What an odd little book! I'm still not sure just why I liked it, as I found some of the characters absurd, and the narrative rather uneven. Perhaps it would be most accurate to say that I enjoyed it, in part...

A late Victorian school story, The Girls of St. Wode's follows six young women who all find themselves attending a woman's college in England. The novel opens in the London home of Mrs. Chetwynd, who fondly hopes that her twin daughters Eileen and Marjorie, and her niece Letitia, will become society women. Her hopes are soon dashed however, when the twins make it plain that they want to be "useful" rather than fashionable women. Letitia, herself more interested in clothing and comfort, nevertheless follows the lead of her cousins.

Then there is Belle Acheson, the head-strong and scholarly daughter of Mrs. Acheson, a friend of Mrs. Chetwynd. She seems almost like a caricature of the "academic woman" as she might have been perceived in the first decade of the twentieth century. Plain looking, rather unpleasant to be around, and ludicrously attached to her notions of "the life of the mind," she dreams of founding a secular "convent" for women who want to study all their lives, and never marry.

Also thrown into the mix is Leslie Gilroy, the daughter of a cultured but impoverished widow, who is given the opportunity to attend college by a wealthy friend of the family. Finally, there is Annie Colchester, the eccentric, red-headed mathematics student intent on taking honors. Leslie's roommate at St.Wode's, Annie is hiding a "dark" secret that could ruin both herself and her new friend...

There's quite a bit going on here, and the narrative jumps around at the beginning of the novel, introducing different sets of characters before bringing them all together. The reader does not discover the real heroine of the piece until midway through the book. Meade's organization of the plot leaves something to be desired, and her more moralistic passages are somewhat overwrought, but once the girls are settled at St. Wode's, the story becomes more cohesive, and much more interesting. In fact, this middle section of the book is probably the most entertaining. When term ends, and the girls all return to London, the moralizing (now explicitly religious) begins again, and the reader struggles on to the inevitable conclusion.

In addition to the character of Belle, who - if I didn't know the author was in deadly earnest - would strike me almost as a parody, I had a difficult time understanding Eileen and Marjorie, whose thinking seemed a little muddled. The religious conclusion (everyone prays, and things turn out OK) seemed a little forced, but was no doubt in line with the conventions governing this type of literature. But despite the fact that The Girls of St. Wodes was not entirely successful, there were moments of real interest and enjoyment, a fact that has decided me in favor of trying another story by L.T. Meade. ( )