Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958) published ‘Her Son’s Wife’ in 1926.

It is set in Gilmanville, a fictional place in small-town America, between 1908 and 1925.

The ‘her’ in question is Mary Bascombe, a middle-aged widow. Though a determined, highly capable teacher and mother, she seems incapable of understanding or forgiving weakness in others.

Her son, Ralph, is a weak-willed young man who has allowed his mother to control his life. He is on the verge of a legal career, like her father and grandfather before him, his girlfriend a younger version of his mother.

Mary loves Ralph, although he is completely unlike her late husband, John Bascomb, an awe-inspiring paragon who held that ‘character is destiny’.

Ralph’s wife is Lottie Hicks, a pretty but common, lazy, sluttish woman from a poor background. Ralph, completely infatuated, forgets his girlfriend and marries Lottie impetuously, telling his mother only after the event.

Lottie is everything that Mrs Bascomb despises.

Lottie gives birth to a daughter. Mary Bascomb is hopeful she will be named after herself, or ‘Joanna’ after her dead husband, for the baby has inherited his remarkable eyes. But Lottie prefers ‘Gladys’, which little Gladys soon adjusts to ‘Dids’. Her parents are only too willing to delegate care of Dids to Mrs Bascomb.

Ralph and Lottie cannot afford their own house on the small salary Ralph earns in a dead-end printing job – he has had to give up his legal career. As matters come to a head, Mrs Bascombe finds it impossible to live with Lottie. She moves to another teaching post in the next town, taking rooms and leaving her own house to the young family.

But, three years later, after re-encountering the infant Dids, who is showing some signs of neglect, love and duty draw her home again.

She finds a way to remove Lottie’s baleful influence upon her son and grand-daughter, colluding with a quack doctor to persuade Lottie that she is an invalid who needs extended bed rest. Naturally indolent, Lottie accepts this and, by remaining in bed, eventually becomes bedridden.

Mrs Bascombe has learned from her mistakes with Ralph. She finds an opening for him on a local newspaper, but then steps back, leaving him to transform himself into a promising sports journalist, often away from home. And, under her tutelage, Dids becomes a splendidly independent young woman, the natural heir of John Bascombe rather than of Lottie Hicks.

Dids is about to leave for university. Mrs Bascomb tries to release herself by recruiting a nurse to care for Lottie, but in retaliation Lottie threatens to keep Dids at home. Mrs Bascomb must sacrifice herself, for Lottie has grown to rely on her, perhaps even to love her.

She is trapped – the consequence, perhaps, of her wickedness in deceiving Lottie, effectively imprisoning her in her bedroom.

But her salvation lies in her realisation that she has grown to understand Lottie, to pity her as a victim of her own childhood circumstances and, yes, even to love her. She willingly resigns herself to being Lottie’s carer.

Canfield herself assumed that a male audience could not be interested in any novel that dealt so exclusively with human relationships, predominantly within the family.

This betrays a casual sexism, surprising in such an enlightened woman, and limited knowledge of the work of some of her male contemporaries.

I am certainly not ashamed to say that I found ‘Her Son’s Wife’ compelling, and I recommend it to readers regardless of their gender.

TD

September 2024