Published in 1921, Vera is a novella by Elizabeth von Arnim (she/her) about Lucy, a woman of twenty who has just lost her father. As she quietly mourns his death, a man she’s never met before, Everard, shows up out of nowhere, consoles Lucy, organizes the funeral, and is a bit of joy to the young woman. Lucy’s only family is her Aunt Dot, and when the pair head to London post funeral, Everad is upset that his access to Lucy is more limited. What readers can tell but poor Lucy cannot is that he lacks control over her.
Hanging around and stinking up his reputation is Everard’s recent past; his wife, Vera, was found dead outside their country home. Although there was an inquest and locals tend to look suspiciously upon Everard, we’re told her death was a suicide. Aunt Dot has funny feelings about a widower hanging around her niece, a woman half his age, mere months after his wife’s death.
And, we see the contrast between Lucy’s family and Everard: Lucy’s father was a curious book lover who had novels hanging topsy turvy all over the place. His friends, also academics, look fondly, and some even romantically, upon Lucy. Nevertheless, her heart is captured by Everard, who only reads the local newspaper and spouts it off to the best of his memory, such is his curiosity lacking. How can he be so dense, they all wonder. Not Lucy. She marries him, and they head to his country estate where Vera died.
Vera first stands out because you’re thinking, “I know this book!” Much of it feels like Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which came out in 1938, seventeen years later. The dead wife’s presence haunts the house, the servants are kindly to the new wife, the husband has a temper, etc. And yet the similarities end there. Whereas the wealthy husband in Rebecca seems on edge because something is affecting him, Everard is a controlling narcissist.
Everything must be done as he says, when he says, even things he has not voiced and expects the servants to just assume. If things aren’t correct according to his controlling mind, they shall be done again and again until it’s perfect. As a result, Vera can be a challenging read. It reeks of domestic emotional and mental abuse as Everard separates Lucy from Aunt Dot, tells her she’s not sick when she is, and forces her to wait to do something as simple as grab a handkerchief if he doesn’t want her to move.
According to press releases about Vera, the novella is based on the author’s second marriage and described as a black comedy. However, this is a book I read aloud to my spouse, and neither of us found much to laugh about. Earlier, maybe, when Everard makes absurd comments, like during a trip to see some architecture: “Let’s finish the château or we’ll be late for lunch. I wish they hadn’t preserved so many of these places — one would have been quite enough to show us the sort of thing.” But after Lucy and Everard are wed and in his home, the controlling man in his locked down house is more unsettling.
Lastly, we were both disappointed by the ending. Just as the book reached an apex where action could take place that affects Everard, Lucy, and Aunt Dot, I turned the e-page and saw a list of other books sold by the same publisher. That was it? Is there a sequel? Although I wouldn’t recommend Vera, I will add that her writing style was intriguing and showed me a different way of crafting tension that I’d not experienced before. Basically, von Arnim appears to use conventions from poetry forms (the pantoum and villanelle come to mind) as a way to slow a scene and make you sit in it longer. The exact same sentences or ending phrases reappear in a passage, and it was neat to pay attention to how that affected my intake of Vera.
CW: mental and emotional abuse
Grab the Lapels 
I’m interested that you wouldn’t recommend it Melanie. Because it’s too grim? Some other reason? I thought the ending was perfect but – SPOILER ALERT – I do hold out some hope for her ending up better than Vera did. It seems amazingly ahead of its time.
I do see it as black comedy. The way she writes some of the servant scenes for example, is both excruciating but oh so funny. Does that say something about me?
If this is your first Von Arnim, I recommend you consider trying another one day.
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So, it’s odd. I enjoyed myself while I was reading, but I think there is too much violence going on in the U.S. right now to find Everard’s verbal abuse funny. You are completely right about the servants, though. When the young lady kept bringing back the same tea and toast after hiding outside the door, I felt she got the best of Everard. Also, when she threw away the toast and he said to dock it from her pay, she just added it to the cook’s ledger, which they were all used to doing. I do find the book insidious; the way Everard slides into Lucy’s life and attempts to separate her from any support system of family or friends is all classic signs of life-threatening abuse. I think the reason I don’t openly recommend it is that a lot of the book can be traumatizing for readers who have been in such situations, and then I have to ask it it’s worth it to read all the abuse and then turn the last page thinking there were more. I loved the author’s writing style; I just think this is a delicate book when it comes to recommendations. I thank you for sharing your recommendation, and I’m looking forward to reading more from von Arnim!
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Ah, fair enough … I guess I would argue we should recommend it with provisos. Overall, my question would be what’s the point of authors writing books about serious issues if we then tell people not to read them? Do we only want authors to write happy things and not encourage people to look deeper and confront the tough things.
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Perhaps the marketing choice was the problem? If the book is described as funny and instead we get an abusive relationship, that feels like a bait and switch. Also, I think this book would be worth the read if it did not end abruptly. In real life, von Arnim left her husband, yes? We get Aunt Dot walking away. The end. I was very surprised.
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Good questions Melanie. I would say there are funny serious books, films, etc, but you usually know, I guess, the subject too, eg A Stasi Comedy on now (here). I hope my review didn’t lead you astray in this regard. (Just checked my review and I did use ‘macabre tragedy’and ‘Gothic’ in my introductory paragraphs-phew!
Re Aunt Dot. What else could she do? I “loved”the ending – I didn’t love what happened, and I was surprised too, but I thought it was a true (ie realistic) ending that we could all think about. One of my questions to my book group was “is there hope at the end?” (BTW, I think the novel was inspired by her marriage but it wasn’t autobiographical. Wemyss was very different to Frances I think and, certainly, she was very different to Lucy – being an experienced woman, an established author with an income of her own, etc.
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Oh,that’s good to know that von Arnim had her own income. I actually know little about her personal life, but she sounds terribly interesting. I like the question you asked the book club. To me, I would say there is no hope because Everard has effectively separated Lucy from her only living relative and all her deceased father’s friends. The fewer “interferences” there are in his control over Lucy, the worse it can get. Truthfully, I wanted this book to go further with Lucy’s studies of Vera. She wanted to know what Vera read and thought, and I wanted to know how Vera survived…what was it, 12 years? with Everard. Vera’s survival of the marriage was the most interesting aspect to me. I was not scarred by the book or anything, it was simply much different from what I thought it would be! And to be fair, if I re-read my beloved Rebecca by Daphne du Mauier and REALLY paid attention, I would have to admit to myself that Maxim is not the great person my heart wants to believe he is.
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I think your take is one take, and the one a lot of people take. And you can easily argue for it as you have because he is isolating her. However, I’m an optimist and I’m thinking that when she’s over her cold she’ll be going to London like Vera did, and he’ll be at work. Who’s to say Aunt Dot won’t be able to see her during the day (that couple there are pretty hopeless) and rescue her if / when she sees the light. It’s a little hope but I think it’s not impossible! I refuse to give up hope completely.
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I tried reading her novel Elizabeth and her German Garden a couple of years ago, which is also meant to be somewhat autobiographical, but I found the very odd relationship between Elizabeth and her husband so unsettling that I had to stop reading. And there were so many reviews calling it “funny” or “delightful” – I think if the book knew it was a nightmare story I might have been able to deal with it better. It sounds like this is somewhat the same.
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Yes, as I read this novella to my spouse, we both got more and more uncomfortable with all the red flags of abuse: separating the wife from her family, alienating her from friends, controlling her movements, punishing her by locking her out in a freezing rainstorm, etc. The only humor I saw was in the way servants knew the husband was unreasonable and basically played nice the two days per week he was home because he paid so well.
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Interesting. Do you think if real world stuff weren’t so grim you would have a different perspective on the book? I’ve not read it, so I’m just curious. Very cool though that you found some good technique in her writing style that could be useful to your own!
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Actually, if the book had an ending I would recommend it. This is a great example of reading a tough book, but when I flipped the last page, I thought there was an issue with the e-book and some got cut off. If there were any kind of ending, I would recommend it with caution.
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I haven’t read any von Arnim yet, despite all the attention she seems to be getting. I tend to agree with you rather than Sue, I don’t like a protagonist I’m learning to like heading unknowingly into danger, especially a young woman with a controlling husband. Sue asks, well how should these situations be written about? I’m not sure, but then I don’t like horror or suspense either, so perhaps I’m not the best judge.
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I like reading difficult books, but my problem was how Vera ended so abruptly that I thought there was a problem with my e-book copy. It didn’t have to end in a rosy way, but it would have been helpful if it had ended. Either this is a lesson of sorts on the true horrors of emotional domestic violence, or she’s going to escape, but it can’t just end.
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I’ve only read her The Enchanted April, which is divine and sounds like the opposite reading experience of this one. I am intrigued by Vera, though, but it’s good to know what I’d be getting into. What you’ve described doesn’t sound very humorous to me.
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Yes, and if readers who are worried about manipulative, controlling behavior in their own relationships, this book may be confusing or strike the wrong chord. I am looking forward to reading a different von Arnim book, though, because I really liked her writing style.
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Yikes! I hate when books end like that, wanting more, I find it so frustrating as a reader. I really want Everard to get what he deserves haha
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And it’s the worst with e-books because it’s so easy to have no sense of how much time is left in a book. Well, okay, a physical book that ends with a whole bunch of excerpts to future novels and book club questions can also trick me, too.
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Doesn’t sound like one I will be adding to any lists.
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Totally understand! This is a book I could see you and I angrily texting back and forth, and have lots of other things to text about right now.
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Haha, sounds about right!
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I know I’ve read this but it must have been before the blog! She’s very good at subtle control and the relationships between married couples and with relatives. But this isn’t her best.
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I did love her writing style, the way she repeats things almost like a poet, and I’m excited to read another novel of hers.
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I like the idea of using form to create tension in new ways but that ending sounds frustrating.
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Yes! I think if I had read this book much faster (I read a bit every night to my spouse), then I would have focused even more on the style and less on the ending.
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