Nava Atlas's Blog, page 26
May 31, 2022
Vera Caspary’s The Man Who Loved his Wife (& Other Diary-Driven Fiction)
“The trouble with being the author of one of the all-time classics of suspense is that people keep expecting you to be that good again; and I suppose I must regretfully say that Vera Caspary’s The Man Who Loved His Wife is no Laura,” began Anthony Boucher’s February 20, 1966 review in the New York Times.
“But it is an intelligent and largely persuasive novel of a laryngectomy subject with a powerful death wish,” continued Boucher’s review, “ and was it himself or one of his family that fulfilled the desire? I suspect that Mrs. Caspary has cast as a whodunit a story that could have been more effective without the puzzle element; but it still is well worth one’s attention – especially for her unflagging skill in creating unpleasant people.”
This look Caspary’s The Man Who Loved His Wife (1966) and other classic fiction in which diaries are a central plot element, is excerpted from A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary by Francis Booth ©2022. Reprinted by permission.
A secret diary kept by a suspicious husband
From the 1966 Dell books edition:
“This is a brilliantly thrilling novel about a sick man who keeps a secret diary in which he records all the suspicions and highly charged emotions he feels for his beautiful young wife.
The story reaches its climax when the wife, refusing to lie, admits to one act of infidelity. Her confession induces in her husband fresh ravages of distrust and mental agony. Shortly afterwards he is found dead of suffocation.
The secret diary … finds its way mysteriously into the hands of the police, where its contents take on a seriousness that his wife could never have imagined. She finds herself in fact suspected of her husband’s murder.
If in fact he was murdered, could it have been by the wife’s lover, or perhaps by the dead man’s impecunious daughter or her unsuccessful husband? How, in any case, did the diary reach the police?
With absolute mastery of her theme, and in an atmosphere of mounting suspense, Vera Caspary builds up to a surprise climax with all the enchantment and skill for which she is famous.”
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Learn more about Vera Caspary
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In a diary, a woman – or less usually a man – young or old, can say things she could not confide even to her closest female friend, assuming the diary will never be read by anybody else.
But in a novel the diary is bound to be found and read, probably by the worst possible person and to tragic effect – as with Chekhov’s gun, if an author introduces a secret diary in chapter one, it will inevitably be discovered and lead to dire consequences later on.
The diary, which is at the center of The Man Who Loved His Wife, is sometimes said to be a particularly feminine literary form and certainly most of the literary diaries we have were written by women, going all the way back to The Diary of Lady Murasaki and The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, both written in Japan around the year 1000 CE.
Hundreds of years later, the British novelist Fanny Burney started her wildly successful writing career as a teenager in 1768 with “a Journal in which I must confess my every thought, must open my whole Heart!”
Burney’s young female friend, on being told of the journal’s existence, “says that it is the most dangerous employment young persons can have – it makes them often record things which ought not to be recorded, but instantly forgot. I told her, that as my Journal was solely for my own perusal, nobody could in justice, or even in sense, be angry or displeased at my writing anything.”
But of course, this is naïve. In the novel, the finding of a diary and the disclosure of its secrets is often the driver of the plot; as in real life, the revealing of a woman’s diary – or in this case a man’s – can lead to unintended, perhaps tragic consequences.
Like Burney in real life, many teenagers in female coming-of-age novels keep diaries, often written in journals which are of themselves beautiful objects. These include:
Charlie by Kate Chopin (1900)Invitation to the Waltz (1932)The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (1938)A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943)The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault (1944)I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith (1948)Hangsaman, by Shirley Jackson; (1951)A Diary of Love by Maude Hutchins (1953)An Episode of Sparrow, by Rumer Godden (1956)Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (1926)
The plot-driving diary in The Man Who Loved His Wife, which is given to Fletcher Strode as a present by his wife Elaine, is a beauty too, “a good thick book, beautifully bound in dark green Morocco stamped with his initials.”
In Rosamund Lehmann’s Invitation to the Waltz Olivia decides to start hers straightaway “to keep a record of my inmost real-self thoughts. Perhaps it will help me to find out what I really am like: horrid, I know; selfish, conceited, and material minded.”
But Olivia has good advice for journal writers, ignored by Fanny Burney, Fletcher Strode, and most diary-keeping literary characters:
“Advice to Young Journal Keepers. Be lenient with yourself. Conceal your worst faults, leave out your most shameful thoughts, actions and temptations. Give yourself all the good and interesting qualities you want and haven’t got. If you should die young, what comfort would it be to your relatives to read the truth and have to say: It is not a pearl we have lost, but a swine?”
In Anne Brontë’s proto-feminist novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen Graham gives Gilbert her diary, which proves she is married and details her sadistic husband’s descent into drunkenness and debauchery. The Brontës, especially Emily, wrote illustrated diaries. In her Wuthering Heights, Lockwood first encounters Catherine through notes she made in her books. “Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand.”
Elizabeth Gaskell, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley are among other women writers of the time who kept diaries that were later seen as serious literature in their own right, as was much later Anaïs Nin, whose diaries were first published in 1966, the same year as Caspary’s The Man Who Loved His Wife.
Vera Caspary’s Laura and Stranger than Truth both took Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White as an inspiration; in The Man Who Loved His Wife she is perhaps borrowing from Collins again. In The Woman in White, Collins uses Marian Halcombe’s diary as a narrative medium. Count Fosco – the inspiration for Waldo in Laura – reads it surreptitiously.
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A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie on Amazon (US)*
and *
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The Caspary woman in The Man Who Loved His Wife is twenty-eight-year-old Elaine Guardino, second wife of wealthy businessman and alpha male Fletcher Strode. Fletcher, a word meaning a person who makes arrows, is very much the kind of man who “strode” through life, until his illness struck.
Elaine, a former model who is nineteen years Fletcher’s junior, had “a madness for living, spent her energy and her earnings with a zest that had been due not simply to youth, but to a freedom of spirit which he had never before found, nor even expected, in a woman.”
Their friends on both sides think they are mismatched, and not just because of the age difference.
“Her friends considered him the stereotype of the self-made man, a show-off who expressed himself by conspicuous spending and loud talk. His cronies were sure that he would never be able to live contentedly with a highbrow who talked about ambivalence, Shostakovich, existentialism and Martha Graham.”
Elaine was born to highbrow parents: even the ultimate man’s man Fletcher recognizes her name as coming from Tennyson’s Idylls – he had to do it at school along with Emerson’s essays – and she tells him how it originated in the first meeting of her academic, artistic parents in London.
“She told him that her mother had been working on illustrations for a children’s edition of The Idylls when she met Professor Guardino.
‘It was a pick-up. At the Tate. Mother had gone to London to study the Pre-Raphaelites and set up her easel before Burne-Jones, and Papa was a refugee from Rome and was waiting for his American visa. He had thought of translating Blake into Italian and was looking at the lithographs. But he never did. Blake, I mean. He always said mother took his mind of the project. You see, it was inevitable that they named me Elaine.’”
But Elaine is no cold, aloof intellectual: “Fletcher Strode had never before met a girl who could be, at the same time, so refined and so lusty.” She is refined yet lusty, a perfect combination for a Caspary woman.
Jealousy rears its head
Despite the concerns of their friends, Fletcher and Elaine have a very satisfying and happy marriage until Fletcher contracts cancer of the throat and has to have his larynx removed. This loud, vocal man, now silenced, feels emasculated.
“Aware of the frustrations of a young woman tied to an afflicted man, he recognized in her every sigh and silence the needs of a young woman’s passionate nature. When he had been able to satisfy her, Fletcher had enjoyed the spectacle of her charm for other men, and relished his triumph over her younger admirers. Now there was no solace for castrate pride.”
Elaine’s attractiveness, “the jets that sparked out of men’s eyes at the sight of her rounded limbs, the rise of her breasts, the delicious curves of hip and buttock,” now torment him. “He was determined that no other man should possess his lovable wife.”
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The Man Who Loved His Wife by Vera Caspary
on Bookshop.org* and Amazon*
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Fletcher contemplates suicide. “He pondered it constantly, considered various methods, suffered the pain of poison, the terror of drowning, the stink of gas, the dizziness of the long plunge, the shock of gunfire.”
In his fantasy, Fletcher imagines his suicide appearing to the outside world as murder – committed by his wife. He starts to write his thoughts in the diary Elaine bought him, for which he buys a new Yale lock.
“The diary was also locked away. To show that she respected his privacy, Elaine asked no questions. . . It was beyond imagining that into this secret volume he was writing her doom.”
But he is. “How easy would it be to end it all with a man who breathes through a hole in his neck. Is she trying to work up the courage?” he writes. And “to love a woman who dreams about being rid of you. I live in hell.”
Fletcher does not want Elaine to be executed for his murder but prefers to “foresee her future in a woman’s jail where her beauty would fade, her sparkle dim, where she would grow old and stale, before, if ever again, she lay with a man.”
When Fletcher is out one day, Elaine is visited by the man who used to own the house in Los Angeles which she has bought and refurbished for Fletcher to give him peace and privacy. He is a doctor, Ralph Julian. They become friends, and eventually lovers.
“They made love in silence with no words of passion, no moans of rapture. Her lover was ardent and experienced, but Elaine felt delight less than the cessation of throbbing need.”
An failed attempt at recapturing passion
Ralph visits the house one day while Fletcher’s needy daughter Cindy – who is not much younger than Elaine – and her worthless, money-grabbing husband Don are visiting and are sitting around the pool. Fletcher compares his magnificent physique to the younger men’s puny one. “The sense of size and masculinity restored Fletcher’s temper.”
That night, Elaine comes to his bedroom; Fletcher is ready to make love to her.
“On a high wave of elation, the conquering male who had shown up two inferior younger men, he had chosen his best pyjamas, opened a bottle of French cologne, combed his hair, and in the mirror found a man. The surge of youth was strong. He strutted down the short corridor. This was to be the night of the miracle, the end of anxiety, the fulfilment promised by doctors, the reward deserved by his loyal wife.”
A although Elaine says and does all the right things – “you’re such a beautiful man. You’ve got a wonderful body.” – it doesn’t happen. “Nothing came of it. ‘I’m sorry,’ Elaine said, as always taking upon herself to blame for the failure.”
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You may also enjoy: Bedelia by Vera Caspary
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Fletcher twists the facts in the diary to make things look bad for Elaine: “she came to bring the sleeping pills and when I tried to make love, she let me know she was not interested.” Fletcher has been stashing away the sleeping pills Elaine gives him every night to make it look as though he is contemplating suicide.
Son-in-law Don flirts outrageously with Elaine and she does not do enough to put him off; Fletcher accuses her of having an affair with him, though he is a long way beneath her in any measure of sexual attraction.
She denies the accusation but admits she has had an affair though she refuses to tell Fletcher who the man was; now, because of his wife’s infidelity, he has a reason to commit suicide and make it look as though Elaine killed him so she can be with her lover.
At the same time, Don and Cindy want to buy a house and she asks her father for money, but self-made success Fletcher tells them they must make their own way. Cindy believes that if her father dies, all the money will come to her, so now she has a reason to murder Fletcher too.
Fletcher’s suspicious death—spoilers ahead
Then Fletcher, “the man who loved his wife,” really does die. At first everyone assumes it was suicide, that he took the sleeping pills. But the autopsy shows he didn’t – he was suffocated. Because he had to breathe through the tube in his throat, Fletcher could easily have been murdered by blocking up the hole – the pathologist thinks it extremely unlikely he would have committed suicide this way because when people try to suffocate themselves they always stop at the last moment.
Don shows the diary to the police, hoping that it will point to Elaine. It does. “I saw through her devious plans. She may not be brave enough to strike the blow herself, so she is trying to provoke me to do it myself. This thought saved my life. I refuse to make it easy for her.”
In the end, what gives Elaine away is the plastic bag that covered the dry-cleaning which turns out to be the murder weapon; one of the police officers calls that kind of bag “a cheap suicide.”
“‘A cheap suicide,” she said bitterly. ‘That’s what everyone would have believed, the suicide of a man who wanted passionately,’ the word affected her, she clasped her hands under her chin, ‘to die’ . . .
‘He wanted so much to die. I knew. For such a long time, Ralph. I knew at night when I’d go in and look at him asleep. He didn’t want to wake up. Ever! . . . But I knew I couldn’t. Ever. I could never leave him, and it would go on and on like that. I wanted to be free.’
The far-of cry sounded again, but whether it was in her head or on a street below the hill, she could not tell. Free? This, too, was illusion. No matter what her lawyer pleaded, a jury decided, a judge decreed, there would never be a day without memory, nor a night free of his ghost. Fletcher Strode would always possess her.”
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Contributed by Francis Booth,* the author of several books on twentieth-century culture:
Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1960 (published by Dalkey Archive); Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde; Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-Twentieth Century Woman’s Novel; Text Acts: Twentieth Century Literary Eroticism; and Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938.
Francis has also published several novels: The Code 17 series, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s and featuring aristocratic spy Lady Laura Summers; Young adult fantasy series The Watchers; and Young adult fantasy novel Mirror Mirror. Francis lives on the South Coast of England.
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The post Vera Caspary’s The Man Who Loved his Wife (& Other Diary-Driven Fiction) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
May 30, 2022
Myself vs. Myself: Save Me the Waltz and Other Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900 – 1948) is best known for two things: as the wife of celebrated writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and for being the first true Jazz Age flapper and an icon of the new post-World War One era. However, she was also a talented writer, painter, and dancer in her own right. Here, we’ll explore Save Me the Waltz and other writings of Zelda Fitzgerald, which certainly deserve a fresh look.
Struggling first against the excesses of her own Roaring Twenties lifestyle and then against severe mental illness, Zelda never achieved the critical success of her husband nor had the chance to fully develop her skills. According to her daughter Frances (Scottie) Fitzgerald:
“It was my mother’s misfortune to have been born with the ability to write, to dance, and to paint, and then never to have acquired the discipline to make her talent work for, rather than against, her.”
It is only relatively recently that her creative achievements, and her writing, in particular, are starting to be revisited and re-examined.
The search for a creative outlet
Throughout the 1920s, Zelda and Scott were one of the most famous Jazz Age couples of the era. They had lived the high life in New York and had then shifted across the Atlantic, following the tide of so many other Americans seeking the relative artistic and sensual freedom that France offered.
Soon they were riding the rollercoaster of parties, alcohol, infidelity, and excess in Paris and on the Riviera. Scott was enjoying his success, busy writing the short stories that paid some of the bills and working on the next novel, but Zelda was becoming increasingly frustrated at her own lack of a creative outlet.
As a child and teenager, Zelda had been an accomplished dancer. She had also written a few short “guest celebrity” pieces early in her marriage, including a review of Scott’s novel The Beautiful and the Damned, but as a woman and wife of a famous author, she was not expected to have the talent of her own. However, Zelda found that she had no desire to be simply a wife and mother and muse to her husband.
In 1927, at the age of twenty-seven, Zelda started taking ballet lessons again. She studied with notable teachers including Lubov Egorova in Paris, and it soon became an obsession that preoccupied her for up to eight hours a day, often to the detriment of her relationships with her husband and daughter.
She installed a large mirror and a barre at home where, in addition to the time spent at the studio, she would practice for hours.
These lessons were reluctantly paid for by Scott, an arrangement which Zelda also disliked intensely. To support herself and to be able to pay for her own lessons, she began to write again. Articles and short stories including Our Movie Queen, Miss Ella, and A Couple of Nuts were published in Harper’s Weekly, The Smart Set, and The Saturday Evening Post.
Most of the stories appeared under her husband’s name. The F. Scott Fitzgerald byline fetched a far higher price and made it easier to get pieces accepted, but it also meant that Zelda struggled to establish any kind of writing the identity of her own.
Zelda also faced challenges in the ballet studio. In her mid-twenties, she was too old to achieve her dream of becoming a prima ballerina, but she could still have made a career out of it had her health not failed.
In the autumn of 1929, she was offered a salaried position with the San Carlo Opera Ballet Company in Naples, dancing a solo role initially in Aida with more solos to follow during the season, but had to decline the offer as she was not mentally capable of fulfilling the demanding contract.
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Within months, she was hospitalized with hallucinations, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and exhaustion. She discharged herself against her doctor’s advice, desperate to return to the ballet studio, but within weeks she had relapsed.
This time she was sent to a hospital in Switzerland, where the doctors recommended psychological treatment. After seeing a highly sought-after psychiatrist, Dr. Oscar Forel, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
She arrived at the clinic in Switzerland in June 1930 and stayed for over a year. The rest of her life would be spent in and out of hospitals and sanatoriums in both Europe and the U.S.
Save Me the Waltz and tensions with Scott
In early 1932, she was a patient at the Phipps Clinic outside Baltimore in Maryland. It was here that she wrote the first draft of her only novel, Save Me The Waltz, in just two months. It tells the story of Alabama Beggs and her painter husband David, whose artistic success and flamboyant lifestyle lift them from their Southern roots into a whirlwind of New York celebrity. It’s a clear roman à clef based on her own life and, to a lesser extent, that of her husband.
It was far from her first foray into writing fiction, but it was the first time she had ever written anything and sent it to a publisher without showing it to her husband beforehand.
She chose Max Perkins, her husband’s own editor, writing to him, “Scott completely being absorbed in his own [novel] has not seen it, so I am completely in the dark as to its possible merits but naturally terribly anxious that you should like it.”
Zelda wanted desperately to be taken seriously as a writer, and for the first time wanted her work to be evaluated on its own merits, without her husband’s intervention, opinion, or the use of his name.
When Scott did see the novel soon after, he was furious. He wrote to Zelda’s doctor accusing her of plagiarizing several ideas from his current novel-in-progress, which would become Tender Is the Night — “literally one whole section of her novel is an imitation of it, of its rhythm, materials…” — and of exposing too much of his private life.
He was also angry that she had named one of her main characters Amory Blaine, a name that her husband had also used in This Side of Paradise. Scott fumed, “This mixture of fact and fiction is calculated to ruin us both … my God, my books made her a legend and her single intention in this somewhat thin portrait is to make me a nonentity.”
Zelda wrote to Scott to try and explain why she had not sent him the manuscript first:
“Purposely I didn’t — knowing that you were working on your own and honestly feeling that I had no right to interrupt you to ask for a serious opinion. Also, I know that Max will not want it and I prefer to do the corrections after having his opinion …
I was also afraid we might have touched on the same material. Also, feeling it to be a dubious production due to my own instability I did not want a scathing criticism such as you to have mercilessly — if for my own good given my last stories, poor things. I have had enough discouragement, generally, and could scream with that sense of inertia that hovers over my life and everything I do.”
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Fantasy versus realityIt wasn’t the first time that the lines between fact and fiction had become blurred. Scott, too, often conflated fantasy and reality in his novels: he once said to Malcolm Crowley, “Sometimes I don’t know whether Zelda isn’t a character that I created myself.”
In her 1922 review of her husband’s novel The Beautiful and Damned, Zelda had written:
“It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald — I believe that is how he spells his name — seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.”
Indeed, Scott used lines from Zelda’s letters and diaries throughout his writing career, most notably in This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night.
Scott, on the other hand, didn’t appreciate Zelda doing the same thing. While his side of the correspondence has been lost, he must have sent Zelda a curt reply to her explanatory letter, because, in her next letter to him, Zelda wrote:
“I glad[ly] submit to anything you want about the book or anything else…However, I would like you to thoroughly understand that my revision will be made on an aesthetic basis: that the other material which I will select is nevertheless legitimate stuff that has cost me a pretty emotional penny to amass and which I intend to use when I can get the tranquility of spirit necessary to write the story of myself versus myself.”
Zelda’s writing style
Over the next few months, Zelda revised the novel, this time with some input from Scott — although how much he influenced the revisions is unclear, as the original drafts have been lost. His own opinion of the novel varied dramatically, sometimes feeling that it was “perhaps a very good novel” and other times claiming that it was “a bad book.”
In part, then, it’s Zelda’s story the way that her husband wanted it to be told, but there are still elements that are very different from Scott’s and that can therefore be assumed are Zelda’s unique style — lush description, vivid colors, a southern summer brought to life in dripping heat and suffocating magnolias, the anguish and pain of obsession and alcoholism, and the frantic search for an identity outside of marriage.
The rich prose style has also been connected to Surrealism, in its attempts to disrupt realism by creating unexpected connections. In the novel, Alabama’s first kiss with David becomes a deep, nightmarish dive into the frontal cortex of his brain:
“She crawled into the friendly cave of his ear. The area inside was grey and ghostly classic as she stared about the deep trenches of the cerebellum. There was not a growth nor a flowery substance to break those smooth convolutions, just the puffy rise of sleek grey matter…”
Edmund Wilson likened it to the way Zelda spoke:
“She talked with so spontaneous a color and wit — almost exactly in the way that she wrote — that I very soon ceased to be troubled by the fact that the conversation was in the nature of the free association of ideas and one could never follow up anything. I have rarely known a woman who expressed herself so delightfully and freshly; she had no ready-made phrases on the one hand and made no straining for effect on the other.”
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Save Me the Waltz on Bookshop.org * and Amazon *
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Publication of Save Me the Waltz and subsequent writingsSave Me the Waltz was finally published in 1932 in a print run of likely no more than 3,000 copies. Only around 1,200 sold, and the novel went out of print after this first run.
Its publication did not ease any of the tensions between the Fitzgeralds. Zelda wanted to continue to write, while Scott told her she was “a third-rate writer and a third-rate ballet dancer … I am a professional writer, with a huge following. I am the highest-paid short story writer in the world.”
Zelda did start another novel, Caesar’s Things, and worked on it intermittently for the rest of her life. It never came to anything. She also turned to scriptwriting and attempted to produce a play called Scandalabra, described as a fantasy farce in a prologue and three acts.
Having been forbidden by Scott to use any autobiographical material that might coincide with what he wanted to use for Tender Is the Night, Zelda struggled even for a storyline. It was performed by a small Baltimore theatre company in 1933, but its rambling banter only confused the critics. Still mentally unstable, in and out of psychiatric clinics, and at odds with her husband much of the time, Zelda then turned to paint instead.
Zelda’s Legacy
Save Me the Waltz was republished by Southern Illinois Press in 1967 (it required some 550 spelling and grammar corrections), and then again by the University of Alabama in 1991 in The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald.
More recently, it has been reissued by Handheld Press. However, interest in Zelda’s writing and life has only really surged since the 2013 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Several novels have been based on her life.
One of them, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler, has also been made into an Amazon Prime original series called The Beginning of Everything.
There have also been more scholarly explorations of Zelda’s work, including The Subversive Art of Zelda Fitzgerald by Deborah Pike, which takes Zelda out of her husband’s shadow and places her work alongside other female writers and painters of the time such as Leonora Carrington.
Rightly or wrongly, there has been a tendency to give her the label of feminist, and there has been endless debate over the reasons for her lack of creative success. Many like to blame her husband, while an argument has also been put forward that she was constrained from the start by the era in which she was born.
The idea of Zelda as a woman trapped by circumstance has been dismissed by her daughter, who argued that viewing Zelda as a “classic ‘put-down’ wife whose efforts to express her artistic nature were thwarted by a typically male chauvinist husband…is not, in my opinion, accurate.”
However she is defined, perhaps her greatest achievement was summed up by Therese Anne Fowler, who wrote:
“Here we have a woman whose talents and energy and intellect should have made her a brilliant success, who was determined to be an accomplished artist, writer, and ballet dancer in an era where married women were supposed to be wives and mothers, period.”
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.
Further reading:
Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald, Handheld Press, 2018The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli, University of Alabama Press, 1997 (3rd ed)Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise by Sally Cline, John Murray, 2003Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, ed. by Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, Bloomsbury, 2003Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler, Two Roads Press, 2013. . . . . . . . . .
*These are Bookshop Affiliate and Amazon Affiliate links. If a product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
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May 28, 2022
Jane Austen’s Final Days — Her Illness, Courage, and Death
Jane Austen by Sarah Fanny Malden (1889) is a valuable resource on the life and work of the beloved British author from the perspective of the late 19th century. The following excerpt describes Jane Austen’s final days —her illness, the courage she displayed, and her death.
Persuasion, the last novel Austen worked on prior to her death, and Northanger Abbey, her first completed novel, were both published six months after her death in 1817.
Mrs. Malden said of her sources, “The writer wishes to express her obligations to Lord Brabourne and Mr. C. Austen Leigh for their kind permission to make use of the Memoir and Letters of their gifted relative, which has been her principal authorities for this work.”
The 1889 publication of Malden’s Jane Austen was part of an Eminent Women series published by W.H. Allen & Co., London. The following excerpt is in the public domain.
Emma was the last work that Jane saw published
Emma was the last of her works that Jane Austen lived to see published; and despite the compliments, she received upon it, and the pleasure they gave her, its publication had sad associations for her.
Her brother, Henry Austen, had become ill while Jane was busy bringing out the novel, and it had been very sudden and serious. At first, Jane was alone with him, but, as the danger increased with alarming rapidity, she sent for the other members of the family.
They all arrived as quickly as was possible in those days when locomotion was so difficult; but Henry was at death’s door before they could get to him, and for many days he lay between life and death. He recovered eventually.
The strain and anxiety told much upon Jane, and she was still in a very low nervous state when fresh trouble came upon her family. Henry, who had tried several professions, and had been unable to establish himself in any, had for some time past been a partner in a bank, which now went broke. Many of the Austen family besides himself were involved in the loss.
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Any family trouble was always deeply felt by Jane, and this came upon her when she was quite unfit for any fresh trial. Her health and spirits, which were already much weakened, sank perceptibly, and though she was anything but nervous about herself, and seldom mentioned her own health in her letters, she was evidently very far from well.
In 1816 one of her nieces had written to her with earnest inquiries after her health, in answer to which Jane replied,
“Many thanks for your kind care of my health. I certainly have not been well for many weeks, and about a week ago I was very poorly. I have had a good deal of fever at times and indifferent nights; but I am considerably better now, and am recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough — black and white and every wrong colour. I must not depend upon being ever very blooming again. Sickness is a dangerous indulgence at my time of life.”
In the same making-the-best-of-it spirit, she wrote about this time to her brother Charles: ‘I live upstairs for the present and am coddled. I am the only one of the party who has been so silly, but a weak body must excuse weak nerves.’”
Increasing discomfort soon convinced her that she was not as near recovery as she had hoped, and though she was so cheerful before her family that they could not tell whether she was alarmed or not, before others she sometimes allowed herself to relax in this watchful self-control.
While staying with some old friends in scenes that were very familiar to her, they were struck by the way in which she spoke and acted as though she never expected to be there again, and the visible failure in her health greatly alarmed them.
Her letters, too, became sadder in tone, and in one of them the depression was so evident that she pulls herself up with the remark, “But I am getting too near complaint; it has been the appointment of God, however secondary causes may have operated.”
In the summer of 1816, she was able to pay a visit — which she must have known would be her last — to the old home at Steventon; and when she returned to Chawton, she continued to work at Persuasion, though under great difficulty from bodily weakness.
It may have been the consciousness of approaching death that touched that exquisite novel — the last she ever completed — with the wonderful pathetic sweetness and grace in which it stands alone among her works; even the happy termination having a sort of subdued radiance about it quite unlike the endings of her other stories.
Considering her state of health, it is wonderful that she could write at all. She had been obliged to give up all walking and almost all driving, while inside the house she could seldom find comfort or rest, except by lying down. The little drawing-room of Chawton Cottage contained only one sofa, which was appropriated to Mrs. Austen, then more than seventy years old, but if she had seen that her daughter needed it, she would, probably, have refused to use it herself.
Jane, who carried on all her work, literary or otherwise, amid all that was going on with her family, made herself a sort of couch with some chairs, and declared that she preferred this to the real sofa — a “pious fraud” which the grown-up members of the family respected in silence.
. . . . . . . .
Analysis and plot summary of Persuasion
. . . . . . . . .
In spite of weakness and suffering, she finished Persuasion in July, 1816; but when she attempted the most difficult part of the story — the re-engagement of Anne and Captain Wentworth — her brain had, for the moment, lost its full power, and she produced a chapter which was certainly not up to her usual standard.
Her clear judgment was not dimmed: she saw the deficiencies in what she had written, but, for the first time in her life, she felt incapable of correcting them, and a great wave of despondency swept over her as she realized her own weakness of mind and body, and felt that the pen which she had enjoyed the use of for so many years was at length slipping from her grasp.
Her despondency was, however, premature; she went to bed in very low spirits, but the next morning her brain was in full vigor again, and she resumed her pen with all the old energy. She now wrote two chapters in place of the one she had already composed, and as these give us the visit of the Musgroves to Bath; all the scenes immediately following that visit.
With the reconciliation of Anne and Captain Wentworth, her readers must feel that she has left us nothing worthier than her genius. She herself was quite contented with her second attempt, and indeed, it is difficult to see how she could have been otherwise.
. . . . . . . . .
Sanditon: An Unfinished Novel by Jane Austen
. . . . . . . . .
For some time after this, she attempted no further writing, but in January 1817 she either was, or fancied herself, better, for she wrote to a friend, “I have certainly gained strength through the winter, and am not far from being well, and I think I understand my own case now so much better than I did as to be able to keep off any serious return of illness.”
And about the same time, she wrote to a niece, “I feel myself so much stronger than I was, and can so perfectly walk to Alton or back again without fatigue, that I hope to be able to do both when summer comes.”
Her hopes were never to be realized; but she took advantage of her comparative vigor to begin afresh novel on January 27th, 1817, and was able to go on with it, with tolerable rapidity, till March 17th.
This last unfinished attempt, which had not even received a title, has never been published, but extracts from it have been given, and a sketch of the plot as far as it was worked out. [Note: it’s likely that this refers to her unfinished novel, Sanditon.]
Hope begins to fade
It is possible that, if health had been granted her, Jane Austen would have polished and improved upon the materials until the characters had become as real to us as the Bertrams and the Bennets; but by this time her alarming state had become evident to every member of the family, and when two of James Austen’s daughters went to see her in April, the younger one recorded:
“She was then keeping to her room but said she would see us, and we went up to her. She was in her dressing-gown and was sitting quite like an invalid in an armchair, but she got up and kindly greeted us, and then, pointing to seats which had been arranged for us by the fire, she said, ‘There is a chair for the married lady and a little stool for you, Caroline.’
It is strange, but those trifling words were the last of hers that I can remember, for I retain no recollection of what was said by anyone in the conversation that ensued. I was struck by the alteration in herself.
She was very pale, her voice was weak and low, and there was about her a general appearance of debility and suffering, but I have been told that she never had such acute pain. She was not equal to the exertion of talking to us, and our visit to the sickroom was a very short one, Aunt Cassandra soon taking us away, I do not suppose we stayed a quarter of an hour, and I never saw Aunt Jane again.”
Still, she continued cheerful, though she can have had by this time little hope of recovery; and in April her brother James writes to his daughter that, “I was happy to have a good account of herself written by her own hand in a letter from your Aunt Jane, but all who love, and that is all who know her, must be anxious on her account.” By this time, she had given up her novel-writing, so that she must have felt herself weak indeed.
Awareness of her deteriorating state
In May she and her sister Cassandra moved into lodgings in Winchester that she might be within reach of an eminent medical man living there; but he had little hope of saving her, though, after going there, she seemed for a time rather stronger. She wrote touchingly to one of her nephews:
“I will only say further that my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse, has not been made ill by her exertions. As to what I owe her, and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more.”
She was now fully aware of her state and in no way alarmed by it, though — might she have chosen — she would gladly have lived longer. Every year was bringing her fresh fame and giving her new assurances of success; she was surrounded by loving relations and friends, and she had scarcely reached middle age.
Her brothers were scattered in their own various homes, but their children were a constant interest and pleasure to her, and she had the unceasing companionship of the sister who was more than anyone else to her, and from whom she had been so little separated.
Jane Austen’s last days
There was much to make life sweet to Jane Austen at the age of forty-two; nothing that should make her wish to leave it, and yet, with her usual contentedness, she quietly acquiesced in the summons for her, and endeavored, as far as possible, to cheer those around her.
Her sister-in-law, Mrs. James Austen, came to Winchester to help Cassandra with the nursing; and soon after she arrived, a sudden prostration in the patient made everyone believe that the end had come. Jane was aware of it, and, calm and serene as ever, said words of farewell to all who were with her.
Finally, she turned to her sister-in-law with warm expressions of gratitude for all her care and help, adding, “You have always been a kind sister to me, Mary.” The end was not as near as the watchers thought, for she lingered until past the middle of July, but when it came, it seemed sudden, as is often the case after a lingering illness.
On the 18th of July, 1817, Jane Austen breathed her last; and those who had watched her throughout her illness were thankful that the months of weariness and suffering were over, even though they felt how irreparable was their own loss.
. . . . . . . . . .
You may also enjoy:
Jane Austen’s First Attempts at Publishing
. . . . . . . . . .
Their feelings are best described in the letter which Cassandra wrote to her niece, Fanny Knight, two days after Jane had passed away; and this portion of the letter gives, also, the most complete account of her last hours:
“Since Tuesday evening, when her complaint returned, there was a visible change, she slept more and much more comfortably; indeed, during the last eight and forty hours, she was more asleep than awake. Her looks altered, and she fell away, but I perceived no material diminution of strength, and though I was then hopeless of recovery, I had no suspicion of how rapidly my loss was approaching.
I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I had not a thought concealed from her and feel as if I had lost a part of myself.
I loved her only too well—not better than she deserved, but I am conscious that my affection for her made me sometimes unjust to and negligent of others; and I can acknowledge, more than as a general principle, the justice of the Hand which has struck this blow …
I thank God that I was enabled to attend her to the last; and amongst my many causes of self-reproach, I have not to add any wilful neglect of her comfort.
She felt herself to be dying about half an hour before she became tranquil and apparently unconscious. During that half-hour was her struggle, poor soul! She said she could not tell us what she suffered, though she complained of little fixed pain.
When I asked her if there was anything she wanted, her answer was she wanted nothing but death, and some of her words were, ‘God grant me patience; pray for me, oh, pray for me.’ Her voice was affected, but as long as she spoke she was intelligible.
I hope I do not break your heart, my dearest Fanny, by these particulars; I mean to afford you gratification whilst I am relieving my own feelings.
… The last sad ceremony is to take place on Thursday morning; her dear remains are to be deposited in the Cathedral. It is a satisfaction to me to think they are to lie in a building she admired so much.”
A proper burial and fitting inscription
Jane Austen’s remains were laid near the middle of the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral, almost opposite the well-known tomb of William of Wykeham. The taste of the day was for full and somewhat minute epitaphs, and on a large slab of black marble which marks the spot was placed the following inscription:
“In memory of Jane Austen, youngest daughter of the late Revd. George Austen, formerly rector of Steventon in this County. She departed this life on July 18, 1817, aged 41, after a long illness, supported with the patience and hope of a Christian.
The benevolence of her heart the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her immediate connections.
Their grief is in proportion to their affection; they know their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm, though humble, hope that her charity, devotion, faith, and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her Redeemer.”
The post Jane Austen’s Final Days — Her Illness, Courage, and Death appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
Jane Austen’s Final Days — Illness, Courage, and Death
Jane Austen by Sarah Fanny Malden (1889) is a valuable resource on the life and work of the beloved British author from the perspective of the late 19th century. The following excerpt describes Jane Austen’s final days —her illness, the courage she displayed, and death.
Persuasion, the last novel Austen worked on prior to her death, and Northanger Abbey, her first completed novel, were both published six months after her death in 1817.
Mrs. Malden said of her sources, “The writer wishes to express her obligations to Lord Brabourne and Mr. C. Austen Leigh for their kind permission to make use of the Memoir and Letters of their gifted relative, which has been her principal authorities for this work.”
The 1889 publication of Malden’s Jane Austen was part of an Eminent Women series published by W.H. Allen & Co., London. The following excerpt is in the public domain.
Emma was the last work that Jane saw published
Emma was the last of her works that Jane Austen lived to see published; and despite the compliments, she received upon it, and the pleasure they gave her, its publication had sad associations for her.
Her brother Henry Austen’s illness had begun while his sister was busy bringing out the novel, and it had been a very sudden and serious one. At first, Jane was alone with him, but, as the danger increased with alarming rapidity, she sent for the other members of the family.
They all arrived as quickly as was possible in those days when locomotion was so difficult; but Henry Austen was at death’s door before they could get to him, and for many days he lay between life and death, although he recovered eventually.
The strain and anxiety told much upon Jane, and she was still in a very low nervous state when fresh trouble came upon her family. Henry, who had tried several professions, and had been unable to establish himself in any, had for some time past been a partner in a bank, which now went broke. Many of the Austen family besides himself were involved in the loss.
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Learn more about Jane Austen
. . . . . . . .
Any family trouble was always deeply felt by Jane, and this came upon her when she was quite unfit for any fresh trial. Her health and spirits, which were already much weakened, sank perceptibly, and though she was anything but nervous about herself, and seldom mentioned her own health in her letters, she was evidently very far from well.
In 1816 one of her nieces had written to her with earnest inquiries after her health, in answer to which Jane replied,
“Many thanks for your kind care of my health. I certainly have not been well for many weeks, and about a week ago I was very poorly. I have had a good deal of fever at times and indifferent nights; but I am considerably better now, and am recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough — black and white and every wrong colour. I must not depend upon being ever very blooming again. Sickness is a dangerous indulgence at my time of life.”
In the same making-the-best-of-it spirit, she wrote about this time to her brother Charles: ‘I live upstairs for the present and am coddled. I am the only one of the party who has been so silly, but a weak body must excuse weak nerves.’”
Increasing discomfort soon convinced her that she was not as near recovery as she had hoped, and though she was so cheerful before her family that they could not tell whether she was alarmed or not, before others she sometimes allowed herself to relax in this watchful self-control.
While staying with some old friends in scenes that were very familiar to her, they were struck by the way in which she spoke and acted as though she never expected to be there again, and the visible failure in her health greatly alarmed them.
Her letters, too, became sadder in tone, and in one of them the depression was so evident that she pulls herself up with the remark, “But I am getting too near complaint; it has been the appointment of God, however secondary causes may have operated.”
In the summer of 1816, she was able to pay a visit — which she must have known would be her last — to the old home at Steventon; and when she returned to Chawton, she continued to work at Persuasion, though under great difficulty from bodily weakness.
It may have been the consciousness of approaching death that touched that exquisite novel — the last she ever completed — with the wonderful pathetic sweetness and grace in which it stands alone among her works; even the happy termination having a sort of subdued radiance about it quite unlike the endings of her other stories.
Considering her state of health, it is wonderful that she could write at all. She had been obliged to give up all walking and almost all driving, while inside the house she could seldom find comfort or rest, except by lying down. The little drawing-room of Chawton Cottage contained only one sofa, which was appropriated to Mrs. Austen, then more than seventy years old, but if she had seen that her daughter needed it, she would, probably, have refused to use it herself.
Jane, who carried on all her work, literary or otherwise, amid all that was going on with her family, made herself a sort of couch with some chairs, and declared that she preferred this to the real sofa — a “pious fraud” which the grown-up members of the family respected in silence.
. . . . . . . .
Analysis and plot summary of Persuasion
. . . . . . . . .
In spite of weakness and suffering, she finished Persuasion in July, 1816; but when she attempted the most difficult part of the story — the re-engagement of Anne and Captain Wentworth — her brain had, for the moment, lost its full power, and she produced a chapter which was certainly not up to her usual standard.
Her clear judgment was not dimmed: she saw the deficiencies in what she had written, but, for the first time in her life, she felt incapable of correcting them, and a great wave of despondency swept over her as she realized her own weakness of mind and body, and felt that the pen which she had enjoyed the use of for so many years was at length slipping from her grasp.
Her despondency was, however, premature; she went to bed in very low spirits, but the next morning her brain was in full vigor again, and she resumed her pen with all the old energy. She now wrote two chapters in place of the one she had already composed, and as these give us the visit of the Musgroves to Bath; all the scenes immediately following that visit.
With the reconciliation of Anne and Captain Wentworth, her readers must feel that she has left us nothing worthier than her genius. She herself was quite contented with her second attempt, and indeed, it is difficult to see how she could have been otherwise.
. . . . . . . . .
Sanditon: An Unfinished Novel by Jane Austen
. . . . . . . . .
For some time after this, she attempted no further writing, but in January 1817 she either was, or fancied herself, better, for she wrote to a friend, “I have certainly gained strength through the winter, and am not far from being well, and I think I understand my own case now so much better than I did as to be able to keep off any serious return of illness.”
And about the same time, she wrote to a niece, “I feel myself so much stronger than I was, and can so perfectly walk to Alton or back again without fatigue, that I hope to be able to do both when summer comes.”
Her hopes were never to be realized; but she took advantage of her comparative vigor to begin afresh novel on January 27th, 1817, and was able to go on with it, with tolerable rapidity, till March 17th.
This last unfinished attempt, which had not even received a title, has never been published, but extracts from it have been given, and a sketch of the plot as far as it was worked out. [Note: it’s likely that this refers to her unfinished novel, Sanditon.]
Hope begins to fade
It is possible that, if health had been granted her, Jane Austen would have polished and improved upon the materials until the characters had become as real to us as the Bertrams and the Bennets; but by this time her alarming state had become evident to every member of the family, and when two of James Austen’s daughters went to see her in April, the younger one recorded:
“She was then keeping to her room but said she would see us, and we went up to her. She was in her dressing-gown and was sitting quite like an invalid in an armchair, but she got up and kindly greeted us, and then, pointing to seats which had been arranged for us by the fire, she said, ‘There is a chair for the married lady and a little stool for you, Caroline.’
It is strange, but those trifling words were the last of hers that I can remember, for I retain no recollection of what was said by anyone in the conversation that ensued. I was struck by the alteration in herself.
She was very pale, her voice was weak and low, and there was about her a general appearance of debility and suffering, but I have been told that she never had such acute pain. She was not equal to the exertion of talking to us, and our visit to the sickroom was a very short one, Aunt Cassandra soon taking us away, I do not suppose we stayed a quarter of an hour, and I never saw Aunt Jane again.”
Still, she continued cheerful, though she can have had by this time little hope of recovery; and in April her brother James writes to his daughter that, “I was happy to have a good account of herself written by her own hand in a letter from your Aunt Jane, but all who love, and that is all who know her, must be anxious on her account.” By this time, she had given up her novel-writing, so that she must have felt herself weak indeed.
Awareness of her deteriorating state
In May she and her sister Cassandra moved into lodgings in Winchester that she might be within reach of an eminent medical man living there; but he had little hope of saving her, though, after going there, she seemed for a time rather stronger. She wrote touchingly to one of her nephews:
“I will only say further that my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse, has not been made ill by her exertions. As to what I owe her, and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more.”
She was now fully aware of her state and in no way alarmed by it, though — might she have chosen — she would gladly have lived longer. Every year was bringing her fresh fame and giving her new assurances of success; she was surrounded by loving relations and friends, and she had scarcely reached middle age.
Her brothers were scattered in their own various homes, but their children were a constant interest and pleasure to her, and she had the unceasing companionship of the sister who was more than anyone else to her, and from whom she had been so little separated.
Jane Austen’s last days
There was much to make life sweet to Jane Austen at the age of forty-two; nothing that should make her wish to leave it, and yet, with her usual contentedness, she quietly acquiesced in the summons for her, and endeavored, as far as possible, to cheer those around her.
Her sister-in-law, Mrs. James Austen, came to Winchester to help Cassandra with the nursing; and soon after she arrived, a sudden prostration in the patient made everyone believe that the end had come. Jane was aware of it, and, calm and serene as ever, said words of farewell to all who were with her.
Finally, she turned to her sister-in-law with warm expressions of gratitude for all her care and help, adding, “You have always been a kind sister to me, Mary.” The end was not as near as the watchers thought, for she lingered until past the middle of July, but when it came, it seemed sudden, as is often the case after a lingering illness.
On the 18th of July, 1817, Jane Austen breathed her last; and those who had watched her throughout her illness were thankful that the months of weariness and suffering were over, even though they felt how irreparable was their own loss.
. . . . . . . . . .
You may also enjoy:
Jane Austen’s First Attempts at Publishing
. . . . . . . . . .
Their feelings are best described in the letter which Cassandra wrote to her niece, Fanny Knight, two days after Jane had passed away; and this portion of the letter gives, also, the most complete account of her last hours:
“Since Tuesday evening, when her complaint returned, there was a visible change, she slept more and much more comfortably; indeed, during the last eight and forty hours, she was more asleep than awake. Her looks altered, and she fell away, but I perceived no material diminution of strength, and though I was then hopeless of recovery, I had no suspicion of how rapidly my loss was approaching.
I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I had not a thought concealed from her and feel as if I had lost a part of myself.
I loved her only too well—not better than she deserved, but I am conscious that my affection for her made me sometimes unjust to and negligent of others; and I can acknowledge, more than as a general principle, the justice of the Hand which has struck this blow …
I thank God that I was enabled to attend her to the last; and amongst my many causes of self-reproach, I have not to add any wilful neglect of her comfort.
She felt herself to be dying about half an hour before she became tranquil and apparently unconscious. During that half-hour was her struggle, poor soul! She said she could not tell us what she suffered, though she complained of little fixed pain.
When I asked her if there was anything she wanted, her answer was she wanted nothing but death, and some of her words were, ‘God grant me patience; pray for me, oh, pray for me.’ Her voice was affected, but as long as she spoke she was intelligible.
I hope I do not break your heart, my dearest Fanny, by these particulars; I mean to afford you gratification whilst I am relieving my own feelings.
… The last sad ceremony is to take place on Thursday morning; her dear remains are to be deposited in the Cathedral. It is a satisfaction to me to think they are to lie in a building she admired so much.”
A proper burial and fitting inscription
Jane Austen’s remains were laid near the middle of the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral, almost opposite the well-known tomb of William of Wykeham. The taste of the day was for full and somewhat minute epitaphs, and on a large slab of black marble which marks the spot was placed the following inscription:
“In memory of Jane Austen, youngest daughter of the late Revd. George Austen, formerly rector of Steventon in this County. She departed this life on July 18, 1817, aged 41, after a long illness, supported with the patience and hope of a Christian.
The benevolence of her heart the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her immediate connections.
Their grief is in proportion to their affection; they know their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm, though humble, hope that her charity, devotion, faith, and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her Redeemer.”
The post Jane Austen’s Final Days — Illness, Courage, and Death appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara (1941)
My Friend Flicka, the 1941 novel by Mary O’Hara, is this author’s most enduring work. The ranch living and rugged Wyoming landscape of her personal experience inspired the novel.
A classic that’s for “children of all ages,” My Friend Flicka is the story of Ken McLaughlin, a rancher’s son, and his untamed horse.
Ken’s father, a practical Scotsman, had no patience for his son’s dreaminess, so out of place in the harsh realities of the family’s horse-breeding farm. Ken becomes smitten with a wild colt, who he names Flicka, meaning “little filly.”
His devotion to the horse and to taming her grows along with his acceptance of responsibility as a young man. My Friend Flicka was the first volume in a trilogy, followed by Thunderhead (1943) and Green Grass of Wyoming (1946).
The novel quickly became a bestselling classic and was the basis of a successful 1943 film starring Roddy MacDowall. It was also adapted as a television show, airing from 1956 to 1957, and reran throughout the 1960s.
A synopsis of My Friend Flicka
From the 1941 edition: Ken McLaughlin was only eleven years old, but for as long as he could remember he had wished for nothing more than his very own colt. He had tried to do his chores well around his father’s horse ranch, but whenever he was alone, he found his thoughts drifting off to that one wish …
And as a result, he usually made some mistakes like forgetting to be on time for dinner or leaving the cinch strap too loose on the horse he was riding. Then his father would get angry, and Ken felt he would never have his own colt.
One morning at the breakfast table, though, Ken heard his father say something that almost made him fall off his chair. “Ken, I’m giving you one week to look over all the new yearlings and choose one for yourself.”
What a wonderful surprise! He was to have his very own colt to train and care for and ride to his heart’s content.
By the end of the week, Ken had made his choice of a golden-brown filly with a flowing white mane and tail. But what about a name for his horse? Then Ken remembered what Gus, the hired hand, had said when the filly was a newborn colt.
“Gee whiz! Look at the little Flicka.”
“What does Flicka mean, Gus?” Ken asked.
“Why, it’s Swedish for a little girl.”
And now Ken had a name for his colt. “I’m going to call her Flicka!” he announced proudly at dinner that night.
This is the beginning of the exciting, heartwarming adventure of a boy and his horse, and how they grew up together — a story that in a few short years has become one of the most popular classics for young readers.
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4 Classic Horse Stories by Women Authors
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From the original review in the Daily Times (Davenport, Iowa), September 20, 1941: This is the story of a friendship between a boy and a horse written by Mary O’Hara, who in all her childhood has never realized her wish for a colt. She has called this tale “My Friend Flicka” because it is about a filly of that name who lived on a mountain ranch of Wyoming.
Flicka was the granddaughter of an English thoroughbred mare and her mother’s sire was a hellion mustang and this meant that she had bad blood in her veins.
Eleven-year-old Kenneth McLaughlin who had been told by his father that he could select any spring colt or yearling from the entire herd for his own had chosen Flicka for a special reason aside from her beauty and speed, and nothing in his short life had given him so much pleasure as his possession of this wild little pony.
A sense of responsibility, building trust
Bob McLaughlin, Kenneth’s father, gave the boy a colt because he had hopes that by this means he could arouse in him a sense of responsibility. For it was evident to Rob that Kenneth had definite shortcomings. The boy was too much of a dreamer. He was dumb. He was not reliable. And not even fear of punishment had caused Kenneth to mend his ways.
It was a great disappointment to Rob when Ken chose Flicka for his own, because of the wild strain in the pony. Rob himself had had enough of that breed. Flicka, he was sure, was loco like her mother, Rocket, and like her mother, she would come to a bad end.
But Kenneth did not believe that Flicka was loco. What did loco mean? Loco meant unpredictable. Loco meant crazy. Loco was the way a lone wolf was savage and untamable.
Kenneth had to worship Flicka from afar. She would not let him come near her. She had no trust in him or any human.
And if Flicka, revolting at being penned in, had not all but killed herself in a jump over a high barbed wire fence, Kenneth may never have known the truth about Flicka’s nature — that she was not loco, only scared; that she was capable of great affection and devotion, and that the blood of her great sire, the stallion, Banner, was triumphant over the mustang strain.
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My Friend Flicka on Amazon*
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A stricken animal and a devoted boy
If the reader’s heart was touched at Ken’s longing for a horse before his father decided to give him one, he will be beside himself now as the boy yearns over a stricken and dying pet. How well does Mary O’Hara understand the human heart and how instinctive is your response to all this because you are Ken, and Flicka is your home, and Flicka is marked for doom.
Yet miracles can happen, can’t they? When one loves so much, it is necessary that the loved one must be taken away? Or did Flicka permit Kenneth to touch her merely because she was lame and could not prevent it?
Flicka’s wounds were healing nicely when an infection set in, first on the leg and then all through her body. But she had seemed to get better from these new complications and now she was following Kenneth about everywhere like a faithful dog.
But the days passed and Flicka was having a setback again. She was losing flesh every day and she looked like a scarecrow. Ken’s father had not been paying much attention because he was so busy with the harvest but one day he saw Flicka and asked:
“What is that?” Ken knew the law of the ranch-that an animal that could not be cured must not be allowed to suffer pain. He knew that Flicka would be shot, and though his father had ordered the Swedish foreman to do it when Ken was not around, Ken sensed that the command had been given.
The Swede promised Ken that he would wait one more day. The boy say goodbye to his pet but in the night he heard a whinny and he found the feverish.
Flicka bogged in the stream of the pasture where she had gone in relief from her pain. All night he stayed with her, and it seemed to him many times that she was gone, but morning came, and the boy was unconscious and Flicka was better.
Ken’s turn to be at death’s door
Now it was Ken’s turn to be sick and to lie near death’s door. His mother tells him that Flicka is better but he cannot be greatly hopeful and besides there is that order of his father’s. His ears strain to hear a shot and finally, he hears it in between the crashes of thunder.
For a long time, Ken hovers between life and death and when he does get better he is apathetic. His mother and the doctor think that he is too weak to bear the shock of hearing that Flicka is alive, that she is getting well, and that the shot he heard once had been directed at a mountain lion.
The ultimate bond between a boy and his horse
Now as the last chapter is being related, Kenneth is just beginning to show a little interest in things. He had known that Flicka was alive, but he had not sought her out. He was almost afraid to see her and to be caught up with life again.
Then one day his fear left him and quite strong now and with joy in his heart he went alone to the pasture. Flicka saw him and came running to meet him and her whinny was like none he had heard from her before-a nicker of delight and recognition and the expression of the ultimate bond between them.
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Media adaptations of My Friend FlickaFilm
My Friend Flicka (1943), starring Roddy McDowall as Kenneth McLaughlin. It was followed by sequels based on the two books in the Flicka trilogy by Mary O’Hara’s subsequent novels, Thunderhead, Son of Flicka (1945), and Green Grass of Wyoming (1948). Available to stream on Amazon*
Flicka (2006), a 20th Century Fox film loosely adapted the story to contemporary times, starring Alison Lohman as Katy McLaughlin (replacing the original male protagonist, Kenneth). Flicka 2 (2010) and Flicka: Country Pride (2012) followed in this series.
Radio
My Friend Flicka (June 7, 1943), radio adaption on Lux Radio Theatre, starring Roddy McDowall and Rita Johnson reprising their 1943 film roles as Ken McLaughlin and Nell McLaughlin.
Television
My Friend Flicka was a 20th Century Fox television series on CBS that ran from 1956 to 1957.
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May 26, 2022
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden (1958)
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden is a 1958 coming-of-age novel, crackling with suspense, and portraying love and deceit in the Champagne country in France.
“On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages…” is a memorable line from this engaging novel based on an incident in Godden’s youth.
Taking place in the shabby hotel of Les Oeillets, once gloriously elegant, the four children of the Grey family find themselves alone with the shady eccentrics who run the hotel. Like many of Godden’s novels, The Greengage Summer was adapted into a 1961 British film starring Kenneth More, Jane Asher, and Susannah York.
A Plot Summary of The Greengage SummerFrom the publisher, of the 2016 ebook edition (Open Road Media): A sixteen-year-old girl captures the dangerous attention of an older man in this New York Times–bestselling novel by the author of Black Narcissus.
Soon after the end of the terrible Great War, Mrs. Grey brings her five young children to the French countryside for the summer in hopes of instilling in them a sense of history and humility. But when she is struck down by a sudden illness and hospitalized, the siblings are left to fend for themselves at the lovely, bullet-scarred hotel Les Oeillets, under the suspicious, watchful eyes of its owner, Mademoiselle Zizi.
The young ones find a willing guide, companion, and protector in charming Englishman Eliot, a longtime resident at Les Oeillets and Mlle. Zizi’s apparent paramour. But as these warm days of freedom, discovery, and adolescent adventure unfold, Eliot’s interest becomes more and more focused on the eldest of the Grey children, sixteen-year-old daughter Joss.
The older man’s obsession with the innocent, alluring, heartbreakingly beautiful woman-child soon threatens to overstep all bounds of propriety. And as Eliot’s fascination increases, so do the jealousy of his disrespected lover, adding fuel to a dangerously smoldering fire that could erupt into unexpected violence at any moment.
Told from the point of view of Cecil, Joss’s sharp-eyed younger sister, The Greengage Summer is a beautiful, poignant, darkly tinged coming-of-age story rich in the sights, smells, and sounds of France’s breathtaking Champagne country. It remains one of the crowning literary achievements of Rumer Godden, acclaimed author of beloved classics Black Narcissus, The River, and In This House of Brede.
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You may also enjoy:
The Peacock Spring by Rumer Godden
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From the original review by Elizabeth A. McSherry in The Hartford Courant, April 6, 1958: Rumer Godden’s children are wise beyond their years, and their observations in this enchanting novel solve much of the mystery that eludes their elders, even the detectives.
The story tells of the adventures of five English children on a summer vacation in France in a second-rate hotel near the forest of Compiègne. Their surname is Grey and their ages range from sixteen down to a mere five years. The second sister, some years later, recalls this strange and delightful summer.
Their mother, realizing how circumspect their lives had been in the usual drab watering places where she had taken them on vacations, did a most unpredictable thing. She took them across the Channel for a glimpse at the beauties of France. No sooner had they arrived at the hotel Les Oeiletts than she became seriously ill and was rushed off to a hospital where she had to remain for a long rest.
The children are left in the care of the proprietress, Mademoiselle Zizi, who had little use for them, and her assistant, Madame Corbet, who had so many duties that she paid little attention to them.
They spent much time in the kitchen with Monsieur Armand, reading his crime-filled newspapers, or watching Paul, the sullen helper who had developed a passion for the eldest Grey girl.
But it was the mysterious Englishman Eliot who gave them the most delightful entertainment. One of the oddest things about Eliot was that he had no idea of what kind of person he was. The children knew that he was Mademoiselle Zizi’s friend and that Madame Corbet was jealous of this attachment.
They also observed that Eliot disappeared for days at a time and then came back and made them all happy.
The Grey children’s innocent world and the world of crime are merged in the evil that hovered about the hotel. it was their keen observations that offered clues, hidden in the adult world. What they really learned that summer was that good and even can reside in the same person. in remembering this, they always thought of the good side of Eliot.
If you enjoyed Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows, you will find The Greengage Summer a sheer delight. It is witty and profound at the same time.
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The Greengage Summer on Amazon*
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More about A Greengage Summer A review on Kate MacDonald A review on Girl With Her Head in a Book Reader discussion on Goodreads. . . . . . . . . .
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May 25, 2022
The Peacock Spring by Rumer Godden (1976)
The Peacock Spring by Rumer Godden is a 1976 novel by the British-born novelist and memoirist who was raised mainly in India at the height of colonial rule. Margaret Rumer Godden (1907 – 1998) led a life was as dramatic and colorful as the stories she so skillfully wrote.
Inspired by her personal experiences and love for the Indian continent, The Peacock Spring is a beautiful and heartbreaking novel of loss of innocence and coming-of-age from the acclaimed author of Black Narcissus and The River.
Despite Godden’s love for the Indian people and continent, it is certainly time to reconsider literature written from the perspective of British colonialism. However, she doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of wealth and privilege, race and caste in colonial Indian society. As always, her prose is vivid and poetic.
The book was generally well received, and, like the majority of her works, was made into a film of the same title in 1996. Following is a plot summary and a brief review of The Peacock Spring from 1976, the year in which it was published.
A brief plot summary
By Jeanne Rose for the Baltimore Sun, March 28, 1976: Fifteen-year-old Una and her twelve-year-old sister Hal (Halcyon) have come from their English school to New Delhi at the bidding of their father, Sir Edward Gwithiam, a high official in the U.N.
He is lonely and has told their headmistress. But Una and Hal soon realize their presence fills another need: Alix, the beautiful Eurasian governess Edward has hired, is his mistress, and the girls are there as chaperones.
Alix, ambitious and unstable, cannot teach Una; she lacks the background she has claimed. Una, frustrated and ignored, soon drifts into friendship, then more, with her father’s gardener Ravi, a poet and student hiding from the police. When Edward marries Alix, Ravi and Una run away but are soon found. And Una’s “peacock spring” ends in disillusionment and grief.
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The Peacock Spring on Amazon*
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From the original review by Barbara Hodge Hall in The Anniston Star, AL, Apr 4, 1976: Rumer Godden has abandoned the sunny peace of her last novel, In This House of Brede, to write a brilliant tragedy of color, passion, and violence.
She perhaps overworks the peacock symbolism — the dazzling bird stands for India itself and also for Ravi, splendid but flawed. creates vivid minor characters. No one who reads this book will soon forget it.
For English novelist Rumer Godden. as well as her sister Jon, another talented writer, India is a beloved childhood home, familiar and well-understood, a place of contrasts, beauty, and the same human emotions that govern us all.
Their never-to-be-forgotten Two Under the Indian Sun ten years ago captured their memories of colonial days there, and Rumer, in particular, has turned again and again to that fascinating subcontinent as a setting for her stories.
The Peacock Spring is Rumer Godden at her best, writing about India. young people, and the deep well-springs of love. At once somber and joyous, the novel will be wonderfully welcome after the long wait since In This House of Brede.
Two young sisters have been brought to India by their UN diplomat father, snatched up from boarding school shortly after the beginning of the term, and deposited in his palatial official residence under the questionable tutelage of a beautiful young governess.
It does not take long for Una, the wise. sensitive fifteen-year-old, to realize what is happening — her father, Edward, wants her and pretty twelve-year-old Hal to provide an excuse for Alix’s presence in his household. Edward and Alix are lovers, and New Delhi society is already buzzing with gossip.
The two girls, who are half-sisters, react in far different ways. Hal (short for Halcyon), is already beautiful, vivacious, and eager for life, and is enchanted by the whole arrangement — Alix, parties, horses, admiring boys, and the excitement of new experiences.
But Una, a brilliant student for whom her school had high hopes, is resentful and angry. She is being cheated on her studies. her chances for university, the quiet English way of life she loves. Alix does not fool her for a minute, and the social whirl is just a waste of time.
And then she meets Ravi. the young Brahmin poet masquerading as the second gardener on the estate, a handsome, well-educated boy who alone seems to understand her feelings. What happens is new only to Una, at once innocent and as old as Eve.
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The Peacock Spring (1996 film) is available to stream on Amazon*
More about The Peacock Spring Out of Time: Rumer Godden’s The Peacock Spring Reader Discussion on Goodreads Review: The Peacock Spring by Rumer Godden. . . . . . . . . .
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Jane Austen’s First Attempts at Publishing
Jane Austen’s talent was recognized early on and taken seriously by her entire family. Her father and brothers played key roles in getting her works published, as it wasn’t considered proper for a woman to do so herself in the early 1800s. This 19th-century view of Jane Austen’s first attempts at publishing illustrates the difficulties of the pursuit.
Austen longed to see her work in print, regardless of whether or not it would gain her fame or fortune — but getting it published was important to her, contrary to the myth about her extreme modesty.
Her father and brothers took it upon themselves to seek publication opportunities for Jane’s first works. It was clear that she didn’t write merely for her own amusement but was deeply invested in having her work published and read.
Jane Austen by Sarah Fanny Malden (1889) is an excellent resource as a 19th-century view of Jane Austen’s works. The publication was part of an Eminent Women series published by W.H. Allen & Co., London. The following analysis and plot summary of Sense and Sensibility (1811) focuses on this work, which was Jane Austen‘s first published novel. This excerpt is in the public domain:
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From about the age of twenty to twenty-five — that is, during the five last years of her life at Steventon—Jane had fairly taken up her pen and worked hard with it all the time.
At least three of her best-known novels were written during this period, although, from their not having been published till much later, there is difficulty in fixing the exact dates of their composition.
Pride and Prejudice, however, was begun in October 1796, when she was nearly twenty-one, and finished in August 1797. Three months after it was completed, she began upon what we now know as Sense and Sensibility, but with which, as has been already said, she incorporated a good deal of an earlier story, Elinor and Marianne, originally written in letters. She wrote Northanger Abbey in 1798, soon after finishing Sense and Sensibility.
Even in the quiet life at Steventon, it is difficult to understand how Jane managed to combine so much literary work with all her household and social occupations, for so little was writing a serious business to her that she never mentions it in her letters throughout those years.
It is provoking to read through the pages of correspondence with the sister to whom she told everything and to find them full of little everyday details of home life without a single word upon the subject which would be so interesting now to us.
Writing in the midst of comings and goings
It cannot have been from the shyness that she avoided the topic, for her own family knew of her stories when completed, and, wonderful to relate, she carried on all her writing in the little parsonage sitting room, with everyone coming in and out and pursuing occupations there.
This speaks volumes for the Austen family and their friends; for if even one of them had been a Mrs. Allen, or, worse still, a Miss Bates, all Elizabeth Bennett’s and Emma Woodhouse’s doings might have been forever lost to posterity. While perfectly free from shyness or false shame with her own family about her works, Jane was nevertheless careful to keep their knowledge of them from the outer world.
In spite of her writing being so openly carried on, one intimate friend of family wrote afterward that he “never suspected her of being an authoress.” She always used a little mahogany desk—still in existence—which was easily put away if necessary; and she wrote on very small sheets of paper, which could be quickly concealed without attracting any notice.
When we hear of so much steady work between 1795 and 1800, it seems incredible that she published nothing until 1811; but Jane Austen, like other people, was destined to work her way slowly to success, and her first attempts at getting into print were so disheartening that they deserve to be recorded for the benefit of all despairing young authors.
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George Austen’s attempts to help Jane get publishedWhen Pride and Prejudice were finished and given to the family circle, Mr. Austen was much struck by the story and determined to make an effort to get it published. Accordingly, in November 1797, he wrote to Mr. Cadell, the well-known London publisher, as follows:
Sir,
I have in my possession a manuscript novel, comprising 3 vols., about the length of Miss Burney‘s Evelina. As I am well aware of what consequence it is that a work of this sort shd make its first appearance under a respectable name, I apply to you. I shall be much obliged therefore if you will inform me whether you choose to be concerned in it, what will be the expense of publishing it at the author’s risk, and that you will venture to advance for the property of it if on perusal it is approved of. Should you give any encouragement I will send you the work.
I am, Sir, your humble servant,
George Austen.
Steventon, near Overton, Hants,
1st Nov. 1797.
Was Mr. Cadell already overwhelmed with novels in imitation of Evelina, or had he made some unlucky ventures in that line, or was he offended by the epithet “respectable” which Mr. Austen applied to him? It is impossible to tell now; but by the return of the post, and without having seen a line of the book, he declined to undertake it on any terms, and Pride and Prejudice remained unknown to the public till sixteen years later.
Probably Mr. Austen made a mistake in not sending the MS. direct to the publisher at first, for if Mr. Cadell had glanced at the first chapter of it, he must have seen it was no ordinary novel.
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Not the first unsuccessful attemptNevertheless, this was not the only unsuccessful attempt at a publication that befell Jane Austen. Six years later, in 1803, while living at Bath, she offered Northanger Abbey, which had then undergone careful revision, to a local publisher, who accepted it and gave her—ten pounds!
On second thoughts the worthy man seems to have repented of his bargain, for he never brought it out, and the MS. remained in oblivion for thirteen years longer. By that time Jane Austen had begun to recognize her position as a successful authoress, and thought with justice that if she could recover the MS. it might be published without detracting from her fame.
Henry Austen, her third brother, who often helped her in her communicating with publishers and printers, undertook the errand and found no difficulty whatever in regaining the work, copyright and all, by repaying the original ten pounds.
On this occasion the publisher learned of his error (which Mr. Cadell probably never did); for as soon as Henry Austen had safely concluded the bargain, and gained possession of the MS., he quietly informed the unlucky man that it was by the author of Pride and Prejudice, and left him, we may hope, raging at himself over the opportunity which he had missed of making so good a stroke of business.
Sorrow at the prospect of a move
In 1801 the state of her father’s health brought about the first important change in Jane’s life, for the old home was given up, and she was destined never to spend so much of her life in any other.
The change was a great sorrow to her, but she was allowed very little time to dwell upon it, for Mr. George Austen was a man of prompt decision and rapid action, and having made up his mind, while Jane was away on a visit, that he would leave Steventon, she found, when she returned, that the preparations for departure were being carried on.
Mr. Austen was then upwards of seventy and felt himself no longer fit for the active duties of a clergyman. He did not resign his living but installed his eldest son in them as a kind of perpetual curate, and this arrangement lasted till Mr. Austen’s death in 1805.
At first, the idea of a move was a great grief to Jane, but she was always resolute in seeing the bright side of life, and so she repressed her regrets, and could soon write gaily to her sister:
“I am becoming more and more reconciled to the idea of departure. We have lived long enough in this neighborhood; the Basingstoke balls are certainly on the decline; there is something interesting in the bustle of going away, and the prospect of spending future summers by the sea or in Wales is very delightful.
For a time we shall now possess many of the advantages which I have often thought of with envy in the wives of sailors or soldiers. It must not be generally known, however, that I am not sacrificing a great deal in quitting the country, or I can expect to inspire no tenderness, no interest in those we leave behind.”
A move to Bath
It was fortunate that she had a hopeful disposition to bear her up throughout the worries of house-hunting, and the inevitable discomforts of “a move,” for Cassandra was away at the time, and Mrs. Austen being in delicate health, all the burden fell upon Jane.
Mr. Austen wished to live in Bath, where Mrs. Austen had a married sister, Mrs. Leigh Perrot; so in May 1801 Jane and her parents moved to Bath, where they were to stay with their relatives till they found a house.
Jane’s account of the journey brings before us the gap that railroads have made between her days and ours, for “our journey was perfectly free from accident or event; we changed horses at the end of every stage and paid at almost every turnpike. We had charming weather, hardly any dust, and were exceedingly agreeable as we did not speak above once in three miles.
“We had a very neat chaise from Devizes; it looked almost as well as a gentleman’s, at least as a very shabby gentleman’s. In spite of this advantage, however, we were above three hours coming from thence to the Paragon, and it was half after seven by your clocks before we entered the house. We drank tea as soon as we arrived; and so ends the account of our journey, which my mother bore without any fatigue.”
Composing nothing of importance at Bath
In spite of its dullness, Bath suited both Mr. and Mrs. Austen in many ways, and before long they and their daughters were settled at 4 Sydney Terrace. Sometime later they moved to Green Park Buildings and were there till Mr. Austen’s death in the spring of 1805, when, after a short residence in lodgings in Gay Street, his widow and daughters left Bath “for good.”
Whether the life there had been too full of small bustles for authorship to be easy, or whether the declining health of her parents occupied her too fully for writing, the fact remains that Jane Austen composed nothing of importance while at Bath; perhaps the failure of Northanger Abbey in 1803 disheartened her for a time from further efforts.
One story she did begin, but it was never finished, nor even divided into chapters, so that she cannot have thought seriously of publishing it, and it certainly would not have satisfied her in its present state.
Moving once again, to Southampton
Her next home was in Southampton, where her mother took a house with a garden in Castle Square, and there, Jane was established for four more years of her fast-shortening life.
A friend of hers, Martha Lloyd, to whom she constantly refers in her letters, came to live with them, and this was a source of great happiness to Jane, who frequently mentions her in terms of warm affection. Ultimately Miss Lloyd married Frank Austen, Jane’s youngest brother; but this connection, which would have given her so much pleasure, did not take place till several years after Jane herself had passed away.
The Southampton house was a pleasant one, but the Austens never took root comfortably there, and it is significant of how little Jane felt at home in it, that she wrote absolutely nothing during her four years of Southampton life; not even as much as she had accomplished at Bath.
She had come under circumstances of loss and sorrow which would probably have made any place unattractive to her, and her mother and sister evidently shared her feeling, for as soon as an opportunity occurred of changing their home they gladly seized it.
For some time, Jane had felt herself only a sojourner in strange towns, not really “at home” anywhere; and though she seldom complained of this feeling, it showed itself in the way she had dropped her favorite home pursuit of writing. Now, after the move to Chawton, she dwelt among her own people, and to such a domestic nature as hers, this was a great boon.
A brother comes through
Edward Austen—or Edward Knight as he had now become—deserves the warm gratitude of all Jane Austen’s readers for the arrangement by which his sister found herself again in a real “home,” and felt able to take up once more the writing that she had almost entirely laid aside after leaving Steventon.
As one would like to know whether, on leaving her first home, she ever realized that in that quiet parsonage she had laid the foundations of worldwide fame, so one longs to know whether, on settling at Chawton, she guessed that she should there attain the zenith of her powers and see at least some measure of her future success.
Probably neither idea ever occurred to her; she was too simple-minded to think much of herself and her works at any time, and her principal feeling would have been a peaceful satisfaction at finding herself once more in a house that she could really call “home,” blessed with the continual companionship of her sister, as well as her dearest friend, and enjoying the country life that was associated with her earliest childish recollections.
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May 17, 2022
bell hooks, Poet, Essayist, & Public Intellectual
In her lifetime of sixty-nine years, bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins, September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021) became internationally recognized and highly acclaimed as a prolific writer, beloved poet, university professor, public intellectual, social activist, and cultural critic.
Her legacy of written work (which included forty books) and her contributions to the public discourse on the intersectionality of race, gender, love, feminism, and capitalism is inestimable.
Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale stated, “Her impact extended far beyond the United States; many women from all over the world owe her a great debt.”
The influential writer and thinker Roxane Gay tweeted, “Oh, my heart, bell hooks. May she rest in power. Her loss is incalculable.”
Since 2004, hooks had served as the Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College, a liberal arts institution near Lexington, Kentucky that offers its students free tuition. In 2014, she established the bell hooks Institute at Berea College and three years later, in 2017, she donated her papers to its collection.
“The family is honored that Gloria received numerous awards, honors, and international fame for her works as a poet, author, feminist, professor, cultural critic, and social activist. We are proud to just call her sister, friend, confidante, and influencer,” the family’s statement concluded.
“Poetry sustains life … Of this I am certain. There is no doubt in my mind that the pain of poverty, whether material or emotional lack, can be eased by the power of language. For in that misunderstood childhood of mine, I found that sanctuary of poetry. It restored me, allowed me to come back from the place of roundedness and sadness to a recognition of beauty.” (from Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life by bell hooks, 1999)
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Early life and educationHopkinsville, Kentucky, where bell hooks was born on September 25, 1952, is a small rural town located in the southwestern corner of the state. Her father was a janitor and postal worker. Her mother worked as a maid for white families, and later as a homemaker.
When hooks was growing up, every aspect of Hopkinsville was segregated. She didn’t attend any non-segregated schools until nearly the end of high school.
hooks learned the intricacies of her Southern town’s racist and sexist structure and how to function within those boundaries from the close-knit African American community of Hopkinsville. From an early age, she knew she had to leave Hopkinsville and considered the liberating possibilities of education as her ticket out of town.
hooks’ family didn’t understand her need for an inner life, which included her compulsion to write in her journal, her passion for words, and obsessive reading. For hooks, writing was a needed relief to shield her from criticism.
“Living as we did — on the edge — we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out.” (from Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks, 2000)
Literary influences
By the time she left Kentucky for Stanford in 1971, hooks’ literary influences were Zora Neale Huston, William Wordsworth, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lorraine Hansberry, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Buddhism, and the Beat poets.
She distinguished herself at Stanford with a degree in English Literature in 1974. She then furthered her academic credentials with a master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976 and a doctorate in English Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1983. Her doctoral thesis was on Toni Morrison.
Becoming bell hooks
In the late 1970s in Northern California, hooks began to write and publish poetry and defined herself as a “cultural worker on the left.”
She began to use the pen name bell hooks. The name was chosen in honor of her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. The lowercase spelling signified for the reader to pay attention to the substance of the book and not the writer.
Beginning in 1976, hooks began her professorial career teaching Ethnic studies and English Literature at the University of Southern California. hooks had an extraordinary career as a university professor.
After teaching at the University of Southern California, hooks taught at Stanford University, Yale University, Oberlin College in Ohio, and the City College of New York. In 2014 she became the Distinguished Professor in Residence Berea College near Lexington, Kentucky.
“As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.” (from Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks, 2000)
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bell hooks in 2009
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In 1981, the nonfiction book she began during her undergraduate days at Stanford, was completed and published. Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism remains a landmark book of progressive ideas that seem commonplace now: the idea of recognizing and reconciling how the historical intersections of race, gender, and feminism are inextricably intertwined and how these factors have inhibited our roles in the present time.
hooks was referring to the reluctance of many Black women to form an alliance with a movement that had been alienated from: the leaders of the early Women’s movement were invariably white, were disinclined to mention Gay and Lesbian Rights, and were dismissive of the experiences of poorer women and women of color.
Ain’t I a Woman? has become a classic: hooks examines the history of slavery in the United States and the continuing dehumanization of Black women. It critiques the revolutionary politics that have risen against white supremacy.
“A devaluation of Black womanhood occurred as a result of the sexual exploitation of Black women during slavery that has not altered in the course of hundreds of years.” (bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman by bell hooks, 1981)
The “oppositional gaze is another of hooks’ most prominent analyses. In 1992 hooks published a collection of essays Black Looks: Race and Representation that critically looked at the significance and hierarchies of power structures by the way human beings simply look at one another.
In the days of American slavery, slaves were mercilessly beaten if their white slave owners thought they had dared to even look at them. The “oppositional gaze” has become one tool to challenge the historic power dynamic between the races. Personal agency and dignity are attained when a Black man or Black woman meet and hold the gaze of their oppressors.
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bell hooks page on Bookshop.org* and Amazon*
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“Everywhere I go, people want to feel more connected. They want to feel more connected to their neighbors. They want to feel more connected to the world. And when we learn that through love we can have that connection, we can see the stranger as ourselves. And I think that it would be absolutely fantastic to have that sense of ‘Let’s return to kind of a utopian focus on love, not unlike the sort of hippie focus on love.’
Because I always say to people, you know, the 60’s focus on love had its stupid sentimental dimensions, but then it had these life-transforming dimensions … I tell this to young people, you know, that we can love in a deep and profound way that transforms the political world in which we live in.” (from a 2000 NPR interview)
The comments above are from an interview hooks gave in 2000 on her recently published book, All About Love: New Visions. All About Love has become a classic book on the varying natures of love: ideas on how to reverse our cultural training and become more open to giving and receiving love.
hooks defines the aspects of love: affection, respect, recognition, commitment, trust, care, and open and honest communication. However, the aspects of customary and accepted aspects of love that stem from historic gender stereotypes i.e., domination, control, ego, and aggression, remain in place. Love cannot survive in a power struggle. Love is a verb, not a noun: how we act and carry ourselves through the world is always more lasting, more beautiful and profound, when we recognize that love is the core of ourselves.
All About Love has become another bell hooks classic. It is the book she felt she needed to write — a book to recommend to men when she was asked about love.
bell hooks’ legacy
The legions of bell hooks readers were invariably saddened to hear of her passing at an age that is considered far too young. bell hooks gave the world an influential and monumental legacy that is timeless, altering the way people view themselves and their place in society for generations.
bell hooks wanted her work to be about healing: she has more than accomplished that goal. It is hooks’ perception of herself that she shared with the Buddhist magazine, Tricycle in 1992 that has become encoded within myself:
“If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-act struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.”
bell hooks’ accomplishments are too numerous to list. Here is her filmography; list of awards; and of course, her numerous published books.
Contributed by Nancy Snyder, who writes about women writers and labor women. After working for the City and County of San Francisco for thirty years, she is now learning everything about Henry David Thoreau in Los Angeles.
More about bell hooks & sources Trailblazing feminist author, critic and activist bell hooks has died at 69 bell hooks, Pathbreaking Black Feminist, Dies at 69 Five bell hooks Quotes To Carry With You … What bell hooks had to say about the state of feminism in 1999 bell hooks Will Always be a Foundational Force in Black Feminist Thought Poets.org The Revolutionary Writing of bell hooks Reader discussion of bell hooks’ books on Goodreads Wikipedia. . . . . . . . . .
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May 14, 2022
Enigmatic Recluse or Sheltered Genius? A Tribute to Emily Dickinson
While scrolling through social media, it’s not usual for me to stop because a word or words caught my attention, and I simply had to go back and read the poem that caught my eye. More often than not, it turned out to be one of Emily Dickinson’s poems.
They’re light in the sense that she tended to use simple, everyday words, and often sparingly; yet, the images spring out from them to grab hold of one’s imagination. Or her deep concepts compressed into a few lines oblige one to delve deeper into her poems.
Her verses aren’t pretentious, though she was as well-read as any man of her era. Yet, it seems she didn’t choose grandiose words to impress anyone, especially as most of her poems went unpublished during her lifetime.
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White Quill
Paddling for meanings were critics’ boats.
Hero, or champion, for rebels, and misfits?
Decriers? Supporters? There were wide rifts.
Her words used in world in countless quotes.
Water-shed poet, was worthy; of note.
She died thinking was wasted rare gift.
Yet, on gold spirals her name’s been writ.
A thousand critiques her verse set afloat.
Does mystical sub-text peers from beneath?
With the widest palette, so finely she drew.
Colours abound in wisdom’s white sheath.
Fresh breezes, soft chills, a green so blue,
Broad issues, sweeping scenes, minute details,
For centuries they’ll uncover more veils.
(by Sultana Raza, inspired by Emily Dickinson)
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More about Emily Dickinson
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My path crossed with Emily Dickinson’s verse when I was a teenager growing up in India, and I must confess that I wasn’t exactly taken in by her words. Perhaps because at that time we had to read her poems related to death and mortality at school, which aren’t the main pre-occupations of most teenagers.
Somehow, an image of an aging lady with one foot in the grave formed in my mind. One of my mentors tried to get me into her poems, but at that time I couldn’t understand why she used to admire Dickinson’s lines so much. On the other hand, I could understand Sylvia Plath’s works with frightening ease. Her words talked to me much more than those of Dickinson.
While I still appreciate Plath’s poems, my admiration for Dickinson has grown by leaps and bounds. It would be impossible to outline all the facets of her poems, since they’re so varied and deep at the same time. It’s amazing how much she could write about the vast canvas of life and beyond with so few words, while ensconced in her room.
Perhaps it’s ironic that someone so reclusive, who had traveled very little beyond her own State of Massachusetts could know so much about the evolution of humanity. Possibly, some writers and artists need to be outsiders to be able to observe all the layers of society critically from afar.
Are all women social animals?
Although plenty of authors or poets loved to be in the thick of things, even in the limelight, which helped to build their reputation. In stark contrast to Emily Dickinson, Colette (1873 –1954) preferred being on stage to scratching with her pen on an obstinate sheet of paper in an isolated room.
For another example, Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937) came into the world about thirty-two years after Emily and was able to distill her experiences of socializing in the upper-class circles of New York and travels in Europe in her insightful novels. However, Wharton wasn’t exactly a typical socialite. Both Wharton and Dickinson used to write in their bedrooms, except that the former wrote while sitting in bed in the morning. She used to drop her finished sheets of paper to the floor, which an employee would pick up and assemble later.
Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) didn’t mingle all that much in society, especially when she was obliged to reside in Bath with her family. Though her keen wit and pithy observations were present from an early age, possibly she didn’t find inane rounds of socializing to be quite as interesting as it was for most young girls, unless they provided fodder for her novels.
The Brontë sisters led an even more secluded life at Haworth than Jane Austen, except for their forays in Brussels and in other households in England to work as governesses. Their novels focus on a slice of society different from that in Austen’s novels. At the same time, their works are often praised for their intensity.
Apparently, Emily Dickinson was interested in Charlotte Brontë’s (1816 – 1855) biography, according to biographer Alfred Habegger. It seems to denote that Emily was aware of, or sensible to the role a female writer could play in society.
She could have published using a male pseudonym, as was the case of the Brontë sisters who initially published under the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Or she could have followed the example of George Eliot (1819 – 1880), or the French writer George Sand (1804 –1876).
Reticence
Why she chose to publish so little during her lifetime is one of the enduring mysteries surrounding Emily Dickinson. Only about ten or eleven poems managed to trickle onto the pages of newspapers while she was still wielding her plume. Unlike her, another genius, John Keats, died regretting that his works would never become well known.
Though Keats didn’t formulate the phrase inscribed on his grave, “Here lies One Whose Name was writ on Water,” it encapsulates his thoughts to a certain degree. Both Keats and Emily Dickinson found nature to be a great source of inspiration and penned numerous poems exploring it mysteries.
Through a bird’s eye
Curiously enough, Dickinson’s poem, “A Bird, came down the Walk –” is reminiscent of Keats’s letter #XXII, to Benjamin Bailey. written on November 22, 1817, where he wrote: “I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness—I look not for it if it be not in the present hour, — nothing startles me beyond the moment. The Setting Sun will always set me to rights, or if a Sparrow come before my Window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.”
Dickinson seems to be seeing the world through the existence of a bird in her poem as well:
A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,
And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass –
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass –
He glanced with rapid eyes,
That hurried all abroad –
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head. –
Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers,
And rowed him softer Home –
Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,
Leap, plashless as they swim.
Both of these poets seem to become part of another sentient being, the better to live in its reality or experience existence through its mind, or lens. This merging of the self with an organic entity of nature is part of a mystical phenomena. It also represents a cutting off from human reality, an escape from the humdrum business of daily routines, or a foray into another dimension.
Dickinson may have locked herself in her room towards the end of her life, but the entire world was spilling out from her quill onto her pages. Keats did not travel to Italy or Greece when he was still composing poetry, but his explorations of antiquity through his surreal forays into dreamscapes could lead the readers to believe he knew of these places firsthand.
Dickinson may have had a limited social circle, yet her poems appeal to all sorts of people. Both these poets died thinking their work would be read by a limited number of people, yet their work grew deep roots and flourished all over the world. While Keats was quite ambitious, it’s not known how Dickinson intended for her poems to be treated after her demise.
Ensconced genius
It seems that Dickinson was writing as a way of self-expression. It’s rare for a writer of such skill to practice their craft without keeping an eye on potential readers. Many writers do scribble away for fame, riches, or glory.
After Oscar Wilde was exiled to France, he couldn’t come to terms with his notoriety and relative obscurity since he had enjoyed the limelight for many years in England and America. His literary output dwindled and his greatest works are those created while he was hobnobbing with well-known names in London. His most famous (though unverified) quote is “I have nothing to declare but my genius,” when questioned by a customs officer in New York in 1882.
Pure outpourings
In stark contrast, Emily Dickinson kept her genius hidden even from her own family for her entire life. It’s a pity that she didn’t feel that her immediate social circle would be receptive enough to share her oeuvres with them. But since she didn’t have any pressure from her peers, critics, or even friends, she was free to explore and experiment.
Though she may not have experimented consciously, she wrote what came naturally to her. Keats said in his letter (XXXIX) to John Taylor written on 27 February 1818, “Another axiom — That if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all,” yet he revised his poems many times before sending them to friends or publishers.
It seems that Dickinson didn’t do a lot of revisions to her poems. Perhaps the sheer, staggering number of them— about 1800 — wouldn’t have allowed for extensive revisions. She composed about 800 poems in her most productive period from 1861 to 1865.
There’s a natural flow in her poems, punctuated by long dashes, giving the impression that they were written impulsively, or unrestrainedly, as opposed to deliberate crafting, which could have resulted in an interruption of that flow.
Her output can be seen as “pure,” since her motivations don’t seem to be affected by recognition from her peers, critics, the public, or monetary gain. She didn’t need to please anyone, nor was she afraid of any critical reception. In that sense, her poems can be seen as a rare expression of the authentic self.
Self-seclusion
Dickinson possessed a self that seemed to be detached from worldly concerns, while still living with her family in a civilized (and religious) town with intellectual leanings. However, she must have had some inkling of her own genius.
Her seclusion can also be interpreted in symbolic terms: she was conscious of the fact that she was different from the others. Her visions and mystical journeys set her apart, as did her acute observations about humanity, nature, and mortality. Some of her poems seem to be forays and explorations of her unconscious self, and inquiries into the mysteries of the universe.
The ties that bind
According to biographer Alfred Habegger, since her father discouraged women from expressing themselves in public, that may have curbed any impulse to publish, or at least share, her poems. However, even after he passed away in 1874, she still didn’t take any initiative to see them in print.
It’s ironic that her father and brother are now known in the world because they were her relatives, and not the other way around, though at the time, the men in the family were supposed to be the most important. Often, childless women were supposed to take care of their elderly parents, and even now, unless an artist/writer can make a living from their work, it’s not taken seriously by those around them.
It’s a pity that attitudes haven’t changed all that much. Few women are lucky to be supported by others at the beginning of their creative journey.
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10 Well-Loved Poems by Emily Dickinson
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Could it be that Dickinson didn’t think the world was ready to receive her poems? This is reminiscent of the steps taken by Swedish artist Hilma Af Klint (1862 – 1944), who packed away her paintings because she believed that the Swedish society of her time wasn’t ready for her works.
Both Dickinson and Klint portray mystical ideas in their works, albeit in different mediums and ways. Klint was one of the first artists in the Western world to depict abstract, often geometrical forms as a way to channel spiritual concepts gleaned from her association with the Theosophical Society (a spiritual movement inspired by Eastern philosophy).
Though Dickinson grew distant from organized religion, however, her deeply spiritual and mystical side comes across in numerous poems, such as “You’ll know it — as you know ’tis Noon —,” or “One Blessing had I than the rest,” “As Watchers hang upon the East,” “A Tongue — to tell Him I am true!”
Eastern threads
In her vast body of works, some of her verses seem to express Sufi ideas in the sense that the poem or the lyrics can be interpreted on at least two levels. For example, in “Fitter to see Him, I may be,” the poet could be referring to another mortal. At a deeper level, the person referred to could be the Creator of the universe. “I’ve nothing else — to bring, You know —” and “I think to Live — may be a Bliss” could be about the Creator as well.
Her Master poems, such as “The Master / He fumbles at your spirit” can be interpreted via the Sufi philosophy of expressing love for the Creator through romantic, mystical poetry. Rumi, Hafez, Sa’adi, Kabir, or Hazrat Inayat Khan are some well-known Sufi poets. A comparison of famous Sufi poems with those Dickinson’s verses would be an onerous research project yet would yield delightful and fruitful results.
While Rumi and Omar Khayyam are the best-known Sufi poets in the West, Sufi poetry has been written in many languages, including Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and Punjabi. Its appeal is universal. The fact that Dickinson’s works can be compared to so many schools of thought is a testimony to the pervasiveness of her ideas across cultures.
A vast universe waiting to be explored
While Dickinson collected some of her poems into small hand-sewn books she called fascicles, the poems written later in life did not get this special treatment. Fortunately, she didn’t destroy her compositions; she simply left them hidden in her room.
That seemed to say that she’d given these poems to the world — now, what was the world going to do with them? Though it took a while for critical reception to warm up to her unconventional style, critics in the 1920s finally caught up with her avant-garde, experimental structures.
No matter how many research papers or books are published about Dickinson’s work, there’s still a vast universe waiting to be explored in her hand-sewn fascicles. More gems are waiting to surface, as readers are still grappling with her enormous output. For example, if a researcher started following her treatment on the subject of birds in her poems, they would need to cover a lot of ground.
The pages on which Dickinson wrote could be compared to feathers that allowed her to fly. She painted each sheet with extraordinary ideas and images; examining each one in detail would require many lifetimes. Her work invites as wide a readership as possible, as it lends itself to multiple interpretations. No wonder she’s soared above so many poets, not only from her lifetime, but also ours.
Hilma Af Klint passed away in 1944, leaving instructions that the boxes containing her paintings should be opened twenty years after her death. It turned out she’d been a prolific painter and had left nearly 1,200 paintings as her legacy to an unappreciative world. It took another twenty years before her paintings gained some traction with an international audience.
Both Emily Dickinson and Hilma Af Klint were hugely productive, yet had to be secretive about their respective oeuvres for various reasons. Their works had mystical overtones, and both turned out to be ahead of their times.
While they can teach us innumerable concepts, perhaps one thing we can learn from them is to indulge in creative expression regardless of the circumstances, or the potential reception of the work. What would the world have been like if Emily lived for many more fruitful years, rather than passing away at age fifty-five?
Contributed by Sultana Raza: Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza’s creative non-fiction has appeared in countercurrents.org, Litro, Gnarled Oak, Kashmir Times, and A Beautiful Space. Her 100+ articles (on art, theatre, film, and humanitarian issues) have appeared in English and French. An independent scholar, Sultana Raza has presented many papers related to Romanticism (Keats) and Fantasy (Tolkien & GRR Martin) in international conferences.
Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Columbia Journal, The New Verse News, London Grip, Classical Poetry Society, spillwords, Poetry24, Dissident Voice, and The Peacock Journal. Her fiction has received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train Review (USA), and has been published in Coldnoon Journal, Szirine, apertura, Entropy, and ensemble (in French). She has read her fiction/poems in India, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, England, Ireland, the U.S.
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