EXCELLENT WOMEN

Pym, Barbara

Mildred, a single woman in her 30s, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, is one of the genteel and respectable "excellent women" people rely on to live on the sidelines, coming forward only long enough to make tea in a crisis. When a cheerfully unconventional married couple move in next door, Mildred falls in love with the formidable Everard Bone, an anthropologist, and her life acquires an objective. At the end of the novel, there is an indication that Mildred's worthy, solitary life will change.