Nava Atlas's Blog, page 15

7 Literary Cocktail Books: Boozy, Punny Tributes to Famous Authors

Some of us find that books are natural partners with coffee, but a small, feisty group of literary cocktail books prove that literature and booze are inextricably intertwined as well.

These literary cocktail books aren’t so much about the true history of famous authors and their drinking habits, but punny tributes to them and their works. I guess it makes sense — after all, many writers led booze-soaked lives.

The genre of literary cocktail books took off with Tim Federle’s Tequila Mockingbird, and is going strong with Agatha Whiskey by Colleen Mullaney

These beautifully packaged books, filled with real recipes for cocktails (and sometimes mocktails) as well as fascinating literary history, are perfect gifts for the book loving cocktail connoisseur in your life.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Agatha Whiskey

Agatha Whiskey: 50 Cocktails to Celebrate the Bestselling Novelist of All Time by Colleen Mullaney (Skyhorse, 2023). From the publisher: A celebration of Agatha Christie’s timeless murder mysteries, killer short stories, suspenseful plays, and unmatched characters—with cocktails that are so tantalizingly delicious, it must be a crime.

Dame Agatha Christie is perhaps the world’s most famous mystery writer with over a billion copies of her books sold. Agatha Whiskey takes clues from Agatha’s most pivotal works of fiction and honors her most popular detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. 

There’s a plot twist for everyone with fifty thrilling drinks such as a pocket full of rosé, orient espresso martini, and daiquiri on the Nile. There are also detective drinking games to get the whole party on the right track, perhaps sipping until there were none, and mocktails for those who choose to forgo an endless night.

Just like Agatha, Agatha Whiskey is here to entertain, inspire, and add some drama of the right sort to your life. Sample  Passion Fruit Martinis, and read a Q & A with the author.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Gin Austen

Gin Austen: 50 Cocktails to Celebrate the Novels of Jane Austen by Colleen Mullaney (Union Square & Co., 2019). From the publisher: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of this good book must be in want of a drink.

Discover an exotic world of cobblers, crustas, flips, punches, shrubs, slings, sours, and toddies, with recipes that evoke the past but suit today’s tastes. Raise your glass to Sense and Sensibility with a Brandon Old-Fashioned, Elinorange Blossom, Hot Barton Rum, or Just a Dashwood.

Toast Pride and Prejudice with a Cousin Collins, Fizzy Miss Lizzie, or Salt & Pemberley. Brimming with enlightening quotes from the novels and Austen’s letters, beautiful photographs, and period design, this intoxicating volume is a must-have for any devoted Janeite. Learn more about Gin Austen, with a recipe for Gin and Bennett.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Tequila Mockingbird

Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist (10th Anniversary Expanded Edition) by Tim Federle (Running Press, 2023) From the publisher: Celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tequila Mockingbird with this special new, expanded edition! This clever cocktail guide pairs cherished novels with both classic and cutting-edge drink recipes—no B.A. in English required.

It’s been ten years since the world’s bestselling cocktail recipes book, Tequila Mockingbird, captured the attention of bar crowds, literary lovers, English majors, and readers everywhere with its clever commentary on history’s most beloved books.

This much anticipated 10th anniversary expanded edition features an updated introduction, refined drink recipes, and more than 70 delicious drinks and bar snacks, of which 15 recipes and 7 illustrations are exclusive to this revised edition. 

. . . . . . . . . . .

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margarita

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margarita: More Cocktails with a Literary Twist by Tim Federle (Running Press, 2018). From the publisher: Literature, puns, and alcohol collide in this clever follow-up to Tequila Mockingbird, the world’s bestselling cocktail recipes book.

Tim Federle’s Tequila Mockingbird has become one of the world’s bestselling cocktail books and resonated with bartenders and book clubs everywhere.

Now in this much anticipated follow-up, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margarita, Federle has shaken up 49 all-new, all-delicious drink recipes paired with his trademark puns and clever commentary on more of history’s most beloved books, as well as bar bites, drinking games, and whimsical illustrations throughout.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Literary Libations

Literary Libations: What to Drink with What You Read by Amira Makansi (Skyhorse, 2018). From the publisher: Want to know what to drink with all your favorite books?

A bubbly, boozy French 75 with The Great Gatsby. A luscious Chocolatini with Bridget Jones’s Diary. Old vine California Zinfandel with The Grapes of Wrath. Lager (by the pitcher, from your local dive) with Fight Club.

Refreshing citrus shandy with Their Eyes Were Watching God. And don’t you dare open Dracula without a Bloody Mary near at hand! 

Now book lovers everywhere can raise the perfect toast to Shakespeare, Austen, Kerouac, Woolf, and more. With drink pairing recommendations for nearly 200 classic and contemporary works of fiction, including non-alcoholic pairings for kids and young adult books, Literary Libations is a necessary addition to bookshelves and bar tops everywhere.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Buzzworthy

Buzzworthy: Cocktails Inspired by Female Literary Greats by Jennifer Croll (Prestel, 2023): From the publisher: The author of Free the Tipple is back with another collection of delectable cocktails—this time a literary mix inspired by the world’s most iconic women writers. The fifty recipes in this volume are as unconventional, imaginative, and refreshing as the authors that inspired them.

Each double-page spread includes an illustration of one important woman writer along with fascinating background about her œuvre, personality, and points of literary distinction.

And, of course, each profile is paired with a delicious recipe for a fitting cocktail. Pulling from every category—literary and genre fiction, poetry, graphic novels, essays and nonfiction— this book offers some surprising twists as well as old favorites. Perfect for literary-themed parties as well as intimate gatherings, this book itself is an intoxicating, lip-loosening brew made of equal parts sophistication and fun.

. . . . . . . . . . .

How to Drink Like a Writer

How to Drink Like a Writer: Recipes for the Cocktails and Libations that Inspired 100 Literary Greats by Apollo Publishers (2020). From the publisher: Pairing 100 famous authors, poets, and playwrights from the Victorian age to today with recipes for their iconic drinks of choice, How to Drink Like a Writer is the perfect guide to getting lit(erary) for madcap mixologists, book club bartenders, and cocktail enthusiasts.

Have you dreamed of sharing martinis with Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton after poetry class? Maybe a mojito—a real one, like they serve at La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana—is all you need to summon the mesmerizing power of Hemingway’s prose. Writer’s block? Summon the brilliant musings of Truman Capote with a screwdriver—or, “my orange drink,” as he called it.

With 100 spirited drink recipes and special sections dedicated to writerly haunts like the Algonquin of the New Yorker set and Kerouac’s Vesuvio Café, pointers for hosting your own literary salon, and author-approved hangover cures, all accompanied by original illustrations of ingredients, finished cocktails, classic drinks, and favorite food pairings, How to Drink Like a Writer is sure to inspire, invoke, and inebriate.

The post 7 Literary Cocktail Books: Boozy, Punny Tributes to Famous Authors appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Nina Bawden, Author of Carrie’s War

Nina Bawden (January 19, 1925 – August 22, 2012) was a British novelist, children’s book writer, and campaigner. Best known for the children’s novel Carrie’s War, she published twenty-three adult novels and twenty children’s books over some fifty years.

In all of her writing, she made “use of all of my life, all memory, wasting nothing,” and claimed that if her books were read in sequence, they formed a “coded autobiography.”

She was also a fierce campaigner for rail safety after being involved in the Potters Bar train crash of 2002.

 

Early years in Essex and Oxford

Born Nina Mary Mabey in Goodmayes, Essex, an area near the London Docks in Milford which she later described as “featureless and ugly.” Her father Charles was a merchant navy engineer and was mostly absent. It was a second marriage for him, but the first for her mother, who was a teacher.

She won a scholarship to Ilford County High School, but at age fourteen, when World War II broke out, she was evacuated first to Suffolk and then to South Wales. She only returned to London in 1943.

Despite this interruption to her education, Nina achieved a place at Somerville College, Oxford, to study philosophy, politics, and economics. There, she was a contemporary of Margaret Roberts — later Margaret Thatcher — and, with characteristic audacity and determination, attempted to persuade Margaret to join the Labour Party instead of the Conservatives. One can’t help but wonder how history might have been different had she succeeded!

 

Two marriages and family life

In 1946, Nina married Henry Bawden, an ex-serviceman and classical scholar many years her senior. His mother had taken her own life before their marriage; the couple managed to buy their first house in London with the money that she left. They had two sons, Nicholas (known as Niki) in 1948, and Robert in 1951.

When she met ex-naval officer Austen Kark, he too was married and had two young daughters. They fell in love after meeting on a bus in 1953, and both swiftly got divorced before marrying in 1954.

The couple had a daughter, Perdita, in 1957, and enjoyed family life in Weybridge, Surrey, where Nina served as a local magistrate as well as writing.

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

Writing for adults and children

It was while her children were young that Nina, who had initially wanted to become a foreign correspondent, started writing novels.

Her first book for adults, a crime novel called Who Calls the Tune, was published in 1956 by George Hardinge at Collins, and he continued to publish her adult novels (through his moves to Longman and then Macmillan) until 1987.

Finding a publisher for her children’s books proved more challenging, and it took several tries before her first, The Secret Passage (1963), was picked up by Livia Gollancz.

It was considered unusual at the time because the young protagonists didn’t have a traditional family, nor were the characters “good” as most children in books were: their mother was dead, their father was absent, their aunt was nasty, and they could be jealous, selfish, and bad-tempered.

In the early years of writing, Nina wrote one adult book and one children’s book each year. Later, she began to alternate them.

She became known for her refusal to shy away from the darker undercurrents of life, even in her children’s novels. In In My Own Time: Almost an Autobiography (1994) she wrote that “darkness and chaos threaten us all, lying in wait at the bottom of the garden, lurking outside the safe, lighted room,” and she always acknowledged that belief in her work.

Her children’s novel Carrie’s War (1973) was arguably the best example of her beliefs. It’s the gritty story of two children evacuated from London to Wales during World War II, based on Nina’s real-life experiences. It won the Phoenix Award in 1995 and was adapted for television in 1974 and 2004.

Her adult novels, meanwhile, often centered on breakdowns -—of relationships, families, communication, health — and on the turbulence that may lie beneath the surface of a British middle-class family. Many also had a political undertone. Nina was a committed Labour supporter, and throughout her life challenged conservative social and cultural norms.

While she was sometimes criticized for her plotting — with some critics complaining there was too much and others that there was too little — it was generally agreed that she was a master of description, even in her children’s books. The Peppermint Pig (1975), contains the following wonderful line:

“Poll was the naughtiest one of the family, and the dreadful thing happened on one of her naughty days: a dark day of thick, mustardy fog that had specks of grit in it she could taste on her tongue.”

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

Family life and a tragedy

By the late 1960s, Kark was rising up the ranks at the BBC (he would eventually become head of the BBC World Service) and the family moved to Islington in 1979.

The family traveled a lot, and Nina often set her novels in the countries they visited: for example, Kenya (Under the Skin, 1964), Morocco (A Woman of My Age, 1967), and Turkey (George Beneath a Paper Moon, 1974). They also enjoyed socializing and parties both in London and at their second home in Nafplio, Greece.

In his teens, her son Niki became addicted to drugs. He was also diagnosed with schizophrenia and, after a period of imprisonment for drug offenses, was incarcerated in a mental hospital. The story ended in tragedy when Niki drowned himself in the Thames in 1981 at the age of thirty-three. The family didn’t find out for certain that it was he who had died until months later.

Later, Nina would write in her memoir, “If my son wanted to leave then I should have left too. This is what it feels like when pieces of you fall away.” Her novel, Circle of Deceit (1987), was based largely on Niki’s story.

“When bad things happen,” Nina said, “you absorb them into yourself and make use of them in novels.” The novel featured a young man who was schizophrenic, although Nina couldn’t bring herself to kill the character as Niki had done to himself in real life.

Circle of Deceit was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was successfully adapted for television. It was not the only novel to be inspired by Niki: her later novel Birds on the Trees (1970) was about a young man who becomes addicted to drugs and has a subsequent breakdown, and the effect this has on his family. In 2010 it was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize.

 

The Potters Bar train crash

On 10th May 2002, Nina and her husband boarded a high-speed train from London to Cambridge to attend a party. It derailed at almost one hundred miles per hour at Potters Bar in Hertfordshire, killing seven people, including Kark, who died instantly, and injuring several more. It was the worst train disaster in British history.

Nina, then age seventy-seven, was cut from the wreckage with a broken ankle, arm, leg, shoulder, collarbone, and several ribs. Family and friends feared she might not recover. After multiple surgeries, she defied the doctors’ expectations and was able to stand unaided. She taught herself to walk again, and eventually returned home to Islington.

Although she suffered from PTSD after the crash, Nina said, “I refuse to feel badly done by in life … I could have been in a concentration camp or been born a paraplegic. My family have been so loving and supportive it is my duty to recover and get on with things for them.”

She campaigned tirelessly for a full investigation into the accident, and when the government refused to allow a public inquiry, she was so incensed that she cut up her Labour Party membership card. When survivors of the crash were refused legal aid, she stepped in and took the rail companies to court personally. In 2011 the company that operated that section of the rail track was fined £3 million for safety violations.

The disaster was commemorated in The Permanent Way (2003), a play by David Hare which featured a character based on Nina Bowden.

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

Later years

Nina Bawden continued to write through her recovery and subsequent campaigning, and in 2005 published a memoir, Dear Austen. It was structured as a series of letters addressed to her late husband, and was extraordinary in its courage, anger, and vulnerability. In one letter, Nina wrote,

“When we bought tickets for this railway journey we had expected a safe arrival, not an earthquake smashing lives into pieces … I dislike the word ‘victim.’ I dislike being told that I ‘lost’ my husband — as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like a pair of unwanted old shoes. You were killed. I didn’t lose you. And I am not a victim, I am an angry survivor.”

Nina was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. In the same year, she was awarded a PEN Award for Lifetime Services to Literature.

The crash had taken its toll, and in her last years, she was largely dependent on her daughter Perdita for helping her out. Nina never recovered after Perdita died from an aggressive form of cancer in 2012, and died just a few months after her daughter did that same year.

 A plaque commemorating Nina Bawden’s life as a writer and campaigner was unveiled at her home in Islington in September 2015. Many of her books have been reissued by Virago Modern Classics.

Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is a writer and editor with a serious case of wanderlust. Her short fiction has been widely published online and is included in the Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology published by Sonder Press. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, she is also co-facilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and when not writing can usually be found planning the next trip abroad, or daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Find her online at  Elodie Rose Barnes. 

More about Nina Bawden

Following is but a small sampling of Nina Bawden’s major works. Here is a complete bibliography, though it doesn’t distinguish between her works for adults and children, nor between fiction and nonfiction.

Books for children

Carrie’s War (1973)Henry (1988)Keeping Henry (1988)The Peppermint Pig (1975)The Secret Passage (1963)The Witch’s Daughter (1966)

Selected novels for adults

Who Calls the Tune (1956)Devil by the Sea (1957)Under the Skin (1964)A Woman of My Age (1967)The Birds on the Trees (1970)George Beneath a Paper Moon (1974)Afternoon of a Good Woman (1976)Circle of Deceit (1987)

Biography and letters

In My Own Time: Almost an Autobiography (1994)Dear Austen (2005)

Further reading

Obituary in The Guardian  Reader discussions on Goodreads The Booker Prize

The post Nina Bawden, Author of Carrie’s War appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Agatha Whiskey by Colleen Mullaney (+ a Q & A with the author)

From the author of Gin Austen, Colleen Mullaney’s new book, Agatha Whiskey, is a delicious and mysterious collection of cocktails and mocktails. 

The perfect gift for mystery fans, Agatha Christie fans, amateur mixologists, and anyone who wants a fun drink to sip on all year round.

A celebration of Christie’s timeless murder mysteries, killer short stories, suspenseful plays, and unmatched characters—with cocktails that are so tantalizingly delicious, it must be a crime.

Dame Agatha Christie is arguably the world’s most famous mystery writer, with over a billion copies of her books sold.

Agatha Whiskey (Skyhorse, September 2023) takes clues from Agatha’s most pivotal works of fiction and honors her most popular detectives. Featured super-sleuths are Dame Agatha herself, the one and only Maiden of Murder, detective Hercule Poirot, whose sleuthing is only outdone by his magnificent mustache, and Miss Jane Marple, the sweet old maid with an uncanny knack for crime solving.

There’s a plot twist for everyone with fifty thrilling drinks such as a Pocket Full of Rosé, Orient Espresso Martini, and Daiquiri on the Nile. There are also detective drinking games to get your party on the right track, and mocktails for those who choose to forgo an endless night.

Just like Agatha herself, Agatha Whiskey is here to entertain, inspire, and add some drama of the right sort to your life. Make sure to read to the very end for a cocktail from the book, “Hercule’s Hurricane.”

. . . . . . . . . 

Agatha Whiskey is available on Bookshop.org* and Amazon*
. . . . . . . . . 

About the Author: Colleen Mullaney is a well-known lifestyle expert and bestselling author of how-to books covering a range of topics on entertaining, cocktails, floral design, and weddings. Her most recent, Gin Austen, won the International Gourmand Drink Culture Award. Mullaney is a former magazine editor-in-chief and has been a regular contributor to Huffington Post, Today.com, New York Daily News, Woman’s Day, and many more. She lives in Westchester county, New York.

 

Q & A with Colleen Mullaney, author of Agatha Whiskey

Colleen, I shared a cocktail from your previous book, Gin Austen,  shortly after it was published. Given the relative staidness of Jane Austen’s situations and characters  the 20th-century settings of the Agatha Christie mysteries, how was the creative process behind Agatha Whiskey different?

I wrote Gin Austen to celebrate Jane’s work and her tremendous legacy through entertaining and cocktails, giving lighthearted insight into her world and her characters. She definitely was a woman ahead of her time, and her popularity remains so strong today.

So, when I began researching a second book by a woman author, I thought who better than Dame Agatha, the bestselling novelist of all time! But the question was, where do I even begin to choose titles and works to feature?

Her canon of work is so vast, and my goal was to write it so readers would discover a bit about her personal life and work — and to be entertained with cocktails. Hopefully, readers will come away curious.

As I decided how to approach the book, I broke it into different chapters to reflect the topics of her writing: Drinking Detectives, Murders & Mysteries in Faraway Places, Garden Parties, Stolen Identities & Unscrupulous Vicars, and Family Dynamics & Deadly Disturbances to name a few.

. . . . . . . . . 

Learn more about Agatha Christie
. . . . . . . . . 

Dame Agatha was something of an expert on poisons. Kemper Dawson (mystery author and host of the All About Agatha podcast) in the Forward to your book points out that “The Queen of Crime used poisons more than any other means to murder her characters.” Of course, your cocktails and mocktails aren’t poison-laced, but did these factors help inspire them?

Oh yes! I loved the fact that during the First World War, Agatha worked as an assistant dispenser, gaining knowledge of poisons. Ao it was a natural fit that poisons inspired many of the books I featured and the cocktails I mixed: Sparkling Cyanide (Sparkling Cyanide), Artist in Residence (Five Little Pigs), Seaside Sangria (Sleeping Murder).

Others were a play on words like Orient Espresso Martini (Murder on the Orient Express) and Daiquiri on the Nile (Death on the Nile).

. . . . . . . . . .

You may also like:
A Jane Austen-Inspired Cocktail
from Gin Austen by Colleen Mullaney
. . . . . . . . . .

Speaking of mocktails, can you talk about why you provided an alcohol-free alternative to each of your recipes?

I wanted to celebrate the fact that Agatha wasn’t a drinker, so I included a mocktail with each cocktail recipe. I featured a mocktail that I titled “Mocktails and Murder,” which I thought she would have enjoyed, sitting and looking out at her gardens. The cocktail is very garden-centric with Seedlip Grove 42, an English brand specializing in non-alcoholic spirits, rhubarb syrup, and bitters.It’s quite refreshing and tasty!

Also, I thought it was important to include mocktails for the growing number of people that are abstaining for personal reasons or simply to pursue a healthier lifestyle.

. . . . . . . . . . .

“Hercule’s Hurricane” (recipe below) Photo: Jack Deutsch
. . . . . . . . . . .

I recently read The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Dame Agatha’s first published novel, and the one that introduced her iconic detective, Hercule Poirot. This novel inspired your first two cocktail recipes, including the one I’ll be sharing here (Hercule’s Hurricane). Are you Team Poirot or Team Marple? And, would you like to give a shout-out to any of her lesser-known detectives (all of whom are listed in your book)?

Yes, the question I find most torturous when talking about the book! I adore Poirot, and his quirkiness, mannerisms, and profound way of being. That said, I root for his happiness.

But for me it’s Miss Jane Marple. She’s entirely underestimated, up for anything, and has no plans for slowing down. I love her community of St. Mary’s Mead, how she lives a virtuous life training girls from the nearby orphanage to work as housekeepers so they can go on and earn a living.

She has a nephew, Raymond West, who treats her to vacations and hotel stays. Then there’s the fact she makes her own Cherry Brandy from her grandmother’s recipe, offering it to anyone who’s had a bit of a fright. I include a recipe titled Miss Marple’s Cherry Blossom, with, of course, cherry brandy!

Scattered throughout your book are quotes from Agatha Christie’s novels. Can you share a favorite, and why it appeals to you?

Oh, it has to be this from Murder at the Vicarage: 

“What are you doing this afternoon, Griselda?”
“My duty as the Vicaress. Tea and scandal at four-thirty.”

I just love the levity and humor of the honest answer, as you know in the book they do sit around and gossip about how one of the characters should meet his demise. Little did they know he was quite dead already!

For me, as a writer of entertaining books and lifestyle expert, mixing cocktails and inviting friends over to join in is what it’s all about — sharing and being hospitable is pure joy.

I would suggest grabbing a copy of Agatha Whiskey, inviting friends over, mixing up some cocktails and letting the fun begin! Pick your poison!!

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

*These are Bookshop.org and Amazon affiliate links. If a product is purchased after linking through, Literary Ladies receives a modest commission, which helps us to keep growing!

The post Agatha Whiskey by Colleen Mullaney (+ a Q & A with the author) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

“Sweat” – a 1926 short story by Zora Neale Hurston (full text)

Originally published in 1926, Zora Neale Hurston’s short story, “Sweat,” is nuanced and eloquently compact. Hurston maximizes each word, object, character, and plot point to create an impassioned and enlightening narrative.

Within this small space, Hurston addresses a number of themes, such as the trials of femininity, which she explores with compelling and efficient symbolism.

In her introduction to the 1997 anthology entirely devoted to the story (“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston), editor Cheryl A. Wall wrote:

“The many levels on which ‘Sweat’ can be read make it one of Zora Neale Hurston’s most enduring works. It was published in 1926, early in Hurston’s career, indeed, long before she had dedicated herself to the profession of writing.”

Robert Hemenway, a Hurston biographer, observes in Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography (1977):

“‘Sweat’ is a story remarkably complex at both narrative and symbolic levels, yet so subtly done that one at first senses only the fairly simple narrative line. The account of a Christian woman learning how to hate in spite of herself, a story of marital cruelty and the oppression of marital relationships, an allegory of good and evil, it concentrates on folk character rather than on folk environment.”

Read the rest of Jason Horn’s analysis of this short story:  “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston: An Ecofeminist Master Class in Dialect and Symbolism.

“Sweat” was originally published in Fire!! Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists (1926), and is now in the public domain.

. . . . . . . . . . 

 

Learn more about Zora Neale Hurston
. . . . . . . . . . .

“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston

It was eleven o’clock of a Spring night in Florida. It was Sunday. Any other night, Delia Jones would have been in bed for two hours by this time. But she was a wash-woman, and Monday morning meant a great deal to her.

So she collected the soiled clothes on Saturday when she returned the clean things. Sunday night after church, she sorted them and put the white things to soak. It saved her almost a half day’s start. A great hamper in the bedroom held the clothes that she brought home. It was so much neater than a number of bundles lying around.

She squatted in the kitchen floor beside the great pile of clothes, sorting them into small heaps according to color, and humming a song in a mournful key, but wondering through it all where Sykes, her husband, had gone with her horse and buckboard.

Just then something long, round, limp and black fell upon her shoulders and slithered to the floor beside her. A great terror took hold of her. It softened her knees and dried her mouth so that it was a full minute before she could cry out or move. Then she saw that it was the big bull whip her husband liked to carry when he drove.

She lifted her eyes to the door and saw him standing there bent over with laughter at her fright. She screamed at him.

“Sykes, what you throw dat whip on me like dat? You know it would skeer me–looks just like a snake, an’ you knows how skeered Ah is of snakes.”

“Course Ah knowed it! That’s how come Ah done it.” He slapped his leg with his hand and almost rolled on the ground in his mirth. “If you such a big fool dat you got to have a fit over a earth worm or a string, Ah don’t keer how bad Ah skeer you.”

“You aint got no business doing it. Gawd knows it’s a sin. Some day Ah’m goin’ tuh drop dead from some of yo’ foolishness. ‘Nother thing, where you been wid mah rig? Ah feeds dat pony. He aint fuh you to be drivin’ wid no bull whip.”

“You sho is one aggravatin’ n—— woman!” he declared and stepped into the room. She resumed her work and did not answer him at once. “Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks’ clothes outa dis house.”

He picked up the whip and glared down at her. Delia went on with her work. She went out into the yard and returned with a galvanized tub and set it on the washbench. She saw that Sykes had kicked all of the clothes together again, and now stood in her way truculently, his whole manner hoping, praying, for an argument. But she walked calmly around him and commenced to re-sort the things.

“Next time, Ah’m gointer kick ’em outdoors,” he threatened as he struck a match along the leg of his corduroy breeches.

Delia never looked up from her work, and her thin, stooped shoulders sagged further.

“Ah aint for no fuss t’night Sykes. Ah just come from taking sacrament at the church house.”

He snorted scornfully. “Yeah, you just come from de church house on a Sunday night, but heah you is gone to work on them clothes. You ain’t nothing but a hypocrite. One of them amen-corner Christians–sing, whoop, and shout, then come home and wash white folks clothes on the Sabbath.”

He stepped roughly upon the whitest pile of things, kicking them helter-skelter as he crossed the room. His wife gave a little scream of dismay, and quickly gathered them together again.

“Sykes, you quit grindin’ dirt into these clothes! How can Ah git through by Sat’day if Ah don’t start on Sunday?”

“Ah don’t keer if you never git through. Anyhow, Ah done promised Gawd and a couple of other men, Ah aint gointer have it in mah house. Don’t gimme no lip neither, else Ah’ll throw ’em out and put mah fist up side yo’ head to boot.”

Delia’s habitual meekness seemed to slip from her shoulders like a blown scarf. She was on her feet; her poor little body, her bare knuckly hands bravely defying the strapping hulk before her.

“Looka heah, Sykes, you done gone too fur. Ah been married to you fur fifteen years, and Ah been takin’ in washin’ for fifteen years. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!”

“What’s that got to do with me?” he asked brutally.

“What’s it got to do with you, Sykes? Mah tub of suds is filled yo’ belly with vittles more times than yo’ hands is filled it. Mah sweat is done paid for this house and Ah reckon Ah kin keep on sweatin’ in it.”

She seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act surprised him greatly, coming from her. It cowed him and he did not strike her as he usually did.

“Naw you won’t,” she panted, “that ole snaggle-toothed black woman you runnin’ with aint comin’ heah to pile up on mah sweat and blood. You aint paid for nothin’ on this place, and Ah’m gointer stay right heah till Ah’m toted out foot foremost.”

“Well, you better quit gittin’ me riled up, else they’ll be totin’ you out sooner than you expect. Ah’m so tired of you Ah don’t know whut to do. Gawd! how Ah hates skinny wimmen!”

A little awed by this new Delia, he sidled out of the door and slammed the back gate after him. He did not say where he had gone, but she knew too well. She knew very well that he would not return until nearly daybreak also. Her work over, she went on to bed but not to sleep at once. Things had come to a pretty pass!

She lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail. Not an image left standing along the way. Anything like flowers had long ago been drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed from her heart. Her tears, her sweat, her blood.

She had brought love to the union and he had brought a longing after the flesh. Two months after the wedding, he had given her the first brutal beating. She had the memory of his numerous trips to Orlando with all of his wages when he had returned to her penniless, even before the first year had passed.

She was young and soft then, but now she thought of her knotty, muscled limbs, her harsh knuckly hands, and drew herself up into an unhappy little ball in the middle of the big feather bed. Too late now to hope for love, even if it were not Bertha it would be someone else.

This case differed from the others only in that she was bolder than the others. Too late for everything except her little home. She had built it for her old days, and planted one by one the trees and flowers there. It was lovely to her, lovely.

Somehow, before sleep came, she found herself saying aloud: “Oh well, whatever goes over the Devil’s back, is got to come under his belly. Sometime or ruther, Sykes, like everybody else, is gointer reap his sowing.”

After that she was able to build a spiritual earthworks against her husband. His shells could no longer reach her. Amen. She went to sleep and slept until he announced his presence in bed by kicking her feet and rudely snatching the covers away.

“Gimme some kivah heah, an’ git yo’ damn foots over on yo’ own side! Ah oughter mash you in yo’ mouf fuh drawing dat skillet on me.”

Delia went clear to the rail without answering him. A triumphant indifference to all that he was or did.

. . . . . . . . . .

The week was as full of work for Delia as all other weeks, and Saturday found her behind her little pony, collecting and delivering clothes.

It was a hot, hot day near the end of July. The village men on Joe Clarke’s porch even chewed cane listlessly. They did not hurl the cane-knots as usual. They let them dribble over the edge of the porch. Even conversation had collapsed under the heat.

“Heah come Delia Jones,” Jim Merchant said, as the shaggy pony came ’round the bend of the road toward them. The rusty buckboard was heaped with baskets of crisp, clean laundry.

“Yep,” Joe Lindsay agreed. “Hot or col’, rain or shine, jes ez reg’lar ez de weeks roll roun’ Delia carries ’em an’ fetches ’em on Sat’day.”

“She better if she wanter eat,” said Moss. “Syke Jones aint wuth de shot an’ powder hit would tek tuh kill ’em. Not to huh he aint. ”

“He sho’ aint,” Walter Thomas chimed in. “It’s too bad, too, cause she wuz a right pritty lil trick when he got huh. Ah’d uh mah’ied huh mahseff if he hadnter beat me to it.”

Delia nodded briefly at the men as she drove past.

“Too much knockin’ will ruin any ‘oman. He done beat huh ‘nough tuh kill three women, let ‘lone change they looks,” said Elijah Moseley. “How Syke kin stommuck dat big black greasy Mogul he’s layin’ roun wid, gits me. Ah swear dat eight-rock couldn’t kiss a sardine can Ah done throwed out de back do’ ‘way las’ yeah.”

“Aw, she’s fat, thass how come. He’s allus been crazy ’bout fat women,” put in Merchant. “He’d a’ been tied up wid one long time ago if he could a’ found one tuh have him. Did Ah tell yuh ’bout him come sidlin’ roun’ mah wife–bringin’ her a basket uh pecans outa his yard fuh a present? Yessir, mah wife! She tol’ him tuh take ’em right straight back home, cause Delia works so hard ovah dat washtub she reckon everything on de place taste lak sweat an’ soapsuds. Ah jus’ wisht Ah’d a’ caught ‘im ‘dere! Ah’d a’ made his hips ketch on fiah down dat shell road.”

“Ah know he done it, too. Ah sees ‘im grinnin’ at every ‘oman dat passes,” Walter Thomas said.

“But even so, he useter eat some mighty big hunks uh humble pie tuh git dat lil ‘oman he got. She wuz ez pritty ez a speckled pup! Dat wuz fifteen yeahs ago. He useter be so skeered uh losin’ huh, she could make him do some parts of a husband’s duty. Dey never wuz de same in de mind.”

“There oughter be a law about him,” said Lindsay. “He aint fit tuh carry guts tuh a bear.”

Clarke spoke for the first time. “Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in ‘im. There’s plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint uh sugar-cane. It’s round, juicy an’ sweet when dey gits it. But dey squeeze an’ grind, squeeze an’ grind an’ wring tell dey wring every drop uh pleasure dat’s in ’em out. When dey’s satisfied dat dey is wrung dry, dey treats ’em jes lak dey do a cane-chew. Dey throws em away. Dey knows whut dey is doin’ while dey is at it, an’ hates theirselves fuh it but they keeps on hangin’ after huh tell she’s empty. Den dey hates huh fuh bein’ a cane-chew an’ in de way.”

“We oughter take Syke an’ dat stray ‘oman uh his’n down in Lake Howell swamp an’ lay on de rawhide till they cain’t say Lawd a’ mussy.’ He allus wuz uh ovahbearin’ ni – – ah, but since dat white ‘oman from up north done teached ‘im how to run a automobile, he done got too biggety to live–an’ we oughter kill ‘im,” Old Man Anderson advised.

A grunt of approval went around the porch. But the heat was melting their civic virtue, and Elijah Moseley began to bait Joe Clarke.

“Come on, Joe, git a melon outa dere an’ slice it up for yo’ customers. We’se all sufferin’ wid de heat. De bear’s done got me!”

“Thass right, Joe, a watermelon is jes’ whut Ah needs tuh cure de eppizudicks,” Walter Thomas joined forces with Moseley. “Come on dere, Joe. We all is steady customers an’ you aint set us up in a long time. Ah chooses dat long, bowlegged Floridy favorite.”

“A god, an’ be dough. You all gimme twenty cents and slice way,” Clarke retorted. “Ah needs a col’ slice m’self. Heah, everybody chip in. Ah’ll lend y’ll mah meat knife.”

The money was quickly subscribed and the huge melon brought forth. At that moment, Sykes and Bertha arrived. A determined silence fell on the porch and the melon was put away again.

Merchant snapped down the blade of his jackknife and moved toward the store door.

“Come on in, Joe, an’ gimme a slab uh sow belly an’ uh pound uh coffee–almost fuhgot ’twas

Sat’day. Got to git on home.” Most of the men left also.

Just then Delia drove past on her way home, as Sykes was ordering magnificently for Bertha. It pleased him for Delia to see.

“Git whutsoever yo’ heart desires, Honey. Wait a minute, Joe. Give huh two bottles uh strawberry soda-water, uh quart uh parched ground-peas, an’ a block uh chewin’ gum.”

With all this they left the store, with Sykes reminding Bertha that this was his town and she could have it if she wanted it.

The men returned soon after they left, and held their watermelon feast.

“Where did Syke Jones git da ‘oman from nohow?” Lindsay asked.

“Ovah Apopka. Guess dey musta been cleanin’ out de town when she lef’. She don’t look lak a thing but a hunk uh liver wid hair on it.”

“Well, she sho’ kin squall,” Dave Carter contributed. “When she gits ready tuh laff, she jes’ opens huh mouf an’ latches it back tuh de las’ notch. No ole grandpa alligator down in Lake Bell ain’t got nothin’ on huh.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Bertha had been in town three months now. Sykes was still paying her room rent at Della Lewis’–the only house in town that would have taken her in. Sykes took her frequently to Winter Park to “stomps.” He still assured her that he was the swellest man in the state.

“Sho’ you kin have dat lil’ ole house soon’s Ah kin git dat ‘oman outa dere. Everything b’longs tuh me an’ you sho’ kin have it. Ah sho’ ‘bominates uh skinny ‘oman. Lawdy, you sho’ is got one portly shape on you! You kin git anything you wants. Dis is mah town an’ you sho’ kin have it.”

Delia’s work-worn knees crawled over the earth in Gethsemane and up the rocks of Calvary many, many times during these months. She avoided the villagers and meeting places in her efforts to be blind and deaf. But Bertha nullified this to a degree, by coming to Delia’s house to call Sykes out to her at the gate.

Delia and Sykes fought all the time now with no peaceful interludes. They slept and ate in silence. Two or three times Delia had attempted a timid friendliness, but she was repulsed each time. It was plain that the breaches must remain agape.

The sun had burned July to August. The heat streamed down like a million hot arrows, smiting all things living upon the earth. Grass withered, leaves browned, snakes went blind in shedding and men and dogs went mad. Dog days!

Delia came home one day and found Sykes there before her. She wondered, but started to go on into the house without speaking, even though he was standing in the kitchen door and she must either stoop under his arm or ask him to move. He made no room for her. She noticed a soap box beside the steps, but paid no particular attention to it, knowing that he must have brought it there.

As she was stooping to pass under his outstretched arm, he suddenly pushed her backward, laughingly.

“Look in de box dere Delia, Ah done brung yuh somethin’!”

She nearly fell upon the box in her stumbling, and when she saw what it held, she all but fainted outright.

“Syke! Syke, mah Gawd! You take dat rattlesnake ‘way from heah! You gottuh. Oh, Jesus, have mussy!”

“Ah aint gut tuh do nuthin’ uh de kin’–fact is Ah aint got tuh do nothin’ but die. Taint no use uh you puttin’ on airs makin’ out lak you skeered uh dat snake–he’s gointer stay right heah tell he die. He wouldn’t bite me cause Ah knows how tuh handle ‘im. Nohow he wouldn’t risk breakin’ out his fangs ‘gin yo’ skinny laigs.”

“Naw, now Syke, don’t keep dat thing ‘roun’ heah tuh skeer me tuh death. You knows Ah’m even feared uh earth worms. Thass de biggest snake Ah evah did see. Kill ‘im Syke, please.”

“Doan ast me tuh do nothin’ fuh yuh. Goin’ roun’ trying’ tuh be so damn asterperious. Naw, Ah aint gonna kill it. Ah think uh damn sight mo’ uh him dan you! Dat’s a nice snake an’ anybody doan lak ‘im kin jes’ hit de grit.”

The village soon heard that Sykes had the snake, and came to see and ask questions.

“How de hen-fire did you ketch dat six-foot rattler, Syke?” Thomas asked.

“He’s full uh frogs so he caint hardly move, thass how. Ah eased up on ‘m. But Ah’m a snake charmer an’ knows how tuh handle ’em. Shux, dat aint nothin’. Ah could ketch one eve’y day if Ah so wanted tuh.”

“Whut he needs is a heavy hick’ry club leaned real heavy on his head. Dat’s de bes ‘way tuh charm a rattlesnake.”

“Naw, Walt, y’ll jes’ don’t understand dese diamon’ backs lak Ah do,” said Sykes in a superior tone of voice.

The village agreed with Walter, but the snake stayed on. His box remained by the kitchen door with its screen wire covering. Two or three days later it had digested its meal of frogs and literally came to life. It rattled at every movement in the kitchen or the yard. One day as Delia came down the kitchen steps she saw his chalky-white fangs curved like scimitars hung in the wire meshes. This time she did not run away with averted eyes as usual. She stood for a long time in the doorway in a red fury that grew bloodier for every second that she regarded the creature that was her torment.

That night she broached the subject as soon as Sykes sat down to the table.

“Syke, Ah wants you tuh take dat snake ‘way fum heah. You done starved me an’ Ah put up widcher, you done beat me an Ah took dat, but you done kilt all mah insides bringin’ dat varmint heah.”

Sykes poured out a saucer full of coffee and drank it deliberately before he answered her.

“A whole lot Ah keer ’bout how you feels inside uh out. Dat snake aint goin’ no damn wheah till Ah gits ready fuh ‘im tuh go. So fur as beatin’ is concerned, yuh aint took near all dat you gointer take ef yuh stay ‘roun’ me.”

Delia pushed back her plate and got up from the table. “Ah hates you, Sykes,” she said calmly.

“Ah hates you tuh de same degree dat Ah useter love yuh. Ah done took an’ took till mah belly is full up tuh mah neck. Dat’s de reason Ah got mah letter fum de church an’ moved mah membership tuh Woodbridge–so Ah don’t haf tuh take no sacrament wid yuh. Ah don’t wantuh see yuh ‘roun’ me atall. Lay ‘roun’ wid dat ‘oman all yuh wants tuh, but gwan ‘way fum me an’ mah house. Ah hates yuh lak uh suck-egg dog.”

Sykes almost let the huge wad of corn bread and collard greens he was chewing fall out of his mouth in amazement. He had a hard time whipping himself up to the proper fury to try to answer Delia.

“Well, Ah’m glad you does hate me. Ah’m sho’ tiahed uh you hangin’ ontuh me. Ah don’t want yuh. Look at yuh stringey ole neck! Yo’ rawbony laigs an’ arms is enough tuh cut uh man tuh death. You looks jes’ lak de devvul’s doll-baby tuh me. You cain’t hate me no worse dan Ah hates you. Ah been hatin’ you fuh years.”

“Yo’ ole black hide don’t look lak nothin’ tuh me, but uh passle uh wrinkled up rubber, wid yo’ big ole yeahs flappin’ on each side lak uh paih uh buzzard wings. Don’t think Ah’m gointuh be run ‘way fum mah house neither. Ah’m goin’ tuh de white folks bout you, mah young man, de very nex’ time you lay yo’ han’s on me. Mah cup is done run ovah.” Delia said this with no signs of fear and Sykes departed from the house, threatening her, but made not the slightest move to carry out any of them.

That night he did not return at all, and the next day being Sunday, Delia was glad she did not have to quarrel before she hitched up her pony and drove the four miles to Woodbridge.

She stayed to the night service–“love feast”–which was very warm and full of spirit. In the emotional winds her domestic trials were borne far and wide so that she sang as she drove homeward.

“Jurden water, black an’ col’

Chills de body, not de soul

An’ Ah wantah cross Jurden in uh calm time.”

She came from the barn to the kitchen door and stopped.

“Whut’s de mattah, ol’ satan, you aint kickin’ up yo’ racket?” She addressed the snake’s box. Complete silence. She went on into the house with a new hope in its birth struggles. Perhaps her threat to go to the white folks had frightened Sykes! Perhaps he was sorry! Fifteen years of misery and suppression had brought Delia to the place where she would hope anything that looked towards a way over or through her wall of inhibitions.

She felt in the match safe behind the stove at once for a match. There was only one there.

“Dat ni – – ah wouldn’t fetch nothin’ heah tuh save his rotten neck, but he kin run thew whut Ah brings quick enough. Now he done toted off nigh on tuh haff uh box uh matches. He done had dat ‘oman heah in mah house, too.”

Nobody but a woman could tell how she knew this even before she struck the match. But she did and it put her into a new fury.

Presently she brought in the tubs to put the white things to soak. This time she decided she need not bring the hamper out of the bedroom; she would go in there and do the sorting. She picked up the pot-bellied lamp and went in. The room was small and the hamper stood hard by the foot of the white iron bed. She could sit and reach through the bedposts–resting as she worked.

“Ah wantah cross Jurden in uh calm time,” she was singing again. The mood of the “love feast” had returned. She threw back the lid of the basket almost gaily. Then, moved by both horror and terror, she sprang back toward the door. There lay the snake in the basket!

He moved sluggishly at first, but even as she turned round and round, jumped up and down in an insanity of fear, he began to stir vigorously. She saw him pouring his awful beauty from the basket upon the bed, then she seized the lamp and ran as fast as she could to the kitchen.

The wind from the open door blew out the light and the darkness added to her terror. She sped to the darkness of the yard, slamming the door after her before she thought to set down the lamp. She did not feel safe even on the ground, so she climbed up in the hay barn.

There for an hour or more she lay sprawled upon the hay a gibbering wreck.

Finally, she grew quiet, and after that, coherent thought. With this, stalked through her a cold, bloody rage. Hours of this. A period of introspection, a space of retrospection, then a mixture of both. Out of this an awful calm.

“Well, Ah done de bes’ Ah could. If things aint right, Gawd knows taint mah fault.”

She went to sleep–a twitch sleep–and woke up to a faint gray sky. There was a loud hollow sound below. She peered out. Sykes was at the wood-pile, demolishing a wire-covered box.

He hurried to the kitchen door, but hung outside there some minutes before he entered, and stood some minutes more inside before he closed it after him.

The gray in the sky was spreading. Delia descended without fear now, and crouched beneath the low bedroom window. The drawn shade shut out the dawn, shut in the night. But the thin walls held back no sound.

“Dat ol’ scratch is woke up now!” She mused at the tremendous whirr inside, which every woodsman knows, is one of the sound illusions. The rattler is a ventriloquist. His whirr sounds to the right, to the left, straight ahead, behind, close under foot–everywhere but where it is. Woe to him who guesses wrong unless he is prepared to hold up his end of the argument! Sometimes he strikes without rattling at all.

Inside, Sykes heard nothing until he knocked a pot lid off the stove while trying to reach the match safe in the dark. He had emptied his pockets at Bertha’s.

The snake seemed to wake up under the stove and Sykes made a quick leap into the bedroom. In spite of the gin he had had, his head was clearing now.

“‘Mah Gawd!” he chattered, “ef Ah could on’y strack uh light!”

The rattling ceased for a moment as he stood paralyzed. He waited. It seemed that the snake waited also.

“Oh, fuh de light! Ah thought he’d be too sick”–Sykes was muttering to himself when the whirr began again, closer, right underfoot this time. Long before this, Sykes’ ability to think had been flattened down to primitive instinct and he leaped–onto the bed.

Outside Delia heard a cry that might have come from a maddened chimpanzee, a stricken gorilla. All the terror, all the horror, all the rage that man possibly could express, without a recognizable human sound.

A tremendous stir inside there, another series of animal screams, the intermittent whirr of the reptile. The shade torn violently down from the window, letting in the red dawn, a huge brown hand seizing the window stick, great dull blows upon the wooden floor punctuating the gibberish of sound long after the rattle of the snake had abruptly subsided.

All this Delia could see and hear from her place beneath the window, and it made her ill. She crept over to the four-o’clocks and stretched herself on the cool earth to recover.

She lay there. “Delia. Delia!” She could hear Sykes calling in a most despairing tone as one who expected no answer. The sun crept on up, and he called. Delia could not move–her legs were gone flabby. She never moved, he called, and the sun kept rising.

“Mah Gawd!” She heard him moan, “Mah Gawd fum Heben!” She heard him stumbling about and got up from her flower-bed. The sun was growing warm. As she approached the door she heard him call out hopefully, “Delia, is dat you Ah heah?”

She saw him on his hands and knees as soon as she reached the door. He crept an inch or two toward her–all that he was able, and she saw his horribly swollen neck and his one open eye shining with hope.

A surge of pity too strong to support bore her away from that eye that must, could not, fail to see the tubs. He would see the lamp. Orlando with its doctors was too far. She could scarcely reach the Chinaberry tree, where she waited in the growing heat while inside she knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye which must know by now that she knew.

. . . . . . . . . .

More full texts of Zora Neale Hurston short stories

“John Redding Goes to Sea”  (full text; 1921)“Spunk” (full text; 1925) “The Gilded Six-Bits”   (full text; 1933; and  an analysis here )

The post “Sweat” – a 1926 short story by Zora Neale Hurston (full text) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

10 Fascinating Facts About Christina Rossetti, Victorian Poet

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) is among the most important female poets of the 19th century. Presented here are fascinating facts about Christina Rossetti, the Victorian English poet whose work continues to resonate and inspire.

Her popular works, including “Goblin Market,” “Remember,” “In an Artist’s Studio,” “Who Has Seen the Wind,” and “In the Bleak Midwinter,” are a small part of her prolific output.

The American author Elbert Hubbard wrote in Christina Rossetti (2015), “Christina had the faculty of seizing beautiful moments, exalted feelings, sublime emotions … In all her lines there is a half-sobbing tone.”

DM Denton’s new novel, The Dove Upon Her Branch: A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti (2023) takes the reader deep into the heart of the fascinating and remarkably gifted Rossetti family, unveiling Christina’s life from childhood to middle age, through her encounters with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, her development as a poet, family changes and tragedies, and struggles with her health and salvation.

. . . . . . . . .

The Dove Upon Her Branch by DM Denton
is available on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . .

Christina’s lineage was more Italian than English

Christina has been portrayed as the quintessential English woman and in many ways she was. Her English blood came by way of her maternal Middlesex grandmother Anna Pierce, who married Tuscan scholar Gaetano Polidori, an immigrant who settled in London.

We Englishwomen, trim, correct,
All minted in the self-same mould,
Warm-hearted but of semblance cold,
All-courteous out of self-respect.

(from “Enrica” by Christina Rossetti)

Christina’s father, Gabriele Rossetti, a Neapolitan nobleman and political exile, befriended Gaetano and courted his eldest daughter, Frances. Her “passion for intellect” persuaded her to marry Gabriele rather than a much better-situated but less interesting Scottish colonel.

Many expatriate Italians—the humblest and highest—called at Christina’s childhood homes. She visited Italy only once, but through her written reflections it’s obvious she felt it was her essence: “Take my heart, its truest part, Dear land, take my tears.” (from“En Route” Christina Rossetti)

. . . . . . . . .

Learn more about Christina Rossetti
. . . . . . . . .

Christina was a child with fiery emotions

“One one occasion, for being rebuked by my dear mother for some fault, I … ripped open my arm to vent my wrath,” Christina reportedly told her niece. She was a high-spirited, willful, and often fractious little girl, happy to be indulged.

Her temperament was more aligned with her oldest brother Gabriel than their other siblings. Their father referred to Christina and Gabriel (renowned later as the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti) as “the storms” in the family, Maria and William “the calms.”

Adolescence changed her. Family, friends, and even several doctors couldn’t decide why. Was it because she spent too much time alone with her aging, ailing father, the delay of her monthlies, restricting piety, the strain of her intellect and creativity, or the Victorian go-to for female melancholia and poor health, hysteria?

The little girl of tears and tantrums but also uninhibited playfulness and passion was, if not entirely gone, properly subdued, eventually under the appearance of a disciplined, dutiful, devotional woman.

 A city dweller, Christina was inspired by nature

In her poem “Summer,” Christina wrote: “… one day in the country is worth a month in town.” As an observer noted, Christina enjoyed the pastoral life “with a fearless love … country children could never emulate.”

Her Grandparents Polidori owned a cottage in the Buckinghamshire village of Holmer Green. “If one thing schooled me in the direction of poetry,” she reflected, “it was perhaps the delightful liberty to prowl all alone about my grandfather’s cottage grounds.” (from Christina Rossetti’s Letters)

Even in London, there were opportunities to observe and enjoy nature, including Regents Park, its Zoological Gardens, and Primrose Hill.

Eventually, her grandparents moved to an Italianate villa on the northern corner of Regents Park, “one side in the town and the other in the country,” satisfying both her grandfather’s and her needs as “creatures of both.” (from Christina Rossetti’s Letters)

. . . . . . . . .

Illustration from
The Dove Upon Her Branch by DM Denton
. . . . . . . . .

Christina’s promise as a poet was encouraged by her family

It must have been stimulated by a game bouts-rimés she played with her siblings, a race between two of them to compose a sonnet using a set of end rhymes a third came up with. She pleased her mother with her earliest verses.

Maria kept a notebook of her little sister’s poems. Christina first saw her poetry in print when she was seventeen, owing to the adoring insistence and personal printing press of Nonno Polidori. Her brothers often proofread and critiqued her writing, negotiated with publishers, and Gabriel contributed illustrations.

“I’m luckier than some, with a family that encouraged me to do the one thing I’m fairly good at. And long before I could claim any income from it.” (from The Dove Upon Her Branch, A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti by DM Denton)

 

Christina almost avoided being a governess

When her father, who was seventeen years older than her mother, became too ill to support his family, his wife, youngest son, and oldest daughter had to find employment. Gabriel was only expected to pursue his art.

For Maria, like so many unmarried lower- or middle-class females in the 19th century, being a governess was the obvious option. Christina was left at home to take care of her nearly blind, demanding, depressed father.

Her brother William saw the blessing in her situation. “So here you are. Not sent off to be a governess but left behind to be a poet; surely a better way to make a few bob.” (from The Dove Upon Her Branch, A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti by DM Denton)

As for Maria’s assumption that her sister “wouldn’t last a week as a governess,” twenty-five-year-old Christina made it through a couple of months at Haigh Hall in Lancashire as a temporary nanny for one of her Aunt Charlotte’s connections. Christina’s own words speak to how she felt about the experience she called my exile, happy to confirm her health did “unfit her for miscellaneous governessing en permanence.” (from Christina Rossetti’s Letters)

For a short time, she helped her mother run two small day schools in their residences, first in London on Arlington St. and then in Frome, a country town in Somerset. Christina disliked teaching, too, so as both schools failed, she was once again relieved of an occupation she was unfit for.

. . . . . . . . .

Illustration from
The Dove Upon Her Branch by DM Denton
. . . . . . . . .

Christina posed as a model for several artists

The fledgling, free-and-easy Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (P.R.B.) often met upstairs in her Charlotte Street home. At eighteen, pretty and naïve, she went to the grungy studio across from a workhouse Gabriel shared with William Holman Hunt.

Opportunely realizing Christina’s innocent look fit the bill and wouldn’t cost him anything, Gabriel brought her in for the role of the Virgin Mary as a girl, along with their mother for Saint Anne and chaperoning her vulnerable daughter from any unsuitable influence.

Gabriel did set Christina up to be courted by one of the Brotherhood’s members, albeit one who was “priestlike” and narcoleptic. Although never a bona fide member of the P.R.B., Christina contributed—first anonymously, then under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne—to its publication, The Germ.

In addition to another Virgin Mary painting, she posed for the head of Jesus in Hunt’s The Light of the World, eventually her face irrelevant, surrounded by the fire and flow of a real model’s—Lizzie Siddal’s—hair.

In her mid-thirties, Christina sat for the artist William Bell Scott who was designing murals for Penkill Castle, the Scottish home of his mistress Alice Boyd. Christina’s visit there might have been judged unwise for Mr. Scott’s wife was also one of the guests of Miss Boyd.

Somehow Christina safely navigated the scandalous situation and, even as she intimately modeled for him, the attention of a man she possibly was attracted to.

. . . . . . . . .

Elizabeth Eleanor “Lizzie” Siddal, whom Dante Gabriel Rossetti
used as a model in many well-known paintings
. . . . . . . . . 

Christina had little interaction with her brother’s wife

Lizzie (Elizabeth) Siddal, the model, painter, and poet, was a significant part of Christina’s brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s life. Lizzie was his muse, student, and fiancé; later his wife and haunting vision.

Although Lizzie was often not far away in London, frequenting and eventually living at Gabriel’s Chatham Place, Blackfriars residence, it was only many years after she and Gabriel became a couple that Christina met her.

And downcast were her dovelike eyes, and downcast was her tender cheek,
Her pulses fluttered like a dove
To hear him speak.
(from “Listening” by Christina Rossetti)

When Lizzie became pregnant Christina hoped that once she was a doting aunt, she and her sister-in-law might become closer. Then a baby girl was stillborn, and Lizzie’s overdose of grief and laudanum determined what would never happen.

 

Christina forayed into several social causes

Christina was in her mid-twenties when she applied, following the example of her Aunt Eliza Polidori. Eliza was accepted, but Christina wasn’t. A few years later, she turned to a cause utilizing her belief in forgiveness and redemption over punishment and hopelessness.

Ironically, as Sister Christina, donning a black dress with hanging sleeves, a muslin cap, string of black beads, and silver cross, she emerged from her cloistered family life to volunteer at the St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary on London’s Highgate Hill, a charitable institution that focused on “the reception and reformation of penitent fallen women with a view to their ultimate establishment in some respectable calling.” (Ad for the St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary)

Christina organized petitions for the rights of minors and anti-vivisection and in support of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which included raising the age of consent for girls to sixteen.

She didn’t support women’s suffrage, leaving herself out when she made an exception for married women: “For who so apt as Mothers — all previous arguments allowed for the moment — to protect the interests of themselves and of their offspring?” (from Christina Rossetti’s Letters)

 

Christina never married, though not for lack of opportunity

She received at least three marriage proposals, two by the same man. A poem, “No, Thank You, John,” hints there was a fourth.

When she was seventeen, Christina caught the eye of the painter James Collinson; Christina turned him down because he was leaning towards Catholicism. He proposed a second time with the assurance he would remain an Anglican, their disengaged engagement dragging on for a few years until Collinson decided to go to a Catholic Seminary College.

The linguist Charles Bagot Cayley had been a student of her father’s, a shy, unworldly, disheveled, dry-witted intellectual who eventually proposed to Christina, but his agnosticism forced her to refuse him. They remained platonically affectionate.

Between Collinson and Cayley, the painter John Brett may have asked Christina to marry him.

The 2020 biography, Christina Rossetti by Lona Mosk Packer, sets out the theory that some of Christina’s poems show she had a strong affection for a secret someone. Ms. Packer believed he was the Scottish painter and poet William Bell Scott, a good friend of the Rossettis but a married man with a mistress. Whether he was the reason Christina rejected the others remains a controversial possibility.

 

Christina suffered from Graves’ Disease

In her early forties, having been prone to various ailments, Christina’s health suddenly and severely deteriorated.

She was diagnosed with Graves’ Disease, at the time a little understood autoimmune thyroid condition. Her brother William described her as a “total wreck;” Gabriel claimed she looked ten years older: her eyes bulging, hair falling out, skin discolored, and swelling on her neck.

For a while, she was barely able to walk. And although she experienced remissions, alterations to her appearance were mostly permanent, causing her to become even more reclusive.

It was another disease that snatched the chance of the Poet Laureateship and living a long life from her. After Tennyson, Poet Laureate since 1850, died in 1892, Christina was considered a contender to succeed him.

At the time she seemed well recovered from a mastectomy, but with a delay of a few years before Queen Victoria made an appointment, time wasn’t on Christina’s side. She died in December 1894 from a recurrence of breast cancer.

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

(from “Remember” by Christina Rossetti)

. . . . . . . . .

More about Christina Rossetti

Goblin Market  (full text) 12 Poems by Christina Rossetti, Victorian Poet The Poetry of Christina Rossetti: A 19th-Century Analysis

Contributed by DM (Diane) Denton, a native of Western New York, a writer and artist inspired by music, nature, and the contradictions of the human and creative spirit.

Her historical fiction A House Near Luccoli, which is set in 17th century Genoa and imagines an intimacy with the charismatic composer Alessandro Stradella, and its sequel To A Strange Somewhere Fled, which takes place in late Restoration England, were published by All Things That Matter Press, as were her Kindle short stories, The Snow White Gift and The Library Next Door.

Diane has done the artwork for both her novels’ book covers, and published an illustrated poetry flower journal, A Friendship with Flowers. Visit her on the web at at DM Denton Author & Artist and  BardessMDenton.

The post 10 Fascinating Facts About Christina Rossetti, Victorian Poet appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

6 Notable South African Women Poets

The landscape of Southern Africa is sometimes harsh and unforgiving. The same may be said about much of the country’s history. Still, it is impossible to experience the country without feeling inspired by its culture, nature, and sheer spirit.

The country’s literary legacy has produced legendary authors like Olive Schreiner, Nadine Gordimer, and Elsa Joubert. There are just as many poets, like Ingrid Jonker, Elisabeth Eybers, and the others listed here, who have forever etched their words and phrases in world literature.

Here are six notable South African women poets to add to your reading list, with links to samples of their poetry if English translation is available.

 

. . . . . . . . .

Sarah Goldblatt

Sarah Eva Goldblatt (1889 – 1975) was a journalist, editor, and poet. She was born in London to parents David Nathan Goldblatt and Fanny Esther Smith. The family relocated to Southern Africa in 1897. David Goldblatt became known for having been instrumental in getting the Yiddish language recognized in South Africa.

At age twenty-one, Sarah began working for author C.J. Langenhoven as a newspaper editor. She maintained lifelong correspondence with Langenhoven, eventually becoming executrix of his works after his death in 1932.

Goldblatt’s poetry, collected in Liefdeskransie (Love wreath) was published in 1920. Sarah is considered one of the first South African women to publish poetry. Her poetry was mostly aimed at younger readers and may have lacked recognition from the serious literary scene until decades after publication.

Sarah died in Belville, Cape Town, in 1975. Her influence and cultural legacy have been further explored in Searching for Sarah, written by her grandniece, Dominique Malherbe. 

 

. . . . . . . . .

Elisabeth Eybers

Elisabeth Françoise Eybers (1915 – 2007) was a South African journalist and poet. She was born in Klerksdorp to clergyman John Henry Eybers and math teacher Elisabeth Susanna le Roux.

Eybers is considered an influential figure in South African literature, especially as part of the Dertigers (“Thirtiers”) writing movement in the 1930s that eventually gave rise to the later Sestigers (“Sixtiers”) counterculture authors group.

Her first poetry collection, Belydenis in die skemering  (Confession at Twilight) was published in 1936. Her second, Die stil avontuur (The silent adventure), came out in 1939.

Eybers was awarded the national Hertzog Prize for poetry in 1943. In 1961, after her divorce, Eybers left for Amsterdam intending only a short stay. Her third collection, Balans (Balance), reflects on her time in Amsterdam, which spanned more than four decades.

Elisabeth Eybers’ last collection of poetry, Valreep (Stirrup Cup), was published in 2005. She passed away in Amsterdam in 2007, and was buried at Zorgvlied Cemetery.

“Digteres as huisvrou” (“Poetess as housewife”) “Homesickness”, “At night”, “Last attempt at logic”, “Immigrant” (four poems) 

. . . . . . . . .

Ingrid Jonker

Ingrid Jonker (1933 – 1965) was a South African poet and founder of the emerging counterculture literary movement. The daughter of a member of Parliament for the National Party, her views and work strongly opposed the apartheid government of the time.

Jonker has been compared to some of the most iconic modern female artists and poets, including Sylvia Plath. Her poetry, written in Afrikaans, has been more recently translated into English, as well as German, Dutch, French, Polish, Hindi, and other languages.

Jonker’s poem, “The child who was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga” was recited by Nelson Mandela on May 24, 1994, signifying the past impact and end of the Apartheid-regime. Read a biography of Ingrid Jonker.

The child who was shot dead by soldiers in Nyanga Little Grain of Sand  

. . . . . . . . .

Jeanne Goosen

Jeanne Goosen (1938 – 2020) was a South African journalist, author, and poet born in Parow, Cape Town. She first studied radiography, as well as formally studying music and drama.

Her first poetry collection, `n Uil vlieg weg (An Owl Flees Away), was published in 1971. Orrelpunte (Organ pipes) appeared in 1975, establishing Goosen as a lasting voice in South African poetry.

In the 1980s, Goosen worked as a journalist for several publications, including The Paarl Post. Between the 1980s and 1990s, she relocated to the coastal city of Durban. Here, she continued writing for Tempo and supplemented her income with playing piano at a local club.

“Ons is nie almal so nie” (“We are not all like that”), 1990, is considered an important prose work exploring life in a 1950s South African household. The book was later translated into English by Sixtiers poet André P. Brink.

Much of Goosen’s work explored themes of self and cultural identity, set against the backdrop of uniquely South African scenes. Daantjie Dromer (Daantjie Dreamer) was her next work published in 1993, further exploring the setting of the average South African family in the 1950s.

In 2000, Goosen relocated to the North-West province (Hartbeeshoek). After the publication of Wie is Jan Hoender? (Who is John Chicken?) in 2001, she moved again to Johannesburg — and again, to Melkbosstrand in Cape Town.

Goosen wrote her first cabaret in 2003, called “Desnieteenstaande” (“Nevertheless”), with contributors Sandra Prinsloo and Lizz Meiring.“Plante Kan Praat” (“Plants Can Talk”) was one of her final publications in 2005. She died in Melkbosstrand.

 “Hoedlied” (“Hat song”)  

. . . . . . . . .

Gladys Thomas

Photo: False Bay Echo

Gladys Thomas (1934 – 2022) was a South African author, poet, and activist.  She was born in Salt River, Cape Town, to John Adams and Dorothy O’Riodan.

Cry Rage (co-written with James Thomas Matthews) was the first poetry collection subjected to South Africa’s banning laws after its 1971 publication. Notably, Thomas was one of the first South African black female authors to publish.

With her husband, Thomas founded a theatre group called the Getwize Players. She continued to write, presenting her poetry at Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) meetings during the 1970s and contributing plays to the Getwise Players.

Gladys Thomas achieved international recognition for her work in 1980 as part of the American Kwanzaa Awards.

Spotty Dog and Other Stories: Stories for and of South African Township Children appeared in 1983. The prose collection was particularly notable for its perspective on South African township life. This was followed by her next poetry collection, Exile Within (1986).

Her work is considered protest literature, with strong opposition to the conservative South African government of the time. More recognition for Thomas followed when her play, Avalon Court, won the African Literary Award for 1990. She received the prestigious National Order of Ikhamanga in 2007 for her valuable contributions to literature.

“Fall Tomorrow” Cry Rage (several poems) 

. . . . . . . . .

Bessie Head

Photo: Khama III Memorial Museum Archives

Bessie Amelia Head (1937 – 1986) was a South African journalist, writer, poet, and activist born in Pietermaritzburg, to a Scottish mother and unknown South African man. She spent her early life placed between several families, eventually completing her studies to become a teacher.

Head accepted a teaching post in Clairwood, Kwazulu-Natal in 1956. Subsequently, she moved to Johannesburg and wrote a newspaper column for teenagers. She married and gave birth to a son in 1962. Soon after, some of her well-received poems, including “Things I Don’t Like,” and “Where the Wind Don’t Blow,” appeared in literary journals.

Head accepted another teaching post in 1964: this phase of her life would take her to Botswana, where she was unable to return to South Africa.

In 1968 she published her debut novel Where Rain Clouds Gather. This was followed by Maru in 1971, and The Question of Power in 1973. Most of her fiction was set in Botswana, except for her debut. The Cardinals, published in 1993.

Bessie Head was awarded the national Order of Ikhamanga posthumously in 2003 for her contribution to literature.

“Things I Don’t Like” “Self Portrait”

Contributed by Alex J. Coyne, a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo, and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.

 

The post 6 Notable South African Women Poets appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

John Redding Goes to Sea by Zora Neale Hurston (1921)

Presented here is the full text of “John Redding Goes to Sea,” the first story by Zora Neale Hurston to be published.

Launching what would become her typical style, with characters speaking in dialect, the story was first published in the May, 1921 issue of Stylus, Howard University’s literary magazine. A slightly edited version in the January, 1926, issue of Opportunity, a prominent literary journal associated with the Harlem Renaissance. 

More recently, the story is included in Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick (2020) a collection of Zora’s rediscovered short stories.

Set in a nameless Florida location that recalls Eatonville, the incorporated Black town where Zora grew up, a young man named John Redding  wants set off and “go roving about the world for a spell” — much to his mother’s distress.

The central message of the story is that individuals need to be free to pursue their dreams and desires, even if doing so puts them at risk and distresses those close to them.

Analyses and discussions of “John Redding Goes to Sea”

Literary Theory and Criticism Bitter Southerner University of Notre Dame

. . . . . . . . . . .

 

Zora Neale Hurston in her younger days
. . . . . . . . . . .

John Redding Goes to Sea

The villagers said that John Redding was a queer child. His mother thought he was too. She would shake her head sadly, and observe to John’s father: “Alf, it’s too bad our boy’s got a spell on ’im.”

The father always met this lament with indifference, if not impatience.

“Aw, woman, stop dat talk ’bout conjure. Tain’t so nohow. Ah doan want Jawn tuh git dat foolishness in him.”

“Cose you allus tries tuh know mo’ than me, but Ah ain’t so ign’rant. Ah knows a heap mahself. Many and many’s the people been drove outa their senses by conjuration, or rid tuh deat’ by witches.”

“Ah keep on telling yuh, woman, tain’t so. B’lieve it all you wants tuh, but dontcha tell mah son none of it.”

Perhaps ten-year-old John was puzzling to the simple folk there in the Florida woods for he was an imaginative child and fond of day-dreams. The St. John River flowed a scarce three hundred feet from his back door. On its banks at this point grow numerous palms, luxuriant magnolias and bay trees with a dense undergrowth of ferns, cat-tails and rope-grass. On the bosom of the stream float millions of delicately colored hyacinths. The little brown boy loved to wander down to the water’s edge, and, casting in dry twigs, watch them sail away down stream to Jacksonville, the sea, the wide world and John Redding wanted to follow them.

Sometimes in his dreams he was a prince, riding away in a gorgeous carriage. Often he was a knight bestride a fiery charger prancing down the white shell road that led to distant lands. At other times he was a steamboat captain piloting his craft down the St. John River to where the sky seemed to touch the water. No matter what he dreamed or who he fancied himself to be, he always ended by riding away to the horizon; for in his childish ignorance he thought this to be farthest land.

But these twigs, which John called his ships, did not always sail away. Sometimes they would be swept in among the weeds growing in the shallow water, and be held there. One day his father came upon him scolding the weeds for stopping his sea-going vessels.

“Let go mah ships! You ole mean weeds you!” John screamed and stamped impotently. “They wants tuh go ’way. You let ’em go on!”

Alfred laid his hand on his son’s head lovingly. “What’s mattah, son?”

“Mah ships, pa,” the child answered weeping. “Ah throwed ’em in to go way off an’ them ole weeds won’t let ’em.”

“Well, well, doan cry. Ah thought youse uh grown up man. Men doan cry lak babies. You mustn’t take it too hard ’bout yo’ ships. You gotta git uster things gittin’ tied up. They’s lotser folks that ’ud go on off too ef somethin’ didn’ ketch ’em an’ hol’ ’em!”

Alfred Redding’s brown face grew wistful for a moment, and the child noticing it, asked quickly: “Do weeds tangle up folks too, pa?”

“Now, no, chile, doan be takin’ too much stock of what Ah say. Ah talks in parables sometimes. Come on, les go on tuh supper.”

Alf took his son’s hand, and started slowly toward the house. Soon John broke the silence.

“Pa, when Ah gets as big as you Ah’m goin’ farther than them ships. Ah’m goin’ to where the sky touches the ground.”

“Well, son, when Ah wuz a boy Ah said Ah wuz goin’ too, but heah Ah am. Ah hopes you have bettah luck than me.”

“Pa, Ah betcha Ah seen somethin’ in th’ woodlot you ain’t seen!”

“Whut?”

“See dat tallest pine tree ovah dere how it looks like a skull wid a crown on?”

“Yes, indeed!” said the father looking toward the tree designated. “It do look lak a skull since you call mah ’tention to it. You ’magine lotser things nobody else evah did, son!”

“Sometimes, Pa dat ole tree waves at me just aftah th’ sun goes down, an’ makes me sad an’ skeered, too.”

“Ah specks youse skeered of de dahk, thas all, sonny. When you gits biggah you won’t think of sich.”

Hand in hand the two trudged across the plowed land and up to the house, the child dreaming of the days when he should wander to far countries, and the man of the days when he might have—and thus they entered the kitchen.

Matty Redding, John’s mother, was setting the table for supper. She was a small wiry woman with large eyes that might have been beautiful when she was young, but too much weeping had left them watery and weak.

“Matty,” Alf began as he took his place at the table, “dontcha know our boy is different from any othah chile roun’ heah. He ’lows he’s goin’ to sea when he gits grown, an’ Ah reckon Ah’ll let ’im.”

The woman turned from the stove, skillet in hand. “Alf, you ain’t gone crazy, is you? John kain’t help wantin’ tuh stray off, cause he’s got a spell on ’im; but you oughter be shamed to be encouragin’ him.”

“Ain’t Ah done tol’ you forty times not tuh tahk dat low-life mess in front of mah boy?”

“Well, ef tain’t no conjure in de world, how come Mitch Potts been layin’ on his back six mont’s an’ de doctah kain’t do ’im no good? Answer me dat. The very night John wuz bawn, Granny seed ole Witch Judy Davis creepin outer dis yahd. You know she had swore tuh fix me fuh marryin’ you, ’way from her darter Edna. She put travel dust down fuh mah chile, dat’s whut she done, tuh make him walk ’way fum me. An’ evuh sence he’s been able tuh crawl, he’s been tryin tuh go.”

“Matty, a man doan need no travel dust tuh make ’im wanter hit de road. It jes’ comes natcheral fuh er man tuh travel. Dey all wants tuh go at some time or other but they kain’t all get away. Ah wants mah John tuh go an’ see cause Ah wanted to go mah self. When he comes back Ah kin see them furrin places wid his eyes. He kain’t help wantin’ tuh go cause he’s a man chile!”

Mrs. Redding promptly went off into a fit of weeping but the man and boy ate supper unmoved. Twelve years of married life had taught Alfred that far from being miserable when she wept, his wife was enjoying a bit of self-pity.

Thus John Redding grew to manhood, playing, studying and dreaming. He attended the village school as did most of the youth about him, but he also went to high school at the county seat where none of the villagers went. His father shared his dreams and ambitions, but his mother could not understand why he should wish to go strange places where neither she nor his father had been. No one of their community had ever been farther away than Jacksonville. Few indeed had ever been there. Their own gardens, general store, and occasional trips to the county seat—seven miles away—sufficed for all their needs. Life was simple indeed with these folk.

John was the subject of much discussion among the country folk. Why didn’t he teach school instead of thinking about strange places and people? Did he think himself better than any of the “gals” there about that he would not go a-courting any of them? He must be “fixed” as his mother claimed, else where did his queer notions come from? Well, he was always queer, and one could not expect the man to be different from the child. They never failed to stop work at the approach of Alfred in order to be at the fence and inquire after John’s health and ask when he expected to leave.

“Oh,” Alfred would answer. “Jes’ as soon as his mah gits reconciled to th’ notion. He’s a mighty dutiful boy, mah John is. He doan wanna hurt her feelings.”

The boy had on several occasions attempted to reconcile his mother to the notion, but found it a difficult task. Matty always took refuge in self-pity and tears. Her son’s desires were incomprehensible to her, that was all. She did not want to hurt him. It was love, mother love, that made her cling so desperately to John.

“Lawd knows,” she would sigh, “Ah nevah wuz happy an’ nevah specks tuh be.”

“An’ from yo’ actions,” put in Alfred hotly, “you’s determined not to be.”

“Thas right, Alfred, go on an’ ’buse me. You allus does. Ah knows Ah’m ign’rant an’ all dat, but dis is mah son. Ah bred an’ born ’im. He kain’t help from wantin’ to go rovin’ cause travel dust been put down fuh him. But mebbe we kin cure ’im by disincouragin’ the idee.”

“Well, Ah wants mah son tuh go; an’ he wants tuh go too. He’s a man now, Matty. An’ we mus’ let John hoe his own row. If it’s travelin’ twon’t be foh long. He’ll come back to us bettah than when he went off. What do you say, son?”

“Mamma,” John began slowly, “it hurts me to see you so troubled over my going away; but I feel that I must go. I’m stagnating here. This indolent atmosphere will stifle every bit of ambition that’s in me. Let me go mamma, please. What is there here for me? Why, sometimes I get to feeling just like a lump of dirt turned over by the plow—just where it falls there’s where it lies—no thought or movement or nothing. I wanter make myself something—not just stay where I was born.”

“Naw, John, it’s bettah for you to stay heah and take over the school. Why don’t you marry and settle down?”

“I don’t want to, mamma. I want to go away.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Redding, pursing her mouth tightly, “you ainta goin’ wid mah consent!”

“I’m sorry mamma, that you won’t consent. I am going nevertheless.”

“John, John, mah baby! You wouldn’t kill yo’ po’ ole mamma, would you? Come, kiss me, son.”

The boy flung his arms about his mother and held her closely while she sobbed on his breast. To all of her pleas, however, he answered that he must go.

“I’ll stay at home this year, mamma, then I’ll go for a while, but it won’t be long. I’ll come back and make you and papa oh so happy. Do you agree, mamma dear?”

“Ah reckon tain’ nothin’ tall fuh me to do else.”

Things went on very well around the Redding home for some time. During the day John helped his father about the farm and read a great deal at night.

Then the unexpected happened. John married Stella Kanty, a neighbor’s daughter. The courtship was brief but ardent—on John’s part at least. He danced with Stella at a candy-pulling, walked with her home and in three weeks had declared himself. Mrs. Redding declared that she was happier than she had ever been in her life. She therefore indulged in a whole afternoon of weeping. John’s change was occasioned possibly by the fact that Stella was really beautiful; he was young and red-blooded, and the time was spring.

Spring-time in Florida is not a matter of peeping violets or bursting buds merely. It is a riot of color in nature—glistening green leaves, pink, blue, purple, yellow blossoms that fairly stagger the visitor from the north. The miles of hyacinths lie like an undulating carpet on the surface of the river and divide reluctantly when the slow-moving alligators push their way log-like across. The nights are white nights for the moon shines with dazzling splendor, or in the absence of that goddess, the soft darkness creeps down laden with innumerable scents. The heavy fragrance of magnolias mingled with the delicate sweetness of jasmine and wild roses.

If time and propinquity conquered John, what then? These forces have overcome older men.

The raptures of the first few weeks over, John began to saunter out to the gate to gaze wistfully down the white dusty road; or to wander again to the river as he had done in childhood. To be sure he did not send forth twig-ships any longer, but his thoughts would in spite of himself, stray down river to Jacksonville, the sea, the wide world—and poor home-tied John Redding wanted to follow them.

He grew silent and pensive. Matty accounted for this by her ever-ready explanation of “conjuration.” Alfred said nothing but smoked and puttered about the barn more than ever. Stella accused her husband of indifference and made his life miserable with tears, accusations and pouting. At last John decided to bring matters to a head and broached the subject to his wife.

“Stella, dear, I want to go roving about the world for a spell. Would you stay here with papa and mamma and wait for me to come back?”

“John, is you crazy sho’ nuff? If you don’t want me, say so an’ I kin go home to mah folks.”

“Stella, darling, I do want you, but I want to go away too. I can have both if you’ll let me. We’ll be so happy when I return . . .”

“Naw, John, you kain’t rush me off one side like that. You didn’t hafta marry me. There’s a plenty othahs that would have been glad enuff tuh get me; you know Ah wan’t educated befo’ han’.”

“Don’t make me too conscious of my weakness, Stella. I know I should never have married with my inclinations, but it’s done now, no use to talk about what is past. I love you and want to keep you, but I can’t stifle that longing for the open road, rolling seas, for peoples and countries I have never seen. I’m suffering too, Stella, I’m paying for my rashness in marrying before I was ready. I’m not trying to shirk my duty—you’ll be well taken care of in the meanwhile.”

“John, folks allus said youse queer and tol’ me not to marry yuh, but Ah jes’ loved yuh so Ah couldn’t help it, an’ now to think you wants tuh sneak off an’ leave me.”

“But I’m coming back, darling . . . listen Stella.”

But the girl would not. Matty came in and Stella fell into her arms weeping. John’s mother immediately took up arms against him. The two women carried on such an effective war against him for the next few days that finally Alfred was forced to take his son’s part.

“Matty, let dat boy alone, Ah tell you! Ef he wuz uh homebuddy he’d be drove ’way by you all’s racket.”

“Well, Alf, dat’s all we po’ wimmen kin do. We wants our husbands an’ our sons. John’s got uh wife now, an’ he ain’t got no business to be talkin’ ’bout goin’ nowheres. I ’lowed dat marryin’ Stella would settle him.”

“Yas, dat’s all you wimmen study ’bout —settlin’ some man. You takes all de get-up out of ’em. Jes’ let uh fellah mak uh motion lak gettin’ somewhere, an’ some ’oman’ll begin tuh hollah, ‘Stop theah! where’s you goin’? Don’t fuhgit you b’longs tuh me.’ ”

“My Gawd! Alf! Whut you reckon Stella’s gwine do? Let John walk off an’ leave huh?”

“Naw, git outer huh foolishness an’ go ’long wid him. He’d take huh.”

“Stella ain’t got no call tuh go crazy ’cause John is. She ain’t no woman tuh be floppin’ roun’ from place tuh place lak some uh dese reps follerin’ uh section gang.”

The man turned abruptly from his wife and stood in the kitchen door. A blue haze hung over the river and Alfred’s attention seemed fixed upon this. In reality his thoughts were turned inward. He was thinking of the numerous occasions upon which he and his son had sat on the fallen log at the edge of the water and talked of John’s proposed travels. He had encouraged his son, given him every advantage his own poor circumstances would permit. And now John was home-tied.

The young man suddenly turned the corner of the house and approached his father.

“Hello, papa.”

“’Lo, son.”

“Where’s mamma and Stella?”

The older man merely jerked his thumb toward the interior of the house and once more gazed pensively toward the river. John entered the kitchen and kissed his mother fondly.

“Great news, mamma.”

“What now?”

“Got a chance to join the Navy, mamma, and go all around the world. Ain’t that grand?”

“John, you shorely ain’t gointer leave me an’ Stella, is yuh?”

“Yes, I think I am. I know how both of you feel, but I know how I feel, also. You preach to me the gospel of self-sacrifice for the happiness of others, but you are unwilling to practice any of it yourself. Stella can stay here—I am going to support her and spend all the time I can with her. I am going—that’s settled, but I want to go with your good will. I want to do something worthy of a strong man. I have done nothing so far but look to you and papa for everything. Let me learn to strive and think—in short, be a man.”

“Naw, John, Ah’ll nevah give mah consent. I know yous hard-headed jes’ lak yo’ paw; but if you leave dis place ovah mah head, Ah nevah wants you tuh come back heah no mo. Ef Ah wuz laid on de coolin’ board, Ah doan want yuh standin’ ovah me, young man. Doan even come neah mah grave, you ongrateful wretch!”

Mrs. Redding arose and flung out of the room. For once, she was too incensed to cry. John stood in his tracks, gone cold and numb at his mother’s pronouncement. Alfred, too, was moved. Mrs. Redding banged the bed-room door violently and startled John slightly. Alfred took his son’s arm, saying softly: “Come, son, let’s go down to the river.”

At the water’s edge they halted for a short space before seating themselves on the log. The sun was setting in a purple cloud. Hundreds of mosquito hawks darted here and there, catching gnats and being themselves caught by the lightning-swift bullbats. John abstractly snapped in two the stalk of a slender young bamboo. Taking no note of what he was doing, he broke it into short lengths and tossed them singly into the stream. The old man watched him silently for a while, but finally he said: “Oh, yes, my boy, some ships get tangled in the weeds.”

“Yes, papa, they certainly do. I guess I’m beaten—might as well surrender.”

“Nevah say die. Yuh nevah kin tell what will happen.”

“What can happen? I have courage enough to make things happen; but what can I do against mamma! What man wants to go on a long journey with his mother’s curses ringing in his ears? She doesn’t understand. I’ll wait another year, but I am going because I must.”

Alfred threw an arm about his son’s neck and drew him nearer but quickly removed it. Both men instantly drew apart, ashamed for having been so demonstrative. The father looked off to the woodlot and asked with a reminiscent smile: “Son, do you remember showin’ me the tree dat looked lak a skeleton head?”

“Yes, I do. It’s there still. I look at it sometimes when things have become too painful for me at the house, and I run down here to cool off and think. And every time I look at it, papa, it laughs at me like it had some grim joke up its sleeve.”

“Yuh wuz always imaginin’ things, John; things that nobody else evah thought on!”

“You know, papa, sometimes—I reckon my longing to get away makes me feel this way. . . . I feel that I am just earth, soil lying helpless to move myself, but thinking. I seem to hear herds of big beasts like horses and cows thundering over me, and rains beating down; and winds sweeping furiously over—all acting upon me, but me, well, just soil, feeling but not able to take part in it all. Then a soft wind like love passes over and warms me, and a summer rain comes down like understanding and softens me, and I push a blade of grass or a flower, or maybe a pine tree—that’s the ground thinking. Plants are ground thoughts, because the soil can’t move itself. Whenever I see little whirls of dust sailing down the road I always step aside—don’t want to stop ’em ’cause they’re on their shining way—moving! Oh, yes, I’m a dreamer. . . . I have such wonderfully complete dreams, papa. They never come true. But even as my dreams fade I have others.”

“Yas, son, Ah have them same feelings exactly, but Ah can’t find no words lak you do. It seems lak you an’ me see wid de same eyes, hear wid de same ears an’ even feel de same inside. Only thing you kin talk it an’ Ah can’t. But anyhow you speaks for me, so whut’s the difference?”

The men arose without more conversation. Possibly they feared to trust themselves to speech. As they walked leisurely toward the house Alfred remarked the freshness of the breeze.

“It’s about time the rains set in,” added his son. “The year is wearin’ on.”

After a gloomy supper John strolled out into the spacious front yard and seated himself beneath a China-berry tree. The breeze had grown a trifle stronger since sunset and continued from the south-east. Matty and Stella sat on the deep front porch, but Alfred joined John under the tree. The family was divided into two armed camps and the hostilities had reached that stage where no quarter could be asked or given.

About nine o’clock an automobile came flying down the dusty white road and halted at the gate. A white man slammed the gate and hurried up the walk toward the house, but stopped abruptly before the men beneath the China-berry. It was Mr. Hill, the builder of the new bridge that was to span the river.

“Howdy John, Howdy Alf. I’m mighty glad I found you. I am in trouble.”

“Well now, Mist’ Hill,” answered Alfred slowly but pleasantly. “We’se glad you foun’ us too. What trouble could you be having now?”

“It’s the bridge. The weather bureau says that the rains will be upon me in forty-eight hours. If it catches the bridge as it is now, I’m afraid all my work of the past five months will be swept away, to say nothing of a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of labor and material. I’ve got all my men at work now and I thought to get as many extra hands as I could t0 help out tonight and tomorrow. We can make her weather tight in that time if I can get about twenty more.”

“I’ll go, Mister Hill,” said John with a great deal of energy. “I don’t want papa out on that bridge—too dangerous.”

“Good for you, John!” cried the white man. “Now if I had a few more men of your brawn and brain, I could build an entirely new bridge in forty-eight hours. Come on and jump into the car. I am taking the men on down as I find them.”

“Wait a minute. I must put on my blue jeans. I won’t be long.”

John arose and strode to the house. He knew that his mother and wife had overheard everything, but he paused for a moment to speak to them.

“Mamma, I am going to work all night on the bridge.”

There was no answer. He turned to his wife.

“Stella, don’t be lonesome. I will be home at day-break.”

His wife was as silent as his mother. John stood for a moment on the steps, then resolutely strode past the women and into the house. A few minutes later he emerged clad in his blue overalls and brogans. This time he said nothing to the silent figures rocking back and forth on the porch. But when he was a few feet from the steps he called back: “Bye, mamma; bye, Stella,” and hurried on down the walk to where his father sat.

“So long, papa. I’ll be home around seven.”

Alfred roused himself and stood. Placing both hands upon his son’s broad shoulders he said softly: “Be keerful son, don’t fall or nothin’.”

“I will, papa. Don’t you get into a quarrel on my account.”

John hurried on to the waiting car and was whirled away.

Alfred sat for a long time beneath the tree where his son had left him and smoked on. The women soon went indoors. On the night breeze were borne numerous scents: of jasmine, of roses, of damp earth of the river, of the pine forest near by. A solitary whip-poor-will sent forth his plaintive call from the nearby shrubbery. A giant owl roared and boomed from the woodlot. The calf confined in the barn would bleat and be answered by his mother’s sympathetic “moo” from the pen. Away down in Lake Howell Creek the basso profundo of the alligators boomed and died, boomed and died.

Around ten o’clock the breeze freshened, growing stiffer until midnight when it became a gale. Alfred fastened the doors and bolted the wooden shutters at the windows. The three persons sat about a round deal table in the kitchen upon which stood a bulky kerosene lamp, flickering and sputtering in the wind that came in through the numerous cracks in the walls. The wind rushed down the chimney blowing puffs of ashes about the room. It banged the cooking utensils on the walls. The drinking gourd hanging outside by the door played a weird tattoo, hollow and unearthly, against the thin wooden wall.

The man and the women sat silently. Even if there had been no storm they would not have talked. They could not go to bed because the women were afraid to retire during a storm and the man wished to stay awake and think with his son. Thus they sat: the women hot with resentment toward the man and terrified by the storm; the man hardly mindful of the tempest but eating his heart out in pity for his boy. Time wore heavily on.

And now a new element of terror was added. A screech-owl alighted on the roof and shivered forth his doleful cry. Possibly he had been blown out of his nest by the wind. Matty started up at the sound but fell back in her chair, pale and trembling: “My Gawd!” she gasped, “dat’s a sho’ sign uh death.”

Stella hurriedly thrust her hand into the salt-jar and threw some into the chimney of the lamp. The color of the flame changed from yellow to blue-green but this burning of salt did not have the desired effect—to drive away the bird from the roof. Matty slipped out of her blue calico wrapper and turned it wrong side out before replacing it. Even Alfred turned one sock.

“Alf,” said Matty, “what do you reckon’s gonna happen from this?”

“How do Ah know, Matty?”

“Ah wisht John hadn’t went away from heah tuh night.”

“Humh.”

Outside the tempest raged. The palms rattled dryly and the giant pines groaned and sighed in the grip of the wind. Flying leaves and pine-mast filled the air. Now and then a brilliant flash of lightning disclosed a bird being blown here and there with the wind. The prodigious roar of the thunder seemed to rock the earth. Black clouds hung so low that the tops of the pines were among them moving slowly before the wind and made the darkness awful. The screech-owl continued his tremulous cry.

After three o’clock the wind ceased and the rain commenced. Huge drops clattered down upon the shingle roof like buckshot and ran from the eaves in torrents. It entered the house through the cracks in the walls and under the doors. It was a deluge in volume and force but subsided before morning.

The sun came up brightly on the havoc of the wind and rain calling forth millions of feathered creatures. The white sand everywhere was full of tiny cups dug out by the force of the falling raindrops. The rims of the little depressions crunched noisily underfoot.

At daybreak Mr. Redding set out for the bridge. He was uneasy. On arriving he found that the river had risen twelve feet during the cloudburst and was still rising. The slow St. John was swollen far beyond its banks and rushing on to sea like a mountain stream, sweeping away houses, great blocks of earth, cattle, trees—in short anything that came within its grasp. Even the steel framework of the new bridge was gone!

The siren of the fibre factory was tied down for half an hour, announcing the disaster to the country side. When Alfred arrived therefore he found nearly all the men of the district there.

The river, red and swollen, was full of floating debris. Huge trees were swept along as relentlessly as chicken coops and fence rails. Some steel piles were all that was left of the bridge.

Alfred went down to a group of men who were fishing members of the ill-fated construction gang out of the water. Many were able to swim ashore unassisted. Wagons backed up and were hurriedly driven away loaded with wet shivering men. Two men had been killed outright, others seriously wounded. Three men had been drowned. At last all had been accounted for except John Redding. His father ran here and there asking for him, or calling him. No one knew where he was. No one remembered seeing him since daybreak.

Dozens of women had arrived at the scene of the disaster by this time. Matty and Stella, wrapped in woolen shawls, were among them. They rushed to Alfred in alarm and asked where was John.

“Ah doan know,” answered Alfred impatiently, “that’s what Ah’m trying to fin’ out now.”

“Do you reckon he’s run away?” asked Stella thoughtlessly.

Matty bristled instantly.

“Naw,” she answered sternly, “he ain’t no sneak.”

The father turned to Fred Mimms, one of the survivors and asked him where John was and how had the bridge been destroyed.

“Yuh see,” said Mimms, “when dat turrible win’ come up we wuz out ’bout de middle of de river. Some of us wuz on de bridge, some on de derrick. De win’ blowed so hahd we could skeercely stan’ and Mist’ Hill tol’ us tuh set down fuh a spell. He’s ’fraid some of us mought go overboard. Den all of a sudden de lights went out—guess de wires wuz blowed down. We wuz all skeered tuh move for slippin’ overboard. Den dat rain commenced—an’ Ah nevah seed such a down-pour since de flood. We set dere and someone begins tuh pray. Lawd how we did pray tuh be spared! Den somebody raised a song an’ we sung, you hear me, we sung from de bottom of our hearts till daybreak. When the first light come we couldn’t see nothin’ but fog everywhere. You couldn’t tell which wuz water an’ which wuz lan’. But when de sun come up de fog begin to liff, an’ we could see de water. Dat fog wuz so thick an’ heavy dat it wuz huggin’ dat river lak a windin’ sheet. And when it rose we saw dat de river had rose way up durin’ the rain. My Gawd, Alf! it wuz runnin’ high—so high it nearly teched de span of de bridge—an’ red as blood! So much clay, you know from lan’ she done overflowed. Comin’ down stream, as fas’ as ’press train wuz three big pine trees. De first one wuzn’t fohty feet from us and there wasn’t no chance to do nothin’ but pray. De fust one struck us and shook de whole works an’ befo’ it could stop shakin’ the other two hit us an’ down we went. Ah thought Ah’d never see home again.”

“But, Mimms, where’s John?”

“Ah ain’t seen him, Alf, since de logs struck us. Mebbe he’s swum ashore, mebbe dey picked him up. What’s dat floatin’ way out dere in de water?”

Alfred shaded his eyes with his gnarled brown hand and gazed out into the stream. Sure enough there was a man floating on a piece of timber. He lay prone upon his back. His arms were outstretched, and the water washed over his brogans but his feet were lifted out of the water whenever the timber was buoyed up by the stream. His blue overalls were nearly torn from his body. A heavy piece of steel or timber had struck him in falling for his left side was laid open by the thrust. A great jagged hole wherein the double fists of a man might be thrust, could plainly be seen from the shore. The man was John Redding.

Everyone seemed to see him at once. Stella fell to the wet earth in a faint. Matty clung to her husband’s arm, weeping hysterically. Alfred stood very erect with his wife clinging tearfully to him, but he said nothing. A single tear hung on his lashes for a time then trickled slowly down his wrinkled brown cheek.

“Alf! Alf!” screamed Matty, “dere’s our son. Ah knowed when Ah heard dat owl las’ night. . . .”

“Ah see ’im, Matty,” returned her husband softly.

“Why is yuh standin’ heah? Go git mah boy.”

The men were manning a boat to rescue the remains of John Redding when Alfred spoke again.

“Mah po’ boy, his dreams never come true.”

“Alf,” complained Matty, “why doantcher hurry an’ git my boy—doantcher see he’s floatin’ on off?”

Her husband paid her no attention but addressed himself to the rescue-party.

“You all stop! Leave my boy go on. Doan stop ’im. Doan’ bring ’im back for dat ole tree to grin at. Leave him g’wan. He wants tuh go. Ah’m happy ’cause dis mawnin’ mah boy is goin’ tuh sea, he’s goin’ tuh sea.”

Out on the bosom of the river, bobbing up and down as if waving good bye, piloting his little craft on the shining river road, John Redding floated away toward Jacksonville, the sea, the wide world—at last.

The post John Redding Goes to Sea by Zora Neale Hurston (1921) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

The Chosen Place, The Timeless People by Paule Marshall (1969)

The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, was the second full-length novel by Paule Marshall (1929 – 2019). Following her first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), she published a collection of four novellas in Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961).

In its recognition of the intersectionality of race, class, and colonialism,The Chosen Place, The Timeless People was ahead of its time.

A New York Times reviewer called it “the best novel to be written by an American Black woman” when it was published in 1969. Such praise sounds patronizing in the present day, but let’s discount the reviewer’s limitations and focus on the recognition the comment represented.

Despite the many good reviews Marshall received, she never achieved the kind of celebrity afforded other Black writers, according to Donna Hill of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College.

Marshall saw herself as the product of a triangular identity that included Africa, the Caribbean, and Brooklyn. The Chosen Place, the Timeless People thus appropriately revolves around three characters who come together on the fictional Caribbean island of Bourne “a hundred-and-seventy square miles of sugar cane stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Learn more about Paule Marshall
(fair use image from BlackPast.org)
. . . . . . . . . .

Merle Kinbona

The first character we meet is Merle Kinbona (though we don’t learn her name right away). Kinbona is a native of Bourne who has a past in London and a future in East Africa. She is the fulcrum of the story. She is a powerful woman:

“… her eyes … gave the impression of being lighted from deep within (it was as if she had been endowed with her own small sun), and they were an unusually clear tawny shade of brown, an odd, even eerie, touch in a face that was the color of burnt sugar.”

In the course of the novel, we will learn that Merle is the daughter of a white British man, descended from the founder of the sugar plantation, and a Black West Indian woman who was murdered when Merle was a toddler.

Merle is headed toward middle age, but she dresses “like a much younger woman.” She wears “strange but beautiful earrings that had been given to her years ago in England by the woman who had been, some said, her benefactress; others, her lover.”

Along with the beautiful and finely made earrings, she wears numerous bracelets, “crudely made.” The contrast between these items, along with other aspects of Merle’s appearance, reveals Merle’s “diversity and disunity within herself” and that she has suffered “some profound and frightening loss.”

 

Saul Amron and Harriet Shippen

Even as we meet Merle, who is having car trouble due to the poor condition of the roads on the island, a small plane carrying four passengers is about to land and upend life within this community.

The passengers include the other two major characters of the novel: Saul Amron, an American anthropologist and a Jew, along with Harriet Shippen, his wife of one year, a mainline Philadelphia WASP whose family profited from the slave trade.

Saul is on his way to the island to undertake a research project that he hopes will help alleviate the extreme poverty of Bournehills, the community on the island where Merle and most of the other characters live. Harriet has influenced the foundation that is funding the project to bankroll Saul’s efforts.

 

Minor but Important Characters

We are introduced to Saul and Harriet through the eyes of another passenger on that plane, Saul’s statistician, Allen Fuso. A white American whose working-class background is very different from Harriet’s wealthy upbringing, he is the product of “the whole of Europe from Ireland to Italy.” Fuso, a closeted gay man, plays an important supporting role in the story.

The fourth passenger on the plane is Vere (Vereson Walkes). His tragic story is crucial to our understanding of Bournehills. He is a native of Bourne who is returning to the island after three years in the Farm Labor Scheme in the United States.

While working in the cane fields of Florida, Vere faced brutality and humiliation. Now he fantasizes about winning love and respect by building a race car and impressing everyone with its beauty and speed at the races on Whitsun.

Whitsun, a shortened form of White Sunday, is a Christian holiday that is widely observed in Britain and many of its former colonies with races, parades, and festivals. It occurs seven weeks after Easter Sunday. It is called White Sunday because traditionally people wore white clothing on that day, but Marshall is obviously drawing on another meaning of “white” in her emphasis on the festival in this novel.

We meet other characters through Vere: Leesy is the old aunt who raised Vere after his mother died in childbirth. Leesy lost her husband in a sugar-processing plant accident, and she has some prophetic powers, at least when it comes to Vere. She anticipates his return even though he has not been able to communicate his coming to her.

Another character we learn about through Vere is the (unnamed) woman who bore his child—a child who died of apparent neglect—and who now survives through prostitution.

Another significant, though minor, character is Lyle Hutson, the successful and popular barrister. Hutson is also a businessman. He is building a yacht club for successful Black people on the island such as himself who are barred from the Bourne Island Yacht Club because of their color.

Lyle is known for his adulterous affairs with white women. And he will be the friction that blocks Saul’s progress—and the instigator of Harriet’s tragic end.

. . . . . . . . . .

See Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones
. . . . . . . . . .

The World of Bournehills

All these characters, and many others, are fully delineated and brought to life through Marshall’s skillful prose. Each has her or his aspirations and motives; each has her or his sources of pain and disappointment.

In the unfolding of the story, we will learn that Merle’s ex-husband left her after learning of her affair with the white British woman who gave her those beautiful earrings. When he left, he took their daughter.

Saul is wracked with guilt over the death of his first wife, who died while they were doing anthropological field research in Honduras. Harriet, the least sympathetic of the three principals, is portrayed as a well-meaning though misguided white woman.

She is desperate to take on meaningful work despite an upbringing that raised her to exist purely as an ornamental accessory. But her belief that she knows best for all concerned, including those of a different culture, alienates Saul and places her in peril.

Saul is portrayed extremely sympathetically (though the repeated references to the size and shape of his nose suggest certain anti-Semitic tropes). His Jewish heritage is central to his identity, and the title of the novel evokes the idea of the chosen people. Saul, as a white American, had privileges not available to the Black people of Bournehills, and yet Bournehills is his chosen place.

Marshall offers parallels in the ancient histories and experiences of oppression of Africans and Jews. Like Africans, Jews have an ancient history. Both are arguably timeless in their traditions and awareness of the past.

The history and spirit of Cuffee Ned, leader of a briefly successful slave uprising, haunts the island and is mentioned again and again as well as re-enacted. Merle, in fact, loses her position as a teacher because of her insistence on relating the tale of Cuffee Ned to her students. (Marshall might have been anticipating the current situation in many U.S. schools.)

The scourge of sugar—widely regarded as the source of the slave trade in the Americas—hangs over the island as well. The working conditions are brutal. The workers are at the mercy of those who own the land and the processing equipment. And everyone on the island is diabetic.

Needless to say, the arrival of the American research team disrupts the balance of power in the Bournehills community. While the status quo was neither just or idyllic, the disruptions highlight the ongoing effects of British imperialism as well as the more recent imposition of U.S. capitalism.

 

Accusations of Homophobia

In her 2019 LitHub essay “Mourning Paule Marshall, the Foremother Who Didn’t Always Love Me Back,” Rosamond S. King, a self-described “queer Caribbean writer and critic,” tackles the issue of Marshall’s attitude toward queer love and identities.

There are certainly negative descriptions of gay people: early in the novel, when Merle takes Saul to the club known as Sugar’s, she indicates “that bunch out on the balcony” and says that no boy “over the age of three is safe” from them.

Yet closeted Allen is portrayed sympathetically, if sadly. He denies his sexual attraction to Vere until he finds himself unable to respond to the young woman Vere provides to him. It’s only when he realizes that he can reach orgasm only by masturbating to the sound of Vere having sex with a woman in the next room that he is able to recognize his own sexual identity.

Merle is filled with self-hatred as a result of her lesbian affair with the unnamed wealthy British woman in London. Yet I want to argue that while Marshall may not have always been the most enlightened writer regarding queer characters (in her LitHub essay, King traces an evolution in Marshall’s attitude in later novels), one can argue that at least part of Merle’s self-hatred might arise from the fact that her affair led her to lose access to her daughter after her husband left her.

Further, her unnamed lover was white and wealthy, and thus able to manipulate her. There are indeed no healthy and egalitarian same-sex relationships in this novel, but one might say the same about heterosexual relationships.

 

A Healing Connection

There is one exception to my statement above. While many of the characters come to a tragic end, Merle and Saul find a sexual connection that heals. To be sure, this is no happily-ever-after story. Yet these two are able to share an intimacy that is not just physical, but emotional as well.

They recognize that in the world in which they live, a relationship between the two of them is impossible, yet as a result of their connection they both come to understand what it is they must do next.

Saul is finished with fieldwork. The program to address poverty in Bournehills will continue, though in diminished form and without Saul. He hopes to go back to Stanford to “recruit and train young social scientists from overseas … that’s the best way: to have people … carry out their own development programs.”

Merle is bound for Africa, to find her daughter, even though she doesn’t know whether her former husband will “chase [her] from his door.” But she knows as well that she will eventually return to Bournehills.

“A person can run for years but sooner or later he has to take a stand in the place which for better or worse, he calls home,” she says, “and do what he can to change things there.”

It’s very much a conclusion and a recognition for our times—a time in which so many of us recognize that the work of change has to begin at the local level and with full recognition of and respect for the diversity that surrounds us.

But the conclusion of the novel takes me back to the story of Allen. He is the one who drives first Merle and then Saul to the airstrip so they can embark on the next stage of their respective lives. Allen has decided to stay behind on the island after they leave, for reasons that are not clear to Saul or Merle.

But we have seen Allen struggling with his own past—his upbringing of small-minded conformity—following the death of Vere and Allen’s recognition of his love for him. One senses that although he remains on the island, Allen will embark on his own quite profound and possibly joyous journey without ever leaving Bourne.

We might even think of those men out on the balcony who Merle points out to Saul near the beginning of the novel. Merle described them in negative terms, but Allen may see them differently. He may see in them the possibility of embracing his true identity and achieving an acceptance he has never had.

. . . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Lynne Weiss: Lynne’s writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review; Brain, Child; The Common OnLine; the Ploughshares blog; the [PANK] blog; Wild Musette; Main Street Rag; and Radcliffe Magazine. She received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has won grants and residency awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Millay Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. She loves history, theater, and literature, and for many years, has earned her living by developing history and social studies materials for educational publishers. She lives outside of Boston, where she is working on a novel set in Cornwall and London in the early 1930s. You can see more of her work at LynneWeiss.

See also: Inspiration from Classic Caribbean Women Writers.

The post The Chosen Place, The Timeless People by Paule Marshall (1969) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Walking with Anne Brontë: Insights and Reflections

Walking with Anne Brontë: Insights and Reflections (edited by Tim Whittome, 2023) makes a passionate case for elevating the youngest of the Brontë sisters to her rightful place in English literature.

A collection of essays and personal reflections by Anne Brontë scholars and aficionados, this book will go a long way to the understanding and appreciation of Anne’s fortitude as a woman and her genius as a writer.

The following is excerpted from Tim Whittome’s Introduction to Walking with Anne Brontë, reprinted with permission.

. . . . . . . . . .

“It is a sad fact that Anne Brontë has come to be regarded by posterity as the Cinderella of the famous trio of sisters. Critics have been off-hand about her two novels, tending to dismiss them as mere talent against her sisters’ genius.” (Arnold Craig Bell, The Novels of Anne Brontë, 1992)

. . . . . . . . . .

“[Anne Brontë] has been passed over—both as a writer and as an individual—by successive Brontë biographers as less than nothing, or dismissed with a gesture of condescension as affording only a pale replica of her sisters’ genius … For in the last resort Anne Brontë must be judged by the high character which she displayed not only at the end but at every turning in her life. It is for what she was, quite as much as for what she created, that one wants to know more of her.” (Winifred Gérin, Anne Brontë, 1959)

. . . . . . . . . .

Learn more about Anne Brontë
. . . . . . . . . .

“Dear gentle Anne” and getting to the truth

“Dear gentle Anne,” as Charlotte Brontë’s friend Ellen Nussey viewed the youngest Brontë sibling, has traditionally been many people’s impressions of Anne Brontë. In recent decades, however, there has been far more of a focus on what Juliet Barker has referred to in her seminal biography of the Brontës as Anne’s “core of steel.”

This has been coupled with an admiration for Anne’s own stated desire to “tell the truth” in her two novels and a sense that her personal attributes of courage and duty may well have exceeded those exhibited by Charlotte and Emily.

These enduring qualities have steadily come to replace much of the frequently dismissive personal comments and ambiguous literary commentary that bizarrely defined Anne’s reputation in the writings of early Brontë biographers and interpreters.

. . . . . . . . . .

Walking with Anne Brontë is available
on Amazon US and Amazon UK

. . . . . . . . . .

Discarding unfair commentary and grudging admiration

I decided to open this introduction with commentary from some of the writers who have chosen to highlight some of this denigration, if only to destroy it.

Even some of Anne’s own early biographers such as W. T. Hale were apparently not too sure how far they could go in admiring her. In life, things were never easy for Anne Brontë; and in death, her legacy has frequently been dismissed as if it has been all too much and too unreal to have three talents in one family. 

This present work is unfortunately littered with unfair commentary about the youngest Brontë sibling by other writers—I consider May Sinclair (The Three Brontës, 1912) to be among the worst of the early writers along with Ellis Chadwick who saw only two geniuses (Emily and Charlotte) in the family and everyone else as contributing to making them sound even better. 

Another early Brontë biographer, Clement Shorter, opened a description of Anne in The Brontës and Their Circle (1914) by proclaiming that both “Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall would have long since fallen into oblivion but for the inevitable association with the romances of her two greater sisters” (my emphasis added).

While some of Anne Brontë’s more recent biographers and critics have successfully emulated the earlier panache of these earlier Brontë scholars and have emerged with fully engaging accounts, others have demonstrated the tactical aplomb of good defense lawyers with strength-based assessments of their “client.”

In a similar way, my coauthors and I have also chosen to shine a spotlight on Anne’s earlier critics if only swiftly to destroy their potential reach and acceptance with fairer academic and personal assessments—assessments designed (with hopefully some panache added) to override the hasty conclusions of former prejudiced judges and to convince the jury of current readers with a more judicial-minded reasoning behind our loyalty to Anne.

Even today, some of the older and more prejudiced opinions prevail; and it is reasonable to add, since I live here, that Anne Brontë is not very well known in the United States.

 

In the context of the Brontë family

For those who are familiar with Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, it would not be entirely inaccurate to suggest that Anne’s profile here is not that much greater than that of Margaret Dashwood, the younger sister of Elinor and Marianne—in other words, Anne has a tendency to be viewed as a character of marginal interest who occasionally distracts the otherwise disengaged reader with her prattle.

Working down the age range from the eldest to the youngest of the Brontë siblings who survived childhood, it has often seemed to me that the exhaustion that surrounds intense literary and other critical attention on members of the Brontë family typically stops at Emily.

In the process, Branwell Brontë is largely dismissed as too great a problem while their elder siblings Maria and Elizabeth sadly died too young to leave much of a trail for biographers and critics.

It is almost superfluous to say that this paradigm has led to Anne inevitably becoming overshadowed or just “included” in other critical works that primarily focus on Charlotte and Emily. I am surely not the only admirer of the Brontës who has found this highly annoying and irritating.

If instead of working our way down from Charlotte’s undeniable literary achievements, we were to work ourselves up from looking into the literary and personal world of the youngest to the eldest surviving sibling, what would the literary world think if we were still to stop after admiring Emily’s life and achievements and decided to ignore Charlotte? The idea would be unthinkable, right?

Forgetting the brilliant writer of Jane Eyre and Villette would seem irrational and even criminal in literary circles. It seems superfluous to point out that their troubled brother, Branwell, is typically viewed sparingly in both directions.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Impressive Lessons of Agnes Grey
. . . . . . . . . .

The call to join “Team Anne”

In short, my fellow authors and I feel that it should be just as unthinkable to ignore Anne’s literary legacy as the compelling writer of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, fifty-nine beautiful poems, two self-penned “diary papers,” and five interesting or heartbreaking letters as it would be to ignore Charlotte’s.

Biographer Edward Chitham, at the 1994 Anne Brontë conference organized by the Brontë Society in Scarborough, had every reason for saying at the outset of one of the talks that he was an “Anne person.” He still is, as am I, and several writing here would assert the same.

Taking Mr. Chitham’s memorable comment as the inspiration for much of my own devotion to the memory of Anne, I wanted to put together an anthology of like-minded admirers of the youngest Brontë.

Our goal has been to bring together a “Team Anne” approach toward showcasing Anne’s literary talents and interesting personality to those that either have not heard of her, avoid thinking too much about her achievements if they have, or who have too often been wary of declaring their deep affection for her in company otherwise disposed to revere Charlotte and Emily as the only writers of consequence in the family.

We also hope that Walking with Anne Brontë will be viewed as a worthy addition to the growing body of work written by those who have already absorbed the lessons of Anne Brontë’s life and who understand the literary power of her novels and poetry.

In this regard, I was very struck by a comment that Samantha Ellis wrote in Take Courage in which she was surprised to discover that “most of the volunteers” who work for the Brontë Parsonage and Museum “say that Anne is their favorite.”

Ms. Ellis is one of my favorite interpreters of Anne’s life and work, and she goes on to wonder:

“Why she is ignored, or written off as boring? Why isn’t she read as much as her sisters? Why was her work suppressed, why is it underrated even now, and what does that say about what women still are and aren’t allowed to say? And what can I learn from her life and from her afterlife?” (Samantha Ellis, Take Courage, 2017)

These are typical reflections when it comes to thinking about Anne Brontë. As we walk with Anne and listen to some of her own insights and reflections in the pages ahead, readers will hopefully come to understand more of why Ms. Ellis was prompted to ask these questions.

Most of the time when many of us look at the Brontë literary landscape, we find ourselves wanting to learn as much about Anne as scientists eager to study some interesting geological formation in a hitherto undiscovered or overlooked country …

. . . . . . . . . .

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
. . . . . . . . . .

Anne Brontë: Out from her sister’s shadows

I need to make it clear to our readers from the outset that while everyone writing in this book fully admires the literary achievements of Charlotte and Emily Brontë and is as devoted to them as they are to Anne, we do rightly feel a mixture of surprise and sense of aggrievement that Anne is the overshadowed sibling among the three sisters.

We feel this loss as unwarranted, and like Elizabeth Langland has said in a memorable conclusion to her study of Anne in Anne Brontë: The Other One, we really need to flip Mary Ward’s earlier assessment of Anne as “like them [Emily and Charlotte], yet not with them” to “unlike them, yet with them.”

I have always remembered and cherished this defiant and memorable observation and it helped to shape my subsequent appreciation of Anne in the years since.

Those who do end up reading Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall could be forgiven for asking why it has seemed so hard for others to see the intricacies of this unique “geological” literary formation: Is it because one or both dusty books can only be seen on a hard-to-reach upper shelf or are only available to the knowing reader online as is the case with my local library system?

Anne Brontë used to love the “distant prospects” on the moor above Haworth according to Charlotte in a letter she wrote to her literary reader, William S. Williams, May 22, 1850.

Maybe this is how not Anne’s, but Emily’s and Charlotte’s literary reputations have been seen by those who choose to focus their effortless attention on the brightest of the distant stars and not on the more intricate shades of the abundant life nearby that maybe requires a variety of instruments and tools to see.

For me, either I can find Anne in those same distant prospects of sunrises, sunsets, and bright stars or I can find her close by requiring my closest attention. Rewardingly so, it has to be said, and I would argue that it is better to view the achievements of all three sisters in the same way.

. . . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Tim Whittome: Tim is originally from England and spent all of his childhood and early adulthood there, and now lives in Washington State. He first “walked” with Anne Brontë when he was in his late twenties; and he has been inspired by her ever since. Tim is devoted to honoring the memory of not just Anne Brontë, but also those of Anne and Margot Frank. In 2021, Tim edited and published “Meeting” Anne Frank, which he has donated many copies of to those who knew Anne and Margot, to members of the British and Dutch royal families, various luminaries in the Anne Frank world, and school and public libraries.

The post Walking with Anne Brontë: Insights and Reflections appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Thus Far and No Further by Rumer Godden (1946)

Thus Far and No Further by Rumer Godden is this prolific midcentury novelist and memoirist’s first memoir, published in 1946. It chronicles her brief sojourn in Kashmir India, where she lived briefly with her two young daughters on a tea plantation.

Though not as enduring as her novels nor her other memoirs, this slim book, her sixth overall, was well received by readers and critics.

Godden’s characteristically evocative writing captures the time she spent in Rungli Rungliot in Darjeeling in Northeast India. Some of the editions of this now rather obscure book are, in fact, titled Rungli Rungliot.

A beautiful story, delightfully illustrated, it is filled with gentle wisdom. One of the well-known passages is as follows:

“In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve means ‘dig with a spade;’ it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Learn more about Rumer Godden
. . . . . . . . . .

Original 1946 review of Thus Far and No Further

From the original review by John C. Goodbody in The Boston Globe, May 9, 1946:  “Living Away from Crowds and Liking It”

Fleeing from complex, war-ruffled Calcutta of 1941, British novelist Rumer Godden escaped for six months to the Himalaya foothills where she conducted her own experiment of living away from the crowds and liking it.

On the level this autobiographical record is an exquisite monument in prose, erected in memory of her days of isolation by one of the few really talented stylists of today.

On another level, half-hidden beneath the beguiling simplicity of the diary form, the book becomes an absorbing study of the value of solitude in contemporary society. It is easily Miss Godden’s greatest achievement, and a convincing demonstration that she is far more than the talented literary virtuoso revealed in her last novel, “Take Three Tenses.”

When you leave the stench and confusion of Calcutta and climb perilously up the winding Teesta River valley to Darjeeling, you find yourself in a new world-a fresh, green, windswept world of tea terraces, sprawled against the rugged foothills of the jagged Himalaya range.

Miss Godden went beyond Darjeeling to a bungalow on a tea plantation at Chinglam. With her she had her two small daughters, a Swiss governess, a small retinue of Indian servants and four Pekinese.

Most of the entries in her journal are concerned with the new everyday world in which the author found herself:

“There are only a few things in these notes, Chinglam and its hills and valleys, work, flowers, children, animals, servants; there is nothing else because there was nothing else.”

It was a world of quiet sounds and vivid colors and strange tastes firmly bounded by routine.

Miss Godden learned the meaning of the Hindu proverb: “You only grow when you are alone.” She discovered that she could ration worry by hard work.

“The Buddhists here put their prayer flags where the wind will blow them and their prayer wheels in the stream where the water will turn them and get on with their work while the prayers are said. I think that is wisdom.”

But in the end, she knows she must with her retreat. Her solitude is not an end in itself, but a reprieve. After a wonderful Christmas — perhaps the best sequence of the book — Miss Godden leaves Chinglam to face again the challenges of society in the lowlands.

The most rewarding quality in this book is the author’s style, which seems to thrive when removed from the compulsions of the novel form. It is simple, incisive, evocative; it makes skillful use of repetition; it appeals directly to the senses. It invests this slim book with the special aura of craftsmanship.

More memoirs and biographies by Rumer Godden

A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep (1987) A House with Four Rooms (1989) Two Under the Indian Sun  (with sister Jon, 1966)

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

More about Thus Far and No Further by Rumer Godden

Reader discussion on Goodreads Library Thing Full text on Issuu

The post Thus Far and No Further by Rumer Godden (1946) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.