A woman caught in a particular historical moment?
I don't know if anybody else has been noticing the reviews of the recent biography of Monica Jones, 'girlfriend of the more famous Philip Larkin' for many years in a very strange and rather horrible relationship.
Rachel Cooke, Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me review - a woman under the influence
Blake Morrison, Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me by John Sutherland review - a poisonous love
(I think there were others but I don't seem to have links.)
And she does not sound a particularly admirable person, but then, I think of what an awful time for being a woman who wanted a career and a life of mind she was stuck in. Much worse than the 20s/30s, in which, not only was there the sense that the world was opening up for women post-suffrage, Sex Disqualification Removal Act, etc, but also, the get-out clause that, 'she could have married but he was killed on the Somme/she visits him every week in the asylum which is treating his shell-shock but he still doesn't recognise her'. This didn't pertain in the 50s which was far more pathologising about women who did not marry, and do so at an increasingly early age.
One may suppose that she did not, perchance, actually want to marry and dwindle into a wife, quite apart from any problems that the requirements of a husband's career would have posed to hers. I have noted, in the biographies of other women of the period, who did not have the option of settling down with a nice woman (and even the ones who were bi or lesbian tended to be influenced by the homophobia of the times), such expedients as long-term affairs with married men or men like Larkin who had commitment issues, or relationships with men who were bi/gay. (Cf the recent bio of Barbara Pym.)
Which was not necessarily, 'poor things, wasting the best years of their lives when they could have been having hubby and babbiez', but as - possibly not entirely consciously? - a way to have an emotional/sexual life without all that marriage at the period comprised for a woman.
Okay, her internalised misogyny strikes fairly appallingly, but I suspect that was also par for the course at the time, and the being Not Like Other Gurlz, to the point of loathing women writers (WOT she hate George Eliot??!!) and specialising in two particularly stodgy bloke writers. Not even authors noted for their sympathetic and subtle depictions of women, or romantic allure.
Did not have women friends - were there no other women academics at Uni of Leics in other depts whom she would not have seen as competitors?
The sheer awfulness of 50s bro literary culture, though K Amis possible a particularly nasty specimen.
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