Dusty Answer, first published in 1927, is Lehmann’s first novel, and it is an impressive debut. It’s a novel about a young girl’s difficult passage into adulthood, and examines in nuanced detail her emotional, romantic, and sexual maturation.
Judith Earle is the only child of wealthy and distant parents, raised in a beautiful house full of beautiful things on a river not far from London. Five cousins spend summers and holidays in their grandmother’s house next door: the brothers Julian and Charlie, and Roddy, Martin, and Mariella. Judith is enchanted by them all, but her favorite is the charming and cavalier Roddy, who she loves despite his sometimes flirtatious indifference and his ardent devotion to his best friend Tony.
Judith is sheltered and inexperienced but smart and somewhat ruthless. At Cambridge she enjoys a passionate romantic friendship with the popular and charismatic Jennifer, and she is crushed when Jennifer abandons her for an Geraldine, an older, wiser, and more cosmopolitan woman. Yet Judith brilliantly concludes her academic career and returns home to find the cousins once again in the residence next door. She pursues Roddy and is seduced and abandoned by him. Shocked and wounded by his callous selfishness, she agrees to marry Martin, the dull but kind cousin who has always doggedly loved her. She realizes instantly that this is a horrible mistake, and cruelly extricates herself, only to succumb to Julian’s pursuit of her. He proposes she should become his mistress, as neither of them (he claims) are well-suited for marriage. But before they can put this plan into action, Martin dies in a yachting accident, a tragedy that puts the kibosh on Julian’s and Judith’s liaison. In the final pages Judith reconnects with Jennifer and arranges to meet her back at Cambridge, at “their table” in “their” teashop. Jennifer stands her up, but not before Judith observes Roddy and Tony pass by outside the teashop, obviously happy and in love with each other. So Judith once again returns alone to the house on the river (her father has died and her mother is living in Paris) and in the ruins of her adolescent romances, all misguided or doomed, begins to imagine a new adult life for herself — a sadder but wiser girl.
On the back cover of the HBJ Harvest paperback edition of this book (which features one of the ugliest and most poorly-designed jackets imaginable) the copy states that Dusty Answer is a “sensitive treatment of homosexuality,” a bold statement that really doesn’t correspond with the book’s atmosphere, for the same-sex relationships that these characters have are not overtly homosexual; they are perfect examples of the passionate friendships that were once allowed, though perhaps discouraged, between boys and boys and girls and girls in British public schools. Judith’s relationship with Jennifer and Roddy’s with Tony may or may not be sexual, but they are passionate, romantic, loving, and publicly evident. While Jennifer may be a lesbian, as her relationship with Geraldine suggests, Judith’s infatuation with her is seemingly an adolescent fancy, as it coincides with her infatuation with Roddy. This cloudiness and ambiguity is interesting, and perhaps preferable to today’s clear-cut and exhaustively defined gender roles and sexual orientations, for it leaves room for shadows and nuances, as well as, of course, wounding misunderstandings.
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