The Love of Good Women

by Isabel Miller

Complex family novel including the involved coming-out

Genres: Fiction, Lesbian, LGBT, Queer, Lesbian Fiction, Historical, Historical Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1986

About the author

Isabel Miller was the pen name of Alma Routsong, an American novelist best known for her lesbian fiction. She graduated from Michigan State University in 1949 with a degree in art. Her first two novels (A Gradual Joy and Round Shape) were published under her own name, with the later works under the pen name Isabel Miller — a combination of an anagram of “Lesbia” and her mother’s maiden name.

In 1969, Isabel Miller published her best known book, A Place for Us, printed in an edition of 1,000 copies paid for and sold by the author. With this title, based on a true story of a 19th-century couple from New York state, Miller began her career as lesbian novelist. In 1971, the novel won the first annual Gay Book Award of the American Library Association. Under its later title, Patience and Sarah, Miller’s novel became one of the most cherished lesbian love story of all time.

Isabel Miller died in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 4, 1996, shortly before her last novel (Laurel) was published.

Reviews

[ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought about Patience & Sarah the entire time I was reading THE LOVE OF GOOD WOMEN because it had the same author, and I am always in the lookout for the synergies between works. Only now am I really understanding that certain themes haunt an artist for most of their lives. For Isabel Miller, I see that her themes have to do with domesticity having the capability to be both freeing and confining regardless of whether it's a heterosexual or a lesbian companionship. Another is found on the title itself: THE LOVE OF GOOD WOMEN. Not necessarily just in a romantic capacity as with Milly and Lil, but in women friendships between Trudi and Ada as well.

Arguably the best part of this novel is how Trudi came into her own. The liberation of her own work, her own money - would have been complete if she dropped men altogether (but we can't all be winners).

There are a few lines (less than PATIENCE & SARAH, unfortunately) from the novel that stood out to me, enough to make me pause reading to bury my face in my pillow for the feelings it left me with:

"...and placed on Milly's mouth the kiss that confirmed a lifetime's guesses." OOF.

"If it was Ada's love, Trude would tell Milly in her own good time. Sooner or later, you have to speak of the most beautiful thing in your life. "

"It appeared that happiness, though not mandated, was permitted. Love was possible and could be fairly durable."

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bringing that one small, timid, virtuous, ignorant, brown-haired, awkward country woman to the knowledge of her own beauty, to love and power, would be Milly's life work. That's one for my side, world. You've drowned our baby girls, you've sealed our maidens into towers and chastity belts, you've beaten and raped and killed and despised and trivialized us, you've set us against each other, but by God here's one you don't get. Here's, in fact, two.

This passage from the book's brief foreword made me eager to read on. It's a beautiful thought: that love between women can be so far-reaching; can counteract oppression; can have a deep political significance, as well as personal.

I still love the quote, as well as several others from the foreword ("In those days, Milly was in danger of loving any woman who held out her hand and some who didn't."). But disappointingly, Milly quickly and quietly abandons her dream of saving and romancing Gertrude, her timid sister-in-law.

We are rarely aware of Milly's perspective, because Gertrude's side of the story takes the lion's share of the pages. Only about a quarter of the short book is spent with Milly. It's too bad, because Milly's story is interesting - she falls in love with Lil, the live-in-housekeeper she hires when her husband is fighting in WWII. She and Lil create a little utopia for themselves; cooking good food, gardening, reading, and caring for their children (four between them). This beautiful world is disrupted when the war ends and Milly's husband returns home.

But all this happens over just 50-some pages; we spend the rest of the book with Gertrude; meek and subservient Gertrude, who is walked all over by both her brooding husband and her bratty children; who makes her head "go white inside" to cope with her miserable life; who gets a factory job and learns the power of making her own money; who eventually goes by Trude, and then Trudi, as she learns to stand up for herself. But however much she may grow and change, she remains a victim of circumstance, moving from one unbalanced hetero marriage to another.

It's odd, because my copy of this book tries hard to sell itself as a lesbian romance in the vein of Miller's relatively popular Patience & Sarah, which it certainly is not. Trude and Milly occupy the same space, but hardly even share a friendship. Despite it not meeting my expectations, though, some inarticulable quality of this book will remain in my mind. I read Patience & Sarah years ago and I don't remember it very well, but I'm sure some images from The Love of Good Women will stay with me: Sad doormat Gertrude, planting her husband's name in tulips, only to be rebuffed and humiliated when they bloom. Milly and Lil gardening outside their home at dusk, peaceful. Anxious Gertrude stepping outside her household bubble and befriending the other women in the factory; all chatting in vivid 1940s slang. Milly and Lil going to a gathering held by two lesbians who live together, elated by the joy of being among their own kind; and the solemnity that follows:

But they still hadn't faced up to the question of what would become of them. There they were singing and laughing and having fun, a lot of fun, pretending the volcano would never blow up, the ax would never drop. In the end, some little mistake, somebody's suspicion, would get them - and they knew it. They must have made their heads go white inside.

This is a unique little book. Certainly not the romance novel that it's marketed to be, but it's an interesting take on 1940s relationships (both lesbian and hetero). And Miller is clear on the distinction. Lesbian relationships here are dangerous. At any time, women who love one another could be found out, deemed unnatural, and killed. But despite this, and despite the fact that these sapphic relationships are not purely happy, Miller makes it clear that they are worlds better than the fundamentally oppressive hetero relationships that so many other women find themselves trapped in.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a lesbian romance, as the blurb (on my copy at least) suggests. But, a painful, infuriating look at a woman unlearning the effects of her society, of abuse and gaslighting. A tribute to female friendship and empowerment, with a fair bit of bisexuality and queerness throughout (tailored to the language of its setting.)

[Amris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm being generous with three stars. It's a very flawed book that tried.

[F.H.H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyed this book all around but man, the foreword and the postscript especially got me

[Michelle Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am trying to get a feel for what it was like for lesbians in the 50s and 60s so I thought this book would help with some insight. I expected there to be prejudice for lesbians and that their lives would be very different from the one I live. What ended up shocking and offending me is how women were treated in general and what was expected of the them. Much of the first part of this book focuses on a women who is a stay at home wife and mother. She is so dominated by her husband that I wanted to smack her around a bit. She does escape it but falls in with another man and ends up right back where she started. I liked the writing and a quick read.

[Ronan Doyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sensational portrait of the gaslit mind, and the first dawning realisation that things can be better. Found this fantastically funny, and Miller's generously nuanced characterisation a serious asset: its anti-patriarchal bent is built on an empathy no-one could deny. I will be quick to come to more of hers.

[Teri Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lightish but still poignant story of a group of women in a wartime munitions factory in England. While their men are off at the front they build armaments and chat and make plans for the future. But not all the ladies share the longing for a husband...!

[Gina Barnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clarity be damned...exploring the scope of the movement.