The Enchanted April

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) was an Australian-born English novelist. Von Arnim’s father was a wealthy shipping merchant, and she had an affluent upbringing. She was the cousin of noted Modernist author Katherine Mansfield, best known for short stories such as The Doll’s House (1922), The Garden Party (1922), and Miss Brill (1920). Von Arnim moved to London with her family early in her childhood and grew up there and in Switzerland. She attended the Royal College of Music to study the organ before marrying Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a wealthy German aristocrat with whom she moved to Germany.

The couple had five children, whose tutor was the novelist E.M. Forster, best known for his novels A Passage to India (1924), A Room with a View (1908), Howard’s End (1910), and Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905). Von Arnim and her husband were not happily married, and upon his death in 1911, she and the children moved to London, where she hoped to have a fresh start. In 1916, von Arnim married Frank Russell, the brother of philosopher Bertrand Russell. They separated in 1919, although they did not formally divorce. Von Armin would go on to have several affairs but would not marry again even after Russell’s death. She moved first to the south of France and then the United States, maintaining an active social life and enjoying her role in various literary circles.

Von Arnim authored many books. Her first was the semi-autobiographical, satirical novel Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898). First published anonymously, it chronicles her attempt to create a garden on her husband’s family estate and the difficulty with which she tried to integrate herself into Germany’s insular aristocratic society. She went on to write The Benefactress (1902), The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen (1904), Vera (1921), Love (1925), Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight (1905), The Pastor’s Wife (1914), Christine (1917), and In the Mountains (1920), among others. The Enchanted April remains the most popular of her novels; it was made into a successful film in 1992 and is often credited with popularizing the Italian coastal town-turned-resort mecca of Portofino.

Although lighter in tone than much of von Arnim’s work, The Enchanted April contains many elements common in her writing. She is known for witty, character-driven novels that feature strong female protagonists and explore issues that were important to women of her era. Having found romance and love outside of her marriages, von Arnim was uniquely positioned to explore non-traditional relationships and to depict friendships that, in many cases, provided women with the respect and support that they did not receive from their husbands. She was equally interested in propriety, social expectations, class, and the importance of status in an affluent society. The characters in The Enchanted April represent different class positions and bring their own set of values, practices, and boundaries to the castle in San Salvatore.