The Ladies

by Doris Grumbach

The Ladies is a retelling of the story of two of history’s most interesting characters: Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, well-born Irish women who defied all conventions of their eighteenth-century Irish homeland and eloped to the small hamlet of Llangollen in Wales, where they lived as a married couple. There, removed from the eyes of the world, they hoped to live out their quiet lives. But the world outside gradually came to claim the Ladies—first out of curiosity, but eventually on the basis of profound respect, and even love. Visited by such luminaries as Edmund Burke, William Wordsworth, Walter Scott, and Horace Walpole, among many others, Eleanor and Sarah became known throughout Britain and to history as the “Ladies of Llangollen.”

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

210 pages, Hardcover

First published September 16, 1984

About the author

Doris Grumbach is an American novelist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist. She taught at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, and was literary editor of the The New Republic for several years. Since 1985, she has had a bookstore, Wayward Books, in Sargentville, Maine, that she operates with her partner, Sybil Pike.

Reviews

[Bandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book I picked up on a whim at the library and really enjoyed. Majority of the enjoyment came from the fact that it was based on the real historical figures, two women who chose to defy the societal norms of mid to late 1700s and early 1800s and make their own lives according to their own preferences. For a female in that day and age it was pretty phenomenal and phenomenally bold. I thought it was a fascinating story. And Doris Grumbach did a terrific job dramatizing it, although some of it was clearly factually based, the speculative parts were exceptionally well written and lyrical without being overdone. In fact Grumbach tells the entire story of the ladies' impressively long for the time lives in just over 200 pages. Interestingly enough this was not an entirely objective narration, in fact it was quite biased as in the author's feelings toward her subjects were very apparent to the reader, but somehow it neither detracted nor subtracted from the book. Grumbach described the ladies' lives in such rich detail, it was really lives only up to a point, once together it was a Life, one shared life, with as much love, kindness and affection as anyone can hope to share with another person, a genuine definition of what a marriage should be regardless of gender and small minds, and though their isolation could be viewed as a burden, personally I thought they had a pretty nice life together, however geographically restricted. Their love of books and learning and impressive array of visitors was very admirable and their quirks came across as very human. Every couple creates their own world to an extent, but few are quite as thorough and accomplished at that as were the ladies of Llangollen. No cheap thrills here, no sex even, although plenty of intimacy, in this story of a genuine life long loving union of two kindred spirits, who chose and dared to be wholly unique and boldly authentic. Highly recommended.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What book would I most want to see filmed? The Ladies, a novel by Doris Grumbach. I've wondered often why it never was filmed. It's such a good story!

In the late 18th century, two Irish women decided to leave their family homes and create a life for themselves in the wider world. Sarah, an orphaned teenager, met Eleanor while on holiday from school. Eleanor, a woman in her thirties whose father had never forgiven her for being a daughter instead of the son he longed for, had dressed as a man from childhood and had enjoyed the kind of freedom that few traditional women could imagine. They became dear friends and companions, and their friendship was considered salutary by their families - until they eloped.

Lesbian love, even (and especially) loving relationships that were true marriages of hearts, minds, and bodies, shocked the families into allowing Sarah and Eleanor to leave their homes. They never returned. Instead, they established themselves in a small Welsh town, Llangollen, where they lived according to their own vows and beliefs. That their love was as natural as any was their first vow of binding. They vowed to create a beautiful home with bountiful gardens to sustain them, and to read and study to develop their minds and hearts.

Dressed in the riding habits and top hats that Eleanor designed as their lifelong fashion, they lived a solitary life in the puzzled town, and refused to allow themselves to be sensationalized when they attracted notice. Gradually, they received the visitors who would make them famous - Wordsworth, Byron, Walter Scott, Edmund Burke, Richard Shackleton, Josiah Wedgewood, and Anna Seward, amongst others. They grew old together, and they died together; their love never faltered.

Now, imagine the movie! Since there will be no more Merchant/Ivory productions, I would like Jane Campion to direct because of her skill in depicting women who make brave and difficult choices amidst natural or social beauty. (Think "The Piano" or "Portrait of a Lady," and imagine the Ladies against the expanses of rural Wales.) Picture Sarah's resplendent gardens, the house that the Ladies decorated, and the immense bed they shared; picture their beloved cow and the artichokes they feasted on with freshly-churned butter. The movie would be a visual treat.

Emma Thompson might be a good choice for the older, more assertive Eleanor. I can imagine Kate Winslett as Sarah, blonde and emotional, comforting Eleanor through her monthly migraines, knitting delicate stockings and gloves, and designing the gardens that would be so admired. Who would portray their famous friends? I'll leave that to you,the casting director, although I might suggest Anthony Hopkins as Sir Walter Scott, and (dare I say) Hugh Laurie as Lord Byron.

Perhaps you are puzzled, wondering why real-life luminaries are including in this fiction. Simple: Doris Grumbach's novel is a fictionalized biography of two very real, very brave women: Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler, the Ladies of Llangollen. Did Sarah suffer from debilitating dreams and lingering guilt about her sexual preference? Did Eleanor develop a passion for magic in her later years? Grumbach cautions the reader to remember that her book is fiction, her own vision, and not a faithful biography. I think it would make a splendid film, and I recommend the book as a fine romance and a vision of the lives of two pioneering women.

[Esmé J · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading when I found out that one of the "ladies" was 13 at the time of their first kiss, and the other was in her 30s. While I understand that this was their historically accurate age difference when the two ladies met, I think that because Grumbach fictionalized their story she could have written it as a friendship which blossomed into love after both of them were fully consenting adults. They way it was written came off like grooming and pedophilia.

Content warnings for book: mentions of sexual harassment, pedophilia

[Britta Böhler · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5*

[Robyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Discounted | Disrespectful | I finished the book and then waited to write this review until I had finished a nonfiction book about Eleanor and Sarah, because I was already annoyed at the false presentations of them in Grumbach's "novel", but wanted to be fair and make sure she really did just tell a bunch of lies about real people, before I claimed that's what she did. Turns out, yes, that's what she did.

First, let's address calling this "a novel" so that she didn't have to bother being honest about actual human beings who had real lives. If a book doesn't have any sort of plot or narrative structure, it is not a novel. There is no arc here, just a straightforward recitation of who the ladies allegedly were, how they came to be together, and how they spent their time once they were settled, mostly a list of money spent and people either offended or allowed to visit briefly. That's fine for biography. It does not a novel make.

But of course, in a biography you have to write what really happened. Eleanor's father, in real life, liked her just fine, she was his third child not a first long-desired offspring in whom all his hopes for an heir resided, and she was followed just a year later by a brother, not 12 years later by a sister. Her mother was focused on the title, but the father was kind. There is no indication that she masturbated to climax on the back of a statue multiple times a day.

The ladies became friends when Sarah was 13 and Eleanor was 29, but that friendship then grew over the course of five years of discussing books and learning French, with Sarah going back to her guardians at the age of 18. Three years after that, the two became regular secret correspondents (not uncommon among young ladies of the time), and 18 months after that their correspondence became known to their families. Sarah was 23 when they decided to take the example of the French philosophers they had long been reading, and retire from society. A woman in her mid-30s did not entice a teenager into running away with her.

The journal of their two years travelling in Wales before settling down was kept by Sarah, not Eleanor, and they both kept them once they settled down. They weren't immediately sending letters back home asking for money, since no money had been promised to them and Eleanor had not been forced to swear not to contact her family. Mary Carryll was with them from the start, they didn't wait a couple years before sending for her, and her strong-arm background and attitude is entirely invented. They did not refuse all visitors in early days, inviting the landlord and the owner of the local inn into the kitchen, and hosting friends and family in the first year in Plas Newydd. A close family friend who was very involved in the elopement stayed two weeks during the second summer, during which they had others in for dinner and visited at fine houses, and after which Eleanor wrote asking the friend to come stay again. They stayed overnight with friends outside of Llangollen on several occasions. Mrs Tighe came to stay, and was charmed by the cottage. Eleanor's sister in law came for a lovely visit.

Grumbach places certain events very specifically in the wrong time, to create a different sense of their life. Queen Charlotte asked for plans of the cottage and gardens within the first five years, not decades later. The widow Paulet, never having met them, offered to join their household in year three, not near the end of their lives. She gives a specific and very wrong year to the death of Mary Caryll, and follows it with confusion on the date of Eleanor's (Eleanor lived 20 years after Mary died, and Sarah did die two years after Eleanor, but the years given are all mixed up).

Despite Grumbach's inventions, the journals make no references, plain, coy, or coded, to sexual intimacy between the ladies.

But the worst is the way that Grumbach has turned Eleanor into such a bitch. In reality it was Eleanor who woke in the night with nightmares that Sarah soothed away. Eleanor who considered herself unable to face difficulties, while Sarah took care of them. And Eleanor who insisted that a neighbor's dog not be shot because of the sadness she saw on its owner's face. Both were the delight of village children until the end of their lives.

If Grumbach wanted to create completely fictional characters, she could easily have done so, giving them new names and mentioning Eleanor and Sarah, and their real lives, as her point of inspiration. To write an entire book that reads as biography while being full of falsehoods and representing real people badly, is unfair and unworthy of any good writer. People will read this and think it actually tells their story, which is disrespectful to the women they really were, the love they shared, and the warm home they created together.

[Charlee Underwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

a heartwarming story! the (slightly fictionalized) lives of these sapphic Irish women is slow paced and dense, but its filled with beautiful moments and so much history!

[Elizabeth Sprague · Rating 4 out of 5]

so sweet!!!! started this a bit ago as a partner read (much like my next review) but i have too much time on my hands and wanted to finish it before the new year. age gap…kinda fucking insane. definitely informs their dynamic beyond just the fact that eleanor dressed masc first (which like…sarah seemed to acquiesce to later when they needed new clothes and seemed to be like okay i guess i have to also dress masc for the rest of my life even tho we’re living “freely” (whatever that means here idek)… like sure). i’m not the guy to have an opinion however it just seemed a bit brushed over in the grumbach account. this leads me to a further point of interest about presenting masculinity, especially for eleanor, as a form of protection, beyond ‘mere’ expression. i think as eleanor, with sarah, risks a lot to establish their own independent lives, and naturally wants to protect that, (and she has learned that presenting masculinely gets her far in their society) she begins to close off their world to secure that protection further. when this becomes problematic for me as a reader (nevertheless fascinating) is when eleanor becomes increasingly paranoid of others, beyond just maintaining her (‘their,’ supposedly sarah agrees) rule that only like classy people can visit them etc., and begins to actively be conservative (i.e.; telling the landlord to evict the homeless people (who are homeless bc injury made them unable to work, not that it matters) living down the way just bc they’re like…an eyesore?? (no pun intended) (sorry)….like hello???). i’m not sure i should expect much from someone who canonically comes from an elite background but damn maybe some like sympathy idk. made it hard to keep reading some sections that focused on eleanor’s conservative social habits, let’s say.

ANYWAY, points for having a whole scene with a trained bear and being just generally very wholesome and easy to pick up. let’s go with 3.6

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the idea of this book. The author took an actual historical anecdote about two eccentric ladies who had chosen to spend their lives together in Wales in the 1700's, and fictionalized it to portray their inner lives together. The book was only 200 pages, yet it took me forever to get through it. It was a bit tedious, but I have to admit the ending made up for it quite nicely. It was sad and sweet and poignant.
I might recommend this for anyone truly interested in history, and who has a lot of patience.

[Sage Suorsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great true story about two 18th Century women who lived together in Wales as a married couple. Knowing that they wanted to always be together, though they couldn't legally be married, they left their families in Ireland when Sarah was only 14 and Eleanor was in her late 30's, I think. Interesting to read how the townspeople reacted to the reclusive lesbians living in their town.

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I vote that this book be turned into a movie or BBC mini series or something. It's just so courageously written; so well put. And it's not a romance novel full of frills and lies, it's the true story of two women who loved each other. They had their ups and downs like all couples and they bore them all.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part novel, part biography. This book won't encourage any obsessive reading, but it is a lovely record of two lives designed and lived just as they wanted to be.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ladies of Llangollen were a pair of Irish heiresses, with a twenty year age-gap, who set up house together in a Welsh valley. There, they lived a quiet and domestic life, slowly improving their home and gardens, keeping to themselves, whilst wearing a masculine coded uniform of riding habits, white powdered hair and top hats. They became famous, ending up having lots of famous visitors who often left little gifts.

The Ladies is a novel that retells these events and, while it teases out some of the tensions within The Ladies’ lives, it never fully goes beyond being a retelling to a fully alive, flesh-and-blood novel. Events are rejigged, the point of view does delves into Eleanor and Sarah’s heads, but it never seems to grow from someone telling the reader their version of the events into a shaped and compelling work of literature. Their story is fascinating, and that made the book an enjoyable read, but it was (presumably) more accurately, and more engagingly told in Elizabeth Maven’s The Ladies of Llangollen: A Study in Romantic Friendship.

Part of my ambivalence about the book is the use of tense. It swaps between past and present tense, seemingly at random. There are no chapters in the book but it’s split into four sections, yet the tense isn’t consistent within these sections. Going back to the book and skipping through to when the tense changes, I think any part about the two Ladies on their own or together are in present tense, and the parts when they are with someone else are in the past. If this is true, I think the idea is that when they are together, things are more intense and immediate but washed out when their essential togetherness is watered down by the presence of someone else. If so, it’s an interesting idea, but it comes across as muddled.

The Ladies have represented a lot to people. To the age they lived in, they were either ‘damned sapphists’, as Hester Thrale called them, or a symbol of a pure romantic friendship to be celebrated. Certainly, they saw themselves in a tradition of Rousseau and sought to bring a cosy, homely quality to their lives, especially expressed by their garden. To many queer people today they represent an ideal, a happy and fulfilled domestic life. Anne Lister even went to meet them to see how a same sex ‘marriage’ could work. The Ladies themselves were indignant about any sexual aspersions being cast on them, but Grumbach’s novel centres their sexual life as the anchor of the relationship, with their shared bed being a separate and better world. (That said, it’s never an explicit book).

The most interesting thing the book does, is poke some criticisms into the life the Ladies built together. Their cosy life of reading, sewing and walking in the gardens is one that has been celebrated as ideal. Personally, it seems like a very heaven to me. However, the book pulls at a divide between the home they built in Wales and a sense of exile from their families in Ireland. There’s a sense that the very routine and domestic life they lived also served as something of a prison.

The most novelistic parts of the book happen at the beginning, where the Ladies formed their relationship, prepared an escape, made it and then were captured before making an arrangement to be allowed to go off together. The characterisation of Eleanor’s parents and Sarah’s gropey guardian are often stronger than the characterisation of the Ladies themselves. It’s quite a gripping beginning.

The flattest section is at the end, entitled ‘visitors’, which is largely a description of all the people that visited their houses and the Ladies’ slow decline. The book starts to come to a conclusion about their relationship at this part, and it’s an interesting an nuanced one. Their relationship was intense and fulfilling but in being so central to them it trapped them together and denied them access to the rest of the world. It seems their relationship was enough for them, which is brilliant, but if it hadn’t been, it would have been a slow suffocation.

Personally, this book has reenforced me an important lesson as I am writing a book featuring real historical people. That the book needs to be a novel as well as a retelling.

[Kymm · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ladies, by Doris Grumbach turned out to be a wonderful read! I found it so interesting and informative, so relative to life today yet it takes place in the late 1700's. The story is based on the lives of two women, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who chose to love and live together as a couple in a small town in Wales. This book is important, as these brave women were most likely the first documented same sex couple, however I believe they were not the only one in history, we've just never heard about them until now thanks to Ms. Doris Grumbach. Fascinating, awesome and must be read are words that come to mind when I think back on it. The women who met as teenagers always felt drawn to one another and eventually leave their familial homes, of which they've been ostracized and banned from returning because of their love, and move to Wales to set up their home. The troubles, concerns and problems they had living the way they wanted and needed to brought many whispers and town talk, but they persevered and loved freely. Amazing that in 2019 we still see this prejudice of same sex couples, can you imagine what it was like in the 1700's? These strong, intelligent women knew only one thing when they set out to rock the norm and that was they felt true, inseparable love for one another. Yes, they did have their problems and the book describes and captures these feelings perfectly. The author took a brave stance in writing this book, I believe, but what an inspirational read it is! Grumbach does an amazing job portraying each women as an individual and also as one half of this love affair. There's nothing too graphic or descriptive in the book, which would have disappointed me. It just wasn't that type book, it had meaning and feelings and hooked me from page one. I couldn't put it down, hence the finishing it in one afternoon. I say read this book if you love a good love story, or if you, like me love historical fiction and learning about people, places and times, you know nothing about. This is one I won't forget for some time, it had such guts and explored a topic that was obviously considered taboo and even dangerous at the time. I love reading about strong women who've braved the world before me, it gives me such gratitude for what they've been through and done to make this world the place it is today! Happy Reading!

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a novelization of the Ladies of Llangollen, two upper class 18th Century women who chose to make a life together. The first half of the novel deals with the efforts that both women had to make to leave their families, develop their relationship and make a journey around the British isles ending in Llangollen, Wales. I found this to be the best part of the novel. As the ladies settled into their house, the outside world became interested and a few accomplished select people were able to make visits. I felt here that the author became clinically detached from her subjects and the writing centered around the peculiarities of each woman. Lady Eleanor, the older of the two was almost curmudgeonly towards visitors while the younger Sarah was more welcoming.

[Susan Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about the love two women found with each other. There is no graphic sexual content.
As hard as some members of today's GLBT community have it can you even begin to imaging what it must have been like for them if they had lived in the 1700's? This book shows how Eleanor and Sarah gave up so much for their relationship.
I gave the book 5 stars because it was a warm, caring book that showed how love can change people's lives and also how they can be so close they are almost one person.
Eleanor and Sarah are wonderful characters although in real life I don't know if I would be acceptable to them!

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I still need to look up where the lines between fact and fiction are. Not that the answers change my enjoying the read. Interesting characters in an interesting time. It wasn't the romance I was looking for, but is one I am glad I read.

[Wilder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the ladies themselves, just not Grumbach's writing style.

[Bree (AnotherLookBook) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off strong and compelling, but wandered somewhere in the middle. I was startled at one point to realize that 30 years had passed in the book. It might prove memorable in time.

[Anne]

I bought this at a book sale, and this is what was inscribed on the back:
"To Donice,
A fine book and study of a relationship that weathers time and social dictates.
Love,
Mary
Christmas '85"

[Ster · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed and intricate view of two ladies life and love. We travel with them from their rich upbringings in Ireland to their marriage in England. I loved the detail of their everyday lives, filled with strife and beauty. Two very compelling and different characters, drawn together by a great love. I wonder if this life, this marriage, this love was only permitted\available to them because of their chosen seclusion, status in society and their monies from family. True they had their slight, miniscule bit of scandal, but overall they were happy, content and most of all - together.

[Smart Goliath · Rating 4 out of 5]

It did feel a bit like it was dragging on, but absolutely the good type. I read a chunk everyday, sometimes a lot, but I thought about it almost the entire time I didn’t read in it. The style of writing was so matter of factly, so detached from the story but attached enough to make you wonder. I felt myself very caught in renegotiating certain scenes in the book, intrigued by how the characters must’ve felt.

[Faith Reidenbach · Rating 1 out of 5]

"The Ladies," a lesbian couple who lived in the 1700s in Wales, would make interesting reading if this book were a history. Instead, it's fiction. It's well enough imagined in the beginning, as the young women escape their well-to-do families, but it devolves into little more than a recitation of the famous people they knew and a lot of walks in the garden.

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish I'd read ANY of the books Goodreads suggests when you search for 'The Ladies'. The first two pages were good, so I bought it secondhand, because historical lesbians! Where is the bad? In most of the rest of the pages, as it turns out.

[Kieren]

3.5 stars, rounding up.

So I did like this book (didn't love it), but it has inspired me to read more wlw fiction. I had heard about these two ladies prior to reading this book. Would be interested to read a more factual account of their lives together.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very sweet love story about a lesbian relationship that was accepted by the Wales town where these women lived until their deaths about 1830...