Warner’s prose sparkles and snaps like a gin and tonic in an elegant cut glass tumbler, her humor the slice of lime contributing the essential dash of sharp acidity. Warner proves to be a most devious hostess, however: seemingly invited to a pleasantly amusing afternoon garden party, it is only as the sun begins to set that it slowly begins to dawn—this is actually a Witch’s Sabbath! What a marvelously devious sleight of hand.

HeideggerMartin. Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by HofstadterAlbert (New York and London: Harper & Row, 1971). The point of view was old-fashioned, but the Willoweses were a conservative family and kept to old-fashioned ways. Preference, not prejudice, made them faithful to their past. They slept in beds and sat upon chairs whose comfort insensibly persuaded them into respect for the good sense of their forbears. Finding that well-chosen wood and well-chosen wine improved with keeping, they believed that the same law applied to well-chosen ways. Moderation, civil speaking, leisure of the mind and a handsome simplicity were canons of behavior imposed upon them by the example of their ancestors.”

That's enough, I think, to indicate that Lolly's/Laura's mental processes are unusual. Townsend Warner's visions were too. BurchardtJeremy. Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change Since 1800 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002).

In Lolly Willowes, patriarchy is assumed as a fact of life. The book takes place among the white middle classes of England: the comfortably landed professionals who benefit from the violence of patriarchal colonization and yet rarely encounter violence themselves. Laura Willowes, the daughter of an English brewer with a small inheritance of her own, is hardly one of the foremost victims of English might. None of the men in her life feel any antipathy toward her, and some even love her. Her material needs are met, and she should be satisfied.GarrityJane. Step-daughters of England: British Women Modernists and the National Imaginary (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012).

JoannouMaroula (ed.). The History of British Women’s Writing, 1920–1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). The two women sat by the fire, tilting their glasses and drinking in small peaceful sips. The lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the contented drinkers, and threw their large, close-at-hand shadows upon the wall.Time just gets away from her, and soon she’s middle aged and desperate for her own life. She up and leaves them all to go to the Chilterns, where she discovers how much she enjoys being alone and being in nature. Her solitary walks put her in touch with some supernatural forces, and eventually these lead her to … well let’s just say an unconventional life choice. The middle-class spinster from a respectable family has made a pact with the devil. Laura feels at peace. She knows that, had she been “called upon to decide in cold blood between being an aunt and being a witch, she might have been overawed by habit and the cowardice of compunction.” But in a state of desperation, afraid of being forced into Aunt Lollyhood once more, Laura chooses unerringly: becoming a witch is the instinctive right choice. Moreover, she has always been a witch in training, she just wasn’t allowed to see it. The sole outlet for Laura’s desires remains the flowers she buys, even in the winter, to fill up her room, a habit in which she persists although Caroline quietly views it as a terrible extravagance. One day, when running an errand, Laura is drawn to a display of preserves from the county and chrysanthemums. As she looks at them, she falls into a revery that seems both to point to her country past and to look ahead to a future in a solitary orchard: a b Darrell Schweitzer, "Warner, Sylvia Townsend", [sic] in St. James Guide To Fantasy Writers, edited by David Pringle. St. James Press, 1996; ISBN 1-55862-205-5 (pp. 589–90).

Gender under patriarchy can’t help but harm women. It harms men, too, but it offers particular benefits that make that harm worthwhile for a whole lot of men. Gender under capitalist patriarchy is necessarily impossible. It isn’t a coincidence that gendered expectations are contradictory. The contradictions make it impossible to fulfill those expectations, and the impossibility places it always just out of reach, fixable with the right product, new look, new attitude, new behavior. For women under capitalist patriarchy, failing to fulfill gendered expectations is financially punished, but, crucially, so is fulfilling those expectations reasonably well. You might get the job or the marriage by being attractive and tidy and correctly female, but the rise to authority and true ownership of wealth is unlikely to follow. Fulfilling femininity to the satisfaction of men is nearly always an argument against your own potential.a b c d e Maroula Joannou, "Warner, Sylvia Townsend", in Faye Hammill, Esme Miskimmin, Ashlie Sponenberg (eds.) An Encyclopedia of British Women's Writing 1900-1950. Palgrave, 2008 ISBN 0-230-22177-7 (pp. 266-7)