Nava Atlas's Blog, page 65
July 14, 2019
How to Write a Romance by the editors of Avon Books
Are you in the mood for romance? Most of us are, at least some of the time. Are you in the mood to write a romance novel? Now, that’s a more specific desire, but if you’ve ever fancied giving it a try, the editors of Avon Books, one of the leading publishers of romance books, have produced How to Write a Romance: Or How to Write Witty Dialogue, Smoldering Love Scenes, and Happily Ever Afters (Morrow Gift, July 2019).
It’s a cleverly designed guided journal that just might get you going, and a perfect gift for the aspiring romance writer in your life.
Many of the most beloved novels of all time are incredibly romantic, and perhaps the literary predecessors of contemporary romances. Classic plot lines often feature a plucky heroine who wants to be her own person, while at the same time, yearns for the love of a brooding, mysterious man.
Think of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice; Catherine and Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights; the eponymous Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester; the nameless narrator of Rebecca and her inscrutable husband, Maxim de Winter.
. . . . . . . . . .
What do you consider the most romantic classic novel?
Many literature nerds would choose Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
. . . . . . . . . .
Today’s romance novels go far and wide in terms of character types and are no longer confined to bodice-ripping or predictable will-they-or-won’t-they plots. If you’re ready to take the next step with your own writing, How to Write a Romance might be just the inspiration you’ve been looking for. Here’s what the editors of Avon Books have to say:
Romance novels are in the mainstream. No longer are they relegated to the back of the bookstore; they are front and center with colorful covers, boast a diverse readership, and are covered by national media.
As romantic comedies are coming back in a big way, they are influenced and often based on bestselling romance novels. Beyond that, romance novel reading and writing is its own subculture; just check your twitter timeline for when #Romanclandia trends; the readers are voracious, tireless and passionate.
There are few who know the romance landscape better than the incomparable editors at Avon Books. Their list spans several decades of bestselling romance, from the 1970s cult classic The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss to the incomparable Night Song by Beverly Jenkins in the 1990s, and through the early 2000s with Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series, soon to be a Netflix original series. Today, Avon publishes these authors and more, setting a standard for the industry.
For romance writers and readers alike, How to Write a Romance is a sleek, inventive journal that will inspire you to create love stories that stir the heart, tease the imagination, and touch the soul. Inside this handy diary, you’ll find an introduction and tip sheet compiled by the editors fo Avon Books.
Sharing their wisdom and expertise, the Avon Books editors guide you journals through the basic construction of a romance novel and highlight the most common pitfalls to avoid. The pages that follow include 180 prompts touching on every aspect of romance writing: dialogue, character development, scene descriptions, situational entries, and more. These include:
Describe your heroine without her having to look in the mirrorMake a list of 5 to 10 of your hero’s characteristics — be sure to include both good and bad qualities to help clarify how he will react in different situations.Write a scene between two females characters discussing something unrelated to the heroWrite a meet cute in a library.
In addition, renowned bestselling Avon authors such as Eloisa James, Beverly Jenkins, Lisa Klaypas, Julia Quinn, Sarah McClean, Jennifer Ryand, Lori Wilde, and more, share their own insights and offer work of encouragement, sprinkled throughout the journal in hand-lettered text.
A beautiful keepsake and practical tool that embodies the essence of romance fiction, How to Write a Romance will enflame your passionate and creative spirit!
. . . . . . . . . .
How to Write a Romance is available on Amazon
and wherever books are sold
. . . . . . . . . .
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
The post How to Write a Romance by the editors of Avon Books appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
July 11, 2019
Quotes from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1928–2014) is a 1969 autobiography by the beloved writer and poet written in 1969 covering her upbringing and youth. The book is the first in a seven-volume series. It delves into Angelou’s journey, one in which she experiences and overcomes racism and trauma and develops the strength of character and a love of literature.
The book starts with her as a three-year-old being sent to Stamos, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother along with her older brother. By the end of the book, Angelou is sixteen years old and becomes a mother. Throughout the course of the book, Maya overcomes racism and transforms into an unbreakable woman as she is able to effectively respond to the ignorance of prejudice.
Angelou created her autobiography as a way to explore identity, rape, literacy, and racism. She also gives readers a new perspective about the lives of women in a society that is male-dominated, earning her praise as “a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America.”
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was nominated for a National Book Award in 1970. In addition, it has remained on The New York Times paperback bestseller list for two years. The book has made its debut in high school and university classrooms, though some institutions and libraries have banned Caged Bird due to its explicit depiction of childhood rape, racism, and sexuality.
Though it has stirred some controversy, the book continues to be commended for having created new literary avenues for the American memoir. Here is a selection of quotes from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the raw and inspiring autobiography about the early life of Maya Angelou.
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
“Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still,
and his tune is heard on the distant hill,
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.”
. . . . . . . . . .
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . .
“I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“If you’re for the right thing, you do it without thinking.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Ritie, don’t worry ’cause you ain’t pretty. Plenty pretty women I seen digging ditches or worse. You smart. I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn’t know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn’t be taught to me at George Washington High School. ”
. . . . . . . . . .
“The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. ”
. . . . . . . . . .
“At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.”
. . . . . . . . . .
Maya Angelou Quotes to Live By
. . . . . . . . . .
“A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, “Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Women been gittin’ pregnant ever since Eve ate that apple.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep”
. . . . . . . . . .
“I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss”
. . . . . . . . . .
“The intensity with which young people live demands that they “blank out” as often as possible.”
. . . . . . . . . .
10 Fascinating Facts About Maya Angelou
. . . . . . . . . .
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.
. . . . . . . . . .
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
The post Quotes from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
July 8, 2019
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë (1849): A plot summary
Shirley was the second published novel by Charlotte Brontë. Published in 1849 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, the author had already become famous with the success of Jane Eyre (1847). While Charlotte was at work on this book, her remaining siblings died. The first to go was her troubled brother Branwell, followed by sisters Emily and Anne, who would also come to be celebrated for their literary accomplishments.
The lengthy novel has two female protagonists — the eponymous Shirley Keeldar, as well as Caroline Helstone. Set in Charlotte’s native Yorkshire, it takes place against the background of the textile industry’s Luddite uprisings of 1811 and 1812.
Shirley: A Tale, as it was originally titled, is considered an example of the mid-19th century “social novel.” The social novels that emerged from that period were works of fiction dealing with themes like labor injustice, bias against women, and poverty.
Charlotte supposedly told Elizabeth Gaskell (who, not long after the former’s death would become her first biographer) that the character of Shirley was how she imagined Emily might have turned out if she’d had the benefits of wealth and privilege. Like Shirley, Emily was always accompanied by a “rather large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly, being of a breed between a mastiff and a bulldog.”
Following is a lengthy plot summary of Shirley by Charlotte Brontë from 1910, befitting a very long and detailed novel. In the early 1900s, interest in the Brontë sisters was still going strong on both sides of the Atlantic, evidenced by the frequency with which their life stories and analyses of their novels showed up in newspapers.
. . . . . . . . . .
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . .
From the original article in the Boston Globe, March 13, 1910:
Shirley was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel. While it was hardly as popular as Jane Eyre, it was a success from the date of its appearance and has long remained a favorite.
In many respects, it is a much more finished and artistic production than Jane Eyre and is free from many of the crudities and absurdities that are in that first book of “Currer Bell’s.” Of course, Jane Eyre will always exceed Shirley in popularity. But, from an artistic and literary point of view, Shirley is much the better story.
In Shirley, Charlotte Brontë drew her characters from real life, used people with whom she was associated, her own family and her dearest friends as models for her fiction people, and did it with as little faltering and as frankly as did Dickens, who did not hesitate to portray the weaknesses of his own father and mother to advance his literary fame and his worldly fortunes.
Shirley, it will be seen when reading the story, was rather inclined to be “strong-minded.” So was Jane Eyre, it will be remembered, so are most of Charlotte Brontë’s stories.
Perilous times
When Robert Gerald Moore came to the West Riding of Yorkshire and leased Hollow’s mill, the people of the neighborhood regarded him, not as a countryman returned to them, but as a semi-foreigner. And foreigners at that time, whether of the whole or semi-variety, were not popular in England.
Neither were cloth manufacturers who persisted in introducing into their mills those new-fangled machines, one of which did the work of half a dozen hands and thereby deprived working people, honest or dishonest, of the chance of making a living.
Times were hard enough, anyway, without machinery coming to make them harder, for it was at about the darkest hour of that great struggle which a determined stolid nation was waging against the power and splendor of a world-compelling genius.
Napoleon and England had engaged in a struggle. The rest of the nations were pawns on the chessboard of a mighty game. In response to Napoleon’s Milan and Berlin decrees, the British government prohibited all commercial intercourse with nations which accepted the Napoleonic decrees.
The harvest of discontent
America, irritated, declared an embargo. The commerce of the world stood still. The European market had long been practically lost to the manufacturers of England and now the American market, upon which they mainly relied, was closed to them. Their warehouses were piled high with unstable goods. Mill owners shut down or ran their establishments with reduced hands.
Hunger was in the cottage of the operative and bankruptcy in the counting-house of the mill owner. Then came the machinery to make matters worse, as the working people thought: as a straw to clutch at, the owners thought. Improved machinery means less demand for labor, said the operative. Improved machinery means a lessened cost for production, said the owner.
Workmen went about destroying the new inventions. It was a time of harvest for the agitator, the worthless being who lives by the sweat of other men’s brows and wafts himself to ease and power upon the breath of popular discontent; who craftily plays upon ignorance and amuses himself with fanning the flames of evil discord. And the agitators took advantage of the opportunity.
Obsessed with an idea
This was the condition of affairs in commercial England which supervened soon after Robert Moore had set to work at Hollow’s mill with a fixed determination to carry out a purpose which he felt sacred–the purpose of making enough money to pay off the debts of his father and reestablish the name of the once great firm of Gerard & Moore above the gloom of the bankruptcy into which it had fallen.
His mother had been a native of Antwerp and his father of one of the oldest families of Yorkshire. The principal office of the house of Gerard & Moore had been in Antwerp and there his father had married his mother – there Robert had been born and where he had spent much of his youth, though some of it had been passed with his grandfather, who ran the Yorkshire end of the business.
Those great continental wars which swept away nations and thrones also swept away mercantile houses and among them that of Gerard & Moore. There are a proud lot, those mercantile families of long descent, as proud as if they had “all the blood of all the Howards” and the credit of their name is dear to them.
When Robert came back to Yorkshire, the one idea of reestablishing the name of the house obsessed him. Neither love nor mercy should stand in his way. Then he found himself confronted by the situation stated.
The mystery surrounding Caroline
Briarfields was the nearest village to Hollow’s mill, and the rector of Briarfields was a sort of relative by marriage of Robert. His brother had married the half-sister of Robert’s father, and living with Rev Heistone, the rector, was Caroline Helstone, the only offspring of this marriage.
Of her mother Caroline knew nothing. The wild and dissipated career of her husband had been such that when the crisis came and the rector had offered to take charge of the girl the mother, seeing in the face the looks of her father, had abandoned her to the charge of her uncle and had disappeared.
The poor woman shuddered as she looked at the replies in the face of her child of that false, fair face of him who had wrecked her life and abandoned her. No one ever mentioned her mother to Caroline. When she inquired of her she was put off with evasive answers. She saw that her mother had committed some crime–as she thought.
What it really was those of whom she asked felt that the mother had not been true to her trust, that in spite of everything, she should have made herself a part of her daughter’s life.
. . . . . . . . . .
See also: A Plot Summary of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
. . . . . . . . . .
An apostle of authority
Mr. Helstone was a dictatorial, domineering man who thought that authority was the beginning and the end of existence. The orders in council were right because they proceeded from authority. The church was right because it had authority.
He had been twice married and had crushed out the lives of his wives with authority. He was not a bad man; he was a good man, according to his light and went about doing good.
But to him, the crazy king, the solute prince regent, the ministry, the established order of things, in short, were not to be tampered with, come weal to woe.
He was a friend of Moore’s and was prompt to aid him, not only with advice but with physical force when the unemployed workmen, led by demagogues, broke the machines which Moore was transporting to his mills in the Hollow.
All the more was he enlisted on the side of the mill-owner because some self-created preacher of a dissenting denomination had incited the “frame breakers” and had lured people from his parish to listen to his “tub oratory,” as the person called it.
The cottage in the hollow
The rector used to like to have Caroline go to the cottage in the Hollow, where she called Robert and his sister Hortense cousins, and where she took lessons in French from the old maid.
Now and then Robert irritated Mr. Hellstone by being “English.” Why the man would sometimes inveigh against the orders in council! But the times were too exciting, there were too many things to be done to preserve authority, for Mr. Helstone to pay much attention to these heretical opinions of Robert just then. As soon as things quieted down he would reason with him.
In the meantime, the thing to be done was to see that Robert got new machinery in place of that which had been destroyed and that the Moores–to whom Mr. Helstone was proud to be related–were reestablished in their rightful place among the people of Yorkshire.
Intolerant Mr. Yorke
Another of Moore’s neighbors was Mr. Yorke. He was a Yorkshire gentleman, par excellence, in every point. About 50 years old, but looking older because of his white hair, he dwelt in his ancestral house upon his ancestral acres, was intolerant to those above him–kings, nobles, priests, dynasties and parliaments. “All rubbish,” he said, and found no pleasure in them.
He was not irreligious, though a member of no sect; but his religion was that of a man who knows not how to venerate. He believed in God and heaven, but his God and his heaven were those of a man in whom awe and imagination and tenderness were lacking.
He had been a youth once and had traveled and lived in southern Europe. On the wall of his old house were many beautiful and well-selected pictures. He liked to talk about freedom and equality, but at heart, he was a very proud man. He sympathized with all below him but could brook no superior and scarcely an equal.
Yorke and the rector
He hated the rector, not only because they looked at things from different points of view, but also because Mr. Yorke had heard and believed them, and was unforgiving.
Yorke had not been so deeply in love that it had prevented him from marrying afterward a very different sort of woman from the one the rector had taken from him, but he never forgave. Strange to say, he liked Moore, and though he abused him for what he called grinding the face of the poor and roundly abused the rector for taking any part in the quarrel between Moore and the unemployed workmen, he did, in fact, help Moore to keep his mill going and to get in his new machinery.
Perhaps it was Moore’s habit of speaking French with him upon occasions — for Yorke was a fine French scholar, perhaps it was the half-foreign looks and half foreign way of thinking about Moore, which brought back to the Yorkshireman memories of his youthful days on the continent that attracted him.
Walking in a dream
The day after that first lot of machinery which Moore had ordered was destroyed in its passage across the heath by the “frame-breakers,” Caroline Heistone visited the cottage at the Hollow and staid to tea.
She had fallen in love with Robert when he first came, and as the days passed and she saw him in trouble and peril her love increased. “And when people love,” mused Caroline, “the next thing is they marry.”
Robert was very tender to her that day after the breaking of the “frames,” and when Caroline went back to the rectory she walked into a happy dream.
Robert, too, as he went to the mill, had a dream for the moment of the beautiful girl with her statue-like face; but he put it away from him sternly. Love and marriage were not for him – unless love and marriage could help in the rehabilitation of the house of Gerard & Moore.
Yet Robert spoke much of Caroline to his sister Hortense that evening–asked how the girl was getting on with her French, asked many little things about her, what she said and what she thought and how her health was. But he dreamed of machinery and of markets and finances that night, and not of Caroline.
As for Caroline, she lay for a while upon her bed, watching through the windows the shadows of the trees slant down the moonlit sward and then fell into slumbers which were haunted by visions of Robert.
As plainly as she could
So things went on for a while, Caroline finding Robert dearer and dearer to her, and Robert sternly putting out of his mind of all thought of love and matrimony.
As plainly as she could, without violating her native maiden modesty, Caroline intimated to Robert her love for him. Once they were talking about the future, and Caroline said:
“O, I shall probably stay and keep house for my uncle until–”
“Until what?” said Robert, as she paused, “until he dies?”
“No, no,” replied Caroline, blushing a little, “until events, in short, offer some other occupation for me.” She looked at Robert steadily, but he could not, or would not, see.
“I love Robert,” Caroline said to herself that night, “and he ought to see it. I believe he loves me, but will not give in to it. That infatuation of his love for business swallows up all else. My love is dashed against a rock. I will torment myself no more by seeing him.”
But she did see him and when he was a little tender, even when he was kind, hope was renewed in her.
The coming of the heiress
Now into this community, into these affairs, and among these people, came Shirley Keedlar. Mr. Yorke was one of her trustees. The young lady had just come of age, and at Yorke’s request, or rather command, had journeyed down into Yorkshire to live in the ancient house of her father.
For though Miss Keeldar had a masculine name [note — at the time this book was written, Shirley was considered a masculine first name], she was a young lady with all the feminine graces, most beautiful to look upon and with a will of her own not to be disputed by anyone with impunity.
There were many wealthier families in the district, but the Keeldar had lived there, at their place at Fieldhead, for a thousand years, and all the gentry roundabout, titled and untitled, regarded them as a superior clay.
Shirley’s parents had much wished for a boy as the inheritor of their ancient line, and when a girl was born to them they did the best they could with the situation by giving to the girl the name they had selected for the boy who did not appear.
Mrs. Pryor’s greeting
Mr. Helstone, as soon as he heard of the arrival of the heiress of Fieldhead, made his niece put on her bonnet and shawl and accompany him to the mansion house.
In a low-ceilinged, oak-paneled parlor they were received by a woman of matronly form, and though she could not have been more than 45, of no youthful aspect nor, apparently, the wish to assume it, she had a face across which was written as legibly as if in words, “I have seen sorrow.”
It was Mrs. Pryor, formerly the governess of Shirley Keeldar and now her companion. Mrs. Pryor seemed strangely embarrassed when the rector and his niece were announced. Diffident Caroline was delighted to find someone more ill at ease than herself, she began to talk freely with the lady feeling strangely drawn to her.
Mrs. Pryor gazed upon her tenderly yet doubtfully and replied in soft, low tones.
A Jacobin’s confession
Then came in Shirley, fresh and radiant from the garden, through a window opening to the floor, and held in her apron a great mass of flowers which she had just picked. With her was a great dog, half mastiff, half bulldog, which she addressed by the name of Tartar.
Tall, erect, slight, the girl still retaining with her left hand her apron full of flowers, gave her right hand to the rector and said:
“I knew you would come to see me, though you do think Mr. Yorke has made a Jacobin out of me. Good morning.”
“But we will have you no Jacobin,” replied the rector, “they will not steal the flower of
my parish. Now that you are amongst us again you shall by my pupil in politics and religion. I’ll teach you sound doctrine on both points. We are a little Jacobin, for what I know, a confession of faith on the spot.”
He took the two hands of the heiress causing her to let fall her whole cargo of flowers and seated her by him on the sofa.
“Say your creed,” he ordered.
“The Apostles’?”
“Yes.” She said it like a child.
“Now for St. Athanasius’, that’s the test.”
“O, let me pick up my flowers first,” cried Shirley. “Tartar will tread on them.”
Shirley turned her attention to Caroline. “You look pale,” she said, “is she always pale, Mr. Helstone?”
“She used to be the rosiest of flowers,” replied the rector.
“What has altered her, has she been ill?”
“She tells me she wants a change.”
Hopeless love
Caroline did, indeed, look pale and she had been begging her uncle to let her go away somewhere–she did want a change. Her love for Robert now seemed hopeless.
Her uncle had a heated argument with Robert over politics and, after declaring that the mill man was no better than Jacobin, had forbidden her to visit the cottage at the Hollow more.
But this prohibition did not distress Caroline. She was, in fact, glad of an excuse to keep herself away from the company of the man who was so insensible to her devotion. She felt that in his presence she could not help showing her love for him and she felt humiliated at the lack of response which this evoked.
Yes, Caroline was pale, disheartened — life was a desert to her.
Arranging a marriage
But with the coming of Shirley entered into Caroline’s life, if not a consolation, at least a comfort. Shirley was so strong, so dominant, such a woman to lean upon. She and Caroline became fast friends, they were every day together and Shirley helped Caroline to become reconciled to life and fate.
In the company of Mrs. Pryor, too, Caroline felt pleasure and soothing influence which she could not explain. As for Robert Moore, he and Shirley were naturally thrown much together, for not only was he Shirley’s tenant, but the strong-willed girl took up his cause, aided him financially and in every other way, almost made herself a partner of his in his enterprises.
And Hiram Yorke assented to this, even by many hints showed to Robert the advisability of his marrying Shirley. He thought from the interest Shirley took in Robert and his affairs that the heart of the heiress was engaged with the man, and almost said so to both of them.
But Shirley laughed and put the question by. Even Yorke could not stand against Shirley’s laugh and Shirley’s will.
Dreary days
As for Caroline, she saw or thought she saw, the way things were shaping themselves. “Yes,” she thought, “Shirley is certainly the wife for Robert. Her strength, her money would be of great help to him.”
Poor Caroline’s life fell into days more dreary, if possible, than before, and all the more so because she now saw a little of Shirley. The heiress had gone visiting her uncle and aunt, the Sympsons of Sympson’s Grove, every grand people from the south of England, with their two daughters and their son, the latter a small boy who was accompanied by his tutor.
This tutor was none other than Louis Moore, brother of Robert Moore. He had been in the employ of the Sympsons for several years and as Shirley had spent much of her girlhood in her uncle’s family she had been a pupil of Louis. Robert had not seen his brother for some years. Caroline had never seen him–this was his first visit to Yorkshire since his boyhood.
As for Shirley, it had been only a few months since she had looked into Louis’ eyes, but the months seemed very long to her. The fact was that Louis loved Shirley and Shirley loved Louis. But Louis was very poor and as proud as he was poor. So the wealth of the girl he loved seemed to him an insurmountable barrier raised between them forever.
Cross-purposes
It was curious about the way these two people treated each other. Shirley would be all sweetness to the tutor for a time. Then suddenly Louis would freeze and hold her at arm’s length. Then Shirley would become piqued and would treat Louis in a supercilious manner as if he were merely some sort of an upper servant and should remember his position.
The danger point passed, Louis would thaw out again, only to freeze once more when Shirley thawed. So they played at cross purposes with each other. Shirley angry that Louis did not speak, Louis too proud to speak and afraid that he might someday forget himself and do so.
The only way in which they could meet with anything like ease and comfort to each other was as teacher and pupil. So Shirley decided that she wanted to take up her French again, and in the schoolroom was all gentleness and docility–a model pupil–while Louis was the kind pedagogue laboring with his favorite scholar.
Finding a mother
Meantime, Robert Moore pursued the stern course he had marked out for himself and deserted Caroline fell sick with a fever. As soon as the news of her illness reached Fieldhead. Mrs. Pryor went to the rectory. She had a long private talk with the rector and then installed herself as Caroline’s nurse.
Shirley, of course, came often to inquire about her friend and messages and inquiries came from the Moore cottage in the Hollow. But the bedside of Caroline was tended night and day by Mrs. Pryor.
The fever left Caroline, but she lay listless and weak with apparently no vitality remaining, with no desire to live on. One day Caroline said:
“I believe that grief is and always has been, my worst ailment. I sometimes think that if an abundant gush of happiness came to me I could revive yet.”
“I have no object in life.”
“You love me, Caroline?”
“Very much, very truly, inexpressibly, sometimes. Just now I almost feel as if I could grow to your heart.”
“Then, if you love,” said the matron, speaking rapidly in an altered voice, “it will be neither shock nor pain to you to know that my heart is the source from which yours was filled–that from my veins issued the tide which flows in yours. If I have given you nothing else, at least I have given you life. I am your mother. And you are mine, my daughter, my child.”
“My mother, my own mother!” cried Caroline, and nestled close to that heart to which she had long been a stranger.
The mother crooned over her like a dove fostering its young and covered her with noiseless kisses. It was indeed, Caroline’s mother returned to her. The child had looked so like its father that the mother had been afraid of what the girl might develop into and had willingly given her up and disappeared.
But when she had seen Caroline at Fieldhead, had come to know her and to realize what she was, all the long pent-up mother feeling had come over her.
Mob rule
Shirley had long suspected the true state of affairs and the window had revealed herself to the rector upon the occasion of her first coming to the rectory as Caroline’s nurse. Now everybody knew and Mrs. Helstone took her residence for good, at the rector’s request, with her daughter.
Caroline with this new incentive for a living began rapidly to recover. She was still sad and pensive–thinking of Robert–but she gained strength day by day.
Just before Caroline had taken sick an attack had been made by a mob upon the Hollow’s mill, an attack which had been repulsed by Robert and his men which the aid of half a dozen soldiers he had got over from a neighboring garrison town.
Robert had hunted down the ring-leaders, had caused their arrest, and had gone up to London to attend their trial, not ceasing his efforts until he had seen them transported for life.
Then he had been heard of in Birmingham, where he was investigating some new machinery. But he delayed his homeward journey inexplicably and everybody wondered why.
A cold-blooded proposal
The reason was that before he left Yorkshire Robert had proposed to Shirley and had been rejected. He had proposed in a cold-blooded manner, scarcely trying to veil the fact that he wanted her for her money.
Shirley had fallen upon him with a tempest of tears and reproaches; he confessed that he was a despicable culprit, had been forgiven by the heiress which he was now rather ashamed and loath to return.
Shirley knew what kept him away, but she did not tell. She took counsel, however, with Mr. Yorke and Louis, and they all agreed that the business required Robert’s immediate return and that the thing that’s sure to bring him back was a knowledge of her rumor about the country that he was afraid to return on account of the vengeance which the “frame-breakers” and their leaders had sworn against him for the conviction of their comrades.
A letter from Mr. Yorke informed Robert of these rumors, and Robert set out his return as fast as his horse could carry him.
Caroline was so much improved in health now that she was able to visit Fieldhead, and she did so at the earnest request of Shirley, who often came to the rectory to see her.
She met Louis Moore, of course, and took a special interest in this newfound cousin of hers. Also, she felt a relief of heart which she hardly dared acknowledge to herself when her woman’s intuition told her that it was Louis and not Robert that Shirley loved.
Then, one night as they walked together, Shirley confided to Caroline the true state of her heart and Caroline hoped again. Returning toward Briarfields from his journey, Robert stopped at the market town of Stillboro. It happened to be market day, and Mr. Yorke was there. The two, at nightfall, rode homeward together.
Robert lingered a little behind Yorke to water his horse at a brook. A shot rang out, and the mill man fell from his horse; the “frame-breakers” had kept their oath, and one of them had shot him from behind a hedge.
“Come at Last”
Yorke’s place of Briarmaine was not far off. Yorke managed to get the wounded man there, where he hovered between life and death for days and was confined to his bed for many weeks.
Mrs. Yorke was a dragon and she hired a nurse who was also a dragon. Even when he was convalescent none of “Robert’s friends were allowed to see him, the only sister at rare intervals. Caroline, repulsed by Mrs. Yorke in her attempts to visit the sick man’s chamber, walked daily in the woods near the house. She wanted to be as near the man she loved as possible.
In the woods one day she met one of the Yorke youngsters and made friends with him that the boy not only brought her daily news of Robert but, at last, arranged to smuggle her up the backstairs into the invalid’s room. “You come at last, Cary,” said the meager man, gazing at his visitor with hollow eyes.
“Did you expect me?”
Cured by Love
The very evening of his arrival at his own house, Robert requested his sister to send a note to the rectory asking Caroline to come and take tea with her. The rector’s interdict against Hollow cottage and its inmates had been modified or rather had fallen into something forgotten, and Caroline came.
Left alone by Hortense, the two became confidential. Robert told her with shame the story of his proposal to Shirley, and Caroline, in turn, told Robert of Shirley’s love for Louis.
He was very, very tender with her, declared that he felt like falling at her feet and that he could not bear to have her away from him–but he did not quite say the word which Caroline was waiting to hear.
However, she was satisfied, joyously, abundantly satisfied with what he did say, for he showed her beyond all doubt who held his heart, and after waiting so long she could wait a little longer with patience.
Shirley’s will
While these events were taking place Mr. Sympson had been busy arranging suitable matches for his niece. Two most eligible young men of the neighborhood, one of them a baronet, had been brought to pay court at Shirley, and Shirley had rejected them both!
When Mr. Sympson found that Shirley had rejected the baronet he arose in wrath and said things which aroused all Shirley’s spirit. The way she talked to her venerated and stately relative made that pompous individual gasp.
He declared that he would leave Fieldhead at once, and Shirley pretty plainly intimated to him that the sooner he got out of her house the better she would be pleased. But the Sympsons did not depart at once. Their quarters were comfortable, and they lingered on.
Suddenly a great change came over Shirley. She lost all her spirits, seemed nervous and as if haunted by some secret dread.
One day while still in this mood she rode over to Stillboro and saw her lawyer. Within two hours the rumor was all over the neighborhood — Shirley Keeldar had made her will!
Louis Forces a Confession.
Louis Moore heard it and sent for Shirley to come to the schoolroom.
“Do you want me, sir?” said Shirley, as she came in.
“Yes,” replied Louis, “pray be seated, I have observed that of late your spirits are at a low ebb; there is a nervous look of apprehension in your eyes, a disquiet in your manner. This is not the natural bearing of Miss Keeldar. If Miss Keeldar is nervous, she is not nervous without cause. Your pain is mental, what is it?”
He spoke with authority, as a doctor would speak to his patient or a tutor to his pupil, yet with a certain undertone of tenderness. Shirley, after a little attempted fencing with him, told him all.
She had been one day walking in a woodland path when a dog ran her way. His tongue was hanging out and the animal was evidently highly excited. She had attempted to catch him and calm him as he passed, and the dog had bitten her in the arm so as to draw blood.
A Promise
Soon after, a gamekeeper came up asking if she had seen a dog pass, as she had gone mad and he was after it to kill it.
Shirley had gone back to the house and to the laundry, where she seared her wound with white-hot iron. Then she waited day after day for the appearance of the bread hydrophobia.
“And promise me, Louis,” she said, “that when the awful time arrives, no surgeon, no nurse, no living person but yourself shall hold me and control me in my agony.”
Louis promised, and, placing his hand upon her shoulder, looked into her eyes and said, “Do you feel calmer now?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I can bear all now–with you.”
Louis investigated and found that the dog was not mad, but merely suffering from ill-usage. So Shirley resumed her high spirits and vigorous life again, also her old manner toward Louis Moore.
Seeking a Master
Then there came a day when Louis and Shirley being alone in the school-room, the tutor said:
“This day week you will be alone at Fieldhead, Miss Keedlar.”
“Yes, I believe you my uncle has finally made up his mind to depart,” she replied pertly.
“And I,” said he, “shall resign my position as tutor to your cousin; I shall marry.”
“You — marry!” exclaimed Shirley with a sudden alarm in her voice.
“Yes, marry. And I so suppose, will you? That is,” he continued, “we will both marry when we have found the right one.”
“The man that marries me must better me,” said Shirley. “My husband must improve me or else we part.”
“God knows there is need of it,” said Moore.
“What do you mean by that remark, Mr. Moore?” cried Shirley up in arms.
“Sister of the bright and fiery spotted leopard, I mean what I say,”
“May I pass?” she said haughtily, making for the door.
“No,” said Louis, barring her way.
“I would rather die than let you go without saying the word I want so much to hear you say now.”
Saying the Word
Of course when the grand Sympsons of Sympson’s grove found out that Shirley was to marry the penniless tutor they fled the house with horror and shook the dust of Yorkshire from their fest.
Only once more did Shirley assert herself against Louis. That was just before their wedding day, when, with her old domineering fire, she said to him.
“Myself and everything this is mine is now yours — and don’t you ever again at your peril, mention such sordid things as money, or poverty, or inequality in my presence. It will be absolutely dangerous for you to torment me with these maddening scruples which kept us apart for so long.”
Commercial salvation
Winter and spring passed and now it was the middle of June — the June of 1812. Napoleon had retreated from Moscow and preceding winter and was so evidently nearing the end of his imperial sway that the orders in council were revoked and the commerce of the world moved once more.
All commercial England rejoiced once more. The humblest of Yorkshire joined in the festivities and the sound of public bells aroused the most secluded abode with their call to be gay.
“Will the repeal of the orders in council help you, Robert, “Now I shall give up my business and quit England as I had intended to do. Now I shall be no longer poor; now I can pay my debts, now all the cloth I have in my warehouse will be taken off my hands.
“This day lays for my fortunes abroad a firm foundation. Now I can take on more workmen, give better wages, lay wiser and more liberal plans, do some good, be less selfish. Now I can think of marriage–now I can seek a wife.”
At the end of the chapter
He waited for Caroline to speak, but she did not speak. Then he said, very gently:
“Will Caroline forgive all that I have made her suffer–all the long pain I have wickedly caused her–all the sickness of body and mind she owed to me? Will she forget what she known of my poor ambitions, my gorged schemes? I can now love faithfully, cherish fondly, treasure tenderly.”
He took Caroline’s hand, a gentle pressure answered his.
“Is Caroline mine?” he asked.
“Caroline is yours,” was the reply.
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Shirley on Project Gutenberg
. . . . . . . . .
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing.
The post Shirley by Charlotte Brontë (1849): A plot summary appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
July 6, 2019
Susan Glaspell
Susan Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 28, 1948) was an American playwright and fiction writer. Glaspell and her husband George Cram Cook founded the Provincetown Players, considered the first modern American theater company.
Susan Glaspell grew up on a farm near Davenport, Iowa. Her father was a hay farmer, her mother was a schoolteacher, and she had two brothers. As a child she had a natural affinity for animals, often rescuing strays. Her grandmother regaled her with real-life pioneer adventure stories that sparked her imagination.
A talented and determined studentThe family was compelled to sell the farm during the panic of 1893 and moved into Davenport. There, young Susan excelled in school, taking advanced courses. By the time she graduated at age eighteen, she landed a full-time job writing for the local newspaper.
Always eager to flex her intellectual muscles, at age twenty-one, Glaspell entered Drake University. It was the 1890s and this was both unusual and controversial, as societal belief held that college education made a woman unfit for marriage. She was apparently proud of her competitive spirit, excelling in debate. She went on to represent the college in a statewide debate competition.
A brief foray into journalismUpon Glaspell’s graduation from college, The Des Moines Daily News lauded her as “a leader in the social and intellectual life of the university.” Soon after, the newspaper hired her as a full-time journalist, where once again she became a trailblazer in a male-dominated field. She covered hard news topics including murder cases and politics.
After covering the murder trial of a local woman, Margaret Hossack, Glaspell rather suddenly left the field of journalism. Only twenty-four, she decided to focus on writing fiction. But the Hossack story, one she covered extensively, was apparently hard to shake, and would resurface later in her career. Read Glaspell’s reporting on the case here.
Success with short stories and novels
Glaspell lucked into some good timing in launching her fiction writing phase, though talent had much to do with it as well. In an era considered the “golden age of short stories,” hers were readily accepted by some of the most popular publications of the day, including Harpers’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Woman’s Home Companion.
Many of the female characters in Glaspell’s stories of this period are determined to upend society’s rules and restrictions in their quest for independence and fulfillment.
Glaspell used a substantial cash prize from one of the magazines to move to Chicago, where she began work on her first novel. In 1909, her first novel, The Glory of the Conquered, was published and became a New York Times best-seller.
Her second novel, The Visioning, was published in 1911, and her third, Fidelity, came along in 1915. Considering the positive reviews and hefty sales, it’s curious that these novels are rarely discussed as part of the American literary canon.
Stepping into the wider world
While living in Davenport, Glaspell became one of the founding members of the Davenport group of writers. There she met George Cram Cook, who became her husband. A university professor who taught literature and writing, he divorced his second wife to be with her.
Seeking a less provincial setting, and an escape from gossip, the couple moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village, then a hotbed of progressive creativity. They associated with Emma Goldman, John Reed, Upton Sinclair, and others who worked toward radical social reform. Glaspell also took up feminist and suffrage causes.
. . . . . . . . . .
Read the full text of “Trifles”
. . . . . . . . . .
Suffering from several miscarriages and fibroids, Glaspell and George Cook traveled in 1915 to Provincetown, at the tip of Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, as a place to convalesce. Apparently not one to rest despite weakness in pain, together with George and some friends, she founded a new kind of theater collective. the group became known as the Provincetown Players.
Joining forces with other creatives inspired Glaspell to produce plays steeped in realism and satire. Her affiliation with the group not only cemented her role as a respected playwright, but launched the career of Eugene O’Neill, one of the giants of American theater.
In 1916, Glaspell produced what would remain her most famous one-act play, “Trifles.” This early feminist work knits together a commentary on gender roles and a murder mystery to create a compelling drama. Inspiration for Trifles was sparked when Glaspell was writing for the Des Moines Daily News, and the Margaret Hossack trial mentioned earlier in this post. Glaspell herself acted in this production.
As the Hossack trial had been some years earlier, Glaspell’s play was also ripe for controversy and debate. Many saw Mrs. Hossack as a victim of domestic abuse; she was eventually acquitted of the crime. “Trifles” appears to be based on the events surrounding the Hossack incident.
The one-act play tells the story of Minnie Wright. When her husband is found dead with a rope around his neck, Mrs. Wright becomes a prime suspect in his murder. The sheriff and the Wright’s neighbors, the Hales, enter the home. While the men are upstairs searching for evidence, a key discovery is made downstairs in the kitchen that sheds light on Minnie’s secret turmoil. While the evidence found by the women convicts Minnie of the crime, the women choose to hide it, seeing Minnie’s actions as the product of an abusive relationship.
“Trifles” was adapted into Glaspell’s short story, “A Jury of Her Peers” in 1917, a year after it premiered as a play. Much anthologized to this very day, “A Jury of Her Peers” is considered an important work of early feminist fiction.
. . . . . . . . . .
Read the full text of “A Jury of Her Peers”
. . . . . . . . . .
After Provincetown Players disbanded in 1923 due to a variety of conflicts (not the least of which that it had in some sense become a victim of its own success), Glaspell and her husband traveled to Greece. It’s possible that they intended to settle there, at least for a time. However, George Cook died unexpectedly and rather bizarrely from an infection he had contracted from his dog. Glaspell returned to the U.S. in 1924, a widow.
Already a respected literary figure, some of Susan Glaspell’s best works were written in the years just following after her husband’s death. Her most popular work of this era was Alison’s House, a play in three acts, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1931.
During her lifetime, she produced fifteen plays, nine novels, and a biography of George Cook. She also wrote countless short stories as a means of supporting herself and the theater company while she was still involved with it.
A declining reputation
Susan Glaspell was a renowned writer during her time, and she left behind an incredible legacy. In the 1940s, the brilliant playwright began to face challenges in her career when Broadway critics began to harshly examine her body of work.
After World War II, her independent female protagonists were less relatable, as media and culture favored a return to domesticity for women. Her novels began falling out of print, leading to a decline in her reputation.
. . . . . . . . .
Susan Glaspell page on Amazon
. . . . . . . . .
In 1970, the second-wave feminist movement helped shed new light on Glaspell’s literary masterpieces, and a revival of her works began. Many of her works have been republished. “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers” are widely anthologized and read in many English and Women’s Studies courses. The International Susan Glaspell Society was founded in 2003; the organization’s mission is to recognize her as a greatest American author. Glaspell’s plays are once again been performed by theater groups around the world.
In 2015, a twelve-hour marathon of Glaspell’s plays was performed by the American Bard Theater Company. This all-day event took place to celebrate the centenary of the Providence Players. In 2018, San Diego State University put on The Glaspell Project in an effort to promote gender equality by featuring female playwrights in their production season.
Susan Glaspell is widely recognized as a critical figure who made important strides in feminism, women’s rights, and writing. She died of pneumonia on July 28, 1948, in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
More about Susan GlaspellOn this site
“Trifles” (1916) – Full text“A Jury of Her Peers” (1917) – Full textMajor Works
Novels
The Glory of the Conquered (1909)The Visioning (1911)Fidelity (1915)Brook Evans (1928)Fugitive’s Return (1929)Ambrose Holt and Family (1931)The Morning Is Near Us (1939)Norma Ashe (1942)Judd Rankin’s Daughter (1945)Short story collections
Susan Glaspell wrote dozens of short stories. Here are a handful of anthologies, two of them posthumous, speaking to the revival of her literary reputation.
Full-Length Plays
Bernice (1919)Inheritors (1921)The Verge (1921)Chains of Dew (1922)The Comic Artist (1927; co-written with Norman Matson)Alison’s House (1930; winner of 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama)Springs Eternal (1943)One-Act Plays
Suppressed Desires (1914), co-written with George Cram CookTrifles (1916; adapted into the short story “A Jury of Her Peers“1917)Close the Book (1917)The Outside (1917)The People (1917)Woman’s Honor (1918)Tickless Time (1918; co-written with George Cram Cook)Free Laughter (1919)Read and listen online
Project Gutenberg LibrivoxMore information and sources
The International Susan Glaspell Society Wikipedia encyclopedia.com Reader discussion of Glaspell’s works on Goodreads. . . . . . . . . .
The post Susan Glaspell appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
July 3, 2019
How I Found America: The Collected Stories of Anzia Yezierska
Anzia Yezierska (1880 – 1970) was a writer whose body of work spoke to the immigrant experience in America in the early 1900s. Born in an area that’s now Poland but which was part of the Russian Empire when she was was a child, her family arrived in New York City’s Lower East Side during the immigration wave of the late 1800s. Anzia, then ten years old, never shed the feeling of being an outsider looking in.
All of Yezierska’s short stories are collected in How I Found America: Collected Stories of Anzia Yezierska, 1991. In her introduction to the book, literary critic Vivian Gornick wrote:
“She was a misfit all her life. Throughout the years, she saw herself standing on the street with her nose pressed against the bakery window: hungry and shut out. No matter what happened, she felt marginal. Not belonging was her identity, and then her subject. After she began to write, it was her necessity.”
Driven by her ambition, she may have been hampered by her brittle personality and a dose of self-loathing. In her last book, the autobiographical Red Ribbon on a White Horse (1950), she wrote: “With a sudden sense of clarity, I realized the battle I thought I was waging against the world had been against myself, against the Jew in me.”
She found a measure of success in the 1920s with her novel, Bread Givers; her short stories even caught the attention of Hollywood, earning her a great deal of money which she eventually lost. Most of her fiction was focused on the Jewish immigrant experience, some of which was semi-autobiographical. Some of her later work addressed Puerto Rican immigrants as well.
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Having all but disappeared from the literary world long before her death in 1980, there was a wave of revived interest in her work beginning in the mid-1970s, with many re-evaluations of her stories and novels. Bread Givers was reissued in 1975 and 2003, and many of her stories were anthologized, introducing them to new audiences.
Yezierska’s stories are populated with familiar characters — struggling, striving Jewish immigrants, part of the “teeming masses,” who are acutely aware of a gentler, easier life that seems just beyond their reach. Often, the girl or young woman at the center of the story is someone very much like herself. The female characters’ longing to be seen and heard, and their striving toward a better life is vivid and palpable.
Her alter ego is depicted in stories with painful allusions. In one story, a male character describes the female protagonist as the one with “the starved-dog look in her eyes.”
Her writing isn’t pretty, though it’s quite readable The dialogue feels awkward, but it’s an accurate reflection of the cadence of native Yiddish speakers expressing themselves in English. And though she’s depicting the immigrant experience of a certain people — mainly Eastern European Jews — the immigrant struggle is still, sadly, quite pertinent today. In her time, Jews and other immigrant groups were often demonized, much as they are today — “welcomed” to the land of the free with lies and stereotypes meant to stir up fear of the Other.
. . . . . . . . . .
Anzia Yezierska page on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . .
From the 1991 Persea Books edition of How I Found America: The Collected Stories of Anzia Yezierska: In evoking the joy and pain of the Jewish immigrant experience, Anzia Yezierska has no peer. Her stories and novels, written from the 1920s to the 1960s, immortalized the Jews of the Lower East Side. In direct, emotionally powerful prose, she wrote about immigrants like herself as they struggled to emerge from poverty and to partake of America’s promise.
How I found America gathers together twenty-seven stories, virtually all of Yezierska’s short fiction. It includes, in their entirety, the two collections published during her lifetime — Hungry Hearts, the volume which catapulted its young author out of her humble circumstances and into the world of the successful, and Children of Loneliness, a rich and revealing collection, which has been long out of print — as well as seven additional stories, may about old age.
Widely anthologized classics like “The Fat of the Land,” “Children of Loneliness,” and “How I Found America” stand alongside equally remarkable but lesser-known works such as “The Lost Beautifulness,” “Soap and Water,” and “Brothers.”
Among the most interesting, certainly, are Yezierska’s stories of old age, “A Chair in Heaven,” “Take Up Your Bed and Walk,” and “The Open Cage,” written in the 1960s when Yezierska’s reputation had waned, when she was living in obscurity once again.
Individually, each story is authentic and immediate, as deeply memorable as a personal experience passed on from one generation to the next. Taken together, they constitute a vivid and enduring portrait of a time and a people.
Yet Yezierska’s stories are not period pieces. They ring with the true feelings of every person who has ever wanted to make something better out of his or her life. As a record of the passionate struggle of the human spirit, they are timeless.
In this complete collection of Yezierska’s short stories, an introduction by Vivian Gornick sets them in a literary and historical context and offers new insight into the quality of Yezierska’s achievement.
. . . . . . . . . .
Looping back to Vivian Gornick’ introduction to How I Found America, we find this painfully accurate assessment:
“Inevitably, in Yezierska’s work, whether the narrator speaks in the first person or the third, the story is divided between the time the character announces her “wild, blind hunger” for her own life, and the time she realizes she is trapped in a “repression” from which hope of release is dim. The strength of this simple repetition is such that it achieves metaphoric status.
Yezierska the immigrant. Yezierska the woman, the permanently bereft child are all trapped in that ‘I want to make from myself a person!’ voice. They galvanize one another. With each cry, the words cut deeper, the situation feels more urgent. The character begins to sound as though she were born to speak her piece in this place and at this time, and in no other.”
. . . . . . . . . .
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
The post How I Found America: The Collected Stories of Anzia Yezierska appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
June 27, 2019
Plot summary of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
Jane Eyre (1847) is Charlotte Brontë’s best known novel, the story of the title heroine’s love for the mysterious and reclusive Mr. Rochester and her quest for independence. Though it has been considered a feminist work, it also fits into the genre of the gothic novel due to that pesky little detail of Rochester’s mad wife locked away in an attic. Through the concise plot summary of Jane Eyre that follows, the reader will get an overview of the book that made Charlotte Brontë famous.
Jane, a young woman of unassuming background and appearance, searches for love and a sense of belonging while preserving her independence. The book sparked a fair amount of controversy when first published, which was fueled by critics and the public suspecting that “Currer Bell” (the author’s ambiguous pseudonym) was a woman. Still, the novel was an immediate success, securing for Charlotte a place in the literary world of her time and for generations to come.
Be sure to read this excellent late 19th-century analysis of Jane Eyre by Mary A. Ward for deeper insight into this iconic novel. The following plot summary is excerpted from a 1919 article which ran in the McClure’s Publishing Syndicate authored by T L. Hood, an early 20th century English instructor at Harvard University:
Plot summary of Jane Eyre
From her very birth, Jane Eyre was left in the cold lap of charity. Her aunt, Mrs. Reed of Gateshead Hall, wealthy and unfeeling, kept the orphan Jane for ten years, during which she was subjected to such fixed hatred that she was glad to be packed off to Lowood School, a semi-charitable institution for girls.
Life at Lowood School
Life at Lowood School was no picnic for Jane. The school’s headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst, was cruel and hypocritical. He kept the students in a state of poverty, preaching self-sacrifice while funding a life of comfort for himself and his own family with the students’ tuition. Lowood School was said to have been modeled after the school that Charlotte and her sisters attended. While there, her two older sisters contracted illnesses that killed them before adolescence. Jane’s friend Helen Burns, who dies of consumption, is thought to be inspired by Charlotte’s sister Maria.
After the school is taken over by a more ethical group of leaders, Jane’s lot improves. She stays at Lowood for six years as a student, followed by two more years as a teacher.
Encountering the mysterious Mr. Rochester
Seeking a change, Jane left the position to become the governess of Adela Varens, the ward of Mr Edward Rochester, at Thornfield Manor. There, she was pleased with her situation: The grand old house; the quiet library; her little chamber; the garden with its huge chestnut tree; and the great meadow with its array of knotty thorn-trees.
If Mr. Rochester had been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, Jane could never have felt at ease with him. But he was a somber, moody man, with broad jutting brow and grim, square mouth and jawline; yet, in his presence, the plain little governess felt somehow content. His character, however was beyond her penetration.
Mr. Rochester confided to her that Adela Varens was not his child; but the daughter of a Parisian dancer, who had deceived him, and deserted the little girl. So much he told her, but of the strange shadow that passed over his happiest moments, of his apparent affection for Jane, along with his withholding from her some secret grief, she could make nothing.
Strange happenings at the manor
Then came the most mysterious happenings to Thornfield. One night, Jane found the door of Mr. Rochester’s room open, and his bed on fire. She managed with great difficulty to quench the flames, and rouse him from the stupor into which the smoke had plunged him. He advised her to remain silent about the ordeal.
Later, a Mr. Mason from Spanish Town in Jamaica arrived at Thornfield while Mr. Rochester was entertaining a large party. That night, Jane was awakened by a cry for help. When she reached the hall, the guests were aroused.
Mr. Rochester, candle in hand, was descending the stairs from the third floor. “A servant has had a nightmare,” he said, and persuaded the guests back into their rooms.
But all that night, Jane was obliged to attend to Mr. Mason, who lay in a bed on the third floor, badly wounded in the arm and shoulder. From scattered hints, Jane gathered that a woman had inflicted the wounds. A doctor was summoned, and before morning, Mr. Rochester had spirited the wounded man away in a coach, with the doctor to watch over him.
. . . . . . . . . .
Jane Eyre: A Late 19th-Century Analyisis
. . . . . . . . . .
Jane is may be an heiress
Jane is suddenly summoned to Gateshead to her aunt, Mrs. Reed, who lays dying. Mrs. Reed gives her a letter from John Eyre, in Madeira, asking that his niece, Jane, communicate with him. He might adopt her, he conveyed, as he was unmarried and childless. It was dated three years back. Mrs. Reed had never attempted to deliver it to Jane, having disliked her too thoroughly to lend a hand in lifting her to prosperity.
A thwarted wedding ceremony
When Jane returns to Thornfield, Mr. Rochester proposes to her; and because she loves him and believes in him, she accepts. A month later, at the ceremony in an ancient house of God, the clergyman asks, “Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?” A distinct voice broke out in the silence of the empty church:
“The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.”
Asked to explain, the speaker, a solicitor from London named Mr. Briggs, shows a document to prove that Mr. Rochester had married Bertha Mason fifteen years earlier in Spanish Town, Jamaica. And he produces Mr. Mason to witness that the woman is still alive and at Thornfield.
Edward Rochester confesses hardily and recklessly that he had married, as the lawyer asserted; that his wife was still living; that he had kept her secretly at Thornfield for years. She was mad, and she came from a mad family — idiots and maniacs for three generations He had been inveigled into the marriage by his family, with the connivance of his father and brother, who had desired him to marry into a fortune.
. . . . . . . . . .
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . .
The madwoman in the attic
Rochester invites the clergyman, the lawyer, and Mr. Mason to come up to Thornfield and see what sort of being he had been cheated into espousing and judge whether or not he had a right to break the vows.
Once back at Thornfield, he takes them to the third story. In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain. A trusted maidservant bent over the fire, apparently cooking something. In the deep shade at the further end of the room, a figure ran back and forth.
What it was, at first sight, one could not tell. It groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal. But it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.
“That is my wife,” said Mr. Rochester. Then all withdrew.
St. John Rivers and his sisters
That night, Jane stole away from Thornfield. The few shillings she possessed she gave to the driver of the first coach she saw, to take her as far as he could for the money. Thirty-six hours later he let her off at a crossroads in the moorlands. Into the heather she walked. That night she ate bilberries and slept under a crag.
Two days later, famished and drenched, she was taken into Marsh End, the house of the Reverend St. John Rivers, a young and ambitious clergyman in the neighboring village of Morton. His two sisters, Mary and Diana, were more than kind to Jane. They were soon to return to their work as governesses in a large city in the south of England.
St. John secured employment for Jane as mistress of the school for girls in Morton. His plan was to become a missionary in India. He asked Jane to become his wife and go with him. But something kept her from consenting; he felt the call to missionary work, but she did not.
Then he discovered for her that her uncle had died, leaving her twenty thousand pounds. This was confirmed by Mr. Briggs, the solicitor in London. Jane discovered, too, that the mother of St. John, Mary, and Diana had been her father’s sisters, so that they should have been heirs to her uncle in Madeira. She insisted on division of the legacy with them.
The destruction of Thornfield and the death of Bertha
One night, St. John was pressing Jane for her final decision. Though she doesn’t love him, she nearly gives in to his pressure. The single candle was dying out, but the room was full of moonlight. She hears a voice from across the moors a cry — “Jane! Jane!” — and realizes that she can’t abandon the man she truly loves.
The next day she was on her way to Thornfield. In thirty-six hours she arrived at The Rochester Arms, two miles away. With much misgiving, she walked to Thornfield — only to find a blackened ruin.
Back at the inn, she learned that Thornfield Hall had burned down at about harvest time the previous year. The fire had broken out in the dead of night. Rochester had tried to rescue his wife. She had climbed to the roof, where she had stood waving her arms, and shouting until they could hear her a mile away.
Rochester had ascended through the skylight. The crowd heard him call to her — “Bertha!” He approached her, she gave a yell and then sprang off. The next minute she was lying dead on the pavement.
Rochester had been taken from the ruins, alive but badly hurt: one eye had been knocked out, and one hand so badly crushed that a surgeon had to amputate it directly. The other eye was also inflamed and losing sight. He was now at Ferndean, a manor house on a farm he owned about thirty miles from where Thornfield Hall had stood, a desolate spot indeed.
“Reader, I married him”
There Jane found him — sad, helpless, and crippled. Now he was free, and with that, Jane is able to convey the iconic line, “Reader, I married him.”
Eventually, the sight returned to Edward Rochester’s eye, so that when his firstborn is put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they had once been — large, brilliant, and black. On that occasion, with a full heart, he acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with Mercy.
More about Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontëWikipedia Reader discussion on Goodreads How Charlotte Brontë Came to Write Jane Eyre Sorry, But Jane Eyre isn’t the romance you want it to be
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
The post Plot summary of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
June 25, 2019
Mary Hunter Austin
Mary Hunter Austin (September 9, 1868 – August 13, 1934) was an American novelist and essayist who focused her writing on cultural and social problems within the Native American community. In addition to spending seventeen years making a special study of Indian life in the Mojave Desert, Austin was also an early feminist and defended the rights of Native Americans and Spanish Americans.
Austin was born in Carlinville, Illinois and was the fourth of six siblings whose parents were Savannah and George Hunter. In 1888, her family moved to Bakersfield, California, where they established a homestead in the San Joaquin Valley. That same year, Austin also graduated from Blackburn College.
A love for the desertTwo years after, Austin married Stafford Wallace Austin on May 18, 1891 in Bakersfield, California. He was from Hawaii and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. They had one child, Ruth, on October 31, 1891, but unfortunately, she died of birth injuries.
For many years they lived in various towns in California’s Owens Valley, where Austin’s love for the desert and the Native Americans who lived there began to grow. This led to the creation of her first and best known book, The Land of Little Rain (1903), a tribute to California’s deserts.
After the success of her first book, she created a collection of stories,The Basket Woman (1904), a romance novel, Isidro (1905), as well as a collection of regional sketches, The Flock (1906).
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Success after a failed marriageAustin and her husband were involved in the local California Water Wars, a series of political conflicts between the city of Los Angeles and ranchers and farmers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California over water rights. When their battle was lost, they decided to divorce in 1905. Stafford Austin went to live in Death Valley, California, and she moved to the art colony at Carmel, California.
In Carmel, she became part of a social circle that included Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and George Sterling. In addition, she was also one of the founders of the Forest Theater where she premiered and directed her three-act play Fire in 1913. She was involved in all aspects of Carmel’s Bohemian society, which included unencumbered sexual and homoerotic attachments.
Austin later traveled to Italy, France, and England where she met H.G Wells and other intellectuals. These encounters fueled her ideas of feminism and commitment to socialism to her personal form of mysticism.
After these travels, Austin arrived in New York City and became associated with a group of writers and artists that included Mabel Dodge Luhan, John Reed, and Walter Lippmann. Her play, The Arrow Maker (1911), and her best novel, A Woman of Genius (1912), were products of her time in New York. In addition, she wrote articles on socialism, women’s rights, and numerous other topics, as well as her novels The Ford (1917) and No. 26 Jayne Street (1920).
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Tragedy in CarmelIn July of 1914 she joined the distinguished New York painter, William Merritt Chase, at several “teas” as well as privately in his studio where he finished her portrait. At the time, he was teaching his final summer class in Carmel.
Well-known artist Jennie V. Cannon claimed that he began the portrait of Austin as a class demonstration after Austin claimed that two of her portraits, which were done by famous artists in the Latin Quarter of Paris, were already accepted to the Salon. Chase then became unnerved by Austin’s “pushiness and claims to extra-sensory perceptions,” but had more of an interest in her appointment as director of East Coast publicity for San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
On July 25, 1914, Chase attended her Indian melodrama, The Arrow Maker, in the Forest International Exposition, and confessed to Cannon that she believed the play was dreary. It was said that Dr. Daniel MacDougall, head of the local Carnegie Institute, paid for most of Austin’s production costs because of their evident love affair.
Around this time, Helena Wood Smith, one of Chase’s students, was brutally murdered by her Japanese lover. Austin joined the mob that belittled authorities for their incompetence. As a result of the horrific event, Austin’s visits to Carmel after 1914 dwindled.
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Taos PuebloAfter a trip to Santa Fe in 1918, Austin took part in establishing The Santa Fe Little Theatre (now operating as The Santa Fe Playhouse) and directed their first production held in February 14, 1919 at the art museum’s St. Francis Auditorium. She also took part in preserving the local culture of New Mexico and established the Spanish Colonial Arts Society in 1925 with artist Frank Applegate.
Four years later, while living in New Mexico in 1929, Austin co-authored a book with photographer Ansel Adams titled Taos Pueblo. A year later it was published and printed in a limited edition of just 108 copies. It was unique because it included actual photographic prints by Adams as opposed to reproductions.
. . . . . . . . . .
Mary Hunter Austin page on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . .
Much of Austen’s work focused on cultural and social problems within the Native American community, a result of devoting several years of her life to studying Indian life in the Mojave Desert. The Land of Little Rain, her best known work, goes into detail about the land and its inhabitants as she writes, “Trust Indians not to miss any virtues of the plant world! Nothing.”
In addition to her focus on Native American issues, Austin developed an interest in political themes of her day, including racism, segregation, feminism, the environment, and the injustices of governmental power. In some of her work, Austin offered a glimpse into her own troubled personal life— especially pertaining to men. She also expressed her love for California through her work..
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Awards and Honors; the legacy of Mary Hunter AustinAfter her death in 1934, Mount Mary Austin in the Sierra Nevada was named in the writer’s honor. It is located just 8.5 miles away from the house she built and designed with her estranged husband in Independence, California. Today, the home is a historical landmark.
A 1950 edition of The Land of Little Rain and a 1977 edition of Taos Pueblo each included photographs by Ansel Adams. In 1989, Doris Baizley wrote and presented a teleplay of The Land of Little Rain on American Playhouse starring Helen Hunt.
In 2018, the Port Yonder Press created a Mary Hunter Austin Book Award in honor of her and her multitude of accomplishments.
On August 13, 1934, Austin passed away at age sixty five in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was cremated and her ashes were laid to rest in a crypt on Mount Picacho.
. . . . . . . . . .
Mary Hunter Austin’s House in Independence, California
Major Works
The Land of Little Rain (1903)The Basket Woman (1904)Isidro (1905)The Flock (1906)Lost Borders, the people of the desert (1909)The Arrow Maker – A Drama in Three Acts (1911)A Woman of Genius (1912)Fire: a drama in three acts (1914)The Ford (1917)The Trail Book (1918)The Young Woman Citizen (1918)No. 26 Jayne Street (1920)The American Rhythm (1923)The Land of Journeys’ Ending (1924)Everyman’s Genius (1925)Lands of the Sun (1927)Taos Pueblo (1930)Experiences Facing Death (1931)Starry Adventure (1931)Earth Horizon (1932)Can Prayer Be Answered? (1934)One-Smoke Stories (1934)One Hundred Miles on Horseback (1887)Cactus Thorn (1927)Biographies
Mary Hunter Austin: Song of a Maverick by Esther F. Lanigan (1997)Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History by Nancy C. Unger (2012)
More Information
Wikipedia Britannica EveripediaSkyler 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.
. . . . . . . . .
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
The post Mary Hunter Austin appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
June 23, 2019
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot (1861)
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe was the third novel of George Eliot (1819 – 1880). Published in 1861, this novel, like others written by the esteemed British author (whose real name was Mary Ann Evans), addresses a number of social themes while telling a compelling story.
Silas Marner, a rather simple man, is betrayed by a trusted friend who accuses him of a crime he didn’t commit. This leads to his expulsion from a religious community that he has loved being a part of. He relocates to a remote village called Raveloe where he has no friends or family, and where the community eyes him suspiciously due to his odd nature.
Marner works tirelessly at his trade as a weaver and amasses a pile of gold, which he practically worships. When his gold is stolen, he goes into a tailspin. A little golden-haired girl wanders into his cottage, rescuing him from despair. Marner raises her with the assistance of his new neighbors, learning the value of love and community. Grounded in the tradition of realism, the novel encompasses the following themes:
Human relationships, individual and communityBetrayal and deceit Religion and its role in societySocietal customs and traditionsIndustrialization and the upheaval it causesAn 1861 review of Silas Marner by George Eliot
From the original review in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 26, 1861: Silas Marner, we believe, will have many friends. The poor weaver of Reveloe will be a welcome guest in English homes and his simple tale will touch the hearts of “gentle readers.”
George Eliot’s heroes and heroines do not usually belong to the class familiar to ordinary novel readers. “Marner was highly thought of,” we are told at the outset, “in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern-Yard, he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centered in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer meeting, into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death.”
A betrayal by a friend and sweetheart
A member of a narrow religious community, and subject to epileptic fits, poor Silas does not at the first blush, appear to be quite the person to carry away our sympathies, or excite in our hearts any large amount of interest. But we soon begin to feel compassion for him for his undeserved misfortunes, and before we have reached the last page of the narrative we cannot fail to regard and esteem his genuine humanity.
In the lantern-yard congregation Silas Marner, found a friend named William Dane. “One of the most frequent topics of conversation between the two friends was assurance of salvation Silas confessed that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of concentration, he had dreamed that he saw the words ‘calling and election sure,’ standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible.”
Besides the friend, Silas had a sweetheart; and by both, he was betrayed. A false accusation was made against him; lots were cast, after earnest prayer, and “the lots declared Silas Marner guilty.” Silas went forth with a shaken trust in God and man, and soon afterward learned that his false friend was engaged to marry the young servant girl he had once fondly loved.
Exile to Raveloe
A blight now had fallen over Marner’s life. He left the old town where he had been a conspicuous member of the Lantern-yard congregation, and took up his abode in a rural district called Raveloe. Here he pursued his labors at the loom, and so successfully that the solitary weaver’s money began to accumulate.
“Cut off from faith and love,” nothing seemed left to him but money and his loom. Though not yet forty, he was called “Old Master Marner.” Prematurely aged, he had also contracted the sordid vice of old age — he was a miser. His long course of labor were unrelieved by intervals of relaxation or pleasant conversation; his money was his idol, friend, and companion.
The weaver and his money
This is the history of Silas Marner until the fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat at his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web. His muscles moved with such even repetition that their pulse seemed almost as much a constant as the holding of his breath.
At night came his revelry; at night he closed his shutters and made fast his doors and drew out his gold. Long since, the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to hold them, and he had made for them too thick leather bags, which wasted no room in their resting place but bent themselves flexibly to every corner.
How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of dark leather! The silver bore no large proportion to the gold because the long pieces of linen which formed Marner’s chief work were always partly paid for in gold and out the silver he supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpence pieces to spend in this way.
He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver — the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labor — he loved them all He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in regular piles and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned by the work in his loom, as if they’d been unborn children.
No wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he made his journey through the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the lane-side in search of the once-familiar herbs; these too belonged to the past from which his life had shrunk away.
Robbed of his treasure; a child wanders in
At length, another great calamity befell the poor weaver. He was robbed — robbed of all his hoarded treasure! By this unexpected blow, Marner was utterly prostrated. For what had he now to live? Who or what would supply the place of his beloved money?
A little child finds its way into Silas’s cottage, having strayed over the snow from the embrace of a dead mother. That poor creature — the profligate wife of a gentleman’s son — had perished in the cold from an overdose of laudanum. The weaver soon becomes conscious that he has found a fresh treasure, and his emotions when he first awakens to a send of its value are beautifully described:
Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent forth only a red uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when, to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth. Gold!—his own gold—brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!
He felt his heart begin to beat violently, and for a few moments, he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last, and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees and bent his head low to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child—a round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head.
Could this be his little sister come back to him in a dream—his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms for a year before she died, when he was a small boy without shoes or stockings? That was the first thought that darted across Silas’s blank wonderment. Was it a dream?
He rose to his feet again, pushed his logs together, and, throwing on some dried leaves and sticks, raised a flame; but the flame did not disperse the vision—it only lit up more distinctly the little round form of the child, and its shabby clothing. It was very much like his little sister. Silas sank into his chair powerless, under the double presence of an inexplicable surprise and a hurrying influx of memories. How and when had the child come in without his knowledge?
. . . . . . . . . . .
Silas Marner by George Eliot on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . . .
Once these passages are excerpted in the review above, it ends abruptly — as if the reviewer ran out of stamina or space. So let’s briefly tie up the loose ends of the plot.
The child who has wandered into Marner’s cottage is a little girl who he names Eppie after his mother and sister, who were both named Hepzibah. As might be predicted, the golden-haired child becomes a much more meaningful form of treasure than the golden coins that were robbed from him.
A kind neighbor, Dolly Winthrop, helps Marner raise Eppie, and enables them to become more a part of the community life of the village. Godfrey Cass, the eldest son of the local squire, helps Marner by providing financial support. He has been blackmailed by his brother Dunstan over his secret first marriage to Molly Farren, a poor opium addict.
Eppie grows up to be a fine young woman who is loved by Marner and is a darling of the entire village. Through Eppie, Marner has also become a respected member of the community.
A shocking development happens when the skeleton of Dunstan Cass is found at the bottom of the stone quarry near Marner’s cottage. In the bones of his hand is Silas’s bag of gold, which is now returned to him.
Godfrey, meanwhile, has been married to Nancy Lammeter, but has kept his first marriage and child a secret from her. Now, he confesses to her that he was married to Molly and that Eppie was their daughter. He also reveals the same to Eppie and offers her a more elegant home with himself and Nancy. Eppie declines, choosing to stay with Marner, to whom she is devoted: “I can’t think o’ no happiness without him.”
Marner realizes what a satisfying life he has had in Raveloe with Eppie and their neighbors and friends. Eppie marries Dolly’s son Aaron, who has been her friend as she grew up, and they move into Marner’s cottage — which has been greatly expanded by Godfrey for the comfort of all.
Silas Marner is a Victorian novel that is sentimental yet satisfying. It rewards the reader with a happy ending, though in George Eliot’s capable hands it manages to remain wonderfully complex.
Over the years, Silas Marner has been adapted for the screen a number of times. It was adapted at least five times into silent films in the years 1911 – 1926, and was produced by Masterpiece Theatre (BBC) in 1985 with Ben Kingsley starring as Silas Marner.
. . . . . . . . .
You might also like: Romola by George Eliot
More about Silas Marner by George Eliot Wikipedia Reader discussion on Goodreads Cliff’s Notes: The Themes in Silas MarnerFull text on Project Gutenberg
. . . . . . . . . . .
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
The post Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot (1861) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Ravenloe by George Eliot (1861)
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Ravenloe was the third novel of George Eliot (1819 – 1880). Published in 1861, this novel, like others written by the esteemed British author (whose real name was Mary Ann Evans), addresses a number of social themes while telling a compelling story.
Silas Marner, a rather simple man, is betrayed by a trusted friend who accuses him of a crime he didn’t commit. This causes his explosion from a religious community that he has loved and felt part of. He relocates to a remote village called Raveloe where he has no friends or family, and where the community eyes him suspiciously due to his odd nature.
Marner works tirelessly at his trade as a weaver and amasses a pile of gold, which he practically worships. When his gold is stolen, he goes into a tailspin. A little golden-haired girl wanders into his cottage, rescuing him from despair. Marner raises her lovingly with the assistance of his new neighbors, learning that love, family, and community are lasting, whereas wealth can be fleeting. Grounded in the tradition of realism, the novel encompasses the following themes:
Human relationships, individual and communityBetrayal and deceit Religion and its role in societySocietal customs and traditionsIndustrialization and the upheaval it causesIt was fascinating to come across an American review of Silas Marner, which appeared in the same year of its publication:
An 1861 review of Silas Marner by George Eliot
From the original review in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 26, 1861: Silas Marner, we believe, will have many friends. The poor weaver of Reveloe will be a welcome guest in English homes and his simple tale will touch the hearts of “gentle readers.”
George Eliot’s heroes and heroines do not usually belong to the class familiar to ordinary novel readers. “Marner was highly thought of,” we are told at the outset, “in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern-Yard, he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centered in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer meeting, into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death.”
A betrayal by a friend and sweetheart
A member of a narrow religious community, and subject to epileptic fits, poor Silas does not at the first blush, appear to be quite the person to carry away our sympathies, or excite in our hearts any large amount of interest. But we soon begin to feel compassion for him for his undeserved misfortunes, and before we have reached the last page of the narrative we cannot fail to regard and esteem his genuine humanity.
In the lantern-yard congregation Silas Marner, found a friend named William Dane. “One of the most frequent topics of conversation between the two friends was assurance of salvation Silas confessed that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of concentration, he had dreamed that he saw the words ‘calling and election sure,’ standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible.”
Besides the friend, Silas had a sweetheart; and by both, he was betrayed. A false accusation was made against him; lots were cast, after earnest prayer, and “the lots declared Silas Marner guilty.” Silas went forth with a shaken trust in God and man, and soon afterward learned that his false friend was engaged to marry the young servant girl he had once fondly loved.
Exile to Ravenloe
A blight now had fallen over Marner’s life. He left the old town where he had been a conspicuous member of the Lantern-yard congregation, and took up his abode in a rural district called Ravenloe. Here he pursued his labors at the loom, and so successfully that the solitary weaver’s money began to accumulate.
“Cut off from faith and love,” nothing seemed left to him but money and his loom. Though not yet forty, he was called “Old Master Marner.” Prematurely aged, he had also contracted the sordid vice of old age — he was a miser. His long course of labor were unrelieved by intervals of relaxation or pleasant conversation; his money was his idol, friend, and companion.
The weaver and his money
This is the history of Silas Marner until the fifteenth year after he came to Ravenloe. The livelong day he sat at his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web. His muscles moved with such even repetition that their pulse seemed almost as much a constant as the holding of his breath.
At night came his revelry; at night he closed his shutters and made fast his doors and drew out his gold. Long since, the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to hold them, and he had made for them too thick leather bags, which wasted no room in their resting place but bent themselves flexibly to every corner.
How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of dark leather! The silver bore no large proportion to the gold because the long pieces of linen which formed Marner’s chief work were always partly paid for in gold and out the silver he supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpence pieces to spend in this way.
He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver — the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labor — he loved them all He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in regular piles and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned by the work in his loom, as if they’d been unborn children.
No wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he made his journey through the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the lane-side in search of the once-familiar herbs; these too belonged to the past from which his life had shrunk away.
Robbed of his treasure; a child wanders in
At length, another great calamity befell the poor weaver. He was robbed — robbed of all his hoarded treasure! By this unexpected blow, Marner was utterly prostrated. For what had he now to live? Who or what would supply the place of his beloved money?
A little child finds its way into Silas’s cottage, having strayed over the snow from the embrace of a dead mother. That poor creature — the profligate wife of a gentleman’s son — had perished in the cold from an overdose of laudanum. The weaver soon becomes conscious that he has found a fresh treasure, and his emotions when he first awakens to a send of its value are beautifully described:
Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent forth only a red uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when, to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth. Gold!—his own gold—brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!
He felt his heart begin to beat violently, and for a few moments, he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last, and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees and bent his head low to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child—a round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head.
Could this be his little sister come back to him in a dream—his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms for a year before she died, when he was a small boy without shoes or stockings? That was the first thought that darted across Silas’s blank wonderment. Was it a dream?
He rose to his feet again, pushed his logs together, and, throwing on some dried leaves and sticks, raised a flame; but the flame did not disperse the vision—it only lit up more distinctly the little round form of the child, and its shabby clothing. It was very much like his little sister. Silas sank into his chair powerless, under the double presence of an inexplicable surprise and a hurrying influx of memories. How and when had the child come in without his knowledge?
. . . . . . . . . . .
Silas Marner by George Eliot on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . . .
Once these passages are excerpted in the review above, it ends abruptly — as if the reviewer ran out of stamina or space. So let’s briefly tie up the loose ends of the plot.
The child who has wandered into Marner’s cottage is a little girl who he names Eppie after his mother and sister, who were both named Hepzibah. As might be predicted, the golden-haired child becomes a much more meaningful form of treasure than the golden coins that were robbed from him.
A kind neighbor, Dolly Winthrop, helps Marner raise Eppie, and enables them to become more a part of the community life of the village. Godfrey Cass, the eldest son of the local squire, helps Marner by providing financial support. He has been blackmailed by his brother Dunstan over his secret first marriage to Molly Farren, a poor opium addict.
Eppie grows up to be a fine young woman who is loved by Marner and is a darling of the entire village. Through Eppie, Marner has also become a respected member of the community.
A shocking development happens when the skeleton of Dunstan Cass is found at the bottom of the stone quarry near Marner’s cottage. In the bones of his hand is Silas’s bag of gold, which is now returned to him.
Godfrey, meanwhile, has been married to Nancy Lammeter, but has kept his first marriage and child a secret from her. Now, he confesses to her that he was married to Molly and that Eppie was their daughter. He also reveals the same to Eppie and offers her a more elegant home with himself and Nancy. Eppie declines, choosing to stay with Marner, to whom she is devoted: “I can’t think o’ no happiness without him.”
Marner realizes what a satisfying life he has had in Ravenloe with Eppie and their neighbors and friends. Eppie marries Dolly’s son Aaron, who has been her friend as she grew up, and they move into Marner’s cottage — which has been greatly expanded by Godfrey for the comfort of all.
Silas Marner is a Victorian novel that is sentimental yet satisfying. It rewards the reader with a happy ending, though in George Eliot’s capable hands it manages to remain wonderfully complex.
Over the years, Silas Marner has been adapted for the screen a number of times. It was adapted at least five times into silent films in the years 1911 – 1926, and was produced by Masterpiece Theatre (BBC) in 1985 with Ben Kingsley starring as Silas Marner.
. . . . . . . . .
You might also like: Romola by George Eliot
More about Silas Marner by George Eliot Wikipedia Reader discussion on Goodreads Cliff’s Notes: The Themes in Silas MarnerFull text on Project Gutenberg
. . . . . . . . . . .
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
The post Silas Marner: The Weaver of Ravenloe by George Eliot (1861) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
June 18, 2019
South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1933)
South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was this author’s first novel, published in 1933. She struggled to gain any traction in her writing career until she and her first husband bought an orange grove in Cross Creek, Florida.
She was fascinated by the locals of Cross Creek, poor white natives of the area who were called “crackers” in the vernacular of the time. At first wary of this Northerner, they eventually warmed to her as she gained their trust. Once she began weaving the dialect, flora and fauna, and foodways of the people of the “big scrub” into her writing, she finally found success.
The story centers on Lant, a young man who supports himself and his mother by making and selling moonshine. It captures the flavor of Cross Creek and the life of moonshine makers. South Moon Under was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, an honor Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings would achieve just a few years later with The Yearling (1938), her most famous novel.
South Moon Under was generally well received; the admiring review just below is typical of its reception. Some reviewers were put off by the harsh descriptions of the backwoods life described in the novel, an example of which is in the second review in this post.
A 1933 review of South Moon Under
From original review in The Tampa Bay Times, March 12, 1933: We who live in Florida cities, and along the sea shore, know little or nothing of the life of the natives in the scrub. the Florida scrub is unique, and has a life all its own which is described with singular power in this novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
This is an area practically untouched in writing, though it resembles the mountain stories of Maristan Chapman and Elizabeth Maddox Roberts, as it deals with primitive people on their native soil. They are simple and uncouth perhaps, but with a certain dignity. They’re unlearned, slow, and peaceful, but gallant and brave.
The book is only a picture of their everyday life, their rich and picturesque individualities, and of the sights and sounds of nature which surround them. Mrs. Rawlings renders her scenes with a profound knowledge of the people and their habitation. Evidently she has lived among them and loves the “Big Scrub.”
Rawlings has a most interesting style, her short, crisp sentences carrying no wasted words, and yet, having an almost poetic rhythm.
The story concerns one Lantry and his family, who live in a clearing in the scrub, wresting a meagre existence from the sandy soil. It’s a picture of American life that will be a lovely to the reader of fiction in that this strange, enchanting setting and its primitive people have never yet been presented. And to Floridians, of course, it will have a special appeal.
. . . . . . . . . .
See also: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1938)
. . . . . . . . . .
From the original review of South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in the Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, March 12, 1933: A regional novel, introducing in fiction an unfamiliar part of the American scene, the Florida “scrub,” and the “Crackers” — illiterate, poor white natives of the isolated sections of the Deep South.
It is a first novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, full of detail, teeming with backwoods crudities in dialect: bearing the star of first-hand acquaintance with the Crackers and the plant and “varmint” life of their surroundings. It belongs to the unvarnished statement of fact school of American writing, a school that has had many recent recruits — regional books by writers who see a great deal, and record it all, camera-like. It’s all true but singularly unbeautiful — somehow diminishing life and making it seem paltry.
Here are shrill voices, strong epithets, further additions to the dreary literary trope of women in childbirth.
One family, the Lantrys — father, daughter, and grandson — is depicted for a genera in the pine scrub, with the woman working in the fields, cooking longing for tender words that never come; the men trapping in winter, ‘gator hunting in summer, moonshining when crops are bad, obeying their own clan code and flogging the transgressor.
“South Moon Under” refers to a stage of the moon, the stage when it is directly under the earth. The Crackers, who believe in the zodiac signs and live principally by hunting, think that game stirs at the four moon stages, moon-rise and moon-down, south-moon-over and south-moon-under.
Young Lant, the grandson, a great woodsman, understands all but the influence of south-moon-under. That “the creatures” should obey an invisible call from another planet is to him strange and eerie. In his halting way he reasons that a Power shapes our destinies, “rough-hew them how we will.”
He was born, he hunts for food, in the end he slays a “revenooer’s” spy, all in the south-moon-under; so the major events of his life seem beyond his control.
The boy’s mother especially, Piety (pronounced Py-tee), has pathetic dignity and commands respect but often this reviewers reaction to the story is distaste, revulsion at being brought to read about the trapped “varmints” boiling for the chickens. “their bodies looking like newborn babies.”
One is emotionally depressed, as if the tragic muse, Melpomene, were being seen on a spring wagon, driving through the scrub, corn pone beside her in a tin pail.
As a revelation of how the other half lives, it’s all significant and interesting. But it’s not the particular province of fiction to explain unfamiliar people. That is, rather, the function of ethnography, the branch of science that is purely descriptive of people and races. To this reviewer, at least, South Moon Under seems to be merely ethnography humanized.
. . . . . . . . . .
South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . .
“Perhaps all men were moved against their will. A man ordered his life, and then an obscurity of circumstance sent him down a road that was not of his own desire or choosing. Something beyond a man’s immediate choice and will reached through the earth and stirred him. He did not see how any man might escape it.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“The worst things I knows of is rattlesnakes and some kinds o’ people. And a rattlesnake minds his own matters if he ain’t bothered. A man’s got a right to kill ary thing, snake or man, comes messin’ up with him.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Hit don’t make no difference what a man perfesses. I been in a heap o’ churches. There’s the Nazarene Church and the Pentecost and the Holy Rollers and the Baptists and I don’t know what-all. I cain’t see much difference to nary one of ‘em. There’s a good to all of ‘em and there’s a bad.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Men had reached into the scrub and along its boundaries, had snatched what they could get and had gone away, uneasy in that vast indifferent peace; for a man was nothing, crawling ant-like among the myrtle bushes under the pines.”
. . . . . . . . . .
*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!
The post South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1933) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.
