Dr. Paull's Theory: A Romance — Edition Insights

Diction of the Consulting Room

Diehl’s prose is notably precise when rendering medical procedure. In the accident ward, Paull “felt the patient’s pulse, listened at his heart, opened the closed eyelids, placed his hand lightly on his brow.” The sequence of verbs—felt, listened, opened, placed—mirrors a diagnostic routine, each action deliberate and unadorned. The dialogue of the porter is similarly functional: “Wanted, sir. Accident just brought in.” No exclamation, no emotion. The dresser’s flushed face and request for a screen contrast with Paull’s curt “Take it away.” Diehl uses these small verbal choices to differentiate characters: the dresser anticipates death; Paull resists it. Later, when Paull speaks of his wife Lilia, his language shifts to frustration: “I thought I had married a woman who would bravely face life at my side, not shrink and cower at shadows like a nervous horse.” The simile is clinical, almost diagnostic, comparing her to a skittish animal. Such diction keeps the reader inside Paull’s professional mindset, even in domestic scenes.

Voice Through Diary and Letter

The novel’s structure relies on multiple first-person documents: Hugh Paull’s diary, an initial letter, and an old notebook of Lilia Pym. Each voice carries distinct rhythms. Paull’s diary entries are dated and reflective, often interrupted—as when he writes “I was interrupted after that last word” by Lilia’s frightened entrance. The diary form allows Diehl to show Paull’s private irritation and his effort to rationalize his wife’s behavior. In contrast, the letter from Daisy (Paull’s sister) uses a more colloquial, exasperated tone: “the poor people we go to see are beginning to think that you beat her, or something.” Daisy’s voice is direct, even blunt, and her report of Dame Ashwell’s “disgusted” look provides an external perspective on Lilia’s misery. The notebook of Lilia Pym, mentioned in the table of contents, suggests a third voice—likely more intimate or confessional. Diehl thus builds a polyphonic narrative where the same events are refracted through different speakers, each with their own vocabulary and emotional register.

Recurring Gestures and Physical Detail

Diehl repeatedly uses physical gestures to convey inner states. When Lilia appears in her dressing-gown, “her heart was beating, she was trembling.” Paull responds by taking her on his knee and shutting his book into a drawer—a small but telling action that separates his work from her need. Earlier, the old gentleman’s face is described as “a model for a painter,” a phrase that aestheticizes the patient even as Paull works to save him. In the diary, Paull notes that Dr. Hildyard, after visiting, called Lilia “a perfect baby.” The metaphor recurs: Lilia is compared to a child, a nervous horse, a non-entity when away from her husband. These repeated images build a portrait of dependency that the novel examines without resolving. The physical details—the trembling, the beating heart, the closed drawer—anchor the psychological drama in observable behavior, allowing Diehl to suggest tension without explicit commentary.

Setting as Psychological Mirror

The settings in the excerpts are few but carefully chosen. The hospital room is quiet because “the thoroughfares near to the hospital were blocked” by a public event; the external disturbance creates an internal calm that is then broken by the accident. The Pinewood, where Paull and Lilia live, is evoked through Daisy’s mention of “the thatched cottage at the end of Swain’s Lane” and “the wood picking up fir-cones.” These details suggest a rural retreat, but one where neighbors observe and gossip. The contrast between the city hospital—a place of ordered emergency—and the country home, where Lilia’s moods are scrutinized by Dame Ashwell, underscores the novel’s central conflict: Paull’s professional world demands rationality and control, while his domestic life is marked by emotional volatility. Diehl does not elaborate the settings; she uses them as backdrops that amplify character. The blocked streets, the quiet room, the fir-cone wood—each functions as a stage for a specific kind of encounter, medical or marital.

Readers attentive to Diehl’s craft will notice how she withholds judgment, letting the diary and letters speak for themselves. The novel does not declare whether Paull’s theory is valid or his treatment of Lilia just; instead, it presents conflicting testimonies. Pay attention to who gets the last word in each section, and to the small physical details—a closed drawer, a trembling hand—that carry more weight than any explicit statement. The romance promised in the subtitle may lie less in conventional love than in the fraught negotiation between two people trying to inhabit the same story.

That grey afternoon, Dr. Paull’s Theory lingered in my hands—the quiet ache of a marriage strained by abstract belief, the rain ticking like a clock. I set it down and reached for something else, almost without thinking, and found myself in The Curse of Eve — Inside the Classic. Same restless beat, different body. The stories seemed to whisper to each other across the shelf.