The Feminine Genius in The Awakening of Miss Prim
/MAGGIE STRICKLAND
Dostoevsky wrote in The Idiot that “beauty will save the world.” This idea is often seen as mere sentiment, for how could mere aesthetics save the world? But, as the title character in The Awakening of Miss Prim discovers, real beauty, which springs from goodness and truth, can indeed save us.
PHOTOGRAPHY: JANISSE VALENZUELA
It is the same beauty that St. John Paul II wrote of in his 1995 Letter to Women when he remarked that “there is constantly revealed, in the variety of vocations, that beauty-not merely physical, but above all spiritual-which God bestowed from the very beginning on all, and in a particular way on women.” Though it is not a utopia, the little village where the novel is set is organized in a way that allows the women to use their feminine genius to better their community.
The story opens as Miss Prudencia Prim, a modern woman who feels that she was born in the wrong era, arrives in the lovely little village of San Ireneo de Arnois in an unnamed European country. At first, all she sees are pretty houses, a quiet pace of life, and rather eccentric villagers, most of whose lives revolve around the adjacent monastery, which she isn’t interested in visiting. She discovers that the community she has come to is “a flourishing colony of exiles from the modern world seeking a simple, rural life,” and she is challenged on her notion that she was simply born in the wrong era.
At first, Miss Prim feels that the village’s habits are quaint: the villagers’ theories about education means that most of the children are educated by a group of adults who, though not trained as teachers, are deeply knowledgeable about the various subjects they teach. Many of the businesses in town are run by women, whose families live over the shops and they keep odd hours (the bookshop is only open from 10-2 and the dentist’s office from noon to 5) so that their work won’t conflict with their families’ needs. And every gathering includes tea or coffee and something delicious to eat, as a means of sharing hospitality.
These first two seemingly quaint habits – the education of the community’s children and the business hours being dependent on family needs – are in line with St. John Paul II’s vision for a society where the feminine genius is valued and able to flourish. This setup allows the women of San Ireneo to use their God-given gifts without having to choose between a family and a career, or feeling that if they have both, one or the other must suffer at times, which is precisely why Miss Prim came to San Ireneo not wanting to be married at all.
Miss Prim has come to the community to work as the librarian for a man known only as the Man in the Wing Chair, an expert on languages and the guardian to his four nieces and nephews. He is one of the founders of the community and he, as a Catholic, has what she believes to be odd views on the world. Their differences often lead to verbal sparring matches, though he is always a gentleman; the novel reminds me in this way of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but with spiritual differences rather than class differences. The Man in the Wing Chair is a Thomist, and everything he does is informed by this, which is difficult for Miss Prim to understand.
She is also challenged by the friends she makes in the San Ireneo Feminist League, which she initally thinks is an organization out of place in a village as old-fashioned as San Ireneo. She is shocked to discover that it is, however, an organization devoted to helping the women of San Ireneo personally and professionally – at her first meeting, the ladies work to figure out how they can help an engaged woman set up her own business so that she won’t be at her employer’s beck and call once she’s married, and they intend to find Miss Prim a husband, much to her horror.
As she spends time in the village, though, she begins to soften towards the idea of marriage and her friends help her to see that the things she dreaded about marriage are things she has misunderstood. When she brings up the question of the routineness of marriage and asks if it doesn’t get boring, her friend Emma tells her about the wild tulips that grow on the Russian Kalmyk steppe and explains that “Routine is like the steppe; it’s not a monster, it’s nourishment. If you can get something to grow there you can be sure that it will be real and strong.”
Throughout this and many other conversations, Miss Prim comes to see the beauty in the Catholic understanding of the world, but she resists visiting the monastery for a long time. I won’t spoil the ending of the novel, but I have returned to it several times because it’s a refreshing reminder to make my little bit of the world shine with beauty by living according to the truths of our faith.
About the Author: Maggie Strickland has loved reading and writing stories since her earliest memory. An English teacher by training and an avid reader by avocation, she now spends her days homemaking, chasing her toddler son, and reading during naptime. She and her husband are originally from the Carolinas, but now make their home in Birmingham, Alabama.