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Frost in May, first published in 1933 with an introduction by Elizabeth Bowen (and publicly praised by Evelyn Waugh ), was based on White's years at a convent school in pre-World-War-I England. That was not an entirely happy time for White, and her mixed experiences are reflected in the novel. [1]
- Early Life and Introduction to Religion
- The Convent of The Sacred Heart
- Teaching and A First Marriage
- The Asylum
- Family Life of Sorts
- Frost in May, and The End of Another Marriage
- The Start of A Troubled Relationship
- War Work, and Return to Catholicism
- Domineering Women
- The Lost Traveller, Translation, and Estrangement from Susan
Antonia’s early years were spent at the family home in Kensington, and at Binesfield, the Sussex cottage owned by her paternal grandparents. When in London she spent most of her time either alone with her beloved toy dog Dash, or in the care of the already busy housekeeper. Antonia’s father, Cecil Botting, was a renowned classics scholar and teache...
In September 1908, Antonia was enrolled as a pupil at the Convent of the Sacred Heart Roehampton, a well-established Catholic boarding school that drew an international group of students, mostly from high-ranking European families. She felt out of place, both as a middle-class girl and as a recent convert who hadn’t yet learned (and never really wo...
After finishing her schooling at St Paul’s Girls School, Antonia rejected her father’s ambitions for her to go to university and instead took a series of jobs, first as a governess to a wealthy Catholic family and then as a teacher at a boys’ school. The money was a key factor in her decision; she considered her own income vital for her independenc...
Her third novel, The Sugar House, details this difficult time with an acute and harrowing awareness; on rereading it later, Antonia commented, ‘… all that queer, horrid Chelsea time leading up to the asylum…How painfully well it described this state of mind which I first knew in 1921.’ It began with a feeling of depression and isolation, a state wh...
In April 1925, Antonia married her friend Eric Earnshaw Smith. He was a homosexual, and their love — although very real — was purely platonic, which suited Antonia. She was terrified of sexual relations and had never found any pleasure in them. A talented poet who also worked for the Foreign Office, Eric was probably the most important man in Anton...
The following years were ones of highs and lows for Antonia, both professionally and personally, and defined by continued mental health struggles. Her relationship with Tom was a difficult one: both felt used by the other in the marriage but were encouraging and supportive to each other in their writing. It was with Tom’s support that, in November ...
Antonia’s mental breakdowns were mirrored in her eldest daughter Susan. It was the first of many in which the struggles of the mother would be echoed in the daughter. Tom was sufficiently concerned that he arranged for Susan to have a course of psychoanalysis. It was also arranged that he should move out of the family home to allow Antonia to move ...
As Britain prepared for war, Antonia’s mental state improved markedly. In 1939 she wrote to Emily Coleman, ‘Funnily enough I’ve never had such a peaceful life as I’ve had since Sept. 1st…I feel very calm, only fretting in inaction.’ In December, her mother died and she inherited Binesfield, the Sussex cottage that had given her so much pleasure in ...
At the end of the war, two women came into Antonia’s life who would dominate her mentally, emotionally, and spiritually for some years afterward. In 1946, she met Benedicta Bezer, a recent convert to Catholicism who had previously led a wild life of drugs and clubs in London and Paris, and who was known as a lesbian. The two women became very close...
In April 1950, The Lost Traveller was published. In it, Nanda Grey’s name had been changed to Clara Batchelor, but her character and the story were essentially continuations of Frost in May, and the book was just as autobiographical; a powerful evocation of the adolescent struggle Antonia herself had faced between the spiritual life and the attract...
Jun 9, 2018 · Tessa Hadley. Sat 9 Jun 2018 08.00 EDT. F irst published in 1933, Frost in May is based on Antonia White’s own pre-first world war girlhood experiences at a convent school in Roehampton, and its...
First published in 1933, Frost in May has been compared by critics to Colette's Claudine a l'Ecole and to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man..
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Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, [2] Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the ...
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Jun 1, 2017 · There are books that change you in unforgettable ways, that teach you things or make the world larger: books that help you grow. But there are books that hurt you, too, or haunt you. Such a book, for me, is Frost in May. Antonia White was born Eirene Botting in London in 1899.
Feb 17, 2011 · Among numerous volumes of short stories, fiction and autobiography, Antonia White published a celebrated quartet of novels linked by their heroine: Frost in May (1922), The Lost Traveller (1950), The Sugar House (1952) and Beyond the Glass (1954).
