The journey to San Salvatore by four unhappy women is an escape from stifling parochialism, constraining social and gendered expectations as well as stultifying insularity, but the evocation of an extraordinarily aesthetic and 'enchanted' location suggests more than personal recuperation.ĪBOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Von Arnim's novel is part of this oeuvre and portrays an escape to a carefully described pastoral enclave away from encroaching urbanisation and the spread of new technologies, in an era when the Great War had left many emotionally and physically starved. The Enchanted April (1922) is a deceptive and timely novel immured in a post-war context, a period noted for its wistful and sometimes satiric writings. As each, in turn, blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring and finds their spirits stirring, quite unexpected changes occur.

Small medieval castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let For the month of April, above a bay on the Italian Riviera.'įour very different women-the dishevelled and downtrodden Mrs Wilkins, the sad, sweet-faced Mrs Arbuthnot, the formidable widow Mrs Fisher, and the ravishing socialite Lady Caroline Dester-are drawn to the shores of the Mediterranean that April. 'To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public Health.The European Society of Cardiology Series.Oxford Commentaries on International Law.by Elizabeth von Arnim, introduction by Cathleen Schineĭownload the Reading Group Guide for The Enchanted April. More recently, the novel has been the inspiration for a major film and a Broadway play. The Enchanted April was a best-seller in both England and the United States, where it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and set off a craze for tourism to Portofino. Now, if the same transformation can be worked on their husbands and lovers, the enchantment will be complete. The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don’t anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy. They find each other-and the castle of their dreams-through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon. The women at the center of Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed.

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