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January 28, 2018

Quotes by Ursula Le Guin on Writing, Reading, and Storytelling

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 – 2018) stirred the imagination with her powerful novels and stories. Though known primarily as a masterful and influential writer of science fiction and fantasy, she wrote across many genres. The imaginary worlds she created were commentaries on our own, with the complexities of human nature. She also spoke eloquently about the art and craft of writing, and considered storytelling as a cornerstone of human experience. Here are some favorite quotes by Ursula Le Guin on writing, reading, and storytelling in her inimitable, compelling voice.

“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.” ―The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1979

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.” — UrsulaLeGuin.com

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.” — “A Few Words to a Young Writer,” 2008

Photo: LitHub

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.” — The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1979

“The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you’re fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.” — “Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading,” Harper’s Magazine, February 2008

“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art.” — National Book Awards speech, 2014

“While we read a novel, we are insane — bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices… Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.”

“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” ― Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places, 1989

“The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.” ― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1979

“I want the story to have a rhythm that keeps moving forward. Because that’s the whole point of telling a story. You’re on a journey — you’re going from here to there. It’s got to move. Even if the rhythm is very complicated and subtle, that’s what’s going to carry the reader.” — Paris Review Interviews, 2013

“Rewriting is as hard as composition is — that is, very hard work. But revising — fiddling and polishing — that’s gravy — I love it. I could do it forever. And the computer has made it such a breeze.” — UrsulaLeGuin.com

Ursula K. Le Guin’s books on Amazon

“Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realize that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being ‘outgoing’. But a writer’s job is ingoing.” — The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, 2002

“In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find — if it’s a good novel — that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we’ve never crossed before.” — The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969

… When people say, did you always want to be a writer? I have to say no! I always was a writer. I didn’t want to be a writer and lead the writer’s life and be glamorous and go to New York. I just wanted to do my job writing, and to do it really well.” — Paris Review Interviews, 2013

“As for ‘write what you know,’ I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.” — UrsulaLeGuin.com

“Hey, guess what? You’re a woman. You can write like a woman. I saw that women don’t have to write about what men write about, or write what men think they want to read. I saw that women have whole areas of experience men don’t have—and that they’re worth writing and reading about.” — Paris Review Interviews, 2013

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Published on January 28, 2018 09:28

January 26, 2018

Astrid Lindgren

Astrid Anna Emilia Ericsson Lindgren (November 14, 1907 – January 28, 2002) was a Swedish writer of fiction and screenplays, best known for her children’s book series featuring the independent and strong Pippi Longstocking. As of January 2017, Lindgren is the world’s eighteenth most-translated author, and the fourth most-translated children’s book writer. Her books have sold roughly 144 million copies worldwide.

An Imaginative Childhood

Born on a farm in Sweden, Astrid enjoyed a happy childhood. The daughter of tenant farmer Samuel August Ericsson and homemaker Hanna Jonsson Ericsson, she was the second of four siblings. Raised by her nurturing parents with tales and storytelling, she was taught how to apply her imagination and creativity in the world of literature. It’s been said that many of the characters and settings in Lindgren’s books are inspired by her own childhood, quoted in her obituary in the New York Times.

A natural-born writer, Astrid published her first story in the Vimmerby Times (Vimmerby Tindingen) at age 13. After finishing school, she took a job with the local newspaper and began writing reviews, advertisements, and eventually articles.

Rise to Recognition

Astrid began a relationship with the chief editor of the newspaper, a married father, who proposed to her in 1926 after she became pregnant. She was then 18 years old. Refusing the proposal, she moved to Copenhagen to have her son, Lars. For the following three years, Lars remained in foster care while Lindgren worked in Stockholm, traveling to visit him when she could. At age 3, he moved in with his grandparents in Vimmerby.

In Stockholm, Astrid worked as a secretary at the Royal Swedish Automobile Club, where she met her husband, the office manager Sture Lindgren, in 1928. In 1934 Astrid gave birth to her daughter, Karin Lindgren. When time allowed, the stay-at-home mother of two children wrote short stories for the magazine Landsbygdens Jul (A Country Christmas), bringing in some extra money.

Quotes by Astrid Lindgren, Author of Pippi Longstocking

Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002) was an incredible Swedish public figure, author and screenplay writer. Best known for her children’s book series, Pippi Longstocking, Lindgren is the recipient of many honors and awards for her support and role in fighting for children and animal rights. She is the 18th most translated author, and even has a minor planet named after her that was discovered in 1978. Here is a sampling of quotes by the inspiring author.

“Everything great that ever happened in this world happened first in somebody’s imagination.” (Astrid Lindgren 1958, from the speech held at the reception of the H C Andersen Award)

“Don’t let them get you down. Be cheeky. And wild. And wonderful.”

“And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be — if I were a child. I write for the child within me.” (Expressen, December 6th)

Astrid Lindgren’s books on Amazon

“If I have managed to brighten up even one gloomy childhood — then I’m satisfied.”

“A childhood without books — that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”

“What the world of tomorrow will be like is greatly dependent on the power of imagination in those who are learning to read today.”

“I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” (Pippi Longstocking)

Learn more about Astrid Lindgren

“I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.”

“I have never experienced being madly in love the way most people seem to have been, although it is not something I would miss. Instead I have had an enormous ability to love my children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.”

“I don’t mind dying, I’ll gladly do that, but not right now, I need to clean the house first.”

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Published on January 26, 2018 13:44

January 24, 2018

Themes and Tips for a Successful Book Club (when you need a change of pace)

These days, I know as many women as not that belong to a book club (or book group, as it’s often known). While book clubs can be rewarding for anyone, male or female, single or part of a family, they’re perfect brief respites from the stresses of life, especially for busy women. Book groups can form strong bonds and have surprising longevity, becoming somewhat of an anchor as the world shifts beneath our feet. There’s something about the combination of good books and good friends that feels quite timeless, and comforting.

Whether your group has been together for two years or two decades, it’s possible to fall into a rut. Are you squeezing out 30 to 45 minutes of discussion on who did or didn’t like the latest novel you chose before digressing into idle chit-chat? If so, you might need a change of pace. Here are some themes and tips for successful book group (aka book club) meetings, especially for times when you need a change of pace and shake things up:

Nonfiction themes

In a book group I belonged to some years ago, some of our fiction selections fell short of expectations in the first months of our meetings. We didn’t know one another very well, and somehow our discussions were falling flat. What helped us gel as a group was switching nonfiction for a while. Our selections included travel memoirs, the simplicity movement, mindfulness, and more.

By focusing more on the themes rather than literary analysis or our opinions about the books, we became more comfortable with discussion, and re-introduced fiction into the mix by and by.

Classic women authors

If you had your fill of male authors in school, consider filling in the blanks of your literary education with books by classic women authors. Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Pearl S. Buck, Kate Chopin, Carson McCullers, Daphne Du Maurier … the list goes on. See a roster of notable and often undervalued authors of the past at the top of this and every other page on this site, and in our Wish List — the list of classic authors we intend to add to this site.

Reading and eating

This duo of passions can become one delicious ritual. Combine your discussions with a potluck dinner, brunch, or even a high tea. Take this theme to its utmost by choosing books with a culinary thread — rustic French fare with A Year in Provence; earthy Mexican food in Like Water for Chocolate; and speaking of chocolate, Chocolat. A few more recent food-themed novels include The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, The Mistress of Spices, and Pomegranate Soup. There are many others; get more ideas in this list of food in fiction.

Lunch hour book group

Those with truly crowded schedules might want to take a page from a professional women’s book group in Washington, D.C. The group convenes once a month in one of several museum cafés, taking longer-than-usual lunch breaks to discuss Pulitzer Prize-winning books. You need not go full-on Pulitzer, but some unifying theme could help keep this kind of lunch break group focused.

Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House

is one of several women authors’ homes to visit in New England

Book group field trips

Enrich your reading group experiences by taking field trips or occasional pilgrimages to literary sites. Planning this kind of adventure for your group can be a stimulating once-a-year event. Is there a well-known author’s home, a special library, or a college hosting a related exhibit or event? Is a well-known figure you’re reading about connected in some way in an area nearby?

Within a 3-hour range of where my book group lives and meets, are the historic homes of Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Washington Irving, Pearl S. Buck, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Herman Melville, and others. Yes, you guessed it, New York State and New England.

Do some research and discover which authors lived in or wrote about your region. Read their writings and/or a biography, then plan a voyage to pay homage to your local literary luminaries.

Women’s biographies

One book group I heard tell of reads biographies of accomplished or daring women. Their selections have included bios of Georgia O’Keefe, Amelia Earhart, Billie Holiday. Others you might consider are Cleopatra, Martha Graham, and Eleanor Roosevelt. If you like to read about women authors, see our selected list of 12 Great Biographies of Women Authors.

The lives of the talented and famous were never tidy and not always happy, but they followed their unique paths, even if it meant breaking the rules. Their life stories can be tremendously inspiring.

Phyllis Rose, in The Norton Book of Women’s Lives, offers a great perspective on why it’s so gratifying to read women’s biographies: “I wanted to know what the possibilities were for women’s lives … I wanted wild women, women who broke loose, women who lived to the fullest.”

Young adult books and children’s classics

When you need a break from 400-page tomes, there’s a lot of great contemporary literature in the Young Adult sector. There’s no shortage of heavy themes here, to be sure, but the books are eminently readable. Time magazine offers this list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.

We discussed classics by women authors above; you can also consider the great classics of children’s literature — ones the members of your group never read, and others that haven’t been cracked open in decades, and ripe for revisiting. Among them: Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, Little Women, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Reconnect with your inner girl, and rediscover why these classics are so timeless. and if you have any daughters, read these with them — and invite them to join in the meeting!

Photo credits

Teacup and books (top), Anete Lusina/Unsplash

Mindfulness book, Breather/Unsplash

Teacup and books (middle), freestock.org/Unsplash

A Little Princess & Anne of Green Gables, Annie Spratt / Unsplash

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Published on January 24, 2018 14:31

January 22, 2018

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (1913) is the story of Undine Spragg, an ambitious, yet naïve young woman from the American midwest. Raised in the fictional town of Apex, and the product of a family who has risen to a certain financial status through sketchy financial dealings. She strives to rise into New York City society through a succession of marriages and divorces that ultimately lead to her undoing.

Undine Spragg has often been compared to Becky Sharp, the heroine (so to speak) of Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, minus any of the charm. It has occasionally been supposed whether Edith Wharton, though a woman herself, was a misogyynist. Though The Custom of the Country has been more favorably viewed through the long lens of literary history, its main character, like so many other of Wharton’s fictional females, was devoid of any redeeming qualities.

Though Wharton was considered a significant literary figure from the time her first novel, The House of Mirth (1905) was published, reviewers occasionally expressed their disappointment at her subjects and characters, even as they admired her talent. Here is one such view of The Custom of the Country that appeared when the novel was published in 1913:

From the original Louisville Courier-Journal review of The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, November 1913: Despite its many excellent points, Mrs. Wharton’s new novel, The Custom of the Country, makes one again regret that a writer of such brilliance, such insight, such worldly wisdom, should waste time on some of the material she employs. In the America of today — bad as it is, in perhaps acute and ugly stages of transition — her pen could surely find a more significant field for analysis, could discover social processes far more deserving of notation.

Even as Lily Bart of The House of Mirth was a heroine descending the social stairs, so Undine Spragg of this present novel is that pitiable creature, a social climber, making her way up society’s beanstalk.

Insatiable egotism

A direct route to Paradise seemed that ladder when viewed from Undine’s place of upbringing, town called, ironically, Apex. Undine’s history and character is interpreted by Mrs. Wharton as the result of “the custom of the country” which develops insatiable egotism in its vain, beautiful women. Undine Spragg’s beauty and ambition were abetted to the utmost by the money of her excellently portrayed father, Abner Spragg, lift her out of her place of birth and its crude bourgeoisie, into New York’s sacred circles of old families, and eventually into an aristocratic French tribe.

With her trained powers of analysis and presentation, Mrs. Wharton deftly portrays the various social groups of Undine’s remarkable transit. The Apex crowd, the dignified New York circle, the French family with its traditional solidarity and ideals. A flawless realism depicts Undine Spragg with all her ineradicable crudities, her vanity, egotism, feeling for beauty of a material order. Her progress — or descent — is logical in a fearfully veracious manner.

Is the story worth 600 pages?

In fact, with the truth of the novel and its technical excellence, perhaps no fault at all may be found. But thus all the more glaring is the disparity between such successful presentation and the thing portrayed. Certainly the vain, crude, self-indulgent Udine Spragg and those like her, and their foolish, gullible fathers, their assortment of husbands abound in America today.

But after all, are their vulgar careers worth 600 pages from the pen of one of the country’s most gifted fiction writers? To beg the question, perhaps so. There may be a mode of treating such social phenomena, true types of the epoch, of employing them in a significant story.

The Custom of the Country on Amazon

With a far worse specimen, Thackeray immortalized an unscrupulous social adventuress. Ah, but in Becky Sharp (of Vanity Fair) and in the author’s point of view — his creative mood, so to speak — there were advantages. Becky, though devilish, could be so interesting. And Thackeray saw her in that light of true, if terrible satire, of exquisite irony which lifts a portrayal to the plane of notable art.

Mrs. Wharton’s irony savors rather of sarcasm. Her portrayal seldom achieves that fine satire, that humor of pathos distinguishing momentous novels.

More about The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

Wikipedia
Reading Guide to The Custom of the Country
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Read online at Project Gutenberg
Audio version on Librivox
Contemporary review on Vulpes Libris

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Published on January 22, 2018 17:54

January 20, 2018

How Mary Mapes Dodge Came to Write Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates

Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge (1865) is the classic tale of Hans and his sister Gretel (not to be confused with Hansel and Gretel). It takes place in Holland, and though the author created a lovely picture of Dutch life in the early 19th century, she never visited the country until well after the book’s publication.

In the 1946 edition, the Brinker children’s parents are described as a “gallant mother and strange, silent father.” The latter’s condition, as it turns out, is due to a head injury sustained The family is relatable and timeless because they “are very real people with ambitions, hopes and problems that the young reader shares as he or she reads their story. The Brinkers are very poor, but during one eventful winter many wonderful things happen to them.”

The story centers on a period in which the family’s luck turns: “The grand race, the silver skates, the missing thousand guilders — these factors all play their parts in bringing happiness to the little family.” Filled with youthful ambition and honor, the story is also believed to have introduced the idea of the sport of speed skating to American readers.

The author’s preface

In her preface, the author, Mary Mapes Dodge wrote: “This little work aims to combine instructive features of a book of travels with the interest of a domestic tale. Throughout its pages the descriptions of Dutch localities, customs, and general characteristics have been given with scrupulous care. Many of its incidents are drawn from life, and the story of Raff Brinker is founded strictly upon fact.

… Should this simple narrative serve to give my young readers a just idea of Holland and its resources, or present true pictures of its inhabitants and their everyday life, or free them from certain prejudices concerning that noble and enterprising people, the leading desire in writing it will have been satisfied.”

Illustration by Maginel Wright Enright from Hans Brinker

Dutch neighbors provide a spark of inspiration

In the introduction to the 1946 edition, May Lamberton Becker described how Mary Dodge came to write Hans Brinker. She had never been to Holland herself, but after reading Rise of the Dutch Republic and meeting a Dutch couple who were neighbors, she became fascinated. She asked her neighbors what life was like in “the land of pluck,” and they were all too happy to oblige.

A widow with two sons to support, Mary had already established herself as a writer and editor when she began writing Hans Brinker. When it came out in 1865, it followed on the heels of her first full book, The Irvington Stories (1864) which was a modest success. Her publisher at the time was doubtful about the idea of a book about Dutch kids. Nobody, he said, was interested in Holland, least of all children.

Illustration by Maginel Wright Enright from Hans Brinkeer

An instant success and enduring classic

Obviously, he was proven wrong. As soon as Hans Brinker was published, according to May Lamberton Becker, “it went like wildfire and has kept going ever since.” Within four years it had won the most celebrated literary award of the period, the Moynton Prize of the French Academy. Within thirty years it went though more than a hundred editions and appeared six languages.

None of Mary Dodge’s other books or stories would ever equal the success of Hans Brinker, but she made her mark as a progressive and talented editor of children’s literature. In 1873 she became editor of a new monthly magazine for children called St. Nicholas, which proved immensely popular.

She had an eye for talent, and published such classic storytellers as Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, and even eminent poets like Tennyson and Longfellow.

A visit to Holland long after the fact

“But with all this,” May Lamberton Becker concluded in the 1946 edition’s introduction, “I think Mrs. Dodge’s happiest moment must have been when, as a world-famous woman, she went to Holland for the first time and found to here delight that it was really just as she had pictured it for young folks, and that little Dutch children loved Hans Brinker as much as children did in the United States.”

The 1946 edition, published some 40 years after Mary Dodge’s death, featured new illustrations by Dutch artist and author Hilda van Stockum, who was born and raised in Holland.

Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge on Amazon

How it begins: Chapter 1 – Hans and Gretel

On a bright December morning long ago, two thinly clad children were kneeling upon the bank of a frozen canal in Holland.

The sun had not yet appeared, but the gray sky was parted near the horizon, and its edges shone crimson with the coming day. Most of the good Hollanders were enjoying a placid morning nap; even Mynheer von Stoppelnoze, that worthy old Dutchman, was still slumbering “in beautiful repose.”

Now and then some peasant woman, poising a well-filled basket upon her head, came skimming over the glassy surface of the canal; or a lusty boy, skating to his day’s work in the town, cast a good-natured grimace toward the shivering pair as he flew along.

Meanwhile, with a vigorous puff and pull, the brother and sister, for such they were, seemed to be fastening something upon their feet, not skates, certainly, but clumsy pieces of wood narrowed and smoothed at their lower edge, and pierced with holes, through which they were threaded strings of rawhide.

These queer-looking affairs had been made by the boy Hans. His mother was a poor peasant woman, too poor even to think of such a thing as buying skates for her little ones. Rough as these were, they had afforded the children many a happy hour on the ice; and now as with cold, red fingers our young Hollanders tugged at the strings, their solemn faces bending closely over their knees, no vision of impossible iron runners came to dull the satisfaction glowing within …

Hans Brinker illustration by Jessie Wilcox Smith

More about Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Listen on Librivox
Hans Brinker on Project Gutenberg

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Published on January 20, 2018 09:26

January 18, 2018

Reading Aloud to Children: Creating Lifelong Book Lovers

Establishing a read-aloud ritual can be one of the most gratifying ways to enjoy well-spent family time. If raising children leaves you with little energy or patience for personal reading, take comfort in knowing that reading aloud to kids can be as nourishing for the reader as it is for the listener(s). And literacy experts agree that reading aloud to children from an early age helps assure their becoming avid readers later on.

Don’t limit reading aloud to preschoolers—school-age children and sometimes even teens love being read to. Add whatever embellishments you’d like—a warm beverage, a specific setting, lots of cuddling—to ensure a prominent place in your child’s memory for this time-honored ritual.

Jim Trelease is the author of The Read Aloud Handbook, which came out in and is revised and updated every few years. He writes, ““The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.” In his “30 Do’s to Remember When Reading Aloud” he offers great tips and benefits. Here are the first five:

1 Begin reading to children as soon as possible. The younger you start them, the easier and better it is.

2 With infants through toddlers, it’s important to include books that contain repetitions; as they mature, add predictable and rhyming books.

3 During repeat readings of a predictable book, occasionally stop at a key phrase and allow the child to provide the words.

4 Read as often as you and the child (or students) have time for.

5 Set aside at least one traditional time each day for a story.

Read the rest here in this online brochure.

Here are a few more tips to inspire you to read aloud to your children:

Revisit heroines you loved as a child

Reading these books to your own children is a thrill, especially when you can introduce them to heroines you loved as a child. Remember Jo March and the rest of the Little Women, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? Revel in their tales of spunk and courage while sharing them with your daughters. There’s no reason not to read them out on boys, too. Few children can resist Pippi Longstocking, Pollyanna, or Anne of Green Gables.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

It’s never too late for a classic

Discovering classics that somehow passed you by is a delight, too. If you somehow missed Peter Pan, Bambi, Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, and others as you grew up, share them with your children. Not merely great children’s books, but great books altogether, the rich language of classics, experienced aloud, stimulates your imagination as much as your children’s.

Fairy and folk tales, myths, and fables

These make wondrous read-alouds, and their universal themes can be experienced on many levels. Start with the folk stories from your own cultural background, then move on to those of cultures that interest your family.

The Heroine’s Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore on Amazon

Resources

The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder by Erin Blakemore pairs literature’s most beloved heroines (including Jo March, Francie Nolan, and Scout Finch) with their creators to impart wisdom for life’s challenges. These intertwined pairs will inspire you to re-read your old favorites with your daughters.

The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease is a definitive volume on this subject. Updated every few years, it makes an inspiring case for reading aloud, and supplies a thorough list of the best read-aloud books for several age groups.

The New York Times’ Parent’s Guide to the Best Books for Children by Eden Ross Lipson is a guide to children’s literature from picture books through young adult novels, with special recommendations for books that make good read-alouds.

Once Upon a Heroine: 450 Books for Girls to Love by Alison Cooper-Mullin and Jennifer Marmaduke Coye explores classic and contemporary literature for girls.

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Published on January 18, 2018 08:42

January 17, 2018

The Awakening by Kate Chopin: an analysis

Following is an analysis by Sarah Wyman of The Awakening by Kate Chopin, an 1899 novella telling the story of a young mother who undergoes a dramatic period of change as she “awakens” to the restrictions of her traditional societal role and to her full potential as a woman. Many times, we find Edna Pontellier awake in situations that signify more metaphorical awakenings to new knowledge and sensual experience.

Consequently, Chopin’s work came under immediate attack when published and was banned from bookstores and libraries. The author died virtually forgotten, yet The Awakening has been rediscovered and holds a secure and prominent position as a watershed text in U.S. literature and feminist studies.

Edna’s first depicted episode of awakening, literally, comes at the expense of a good night’s sleep, and leaves her crying and frustrated but unable to articulate the source of her emotional response to a callous, if affectionate, husband. From this powerless starting point, Edna will experience a series of discoveries about her world and her self that inspire her to experiment and explore, but leave her ultimately defeated. Vacationing at Grand Isle on the Gulf of Mexico, she undergoes life-changing transformations.

The restrictions of marriage and motherhood

Marriage and motherhood constitute unsupportable restrictions for Edna. Léonce, her well-respected, businessman husband, clearly objectifies Edna when she returns from a sunny beach day: “You are burnt beyond recognition,” [Léonce] added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property. He turns Edna into a thing or a commodity through his perception of her and his desire to control her actions.

You might also enjoy

Willa Cather’s review of The Awakening

Acting rebellious, Edna defies social convention in various ways. Back in New Orleans, she stops holding her Tuesday evening “at-homes;” she stomps on her wedding ring; and she moves out of her house into a smaller space of her own. She refuses to attend a family wedding and remembers her own as an “accident,” a revolt against her father and sister’s wishes.

Simultaneously, she witnesses the growth of her own spiritual life: “There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual.” None of these minor outrages, even the collapse of her marriage, were Léonce to let her go, would necessarily have precipitated her suicide. The dilemma of how to mother her children appropriately, with the risk of subjecting them to the public shame she brings upon herself, seems to be the decisive factor.

A feminist framework

Chopin problematizes traditional roles and expectations for men and women by illustrating the dilemmas that arise when one troubles the waters by behaving in non-conformist ways. Hélène Cixous’ famous critique of the western binary system of gender definition (and conceptualizations that issue from it) provides an interesting framework with which to look at the novel.

The French feminist illustrates basic, two-part description of “patriarchal binary thought” with these contrasts:

Activity / Passivity
Sun / Moon
Culture / Nature
Head / Emotions
Intelligible / Sensitive
Logos / Pathos

On which side (left/right) would you place “male” and on which side “female,” according to typical definitions in our culture? The list continues… add your own.

Thinking / Feeling
Demanding / Suggesting
Directing / Manipulating
Teaching / Nurturing
Action / Passion
Mind / Nature
War / Love
Freedom / Security
Defining / Describing
Pointing / Indicating
Linear / Associative
Strong / Reliable
Muscley / Shapely
Sweat / Perspire
Triumph / Succeed
Command / Comply

Of course, such simple dichotomies (or 2-part systems of thought) are “reductive” or “essentializing” (in the words of many critics). These terms simplify complicated characteristics, fitting generalized features into neat boxes. There are gray areas between any polar opposites, and no one belongs, fully, to either of these artificial categories. Contemporary critics and theorists tend to think more in terms of a “continuum of gender and sexuality” or a vast range of possibilities between so-called male and female characteristics. This newer theory originates, in part, with Judith Butler’s work during the 1980s, particularly Gender Trouble.

Considering Edna Pontillier and Adèle Ratignolle

Think about Edna when we first meet her, and as she develops through the course of the novel. How does she fit traditional gender roles for women, and how does she branch away from such expectations? This question constitutes a major theme of the novel. We can look at Edna specifically in her role as a mother. SUNY-New Paltz graduate student Marissa Caston made an important connection between The Awakening and Cixous’ thoughts on mothering with this compelling, if dated quote from “The Laugh of the Medusa”:

In women there is always more or less of the mother who makes everything all right, who nourishes, and who stand up against separation; a force that will not be cut off but will knock the wind out of the codes.

Obviously, Edna is not a traditional “mother-woman” like her foil character Adèle Ratignolle. A foil character is one basically similar to the protagonist, yet differing in certain ways that serve to illuminate the protagonist more brightly or clearly (as in a tin-foil reflection). For example, Adèle is the quintessential mother-woman, an “angel in the house,” beautiful, earthy, usually pregnant, utterly ensconced in her domestic role as mother and nurturer. She does not question her position, nor complain of her duties.

In contrast to Adèle, Edna’s divergence from expected actions and behaviors becomes all the more striking. Their conversation on mothering is a key to the novel. Edna explains, “I would give my life for my children: but I wouldn’t give myself.” Perhaps she implies that a selfless or unfulfilled mother is no mother at all. One could interpret this statement multiple ways.

Full text of The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899)

A rich array of characters

In a somewhat mechanical manner, various characters demonstrate or activate particular aspects of Edna’s awakening. The pianist Mademoiselle (Miss) Reisz models the independent woman as artist, utterly unconcerned with personal appearance or public scrutiny. She encourages Edna to sketch, to cultivate her own creativity. The novel does not put forth a woman who can be both an artist and a mother. Mademoiselle Reisz may even appear less “feminine” because she does not depend on a man, has no children, and takes no heed of social mores.

Two men factor as lovers in Edna’s sexual awakening. Robert Lebrun sees Edna as a person and provides a more equal meeting of the minds than her marriage can. Edna credits Robert with awakening her that summer at Grand Isle. He seems to love her generously, yet his desires are tinged with a possessiveness Edna cannot abide. She rejects outright the possibility of marriage, saying, “I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose.

If he were here to say, ‘Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,’ I should laugh at you both.” At this point, Edna has been sexually involved with Alcee Arobin, the town Casanova, who “detected her latent sensuality” and with whom she has a purely carnal, adulterous relationship. In contrast, she loves Robert and finds great comfort in him. Nevertheless, she no longer trusts in any sort of permanence in any relationship.

Ultimately, only Dr. Mandalet, well acquainted with human affairs of the heart, seems to understand Edna and may possibly have led her to some alternate solution than suicide. She explains to him at the story’s end, “perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.” The kind doctor encourages her to confide in him saying, “I know I would understand, and I tell you there are not many who would – not many, my dear.” If only she had given this male ally a chance, and shared her dilemma with him.

Questions of ethnicity

The novel treats questions of ethnicity in interesting ways. Edna’s new, maverick way of life aside, she feels an outsider in both her Grand Isle and New Orleans communities because she is a Protestant rather than a Catholic Creole like her husband and acquaintances.

Via the omniscient narrator, Chopin condemns racist attitudes in her portrayal of Adèle’s deeply prejudiced view of Mexicans and African-Americans, particularly the degrading image of the young girl operating the foot pedal of the sewing machine for Madame LeBrun. As a rule in the text, skin color is assumed to be white and only specified otherwise in terms of difference.

Stylistic features and motifs

As an interesting stylistic feature, the novel incorporates episodes written in the Darwinian Naturalist vein, particularly those involving attention to the female, sexual drive. At various moments, Edna is pictured in an animalistic way, as a sharp-toothed creature of instinct. After waking at Madame Antoine’s house, she blooms sensually and tears at the bread with her teeth. When Robert leaves and she begins to understand her passion for him, she similarly bites her handkerchief. She sticks her pointed nails into Arobin’s palm, and she reminds him of “some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun” (emphasis mine).

The motifs of swimming, of birds, of the lyric line si tu savais (if you only knew) all seem to converge in the final scene of the novel. Edna wades out into the sea where she experienced her first sensual awakening and, later, her powerful achievement of learning to swim. Birth and death converge as she immerses herself in water, the feminine element, par excellence. A few critics including Sandra Gilbert, argue that Edna does not commit suicide. What do you think?

— Contributed by Sarah Wyman, Associate Professor of English, SUNY-New Paltz

More about The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Wikipedia
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: Struggle Against Society and Nature
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Related post: 10 Classic Banned Books by Women Authors

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Published on January 17, 2018 04:04

January 16, 2018

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: an analysis

This analysis by Sarah Wyman of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) highlights a long short story (or short novella) considered a feminist classic.

This story starts with a mystery: the house seems to have “something queer about it.”

As we read on, it becomes clear that the house is not the only thing strange about this story. The secluded, rented country home and the attic room the narrator inhabits come to represent or symbolize her situation and her very self. She lives under her physician/husband’s care as a patient (deemed abnormal), subjected to the “rest cure” as a treatment for what appears to be postpartum depression.

More broadly, we could see the prison-like room she inhabits (with barred windows, a gate on the stairs, rings in the walls, and a nailed-down bed) as symbolic of her situation as an upper-middle-class woman of a particular time and place (19th century USA). Living under patriarchal rule, she is discouraged from self-expression and productivity via work and writing.

Fiction in the form of first-person diaries

Gilman writes in the form of first-person diary entries penned by the narrator. We as readers are positioned as eavesdroppers, listening in on a conversation the narrator conducts with herself. This rhetorical choice lends a sense of immediacy to the writing. Sometimes, the narrator recounts an event that transpired earlier in the day or recent past. More often, however, and increasingly as the text evolves, she narrates in the present tense.

We thus witness the workings of her unusual mind, even as it comes up with new thoughts and discoveries: “I wonder – I begin to think – I wish John would take me away from here!” (section 4). Ironically, as the narrator claims to improve physically and emotionally, her condition, according to the norms of psychological behavior, worsens. The language reflects this deterioration and dissonance, becoming more highly charged, the syntax more fragmented, the interruptions more frequent. The narrator eventually loses her grip on the reality we all share and lurches into the world of her own creative imagination or hallucination.

Ultimately, the narrator manages to project herself into the persona of the woman she sees in the wallpaper. Standing beside her, we would likely see no such being. Yet, the narrator and woman trapped in the wallpaper pattern become one and the same. By extension, they symbolize all women living under this particular form of oppression.

See Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1913 essay

“Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper”

“Suicidal” wallpaper

The gruesome details of the “suicidal” wallpaper pattern set an ominous tone, even of paranoia: “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (section 2). The violence of her grotesque descriptions seems to express extreme frustration. Such imagery could indicate an image of her very self as a monster, since she either refuses or fails to play the “good mother” role or the type of 19th century feminine perfection: an angel in the house.

The narrator’s relationship with her physician/husband John proves to be a key to her highly symbolic situation. Utterly condescending, he often addresses her as though she were a child, demanding, for example, “What is it, little girl?”(section 5). He seems to have imprisoned her.

Writing itself becomes for her both work and rebellion, for he has denied her this outlet, this access to creative production and expression, and this means of finding a voice and thus establishing an identity. Nevertheless, she manages to achieve all these necessities, through her increasingly secretive journaling.

One could call the narrator an artist of the self, as the writing she carries out creates a world, which in turn, defines her very being. The text turns meta-discursive, or the writing comments reflexively on itself as she writes, “I don’t know why I should write this./ I don’t want to./ I don’t feel able./…it is such a relief!” (section 4).

An ironic conclusion

The conclusion proves additionally ironic with the infantilized image of her “creeping” or crawling, like a baby. Somehow, she has constructed a reality she can bear to inhabit. Yet, she has become utterly estranged from herself (one definition of being psychotic).

Many readers see the narrator as Jane herself in her final cry to John, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” One could read the tight-leashed, yet high-voiced narrator at the end as either utterly defeated or triumphant, in that she has garnered the freedom to express a finally authentic, independent self.

— Contributed by Sarah Wyman, Associate Professor of English, SUNY-New Paltz

How The Yellow Wallpaper begins

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.

You see he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?

Read the full text of The Yellow Wallpaper on this site.

You might also enjoy:

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: an analysis

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Published on January 16, 2018 10:45

January 15, 2018

Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson

Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson by one of the couple’s sons, Nigel Nicolson, is the story of an unusual marriage. Vita, a novelist and poet was known for her role in the Bloomsbury circle and her intense friendship with Virginia Woolf; Harold was a diplomat and scholar. Though neither admitted it to the other when they were courting and in the early days of their marriage, both were primarily attracted to members of their own sex. Ultimately, they allowed one another the freedom to pursue other affairs during the course of their long marriage.

In Portrait of a Marriage, Nigel Nicolson publishes his mother’s memoir and adds his own commentary, which resulted from what he learned from his parents’ letters. Vita’s love affairs with a number of women (which resulted in much drama) and Harold’s discreet relationships with men didn’t hinder this successful, loving marriage and the happiness of their two sons, Nigel and Benedict. Nigel’s insightful Portrait of a Marriage shines a light on a fascinating couple.

From the 1973 Weidenfeld and Nicolson edition of Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, by Nigel Nicolson:

The view of a son

“Now that I know everything, I love her more as my father did, because she was tempted, because she was weak. She was a rebel … rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women … Yes, she may have been mad, as she later said, but it was a magnificent folly. She may have been cruel, but it was cruelty on a heroic scale.

How can I despise the violence of such a passion? How could she regret that the knowledge of it should reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?”

So writes Nigel Nicolson of his mother, Vita Sackville-West, in reaction to her confession — an attempt to purge her heart and mind of a love for another woman — written in 1920, when she was 28 and in the eighth year of her marriage to Harold Nicolson.

Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson on Amazon

“The strangest and most successful union”

Sir Harold, distinguished writer, scholar, diplomat, and statesman, was a social, extroverted being; Vita, a poet and novelist, was the product of mingled Spanish and English blood, once described as “romantic, secret, and undomesticated.” They both thought marriage “unnatural,” but realized that, “as a happy marriage is ‘the greatest of human benefits,’ husband and wife must strive hard for its success. Each must be supple enough, subtle enough, to mould their characters and behaviour to fit the other’s facet to facet, convex to concave.”

Which is precisely what they managed, achieving in time “the strangest and most successful union that two gifted people have ever enjoyed.”

A mother’s passions and a son’s perspective

This autobiography — “a document unique in the vast literature of love” — describes Vita’s sumptuous childhood at Knole, her long love affair with a girl that coincided with her long engagement to Harold, and her elopement, after seven years of marriage, with Violet Trefusis.

She tells the story of this shattering experience with complete candor, partly to clear her heart of a passion which was growing cold, and partly because she believed, in 1920, that one day society would accept that women can love women, men can loved men, and that a marriage as deeply rooted as hers could survive and actually be enriched by infidelity.

To his mother’s autobiography Nigel Nicolson has added the evidence of contemporary diaries and letters to explain in more detail what happened and what resulted. He describes Vita’s family background, starting with her grandmother Pepita, the Spanish dancer, and here even more remarkable mother, Lady Sackville. He traces the growth of his parents’ marriage from its first tumultuous years to the peace of their old age at Sissinghurst Castle. He tells of Vita’s gentle love for Virginia Woolf, and Virginia’s for her.

It is the story of a non-marriage which became a marriage successful beyond their dreams, because it was based on mutual respect and tolerance, and enduring love.

An excerpt from the preface

It is the story of two people who married for love and whose love deepened with each passing year, although each was constantly and by mutual consent unfaithful to the other. Both loved people of their own sex, but not exclusively. Their marriage not only survived infidelity, sexual incompatibility, and long absences, but it became stronger and finer as a result. Each came to give the other full liberty without inquiry or reproach.

Honour was rooted in dishonour. Their marriage succeeded because each found permanent and undiluted happiness only in the company of the other. If their marriage is seen as a harbour, their love affairs were mere ports of call. It was to the harbour that each returned; it was there that both were based.

This book is therefore a panegyric of marriage, although it describes a marriage that was superficially a failure because it was incomplete. They achieved their ideal companionship only after a long struggle, which was still not ended when Vita wrote the last words of her confession, but once achieved it was unalterable and lifelong, and they made of it … the strangest and most successful union that two gifted people have ever enjoyed. ( — Nigel Nicolson, from the Preface of Portrait of a Marriage)

Vita was the inspiration for Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

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Published on January 15, 2018 17:40

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