In a 1978 BBC radio program, Barbara Pym said, “Perhaps I’ve been influenced by something I was once told about Proust – that he was said to go over all his characters and make them worse.” I laughed when I heard this because Pym does have a way of showing the faults of her characters, who tend to be Anglican clergy, women who attend church services frequently, and other do-gooders. Pym’s not interested in chronically their virtues. Rather, she lifts the veil and lets us see the less-than-admirable traits, which of course, are the ones that we enjoy and remember.
Pym, Barbara. Jane and Prudence. Open Road Integrated Media, 1981, p. 47.