At Lady Molly's by Anthony Powell

So Lady Molly's, the title, refers to a setting that kind of provides the backdrop of a lot of the events of the novel.

Molly, Molly Jevons, is a kind of hostess, very similar to the hostess we saw in a previous book, Mili Andreatis.

Although her house, her parties tended to be very bohemian.

What's emphasized about Molly, right, is that she becomes essentially the locus of an aristocratic social world that Nick eventually becomes a part of.

After he marries Isabel Tolland and marries into the Tolland family.

So what is the function of Molly in this novel? I think that's the first question to ask because the title, At Lady Molly's, I think it leads one to suggest that this novel is going to be about this woman Molly and...

her place.

But in reality, Molly is very much a background character, a minor character.

She flits in and out of scenes.

She appears occasionally.

The book is set, especially in the first and the final scene, the book is set at parties that she is throwing.

But otherwise, her function is very subtle.

So let's break down first, before we get into the rest of the novel and the I believe that Molly in some ways is a reflection of the spirit of Powell's world in which social relationships are of primary importance.

If we were to describe these novels to people, if we were to say, well, what are Anthony Powell's novels about? What is A Dance to the Music of Time about? You might say, well, Nick Jenkins and some of his friends from sort of the bohemian and upper class English circles in the early 20th century attend a lot of parties.

And Nick meets a lot of different people.

And you could sum up the entire series in that way.

That is essentially the crux of a lot of what happens in a lot of these books.

Nick goes to a party somewhere, meets someone, or meets someone again for the second time.

Because one of the elements of a lot of the parties Nick goes to is...

the recurrence of characters, the idea of coincidence, the idea that this actually is quite a small world, and everyone seems to know each other and reenter each other's lives because of coincidence and perhaps because of fate, which is, of course, another theme in this whole series.

So Molly's...

Molly...

She represents a social nexus, a social nexus around which all of these other events swirl.

And so even though Molly herself is not really a dynamic character who has an inner life and a change, right? She's not a protagonist in any way, not a major character in any way.

She is part of the setting.