Glass of Belongings

This is a sample research paper topic discussion concerning the novel A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym. Paper Masters provides this sample topic to give students an idea on what to write a quality research paper on Pym's novel. Order a custom research paper or use our topic suggestion here to get started on a fantastic piece of World Literature from Barbara Pym.

A Glass of Blessings the Novel

Research papers from Paper Masters on A Glass of Blessings examine the elements of a novel that are important, plot, theme, characters and setting, just to name a few. "Pym was at her creative best...when she wrote about love and romance. Her vivid imagination often swept away her own emotions, so that she was at times more in love with 'being in love' than she was with another human being." This trait the critic Ellen Tsagaris sees in Pym could also be said about Wilmet Forsyth, the main character of Pym's novel "A Glass of Blessings." Although love and romance are at the center of "A Glass of Blessings," these are not the only subjects of the novel. As Pym did in other novels of hers, "A Glass of Blessings" gives a humorous and somewhat wry but essentially accurate picture of typical bourgeoisie, or middle class, life. Among the novel's other elements besides love and romance are the following:

• Socializing
• Meals and eating
• Clothing
• Habits and pastimes
  • an interest in trivia
  • an interest in gossip
  • family relations
  • religion

A Glass of Blessings Research Papers

Wilmet Forsyth is a woman in her thirties married to a man named Rodney. She is not unhappy; yet she is aroused by her own romantic feelings to try to find a more stimulating and possibly erotic relationship with another man than the comfortable and secure, but routine, relationship she has with Rodney. Along with prompting and prospects about a romantic relationship which mostly come from her own imagination, Wilmet has an opinion on just about everything. She doesn't miss a thing. With her characteristic interest in trivia, tied to her interest in gossip, and her bourgeois concern about social position and the signs of clothing, manners, etc. supposedly indicating it, she observes the smallest details of her surroundings and the persons she meets. Wilmet does not simply mention these or describe these to set the scene or convey its atmosphere. She makes opinionated and usually inconsequential and sometimes frivolous comments on the objects or persons. Wilmet's opinions are more revealing of her decidedly bourgeois temperament than they are about the objects or persons. For instance, in her romantic illusions, Wilmet fails to recognize that Piers Longridge, one of her romantic prospects, is a homosexual. She is blinded by her own romantic imagination and her own self-centeredness. "Because Piers stimulates her imagination, Wilmet weaves a romantic fantasy involving him."