Lolly Willowes — Context and Discussion

A Protagonist Who Prefers Geranium Juice to Conversation

The excerpts show Laura Willowes as a woman whose inner life is expressed through small, physical gestures rather than words. While Caroline plans her future, Laura 'had picked a red geranium flower, and was staining her left wrist with the juice of its crushed petals.' This action recalls her childhood habit of staining her cheeks and bending over the greenhouse tank to see her reflection—a dark, shadowy Laura like 'the lady in the old holy painting.' The narrative does not explain these moments; it simply presents them as natural to Laura. Later, in Great Mop, she spends whole days sitting in the woods, listening to wood-pigeons and laying her cheek against a tree, expecting to hear it 'drumming like a telegraph pole.' These details suggest a character who is attuned to the nonhuman world in a way that the domestic sphere of London cannot accommodate.

The Loving Huntsman: A Man Who Darns Stockings

The novel's subtitle, or the Loving Huntsman, finds its echo in the figure of Mr. Saunter, whom Laura meets in a muddy lane on a wet January morning. He stands bareheaded in the rain, holding 'several dead white hens'—the result of a badger's raid. His response is not anger but a gentle, explanatory smile. In his untidy living-room, he makes tea and then takes up a stocking to darn it, 'much better than she did.' Laura's reaction is to wonder what animal he resembles, but she concludes that he resembles 'no animal except man'—and that he reminds her of Adam, 'intact, with all his ribs about him.' This is a strikingly original portrait of a man: competent, gentle, and utterly at ease in his domestic and rural surroundings. The narrative treats him with the same quiet, observational irony it applies to everything else.

A Different Kind of Fantasy: The Mundane and the Mysterious

Though cataloged as fantasy and paranormal fiction, the excerpts from Lolly Willowes contain no overt magic, no spells, no supernatural events. Instead, the fantasy lies in the quality of attention the narrative pays to the ordinary. Laura's move to Great Mop is not presented as a flight into witchcraft but as a retreat into a world where 'the sap was rising up' and the wind 'called her out.' The prose itself becomes more lyrical in these passages: spring is 'something filial, gently unlacing the helm of the old warrior,' and wet beech-leaves 'smouldered in the woods like embers.' The only hint of the paranormal is the way Laura's perceptions shift—she sees Mr. Saunter as a new Adam, and she feels the woods as a living presence. The novel's fantasy may be less about witches than about the possibility of a life lived in deep, sensuous connection with the natural world, away from the constraints of family and society.

Readers approaching Lolly Willowes should set aside expectations of a conventional witch story. The novel's power lies in its precise, ironic prose and its patient attention to the inner life of a woman who chooses solitude and the company of trees over the demands of family. The excerpts suggest a work that is as much a social comedy as a fantasy, and one that rewards close reading of its small, telling details—the false handles on a bureau, the juice of a geranium petal, a man who darns his own stockings. Pay attention to what the narrative chooses to show and what it leaves unsaid; that is where the real magic resides.

Years on the shelf, I’ve noticed how Lolly Willowes lingers in the mind—that quiet hum of self-possession under the country air. It reminds me of another volume, one I keep shelved nearby, where a similar solitude finds its own peculiar weather. Gay Lawless — A Closer Reading holds that same unhurried pulse, a kinship felt more than spoken. Some books simply breathe together like that.