The Mitford Affair

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-18

Chapters 19-36

Chapters 37-54

Chapters 55-70

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Character Analysis

Nancy

Nancy is one of the three central characters in this novel, arguably the protagonist. She is the eldest of the Mitford sisters and this frames much of her role in the novel. She is the rational voice of reason within her family and maintains the moderate voice in a family divided between fascism and communism. She often takes on a maternal role, not least when her parents often fail to act with suitable care or guardianship. She is also cast as the protector of Britain’s security in the face of fascism.

As the real Nancy Mitford was a famous writer of semi-autobiographical books, she presents a well-known and ready-made character for the novelist. As such, Nancy’s character follows historical fact and self-depiction quite closely, including the style of narrative and internal monologue of Nancy Mitford’s own novels. Her voice as given in the novel closely follows that of her own novels and The Mitford Affair draws on the existence of Nancy as a pre-existing literary persona, with the associations of self-reflection, analysis, and socio-political commentary that her own work brings. In places, Benedict alters details slightly, or makes conjectures, in order to move Nancy’s character away from historical truth, or to portray social or family dynamics in a certain way. These divergences are revealing. Nancy was unofficially engaged to Hamish St Clair Erskine between 1928 and 1933 and was deeply in love with him. She did, however, most certainly know of his sexual orientation and was in a social set of young people with relatively permissive sexual norms for the time: It was very common for gay men to marry women and have children, especially those with family legacies to continue, and this was acknowledged to an extent in private circles. Erskine most likely broke off the engagement because the scandal of Diana’s adultery and divorce made Nancy a less eligible prospect, not because Diana interfered secretly. In making these changes, Benedict maintains Diana’s potential culpability while making Nancy appear more naive and conservative than she really was. This decision was presumably made to smooth and simplify Nancy’s role as the novel’s traditional wife-and-mother figure, and to highlight the compromises that Nancy makes in order to maintain a functional enough relationship with her husband Peter that he might provide her with longed-for children. Another major departure from the real-life Nancy is the level to which she was involved in espionage for Churchill and party to his opinions and strategies regarding the Nazis and her sisters’ involvement. Nancy proactively informed MI5 of Diana’s sympathies and activities in 1941, but there is no evidence that she did so before this, or that she was actively recruited as a spy, let alone by Churchill personally. In expanding on Nancy’s activity here, The Mitford Affair augments her role as a brave, proactive patriot, making her a clearer vehicle for the novel’s key themes.

Diana

In the novel, Diana is the second-eldest Mitford sibling although in real life she was the third eldest: Benedict has essentially eliminated the Mitford’s second sister (Pamela) which simplifies the narrative but also focuses the novel’s attention on the juxtaposition of Diana and Nancy. In many ways Diana is Nancy’s foil. Where Nancy is clever and acerbic, Diana is known for being a great beauty. Nancy longs for marriage and family life: Diana achieves these things very young and then abandons them in favor of the fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. The tension between Nancy and Diana is the main character tension driving the novel and is based on this personal rivalry and difference between them, as well as their wider political differences. The deep divide between the two sisters is parallel to, and representative of, the social and political divisions of the 1930s and allows the novel to explore the factions and currents of the tumult leading up to World War II, and the nature of personal, moral, and political decisions that individuals must make in times of crisis.

The real-life Diana Mosely held a public fascination because of the paradox of her character as both a member of the establishment and a socially and politically iconoclastic outsider, and the novel draws on this factual intrigue. Diana is privileged from birth and, as a result of good fortune, beauty, charm, and intelligence, finds it easy to achieve the things that a girl of her class and time was supposed to want: a brilliant society marriage, a title, wealth and property, and children. The novel allows Diana to be an ambiguous character: It is not clear whether she instead embraces a transgressive lifestyle and politics because she wishes to rebel, because of a sense of exceptionalism, because she falls for Mosely and/or fascism, or because she sees the move as a way to fulfill her own ambitions, or a combination of all these. This ambiguity makes her a well-rounded character but also gives her an unknowable and rather sinister role. Certainly, it is clear that she acts as she pleases without conscience and with a sense of impunity. Her cool and cynical pursuit of her ambitions in the novel casts her as a driving force rather than a victim and the novel’s frank inclusion of the real Diana Mosely’s antisemitic views in the character’s depiction adds significantly to her deep unlikability. Through Diana, the novel explores the nature of privilege and power, especially how those with established elite privilege can harness the power of populist politics in order to satisfy their personal sense of superiority.

Unity

Unity is the third Mitford sister in the novel. This character’s role is largely to enact and embody the trauma of the familial and political divisions explored in the novel, and to enable the novel to explore the dangers of obsession, radicalization, and betrayal.

As with the other two sisters, Benedict stays close to recorded historical fact when portraying Unity, although her inner monologue is conjecture. The character’s trajectory is tragic, from an anxious teenager with a sense of marginalization, to an obsessive and erratic young woman, to a woman physically and cognitively impacted as a result of her suicide attempt. Although Unity’s decisions are generally poor if not reprehensible, her character is sympathetically drawn, showing these decisions being based on deep personal unhappiness and poor guidance. Her suicide attempt is the culmination of her personal conflict and is representative of the irreconcilable nature of her two worlds. The novel also treats this implicitly as a moral punishment for her mistakes, and as her recognition of the false position she has placed herself in, with the manipulative encouragement of others. In later life, the real Unity did disavow and express regret for her previous antisemitic opinions, and the novel draws on this later apparent change of heart when portraying Unity as having an earlier sense of conflict about the Nazi’s antisemitism, leaning into a portrayal of her as a misguided and radicalized young woman. This is one of the reasons why Unity is a more sympathetic character than Diana, although her personal involvement with Hitler and the Nazis is much greater.

Muv/Farve

Muv and Farve are the Mitford parents. Farve is the father, and Muv is the mother. These nicknames were the real Mitfords’ nicknames for their parents which were an elitist joke; the names mimic faux-working-class diction. Farve and Muv are the Baron and Lady Beresford, part of the elite aristocratic social class in Britain, but a lack of adaptation to social change alongside the economic depression has depleted their resources, and they progressively lose money and status as the novel goes on. With their decline, the novel traces the historical decline of the traditional aristocratic lifestyle in the mid-war period, as social and economic changes altered the balance of power in Britain. For many in this social class, although fascism was a new movement, it was also a reactionary means to grasp at failing power in the form of extreme conservativism, social order, and hierarchy. Muv and Farve vacillate markedly in their allegiance, depending largely on their own comfort and self-interest rather than on any sense of principle. In this, they provide a general foil to their daughters’ various political commitments, creating a sense of generational tension and of their moral redundancy even while their position as aristocrats and parents gives them status.

Muv and Farve are not only marginal figures in their representation of failing power and morality but they are also on the peripheries of their children’s lives—they rely on Nancy when an intervention is needed. The novel presents them in the (stereo)typical cast of upper-class English parents: hands-off, unemotional, exacting, and wedded to society’s norms and traditions. They see their children as extensions of their own social capital: Whenever their daughters fail to fulfill their conventional expectations, they are willing to abnegate responsibility for them, particularly in the case of Unity. In this way, the novel again suggests that they belong to an earlier time and that they are a hindrance rather than a help in the modern world.