Barbara Pym and Excellent Women: On Boundaries, Bathrooms, and the Mysteries of Other People

EXCELLENT WOMEN is my favourite answer to the question of where a reader should begin with Pym

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I need to make the case for personal boundaries, that hazy line at which you end and the world begins, or at least I need to make the case for boundaries being worthy of discussion, even fascination, never mind that the term—especially in online psychology circles—has been overused to the point of meaninglessness. I get it, I do, but I also need you to understand that until not long ago, I had no conception of boundaries at all. And not even just in the “sharing too much on the internet” sense, but more like the entire world was my business, and I wasn’t just minding it, I was actually the project manager.

Routine was the kind of scenario in which I would encounter two people screaming at each other on the sidewalk in Cantonese, and contemplate stepping in to mediate. I still ask anyone looking vaguely disoriented at the subway entrance if they require directions. The delivery of packages not addressed to me to my doorstep, which I share with two other households, usually feels like I was being called forth to step into service, compelled by a higher power. If I didn’t orchestrate all this, the world would fall apart, and we are all us just hanging on by a thread anyway.

And so there was a sense of recognition as I was rereading Excellent Women, the second novel by Barbara Pym, and encountered Mildred Lathbury intercepting a telegram intended for her downstairs neighbour, who has recently moved in:

“It was certainly unfortunate that Helena Napier should be out when the telegram came. Wives ought to be waiting for their husbands to come back from the wars, I thought, though perhaps unreasonably, when a few hours by aeroplane can transport a husband from Italy to England.”

And upon receiving the telegram, Mildred jumps into action, “Ought I to try to figure out out where she was and let her know?” she wonders, supposing that Helena has likely gone out with fellow anthropologist, Everard Bone, whom Mildred has met in passing. “I felt that I ought to make an attempt and began searching the telephone directory to see if I could find [Bone’s] number. If I couldn’t, so much the better—I should be saved from interfering in something which didn’t really concern me.”

That emphasis being mine, but you can probably already tell that it’s too late for that.