Editing Excellent Women (section)

==Analysis==
''Excellent Women'' has been noted for its accurate analysis of life in post-war England, where rationing and other shortages were still in effect.<ref>Holt 1990, p.154</ref> Pym was drawing on her own life for some elements of the novel. It is the first of many to feature anthropologists and she had worked at the [[International African Institute]] in London since 1946, at the period she is describing. Previously she had been an officer in the WRNS in Italy during World War II and no doubt had come across Rocky Napier's equivalent then.

The novel's humour is achieved through linguistic as well as situational means. Very often the serious is juxtaposed to the [[Bathos|bathetic]] in a style similar to [[mock-heroic]]. Thus Mildred reflects, "I know myself to be capable of dealing with most of the stock situations or even the great moments of life – birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sale, the garden fete spoiled by bad weather".  This mood is prolonged by Mildred's absorption in mundane detail, as in her first meeting with Helena by the dustbins in the basement, where they make arrangements for managing the supply of toilet rolls in the shared bathroom, followed by Mildred's squeamishness at having such matters discussed where others might hear.<ref>Beverley Bell 2019, p.3</ref>

But behind the humour, there is a darker mood, expressed by one critic as "the world of vague longing… described in this novel in a way which not only shows us the poignancy of such hopes, but allows us to smile at them".<ref name=McCall>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/apr/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview30|title=Barbara Pym's Excellent Women: 'One of the 20th century's most amusing novels'|author=Alexander McCall Smith|author-link=Alexander McCall Smith|date=5 April 2008|website=The Guardian|access-date=2 June 2019}}</ref> [[Philip Larkin]], a long-time admirer of Pym's writing, also noted this in a 14 July 1964 letter, having just re-read ''Excellent Women'' and remarking that the novel was "better than I remembered it, full of a harsh kind of suffering [-] it's a study of the pain of being single,- time and again one senses not only that Mildred is suffering but that nobody can see why she shouldn't suffer, like a Victorian cabhorse." Later, in a letter of 1971, he enthused: "what a marvellous set of characters it contains! My only criticism is that Mildred is a tiny bit ''too'' humble at times, but perhaps she's satirising herself. I never see any Rockys, but almost every young academic wife ('I'm a shit') has something of Helena."<ref>''Selected letters of Philip Larkin'', Faber 1992,  p.368, 442</ref>