Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday is a 2016 novella written by British author Graham Swift. Like much of Swift’s writing, it has a psychological bent, exploring the relationship between history and memory. Swift won the Booker Prize for his 2006 novel Last Orders and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. This guide uses the 2016 Scribner edition of the text.

Plot Summary

It is March 30, 1924 in the upper-middle-class house of Beechwood in Berkshire, Southern England. Jane Fairchild, the novel’s protagonist, is a 22-year-old maid working for Mr. and Mrs. Niven, the owners of Beechwood; she has the holiday (“Mothering Sunday”) off and is considering what to do with the free time. The house will be empty because the Nivens are going out for the day to celebrate the upcoming wedding between the daughter of another local family, the Hobdays, and Paul Sheringham. Paul, who is the son of a nearby family, is also Jane’s secret lover. Thinking that Paul will be joining the celebration with his fiancée and the parents of the other families, Jane decides to spend the day reading.

However, Paul rings her at the last minute, inviting Jane to visit him at the front of his house, Upleigh; it will be her first visit. Once she is there, he reverently undresses her, and he explains how he is pretending to study law to get out of the family celebration. Jane wonders why Paul is not spending the whole day with his fiancée and whether Paul really loves her. After the two have sex, Paul announces that he has arranged to meet Emma for lunch. He gets up, causing Jane to move and his semen to spill between her legs onto the sheets. Paul, already late for his meeting with Emma, starts to dress as Jane remains on the bed, naked. Jane reflects on the significance of this moment and how it will never be repeated.

After dressing, Paul tells Jane that, as his parents will not return home until later, she can stay in the house and let herself out. He then leaves without kissing her or saying goodbye. Jane, still naked, proceeds to explore the house. She examines the bathroom before going onto the landing and down the stairs, studying the paintings there so that she can remember them later in life. Jane also observes herself in the full-length mirror in the hall and reflects on how it is the first time she has properly seen herself. She tries to imagine Emma naked but finds it impossible. Jane then goes into the library and remembers when Mr. Niven gave her permission to borrow books from the library at Beechwood. Going downstairs, she eats half the pie the cook left for Paul in the kitchen. She hears the phone ring for several minutes but does not answer it. Finally, Jane leaves the house and cycles off into the countryside. When she returns to Beechwood, Mr. Niven has returned (earlier than expected) and tells her that he has some distressing news.

Mr. Niven tells Jane that Paul has died in a car crash. He asks Jane to go with him to Upleigh, where he will tell the staff what happened and see if he can find anything that might explain it. On returning to Upleigh, they find that Ethel, Upleigh’s maid, is already there. She has closed the window of Paul’s room and tidied up. Thus, she has removed any potentially incriminating evidence regarding Jane’s affair with Paul, although Jane suspects that Ethel now knows about this.

The narrative skips forward many years, and an elderly Jane discusses her life after that day. She got a job in a bookshop in Oxford, and her employer gave her her first typewriter. She met her husband, a philosophy lecturer called Donald, at Oxford as well, marrying him in 1933. Unfortunately, Donald died of a brain tumor 12 years later, shortly after which Jane had her first major success writing a novel. Mothering Sunday ends with the 90-year-old Jane discussing how she read Joseph Conrad’s story Youth on the night of Paul’s death. This leads her to reflect on the nature of writing. She claims that although writing is about truth-telling, there are some things in life that remain ineffable and resist explanation.