The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam

The Man in the Wooden Hat, new this month from Europa Editions, revisits the half-century-long marriage of Edward and Elizabeth Feathers, first portrayed in Jane Gardam’s 2005 novel, Old Filth. Here, however, Gardam focuses on Elizabeth’s experience of the relationship rather than Edward’s, and with fascinating and refreshing results.

Gardam’s characters are not what we’d typically think of as extraordinarily interesting human beings (an aging and largely sexless wealthy British couple), but we grow to love them because she lets us know them so well. Edward, a prosperous barrister, is good-natured but emotionally stunted due to a traumatic and loveless childhood, and they are both “Raj orphans” whose lives are been split between England and its Eastern colonies. Their marriage is a peaceful if inhibited one, and in true British fashion, they are not people of passion: “But of course I’ll marry him,” thinks Elizabeth upon receiving Edward’s letter of proposal, “I can’t think of a reason not to.”

But for being so mundane, so utterly British, Elizabeth and Edward are lovable and real and so deeply representative. When Elizabeth describes her uneasiness with the path she has followed in life, she is describing the malaise of an entire group of people brought up in a certain era in the colonies:

I have no aim,’ she said. ‘No certainty. I am a post-war invertebrate. I play mah-jong in my head year after year trying to find something I was born to do. I have settled on exactly what my mother would have wanted: a rich, safe, good husband and a pleasant life. All the things she must have thought in the Camp were gone for ever. Impossible for me, the scrawny child playing in the sand. Hearing screams, gunfire, silences in the night, lights searching in the barbed wire. I should be the last woman in the world to recreate the old world of the unswerving English wife.’

Gardam’s characters are incredibly perceptive. Living between two cultures provides them with their perspective. They move between the Eastern and Western cultures and judge one against another, never feeling quite at home anywhere and this double colonial society becomes like a character. The Man in the Wooden Hat derives much of its interest and pleasure from the impressions it develops of the cultures that shape the characters. Elizabeth’s missionary friend Amy prepares her to go health visiting:

“‘Every family will greet us with a glass of tea. If there is no tea it will be a glass of water. If there is no water then it will be an empty glass. Whichever is handed to you, you greet it as if it were champagne. OK?’”

And, though they don’t exactly belong anywhere, people like Edward and Elizabeth learn the rules wherever they are and then live their lives accordingly, be it with champagne in London, or an empty cup in Hong Kong. Each place is brought to life in its details and nuances, and each place also develops that comfortable, unextraordinary yet compelling quality that marks Gardam’s characters.

The structure of the novel is generally straightforward, linear, if not strictly chronological. One scene may come as one character’s flashback, remembered years later, and much information is delineated through dialog long after an even has actually occurred. This is truly a companion novel: nearly every one of the events recounted either took place or was at least referenced in Old Filth. In fact, it’s a miracle that The Man in the Wooden Hat feels as fresh as it does, as thoroughly continuous as it is with the older novel. Like Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat is character-driven, and perhaps that’s why it can retell the same plot with such success.  Elizabeth is not so trapped within herself, nor within the mores of the two cultures, as Edward is.  She’s a character who accepts society on her own terms, and her perspective enlivens the book. As she explains to an elderly missionary who advises her that she “‘will need the consolation of Jesus Christ.’”:

“Mrs. Baxter. I am about to be married. I intend to be very happy. I’ll discover no doubt if I need Jesus Christ. And in what form. If it is in the form of sex and married love, then Jesus is for me. But I haven’t much hope.’”

Unlike Edward, Elizabeth can break societal and personal barriers, so we receive new information and hear transgressive opinions from her—and she has a sense of humor!

Gardam is also adept at writing lively, flowing dialogue. She has a feel for different registers of speech and her characters reveal incredible amounts of information about themselves in short exchanges, allowing even minor characters to feel well-developed. Elizabeth and Edward’s London neighbor and her husband, both actors, explain the advantages of playing the part of a butler:

‘At present he is in a play where his part ends with Act Two and so he gets home for supper. They let him off the final curtain.’

‘I hope always to be let off the final curtain,’ said Dexter. ‘And as I always wear black I need spend no time in the dressing room. I can leave this house and be on stage in nine minutes.’

There are countless little quirky yet unselfconscious exchanges like this one throughout the novel. Taken together, they begin to add up to a snapshot of a rather quaint and insular society, or at least a certain niche within a society.

For all of the naturalness of the dialogue, for all of the details of such a mundane existence, The Man in the Wooden Hat is extremely readable and very engaging.  Fairy-tale characters like Edward’s mysterious Chinese dwarf friend Albert Ross and nightmarish scenes like Elizabeth’s infidelity with Terry Veneering break up the detailed, comfortable, and very lifelike way we come to know Edward and Elizabeth. And like Edward and Elizabeth, the novel has a quiet charm. Modest and understated, its intelligence is wry and always aimed at pleasing, but not necessarily impressing, the reader.

Reviewed by Amanda DeMarco

The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
Europa Editions, 2009
Paper, 240 pp, $15.00
ISBN-10: 1933372893