Yesterday I read Molly Keane’s Good Behavior. It was a complete riot, a send-up of proper British behavior. A clue as to where all this “good behavior” leads is found in the first pages of the novel: “I do know how to behave – believe me, because I know. I have always known. All my life so far I have done everything for the best reasons and the most unselfish motives. I have lived for the people dearest to me, and I am at a loss to know why their lives have been at times so perplexingly unhappy.“ Indeed.
The novel tells the story of an increasingly impoverished, emotionally and financially, landed family in Ireland, and their complications with servants, relatives, horses, and sex (not in that order, not in any order at all but all mixed up together in one big tumble and jumble). They live in Castle Alice, where narrator Aroon and her brother Hubert are cared for by an exuberant and loving nanny, ignored by their gardening and painting mother, and toyed with by their hunting and riding and drinking and philandering father. The novel spans the years before, during, and after World War I but its themes of hypocrisy, self-interest, and utter lack of emotional honesty hidden by good manners — by a projected image — resonates today. While manners have fallen off, the new projected image of letting it all hang out (in conversation, on Facebook, reality TV, or online diaries and blogs) is just as effective at hiding self-serving deeds and motives, as well as genuine feelings.
Molly Keane is the Flannery O’Connor of British Upper Class and a true joy to read; I was cringing and laughing all the way. Keane is cruelly honest with her characters, cutting and slicing through their lives, their situations, and their motivations. No one is left unscathed by her sharpest words. Keane taunts both the pretensions and hypocrisies of the Upper Class and the idiocy of their loyal servants (for staying loyal). In the end, she lets the apparently meek inherit everything. Apparently weak but strongest of heart and darkest of soul.
