Question 1

Is Nancy Mitford writing about her own family in The Pursuit of Love?

Accepted Answer

Yes — The Pursuit of Love is substantially autobiographical, drawing on Mitford's own experience growing up in the extraordinary Mitford family. Her father David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, becomes Uncle Matthew Radlett in the novel: a magnificently irascible country gentleman who hunts his children with hounds, distrusts all foreigners, and refuses to allow his daughters to be educated. Mitford's mother Sydney Bowles becomes Aunt Sadie. Linda Radlett is based partly on Mitford herself and partly on her sister Pamela. The Hons and Rebels — the title of the autobiography Mitford's sister Jessica later wrote about the same childhood — indicates how the Mitford siblings divided between those who embraced and those who resisted their family's political sympathies: two sisters became fascists (Unity and Diana), one became a Communist (Jessica), one married the Mosley fascist (Diana), and Nancy became a novelist who satirized the whole world they came from with devastating affection.

Question 2

What is the Uncle Matthew rule?

Accepted Answer

Uncle Matthew — Linda's father and Fanny's uncle in the novel — is one of the great comic characters in English literature: a man of violent passions and complete confidence in his own opinions who regards education for women as dangerous, foreigners as uniformly contemptible, and the correct way to do anything as the way it was done at Eton and in the army. The 'Uncle Matthew rule' is an informal critical term for the novel's technique of making a figure who holds opinions the reader (and the author) finds absurd or objectionable into a source of comic delight rather than moral instruction. Mitford neither endorses Uncle Matthew's views nor explicitly condemns them; she presents them with a perfect deadpan that makes the reader laugh at him while recognizing the damage his worldview does. The novel's attitude toward its characters is essentially the same: Mitford loves them for their absurdity and their vitality without endorsing the values their world rests on.

Question 3

What is the relationship between The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate?

Accepted Answer

The two novels form a pair — the same narrator (Fanny), the same social world, the same period — but they focus on different characters: The Pursuit of Love focuses on Linda Radlett, Fanny's cousin, and her repeated attempts to find love through a series of unsuitable marriages; Love in a Cold Climate focuses on Polly Hampton, the beautiful daughter of the socially ambitious Lady Montdore, and the shock she causes by marrying someone entirely unsuitable. The tonal difference between the two novels is significant: The Pursuit of Love, for all its comedy, ends in genuine tragedy — Linda dies in childbirth in Paris at the end of the Second World War — while Love in a Cold Climate is more consistently comedic and satirical. Most readers prefer The Pursuit of Love for its greater emotional range; some prefer Love in a Cold Climate for the perfection of its social comedy.

The Pursuit of Love Reading Order

Complete The Pursuit of Love Book List