Salley Vickers

Chekhov in the home counties

issue 26 March 2005

Dorothy Whipple was once a highly regarded bestselling novelist and it is typical of the excellent Persephone books that they have restored her glory within their elegant silver jackets and distinctive floral end papers.

In They Were Sisters, with its, surely intentional, Chekhovian undertones, Whipple explores the fortunes of three sisters: Lucy, Charlotte and Vera. Lucy is clever and studious but must abandon her intellectual aspirations when their mother dies and, in the custom of the times (the novel is set in Thirties Britain), Lucy, as the eldest, becomes duty-bound to raise her siblings. Charlotte is sensitive but wilful and, dis- regarding all the signals, marries an out-and-out rotter, while Vera, an egocentric beauty, marries a mother’s boy and a bore. The only one of the three who remains childless, Lucy finally makes a sound marriage to William, who loves and respects her as an equal.

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