Nava Atlas's Blog, page 63

The Sundial by Shirley Jackson (1958)

The Sundial by Shirley Jackson (1916 – 1965) was this prolific American author’s fourth novel, published in 1958. It was generally well received, though she had not reached the peak as a novelist. She was, though, already famous for her iconic short story, “The Lottery,” and her amusing memoirs of prettied-up domestic life.

After the publication of her masterpiece novels, The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) Jackson struggled with writer’s block and agoraphobia, as well as a host of physical ailments. She died at age 48, a victim of poor health and habits.

A 1958 Chicago Tribune review called The Sundial  “entertaining, absorbing, and disturbing,” and encapsulated the plot succinctly:

An oddly assorted group dwells in the Halloran mansion, on a vast, walled estate. It is dominated ruthlessly by Mrs. Halloran, wife of the sickly heir of the founder, who may have murdered her own son to assure her control. Assorted relatives, a governess, and a young man of vague duties are the original entourage to which some random members are added.

To spinsterish Aunt Fanny, the founder’s daughter, a revelation is vouchsafed from her deceased father. The dreadful, fiery end of the world is imminent. All those in the safety of the father’s house will survive, to emerge to a new world.

Through successive revelations, the truth of this apocalypse impresses itself on all the group. The novel follows their preparations for the majestic even as the hour draws near. The suspense becomes great, the events are surprising, but how Miss Jackson plays out her end game is classified information.

 

A 1958 review of The Sundial by Shirley Jackson

From the original review by Robert Kirsch in The Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1958: Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial is bound to puzzle a great many readers and arouse some controversy as to its meaning. But this is to be expected from one of the great writers of parable of our time.

What most readers will appreciate, I fancy, is that she has turned from the Good Housekeeping type of humorous family chronicles Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. Miss Jackson has too much talent and too much depth for these child-rearing adventures.

The Sundial suggests the technique and quality of Miss Jackson’s best-known short story, The Lottery. It is out of time and out of place, filled with mysterious hints, suggestions, and symbolism — and open to almost every kind of interpretation.

The story concerns a dozen residents of the Halloran mansion, built on a small rise of ground, its lands ringed by a stone wall. It was the property of Mr. Halloran, lately dead, “a man who in the astonishment of finding himself extremely wealthy, could think of nothing better to do with his money than set up his own world.”

He wanted the house endlessly decorated and adorned, the grounds meticulously cared for. “His belief about the the house, only very dimly conveyed to the architect, the decorators and landscapers and masons and hod carriers who put it together, was that it should contain everything.

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See also: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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The other world, the one the Hallorans were leaving behind, was to be plundered ruthlessly for objects of beauty to go in and around Mr. Halloran’s house; infinite were the delights to be prepared for its inhabitants.

In the garden, “an inevitable focus was the sundial, set badly off center and reading WHAT IS THIS WORLD? In black gothic letters over the arched window on the landing was painted WHEN SHALL WE LIVE IF NOT NOW?

If the late Mr. Halloran could create the furnishings and design of his mansion world, he was somewhat less capable of determining the character of its population. The rule of it had gone to his thoroughly vicious daughter-in-law who was so jealous of her position that she is believed to have pushed her own son, Lionel, down the stairs to his death.

Lionel’s wife Maryjane is convinced that the old woman did it because “she couldn’t stand it if the house belonged to anyone else.” Lionel’s father is wheelchair-ridden and senile. He asks, “Is it Lionel who died?”

There are, in addition to the Hallorans, a select group of eccentrics. Most interesting and most eccentric is Aunt Fanny, the late Mr. Halloran’s daughter who is in touch with her father’s spirit and receives the message that the world outside the mansion is to be destroyed “from the sky and from the ground and from the sea … There will be a black fire and red water and the earth turning and screaming: this will come.”

To those in the house, the father’s message is: Tell them … that they will be saved. Do not let them leave the house; say to them: Do not fear, the father will guard the children.”

This is the first of the mysterious events, signs and omens which come upon the Halloran mansion: a snake, shining and full of light, appears in the living room; a guest comes to blackmail Mrs. Halloran; a rhinestone stickpin is jammed through her photograph in a voodoo touch.

If in outline the story appears unbelievable or too confusing, in Miss Jackson’s telling this is never an issue. She achieves Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” for the most grotesque, the most macabre elements. While you read, you believe.

After the entertainment you may try to puzzle out the meaning. Is it a political fable on internationalism vs isolationism? Is it a parable of the decay of an aristocracy? The answer is bound to vary. A novel such as this is a kind of literary Rorschach test. The right answer is the one which you provide for yourself.

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The Sundial by Shirley Jackson on Amazon

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The Sundial is reissued in 2014

Thank goodness Shirley Jackson’s works continue to be read and studied, so that her work isn’t relegated to the ash heap of forgotten midcentury literature. The Sundial was reissued in a Penguin Classics edition in 2014, along with another early novel by Jackson, The Bird’s Nest. In a review in The National Post (Toronto, Canada), March 1, 2014, Naben Ruthnum wrote:

“The Sundial belongs to the pre-apocalyptic genre, a small grouping of texts that lacks the bleak glamour and heroism of its post-apocalyptic cousin. In Jackson’s book, a baseless prophecy of the imminent end allows for the creation of a miniature world of belief, manipulation, and a gently ruthless struggle for power on the walled-in grounds of the Halloran mansion. The generations of women in the house are unwilling to leave the place they consider their birthright, and are equally unwilling to surrender control to each other.”

The reviewer goes on to comment on the sexual frustration demonstrated by the female protagonists as well as their mental fragility, a foreshadowing of Eleanor, the fragile heroine of The Haunting of Hill House. Ruthnum concludes:

“The characters in [Jackson’s] short stories and novels usually inhabit small towns in the eastern states, tiny communities with a mansion or two looming over little houses, all dredged in the Waspishness of the Vermont and Connecticut towns where Jackson lived with her children, pets, and her husband, the Jewish academic Stanley Hyman. 

The family was rarely popular with their neighbors, who pulled charming pranks such as soaping swastikas onto the windows. The unease of a remarkable woman in the community that surrounds and despises or fears her, along with her own inability to leave a home and life she has become inextricably attached to — this is an abiding theme of Jackson’s life and work, the one that haunts these books.”

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Babette’s Feast: The 1958 Short Story by Isak Dinesen, and the 1987 film

It may be fair to say that the acclaimed 1987 film, Babette’s Feast, is better known than the short story by Isak Dinesen upon which it’s based. In fact, it’s possible that fans of the film aren’t aware that it’s based on a short story by Dinesen, nor even anything about the author. So let’s say a few words about her first.

Isak Dinesen (1885 – 1962) was the nom de plume of the Danish author best known for her 1937 memoir Out of Africa, detailing her life as the owner of a coffee plantation in Kenya. Born Karen Christenze Dinesen into a family of aristocrats, merchants, and landed gentry, she was later known after marriage as Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The marriage, through which she became a Baroness, didn’t last, but it left her with the lifelong effects of syphilis.

Dinesen eventually had to give up the coffee plantation. She was above all else a storyteller, and her first book, Seven Gothic Tales (1934), was published soon after she returned to Denmark from Africa, broke, and alone. This collection of short stories was a surprise hit both in the U.S. and Europe. Short form fiction remained Dinesen’s mainstay throughout her writing career.

“Babette’s Feast” was originally published in the 1958 collection titled Anecdotes of Destiny. The other stories in the book are “The Diver,” “Tempests,” “The Immortal Story,” and “The Ring.” A typical review in the Wisconsin State Journal  summed up the book’s charms, praising Dinesen’s skill in the short story genre:

“In a world where nothing is new, she thinks up new plots. In a world where styles merge and flatten out, hers maintains its unmistakable flavor. In a world where facts rules, she deals with fancy.” Indeed, it takes a consummate storyteller like Dinesen to dream up a tale like “Babette’s Feast.”

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Learn more about Isak Dinesen

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A plot summary of “Babette’s Feast”

The film is extraordinarily true to the story, so this summary applies to both. The story takes place in a tiny, remote fictional town called Berlevaag, which sits at the base of a fjord in Norway. It looks “like a child’s toy-town of little wooden pieces painted gray, yellow, pink, and many other colors.”

Central to the story are two sisters, Martine and Philipa, the daughters of a Dean, the town’s religious leader, who founded a pious ecclesiastic party. At the start of the story we meet the two sisters, already aged, living in the house left to them by their father, and learn that they have “a French maid-of-all-work, Babette,” who “had come to that door twelve years ago as a friendless fugitive, almost mad with grief and fear.”

We then travel back in time to when Martine and Phillipa were extraordinarily beautiful young women, circa 1854. A young army officer named Lorens Loewenhielm had been sent by his angry father to stay with his aunt in Berlevaag, to straighten out his wayward habits and gambling debts. While there, he spotted Martine in the marketplace and fell in love immediately. For reasons he couldn’t quite understand, he was unable to communicate his feelings to her, and resolved to mend his ways and devote himself to building a stellar military career.

A year later, a great singer from Paris, Achille Papin, happened to be passing through Berlevaag. When he heard Philippa sing in church with the voice of an angel, he offered her father, free of charge, to allow him to give her singing lessons, secretly planning to introduce her to the world of opera in the wider world.

In the course of acting out Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni, with Philippa, he kissed her. Awakened, perhaps, to a desire she didn’t want to face, she went to her father and told him that she no longer wanted singing lessons. Achille Papin, demoralized and regretful, took the first boat from Berlevaag.

Fifteen years after this incident, on a rainy night in June of 1871, “the mistresses of the house opened the door to a massive, dark, deadly pale woman …” who was, of course, Babette (the Dean had already passed away by this time). With this strange woman  was a letter written in French, by Philippa’s would-be suitor, Achille Papin, explaining that Babette’s husband and son had been shot in violence of the Civil war taking place in France and she was also in mortal danger.

Papin implored them to take her in. The sisters, whose father had since died, lived simply and piously, and told her they couldn’t afford to employ her. Babette insisted that she would work for free, for “If they sent her away she must die.”

Babette, at first bewildered and forlorn, soon settled in and became a trusted figure, not only in the sisters’ little household, but among the townspeople. Twelve years passed in harmony, and Babette rarely referred to her life in France.

One day, though, Babette mentioned that she held a French lottery ticket that a friend had been renewing for her each year, hoping that one day she might win the grand prix of ten thousand francs.

The hundredth centenary of the Dean’s birth was approaching and the sisters wished to do something in honor of their father’s memory. They wished to include the townspeople who had been among his small flock of congregants. Ever fewer in number, aging, cranky, and harboring old grudges amongst themselves, the prospect was daunting:

“The sins of old Brothers and Sisters came, with late piercing repentance like a toothache, and the since of others against them came back with bitter resentment, like a poisoning of the blood.”

As their father’s hundredth birthday grew closer, Babette received a letter from France, the first she’d received in all the time she had lived in Berlevaag. She had won the ten thousand francs from the lottery ticket she had so long held out hope for.

The news spread, and all the townspeople were convinced that Babette would return to France. “Birds will return to their nests and human beings to the country of their birth.” The entire town lamented what they feared would be Babette’s imminent departure, for they had grown fond of her. The sisters dreaded the prospect most of all and wondered if Babette would at least remain with them through the fifteenth of December, the date of their father’s birthday.

On a September evening, Babette approached the sisters for a favor, imploring them to allow her to cook a dinner to celebrate the Dean’s birthday. The sisters, not having intended to serve more than a plain dinner with coffee, were taken aback. But they relented. There was just one more detail, though — Babette wished to pay for the dinner out of her lottery winnings. The sisters protested but Babette insisted, saying that in all the twelve years she had served them, she’d never asked for any other favor. And so, consent was given.

In November, Babette embarked on a journey, telling her mistresses that she needed a leave of a week to ten days to make preparations and buy goods for the celebration. In due time, she returned, and shortly thereafter, the goods she had purchased arrived in Berlevaag.

Wheelbarrow-loads of wine began to arrive at the little house, along with an enormous tortoise destined to become soup. There are details in this story that are gross for vegans like myself; there’s one gross-out detail that will disturb non-vegans as well. and in the film version, I had to shield my eyes during some of the food preparation scenes.

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Anecdotes of Destiny by Isak Dinesen on Amazon

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The day of the feast finally arrives, and with it, a steady snowfall. The guests, some dozen of them, began to arrive. Old Mrs. Lowenhielm, now ancient and deaf, was bringing her nephew, he who had so admired Martine, and was now a general and the husband of a lady-in-waiting in Queen Sophia’s court.

The table, covered in linen and laden with polished plates and multiple glasses, greeted the elderly Brothers and Sisters, as they were referred to, who had been followers of the Dean. A young redheaded lad assisted Babette, bringing forth one course after another of the most exquisitely prepared dishes. Wines were decanted, glasses kept full. The elderly celebrants, who usually spurned anything but the simplest of foods, were largely silent, eating and drinking everything that was put before them, course after abundant course.

But rather than grow heavy, “the convives grew lighter in weight and lighter of heart the more they ate and drank … It was, they realized, when man has not only altogether forgotten but has firmly renounced all ideas of food and drink that he eats and drinks in the right spirit.”

As the evening progressed, old grudges were forgiven, rifts were healed, and “time itself had merged into eternity.” The Dean’s daughters and the townspeople of Berlevaag experienced something that words were inadequate to describe. Babette’s feast was not only an incredible success, but something of a miracle.

And what of Babette? Was she going to return to her native France, as all feared and suspected? To say more would be something of a spoiler, but if you’ve read this far, you may as well know that the answer is no. However, there’s more to it than that, and that’s the miracle of this rich story, which in just over forty pages nearly achieves the depth of a novel.

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Watch Babette’s Feast (1987 film) on Amazon

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Babette’s Feast, the 1987 film

I have to admit that, much as I’d heard about the film, I’d not seen it until recently. I watched it just after reading the story, which, for me, was the perfect way to go. It’s often a disappointment to see a film interpretation after enjoying the original book version, but that wasn’t the case at all. The movie was the written story brought to life, amplifying it beautifully. And after seeing the film, I went back and read the story once again, now picturing the characters and settings more vividly and with greater understanding.

Out of Africa, the film based on Dinesen’s memoir, and starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, was an American production that came out in 1985. Babette’s Feast was the first of Isak Dinesen’s books to be produced in Denmark, and the first Danish film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (1987). The cast consisted of Danish, Swedish, and French actors.

The role of Babette was originally offered to renowned French actress Catherine Deneuve, but when she hesitated, the role went to another French actress, Stéphane Audran. The role of the sisters and their erstwhile suitors were performed by actors highly regarded in their native lands, yet virtually unknown to American audiences.

In addition to the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Babette’s Feast won major awards in In Denmark, received a Cannes Film Festival special prize, and won several other awards. It’s a quiet, contemplative film that’s perfect for a winter evening. As mentioned earlier, pairing it with a reading of the story, either before or after, makes for a wonderful book-to-film (or film-to-book) experience.

Scene from Babette’s Feast, the 1987 film

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Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall (August 12, 1880 – October 7, 1943), British novelist and poet, is remembered as the author of groundbreaking lesbian literature. Her most enduring work is the controversial 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness. Hall’s struggles with love and identity worked their way into her fiction and contributed to a complicated, often unhappy life.

Born in Bournemouth, Hampshire, Marguerite Radclyffe Hall’s father was a wealthy Englishman with the unusual moniker Radclyffe Radclyffe-Hall, and her mother, Mary Jane Diehl, was American. Her parents’ marriage fell apart when she was quite young due to her father’s continuous philandering and her mother’s mental instability. Her mother’s remarriage to a professor of singing was also fraught with conflict, and young Marguerite was largely ignored.

Hall described herself as a “congenital introvert,” referring to an innate characteristic. The term comes from early 20th-century sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing and refers to a type of inborn gender reversal where women could be born with a masculine soul and vice versa. Though at the time the term referred more to homosexuality, the concept seems very much akin to what today is referred to as transgender.

Hall’s gender identity and love life informed her literary work. Given what we now know, it seems almost disrespectful to use the pronouns “her” and “she,” but since Hall has long been known in female terms, it would also seem odd to switch to masculine pronouns and perhaps confusing, in this context to use the more neutral “they” and “them.” So it is with apologies to the memory of Radclyffe Hall that we continue with the feminine pronouns.

 

Education and early works 

Hall attended King’s College in London and afterward attended school in Germany. It was during these years that she began writing verses, which went on to be collected into five volumes of poetry in the first two decades of the 1900s. Twixt Earth and Stars (1906) and A Sheaf of Verses: Poems (1908) were among the first. One of her best-known poems, The Blind Ploughman, was set to music by Coningsby Clarke. 

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Love affairs

In 1907, Hall met Mabel Batten in a spa in Germany. At the time, Hall was twenty-seven and Batten was fifty-one, with a husband, daughter, and grandchildren. They fell in love, and after the death of Batten’s husband, the two committed to each other. During their relationship, Batten gave Hall the nickname John. She preferred this name for the remainder of her life. 

In 1915, she fell in love with Batten’s cousin, Una Troubridge, a sculptor and wife of Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge. Within a year, Batten had passed away. Hall had her corpse embalmed with a silver crucifix on it that was blessed by the pope. She then moved in with Troubridge, despite the Church’s views on same-sex relationships. They lived in Kensington, London, and stayed together until Hall’s death.

Throughout Troubridge and Hall’s relationship, there were many other love affairs. For one, she fell in love with Evguenia Souline, a Russian émigrée, and had a long-term affair with her. Troubridge was aware of this affair and tolerated it, though not without pain.

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Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall

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First successes and a major literary prize

Much of Radclyffe Hall’s literary reputation rests on her best known novel, The Well of Loneliness, but her earlier books enjoyed a slew of successes in the years just preceding its publication. These included the novels The Forge, The Unlit Lamp, Adam’s Breed,

Following, a story in an American publication called the Independent Record (February 4, 1927) announces her winning a major literary prize called the Femina Prize, and outlines some of her background:

“This year’s award of the famous Femina Vie Heureuse prize, which is given each year by the leading French women’s magazine to the woman author of the best English novel published during the past twelve months, is of special interest to Americans.

The winner, Miss Radclyffe Hall, whose novel, Adam’s Breed, was published by Doubleday, Page and Company in 1926, is half American. Her book was entered in competition with Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and Liam O’Flaherty’s The Informer.

Radclyffe Hall is the daughter of an English father and an American mother. While she has always made her home in England, she has spent much time in the U.S. Adam’s Breed, the novel which received this distinguished recognition in France, was her first to be published in America. It was her fourth to appear in England.

She received her first encouragement from the late William Heinemann, whose firm became her publishers. He was so interested in her early stories that he urged her to write a novel and promised to consider it for publication. Although he didn’t live to see his prophecy fulfilled, it was her wish to justify his faith in her. That kept her at work for three years on a first novel, The Unlit Lamp, which won her some reputation in London.

The tall, rather sever, exquisitely tailored Hall, with her hair cut close and brushed smoothly back from a face of almost Greek perfection in outline, looks anything but a sentimentalist. And her books will amply justify her appearance. But she confesses with amusement that at the tender age of three, she was a rank sentimentalist, bursting into lyrics before she knew how to spell.”

 
The Well of Loneliness

Hall’s most famous work, The Well of Loneliness (1928), features a lesbian from an upper class family in England. The main character, Stephen Gordon, lives in isolation with her partner Mary Llewellyn. They journey through a homosexual relationship during an era that rejected this expression of sexuality poses the setting and plot of the novel.

Receiving pushback from critics for her “sexually deviant” novel, Hall was swept into legal battles. Though at first widely banned, its notoriety helped push the narratives of lesbians in Western literature to the forefront. Hall made it clear to her publisher that she wanted the original text published, declaring:

“I have put my pen at the service of some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world … So far as I know nothing of the kind has ever been attempted before in fiction.”

Surprisingly, The Well of Loneliness received more liberal treatment in American courts than it did in England. Justices dismissed charges of violation of Section 1141 of the Penal Law against Covici-Freide, Inc., American publishers of the book. The Court said:

“The book in question deals with a delicate social problem, which in itself cannot be said to be in violation of the law unless it is written in such a manner as to make it obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, and tends to deprave and corrupt minds open to immoral influences.”

After Hall’s death in 1943, the ban on The Well of Loneliness was eventually overturned on appeal. Although she was vindicated by the American verdict, she steered clear of equal controversy in her subsequent literary works. 

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Quotes by Radclyffe Hall

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Gender identity

Although Hall has long been described as a lesbian, it’s possible that she would have identified a trans man if that concept had been known during her time. She continued to call herself “John” after being given the nickname by her early lover, Mabel Batten. Hall nearly always dressed in suits and other men’s attire  and used masculine notions to self-describe. 

The Well of Loneliness is considered a trailblazing work of LGBTQ literature, though it has been criticized in some circles for portraying lesbian relationships as a rather heteronormative light. Still, it’s considered a classic. One can assume that Hall was using the protagonist to portray her sexuality and gender identity as she writes about wearing masculine clothing, having a masculine physique, and displaying masculine body language. 

 

Other Awards and Honors

Hall was given the Gold Medal of the Eichelberger Humane Award in 1930. She was listed at number sixteen in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes in The Pink Paper. 

In 1930, Hall received the Gold Medal of the Eichenberger Humane Award. She was a member of the PEN club, the Council of the Society of Psychical Research, and a fellow of the Zoological Society. 

Radclyffe Hall died of colon cancer in England at the age of 63 in the tiny town of Rye, East Sussex. She is buried at Highgate Cemetery in North London in the chamber of the Batten family, which includes Mabel, one of Hall’s early lovers. 

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Radclyffe Hall page on Amazon

More about Radclyffe Hall

On this site

The Well of Loneliness: Banned and on Trial for Obscenity
Quotes by Radclyffe Hall

Major Works 

Novels

The Forge (1924)
The Unlit Lamp (1924)
A Saturday Life (1925)
Adam’s Breed (1926)
Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (1926)
The Well of Loneliness  (1928)
The Master of the House (1932)
The Sixth Beatitude (1936)

Poetry

Twixt Earth and Stars (1906)
A Sheaf of Verses: Poems (1908)
Poems of the Past & Present  (1910)
Songs of Three Counties and Other Poems (1913)
The Forgotten Island (1915)
Rhymes and Rhythms (1948)

Biographies

Trials of Radclyffe Hall by Diana Souhami
Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing by Richard Dellamora
Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall by Joanne Glasgow
Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John by Sally Cline
Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall by Joanne Glasgow
Radclyffe Hall at The Well of Loneliness: A Sapphic Chronicle by Lovat Dickson
Our Three Selves: The Life of Radclyffe Hall by Michael Baker
Noël Coward & Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits by Terry Castle

More Information

Wikipedia
Reader discussion of Radclyffe Hall’s books on Goodreads

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10 Interesting Facts about the Brontë Sisters

It would be easy enough to compile interesting facts about the Brontë sisters each in her own right, but here we’ll look at the three together, since their lives were so intertwined. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, acknowledged literary geniuses, were close in age and with few exceptions, preferred one another’s company above anyone else’s.

The three Brontë sisters all cherished literary ambitions from an early age, and despite lives that were cut short by illness, secured a prominent place in the English literary canon.

The children of Maria Branwell Brontë and Reverend Patrick Brontë, the sisters were born in the West Yorkshire village of Thornton, England. They subsequently moved to Haworth, where they grew up along with their brother Branwell. Their mother died while the children were still very young, and their aunt Branwell moved in to help take care of them.

The young sisters were sent away to school with dire consequences

In 1824, Charlotte and her sisters Maria (their departed mother’s namesake), Elizabeth, and Emily were sent away from the Parsonage where they lived with their father and an aunt, to a school for daughters of the clergy in Cowan’s Bridge. Maria and Elizabeth fell ill while there and died of tuberculosis; Charlotte and Emily returned home.

It’s widely accepted that Charlotte modeled the Lowood school setting at the beginning of Jane Eyre on her experiences. She blamed the deaths of her sisters on the poor conditions at the school.

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Charlotte Brontë’s Quotes on Her Writing Life

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The Brontë siblings created imaginary worlds together

Charlotte, Emily, and Anne received little formal education after the Cowan’s Bridge school disaster. They, along with their brother Branwell, grew up creating an imaginary world called Angria. They put on plays, told stories, and created journals and magazines about the make-believe realm.

Anne and Emily, who remained closest to one another throughout their brief lives, also created Gondal, another fictional world comprised of four kingdoms. Of all the siblings, Emily had the most reticent and reclusive nature, so it’s not surprising that she took great comfort in creating and retreating to imaginary worlds.

 

At least two of the three sisters worked as governesses

Anne left home briefly to attend a boarding school while in her teens, and at age nineteen, began working as a governess. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, a young governess, is based on her experiences in this line of work, something she did for several years. The heroine’s story highlights the unrelenting hours, low pay, and accumulated humiliations that defined one of the only professions open to women.

Charlotte had returned to school in her teens, after which she worked as a teacher and then as a governess. Her most famous heroine, Jane Eyre, followed the same path. Emily’s occupation was at one point described as “future occupation, governess,” though it’s unclear that she worked at it for long, if at all. Leaving home for any length of time seemed to literally make her sick.

The sisters loathed the occupation of governess and didn’t relish the prospect of becoming teachers, either. All they had ever wanted was to write, as Charlotte put it, “We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors.”

 

Charlotte and Emily studied briefly in Brussels

In 1842, Charlotte and Emily left the parsonage for Brussels, Belgium for the Pensionnat Héger. They studied French, German, and literature, thinking that it might prepare them to be teachers or start their own school in the future. While there, Charlotte fell in love with the married head of school, Constantin Héger. She became obsessed with him, in fact, in a rather unhealthy way.

Charlotte’s experiences were used in the thinly disguised first novel, The Professor, which was published only after her death. Her novel Villette was also inspired by this period of her life.

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Self portrait by Branwell Brontë

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They struggled with their drug- and alcoholic-addicted brother

Though the sisters cared deeply about their brother Branwell, he was a constant thorn in their side. Alcoholic and possibly addicted to opium, he was a failed poet and had trouble holding down positions. Anne based the antagonist in her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in part on Branwell and his demons.

Branwell was a disappointment to everyone around him, but even more, to himself. He fancied himself an artist and a poet, but his efforts fame to naught. Undoubtedly that sense of perpetual failure drove him to drink and drugs. 

The sisters published an unsuccessful book of poems

In the mid-1840s, Charlotte discovered a stash of Emily’s poems and recognized the genius in them. She spearheaded the task of finding a home for a collected book of poems by herself and her two sisters. They took noms de plume Currer, Ellis, and Acton (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne respectively, and shared the faux surname Bell.

The book, dryly titled Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell’s Poems, finally found a publisher willing to take it on. As was customary, the authors were required to front the money for its printing. It was published in 1846 to few (though positive) reviews and humiliating sales totaling two copies.

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No Coward Soul is Mine: 5 Poems by Emily Brontë

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Anne and Emily found a publisher before Charlotte did

After the bruising experience of publishing of the poetry book, the sisters resolved to send out manuscripts of their respective novels, also under their pseudonyms — Charlotte’s The Professor, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Grey.

At the time — still in the 1840s — manuscripts were written by hand, so they could be submitted to only one publisher at a time. Charlotte’s novel was rejected by at least a half a dozen London publishers, each disappointment was a crushing blow.

Emily and Anne’s novels were both accepted by the same publisher, but not Charlotte’s. Meanwhile, though, she’d been working on Jane Eyre, and when another publisher rejected The Professor but asked to see a longer, more developed work, she had it at the ready. Jane Eyre was quickly sent to press and was an immediate sensation. Learn more about the Brontë sisters’ path to publication.

 

The three “Bells” were suspected of being the same person

Though Charlotte was the last to find a publisher, her novel, Jane Eyre, was the first to be published. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey came out several months later. There was a persistent rumor that the authors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre were one and the same:

“It was said that this was an earlier and ruder attempt of the same pen which had produced ‘Jane Eyre,’” Charlotte wrote, “Unjust and grievous error! We laughed at it at first, but I deeply lament it now.” Newspaper coverage of the books seemed to reinforce the notion that Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were the same person.

Charlotte and Anne were forced to travel to London to prove to Charlotte’s publisher that they were not the same person (Emily refused to join them) when Anne’s publisher sold The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to an American publisher under the false understanding that it was by the same author as the hugely successful Jane Eyre. Soon, the reading public accepted that the Bells were indeed three separate people; gradually, the sisters’ true identities came to light.

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Quotes from Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

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Charlotte was the only Brontë sibling that married

In 1839, Charlotte Brontë had declined a marriage proposal, writing: “I am not the serious, grave, cool-hearted individual you suppose; you would think me romantic and eccentric.” Anne may have at some point had a suitor that came to naught, but Emily barely wished to leave the parsonage.

Charlotte ultimately married Arthur Bell Nicholls, a curate in 1854. With her siblings all dead the marriage may have allayed the loneliness she must have felt living alone with her father in the parsonage. Her father bitterly opposed the marriage, though he gradually accepted it.

The marriage started happily but was tragically cut short. In 1855, Charlotte died at the age of thirty-eight, just a month shy of her thirty-ninth birthday, of complications due to pregnancy.

 

All the Brontës died tragically young

Branwell Brontë died at age thirty-one in September 1848, the official cause of death listed as “chronic bronchitis-marasmus,” a form of tuberculosis (then called consumption). His condition was surely aggravated by alcoholism and addiction to laudanum and opium.

Emily, who caught a chill at his funeral, died of tuberculosis barely three months later, at age thirty. Anne died in May of 1849, also of tuberculosis, age twenty-nine. And as mentioned above, Charlotte died several years later, nearly thirty-nine. Their father, Patrick Brontë, outlived all six of his children.

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10 Fascinating Facts About Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize Winner

Toni Morrison, born Chloe Ardelia Wofford (1931 – 2019), was an American novelist, editor, essayist,  and professor. Widely remembered for her work and achievements, there’s much more about her eventful life that many readers may not be aware of. We’ll explore 10 fascinating facts about Toni Morrison that may give you a glimpse at what shaped her to become the woman and writer that we’ve come to know and love. 

She was born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, in a working-class African-American family that influenced her love and passion for black culture as she grew up hearing folktales, songs, and storytelling. 

Her work spoke to many as it was focused on the black American experience and the struggles that they face. After the creation of the notable works including The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1974), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981),  and Beloved (1987), she received an abundance of awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature (1993), the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and many more. 

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25 Wise Quotes by Toni Morrison on Writing and Living

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Her love for literature started as a child 

Morrison’s parents instilled a sense of heritage and language through folktales, ghost stories, and songs traditional to the African-American heritage. As a result, she developed a love for literature and read frequently as a child. She had many favorite authors, including Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. 

 

Her childhood influenced her style of writing 

Morrison started her writing career as an undergrad with a workshop at Howard University. Growing up, Morrison says that her family was “intimate with the supernatural” and that they frequently used visions and signs to predict the future. 

Morrison’s parents made storytelling an important part of their household and was filled with storytelling among the children and the adults. As a result of her childhood, she felt that her writing was influenced by the storytelling in her past.

 
‘Toni’ was actually a nickname 

At the age of 12, Morrison became a Catholic and took on the baptismal name Anthony after Anthony of Padua. Years later when Morrison was a student at Howard University, people had a hard time pronouncing the name Chloe. From then on, she started going by her nickname, Toni, to avoid any further confusion with pronunciation.

 

She didn’t believe she was a good mother 

Morrison married Harold Morrison, an architect she met while studying at Howard University. They had two children but divorced in 1964, leaving her to care for two kids alone. She often felt as though she was not a good mother because she wanted to focus on her writing. “I did it ad hoc, like any working mother does,” she said.

She developed a habit of waking up at four in the morning to write, which led to the completion of her first novel, The Bluest Eye. Here is a recording of a 2015 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, in which she spoke about the regrets she carried about her personal life.

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Learn more about Toni Morrison

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She never remarried after her first husband 

Though she has never discussed the reason for her divorce, she hinted in the past that he wanted a more subservient wife. She said “he didn’t need me making judgments about him, which I did. A lot.” She never remarried after they parted ways. 

 
Her father witnessed a lynching

Morrison’s father grew up in Cartersville, Georgia. At the age of 15, he witnessed white people lynching two black businessmen who lived on his street. Soon after the lynching, her father moved to Lorain, Ohio, a racially integrated town, in hopes of escaping racism and gain better employment in Ohio’s industrial economy rather than sharecropping. 

Upon speaking of her father’s experience with the lynching, Morrison said “He never told us that he’d seen bodies. But he had seen them. And that was too traumatic, I think, for him.” 

 

She was one of the first black editors at Random House

In 1965, Morrison started working as a fiction editor at Random House in Syracuse, New York and was among one of the very few black editors at the company. Few knew much about her extracurricular writing activities until she published The Bluest Eye in 1973. 

After the publication of her book, Morrison said others at Random House “read the review in The New York Times.” She then said that “it got a really horrible review in The New York Times Book Review on Sunday, and then it got a very good Daily Review,” making her work known to a wider audience. 

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Morrison receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993

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She was the first African-American recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She made history as the first African-American woman to receive the honorary prize. It was awarded to Morrison, “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” 

When giving her Nobel speech, she used the power of storytelling to talk about a blind old black woman who is approached by a group of young people. They ask her, “Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature,  no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong?” Morrison then says, “Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story.”

 

A house fire damaged some of her manuscripts

The same year she was awarded the Nobel Prize (1993), Morrison’s home caught on fire in Grandview, N.Y. According to the Nyack Fire Department Chief Paul Wanamaker, about one hundred and twenty firefighters from two towns responded to a fire that was burning down an old four-story Colonial house. When Morrison went to inspect the damage, Wanamaker said that some of her manuscripts had gotten destroyed in the fire but had no further details. 

 

She was the first African-American to hold a named chair at an Ivy League University 

Among her other significant firsts, Morrison was also was the first to hold a named chair at an Ivy League University. In 1987, she was named the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University in New Jersey. 

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Skyler Isabella Gomez is a 2019 SUNY New Paltz graduate with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Black Studies. Her passions include connecting more with her Latin roots by researching and writing about legendary Latina authors. 

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Come Along with Me by Shirley Jackson (1968)

Come Along with Me is the novel Shirley Jackson (1919 – 1965) was working on at the time of her untimely death in 1965 at the age of forty-eight. This unfinished novel was collected in the book of the same title: Come Along with Me: Part of a novel, sixteen stories, and three lectures, and edited by Stanley Edgar Hyman, her husband at the time of her death.

Known for her stories and novels of psychological terror, including The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Jackson didn’t leave behind a huge body of work but what she did produce was hugely influential.

Jackson also published two memoirs of motherhood and family life, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, believed to be highly idealized versions of the messy reality of the Jackson-Hyman brood in their ramshackle Vermont home. Nevertheless, these works, too, influenced a tradition of “momoirs” carried on by the likes of Jean Kerr and Erma Bombeck.

Notably, the Come Along with Me collection includes “The Lottery,” the short story that catapulted Jackson to fame (and notoriety), and with it, a transcript of a lecture Jackson gave about it called “Biography of a Story.”

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Learn more about Shirley Jackson

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This description of Come Along with Me is from the 1968 Viking Press edition:

Come Along with Me is the title of the unfinished novel on which Shirley Jackson was working at the time of her death in 1965. A completed draft of the brilliant first section of that novel begins this posthumous collection of Jackson’s fiction and lectures as selected by her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, from pieces for the most part previously unpublished in book form.

Mr. Hyman has chosen a representative sampling of Jackson’s short stories, ranging from eerie encounters with the supernatural, as in “The Rock,” (on of five stories in the collection never before published anywhere) to lighthearted descriptions of “raising demons,” as in “Pajama Party.”

With characteristic deftness she pinpoints the idiosyncrasies of young women, repressed and precocious, of old women dreaming in their senility, of the understated but savage battle between country people and city interlopers.

Admirers of We Have Always Lived in the Castle will welcome further investigations into the mysterious effects of houses on people, in such tour de forces as “A Visit” and “The Little House.” The collection concludes with three lectures on the subject of writing, including another story about life in the Hyman ménage with which Jackson used to end her lecture on “Experience and Fiction.”  Also included, as the focus for a lecture called “Biography of a Story” is “The Lottery,” perhaps her best known short story.

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Come Along With Me by Shirley Jackson on Amazon

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In his Preface to the 1968 Viking Press edition, Stanley Edgar Hyman wrote:

The fourteen short stories [in this collection] were chosen from about seventy-five not previously collected, as the best, or those best showing the range and variety of her work over three decades …

“Janice” must be one of the shortest short stories on record. Shirley Jackson wrote it as a sophomore at Syracuse University, and it was printed in Threshold, the magazine published by her class in creative writing. My admiration for it led to our meeting. I suppose that I reprint it to some degree out of sentiment, although in its economy and power it is surely prophetic of her later mastery.

The three lectures are those that Shirley delivered at colleges and writers’ conferences in her last years. “The Night We All Had Grippe” is printed after the lecture she used to conclude with a reading of it, although it appears as a section of Life Among the Savages; it gets somewhat lost in that book, and I find it the funniest pieces since James Thurbers’ My Life and Hard Times.

“The Lottery” is printed after the lecture that customarily concluded with it, because of the possibility, however remote, that there are readers unfamiliar with it.

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You might also enjoy:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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The publisher’s description of Come Along With Me concludes: “The adjectives most often applied to Shirley Jackson’s fiction were haunting, eerie, bizarre, cryptic, and magical.” Jackson’s work showed her mastery of the psychological thriller. Today, her work might be deemed less shocking given how popular the genre remains. Her writerly craft was singular, judging by how many contemporary writers, including Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, point to her as an influence.

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25 Wise Quotes by Toni Morrison on Writing and Living

Toni Morrison (1931 – 2019) was an American novelist, editor, essayist, teacher, and professor. She was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her body of work examined the black experience in America through great storytelling. 

Morrison was born and raised in Lorain, Ohio in a working-class African-American family that influenced her love and appreciation for black culture. Growing up, she saw first-hand the horrifying reality of racism in America and used her understanding of racial history to connect it with the present. 

Morrison was a great influence on numerous writers, including National Book Award finalist Jamel Brinkley, best-selling author Julia Alvarez, prize-winning poet Saeed Jones, and many more. American author George Saunders said, “There is something about the scale of her work that inspires other writers to think in a more expansive way,” and added, “she inspires with her incredible language and also the moral-ethical intensity of her work.” Here is a selection of wise quotes by Toni Morrison on writing, living, and love.

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14 Women Who Have Won the Nobel Prize in Literature

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“When a kid walks in a room, your child or anybody else’s child, does your face light up? That’s what they’re looking for.” – Interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, 2000

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“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.'” – Interview with O, The Oprah Magazine, November 2003

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“It is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion—because hatred is involved in it, too.” – Interview with O, The Oprah Magazine, November 2003

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“My world did not shrink because I was a Black female writer. It just got bigger.” – Interview with The New York Times, 1987

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“What I’m interested in is writing without the gaze, without the white gaze … In so many earlier books by African-American writers, particularly the men, I felt that they were not writing to me. But what interested me was the African-American experience throughout whichever time I spoke of. It was always about African-American culture and people — good, bad, indifferent, whatever — but that was, for me, the universe.” – Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s profile of Morrison in The New York Times Magazine, 2015

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“You can do some rather extraordinary things if that’s what you really believe,” – Interview with The New York Times, 1987

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Learn more about Toni Morrison

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“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don’t know why I should be asked to explain your life to you.” – Interview, 1981

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“If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Speech to Ohio Arts Council, 1981

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“If you can’t imagine it, you can’t have it.” – Lecture in Portland, Oregon, 1992

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“I’m a believer in the power of knowledge and the ferocity of beauty, so from my point of view, your life is already artful—waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.” – Graduation address at Princeton University, 2005

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“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” – “A Humanist View,” speech at Portland State University, 1975

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“Your life is already artful—waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.” – From her Wellesley College Commencement address, 2004

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“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

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“If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”

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“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”

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“In my mother’s church, everybody read the Bible and it was mostly about music. My mother had the most beautiful voice I have ever heard in my life. She could sing anything — classical, jazz, blues, opera. And people came from long distances to that little church she went to — African Methodist Episcopal, the AME church she belonged to — just hear her.”  —“‘I Regret Everything: Toni Morrison Looks Back on her Personal Life” –  Interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, 2015

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“The writing is — I’m free from pain. It’s where nobody tells me what to do; it’s where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I’m writing.” – Interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, 2015

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Anger … it’s a paralyzing emotion … you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don’t think it’s any of that — it’s helpless … it’s absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers … and anger doesn’t provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever.”  –  Interview on CBS, 1987

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Former President Barack Obama presenting Toni Morrison

with the Presidential Medal of Freedom 

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Quotes from Toni Morrison’s 2003 interview with The New Yorker

“Being a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write from. It doesn’t limit my imagination; it expands it. It’s richer than being a white male writer because I know more and I’ve experienced more.” 

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“The title of Ralph Ellison’s book was Invisible Man. And the question for me was ‘Invisible to whom?’ Not to me.”

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“Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself.” 

 

Quotes from Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel Speech 

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

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“Make up a story … For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.”

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“Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”  

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“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.” 

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Skyler Isabella Gomez is a 2019 SUNY New Paltz graduate with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Black Studies. Her passions include connecting more with her Latin roots by researching and writing about legendary Latina authors. 

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Quotes from Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Tuck Everlasting is a 1975 novel by Natalie Babbitt (1932 – 2016) about a young girl who stumbles on a family with an incredible secret. Originally intended for middle grade children, it’s a gracefully written story that has resonated with readers of all ages. It explores the idea of eternal life, and its flip side, mortality. The quotes from Tuck Everlasting that follow demonstrate the book’s charm and thoughtfulness. 

When 10-year-old Winnie Foster inadvertently comes upon the Tuck family, she learns that they became immortal when they drank from a spring on her family’s property. They tell Winnie how they’ve watched life go by for decades, while they themselves never grow older. Winnie must decide if she’ll keep the Tucks’ secret, and whether she wants to join them on their immortal path.

The book, from the time of its publication, has been considered a modern classic and has remained the best known of Babbitt’s many works. It was not only filmed twice, it was made into a Broadway musical. The staged production, was, unlike the timeless story, short-lived.  Few among us hasn’t pondered the question, what if you could live forever?

Following is a brief description, from the 1975 Farrar, Straus, Giroux edition:

A kidnapping, a murder, a jailbreak. If this were Winnie Foster’s story only, it would be like any other great adventure: you would come to the end, with all resolved, and that would be that. But this is also the story of the Tuck family and therefore, though it has a beginning and a middle, it can never end.

The two stories cross near the village of Treegap during a handful of hot August days in the 1880s, days which are a curious mixture of violence and love, of anguish and tranquility. And when those days are over, young Winnie is left to make a fundamental choice.

What she chooses at last is not what she might have chosen at first. For when you have known the Tucks as Winnie has, however briefly, you can never be quite the same again.

The book begins with the following passage, draws the reader in from this first paragraph:

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

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“Life’s got to be lived, no matter how long or short. You got to take what comes.” 

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“Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.” 

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“For some, time passes slowly. An hour can seem like an eternity. For others, there was never enough.”

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“I was having that dream again, the good one where we’re all in heaven and never heard of Treegap.” 

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“She was able to believe in this because she needed to; and, believing, was her own true, promising friend once more.”

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“But dying’s part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing. But it’s passing us by, us Tucks. Living’s heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it’s useless, too. It don’t make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I’d do it in a minute. You can’t have living without dying. So you can’t call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.” 

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“But dying’s part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing.” 

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“Like all magnificent things, it’s very simple.” 

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“I got a feeling this whole thing is going to come apart like wet bread.”

Tuck Everlasting was adapted into a 2002 Disney film

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“Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she’d always wished she had.” 

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“The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?” 

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“it’s no good hiding yourself away, like Pa and lots of other people. And it’s no good just thinking of your own pleasure, either. People got to do something useful if they’re going to take up space in the world.” 

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“I was more’n forty by then,” said Miles sadly. “I was married. I had two children. But, from the look of me, I was still twenty-two. My wife, she finally made up her mind I’d sold my soul to the Devil. She left me. She went away and she took the children with her.”

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Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt on Amazon

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“ … this rowboat now, it’s stuck. If we didn’t move it out ourself, it would stay here forever, trying to get loose, but stuck. That’s what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so’s we can’t move on. We ain’t part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing. You, for instance. A child now, but someday a woman. And after that, moving on to make room for the new children.” 

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“And then sometimes it comes over me and I wonder why it happened to us. We’re plain as salt, us Tucks. We don’t deserve no blessings—if it is a blessing. And, likewise, I don’t see how we deserve to be cursed, if it’s a curse. Still—there’s no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don’t bring changes.” 

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“She had gone away with the Tucks because — well, she just wanted to. The Tucks had been very kind to her, had given her flapjacks, taken her fishing. The Tucks were good and gentle people.”

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Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison, born Chloe Ardelia Wofford (February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), was an American novelist, editor, essayist, teacher, and professor. She was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her work examined the black experience, especially the black female experience, in American culture of the past and present.

Morrison was born and raised in Lorain, Ohio in a working-class African-American family. They influenced her immense love and appreciation for black culture as she grew up hearing folktales, songs, and storytelling. Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy were two of her favorite authors. 

 
First glimpse of racism 

As the second oldest of four children, Morrison was well aware of the issues that her family faced because of their race. When her father lived in Cartersville Georgia as a teenager, he witnessed two black businessmen who lived on his street get lynched by white people. Morrison said “He never told us that he’d seen bodies. But he had seen them. And that was too traumatic, I think, for him.” 

At the age of two, her house was set on fire by the family’s landlord while they inside because her parents were unable to pay rent. Rather than getting extremely angry, Morrison’s mother simply laughed at the landlord, calling his actions a “bizarre form of evil.” It was from that moment that Morrison became aware of her family’s ability to remain calm and not let racial actions get the best of them. 

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Education and the start of her career 

Morrison became a member of the Catholic church at the age of twelve and chose the baptismal name of Anthony. This led to the use of her nickname, Toni. She earned her degree from Howard University in 1953 and then attended graduate school at Cornell University. After teaching at Texas Southern University for two years, she taught English at Howard University from 1957 to 1964. During this time, she was married to Harold Morrison, an architect from Jamaica who also taught at Howard, and had two children. They divorced in 1964. 

In 1965, Morrison began working as a fiction editor at Random House in their Syracuse, New York office. After two years, she transferred to Random House in New York City, becoming the first black woman senior editor of fiction.

In this role, Morrison brought black literature into the mainstream with the compilation of Contemporary African Literature (1972). She discovered the writings of African-American writers that are widely read and respected today, including Angela Davis, Gayl Jones, and Toni Cade Bambara. At the same time, she continued to teach part-time, lecture across the country, and write numerous novels. 

 

Her legendary works 

The Bluest Eye (1970) is the story of an African-American girl who dreams of having blue eyes to fit into Western beauty standards. Though it did not sell well at first, it made its way onto the bookshelves of black-studies departments of many colleges which helped boost its sales. 

Morrison’s second novel, Sula (1974), examines the various dynamics of friendships and the expectation to conform to a community’s standards. It was extremely popular and was nominated for the National Book Award. 

Her third novel was by far the most popular of her early works. Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national praise and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was also awarded the Book of the Month Club and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. 

Tar Baby (1981), her next novel, tells the story of Jadine, a fashion model who is obsessed with her looks and falls in love with a poor drifter who is comfortable in his dark skin. Along with this powerful novel, she also worked on her first play about Emmett Till, Dreaming Emmett, who was murdered by white men in 1955. 

In the years to follow, Morrison went on the publish more books that explore issues dealing with race, class, and sex. This next group of books included Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), and Paradise (1997). While working on these novels, she was also a writer-in-residence at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and then at Albany. She moved to Princeton University in 1989. 

While working as a professor at Princeton, she brought out Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992). After creating so many notable books, she was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

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Toni Morrison page on Amazon

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The Nobel Prize in Literature 

Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, making her the first African-American woman to be selected for the award. Typical of the high praise she received was that she “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” 

Upon receiving the award, she discussed the power of storytelling and spoke about a blind old black woman who is approached by a group of young people who ask, “Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? … Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story.”

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14 Women Who Have Won the Nobel Prize in Literature

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Themes in her writing

The central theme of Morrison’s novels is the portrayal of the black American experience. Morrison used her characters to show readers the struggles that black people face, finding themselves and their cultural identity. Her characters seek to understand the unfortunate truth of the world while uncovering love, beauty, friendship, death, and more. 

Morrison employed a poetic style and provoke strong emotional responses from her audience. She occasionally included a bit of fantasy to imbue her stories with texture and power. 

 
Other Awards and Honors

In 1979, Morrison was awarded Barnard College’s highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction, during their commencement ceremony. 

Beloved (1987), based on the true story of a runaway slave, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 1998 and starred Oprah Winfrey. 

In 1996, Morrison received a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. 

In 1997, Morrison appeared on the cover of Time magazine. She was the second female writer of fiction and African-American writer to appear on America’s most significant magazine cover of the era.

In 2001, Morrison was given the National Arts and Humanities Award by former President Bill Clinton in Washington, D.C. Upon giving the award, the president said that Morrison had “entered America’s heart.”

In 2005, Morrison won the Coretta Scott King Award for her novel Remember (2004), which delved into the struggles of black students during the time of integration amongst America’s public school system. 

Morrison was made an officer of the French Legion of Honour in 2010 and was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. 

In 2017, Princeton University changed the name of a building, previously known as West College. It was changed to Morrison Hall. 

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Toni Morrison and former President Barack Obama

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Her final years 

In 2011, Morrison worked with directors Peter Sellars, Malian, and Rokia Traoreon on a production called Desdemona, which takes a fresh look at William Shakespeare’s Othello. The production premiered in Vienna in 2011. 

When Morrison’s son Slade died, she had stopped working on her latest novel. She decided to start writing again because she thought her son would be upset if he knew that he was the reason she stopped writing. “Please, Mom, I’m dead, could you keep going … ?” she thought he would say. She completed her novel, Home, in 2012 and dedicated it to her son. 

On August 5, 2019, the legendary Toni Morrison passed away at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, New York City, from complications of pneumonia. She was eighty-eight years old.

 
The Legacy of Toni Morrison

As of 2014, Morrison’s papers are part of the permanent library collections of Princeton University, where she worked for seventeen years. Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber told those who attended a tribute to Morrison’s legacy:

“This extraordinary resource will provide scholars and students with unprecedented insights into Professor Morrison’s remarkable life and her magnificent, influential literary works. We at Princeton are fortunate that Professor Morrison brought her brilliant talents as a writer and teacher to our campus 25 years ago, and we are deeply honored to house her papers and to help preserve her inspiring legacy.”

Morrison has influenced numerous writers, including National Book Award finalist Jamel Brinkley, best-selling author Julia Alvarez, prize-winning poet Saeed Jones, and many more. When speaking about her work, American writer George Saunders said, “There is something about the scale of her work that inspires other writers to think in a more expansive way,” and added, “she inspires with her incredible language and also the moral-ethical intensity of her work.” 

The Pieces I Am, directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, is a 2019 documentary on Toni Morrison’s life and powerful works. “I wanted as many people who could hear my voice to understand the importance of her work,” says Oprah Winfrey in the trailer. “Toni Morrison’s work shows us through pain all the myriad ways we can come to love. That is what she does with some words on a page.”

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More about Toni Morrison

Major Works 

Novels

The Bluest Eye (1970)
Sula (1973)
Song of Solomon (1977)
Tar Baby (1981)
Beloved (1987)
Jazz (1992)
Paradise (1997)
Love (2003)
A Mercy (2008)
Home (2012)
God Help the Child (2015)

Children’s books (with Slade Morrison)

The Big Box (1999) 
The Book of Mean People (2002)
Who’s Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper?, The Lion or the Mouse?, Poppy or the Snake? (2007)
Peeny Butter Fudge (2009)
Please, Louise (2014) 

Selected short fiction

“Recitatif” (1983)
“Sweetness” (2015)

Plays

Dreaming Emmett (performed 1986)
Desdemona (first performed May 15, 2011, in Vienna)

Libretto

Margaret Garner (first performed May 2005)

Selected nonfiction

Toni Morrison was the editor of several compilations and wrote numerous essays as well.

The Origin of Others (2017)
The Source of Self-Regard: Essays, Speeches, Meditations (2019)

More Information and Sources 

Wikipedia  
Official site of the Toni Morrison Society
Biography 
Notable Biographies 
Britannica 
Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction on Paris Review
Obituary in The New York Times
The Legacy of Toni Morrison (by Roxane Gay)
12 Groundbreaking Toni Morrison Books to Read Right Now

Skyler Isabella Gomez is a 2019 SUNY New Paltz graduate with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Black Studies. Her passions include connecting more with her Latin roots by researching and writing about legendary Latina authors.

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Natalie Babbitt

Natalie Babbitt (July 28, 1932 – October 31, 2016) was an American author and illustrator of children’s books, best known for Tuck Everlasting (1975). Born in Dayton, Ohio, her first ambition was to be a pirate. By second grade, she decided that wanted to grow up to be a librarian.

She discussed her aspirations in Anita Silvey’s The Essential Guide to Children’s Books and Their Creators: “I might have made a pretty good librarian, but with my distaste for heavy exercise, I would probably have made a poor pirate.”

Below-deck or in the stacks, she would have found quiet moments to scribble stories and draw pictures. As an author, she wrote stories about mermaids who swim in the sea, and immortality. As an illustrator, she drew children who hold storybooks close to their hearts.

Upbringing and education

Natalie’s father, Ralph Zane, worked in labor relations and changed jobs many times when the children were young. Natalie recalled (also in Anita Silvey’s volume) that, growing up during the Depression, “there were many things we didn’t have” but “I know now that we had all the things that really matter.”

Her father’s wit and humor had a lasting effect on Natalie. “One of the most valuable things I learned from him,” she wrote in the May-June 1993 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, “was that humor does not trivialize problems. What it does do is relax us and make it easier for us to solve those problems. It puts things in their proper perspective.”

Natalie’s mother, Genevieve Converse Moore was an amateur artist — a landscape and portrait painter, who attended college in an era when that was uncommon for women.

After graduation, Genevieve’s household and parenting duties eclipsed her creative ambitions, but she did expose both daughters to the symphony and the opera, as well as art museums and libraries, and Natalie remembers, fondly, how often her mother read aloud the classics to the girls. Natalie’s love of the classics persisted; as an adult, she continued to read and enjoy the works of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and AnthonyTrollope.

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“Books were a normal part of our daily lives, and beyond the list of children’s classics, no one told us we should read such and such, or shouldn’t read so and so. We were entirely unself-conscious about it.” (From her 2018 collection Barking with the Big Dogs: On Writing and Reading Books for Children.)

Natalie’s interest in drawing intensified at the age of nine, after she discovered John Tenniel’s illustrations in a coveted edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This was also a favorite story because Lewis Carroll never attempted to instruct or moralize.

She describes herself as a “fairly average child” in the aforementioned 1993 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: “Very skinny, but fond of toasted-cheese sandwiches and anything chocolate. By turns confident and scared to death.”

Natalie raced home after school so she could draw and she remembers being captivated by myths and fairy tales while her older sister, Diane, read realistic stories, like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

Her fondest childhood memories revolved around her time in Middletown, Ohio as a student at Lincoln School on Central Avenue, when she was in the fifth grade. When interviewed for the 2007 Square Fish reprints of her classic novels, she identified that time and place as her favored destination using a time-travel device: “And again and again.”

Natalie attended Laurel School for Girls from 1947 –1950, then went on to Smith College in Northampton, MA. She graduated with a B.A. in 1954. She had initially studied theater but soon switched to fine arts.

Stories and books were important throughout her life: “The stories I always liked best were the stories which presented life as it really is: the dark and the light all messed up together, coexisting, with unanswerable questions remaining unanswered, retaining their mystery and their wonder and their endless power to motivate.” (From Barking with the Big Dogs)

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Marriage and family

After graduating from Smith, Natalie married Samuel Fisher Babbitt, on June 26, 1954. He had left Yale, following his sophomore year, to fight in Korea for the U.S. Army, and the couple met after a friend set them up during Natalie’s sophomore year.

Eventually, they would have three children: Christopher Converse (in 1956), Thomas Collier II (in 1958), and Lucy Cullyford (in 1960). Natalie instilled her love of story in her children.

Samuel Babbitt began his career as a professor of American literature with the idea of becoming a novelist. He instead became an administrator at Yale, Vanderbilt, and Brown Colleges. Eventually, he became president of Kirkland College in Clinton, New York, the division of Hamilton College which women attended.

In a 2016 Publishers Weekly article, the story of their relationship is outlined, alongside Natalie’s memory of her later decision to establish a professional identity alongside her work as a wife and mother. In 1964, the feminist movement provided a framework within which Natalie could view her growing sense of frustration and boredom, having abandoned her artistic aspirations.

She credits Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, “a book that reawakened her long-dormant desire to be an artist” and she felt “inspired and empowered by her female friends” to return to work: “By God, I’m going to do what I’ve always wanted to do.”

 

First publications

It was Natalie who illustrated Samuel Babbitt’s first novel, The Forty-Ninth Magician (1966). She describes the process in Silvey’s compilation, of the husband-and-wife team’s work with Michael di Capua at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, as “natural and preordained.” Much later, in 2017, their son, Tom, produced a short animated film of this novel.

After Samuel shelved his writing ambitions, di Capua encouraged Natalie to work independently. She began by telling stories in verse, beginning with Dick Foote and the Shark (1967). Next, in Phoebe’s Revolt (1968), Phoebe Euphemia Brandon Brown is a spirited girl in 1904 America, who insists on dressing in a more comfortable style than traditional girls’ wear. She resists and, as the title states, revolts:

“And loudly said she hated bows

  And roses on her slipper toes

And dresses made of fluff and lace

  With frills and ruffles every place

And ribbons, stockings, sashes, curls

  And everything to do with girls.”

But as buoyant and entertaining as these characters were, verse stories were more difficult to sell, and di Capua encouraged Natalie to experiment with prose.

Her third book, The Search for Delicious, began as a short picture book but gradually grew into a full-fledged novel and ultimately established her as a fiction writer. “I would have been working in a diner if it wasn’t for Michael,” Natalie said in 2015 in School Library Journal.

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Natalie Babbitt page on Amazon

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Tuck Everlasting

Tuck Everlasting was the book that Natalie Babbitt recommended people read, if choosing just one of her books. But in an interview with Scholastic Books, she said her personal favorite among her books was Herbert Rowbarge, written for women over forty. And her favorite of her books for children was Goody Hall, for the characters and its humor, though she declared it “the one my readers like the least.”

Tuck Everlasting is the story of the Tuck family, who drank water from a mysterious well and from that point on, stopped aging. Winnie, a young girl who lives in isolation with her mother and grandmother, spots a boy drinking from a spring. When she tries to drink from it as well, she is abducted by the kind and gentle Tuck family. From a brief description from a December 23, 1975 review by Elizabeth Coolidge in The Boston Globe:

“Tuck explains to Winnie that never to die puts you outside the wheel of life. ‘dying’s part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole things, that’s the blessing. But it’s passing us by, us Tucks.’

Winnie helps them keep the secret in this fascinating story. Natalie Babbit’s great skill is spinning fantasy with the timeless wisdom of the old fairy tales. Tuck Everlasting is a story of death and life, and reading it is like a disturbing dream. You know it isn’t true, yet it lingers on, haunting your waking hours, making you ponder.”

Tuck Everlasting (1975) was adapted twice as a motion picture (first, in 1981 with an age-appropriate Winnie Foster and, next, in 2002 with Alexis Bledel in a Disney production with a 15-year-old version of Winnie) and, more recently, as a stage musical (2015).

 

Awards and honors

“I became a writer more or less by accident,” Natalie explained in Silvey’s collection. But after shifting into prose, Natalie Babbitt steadily built an impressive body of work.

Natalie was modest about her accomplishments. “Few of us can make anything memorable out of the small commonplaces in the life of an average child, Beverly Cleary being a notable and laudable exception,” she said in Barking with the Big Dogs.

Yet Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting altered the landscape of children’s literature. She won a Newbery Honor for Knee-Knock Rise in 1971, a novel which was adapted for film by Miller-Brody Productions in 1975.

She received the George G. Stone Award in 1979 for the body of her work and was the U. S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1981. In 2013, she received the inaugural E. B. White Award for achievement in children’s literature.

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Natalie Babbitt’s legacy

Winnie struggles with the reality of mortality in Tuck Everlasting: “For she – yes, even she – would go out of the world willy-nilly someday. Just go out, like the flame of a candle, and no use protesting. It was a certainty. She would try very hard not to think of it, but sometimes, as now, it would be forced upon her. She raged against it, helpless and insulted, and blurted at last, ‘I don’t want to die.’”

Natalie Babbitt, too, was mortal, and died of lung cancer, on October 31, 2016, in Hamden, Connecticut. In the January – February 2017 edition of The Horn Book Magazine, her husband, Samuel Fisher Babbitt noted that she “definitely…left her mark in the literary world”, that “her ambition was just to leave a little scratch on the rock” and Tuck Everlasting specifically achieved that goal.

Her Square Fish interview reveals what she wanted readers to remember about her books more generally: “The questions without answers.”

She succeeded, according to critics like Joseph O. Milner, who compared her work to that of Kurt Vonnegut and Wallace Stevens (known for their challenging political and philosophical fiction for adults) in “Hard Religious Questions in Knee-Knock Rise and Tuck Everlasting” in the Winter 1995 issue of Children’s Literature Review.

Author Tim Wynne Jones agreed, in a millennial edition of Horn Book: “I think, a century from now, that Tuck will still have something essential to say about the human condition. And how well it does so, with flawless style, in words that are exact and simple and soothing and right.”

A remarkable legacy indeed.

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More about Natalie Babbitt

Major Works

Self-illustrated verse

Dick Foote and the Shark, 1967
Phoebe’s Revolt, 1968

Self-illustrated fiction

The Search for Delicious (1969)
Knee-knock Rise  (1970)
The Something  (1970)
Goody Hall  (1971)
The Devil’s Storybook (1974)
Tuck Everlasting  (1975)
The Eyes of the Amaryllis (1977)
Herbert Rowbarge  (1982)
The Devil’s Other Storybook (1987)
Nellie: A Cat on Her Own (1989)
Bub: Or the Very Best Thing (1994)
Elsie Times Eight (2001)
Jack Plank Tells Tales (2007)

Other works

The Big Book for Peace, 1990
Ouch!: A Tale from Grimm (with M.T. Anderson and C. Brown; 1998)
The Exquisite Corpse Adventure: A Progressive Story Game (2011)
The Devil’s Storybooks (2012)
Barking with the Big Dogs: On Writing and Reading Books for Children (2018)

More Information

Wikipedia 


Tom Babbitt’s 2015 animated short based on Natalie Babbitt’s The Something (1970)  
Reader discussion of Natalie Babbitt’s books on Goodreads
2016 obituary in Publishers Weekly

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