VERA

Although full of the trademark wit and perceptiveness Elizabeth von Arnim demonstrates in the lovable Christopher and Columbus and The Enchanted April, Vera is much darker—a tragedy, rather than a comedy, of manners. The setup is similar to Rebecca (although Vera was written first; did du Maurier read von Arnim?), with an innocent young wife marrying a wealthy, secretive husband and moving into the home haunted by the spirit of his dead first wife. But in Rebecca, nothing is as it first appears to be (i.e., the husband is good and the dead wife a bitch); in Vera, it’s just what you feared: a nightmarishly realistic portrait of an emotionally abusive relationship.

I can’t say I loved this book, but only because it angered me so much, because it was so masterful in its portrayal of banal selfishness and cruelty. von Arnim alternates points of view throughout the novel, so for better or worse, you’re right there in the characters’ heads. This means that the husband, Wemyss, isn’t some mustache-twirling caricature of unspeakable evil, but a monstrously childish, needy, narcissistic control freak whose actions seem perfectly reasonable according to his own twisted logic. He’s the kind of character that makes you wish you could jump into the novel and punch him in the face, but you know that even if you did, he would never understand why you were being so horrible to him—in other words, he’s exactly frustrating enough to have driven his first wife, Vera, to suicide. (The hints we get of Vera’s constrained married life are chilling; for instance, Wemyss claims that she never left the house because she had no interest in traveling, yet her bookshelves are pathetically full of Baedecker guidebooks. It makes you wonder how she lasted as long as she did.) And the new young wife, Lucy, seems maddeningly naive to a modern reader, yet von Arnim gains your sympathy for her early in the book (after the death of her father, Lucy poignantly reflects, “Life—how terrible it was, and how unsuspected. One went on and on, never dreaming of the sudden dreadful day when the coverings were going to be dropped and one would see it was death after all, that it had been death all the time, death pretending, death waiting.”) and keeps you with her every step of the way, through her struggles and rationalizations, as she gradually realizes Wemyss’ true nature yet still, pathetically, keeps trying to find ways to make the relationship work.

In a way, this is a 1920s version of a Lifetime movie, with the Charming (a Little Too Charming) Meet-Cute, the Escalating Warning Signs everyone but the ingenue can see, and the Protective Motherly Figure—in this case, Lucy’s spinster aunt, Miss Entwhistle—whose instincts keep telling her This Man is No Good, who is ultimately proven right, and who must finally save the ingenue when the Evil Abuser reveals his Evil Ways. Yet von Arnim boldly explored these tropes before they were tropes, and (spoiler!) in her version there’s no climactic rescue, no spunky heroine finding her inner strength, no punishment for the villain, no happy ending—just everyone soldiering on along the same disastrous course. In my view, this is a classic feminist horror story on par with The Handmaid’s Tale (less extreme, sure, but far more likely to actually happen to you or someone you know). I’m not sure I’d want to read it again, but it demonstrates that von Arnim’s talent ranged far beyond the light, sparkling stories I love her for.