Persephone Books…. a review of

OUT OF THE WINDOW
by MADELINE LINFORD

– a review by Penzance author and poet, Julia Spry-Leverton

Are you surprised that in the late 1920s a woman was writing a novel whose storyline – of a disruptive romantic liaison between a middle class woman and a lusty working class man – had many resemblances to the current work of DH Lawrence, his novel that was to become Lady Chatterley’s Lover? Such a coincidence – but perhaps only because this subject needed bringing before the public, and through the medium of popular fiction it would become accessible.

But historically the surprise, surely, is that Out Of The Window, the fifth and last novel written by Madeline Linford, went smoothly to publication and modest success in 1930, whereas not until thirty years later was Lawrence’s unpublished manuscript posthumously released, having at last been vindicated of the UK Censor’s accusations of obscenity.

How, you might well ask, was the theme of sexual attraction between two people effectively barred by ‘polite’ society from meeting as equals in love, treated so differently by Linford that her novel aroused no controversy? One answer is that Linford’s writing avoided all explicitness about the relationship’s physicality.  In direct contrast to Lawrence who, determinedly setting out to be a ground-breaker in modern literary language, described himself labouring to ‘go further to make the sex relations valid and precious, instead of shameful.’

Out of the Window opens in February with Kenneth, an engineer from Manchester invited to speak at a philanthropically-minded party on the conditions suffered by the families of striking miners. Ursula, indulged local doctor’s daughter, registers Kenneth’s striking good looks, how his thick fair hair ‘blazed in gold.’ Her girlfriend’s of the same opinion but adds, ‘Common though, I expect.’

Responding to Kenneth’s description of urban deprivation, Ursula contrives to contact him about donating some unwanted clothing, resulting in him being invited to tea at her home. An awkward occasion – but by the end of it the two are nevertheless lingering at the gate like ‘people unwilling to part without the prospect of another meeting.’  

Back in the drawing room prescient spinster Aunt Agnes warns Ursula’s mother further contact should be prevented, Kenneth’s ‘Greek god’ looks alone enough to attract Ursula, quite apart from his ‘romantic’ living conditions.  ‘A slum can be very glamorous to a girl’ declares Agnes, ‘she sees the one bed but not so far ahead as the thirteen children.’

Kenneth’s having his own reaction to the situation, disparaging his ‘intended’, Dorothy, pallid in comparison to Ursula who’s ‘clear cut like a jewel in a white setting.’ His frustration leads him to seduce Dorothy, ‘obedient to any demand that he might make’, subsequently dropping her once he and Ursula have ‘accidentally’ met again, their ‘friendship’ rapidly developing into passion.

Reflecting at her window over the garden, reliving the keen pleasure of her abandon there to Kenneth’s advances, Ursula yields herself up to a ‘strange, unfathomed future.’  A summer wedding ensues, neither partner in the marriage heeding their relatives’ discouragement.

Linford applies journalistic techniques to the characters’ contrasting domestic settings, rural-urban, affluent-poor. Via a tellingly acute level of detail we come to understand the embedded mutual distrust of each for the other. Linford’s remarkable career, lasting forty years from the age of eighteen, as the only female employee, and first Women’s Page Editor, at the Manchester Guardian newspaper equipped her well for this observer stance.

In her plot, by allowing us inside the heads of each character in turn, Linford primes us to foresee – where they cannot – what’s to unfold. She’s laissez-faire; it’s in their words and thought processes that this story is shaped and steered, in all its mutual illusion, delusion and ultimately, exclusion.

Demonstrating her control over the narrative, Linford’s confidence allows her to take her readers to the very brink of critical narrational developments, only to abandon them there, the resources of their imaginations required to fill out the scenes.

Allusion, not explicitness, is Linford’s forte. Even in the closing scene: Ursula back in her childhood bedroom ‘among the old treasures of her maidenhood’, that life’s self-absorption seemingly reasserting its rhythms despite all that’s occurred. Yet we know enough now to see the subtext here – and it’s alerting us that the future view out of the window for artless Ursula can no longer be that of an unsullied high summer afternoon.  

The subject and style of Out Of The Window is a neat fit with publishers Persephone Books www.persephonebooks.co.uk who reprint mid-twentieth century neglected or under-appreciated novels and non-fiction, seeking out accounts which broaden our understanding of women’s lives in that era.

Out of the Window, number 148, was published in October 2023.