In 2005, a series of romance novellas by Jilly Cooper were republished. In my teens and early twenties, I had devoured her Rutshire Chronicles, and so it was inevitable that these would cross my path, too. Today, I have four of the seven novellas. As part of my nostalgia kick, I decided to re-read the one I remembered most fondly: Prudence.
Prudence (originally published in 1978) follows Prudence, a copywriter in London who has a situationship with a barrister named Pendle Mulholland. It’s not going all that well, but when Pendle invites her to the family home in the Lake District, Prudence is sure that things are turning around.
Only when they get there, she sees that things are only going to get worse. His family is a disaster. His mother spends money like water – money that they don’t really have. Pendle’s brother, Jack, stole Pendle’s girlfriend, Maggie, and then married her. This is Jack’s second marriage. Maggie and Prudence look very similar…suspicious. Pendle’s stepbrother, Ace, is home from South America where he’s been producing a story for a news show. Everyone (except Ace) drinks too much. Prudence is buffeted by the winds of disharmony in the family. Incidentally, also visiting at the time is Lucasta, Jack’s daughter from his first marriage. It’s chaotic. (Side note: Lucasta is that rare thing – a well-written, believable child.)
This book introduced me to two of my favourite tropes and settings. First, the ‘nursed back to health’ trope. Prudence was my first experience of it: Prudence falls sick while at the Mulholland family home and someone (no spoilers) nurses her back to health. He’s terribly bossy, but shows infinite care. It’s my catnip!
The other thing Prudence introduced me to: the chicness of the single life in London. At least, that is how I saw it when I was younger. It all seemed impossibly cool. Dinner parties in which things go a bit wrong. Drying your hair in front of the fire. Borrowing clothes from your flatmate. Waiting for people to ring you. It’s not glamorous per se, but to my young self it felt like the height of sophistication. Somehow the flaws made it even more appealing.
For me, Prudence is very similar to Bridget Jones as presented in the original book. Bridget Jones was glamorous to me, too. I was a young woman at the cusp of adulthood and here was a picture that I desperately wanted to emulate. I too wanted to be funny and host parties at which I ruin the main meal, and have a flat that’s a bit scruffy, but that seemed unlikely. With Prudence, the satirical bent of Jilly Cooper’s writing made it all somehow seem possible, even for the likes of me.
Rereading this book now, I look back on my young self with such fondness. Oh, the dreams I had. Twenty years later, I can tell you that they didn’t come true. Or rather, I didn’t make them come true. My life took a different path, but I remember that feeling of being almost an adult and the plethora of possibilities ahead of me, many influenced by this particular portrayal of adulthood.
More prosaically, rereading this book showed me that I really didn’t understand all the racism or sexism portrayed in this story very well. There are some real clangers in this book. Be cautious should you decide to pick it up. For example, there is an offhand and irrelevant comment about how ‘Chinamen’ look alike. Or how Jack expects Maggie to do his laundry.
Should you, dear Bitchery, feel yourself becoming nostalgic, I recommend revisiting old favourites. Some of them hold up, some of them don’t, and some of them remind you of the dreams you used to have. Prudence revealed how much I had longed for a life so different from the adulthood I treasure now, and traced my love of some tropes back to their source. I am a different person now than I was 20 years ago, of course, and I have learned a surprising amount by revisiting both my perspective from two decades back and a book that was formative for me then, and now.