1982 novel by Madeleine L'Engle
A Severed Wasp (1982) is a novel by Madeleine L'Engle. It continues the story of a pianist, Katherine Forrester, who was first seen in "The Small Rain". Now a widow in her seventies, Katherine Forrester Vigneras returns to New York City in retirement from concert touring in Europe. There she encounters Felix Bodeway, an old friend from her Greenwich Village days, who is now the retired Episcopal Bishop of New York. He asks Katherine to give a benefit concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It turns out to be an unexpected challenge, full of new friends and mysterious dangers.
During the novel Katherine is befriended by several recurring characters from other L'Engle novels, including Mimi Oppenheimer from "A Winter's Love", Josiah "Dave" Davidson from "The Young Unicorns", and Suzy Austin (now Dr. Suzy Davidson) from the Austin family series (which L'Engle called her "Chronos" novels).
The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, which figures prominently in the plot of "A Severed Wasp", is also the setting for the 1968 L'Engle novel "The Young Unicorns". The author herself was librarian and writer-in-residence at the same cathedral for several decades.
This story takes place last in the L'Engle canon of "Kairos" and "Chronos" stories, as it features the adult Suzy Austin and the adult Josiah Davidson. No novel published after "A Severed Wasp" took place during or after the events of this one.
Crossover characters.
Mimi Oppenheimer from "A Winter's Love" and Suzy Austin Davidson and Josiah "Dave" Davidson from the Chronos series (Austin family series) all appear in "A Severed Wasp".
In addition, Philippa "Flip" Hunter, the protagonist of the early L'Engle novel "And Both Were Young", is mentioned repeatedly in "A Severed Wasp" as a successful and respected artist, who painted a portrait decades earlier of Katherine Vigneras with her young son. The story of Flip, a talented artist who in her youth was initially miserable at a Swiss boarding school (as recounted in "And Both Were Young"), closely parallels that of Katherine Forrester (later Vigneras) in "The Small Rain", and loosely parallels L'Engle's own experiences in boarding school.
Themes.
The title comes from a quote found in a book review by George Orwell:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;I thought of a rather cruel trick I once played on a wasp. He was sucking jam on my plate, and I cut him in half. He paid no attention, merely went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam trickled out of his severed esophagus. Only when he tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thing that had happened to him. It is the same with modern man. The thing that has been cut away is his soul, and there was a period -- twenty years, perhaps -- when he did not notice it.
The selection of this quote at first appears ironic. In his essay, Orwell laments that the search for truth requires giving up all belief in religion, yet without religion mankind lacks a moral base. L'Engle was a member of the Episcopal Church, writing about flawed people in a religious community. L'Engle's characters comment on this, even as the events of the novel dramatize the problem:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;"It's all too easy to see the Church in that image, the greedy wasp unaware of its brokenness. And I don't mean just the Episcopal Church which still hasn't rid itself of its image—"
"God's frozen people," Bishop Juxon murmured.
Undercroft nodded, "It's also the Romans, the Evangelicals, the Pentecostals, all of us who believe we profess Christ."
The character Felix Bodeway then states what may be seen as L'Engle's response to Orwell: "Once that we recognize that we're broken, we have a chance to mend." As Carole F. Chase states in her book "Suncatcher: A Study of Madeleine L'Engle And Her Writing", L'Engle recognizes "that the church is broken," and that its community "reflects the humanness (and therefore the imperfections) of its participants," which extends to the events of the novel. Characters associated with the Cathedral perpetrate and suffer from "blackmail, threatening phone calls, violence, drugs, jealousy, and revenge motives." Though wounded and imperfect, L'Engle finds value in the Cathedral community's capacity for (in Chase's words) "understanding, compassion, forgiveness and acceptance." As Chase notes, "Forgiveness–and the question of who is qualified to forgive–is one of the main themes of "A Severed Wasp". Madeleine believes firmly that all who know their own need of forgiveness, and who have experienced forgiveness and love, can forgive others."
References.
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