Each of the headmistresses have their circle of acolytes – powerful emotions have been unleashed beneath the roofs of this French school. The school is run by Mademoiselles Julie and Cara, once so close, the two are each acting against the other.
Once more it worms its way into one’s heart, to instil its poison, to gnaw away the solid hard foundations of life and leave in their place the hollow phantom of illusion.” Time after time, like a noxious insect, it begins to stir again, it shivers back again into a faint tremulous life. “How hard it is to kill hope! Time after time, one thinks one has trodden it down, stamped it to death. However, the freedom and fun of Les Avons is superficial, beneath the surface are raw emotions, jealousies and destructive allegiances. Olivia revels in this atmosphere so unlike anything she has experienced before. It is a school where there are few rules, where laughter and passionate discussion are actively encouraged. This is a school of an entirely different kind.
Olivia is sixteen when she is sent to Les Avons a finishing school near Paris, run by two mademoiselles. Nothing ever seemed spontaneously my own.”Ī woman recollects the final year of her education, a year when she discovered life at its fullest, found passion and in a sense, herself. Shakespeare or Donne or Heine had the exact phrase for it. “Was this stab in my heart, this rapture, really mine or had I merely read about it? For every feeling, every vicissitude of my passion, there would spring into my mind a quotation from the poets. Dorothy Strachey’s writing is beautiful, and there is a lot that is very quotable from this slim volume. What a shame it is that Dorothy Strachey only ever published this. I’m not sure why – but I wasn’t altogether certain that I would enjoy Olivia – perhaps I read a review of it somewhere which put me off – however, I enjoyed it enormously. The Afterword reveals that the French school featured in this novella is loosely based on Marie Souvestre’s Allenswood Academy, attended by both the author and Eleanor Roosevelt, which in itself is rather fascinating. It is more of a novella really at just 114 pages in this edition, and I’ll be honest – I picked it mainly for its length as I near the end of my A Century of Books. Published under the pseudonym ‘Olivia’ it is a subtle classic of lesbian literature. Dedicated to the memory of Virginia Woolf, Olivia was Dorothy Strachey’s only novel.
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