Author and journalist Rose Macaulay has largely receded from the collective memory. Nevertheless, she published 24 novels, three volumes of poetry and 18 works of non-fiction during her lifetime. Born in 1881, her literary career started during the Edwardian period. The interwar decades were prolific for her though: she published 12 novels in the 1920s and 1930s. The 1920s were also the decade in which Macaulay found widespread commercial success for the first time.[1] Some of these interwar works have been republished since their first appearance, including her 1928 work Keeping Up Appearances which was re-issued by the British Library in 2022 as part of their Women Writers series.[2]

Not to be confused with the popular 1990s BBC sitcom, Keeping Up Appearances is about two half-sisters, Daisy and Daphne. Daisy is 30, Daphne is 25. Daisy is awkward in social situations and considers herself a coward; Daphne is cool, confident and ‘good fun’. The girls’ father was an upper-middle class intellectual; Daisy’s mother is a lower-middle class woman from East Sheen who had Daisy as a result of a youthful fling. She has since married a labourer and had three more children, who are now adults. Daisy is embarrassed about her mother, whom she considers uncultured. For reasons that will become clear in a moment, we do not find out anything about Daphne’s mother.

At the opening of the novel both women are on holiday with a middle-class family, the Folyots, to act as au-pairs to the family’s younger children, Cary and Charles. The Folyots also have an adult son, Raymond, who is a biologist. Daisy is hopelessly in love with Raymond, who in turn seems only charmed by the cooler Daphne. Mrs Folyot is involved in myriad political causes, including the sheltering of ‘White’ Russians who fled the country after the bolshevist revolution; and the support of independence and self-governance of such varied groups as Basque Spaniards, Estonians and Indians. Although Mrs Folyot’s activities mostly serve as a (comical) backdrop to the novel’s main activities, they remind the modern reader of the huge political turmoil underway across Europe in the interwar period. They also highlight the longstanding nature of some debates that remain unresolved today: both Catalan and Scottish independence get a name-check.

About one hundred pages into the novel, Macaulay reveals the central deceit which sets Keeping Up Appearances apart from many other novels concerned with the emotional life of 20-something women: Daphne and Daisy are one and the same person. Daphne Daisy Simpson, as is the woman’s full name, considers ‘Daisy’ to be the self she is when she is alone, or with her birth family. Daisy is lower-middle class and has to work hard as a journalist and novelist to make some independent income. Daphne is the funnier, cleverer, and younger persona she has adopted when she is around more sophisticated friends, such as the Folyots.

When Raymond proposes to ‘Daphne’, it sets the two personas on a collision course. Daisy’s family understandably are confused why Daisy does not want to introduce her fiancé to them; Daisy has to work extremely hard to prevent Raymond from seeing her ‘real’ self, which she is sure he will not like. The lies pile up and become impossible to all keep hidden. First Raymond finds out that Daphne works as a journalist and writer, under the pen name Marjorie Wynne. He is puzzled why Daphne has not been open about it, but lets it slide. Then Daisy struggles to continue the pretence that she is interested in Raymond’s work: Daphne has always happily escorted Raymond on endless jaunts around the cold and muddy countryside, but Daisy increasingly snaps at Raymond when she is freezing on a heath. Finally, inevitably, Daisy’s mother and aunt visit the Folyot’s unannounced, and all of Daisy’s lies come out.

The book’s preoccupation with ‘real’ selves versus ‘presented’ selves is cleverly mirrored in its discussion of the popular press. Both Daisy and her half-brother Edward work for the Daily Wire, a fictional popular daily along the lines of the Daily Express. But whilst Edward is a reporter, constantly churning out peppy headlines like ‘West End Flat Mystery Surprise – Dead Girl Sensation – Amazing Revelations’; Daisy as Marjorie Wynne is condemned to the women’s pages.[3] Throughout the book, she is asked to write articles on topics such as ‘can a woman run a baby and a business at the same time’[4], ‘modern married life’[5] and ‘should flappers vote?’[6] When Daisy tries to return a sarcastic article under the latter headline, she is promptly told to rectify it to fit with the newspaper’s expected tone. ‘The remuneration was good, so Daisy (…) wrote the article on these lines.’[7]

It is understood by Daisy throughout, as it would have been by Macaulay herself, that women journalists are almost always pigeonholed into providing content relating to ‘the women question’ only. Whereas Edward is mobile during his working day, dashing to and fro to get interviews and eye-witness accounts, Daisy types all her work in her flat. It is, however, the only way she sees that allows her to make an independent income.

By the end of Keeping Up Appearances, Daisy’s second novel (written under the pseudonym Marjorie Wynne) becomes a modest commercial success. Daisy’s regard for her own writing is extremely low; she considers her novels to be middle-brow at best. However, their commercial success gives her financial independence at the novel’s close.[8] They also give her the tantalising opportunity to shed both Daisy and Daphne and adopt Marjorie Wynne as yet another persona in which to navigate the world.

Although Keeping Up Appearances ends on a happy note of sorts for Daphne Daisy, it makes clear that all people, including men, continue to be trapped between behavioural expectations and their true desires. Throughout the novel Macaulay gives the reader glimpses of the ‘secret life’ of the other characters, including Raymond. Everyone behaves differently when unobserved, and despite the loosening of rigid social conventions after the First World War, there remained plenty of conventions to follow in order to ensure financial and romantic success.

---

[1] Sarah Lonsdale, Rebel Women Between the Wars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), p. 45

[2] Rose Macaulay, Keeping Up Appearances (London: British Library, 2022)

[3] Ibid., p. 49

[4] Ibid., p. 64

[5] Ibid., p. 157

[6] Ibid., p. 137

[7] Ibid., p. 138

[8] Ibid., p. 247