Victorian era

A Reliable Wife

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:21:00 +0000

A Reliable Wife begins with anticipation. First, there’s the anticipation of Ralph Truitt, the businessman who owns all the large assets of the town, Truitt, which is named for his family. Ralph Truitt waits on the train platform for a train which is late arriving. As he waits, he is watched by the people of the town, blue-collar workers whose labor makes him wealthy, and who live cold and difficult lives as poor people in the isolated town that revolves around Ralph’s large house.

The train that is waited and watched for carries Ralph Truitt’s new wife—a plain and simple woman who sent a picture and a letter in response to Ralph Truitt’s plain and simple ad asking for a “reliable wife.” From the moment the woman steps off the train, the arrangement is far more complex than expected. Neither the picture nor the letter revealed who the woman truly is, or her reason for marrying Ralph Truitt.

The suspense of Ralph and the town waiting to see the wife who has answered the ad escalates into excitement when the carriage overturns on the way home from the station. Despite the isolation of the novel’s setting, deep in the woods of snowy Wisconsin, A Reliable Wife is a simmering page-turner. Goolrick’s sense of pacing is strong, with well-spaced revelations that deepen the characters and create even more questions about the story’s outcome. Catherine travels to St. Louis to retrieve Truitt’s son—the only living member of his family; he has lost his wife and daughter long ago. However, during this trip to St. Louis, in which the glittering city life contrasts with Truitt’s lonely and isolated Wisconsin home, we learn not only the glamorous and shockingly immoral lifestyle that Catherine Land managed to conceal, but also her connection to Truitt and her ultimate plan for their marriage.

A Reliable Wife is suspenseful and passionate, a great read, especially for fans of Victorian novels. Truitt has secrets about his dead wife and daughter and his faraway son, whose legitimacy is in question. Catherine uses her “honest and simple woman” front to divert attention from the deadly motives she has for Ralph Truitt and his money. However, despite the menacing pasts and motives of each of the character, they manage to develop not only a sensual but an emotional connection, somehow attracted rather than repulsed by one another’s sins. The twist at the end changes the plan that motivated Catherine to marry in the first place, reflects the power of the bond that forms between Catherine Land and Ralph Truitt.

Written by: Elizabeth F.A. Meaney, July 24th 2009

Personal Moments in the Lives of Victorian Women: Selections From Their Autobiographies (Book 2)

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:27:00 +0000

Edited by Abigail Burnham Bloom

Edwin Mellen Press

In her biography of May Duignan—better known as the notorious "Chicago May"—the late Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain notes that cemeteries are full of women whose life stories died with them, and that women's autobiographies are a critical part of lost history. I can't help but think that she would be pleased with the publication of this book (as well as its first, companion volume), which shares excerpts from the autobiographies of multiple women—some well-known and some unknown.

Grouped by themes such as career, family, and religion, some sections are more interesting than others, but all are valuable glimpses of how women lived and were treated during England's Victorian era. Reading through the selections, you're given a look at the lives of quite a range of women—from the literary and rich to those struggling to pay debts to the very religious who have isolated themselves from society.

More interesting still are the details you glean from the period of time in which the selections were written. The blatant sexism, how ever much the reader anticipates it, will still piss you off. One women writes of a chance meeting with a man she hasn't seen for years; his first question is to ask how many children she has had. When he learns she is childless he demands, "Then what have you been doing with your time?"

More horrific are casual references of women without means literally starving to death, and the bizarre lack of legal rights that married women had to the custody of their children. In short, it's a good reminder of how far we've come, as a gender, despite the fact that we're still fighting for full equality.

My only gripe about this book is the fact that it picked up straight where the first volume left off. While each section has a short introduction, there's no foreword or much information—short of one line per author about when they were born and died, and where they came from—about who the women were or why their stories were selected for inclusion in the volume. This is not only disjointed, but also left me with unanswered curiosity.

Having only read the second volume of this collection, I can't help but think that I would have enjoyed it more if I had first read book one.

Written by: M.L. Madison, April 13th 2009

Personal Moments in the Lives of Victorian Women: Selections from Their Autobiographies (Book 1)

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:27:00 +0000

Edited by Abigail Burnham Bloom

Edwin Mellen Press

I have to admit that when I received my copy of Personal Moments in the Lives of Victorian Women, I wasn't exactly excited to snuggle up and read it from start to finish. The cover art is not particularly appealing, as it depicts an antique black and white photo of a rather serious and unhappy looking woman, and makes the book look about as inviting as a textbook. However, as I read the preface I quickly realized Abigail Burnham Bloom's compilation of Victorian women's autobiographies would be more interesting and revealing than I had originally expected.

In the preface, Gina Luria Walker, a professor of women's studies at The New School, writes, "women do not have formal tradition of writing about themselves because they have long been considered unreliable and potentially disruptive." Walker goes on to point out that "Bloom's scholarly production...demonstrates the compelling need of women from disparate parts of that culture to tell their stories, despite the prevailing cultural mores that a woman not have an inner life or unusual adventures to write about." This collection was like a Victorian Vagina Monologues—well, minus the orgasms.

The autobiographical selections of women like Elizabeth Barrett and Frances Hodgson Burnett are categorized by subject—such as youth, marriage, and career. Many selections from this book made me grateful to live in a modern America, where most women are developed to be more than just attractive wives. In the Victorian era "girls were encouraged to learn languages, dancing, art, geography, music, and other subjects that would make them attractive to potential husbands. Generally speaking, parents wanted their daughters to be cultured, but not to be intellectuals." We have come a long way since then, and Bloom's collection gives us a look at just how much we've evolved.

After finishing the book, I learned the woman on the cover is actually Bloom's grandmother, Grace Isabelle Clarke. It important that the voices of women like Grace are heard because they are an essential part of feminist history. Women's studies professors, add this to your curriculum; it captures a time in women's history that is not often examined.

I found Personal Moments in the Lives of Victorian Women rather difficult to get through (and I can't say I'm going to pick up Book 2), but let's be honest: no one really chooses to read a textbook in her spare time. Nevertheless, its worth taking a look at. Bloom obviously put a great deal of passion into her research of Victorian women, and I believe it would make a valuable addition to anyone's library.

Written by: Samara Sousa, April 13th 2009

Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love

admin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:01:00 +0000

By Sheila Rowbotham

Verso

Writing a biography is tricky terrain, particularly on a subject whose name is generally unknown. The author likely has reams and reams of information gathered from years of research and has the thankless task of deciding what can go into the book and what should be left out. For this reason, many biographies suffer from too much or insufficient information. Luckily, Sheila Rowbotham navigates these waters easily with skilled contextualization and engaging writing.

Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love takes us through one of the most intriguing periods in Western history. Born to a wealthy Brighton family in 1844, the young intellectual eventually headed off to Cambridge to study theology. However, he was soon swept up in the counter-culture of emerging socialism and class revolution. Rowbotham mirrors Carpenter's growing social awareness with his own "deviant" sexuality with skill and sensitivity.

Shunning his inborn privilege, Carpenter sets off to live an activist life, educating the working class and living off the land. Of course, problems arise. The many strong personalities involved in the Victorian social reform movement made creating an English utopia an impossible task and the affable Carpenter was often left stuck in the middle.

What is most striking about Carpenter's life, and the lives of those around him, is how unexpectedly progressive these individuals were. Almost a century before Greenpeace and recycling programs, Carpenter espoused the importance of eating locally-made food and even the benefits of vegetarianism. Several of his friends lived openly (to a degree) as homosexuals and Carpenter himself had intimate male relationships his entire adult life, eventually settling down with George Merrill for almost three decades.

Full of a genuine desire to make the world a better place, Carpenter and his colleagues all attempted to enact their beliefs to some degree. There was formidable opposition: George Orwell openly despised Carpenter, and around the time of the the trials of Oscar Wilde, both Carpenter and Merrill were the target of witch-hunting conservative groups out to punish homosexuals. But none of this seemed to hold Carpenter back; he continued to publish texts, give lectures, and travel around the world for all of his long life.

His tale is inspiring but also worrying; a century later we still struggle with the same issues Carpenter tackled. Groups like the Fabian Society and the Social Democratic Federation believed a cultural revolution was imminent, and that sexual, gender, and class liberation would occur within their lifetimes. Sadly, subsequent generations have not done these pioneers justice.

Pessimism aside, this book has much to teach us about what it takes to change a strongly traditional culture. Although names like Carpenter's have been lost in the selective retelling of history, the impact that these people's lives made was evident in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and, one might argue, in activism of the present. An unwavering commitment to a simple, open-minded life made Carpenter an extraordinary person and an inspiring role model.

Rowbotham's biography is lengthy and thus might turn off some potential readers, but so much of the book is about the context of Carpenter's life and the bizarre (and often entertaining) company he kept, which makes the biography consistently engaging. My only criticism is that, as someone familiar with Rowbotham's work, I was hoping for more of a feminist analysis of Carpenter's ideas, as he was close to several "new women" of the day and also a strong supporter of suffrage and women's rights. All in all this is an amazingly written biography!

Written by: Jennifer Burgess, March 23rd 2009