A Family and a Fortune (Penguin Modern Classics)

In many ways A Family and a Fortune reads far more like a play than like a conventional novel. Its narrator tells us something of how the characters seem, and a little of how they behave, but almost everything else must be inferred from the dialogue, and there is no sense that this dialogue is intended to realistically reflect how people talk to one another, reading far more like lines written to be declaimed for an audience than any semblance of family members conversing. And it was a little odd to find the youngest family member joining in by describing how things had been said or done, almost as if he were providing the stage directions, and to find his brothers frequently talking in asides. It took a while to get used to the unusual approach, and it was not always easy to follow who was speaking, or who was being addressed.

The Gaveston family gathers together regularly, and so most of the story takes place within a few rooms of the family home, typically during or after meals, and this circumscribed backdrop adds to the sense of the novel as a play. There is an occasional scene set elsewhere, but when events take place immediately outside the home they are frequently observed and described from within by perplexed family members watching from a window. These scenes almost always prefigure some dramatic change in the plot in a story which is replete with shifts in fortune. The family endures a lot during the months it covers, with a few serious illnesses, a few deaths, and a few changes of circumstance.

The story primarily concerns the effect upon other family members of the unusually close relationship which exists between two siblings. Edgar is the elder Gaveston brother, inheritor of the family home and income; his brother Dudley is still living with him although they are both well beyond middle age. They are almost inseparable, but this close friendship has been restrictive and has impacted on all other relationships in their lives, distracting Edgar from forming close bonds with his wife and children, and preventing Dudley from building an independent life of his own. Dudley now has little other than an accepted place within the family, and it means that while he is loved and respected, he is also taken for granted. The fortune referenced in the title is one Dudley unexpectedly inherits from his Godfather, yet within a day the family have distributed the greater part of his new wealth according to their needs.

The close relationship between the two brothers contrasts with the strained one which exists between Edgar's wife Blanche and her sister Matty, but then Matty is a woman that anyone would struggle to tolerate. She is a self-pitying invalid who has come with their father Oliver to live at nominal rent in the small Lodge located on the grounds of her brother-in-law's property. It has meant accepting a substantial reduction in the grandness of their surroundings, something the pair have brought upon themselves by living beyond their means. They don't endure it with any humility, however, and Blanche's relative comfort only fuels the bitterness Matty feels at her own decline. She bristles whenever pity, concern or attention is directed at anyone other than herself, and relieves the frustration she feels by tormenting her companion of 31 years, the only person over whom she has any power.

Matty's arrival and Dudley's inheritance trigger a series of events which impact on the harmony of family life, and the ensuing conflicts are used by the writer to examine human behaviour and particularly responses to powerlessness. It was perhaps not an ideal book to read during school holidays, when a refuge from bickering would have been more welcome than a story which overflows with it. But it was an interesting story to reflect back upon, and particularly on why Compton-Burnett had chosen to write it in this unusual way.