I may have written about this favorite book too often already on my blogs but every April I fall in love with it all over again.
On April 1, 2014 at Dewena's Window I published a post on the movie, a post I'd spent far too much time working on but I'm still proud of it. And when I entered "Enchanted April" as a label here I realized I'd used quotations from it near the first Valentine's Day I began blogging.
When our youngest son and his family were here visiting us recently I put my DVD of the movie in their hands when they were leaving and told them to watch it together in April but to bring it back to me, please.
Not that our two lovebirds need it but I think every couple who has been married a while needs to watch it together every year.
I made RH watch it with me last year! And he liked it!
Very few couples are Hollywood-story beautiful or perfect and neither were the two married couples in Elizabeth von Arnim's 1923 novel, The Enchanted April.
Take the Wilkins couple. Mrs. Wilkins first:
She was the kind of person who is not noticed at parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible; her face was non-arresting, her conversation was reluctant, she was shy.
Wait, am I talking about myself or Mrs. Wilkins? I do feel an affinity for her and she sometimes irritates me.
Mr. Wilkins:
Wilkins was very respectable. He was known to be highly thought of by his senior partners...He pronounced adequately intelligent judgments on art and artists. He was pithy; he was prudent; he never said a word too much, nor, on the other hand, did he ever say a word too little.
And Mr. Wilkins might be a little too big for his britches.
Mrs. Arbuthnot, when Mrs. Wilkins first met her:
She was just staring; and her face, as usual, was the face of a patient and disappointed Madonna.
Which might possibly get a little old.
And Frederick Arbuthnot? How I laughed at this:
Frederick had been the kind of husband whose wife betakes herself early to the feet of God.
And does any normal husband want to know that his patient and disappointed wife is constantly on her knees begging God to change him? I felt a little sorry for the beautiful Mrs. Arbuthnot's husband.
As you can tell, I both love this book and believe in it! When the two women left dreary London one March and traveled to a villa they rented in San Salvatore, Italy, they, and two other London escapees, began to change. San Salvatore changed them.
Naturally, Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Arbuthnot found their way there too. Otherwise what would be the point of the story?
The Enchanted April
