ConsequencesEn del af World Classicsaf E. M. Delafield

"Consequences" (1919) follows the life of Alexandra Clare, an upper class Catholic girl from London, after she turns down her only suitor. Alex is a misfit and having failed to meet her family’s expectations, she joins a convent. Partly autobiographical, Delafield writes this story in a deeply ironic tone, turning Alex’s plight into a condemnation of the suffocating expectations Victorian society had for women.

E. M. Delafield was the pen name of Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture (1890-1943). She was a British author from Sussex and the daughter of a count and a novelist. Delafield was raised following Late Victorian upper class morals, and when at age 21 she found herself still single, she joined a French covenant in Belgium. But she soon tired of being a nun and left monastery life behind. During WWI, she volunteered as a nurse in Exeter. In 1919, she married civil engineer turned land agent Paul Dashwood, with whom she spent three years in Malaysia. She remains most famous today for her semi-autobiographical "Diary of a Provincial Lady," which had started as a column in the weekly woman’s magazine "Time and Tide."