The Mitford Affair

Benedict’s novel is full of recurring contrast pairs, which form a key formal and thematic motif. This motif is essential to the novel’s treatment of conflict and moral dilemma as it sets up a continual sense of opposite and diverging choices. The novel first explicitly sets up the idea of pairings with Nancy’s introduction of the Mitford family in Chapter 1 when she says “Jessica with Unity, Pamela with Deborah, and Diana with Tom, like golden twins—I’ve often been alone” (4). This passage raises the issues of rivalries and tensions in the family which, as the novel progresses, will become representative of larger tensions in society in the 1930s. Very often these pairings in the novel are used as foils. The major one driving the novel’s action is the extreme contrast of Nancy and Diana: This is portrayed as both a personal rivalry and as the divide between the forces of extremist politics and moderate rationalism. The novel also creates other contrast pairs, some interrelated, which augment the novel’s presentation of personal choice and responsibility. These include Britain and Germany, fascism and communism, intellectualism and physical luxury; duty and self-interest, male and female, parent and children; and the establishment and social change.