Small Pleasures

“It was all too easy to overlook the chores that related to those parts of the house her mother didn’t see.”

Jean mostly performs domestic obligations for appearance’s sake—as many women do throughout the novel. For the social expectations of the time, decorum is everything; though Jean and her mother have differing opinions because of their generational difference, Jean still performs duties as her mother would approve of them to keep the peace within the home.

“[U]nmarried women have very good reason to lie about the circumstances of a pregnancy. Society is so unforgiving.”

Suspicions that Gretchen is lying abound, though all of the women in the narrative understand implicitly why she would. Women in Small Pleasures face scorn from their mothers, society, and doctors about pregnancy. It makes sense that they would resort to desperate measures to avoid the repercussions of single motherhood: social ostracization.

“Of course, it was impossible to know what went on in a marriage behind those neat bay windows, but she had met bullying men before, at work and elsewhere, and Mr. Tilbury was quite unlike them.”

Though Jean is keenly aware that many of the trappings meant to suggest a happy home are sometimes just for show, she feels she can trust Howard’s character. This passage contains both the absurdity of domestic characteristics and the very real qualities of humanity that reside within them, regardless of whether they are accurate.

“How ready people are to think a woman they have never met is a liar, thought Jean.”

Women in Small Pleasures often bear the brunt for events judged to be socially unacceptable, including premarital pregnancy and divorce. Jean comments on this hypocrisy and oppression that many women face with regard to Gretchen.

“Eating out was something other people did. Over the years she trained herself not to mind.”

Though Jean may not be able to budget for dining out, this passage reveals more about the way she deals with her emotions. Once, Jean did mind that she wasn’t able to eat out, but she used repression to train out her desire and envy.

“With this conversation, Jean felt herself being tugged, as if by a muddy tide, far out of her depth. How was it possible to hear a voice in your head saying a word that didn’t already exist in your head?”

Jean, in conversation with Margaret, feels lost and struggles to find the right answer—something she is unaccustomed to. She replies as her mother might have, something she wishes she hadn’t done but, considering much of what Jean has learned has come from internalizing social expectations, she is at a loss for how to handle Margaret’s odd questions.

“Tact was often the first casualty of Gretchen’s imperfect fluency.”

Though Gretchen is not from England, she inhabits the societal expectations of an Englishwoman almost perfectly; however, Jean always observes the small slippages. This suggests that such norms are something people can put on and take off, and Jean often analyzes the moments in which people excel or fail at doing so, including herself. Yet Gretchen’s status as a foreigner puts her at a disadvantage, which Gretchen also acknowledges in the narrative.

“She looked ancient and vulnerable with wet hair, and barely recognizable as a female at all. Jean felt her eyes brimming with tenderness as she ran a comb over her mother’s nearly naked scalp and resolved to be kinder.”

Small Pleasures deals with age and femininity often, and this passage reveals Jean’s awareness of her mother’s frailty and humanness because she can no longer inhabit her role as mother, woman, and caregiver in a recognizable way.

“The watercolor illustrations depicted a freakish race of women, impossibly tall and slender, with strangulated waists, foreshortened bodies and elongated legs culminating in arch pointed toes.”

This passage encapsulates the improbable beauty standards—among many other kinds of standards—women were held (and rarely lived up) to in the 1950s in England as Jean looks for possible dress designs.

“She had no time or talent for elaborate baking herself.”

Jean compares herself against Gretchen frequently to uphold her sense of self. In this particular example, she both values and devalues her position as a woman; she has no time to bake because she is a professional, but she also cannot bake like Gretchen because she is not as talented.

“Why do women lie? To protect themselves of course.”

Martha believes that Gretchen is lying about the pregnancy—a refusal to accept Gretchen’s word that hints at the emotionally abusive relationship the two will have in the future. However, Gretchen, Jean, and Martha all participate in deception to protect their wants and needs—mostly lying to themselves for fear of the repercussions should they be honest about what they want.

“By rights it belonged to her parents, but she, Jean, an interloper, had appropriated it for herself.”

Jean inserts herself into the Tilburys’ life in ways that, in other circumstances, might be improper or impolite. When her mother scolds her for this behavior, Jean realizes she didn’t even consider that her gesture of buying Margaret a bunny could be seen as rude. Her mother’s strict adherence to propriety recasts this act of generosity as selfish, negating its potential to build relationship closeness.

“In the months ahead she would remember this remark—so sincerely felt—and marvel at her own innocence.”

Chambers often uses foreshadowing. In this example, Chambers reveals that, though Jean says she doesn’t want to cause any trouble, she eventually will.

“Girls don’t always like to take advice from their mothers. and perhaps mothers don’t always give the best advice.”

Gretchen delivers a direct commentary on relationships between mothers and daughters, suggesting that mothers don’t always have the right answers, nor do their daughters always want to listen. Generational rifts like these are another casualty of the social emphasis on propriety and decorum at all costs.

“This would then form an eight page section, aimed chiefly at women, which could be detached from the main body of the paper. It was felt that this would enable couples to share and enjoy the Echo more harmoniously.”

The Echo is divided by gender but meant to be a unifying domestic artifact that “couples can enjoy,” as evidenced here. After this passage, the editorial team recognizes that some people might even resist this seemingly progressive mission, change—as if including this segregated and condescendingly removable content makes the newspaper contaminated for men.

“Even if you weren’t enjoying it yourself it was still a waste and therefore a sin against thrift—the only kind of religion Jean practiced.”

Though it’s not referenced very much in the narrative, Jean’s lack of attendance at church and commitment to faith further ostracizes her from society, much like her single status does among the women in her neighborhood. Jean adheres to thriftiness and practicality—religion, like many other things, is just another indulgence.

“She had no illusions or anxieties about her own lack of physical beauty; her ordinariness, in fact, grew less irksome with every passing year.”

Ordinariness is key in the narrative, which makes the point that seemingly everyday people experience extraordinary and traumatic circumstances. Jean’s ordinary looks become bothersome to her only once she starts wondering (for a short time) whether this puts her at a disadvantage against Gretchen.

“I know what you’re about to do, young lady. If it wasn’t for your mother, I’d see you prosecuted—you and the person who did this to you.”

This criticism from Jean’s doctor during her abortion can stand in for the sentiment many women felt from male doctors during a time when women were expected to keep their bodies sexually pure.

“Even now she looks lovely, Jean thought. You could call on her uninvited on a Monday morning and still not catch her with nails unpainted and hair unbrushed.”

Even amidst crisis, Gretchen never struggles to perform her beauty and ensure a flawless appearance. This changes, however, when she starts living with Martha because they cannot afford heat or water. To return to her former appearance, Gretchen must abandon living as her authentic self.

“They had both been witnesses to each other’s disappointments and tragedies, but it had always been understood by Jean that it was weak and shameful to dwell on them and so their conversation never strayed far from the surface of things.”

Jean and her mother, because of their self-restraint, never experience any real intimacy despite their close proximity to each other and presence in each other’s lives. Rigid rules of decorum disallow human bonding, something Jean learns by the end of the novel.

“Jean squatted beside her, an embarrassed onlooker in a domestic drama that had now become horribly public.”

Domestic disputes, like this one between the daughter and mother at Lymington, are embarrassing for Jean, who has a horror of private negative emotions because of her experience of her parents’ divorce as a child. Jean feels mortified to be implicated in such a dispute simply by her proximity. She feels this same fear about the possible revelation of Gretchen’s sexuality.

“It struck her as monstrously unfair that Gretchen should be enjoying her freedom and the pleasures of a new lover, while she and Howard, out of some misguided sense of decorum, remained aloof and lonely.”

Jean recognizes that continuing to adhere to duty and decorum is hypocritical given the context in which she now finds herself, and yet she and Howard still comply. Jean resents Gretchen for pursuing the life she wishes regardless of the consequences. Only, Gretchen isn’t as free as Jean assumes.

“And yet the guilt was there between them like an unwanted third person, interfering, spoiling everything.”

Chambers uses personification to embody restrictive emotions that inhibit Jean and Howard. Here, guilt becomes an unwelcome stranger along for the ride, breaking apart their relationship while remaining unaddressed.