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Canongate Classics
Open the Door!
Joanna Bannerman, capricious, selfish, and warm-hearted, passionately seeks life and "loveliness". The bustling streets of Glasgow at the turn of the century promise much greater excitement than the solid evangelical background she has known hitherto. First published in 1920, this novel powerfully evokes the image of a young woman ensnared yet ultimately released by her capacity for emotion. It contains a strong autobiographical element and is also a powerful evocation of the life and industry of the Second City of the Empire.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1920
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205 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Carswell
22 books3 followersCatherine Roxburgh Carswell (née Macfarlane) was a Scottish author, biographer and journalist, and a contributor to the Scottish Renaissance. Her work is considered an integral part of Scottish women's writing of the early 20th century.
The daughter of a Glasgow merchant, Carswell was educated at the Park School. From 1901 to 1903 she attended classes in English Literature at Glasgow University. She went on to study music at the Schumann Conservatorium in Frankfurt am Main before taking up employment as reviewer and dramatic critic at the Glasgow Herald from 1907 until 1915. She was subsequently an assistant theatre critic for the Observer.
Carswell's first marriage, to Herbert Jackson in 1903, was annulled in 1908, and in 1915 she married Donald Carswell. Her first novel, Open the Door, was published in 1920, followed in 1922 by The Camomile. She developed a particular interest in the life and work of Robert Burns, publishing her celebrated The Life of Robert Burns in 1930: her unsentimental account of his life upset many Burns traditionalists. She was a close friend of DH Lawrence, and in 1932 she published The Savage Pilgrimage: a Narrative of DH Lawrence.
The daughter of a Glasgow merchant, Carswell was educated at the Park School. From 1901 to 1903 she attended classes in English Literature at Glasgow University. She went on to study music at the Schumann Conservatorium in Frankfurt am Main before taking up employment as reviewer and dramatic critic at the Glasgow Herald from 1907 until 1915. She was subsequently an assistant theatre critic for the Observer.
Carswell's first marriage, to Herbert Jackson in 1903, was annulled in 1908, and in 1915 she married Donald Carswell. Her first novel, Open the Door, was published in 1920, followed in 1922 by The Camomile. She developed a particular interest in the life and work of Robert Burns, publishing her celebrated The Life of Robert Burns in 1930: her unsentimental account of his life upset many Burns traditionalists. She was a close friend of DH Lawrence, and in 1932 she published The Savage Pilgrimage: a Narrative of DH Lawrence.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 18, 2024
“See! The moon!”
Subtitle: How a woman manages to live for thirty years without thinking of anything but sex.
The Bannerman family live in 1890s Glasgow, members of the Free Church (a strict Protestant sect), their grandfather having been one of its founding members. The Bannerman we are concerned with is Joanna, a child of twelve when the story begins, but already hyperventilating as ecstatically as any wannabe Virginia Woolf. She grows up, falls in love a few times, has sex a few times, and manages to ignore all life outside of the confines of her own small, limited emotions. Carswell has been compared (by publishers) to DH Lawrence. He should sue.
I’ve seen reviews saying this gives a wonderful picture of Glasgow. Oh, yeah? It gives a wonderful picture of the wealthy Kelvinside area, where the university is, and where smart people lived in a lovely bubble of afternoon teas and dinner parties, and dabbled in what they liked to call art, while their servants cleaned up after them. But it completely ignores minor details like the children dying of poverty-related diseases just round the corner, the cauldron of factories the city had become in the industrial revolution, spewing out pollution and filth and chewing up the men, women and children who scratched out a bare subsistence in their mechanical maws, the elderly dying in poorhouses after a lifetime of back-breaking, soul-breaking labour. It ignores the docks that built the ships that created the wealth that the Bannermans and their buddies benefited from. It ignores the rise of extreme politics as a result of those conditions.
Because, obviously, Joanna’s aspiration to a sex life is more important.
It is well written, if you enjoy that exalted hyperbolic style that seemed popular among women writers at that time, where a flower requires two paragraphs of description, and a starlit evening can take up an entire chapter simply to describe the quivering response of the heroine’s sensitive soul. For the first quarter or so I actually enjoyed it, assuming that the narrow focus on Joanna’s hormonal urgings would broaden out once she got past her teen years and entered adulthood, when, I assumed, she would become interested in other things than men. By the halfway point, my hopes had been dashed – by now around twenty-four, it was clear Joanna (the author’s autobiographical alter-ego) was never going to grow up. By this time she’d had a silly marriage to a man she barely knew (because he made her think erotic thoughts) who happily had the decency to die, thus freeing her up to seek out other sexual experiences. Now she is about to chase a married man to London (because he makes her think erotic thoughts).
I decided not to follow her. However, in case I was making a big mistake and she was just about to involve herself in something worthwhile, like helping the poor or campaigning for votes for women or even just developing an interesting line in conversation that didn’t involve her pursuit of sex, I jumped to the last chapter. And, yes, indeed, there she is, now thirty, now about to start a relationship with another man (she calls it love this time – though, of course, she called it love every time) and being praised for being, like the Infant Phenomenon, eternally fresh and youthful. Says the young(er) man with whom she’s about to embark on a life of undiluted happiness:
Fear not, young lover. For our Joanna, no man is too old, or too young. I shall give her the last word…
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Subtitle: How a woman manages to live for thirty years without thinking of anything but sex.
The Bannerman family live in 1890s Glasgow, members of the Free Church (a strict Protestant sect), their grandfather having been one of its founding members. The Bannerman we are concerned with is Joanna, a child of twelve when the story begins, but already hyperventilating as ecstatically as any wannabe Virginia Woolf. She grows up, falls in love a few times, has sex a few times, and manages to ignore all life outside of the confines of her own small, limited emotions. Carswell has been compared (by publishers) to DH Lawrence. He should sue.
I’ve seen reviews saying this gives a wonderful picture of Glasgow. Oh, yeah? It gives a wonderful picture of the wealthy Kelvinside area, where the university is, and where smart people lived in a lovely bubble of afternoon teas and dinner parties, and dabbled in what they liked to call art, while their servants cleaned up after them. But it completely ignores minor details like the children dying of poverty-related diseases just round the corner, the cauldron of factories the city had become in the industrial revolution, spewing out pollution and filth and chewing up the men, women and children who scratched out a bare subsistence in their mechanical maws, the elderly dying in poorhouses after a lifetime of back-breaking, soul-breaking labour. It ignores the docks that built the ships that created the wealth that the Bannermans and their buddies benefited from. It ignores the rise of extreme politics as a result of those conditions.
Because, obviously, Joanna’s aspiration to a sex life is more important.
It is well written, if you enjoy that exalted hyperbolic style that seemed popular among women writers at that time, where a flower requires two paragraphs of description, and a starlit evening can take up an entire chapter simply to describe the quivering response of the heroine’s sensitive soul. For the first quarter or so I actually enjoyed it, assuming that the narrow focus on Joanna’s hormonal urgings would broaden out once she got past her teen years and entered adulthood, when, I assumed, she would become interested in other things than men. By the halfway point, my hopes had been dashed – by now around twenty-four, it was clear Joanna (the author’s autobiographical alter-ego) was never going to grow up. By this time she’d had a silly marriage to a man she barely knew (because he made her think erotic thoughts) who happily had the decency to die, thus freeing her up to seek out other sexual experiences. Now she is about to chase a married man to London (because he makes her think erotic thoughts).
I decided not to follow her. However, in case I was making a big mistake and she was just about to involve herself in something worthwhile, like helping the poor or campaigning for votes for women or even just developing an interesting line in conversation that didn’t involve her pursuit of sex, I jumped to the last chapter. And, yes, indeed, there she is, now thirty, now about to start a relationship with another man (she calls it love this time – though, of course, she called it love every time) and being praised for being, like the Infant Phenomenon, eternally fresh and youthful. Says the young(er) man with whom she’s about to embark on a life of undiluted happiness:
“There was a time when I was too young for you . . . heaps too young. But I have made up since then. Soon I shall be far older than you, though I hope not too old.”
Fear not, young lover. For our Joanna, no man is too old, or too young. I shall give her the last word…
“See! The moon!”
Together at Joanna's cry they wheeled to look. Amid the flock of little clouds behind them, a young, misshapen moon had been speeding up unseen. Now each cloud, holding fast its own seed of darkness, floated apart in a pale, transparent spume of light.
“Like the seeds of a passion flower, aren't they?” murmured Joanna.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
March 21, 2016
Open the Door! is the highly autobiographical account of a young Scottish woman's sexual awakening and search for independence and happiness at the turn of the 20th century.
Joanne Bannerman is an unconventional heroine of contradictory feelings and sudden passions; a woman whose impressions always seem to be in conflict, finding something to dislike even in the things she most likes, experiencing disappointment in triumph; always the 'dual revelation'.
Defying the Evangelist influence of her mother she stumbles into a doomed engagement, a hasty marriage and a new life in Italy, before she finally finds adulterous love with an older man.
She further unshackles the confines of her upbringing through the Bohemian influences of Art School, her flighty Aunt Perdy and the gaiety of the various artists and performers who gather at 'San Souci' ('Without Worries').
Written with real honesty and unsentimental insight, literature didn't really have female lead characters like this in the 19th century or before. I particularly liked Carswell's description of her heroine's thoughts when she has sex for the first time:
'This droll device, this astonishing, grotesque experience was what the poets had sung of since the beginning'.
If you give this a read it will be very clear why Carswell was an early champion of DH Lawrence.
Joanne Bannerman is an unconventional heroine of contradictory feelings and sudden passions; a woman whose impressions always seem to be in conflict, finding something to dislike even in the things she most likes, experiencing disappointment in triumph; always the 'dual revelation'.
Defying the Evangelist influence of her mother she stumbles into a doomed engagement, a hasty marriage and a new life in Italy, before she finally finds adulterous love with an older man.
She further unshackles the confines of her upbringing through the Bohemian influences of Art School, her flighty Aunt Perdy and the gaiety of the various artists and performers who gather at 'San Souci' ('Without Worries').
Written with real honesty and unsentimental insight, literature didn't really have female lead characters like this in the 19th century or before. I particularly liked Carswell's description of her heroine's thoughts when she has sex for the first time:
'This droll device, this astonishing, grotesque experience was what the poets had sung of since the beginning'.
If you give this a read it will be very clear why Carswell was an early champion of DH Lawrence.
November 18, 2011
I really wanted to like this book and there were sections when I enjoyed reading about the adventures and escapades of Joanna Bannerman from Glasgow to Italy to London but Carswell puzzled me sometimes with the intellectual powers that she conveyed on her heroine. Sometimes Joanna sounded like a philosopher and from her other personality characteristics that ability didn't jibe with the ordinary human being she was.
There were many trite descriptions and passages in the book that were tedious and too many staged coincidences. But for all that, I'm not sorry I read it as I believe that it was a fairly autobiographical accounf of Carswell's own life and she certainly lived an adventurous and unconventional life for a woman whose work was published in 1920. So hats off to her!
There were many trite descriptions and passages in the book that were tedious and too many staged coincidences. But for all that, I'm not sorry I read it as I believe that it was a fairly autobiographical accounf of Carswell's own life and she certainly lived an adventurous and unconventional life for a woman whose work was published in 1920. So hats off to her!
July 8, 2018
Wise but wearing bildungsroman, full with super-Romantic sincerity. Joanna’s life is about embracing pleasure and freedom, but is suffused with the bible; even living godlessly, J thinks in its language and punishes herself in its mood.
Unconventionally emotional: while she doesn’t love her husband (“What they had was not love, but it had beauty, and it served.”) and doesn’t grieve her mother’s death, Joanna (and Carswell) are brimming with strange new emotions: at one point she’s thrilled to ecstasy by a dripping tap. (“It was the still small voice of a new birth, of a new life, of a new world… For it was the voice before creation, secure, unearthly, frail as filigree yet faithful as a star.”)
Ornamented, worthy, but hard work. Probably important.
Unconventionally emotional: while she doesn’t love her husband (“What they had was not love, but it had beauty, and it served.”) and doesn’t grieve her mother’s death, Joanna (and Carswell) are brimming with strange new emotions: at one point she’s thrilled to ecstasy by a dripping tap. (“It was the still small voice of a new birth, of a new life, of a new world… For it was the voice before creation, secure, unearthly, frail as filigree yet faithful as a star.”)
Ornamented, worthy, but hard work. Probably important.
March 19, 2013
The Virago Modern Classics series so consistently pleases me that it makes the well of the world's good books seem quite bottomless. Part, though not all, of their stock in trade is the elegantly written bildungsroman by someone who never quite equals her debut, from a time when people somehow made good writing seem a lot more effortless. Catherine Caswell published only one other novel, but remained a woman of letters, writing two biographies, most significantly one of D.H. Lawrence of whom she was an early supporter in her role as newspaper critic, and correspondent to the tune of several hundred letters.
The story itself traces 12-year old Joanna to age 30, through a young widowhood and eventual happy remarriage; though it is not a quest simply to get herself hitched, rather a detailed and compelling accounting of her emotional and intellectual awakening generally. Raised in Glasgow in the late 19th century in an evangelical Christian family (a term which carried somewhat different connotations then than now, but still involved a rather narrowly circumscribed worldview and a lot of preaching to the benighted), her father has just died at the outset, an eventuality that then as in modern American sitcoms, seemed to trigger a more difficult but also somehow more "interesting" time for the children. In 1890s Glasgow, the first order of business is to get to the more cosmopolitan Edinburgh, whence eventually to London.
The story itself traces 12-year old Joanna to age 30, through a young widowhood and eventual happy remarriage; though it is not a quest simply to get herself hitched, rather a detailed and compelling accounting of her emotional and intellectual awakening generally. Raised in Glasgow in the late 19th century in an evangelical Christian family (a term which carried somewhat different connotations then than now, but still involved a rather narrowly circumscribed worldview and a lot of preaching to the benighted), her father has just died at the outset, an eventuality that then as in modern American sitcoms, seemed to trigger a more difficult but also somehow more "interesting" time for the children. In 1890s Glasgow, the first order of business is to get to the more cosmopolitan Edinburgh, whence eventually to London.
June 30, 2010
I may try to write this up in more detail later, but let's just say it was a disappointment after I'd quite liked The Camomile. I never got on with the self-absorbed heroine or her selfish love interest, I thought the plot was all over the place, and the ending seemed tacked on.
March 27, 2021
This 1920 novel shows the influence of D. H. Lawrence. White the title and cover art might suggest something supernatural, this is the story of a woman raised in a Scottish Presbyterian family tht is very religious and centered around the minister father, who dies early in the plot. She engages with father figures, first as a wife, then as a mistress while younger devoted men flirt fruitlessly around her. While she is working as an artist, it is often unclear just how she is supporting herself. Author's conversations with D. H. Lawrence are evident in the references to "essential" male and female. The writing is good and there are nice descriptions of Scotland and Italy, but the character's continual poor emotional decisions are madding.
February 7, 2023
Opens in Victorian Glasgow and follows fortunes of Joanna Bannerman, one of four siblings whose parents are evangelical Christian. Joanne makes it to art college, largely against her mother's wishes, (her father dies early in the novel). With great determination Joanna goes on to live her life as independently as possible. She is a real romantic of a character with a rather poor taste in men! I found the writing a bit ponderous in places. However, despite finding Joanna at times completely self centred I enjoyed her spirited independent character. And the descriptions of life for a young woman in Glasgow and beyond.
June 24, 2024
I picked this up a few years back as a ‘blind date with a book’ from a bookshop and it was a disappointment. It’s overly long and includes offensive stereotypes of several groups. Probably not one that needed a republication.
October 30, 2024
Coming of age of Glasgow born Joanna who fights societal expectations to embrace her self & her sexuality and find happiness. All the themes are super interesting but I was in parts a bit bored. But you go, girl, it's your life, enjoy it.
January 5, 2017
Despite a somewhat predictable and sappy ending, this feminist classic of growing up in Glasgow in the 1890's is filled with beautiful writing and a riveting plot. The story revolves around an artistic woman who grows up in an Evangelical Scottish family. She eventually questions and rebels against what she has been taught about religion, family, and fulfillment. After a tragic affair with a married man in London, the protagonist finds her way back to her childhood haunts and early lessons about love and healing. The story holds a special interest for any readers who have felt they did not "fit" into their family or social conventions.
June 26, 2013
I seem to be on a kick of reading novels about outsiderish young women having affairs with older men in London in the 1920s - first Voyage in the Dark and now this. Other than the superficial plot resemblance, the two books couldn't be more different - Jean Rhys uses such spare, economical language whereas Catherine Carswell apparently never met a flower, or a flowery description, she didn't like. It was a bit much, and yet I enjoyed it once I got into it.
August 13, 2015
This follows the life of Joanna and the choices she makes regarding love.
It was so sad the pain she went through when her mother died.
I'm so glad she ended up with Lawrence instead of Louis the older married man.
A very moving book of the time.
It was so sad the pain she went through when her mother died.
I'm so glad she ended up with Lawrence instead of Louis the older married man.
A very moving book of the time.
December 12, 2013
I would have liked it more if I'd sat down and read for longer lengths of time. I did enjoy the last chapter, curative and mind clearing nature of Mother Nature.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews