Mrs. Miniver

       I saw the movie adaptation of Mrs. Miniver when I was fifteen or so, and to this day it is one of my favorite movies.  I had no idea, however, that there was a book that the movie was based on until I stumbled on it while browsing a used book store last year! Greer Garson is superb at capturing the personality of the book, both in the quirky and the serious moments. Often the two become charmingly intertwined. I also love Teresa Wright - she looks just like my grandma when she was young.

       The book is actually a collection of essays written for the London Times from 1937-1939. While the movie is focused entirely around the war, it is barely addressed in the essays. Mrs. Miniver is a very thoughtful, insightful wife and mother. Her musings about life, society, and humanity are delightful to read. I'll share a few quotes to give you a peek.

"Clem caught her eye across the table. It seemed to her sometimes that the most important thing about marriage was not a home or children or a remedy against sin, but simply there being always an eye to catch." p. 17

"Thank God for colonels, thought Mrs. Miniver; sweet creatures, so easily entertained, so biddably diverted from senseless controversy into comfortable monologue; there was nothing in the world so restful as a really good English colonel." p. 17

"Toby, his feet sticking out over the edge of the seat, was completely immobile, but whether from profound emotion or too many coats it was impossible to tell." p. 12


"{telling about a recent trip} But however eagerly they listen they do not really take in what you are saying. For you cannot make them understand the essential point, which is that when you went away you took the centre of the universe with you, so the whole thing went on revolving, just as usual, round your own head. How could they, indeed, be expected to believe this when they know quite well that all the time the centre of everything stayed at home with them? It is a day or two, as a rule, before your universe and theirs merge together and become concentric: and when that happens, you know you are really home." p. 137

"Constructive destruction is one of the most delightful employments in the world, and in civilized life the opportunities for it are only too rare."

"One of the minor arts of life, thought Mrs. Miniver at the end of a long day's Christmas shopping, was the conservation of energy in the matter of swinging doors. With patience and skillful timing it was very seldom necessary to use your strength on them. You could nearly always follow close behind some masterful person who had already done the pushing... but there was an astonishing number of people who seemed to glory in taking the line of most resistance, hurling themselves against an approaching door... They must lead, she reflected, very uncomfortable lives." p. 18

"And she wondered, in passing, whether the narrow jaws and protruding teeth which are so distressingly prevalent among the English might not be due less to heredity than to their being encouraged to keep rabbits in their impressionable youth. Change a nation's pets and you might change its physiognomy: but she could not think, off-hand, of a nice prognathous substitute." p. 63

May it please the supreme and divine Goodness to give us all abundant grace

ever to know His most holy will and perfectly to fulfill it.

- St. Ignatius of Loyola