The pastor's wife

By Elizabeth von Arnim

Book Overview

Elizabeth von Arnim has that elusive quality, wit. Unlike humor or books written to amuse and entertain, wit must be appreciated through the lens of the reader's own experiences. You read a sentence... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0006ASQAK
• Release Date: January 1951
• Publisher: Westminster Press
• Length: 187 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant Feminist Novel

The Pastor's Wife has been called witty and perceptive, but it goes much farther than that. Just under the surface of Von Arnim's witty, civilized prose lies a fiercely brilliant feminist novel, burning with quiet rage. Von Arnim details every step of the way by which a well-meaning English innocent, hoping only to live her dream of freedom, finds herself inescapably entrapped. A terrifying,subversive, wonderful book. It's a shock to realize this novel was written almost a hundred years ago.

Von Arnim's witty portrayal of fin-de-siecle married life.

This is one of Von Arnim's very best novels, full of surprising wit and sometimes caustic criticism of the lonely existence of an intelligent British woman in a turn-of-the-century aristocratic German household. In particular, the childbirth scenes are chilling, and reminiscent of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, though Von Arnim typically treats the topic with more humor. The ending is as brilliant as those of her contemporary Edith Wharton.