In Mrs. Miniver, a novel of about 300 pages, Jan Struther writes about the simple and fulfilling life of Kay Miniver and her family as they go through the struggles of WWII. Struther shows Mrs. Miniver’s optimism and vitality despite the effects of the war on her family. A narrator, who watches the family through dialogue between the family and other characters, tells the novel. Mrs.
Miniver is often alone admiring something and commenting to herself. Her spirit and good will are shown in events with her family before the war, during the war when her family is separated, and after the war when they reunite again. Struther shows Mrs. Miniver’s gaiety and liveliness in light that she is oblivious to the impending war that will deeply affect her life. Mrs. Miniver and her family have the same troubles and pleasures like many other families.
One of these pleasures is the day that their new car is scheduled to arrive. The family is excited and is anticipating the beautiful color and design of the car. Christmas shopping is the next event for Mrs. Miniver.
Like most other mothers in Oxford, she has waited until the week before Christmas to do her shopping thus getting stuck in long lines with aggressive people. Realizing she will have yet another busy year, Mrs. Miniver decides it is time to invest in an expensive engagement book. This precious diary will hold all of her memories and events for an entire year. “To give it away is impossible, to lose it is disastrous, and to scrap it and start a new one entails a laborious copying out of all the entries that have already been made,” thought Mrs. Miniver about the process of buying one.
These three ordinary and simple events lead into the first day of spring. “Here, she would find herself thinking, is where I end and the outside world begins. It was exciting, but divisive: it made for loneliness.” Her spirit and vitality remain even as the war becomes closer to reality. Even though Mrs.
Miniver and her family are separated during the war, her hopefulness and merriment are established. The war has come, and the family must go and pick up their gas masks. “We ought to have got one for Teddy,” Toby replies as they receive their masks. The family is now separate.
Clem has gone off with his AAB, and Vin has been sent up to Quern. The children’s day school has been evacuated to the west country, and the maids have gone down to Starlings to prepare it for refugees. Mrs. Miniver, staying at her sister’s flat, has signed on as an ambulance driver and has still been optimistic.
“For even if none of them was killed or injured, and even if their house did not, after all, attract one of the high-explosive bombs, one couldn’t send away, or replace the notches on the nursery door-post where they had measured the children every year.” Through it all, Mrs. Miniver still finds time daily to write Clem and Vin and tell them how the rain has stopped or how Toby has learned to say a new word. She knows that one day the war will be over, so she will keep her cheerful nature for tomorrow and the day after. The reunion of the Miniver family displays her faith and perseverance as she has survived through the war and is ready to continue life again.
The family settles down for Hogmanay tea and flapjacks as they relay their stories while they were apart. “This was the cream of marriage, this nightly turning out of the day’s pocketful of memories. It gave you, in a sense, almost a double life: though never, on the other hand, quite a single one.” After the holidays, life returns to a normal routine, as the family takes a stroll down to Aunt Hetty’s house by the river. Mrs. Miniver has an attribute of taking very ordinary things and making them extraordinary and suddenly important.
She ponders how far a mile really is and how mud feels between her toes in the summer. Mrs. Miniver decides to take her first plane trip to Scotland. After her fears are gone, she realizes the best part about flying that no one has ever told her is, “you may suddenly find a rainbow arched across the tip of your wing, as though you had caught it in passing and carried it along with you.” Her realization of this simple concept shows her exhilarating personality. In the last chapter of the novel, it is time for Mrs. Miniver to make out her annual Christmas list.
As she reads through all of her past lists, she realizes “No, she could not possibly throw them away: they contained too much of her life.” On this note of happiness and closure the novel ends.