Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself by Radclyffe Hall

First published: 1934

Type of plot: Allegory

Time of work: After World War I

Locale: England and France

Principal Characters:

  • Miss Wilhelmina Ogilvy, the protagonist, a woman with a troubled nature
  • Sarah and Fanny Ogilvy, her dependent sisters and frequent antagonists
  • Mrs. Nanceskivel, a hostess at an isolated hotel on a sparsely inhabited island
  • A Neolithic man, part of Miss Ogilvy's dream or previous incarnation
  • A Neolithic woman, part of the same dream or incarnation

The Story

"Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself" begins with the protagonist, Miss Wilhelmina Ogilvy, watching the disbanding of her World War I Red Cross Allied Ambulance Unit at the busy port of Calais in France. The vehicles, only recently back from the front lines, and suddenly expendable, are being unceremoniously hauled onto a freighter bound for England—the same freighter that will transport Miss Ogilvy from her glorious war experiences back to her narrow life in Surrey, England, with her sisters, Sarah and Fanny Ogilvy.

On the train home from Dover, Miss Ogilvy reflects on her troubled youth and her strong need to serve, more actively than most women, in the Great War. She was, it appears, an odd little girl, in a world that valued conformity. As a child, she had a marked predilection for boyish pursuits. As an adolescent, her physical prowess became an embarrassment to her; muscles and muslin did not mix. Even so, as an eligible young woman, she was courted, much to her mother's surprise, by three different men. She could not, however, generate an enthusiasm for any of them. She felt only fellowship with men, and her nature made it impossible for her to take part in the feminine life going on around her. When she moved aside, socially, for her younger sisters—who were avid for matrimony but, ironically, destined to a life of irritable spinsterhood—she became even more isolated.

Then Miss Ogilvy's father died, and she, who as a child had wished ardently to be called William, not Wilhelmina, found herself in the role of paterfamilias. In quick succession, her mother died and then her aunt. Although the aunt left a small fortune, Miss Ogilvy was too worn out from struggling with her unusual nature and her unsympathetic sisters to do anything more adventurous than to buy a small estate in Surrey and settle there. At fifty-five, her energies waning, shy and essentially friendless, she had become content simply to tend her own garden.

Then World War I roused her latent temperament. She despised the work given to women in the war effort. She would not be satisfied until the English officials allowed her to lead a group of women to the frontline trenches of France to do ambulance duty. Once there, "she was competent, fearless, devoted and untiring. . . . Could any man hope to do better?"

Returning to Surrey was a great trial for Miss Ogilvy. Sarah and Fanny had become, in her words, "two damn tiresome cranks!" When a young girl from her ambulance unit visited her and announced an impending marriage, she left Miss Ogilvy with "strange . . . unbidden, thoughts." Growing old no longer seemed a solace. Miss Ogilvy, whose hair had been cropped during the war, refused to grow it back, and Sarah and Fanny began to circulate the rumor that she was suffering from shell shock. She even began to doubt herself.

It is at this point that the story takes on a metaphysical dimension. Quite unexpectedly, Miss Ogilvy packs her kit bag and departs for a small island near the south coast of Devon. This island, seemingly chosen at random and never seen by her before, is rich with déjà vu experiences. Before she even disembarks, she "remembers" a cave about which she could not possibly have known. Her "remembrance" is verified by the boatman.

Once at the only hotel on the island, Miss Ogilvy falls into conversation with Mrs. Nanceskivel, her hostess, who offers to show her the island's treasure: The skull and thighbone of a neolithic man unearthed on the island during the digging of a well. Ominously, the man's skull shows that he had been killed by a bronze ax. Miss Ogilvy's response to seeing the bones is disproportionately passionate, and she retires to her room.

What follows may be interpreted by the reader as a dream, a hallucination, a symptom of shell shock, or evidence of a previous incarnation; it most assuredly illuminates the difficulties of Miss Ogilvy's nature. Miss Ogilvy envisions herself living at the dawn of the Bronze Age, as a powerfully built neolithic man, a leader of his tribe, much beloved by a sturdy and beautiful neolithic woman. Though there is danger from another tribe with weapons of "some dark, devilish substance," the primitive man and his mate find consolation with each other and eventually consummate their love in the dark womb of a cave. The man's love for the woman is inarticulate, but profound, and finally fatal: He "put by his weapon and his instinct for slaying. And he lay there defenseless with tenderness," soon to become, as the reader knows, Mrs. Nanceskivel's treasured relic. The next morning finds Miss Ogilvy herself, inexplicably, at the mouth of the island's cave, quite dead.