Years of Grace.

I’m deep in the forgotten winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction – mostly titles that won while the award was still called the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, as it was until 1948. At least a dozen winners from that period are either out of print or only available for an exorbitant cost (likely intended only for sale to academic readers and libraries). T.S. Stribling’s The Store was one of the latter, but the dated, racist language in the book more than explained why it’s almost completely forgotten today. Margaret Ayer Barnes’ 1931 winner Years of Grace, also only available at a ridiculous price ($42 on amazon as I write this), differs greatly from some of the other ephemeral winners of its era, in that it’s actually a fine book that holds up adequately despite the 80-plus years since its publication. The moral compass of the protagonist (and, I presume, the author) seems old-fashioned, but the same is true of novels from the Regency and Victorian eras of England, and no one seems to mind those. Instead, Years of Grace, seen through today’s lens, reads as a contemporary look at the changing roles of women in American middle- and upper-class society at a time when their rights were starting to expand.

The plot here is a bit by-the-numbers, salvaged by the rich development of the main character, Jane Ward. The three sections of Years of Grace cover three distinct periods of her life: her teenage years, where she has a girlish crush on a young French artist, but their plans to marry are scotched by their parents; the early part of her marriage, where she nearly consummates an affair with her best friend’s wayward husband; and when her children are grown and similar extracurricular activities complicate their lives and Jane’s as well. Jane evolves over the course of the novel, from innocent and somewhat flighty teenager to a young mother feeling hemmed in by her solid but unexciting marriage to her later years, where she takes the role of her own parents but lacks the same power over her children. The parallels in situations are too on the nose, and the transition from her teenage years to her ennui in marriage is rather abrupt – it’s never clear whether the problem is Jane playing “what if” in her mind or if she just married a really boring man.

The real flaw in Years of Grace, however, is that there’s so much talking and not a lot of doing. In the third section, when there’s a scandal among Jane’s children (a plot device that also appears in another Pulitzer winner, Ellen Glasgow’s In This Our Life), it’s shocking not because of what the characters involved have done, but because the book has been so sedate up until that point. Jane’s brief dalliance with Andre while they were still teenagers feels like nothing to us today, and would feel the same to her children if they knew. The mores of her generation and those of the the next generation are worlds apart, and she can’t make the adjustment – that, in and of itself, is enough to fill a novel. Barnes’ heroine makes difficult choices, but because she pulls up short, her subsequent regrets seem overly dramatic:

“When you love people, you’ve got to be decent. You want to be decent. You want to be good. Just plain good – the way you were taught to be when you were a little child. Love’s the greatest safeguard in life against evil. I won’t do anything, Jimmy, if I can possibly help it, that will keep me from looking anyone I love in the eye.”

Barnes’ prose is the novel’s other strength beyond Jane’s characterization, as the book flows quickly despite a relative paucity of action. Perhaps writing ten or twenty years later would have allowed to her to do more with the character – to have her put her marriage into real danger, or to go further in the mental what-if gymnastics that bother her throughout her married life. Perhaps some of the more dismal entries in the early years of the Pulitzer Prize have made me go soft, but I actually didn’t mind Years of Grace even with those flaws. It’s a quaint read, but a well-written one, with a main character you will like even if you don’t agree with her choices or feelings.

Aside: There’s very little about the book available online, but it makes an incongruous appearance on a Real Simple list of 50 books recommended by modern authors. It didn’t even merit a full review in the New York Times when it was first published, appearing as the first review in a two-page collection of shorter writeups.

Next up: I’m reading Ellen Glasgow’s In This Our Life, which I mentioned above.