“The Girls of Slender Means” (1963) by Muriel Sparks  (Brief) 

Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means. London: Penguin Books, 1966.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MURIEL SPARK was born in Edinburgh. She began writing seriously after the Second World War under her married name, beginning with poetry and literary criticism. In 1947 she became editor of the Poetry Review. In 1954 she decided to join the Roman Catholic Church, which she considered crucial in her development toward becoming a novelist. 

SUMMARY

The Girls of Slender Means is a short, satirical story about The May Tech club, a young ladies boarding house, established "for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London". It concerns the lives and loves of its desperate residents amongst the deprivations of immediate post-war Kensington between VE Day and VJ Day in 1945. Theframe story, set in 1963, concerns the news that Nicholas Farringdon, an anarchist intellectual turned Jesuit, has been killed in Haiti. Journalist Jane Wright, a former inhabitant of the Club, wants to research the backstory of the priest's martyrdom. The bulk of the novella is taken up by flashbacks to 1945, concerning Farringdon and the Club. The narrative slowly builds up to the unfolding of a tragedy that killed Joanna Childe, the elocution instructor, and led to Farringdon's conversion through the evil heartlessness he perceived in Selina's behavior.

CHARACTERS

Nicholas

An insecure author and anarchist, who finds the May Tech club fascinating and ends up sleeping with Selina. 

Jane

Seen as ‘the fat one’ she is respected because she has a job in a publishing house.  

Selina

‘The beautiful’ one who has an affair with Nicholas, learns deportment lessons and in the end steals a dress while her friends are trapped in a burning house.   

Joanna

Respected priest’s daughter, who recites poetry and teaches elocution lessons for money. In the end she dies in a fire from a bomb blast.

THEMES

Question:  Sparks’s short story has a similar tone to Borges short story, try comparing the way they use satire and irony. 

 Themes focusing on Nicholas’s character: Anarchy/ Confusion/Totalitarianism/Order

Nicholas, our main male character, alters his beliefs from one of Anarchism (chaos) to Christianity (order). When we first meet Nicholas he is far from an assured, self-possessed individual. Living in London Nicholas seems to have embraced the liberal values of British culture to the extent that, “He had been always undecided whether to live in England or France, and whether he preferred men or women, since he alternated between passionate intervals with both. Also he, could never make up his mind between suicide and an equally drastic course of action known as Father D’ Arcy.” (53) With her usual humour, Spark casually mocks and exposes the idiosyncrasies of human behaviour, and makes us very aware that, underneath Nicholas is a very confused individual. Even his classification as an Anarchist is thrown into comical doubt as Spark reveals that even “The anarchists have given him up.” (53)

The turning point in Nicholas’ conversion seems to be on V.J. Day celebrations when he witnesses the murder of a woman among the celebrating crowds. As, Nicholas sees the murder he feels helpless, he takes out his forged letter by Charles Morgan, which falsely proclaims that he is a genius, and slips it into the murderer's shirt. The narrator explains, “He did this for no apparent reason and to no effect, except that it was a gesture. That was the way things were at the time.” (142). The futility he feels admits the chaos of the crowd, who are indulging in murder and assault, can be seen as a critique on the chaotic nature of a liberal society where almost anything is acceptable. Therefore, it can be argued that Nicholas turns his back on liberal society by converting to Catholicism. he turns his back on liberalism and coverts to Catholicism because religion is able to offer him order, structure, and purpose.  These are qualities are also unmistakably qualities which can also be attributed to Fascism, so although Spark herself was a devout Catholic, there is a sense that she warns us equally against the dangers of Fascism and religion.    

Further Reading

Little, Judy. Comedy and the Woman Write: Woolf, Spark and Feminism. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. 

Osiel, Mark. Mass Atrocity, Ordinary Evil and Hannah Arendt: Criminal Consciousness in Argentina’s Dirty War. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2001.

Suh, Judy. “The Familiar Attractions of Fascism in Muriel Spark's "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"” Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter, 2007): 86-102.

Vonalt, Larry P.  “Five Novels. The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau: Darrell by Marion Montgomery: It is Time, Lord by Fred Chappell: The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark: The Exiles by Albert Guerad.” The Sewanee Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Spring, 1965): 333-339.