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The New Zealand Novel 1860-1965
Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Sylvia Ashton-Warner. If the publication of Owls Do Cry could be said to make an explosion in 1957, 1958 saw several outbursts quite as exciting. It was a bumper year in fiction. The God Boy reached here from America early, M. K. Joseph's I'll Soldier No More arrived soon afterwards, Spinster burst upon us at mid-year, and Ruth France's The Race just before Christmas.
Spinster was published in England, where it attracted "rave" reviews before New Zealanders ever had a chance to get their hands upon it. It was read therefore here with great interest, and promptly became the centre of vigorous discussions. Was Anna a possible person? Was teaching in an infant room ever like that? Who anyway was Sylvia Ashton-Warner?
Members of the primary teaching service knew the name "Sylvia" as that signed to articles on teaching methods for Maori infants. The author is a teacher with plenty of experience of the type of school and community described in Spinster. Clearly, then, the background was authentic; indeed, its very authenticity led readers astray, in the manner so characteristic of us, into judging the novel as a transcript of fact. As in the visual arts, New Zealanders prefer the pleasures of recognition to those of imaginative exploration. Photographic realism on the whole is more likely to be acceptable to us than transmutation of actuality into a higher and more universal truth. Too many discussions of Spinster ignored its creative aspect.
The spinster of the title is Anna Vorontosov, gifted in art and in music, as in human relationships, but a little balmy. She primes herself each morning with brandy, frequently weeps, talks to trees and flowers, has bursting headaches and exhausting nervous crises, longs for a man and children, yet has refused, long ago, the one who might have comforted her. The school where she is infant mistress offers other menfolk, the Head, married and imperturbable, Paul Vercoe, the not-so-young "pressure cooker" trainee, Abercrombie the inspector. Anna is drawn to them all in turn, without satisfaction.