165. The Women Who Illuminated Manuscripts

AMY HELMES: Hi everyone. We're back with another Lost ladies of Lit bonus episode. Last week we discussed Christine de Pizan and her Book of the City of Ladies. Could a woman's hand have been behind any of the beautiful illustrations in this medieval work? Given what we know about women's involvement as artists in the medieval manuscript making process, it's certainly possible. Last week's guest, Kathleen Jones, author of the new novel Cities of Women, is back with us today to talk about it. So let's jump right into the conversation. 

Kathy, I found it really illuminating, pun intended, to discover that it wasn't just male monks who were illustrating these manuscripts in the medieval period. I don't know how it took me this long, or maybe it took us all this long to know, but this gets to the heart of your novel, Cities of Women. You feature a character, Anastasia, who's kind of the name at the center of the mystery that unfolds in your book, and she has a connection to Christine de Pizan, right?

KATHLEEN JONES: Yeah. We don't know whether she's real or another of Christine's metaphors, but she appears in the Book of the City of Ladies, and if I can read the passage, it's in the part where Christine is celebrating the various accomplishments of women artists. And she says, "I know a woman today named Anastasia who is so learned and skilled in painting manuscript borders and miniature backgrounds that one cannot find an artisan in all the city of Paris who can surpass her." 

KIM: That seems very real. 

KATHLEEN: I know. It does seem real. And then she adds, "I know this from experience, for she has executed several things for me, which stand out among the ornamental borders of the great masters." So whether it was literally Anastasia or she's using Anastasia to stand in for a number of women artists with whom she worked on these manuscripts, we don't know for sure. We do know, there's documentation from the archives in Paris that have survived, that there were women artists in all aspects of the book industry in medieval Paris, and while I was researching the book, I came across a reference to a dissertation about medieval artists by a woman named Kouky Fianu, who currently teaches in Canada. I forget what university she's at right now. [Ed: University of Ottowa] And I read her dissertation in French and we conversed about women artists at the time, and definitely there were women working as painters, as bookbinders, as scribes, uh, I'm not sure about parchment makers, you know, the people who created the material that the books were, written on, but definitely in all aspects of the trade. And we know because Christine tells us that she supervised her production, uh, her workshop. It's not like a workshop we think of today where everybody's in the same, you know, room or series of rooms, because the way the medieval book industry worked was, you know, there would be a parchment maker in one part of Paris. There would be a scribe in another part of Paris, the illuminators, the painters were in a different place. And the book would move in its development from spot to spot. But Christine was very precise. And there's been research on this by what are called paleographers, people who study, you know, the actual physical dimensions of the book, to demonstrate that she took absolute control of what her books looked like. And in some cases, she was actually the scribe herself.

KIM ASKEW: That is so cool. I'd love to see an exhibit of that, because I feel like Amy and I have seen illuminated manuscript exhibitions, but I've never seen it from the women who were participating in this work, from their perspective.

KATHLEEN: You know, there's an exhibit of women artists in the medieval and Renaissance period that's ongoing at, I think the Baltimore Museum right now. There's another exhibition, women artists from medieval times to the present, I think, I believe in Boston, but I know that the British Library is going to have a special exhibition on medieval women that they're going to launch in 2024.

KIM: Trip to England, trip to London! 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, there you go. It'll certainly feature de Pizan, uh, because, you know, they have that very famous Queen's Book in their collection. 

KIM: Right. Right. 

AMY: So getting back to the illustrators, who we're finding out women were doing this work, I got so excited when I found this out, that teeth actually help solve this mystery. Can you talk a little bit about what was found in skeletal remains that led scientists to realize this?

KATHLEEN: Right. A few years ago, uh, there's a woman, an archeologist by the name of Anita Radini. She is currently, I think, at the University of Dublin, and she and her team of researchers were digging in the graveyard near a German convent, and they exhumed the remains of a jaw. And they weren't looking for this, but they found these blue spots on the teeth and they couldn't figure out what it was. And they went through a whole bunch of explorations to finally identify it as the remains of lapis lazuli, which is this very, very, you know, expensive, but very important blue color that was used, particularly when you were you know, showing the gowns of, the, you know, Mary, the Blessed Virgin or whatever in these manuscripts. And it's interesting, because Christine, herself, uses that blue or requires that blue in the drapery of the gowns that portray her in her illuminated manuscripts. But they found the remains on skeletal teeth. And that was absolute, incontrovertible evidence that, you know, not only monks, but women were involved in the actual illuminating of these manuscripts. What they hypothesized is that the brushes that were used, you've seen these portraits in books, they're so small. In some cases, strokes are so fine that to get the point of the brush very, very sharp, they would lick it and probably deposited some of the remains of the paint in their teeth. And that's how they, you know, had that evidence to prove that women were involved. And the teeth were the source. 

KIM: I love, of course a woman figured that out. So amazing. I love it. 

Well, you 

KATHLEEN: know that women who were doing the, uh, remember when watches would glow in the dark? Uh, and it was a chemical that was put on them. Many women who performed that very delicate kind of painting in the watches got poisoned from the material that they were using to create the illumination, and this is the same thing. They stick the brush point in their mouth to sharpen it and dip it in the chemical and it was deposited and they in that case they got sick from it. So, but it was an archaeologist several years ago who, yeah, uncovered that information. 

AMY: And I found an article that discusses that a little bit more, and listeners will put a link to that in our show notes.

KATHLEEN: Okay.

AMY: I really loved the detail with which you described the whole medieval book making process in your novel. You really take the reader through that whole process, the binding, the illustrating. What level of research did you do for that? Did you go to a tutorial like the character Verity does in your book?

KATHLEEN: I did. As a matter of fact, I did. Um, well, first of all, I read, you know, voluminously about how the manuscripts were put together. I mean, I love books. I love to hold books. And I love, you know, the physicality of books. But these books are beyond what our books are now because they're so tactile, you know? They have a kind of three dimensionality to it. I wanted to convey that to the reader and I wanted to convey, you know, the amount of labor of many hands that went into the creation of what were, of course, in most cases, very rare books. If they were illuminated, they were meant for the nobility. Um, and so first years ago, I took a bookmaking class. I was interested in how books were put together. So I took an art course with a group of other people that was offered in San Diego at the time on making your own book. But then when I was writing this and doing the research on it, I felt I needed a kind of hands-on experience. And so I went to a workshop that was actually sponsored by the Morgan Library. And there I learned about ink making and the manufacture of vellum. There is still a place in upstate New York, I don't remember the name of the town now, where they mimic the medieval process of vellum making in order to produce the same material that medieval scribes would have. And there are art historians, there's a woman in the UK named, Sara Charles, who teaches the making of vellum, the making of ink, and the process of inscribing words on these pages, as well as illuminating the initials and drawing pictures. I didn't go to that one, that was in London, but in order to demonstrate, you know, the extent of labor involved in the making of a single book. The material was so precious. They couldn't afford to like we do today. Oh, well, you know, let me... 

KIM: Yeah, crumple it up and throw it behind... 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, it was so precious. So I saw a manuscript in the Morgan Library where there's a huge hole in the middle of one page. They weren't going to throw that out. They just wrote around it, you know, they inscribed around it. In other cases, there would be a tear because you stretched this material and there might be a tear made. Well, you know, you'd figure out a way to either write around it or add another layer or patch it up somehow. So yeah, it's definitely a laborious process. Yeah. 

KIM: So talking about these books with intricate illustrations, So the City of Ladies manuscripts, how did it enhance the experience of reading and understanding her work? What do we know about the illustrations that accompany her writing and the impact that they would've had on their reader?

KATHLEEN: Well, there's a kind of conversation going on between text and image and the image is meant to, you know, I guess call attention to aspects of the text to amplify it. And in Christine's case in particular, she was very keen on having her own portrait in these books, and so that serves like instead of signing it like we would now, you know, that portrait. And it wasn't just a portrait of her and her study, although that happens in some cases. She'd show herself at work in her study, but she would show herself giving this book to an important dignitary, like the queen in the case of The Queen's Book. And that was meant to sort of doubly authorize the queen in her power and Christine, you know, as an author. 

KIM: The author photo circa 15th century. 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, an author photo, but with, with much more, you know, power. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah, 

AMY: And make sure you use that expensive lapis lazuli on my dress, please.

KATHLEEN: Exactly. Exactly, if you go online to the British Library and you put in Harley 4431, which is the catalog number for the Queen's Book, will tell you where the images are and you scroll through those. They're amazing. They're also meant to be allegories in themselves. And the positioning of women in them is very important because rather than show, say, men doing all of the heroic acts, she'll show women doing, women bringing things into the world. So, you know, it has a lot of levels of meaning, but it's meant to kind of be in conversation with the text and amplify certain points that the text is actually making. 

AMY: And the colors are so vibrant and crisp. 

KIM: Oh yeah, gorgeous. 

AMY: It's amazing that it has lasted all this time. 

KIM: Mm hmm. 

AMY: It's as if it's almost fresh, on the page. 

KIM: It looks fresh, yeah. 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, yeah, and they're even more in person, they're even more stunning, I suppose, than you could ever reproduce in a... like an image on the screen can't quite get the depth or the almost three dimensionality of the image, you know. It almost literally leaps off the page at you. 

KIM: Speaking of leaping off the page, I really love how you made this relationship between Christine and potential people who were crafting her books, making Anastasia a real person, as a character in your book, and bringing her to life. So, 

AMY: Yeah, it's a great premise. 

KIM: Yeah, Yeah, I love it. 

KATHLEEN: Thanks. 

AMY: That's all for today's episode. Tune in next week, when we'll be discussing a secret diary, which both liberates and torments its owner. Author Joy Castro will be back with us to discuss Forbidden Notebook. A 1952 work by Cuban-Italian writer, Alba de Céspedes. 

KIM: Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes. 

164. Christine de Pizan — The Book of the City of Ladies with Kathleen B. Jones

AMY HELMES: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to unearthing forgotten classics by women writers. I'm Amy Helmes, here with my co host Kim Askew. 

KIM ASKEW: Today, we're going to be discussing a single mom who was also Europe's first professional woman writer of the late middle ages.

AMY: A widow who turned to her pen to support herself, her mother, and her three children. Christine de Pizan was described by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex as the first woman to take up her pen in defense of her sex. 

KIM: The book we're going to be discussing today, The Book of The City of Ladies, is Christine's history of Western civilization from the point of view and in praise of women, showcasing them as the intellectual and moral equals of men.

AMY: And that's really something, considering that this book was first published in 1405. That's almost four centuries before Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which we covered on this show a few weeks ago. 

KIM: Right, and we have an expert on Christine with us today to give us more insight into the writer and her remarkable book.

AMY: Let's raid the medieval manuscripts and get started. 

[intro music plays]

AMY: Joining us today is Kathleen B. Jones. During her over two decades as an academic teaching women's studies at San Diego State University, Kathleen authored six books, including three monographs and three edited anthologies of critical essays.Diving for Pearls: A Thinking Journey with Hannah Arendt, received the prestigious 2015 Barbara “Penny” Kanner Book Award from the Western Association of Women Historians. 

KIM: After resigning from her teaching post to focus on her writing career, Kathleen earned an MFA in Fiction from Fairfield University. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in Fiction International, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, the Briarcliff Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. And her debut novel, Cities of Women, was published by Keylight Books in September. Her inspiration for this novel came from The Book of the City of Ladies, a work she'd previously taught in her Women's Studies courses. Congratulations on your new book, Kathy, and welcome to the show.

KATHLEEN: Thank you. And thanks for inviting me. 

AMY: Okay, so you in your book have created a fictional portrayal of Christine based on extensive research you've done. And considering the vast time gap, she was born in 1364, as well as the limited historical records that are available, what is known about her life and what captivated you to base your novel on her life and her work?

KATHLEEN: Well, as you said, she was born in 65. We don't have accurate dates. And she was born in Venice, where her father was then working as an advisor to the city leadership. But the following year, he returned with his family to Bologna in Italy, for reasons that we don't quite know and In that year, 1365, he received several offers of a new job, and he accepted the one from Charles V in Paris, and he moved to Paris. Three years later, he moved his family to Paris, and that's when Christine first became acquainted with the city. She was four years old at the time, and, probably at that very young age, introduced to the court of Charles V. We don't know a lot. about her youth. And so I was able to invent things, which is great for a novelist. In fact, when you don't have a lot of information, it's the time when you can be the most creative. We do know, however, that her father encouraged her education and that he was well positioned with his place in the court, and especially because of the library of Charles V (he was a renowned collector of manuscripts) to enable his daughter to become educated at a fairly young age. Her mother really wanted her to pursue a much more traditional life and, you know, be married, have children, focus on domestic duties. The father was very much an advocate of her education and she recounts this in several places in the various books that she wrote. She was kind of a protégé at a very early age of the politics and humanistic climate inParis.

KIM: Um, I'm curious, based on what you said, and how you portrayed her father's role as an advisor, um, how much do we actually know about his work? 

KATHLEEN: We know he was an astrologer. And astrologers were very much advisors to kings at the time, among a bunch of other counselors that they would have. We don't know much about the actual activities that he undertook, but he served in a variety of diplomatic roles, consulting the stars for propitious times when, you know, the king could pursue the

various of his adventures, also in relation to the ongoing war with England and so forth. He was very, very proximate to the royal family,and lived very near them. 

KIM: Okay.

AMY: You and your novel, I think, did a great job at showing what a precarious role that is as astrologer to the king. You have a lot of power in the answers you're giving, and also... 

KIM: A lot can go wrong.

AMY: A lot can go wrong. You better make sure you're seeing the right things in those stars, yeah? 

KIM: Yeah, that's a lot of pressure. 

KATHLEEN: Exactly. That's actually relevant to Christine's own experience, I think. The fact that she has to figure out which side to stand for in the ongoing feuds that existed after the death of Charles V in 1380, when she saw her father's fortunes decline, partly because of the shifts in, you know, favor at the court and the conflicts over which of the king's brothers were actually going to be the most influential over the Dauphin, you know, the son of the king who was set to be heir and ultimately became Charles VI. He was very young, he was 11 when his father died, and so there's these, you know, feuds between the uncles over who should have the most influence at court.

And she had to figure out which side. to take, and that's been an area of a lot of controversy in the Christine scholarship, whether she favored Philip of Burgundy or Louis of the Orleanist family. So there's a lot about that in the scholarship about her.

AMY: And listeners, this time period is during the Hundred Years War. Kathy, it's really interesting because I also listen to The Rest is History podcast, and I just happened to choose... they had a four-episode series on the Hundred Years War, but once I was listening to it, I realized what a great connection it is to our topic today, because this is the time period she's in. 

KATHLEEN: Right, exactly, from the latter part of the 14th century all the way up to the influence of Joan of Arc over what was happening in France. So she lived in an amazing period of European history. 

KIM: So back to Amy's question about, what made you decide this is the story you want to tell? 

KATHLEEN: Well, I had actually taught excerpts from The Book of the City of Ladies when I was at San Diego State University in introductory Women's Studies courses. And I found that the students were fascinated that she wrote the kinds of things she did in, you know, the late 14th, early 15th centuries. A lot of the students at the time imagined feminism began in 1970. And so when they, when they hear that many, many centuries earlier, here was a woman who supported herself with her writings and took the side of women revising history to showcase their accomplishments, you know, they got really excited about that. I'm not saying she's a feminist in the modern sense of the term, but she certainly is unique in, uh, advocating for women at a time when many, many negative things were said and women had very little real authority. She insinuates herself into these literary and political circles and becomes, you know, quite influential. 

KIM: Yeah. It's pretty amazing for her time. All right, so she had this precocious upbringing. She's exposed to all the political things going  on. She's exposed to the royal library, which is pretty amazing. Um, and then in 1379, she actually gets married. She marries a notary and secretary at the royal court, Etienne de Castel. And it seems like it was a very happy marriage, what you'd call a love match, which as we know from this podcast was pretty unusual for that time period. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Kathy?

KATHLEEN: Her father, of course, is the one who selected the person she was to marry, and yet he did so, I think, with his daughter's interests at heart. He did not choose somebody who wouldn't respect her intelligence. So she's married at 15 and her husband is about 10 years older than she, uh, but respectful. And one of the things that differentiates Christine from, say, contemporary feminists, is that she underscores the idea that it's okay for a woman to be subordinate to her husband. Not in the sense that she has no life of her own, but she's very traditional in that sense. But it was a happy marriage, and when he dies about 10 years later, she's completely bereft. She's so mournful. She goes into a period of what I would say, uh, depression, and actually magnified by the debt that she was left with, because she couldn't inherit her father's estate. That estate that he had in Italy went to her two brothers. So she's left with the support of three children, a mother and a niece, and how is she going to do that? Well, luckily, I mean, she was privileged. She had access to influential people, but she spends almost 14 years in court trying to get herself out of debt. She was actually forced to pay rent on a property that her husband owned, which was taken back by the French court. And so she's like, in a really distraught place and begins to turn to writing, initially poetry, to sort of write herself out of her despair, except for the fact that the poetry she writes is never only what it appears on the surface. It's also got a lot of political messages embedded in it.

AMY: All right, so yeah, she was only 25 when her husband died, so fairly young. She has three kids, this mother that she needs to support, a niece, and that's very sad, but also this is when things get so interesting and she writes in her journal, actually, "I had to become a man" which is fascinating. And, and she does. She takes care of business. So talk about some of her works and what she was writing. 

KATHLEEN: Okay, she starts with writing what would be called lyric poetry, initially, when her husband dies in 1390. As I said, a lot of her time is taken up in these court battles. But the poetry that she starts writing has a lot to do with the mourning of a widow. But it has to be read in the context of the politics of the time. In other words, the widow isn't just the actual widow of Christine de Pizan or any other widowed woman. It's also, in a sense, the widowed France, because by now, Charles VI has become king, and he is often subject to bouts of insanity. And there's this feud between, as I mentioned, the dukes over who's going to control things. So her poetry is also about the sorrow of the political times. And soon she turns to writing essays, much more explicitly, you know, about politics. The book that you're referring to before, The Mutation of Fortune, is about her transformation into a man and as a way of saying, " If the men aren't going to come to the rescue of a beleaguered France, then I will, as a woman, and I will give advice about how to ease these tensions and solve these problems." And it's also an allusion to the fact that the Queen, Queen Isabeau, who was married to Charles VI, doesn't have the right to rule in her own name because women couldn't rule. But she appeals to the queen as somebody who might be able to, you know, solve some of these political problems. Uh, as times go on, uh, she soon enough she becomes involved in a literary debate about the subject of women. That is what sort of catapults her to public recognition, when she takes on this debate, and does it in a very overt way.

AMY: I believe you are talking about her sort of clap back, we could call it, to the popular courtly love poem, The Romance of the Rose. A lot of our listeners may be familiar or at least have heard of that. So what did she get mixed up in here? What did she do?

KATHLEEN: Well, she is involved in this debate about the added lines to this poem that had actually been written almost a century earlier. There were lines added to the poem, The Romance of the Rose, by a man named Jean de Meunes in the later part of the 13th hundreds. and these lines are what she specifically responds to because it was in way erotic poetry, and some people say, "Oh, she was a prude. She was objecting to this." No, what she was actually talking about was the way in which women were being criticized and misrepresented in these lines of poetry. And it's part of what becomes a major theme of her writing, which is the defense of women. She acknowledges that some of the poetry is fine. But she says, basically, people can hide really mean messages behind flowery words. And I want to set the record straight. But more than that, it's a way of positioning herself as a writer, as someone with authority who can engage in this debate, which had up until this time just been a debate between educated men. And equally important is the fact that she does it by a series of letters that she writes to major people attached to the court and to what's called the Chancery. The, the secretarial wing of the court. And by doing that, by taking this debate, which would have been in kind of private circles among, you know, literary men, and making it public through these letters, she really ratchets up the argument, and specifically, it becomes a turning point in her career around the year 1402, because now she's really a public intellectual you could say in modern terms. And the central thing for her is the defense of women. Don't say these awful things. Don't try to turn women away from virtue, which of course is what, you know, becomes the major enterprise of her later writing, how to ensure that virtuous women are recognized and are secured from the attacks that many are writing against them. Many men are writing against them.

AMY: I can just imagine how this would have been received, like how all eyes would have suddenly been upon her. Like, “Hey, I have something to say about this. Why don't you listen to me for a second?" I mean, that's really amazing. 

KIM: To take on this popular poem that everyone loves. Be like, "Hey, wait a second." 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, this is really pretty ballsy stuff. 

KIM: So let's go ahead and dive right into The Book of the City of Ladies. Kathy, can you give our listeners who might not have read it maybe an overview of what it is and what she's trying to accomplish with it? She pretty much lays it all out at the opening of the book, right?

KATHLEEN: Well, it's important to note that the book is an allegory. And by now, she's begun to write allegories. The Mutation of Fortune is a kind of allegory she's written about dreams or visions that she has. And so, as with The Mutation of Fortune, The Book of the City of Ladies starts out with a very kind of domestic scene. She's in her study, uh, she's reading. She puts one book aside and all of a sudden she sees another book on the shelf and she pulls it off and it's this, you know, really scurrilous attack on women and she starts reading it and then she says, "I got to put it away. This is just too much. "She puts it away, but she's so haunted by it. She takes it out again, and then she starts to say to herself, "Why is it that men have written these horrible things about women? How can they, even learned men, get away with this? How can that be?" And she becomes despondent and says at one point, " I fell into such a state of despair. I began to regret the fact that I was born a woman, and I began to hate the entire female sex." And in the deepest point of despair, she has another vision. 

AMY: I'm giving sound effects because that's what I'm picturing, 

KATHLEEN: Exactly. These three ladies appear to her. Uh, Lady Reason, Lady Rectitude, and Lady Justice. And essentially they say, Look, why aren't you trusting your own judgment? You've talked to a lot of other women. They don't think this way about themselves. You are a learned person. Why do you accept these awful things that have been said? Let us help you set the record straight. And in fact, we want you to build a City of Ladies, a place where virtuous women will be protected from these attacks, and, invite virtuous women of all classes, it's not just for noble people, and you will build this city with the trowel of your pen, and we're going to give you guidance about how to do it. And so she sets off for the next bunch of pages writing what we would now call revisionist history, saying, Here are the things that women have done. Here are the accomplishments that they've had in politics, in the arts, in science, in religious enterprises, as mystics, as visionaries. This is what it's really about and not the stuff that's been written about women. So in a nutshell, that's, that's what it's about. 

KIM: Yeah, I mean, and just hearing that, it just fires me up again. I love what she did. Um, so, um, like her contemporaries of the time, her work very much alluded to and responded to the work of her predecessors. Can you share some of the work she references in Book of the City of Ladies?

KATHLEEN: Well, the title itself is a kind of allusion to Augustine's City of God, you know. So she's clearly influenced by classics, the humanists. Boccaccio's About Famous Women, even Dante is an influence here. And this demonstrates the fact that she was erudite and learned in not only the vernacular French, but Latin. So she uses these things, but she doesn't just... I mean, some people would say, "Oh, it was just a compendium of things that other people had already written." No, it's very different, because she doesn't just repeat the stories that have been told by these other sources like Boccaccio. She rearranges them and sets it up as a kind of dialogue. Okay, are there really famous women rulers? Well, Lady Reason says, let me tell you about a whole host of them. Were there women who were educated in the arts? Of course. And then down the road they go. So she divides them up by, I guess, subject as opposed to chronologically, you know. It's not just a march through history, it's really innovative in the sense in which it's showing the accomplishments that women have made in this whole array of areas of interest from politics to religion.

AMY: Right, because she'll be like, Okay, let's talk about women who used their medical know-how, or let's talk about women who had super strength. 

KATHLEEN: Exactly. 

AMY: If she were around today, she would be our third co host on Lost Ladies of Lit. 

KIM: Oh, yeah. 

AMY: She's pulling all these women out of the hat that you're like, Who's that? Who? Who? I've never heard of this woman. I've never heard of this Amazonian warrior queen that she's referencing. But then she starts going into, like, Let's talk about Athena, Goddess of Wisdom. And then I'm like, Well that's not real. What's going on here? She's using both real women in history and fictional women in history? 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, exactly. In fact, she goes all the way up to her contemporary time to talk about the Queens of France and some of the wives of the dukes that she knew. She's weaving together, because after all, the mythologies would have been based in some way on conflict, right? And so they would have invented characters to represent the conflict. So she's taking those characters back and saying, this is part of our legacy too. Even Medea gets a makeover. She's inspiring people. I mean, because after all, they're stories.It's an allegory, so that even the real characters come to stand for something other than just themselves. Like I was saying before about her poetry, where she's talking about a widow mourning also stands for, you know, the mourning of the loss of the king. So also here, you know, these characters are meant to be inspirational, and they're more than real, just as the mythical are, you know, sort of more than mythical. 

AMY: Okay. Got it. 

KIM: Right, and a lot of those myths were used and are used to portray something about women, whether they're real or not. They're used by writers and thinkers to sort of say something about what a woman is. So I think it was free for her to take them, you know. 

KATHLEEN: And, and you think about what's been going on in contemporary literature just within the last, say, 10 years in historical fiction, for example. There've been so many rewriting of characters from Greek mythology, whether it's, uh, you know, it's Phaedra. A friend of mine wrote novel about Phaedra, or you read a rewriting of Lilith, 

KIM: Mm 

AMY: Circe, Yeah, 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, Circe. The purpose of it is, like with fiction, I guess, in general, it's to say, Hey, there's another way of looking at the story, and we can perhaps talk about it differently than the traditional one. So I think she's doing that. She's a kind of, you know, latter day precursor for all of these feminist retellings, like the ones you read, uh, the ones you mentioned, you know, Circe or Matrix by Lauren Groff or, you know, some of these other books. 

KIM: Right. 

KATHLEEN: Yeah. 

AMY: Um, alright, so she's writing The Book of the City of Ladies. Can we circle back a little bit more to her life at this time? What's going on? 

KATHLEEN: The period between 1390 and 1405 when she completes The Book of the City of Ladies is probably among her most productive, in terms of her writing career. And it's partly, like we were saying before, a response to the feuds over royal succession. The king's brothers fighting with one another over who was going to really control the court. And because Charles VI was subject to, uh, bouts of insanity from about 1392 on, this was a real, you know, hot potato. And she's watching all of these conflicts and is most concerned with seeing peace in France. And so, in a way, what culminates in The Book of The City of Ladies is an effort to say, perhaps Isabeau can intervene here and bring peace back to France because the guys are just going to tear us apart. And when the book, what's now known as The Queen's Book, a manuscript that's in the British Library, is ultimately presented to Queen Isabeau it's years after she writes the first version of The Book of the City of Ladies. But Christine presents, herself, this massive collection of her writings to the Queen in 1414, and at the very center of it is The Book of the City of Ladies. And it's there for a reason. It's an appeal to the Queen to, you know, deal with intervening in these battles and trying to introduce some kind of peace to the realm. So besides advocating for women per se, it's again situated in the context of the political strife of France and the ongoing, you know, war with England. 

KIM: Yeah, it's so interesting that, you know, you think about a lot of writers today as sort of being passive activists in a way, and she doesn't sound very passive at all, which is really interesting. Um, yeah. 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, yeah. 

KIM: I fell in love with this book when I read it as an undergrad. Shout out to Dr. Laurel Hendrix, who introduced it to me. I still have, um, the 1982 edition. Uh, That's the book that I used in this class. And Marina Warner in the foreword writes that Christine uses a benevolent tone rather than quote a shrill one. And she also talks about the courtly way she's very familiar with. But also, she says that it concealed an underlying rage. Because she was a mom, it made me think of that, um, phrase we hear now a lot, mom rage. So, um, Kathy, it seems like her rage is more, uh, politically motivated, but would you like to read maybe a favorite passage from The Book of The City of Ladies so listeners can get a feel for the tone and the style of this book ?

KATHLEEN: Okay, um, sort of going back to what I was paraphrasing before, but let me read the actual words. I talked about how she picked up this book by Matheolus:

 I put it down in order to turn my attention to more elevated and useful study, but just the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men And learned men among them have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many devilish and wicked thoughts about women and their behavior. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and my conduct as a natural woman. And similarly, I discussed that with other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes, who graciously told me of their own experiences and intimate thoughts in order to know, in fact, whether the testimony of so many famous men could be true. And so I relied more on the judgment of others than on what I myself felt and knew. I was so transfixed in this line of thinking for such a long time, it seemed as if I were in a stupor. As I was thinking this, a great unhappiness and sadness welled up in my heart, for I detested myself and the entire feminine sex, as though we were monstrosities in nature. I mean, and then she goes on, a little bit longer, and the three ladies appear to... Pull her out of her despair. We use the term gaslighting, how women are gaslighted. That's what it is! And like, this is 1405. 

KIM: I know, it's, so, in some ways, it's so contemporary to how we're talking about what it is to be a woman today. 

KATHLEEN: Mm-hmm. 

KIM: You're supposed to be confident, but everything's telling you not to be. You're supposed to be body positive, but everything you see is telling you not to be. 

AMY: I have a favorite moment from sort of around the beginning where the three, um, you know, Reason, Justice, I forget what their, what their names were, the, the visions. 

KATHLEEN: Reason, Rectitude and Justice.

AMY: Yeah, okay. So they appear to her and they're trying to like, talk her, you know, down from all these feelings. She's like, you know, Why are the men saying all these things that were like, I forget what she was upset about, but it's something relating to sex. And, one of the visions was basically like, "Girl, these are written by old men whose male parts no longer work and they're just bitter." I mean, she basically says that! I laughed out loud. 

KIM: Yeah, Yeah, can you imagine them reading it at court and just being like, " She said that. She actually said that." 

KATHLEEN: Absolutely. There's so many of those outrageous things that if you put it into a kind of contemporaneous language, it would be like, That's because, you know, they just can't do it anymore. Or that's because they're really jealous of, you know, what you have. I used to have a pin I wore, or I still have it somewhere: War is menstruation envy. 

KIM: Oh, Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. So in her writing on The Romance of the Rose, she makes the argument that if women had written these classics, they wouldn't have been falsely accused of all these things. but then she takes this argument to the next level in The Book of the City of Ladies. All of this that we're talking about makes me think of the episode we just recently did on Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Like Wollstonecraft, Christine was pre feminist, so there wasn't really the term feminism that we know now. But in Christine's case, she wasn't asking for equal rights or power, because that really wasn't a concept, right, in the 15th century. She was arguing that women's lives could be made better. And just like Wollstonecraft, Christine advocated for the education of women.

AMY: Yeah, and she also wanted men to sort of align with their own principles. In other words, you talk this talk, why aren't you walking the walk, sort of thing. Like Wollstonecraft, she's very skillful at dismantling all these flawed arguments regarding women. Kathy, is there any other examples from her writings that you find really powerful or thought provoking in this regard?

KATHLEEN: Yeah. Let me read you something from a little bit later on, where she's still wondering here about the arguments that men are making about why women are inferior. And Christine asks Lady Reason, My lady, according to what I understand from you, woman is a most noble creature. But even so, Cicero says that a man should never serve any woman, and that he who does so debases himself, for no man should ever serve anyone lower than him. Lady Reason replies, The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher. Neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body, according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues. You know, that's a pretty modern concept to, you know, that virtue, knowledge, even strength, doesn't reside in sex, but in what the person does. Um, there's been many, many glosses on that paragraph that have brought that idea into, you know, the 21st century. That's what she was saying. You're assuming that women are inferior, but they've been denied education, many of them. That's what makes them less aware of certain things. Educate them, like Wollstonecraft said, and you'll see that those differences disappear. 

KIM: Yeah, what a modern thing to write. 

AMY: I know, this is pre Enlightenment Era, you know? There are parts of The Book of the City of Ladies where she brings in the church and kind of ties it into religion. But she was really ahead of her game in terms of using reason.

KATHLEEN: Well, the humanist tradition from Italy is already making its way in France. And actually, that was part of what the debate about The Romance of the Rose was about, not just what she turns attention to, but it was about who was going to demonstrate in Latin and in French that they were sophisticated, like the Italian humanists. And so, you know, this humanistic thinking is making the rounds long before the idea of the Enlightenment. Like the Renaissance painter, Artemisia Gentileschi is another person, a painter, not a writer, who also tries to rewrite the way that women have been, uh, she doesn't rewrite, she repaints some of the stories. So, you know, this is a tradition that is sort of touching on the idea of equal dignity of all people. The dignity of the soul, et cetera, et cetera, you know.

AMY: I found it interesting that she did have a lot of patrons who were men, right? Mm

KATHLEEN: Mm hmm, Yeah. 

AMY: So yeah, how were people responding to her work?

KATHLEEN: Well, um, definitely, I mean, the invitation by Phillip of Burgundy to write the biography of Charles V is an indication that her writing was seen of a high stature and that she had that kind of influence. Many years after her death, a person wrote a book about the lost tapestries of Christine de Pizan. Now they're not her tapestries, but the writing that she did was sort of transformed into tapestries, and they became really important artifacts that nobles across Europe were interested in owning. So we know that her work had resonance outside of France. 

AMY: That's like the medieval, 'got adapted to film." 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, 

KIM: Yeah, yeah. 

AMY: if you got a tapestry… 

KIM: I love it. Yeah, you got a tapestry. Yeah, yeah. Was she paid more for the tapestries? No, just kidding. 

KATHLEEN: I don't think she got any of those royalties, nor did her heirs. But one of the earliest translations into English was in fact, the first translation into English of was, I believe, around 1521. And then It wasn't translated again until sections of it appeared in the 1970s. And the edition that you read, Kim, was the most recent, until recently, updating of that translation into English. 

KIM: That amazes me. 

KATHLEEN: So, yeah, so she... Yeah, it's really, I mean, it was translated into other languages, but in English between 1521 and uh, to, I think, no extant English copies, you know, when you could find them if you knew what to look for. But that's why there was this sort of resurgence of interest in her in the 1970s was the, you know, availability of a new translation of The Book of the City of Ladies. But the resurgence of interest in her really coincided with the development of the modern women's movement, I would say, the 1970s. And it's just mushroomed since then. More and more and more and more is added to the literature. And there's in fact a Christine de Pizan Society; a North American branch and a European branch. So, you know, that's all developed within the last four decades or so.

KIM: All right, so let's circle back to Christine's life. In 1413, she crafted one of her final major works. It's called The Book of Peace. And in it, she offers guidance on governance for the future heir to King Charles VI. However, in 1415, as England's invasions cast this shadow over France, Christine sought sanctuary in a convent, possibly the same convent where her daughter had embraced the life of a nun years earlier. And during this turbulent period, her writing career seemed to be on a hiatus. 

AMY: Yeah, but not so fast. Because she had one last work up her sleeve. So after the triumphant siege of Orleans in 1429, that was a victory masterminded by none other than Joan of Arc, Christine was so inspired by that, that she took up her pen once more to write the Tale of Joan of Arc. In it, she hailed Joan as a beacon of hope for the French people. 

KIM: So then, Christine died at around the age of 65. That was about 1430. And it's worth noting that her poem actually remains the sole literary tribute to Joan of Arc written during Joan of Arc's actual lifetime. And how perfect is that? Because Joan, you know, purported to see visions. And we have The Book of the City of Ladies, which is about these visions that Christine is having that are, you know, the women who are telling her to write this incredible book and build this city. 

AMY: It's almost you know, an addendum, yeah, that would have fit into The Book of the City of Ladies had she known about her, you know? 

KIM: That's so perfect. 

AMY: Let me add her. 

KIM: Yeah, one last lady. 

AMY: So, Kathy, as we said in the beginning, you transitioned from academics to writing fiction. It's your first novel. What was that experience like for you?

KATHLEEN: Well, you know, telling stories is often the way you get people most interested in some point that you're trying to make. And I discovered that as a teacher for years, that, you know, I could assign what I thought were exciting articles for students to read, but if I could engage them with a story, that was something that would be more of a hook. So that's always been in the background of my thinking. And as I progressed as an academic, I began to really write more and more differently, let's put it that way. I didn't want to just write abstract theory or dry accounts of things. But at the same time, my training as a researcher clearly influenced my ability to write this particular story because I knew how to do that kind of research. And I had access. As a former professor, I'd have access to libraries. The fact that I was an academic, you know, enabled me to figure out how to use the materials to the greatest advantage of the story. But, um, it's almost as if, you know, I needed to set aside all of the footnotes that I'd been trained to rely upon to tell a story. Put that away and just let your imagination go visiting. I found that when I did that, the research was both a boon and a barrier because I could get caught up in doing all that research if I wanted to, and then I'd never write the story, you know, so you had to sort of let the research get out of the way of your imagination. 

KIM: Right, it's like you had all the tools, but, yeah, you had to step away from it. 

KATHLEEN: Yeah, you have to step away from it, too, because you could, like, you could research till the cows come home, and you never write the novel. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah. Well, I loved all the research that you put into your novel. I think it just makes it that much more fascinating. And this has been such a fun discussion. It was so lovely to have you on the show to talk about Christine and The Book of the City of Ladies, and congratulations on your debut novel. 

KATHLEEN: Thank you very much for inviting me. 

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Be sure to tune in next week when we'll be talking more about the women who illuminated medieval manuscripts like Christine's City of Ladies. We wrongly believed it was only monks doing this work, but there's a lot more to the story, and Kathleen is going to be back for that discussion. It's a really fascinating subject. Until then, be sure to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review if you enjoyed the show, and visit our Facebook forum to chat with us and other listeners. Keep exploring the lost gems of women's literature. 

KIM: Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes. 

163. Cita Press & Sui Sin Far with Juliana Castro Varón and Victoria Namkung

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Kim Askew, here with my co-host Amy Helmes, and today we’re circling back to our “lost lady” from almost three years ago (Episode No. 15) — Sui Sin Far (a.k.a. Edith Maude Eaton). 

AMY HELMES: Our guest from that episode, Victoria Namkung, is back today to tell us about a new volume of Sui Sin Far’s work, but before we get to that, we’re also excited to tell you about the feminist indie press publishing this work — they happen to share our passion for forgotten women writers. So I’d like to first welcome another guest, Juliana Castro Varón. In addition to being the founder and design director of Cita Press, she is also a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and she’s the author of the 2022 Spanish-language essay collection Papel sensible. 

KIM: Juliana, we invited you onto the show because we think what you're doing is going to be of interest to most, if not all, of our listeners. You founded Cita in 2018. Do you want to tell us how it originally came about?

JULIANA CASTRO VARON: Yes, it is built upon two demoralizing statistics that I found when I was in grad school. Um, I'm going to tell you those two and then you're going to think they're really unrelated, but what we ended up doing was kind of like the Venn diagram of those. The first one is that at the time, this is 2017, women comprised only 5 percent of people working in open source, that is, people building open-source software, uh, apps, and putting it mainly on the kind of major platform for that, which is GitHub. And also, of the kind of top public domain books lists, for example, Goodreads has one they put one every year, um, at the time there were only five women in that top 50 percent books, um, and there were 11 books, and most of half of them were by Jane Austen, who we love. But of course that, it was just like, overwhelmingly men. So I decided to kind of tackle both of these issues by creating a web-based platform that would allow us to publish things that are in the public domain, that is, they don't have copyright, but doing so by putting kind of design and code first, making them accessible, available, and free for people using the internet. And that's kind of how Cita came to be.

AMY: Okay. So explain open source, that first part that you were talking about. I don't even know what that is.

JULIANA: That's people who put their code visible and editable for anybody to use. So we've used an online reader. We don't use that anymore because now we're building our own online reader, and so we used things that other people had designed or written, such as the books themselves. And we put everything on open source. That means anybody can see it. And within some rules, we use Creative Commons licenses, people can share it, and they can share it without having to pay, without having to ask for permission. So everything we do, every book, with a couple of exceptions, is open access. Meaning anybody can see it, anybody can download it, anybody could reprint it if they want it. You go to Citapress.org and you find all the books we've published since 2019. Uh, right now you can see it online, we have a reader, meaning like a platform that allows you to have the size larger or have some highlights. We are about to launch a new update to the website that will allow you to download it in ebook, in a PDF. We also sometimes build educational guides for some of the books so people can also use that to teach in a classroom or for a book club or something like that. And sometimes, not for all of them, depending on the kind of like the size and the scope, we also do printable things that people can print at home, fold at home, um, in like either tiny versions of 'zine like versions and everything is free. We run a design studio and we have grants in order to keep every single book that we publish free. And when we sell them, we sell them at cost. So like these, um, we have some ‘zine versions of books that are like under a hundred pages. And those are five dollars, which is how much it costs us to print them.

AMY: Got it. And Juliana and I were talking before we started recording here about, you know, sometimes you go and you can find a public domain book for free on the internet, but once you start reading it, it's a mess.

KIM: Yeah. Or they'll have a picture that totally doesn't relate on the cover.

AMY: Oh, totally. Like really hilarious, bad cover art. Yes, which and, and Juliana, you're a designer yourself, so great design really seems to be a key part of your mission as well, right?

JULIANA: Yes. Thank you. We love talking about this because very often due to kind of scale and resources, open source places such as Project Gutenberg, um, they do a wonderful work of putting these books online at a scale. They put many, many books at a time. But they very often don't have the capacity to edit that book, that is read it, make sure that it doesn't have weird breaks, uh, make sure that the cover art relates, as you say. So what we do is we pick these books. We find a good book that we like, and then we find an artist and we commission a unique cover. And we also find a writer, which in the case of the book we're going to talk about today is Victoria, to write a foreword, an introduction to this book for contemporary readers as a way of landing the book in the present. Very often these books will deal with, like, extremely contemporary issues and very often even they would be written very freshly. So, yeah, design is very crucial. The cover art is so beautiful. We very often would have posters and other things made out of the cover because we like it. And we hope that this kind of lure the reader into finding these books charming and interesting.

KIM: So basically, other than doing Lost Ladies of Lit, this is like our other dream job. I mean, it sounds absolutely amazing. I love it. I mean, I hope at some point maybe we can collaborate on something because that is just so cool. So about how many titles are you releasing each year? 

JULIANA: We usually do between three and four. Three is kind of the sweet number per year. So we have, uh, around 16 books. Those books, not all of them, but many of them are both in English and Spanish, so that's two editions of each book that we produce. And what we cover really ranges in genre, we have from poetry, essays, memoir, so the, uh, the, the kind of the range is large.

AMY: I'm just going to name a few here, um, to entice people. So Cita has already published Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Kate Chopin's The Awakening, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, which I think probably many of our listeners are already pretty familiar with those. But their catalog has in it also, a lot of titles that you'll maybe be less familiar with, but also very intrigued by. At least that was the case for me when I started browsing the list. So here are a few that jumped out at me. Louisa May Alcott's Behind a Mask. Haven't read that one yet. Elizabeth Gaskell's gothic ghost story, The Poor Clare, which, I mean, perfect for Halloween, come on. Um, and then there's an Edith Wharton short story, The Old Maid, and a poetry collection by Amy Lowell, um, a little book on aesthetics by Violet Paget. And we talked about Violet Paget, um, she was also known as Vernon Lee, we talked about her a little bit on our episode about Amy Levy a few years ago. So lots of good stuff. Kim, I know you'll love this one. They have the work of a visionary, and I mean that literally, she had visions, 16th century nun, Santa Teresa de Jesus. That seems like that's something you would instantly go for.

KIM: And that's totally up my alley. I love the nuns with vision. Great.

AMY: So lots of good stuff to go check out. I think everybody listening would be, you know, this is all in their wheelhouse.

KIM: Yeah, Juliana, you really cover a lot of different types of authors from different places and time periods. Does your team have any specific criteria in terms of which books you end up publishing? How does that process work?

JULIANA: Um, yes and no. Generally we have some logistic restrictions, for example, if a book is more than 200 pages, it's very hard for us to print it. The Awakening, for example, is a long book, and so we don't have printed versions of that one. So far we haven't repeated any author. So we try to kind of have one book per author. If the author is very famous, like Louisa May Alcott, we would do a non-known book of the author, and we'd not do, like Little Women, for example, which, editions of that book abound, but it's not the same case for others that are equally worthy. In general, the majority of the books that we publish are in the public domain. Because of that, the majority of our books are old. One exception is the collection of the Nobel lectures, which we published last year with the permission of the Nobel Foundation. But that one is not in the public domain. The Nobel Foundation continues to have the copyright, but they allowed us to do this free book for people to read. Um, we do books that are originally written in English and Spanish just because then we don't have to find an open access or public domain translation or translate it ourselves, which is expensive. Uh, but that's kind when I started Cita Press, it was only me, so it was just books that I was reading and wanted to publish. Right now, we have a little bit more time to do more exploration. And Jessi Haley, the editorial director, spends a lot of time thinking about what books should be put in the front of eyes of readers that have been overlooked or underpublished or that are just simply not available in an edition such as the one we're putting out. And this is the case for An Immortal Book, which I'm very, very excited about talking today.

AMY: Okay, so let's switch gears now and talk about this new title, An Immortal Book: Selected Writings of Sui Sin Far. Why did she seem like an obvious fit for Cita, Juliana?

JULIANA: Here I must credit my colleague Jessi Haley for finding this wonderful book, but well, there are a number of things. The first one is the historical context. Um, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, which is the most known piece by her, was the first published book by a Chinese American author and the only one for, like, multiple decades. She wrote fiction that was realistic about Chinese characters that were not what most people had been publishing at the time. This was a time, as Victoria points out in the introduction, which you should all read, it had many historical racist parallels. I mean, the family separation policies of the present and with the racism that we saw with COVID. So I think that the historical context is important for this book. Solidarity between women, queerness and other topics around the characters in her fiction. The ambition of women, which is something that is portrayed throughout and not shyly. And her own career as a writer. She was very famous at the time, but she's not very famous now. She wrote so much, and she was also very funny. Like she's witty. 

KIM: All right, so let's loop our friend Victoria Namkung into the conversation now. In addition to being a terrific friend of mine, Victoria is a journalist and author. She's been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, Vice, and The Washington Post, among other publications. She's also the author of two wonderful novels, The Things We Tell Ourselves and These Violent Delights. And she has a degree in Asian American studies from UCLA. Victoria wrote the introduction, as we said, to Cita Press's Sui Sin Far title. Victoria, welcome back to the podcast.

VICTORIA: Thank you. I'm so happy to be a return guest. And congratulations on the hundred plus episodes you've done since I was last on.

KIM: You started us off.

AMY: Yeah, I think you came on the show maybe even before we were even airing. 

VICTORIA: Yeah, I had lots of faith, but I'm very impressed with how much you guys have grown since then.

KIM: You started us off right. So you set the tone.

VICTORIA: Yeah.

AMY: So how did this collaboration between you and Cita come about for you to write the introduction to this book, and how did it feel to get to revisit Edith Maude Eaton again?

VICTORIA: Yeah, well, um, you definitely play a role in this story. So Cita's editorial director, Jessi Haley, who Juliana mentioned earlier, she heard the episode we did back in 2020, and she was already researching Edith Maude Eaton for a potential new collection. And I think because I'm also a biracial Asian American journalist and author, and just such a big fan of Eaton, um, also known as Sui Sin Far, I just still remember how excited I felt when I first read her work in college, which was like 25 years ago. So getting to write this introduction is such a full circle moment, and it's thanks in part to Lost Ladies of Lit.

KIM and AMY: Yay!

VICTORIA: So in addition to the stories from Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Cita's new collection also features some personal essays about her life. She writes really candidly about her identity and racism she experienced. Also her career, which is so interesting. There's also an early sketch that bridges her fiction and her observational journalism entitled A Trip in a Horse Car. And that was definitely one of my favorites. It's published in 1888 and it starts to highlight her attention to subjects like class and gender, which we see later in a lot of her work. So I thought I could read a really short excerpt from this story, which has Eaton observing a man who has dropped a parcel that's full of sugar and it's starting to spill out in the horse car. 

AMY: Okay, let's do it.

 VICTORIA: A couple of fashionably dressed ladies are just behind him, and I think it would be kindness on their part to let him know he is losing his sugar, but they take their seats unconcernedly and allow the conductor to notify him of the fact. They choose a seat as far away as possible from the beggar girl, whom they regard with faces of disgust, and after they are comfortably settled, begin a conversation about some mission for which they are collecting contributions. They are rich ladies, good church members, charitable in many ways, but I am afraid they will not have the same position in the next world that they have in this. 

So that passage is a preview of the not always sympathetic mission ladies who appear in a lot of Eaton's later stories. We see that in Mrs. Spring Fragrance as well.

AMY: And just the sharp observation skills of her characters and her as a writer too, right?

VICTORIA: Yes. Juliana mentioned earlier how Eaton is really funny, and I think you see that there's these little jabs, you know, that can be really entertaining and humorous throughout her work.

AMY: And also I think we should make losing his sugar some sort of euphemism. 

KIM: Yeah. Totally. I was thinking the same thing. It's so perfect. Yeah. Did either of you walk away from working on this project having gained any new insights about Sui Sin Far?

VICTORIA: Yeah, I mean, I learned just how prolific she really was as a journalist and a fiction writer. Um, Professor Mary Chapman, who you had on the podcast to discuss Edith's sister, Winnifred Eaton, she had found more than 150 uncollected texts, so that brings Edith Maud Eaton's body of work to more than 260 texts, which is quite a bit. Um, you know, she's best known for her Chinatown fiction that we see in Mrs. Spring Fragrance, but the majority of Edith's fiction and reportage actually has nothing to do with Chinese people or the Chinese American experience. So she really covers such a range, going from fashion to fires, if you can believe it. So, um, yeah, I just was shocked with how much she actually produced at a time when you would think that would be quite unusual. 

AMY: Yeah. So all the more why we're excited that somebody's still publishing new versions of it, that we can get our hands on. Juliana, is there anything we haven't touched on yet that you just would want listeners to know about what it is you guys are doing?

JULIANA: I mean, I think your listeners would be interested in generally many of the things we do. So just read our books. Uh, we've started playing around with social media too, and just kind of adding content about and around women's writers. So just follow Cita Press and read our books and share them with people. They are free and they will be free forever.

KIM: Yeah, listeners, if you saw the viral video going around with Doris Lessing responding to winning the Nobel Prize, that was Cita Press's social media. So you're already doing great.

AMY: Well, thank you guys both for coming on to tell us about this new project and what it is that you're doing, and I'm sure we're gonna be back in touch with you, Juliana, and Cita, to get the word out about some of these other books you're doing.

JULIANA: Thank you for having me. I look forward to chatting again in the future about anything and everything.

AMY: And Victoria, as always, we love having you. Thanks for stopping in.

VICTORIA: Thank you so much. I look forward to listening each week,

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Don't forget to give us a rating and review wherever you listen to this podcast if you enjoy it. 

 KIM: Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew. 

162. Meridel Le Sueur — The Girl with Rosemary Hennessy

KIM ASKEW: Hi, everyone, welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten writers. I'm Kim Askew here with my co host Amy Helmes, and today we're going to be discussing a Prohibition era gangster novel. And frankly, Amy, what have we been waiting for?

AMY: No kidding. It's about time, right? But it was very worth the wait. In fact, author Meridel Le Sueur had to wait a really long time for this novel, The Girl, to even get published. It was originally written in 1939, but wasn't published until 1978, nearly 40 years after the fact.

KIM: And why? Because, listeners, in 1939, publishers didn't think a woman could write a gangster novel, and boy were they wrong. On the plus side, though, Le Sueur was able to use that extra time to revise The Girl, making it much more explicitly about the lives of marginalized women in urban America during the Depression, including frank portrayals of the female characters sex lives.

AMY: Yes, this isn't just a novel about stool pigeons, speakeasies, bootleggers, and Bonnie and Clyde style getaways. It's also a Proletarian novel, and it's filled with radical messages. But above all else, I consider this book to be a poignant tribute to women, more than a "gangster novel," quote unquote. The book is sparely written, but it is so raw and real, almost disconcertingly beautiful.

KIM: Yeah. This book is pure poetry, baby. And as the literary critic Blanche Gelfant wrote in The New York Times, Le Sueur's consummate achievement as an artist is her transformation of colloquial speech into musical prose.

AMY: And with us to discuss the novel is Dr. Rosemary Hennessey, whose most recent nonfiction book features Le Sueur.

KIM: Amy, are you ready to raid the stacks and get started?

AMY: You bet I am, and I can drive the getaway car. 

[intro music plays]

AMY: Our guest today, Rosemary Hennessey, is a professor of English at Rice University, where she previously served as director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She has written extensively on materialist feminism, which highlights capitalism and patriarchy as a central aspect in understanding women's oppression. Her latest book, published in August of this year, is called In the Company of Radical Women Writers. In it, she rediscovers the political commitments and passionate advocacy of seven writers, including today's Lost Lady. Welcome to the show, Rosemary. We're so happy to have you here.

ROSEMARY HENESSY: Well, thank you, Amy and Kim. I'm really pleased to be here and so happy that you're talking about Meridel Le Sueur and her novel, The Girl.

KIM: So Rosemary, your book is about seven young women who turned to Communism during the Great Depression. Can you talk about what prompted you to write it?

ROSEMARY: Sure. As someone who has worked in feminist studies for decades, I really wanted to know who were the feminists of the 1930s. This was a decade of the Great Depression, as well as a period of major organizing by socialists and communists. I wanted to learn more about that time, because it seemed to me that it was a gap in the history of US feminism. And it turns out I did learn a lot. I also had in mind my mysterious grandmother. In 1926, when she was only 19 years old and my father was 18 months old, she ran away. She took her mother in law's suitcase and the Sunday school cash and left her baby with her parents. So it was about maybe nine months later that her then young husband received a postcard from a P. O. box in Chicago, and she was asking for him to take her back. He never answered the letter.

KIM: Wow.

AMY: So when did you find out that story? Did you always know that family lore?

ROSEMARY: I think so. You know, it wasn't a secret. It wasn't hidden. And we knew that my father had been raised by his grandmother. So, yeah, it was just part of the family story. And I have a lot of sisters, and we all have been, at various times, very intent on finding who was this woman. And I've often wondered, and especially writing this book, you know, I started to see in Meridel Le Sueur's novel the woman who could have been my grandmother. Who left, you know, a small town, it was Philadelphia, but it was still a small neighborhood, as a young person and went to the big city. Did she do some of the things that "the girl" had to do? Like... resorting to sex work, or having to figure out how to manage her own reproductive choices? Did she even, maybe, and I love this fantasy, I still harbor it, did she maybe join the Communist Party? Or did she end up in bread lines in the 1930s?

KIM: Yeah, I'm almost about to cry thinking about your grandmother. So, Meridel Le Sueur was born in 1900 in Iowa. She lived in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas before moving with her family to the Twin Cities. Both her parents were socialists, and her mother was an outspoken feminist. What else should we know, Rosemary, about her upbringing in terms of how it affected who she would become as a writer?

ROSEMARY: Well, one thing to know, and this really struck me as I was learning about her biography, is that her mother, whose name was Marion Wharton, was a really strong character, and I think she made a tremendous impact on her daughter's life. Their politics really diverged over their lifetimes, but, as a child, I think this woman who was so strong must have made a big impression on her daughter. As you said, she was a feminist and a socialist, and she lectured on what was called the Chautauqua Circuit then. And she lectured on birth control. She even chained herself to the fence around the White House as part of her very deliberate politics for women's right to vote. So her mother left the state of Texas where she was living with her husband and children and took the children, basically kidnapped them. And took them to Oklahoma where her mother was living, and they lived for some years there. Divorce was illegal in the state of Texas then. So she was basically like, saving not only her children, but her future. Several years later, she met a man named Arthur Le Sueur. He had been mayor of the city of Minot in North Dakota. And together, the two of them, along with Eugene Debs, who was a leading socialist then, founded in Kansas City a school that was basically a college for working class people. It was called The People's College in Fort Scott, Kansas. So Meridel's growing up years were spent in this lively network of free thinkers and socialists who were visiting that school. And that too, you know, had a profound impact on her. The other part of that experience in Oklahoma and Kansas is that she was very aware of the native people and communities that were living around them. And the other thing to know about her is that her great grandmother was Native American. So then the family moved from Fort Scott to the Twin Cities area because vigilantes basically attacked the school and burned it down. So the Le Sueurs moved and there in, St. Paul and Minneapolis, they became very active politically, especially in the Farmer Labor Party. So you get a sense of what the political atmosphere was and some of the family ties and culture. 

AMY: Yes, for sure. Very formative seeing what her mother and her husband were doing for the communities and traveling and seeing different parts of the country, really, too, and seeing that it was sort of, these situations were everywhere. So, Le Sueur joined the Communist Party in the 1920s, and she stayed a member until her death in 1996. And during the Great Depression, which is the time period in which The Girl, this novel, is set, she was in the Minneapolis, St. Paul area, as you said, living side by side with the types of women that she would go on to write about so vividly in this book. So tell us a little bit more about this time in her life in the Twin Cities, Rosemary.

ROSEMARY: Well, it's important to remember that in the 1920s she gave birth to her two daughters, Deborah and Rachel, Deborah was born in 1926 and Rachel in 1928. She had divorced their father earlier on. And so essentially during the 30s, she was a single mother raising her kids. Her writing career took off. Also in the late 1920s, she published her first story in 1927 in The Dial, which was a prestigious Modernist journal. She tried to live off of her writing and published mostly in those years in left leaning magazines like, The New Masses, The Progressive, Partisan Review. She also worked odd jobs: in a factory, on the line as a waitress, even as a washroom attendant. She was also, in those years, part of an organization called the Workers Alliance in the Twin Cities. This was an organization mostly supported by the Communist Party, and as the novel describes, it was really in the forefront of offering support for unemployed people, especially during the time before federal relief was available for them. I think that one of the ways that this novel speaks to people in post COVID times is because it really gives voice to people who are struggling, who are working class people, sometimes unemployed, struggling to support their families, as she was. And a lot of her writing, she's really tuned in to what women do and know. So here's an excerpt from her 1937 essay entitled, "Women Know a Lot of Things." They don't read about the news. They pick it up at its source, in the human body. In the making of the body. And the feeding and nurturing of it. Day in, day out. In that body, under your hands, every day. There resides the economy of that world. It tells you the price of oranges. and cod liver oil, of spring lamb, of butter, eggs, and milk. You don't have to read the stock reports in Mr. Hearst's newspaper. You have the news at its terrible source.

AMY: That reminds me of, um, a line from The Girl, actually, where she writes, What happens to women? What awful things do they know? I remember highlighting that while I was reading that, and it's kind of echoing what you just read there.

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. And I wanted to read a very quick passage that stuck with me from " Women on the Breadlines." Um, it's, quoted in the introduction to the West End Press edition from 2006 of The Girl. It's one of the great mysteries of the city where women go when they are out of work and hungry. There are not many women in the bread line. There are no flop houses for women as there are for men, where a bed can be had for a quarter or less. You don't see women lying around on the floor at the mission in the free flops. What happens to them? Where do they go?

AMY: So interesting, and I don't think I ever really thought about that. You can really see how all of this work that she's doing builds to result in this manuscript, The Girl. This book winds up answering a lot of these questions about where were the women, you know, where did they go? What happened to them? While the men were suffering, the women were actually suffering worse. And that's what this book is about. So let's go ahead and leap into our discussion of The Girl. Why don't you, Rosemary, give us a little basic spoiler free overview of the plot.

ROSEMARY: The central character is this unnamed narrator, "the girl". And we meet her soon after she's arrived In St. Paul, and she's working as a waitress in a place called the German Tavern. The bootlegged liquor in the tavern is run by an underworld network whose leader pays for police protection. So "the girl" has a crush on one of the gang members, a guy named Butch, and he draws her into... many things, uh, promises of a future together, but also, driving the getaway car for the bank robbery that the gang is planning. So the plot follows "the girl" through her disenchantment, basically, with the men's competitive fantasies, her eventual pregnancy, and her awakening to an alternative way of life. There's a woman named Amelia who represents that alternative. She's an organizer and a member of the Workers Alliance.

KIM: So a lot of the action takes place in this German Village Tavern. Incidentally, listeners, that was a real establishment back in the 1930s. Amy, it reminded me of a place Dirty Helen Cromwell might've owned. We did a previous episode on Cromwell. She was a real life, madam bootlegger and speakeasy owner from Milwaukee. She had quite a life. Um, and we'll link to that episode in our show notes, 

AMY: Absolutely. I was totally getting Dirty Helen vibes the whole time I was reading this. And I'm gonna go ahead and read the opening passage of The Girl, because I think it really pulls you into this world right away. Saturday was the big day at the German village where I was lucky to get a job in those bad times. And Clara and I were the only waitresses and had to be going up and down from the bar to the bootleg rooms upstairs. My mama had told me that the cities were Sodom and Gomorrah, and terrible things could be happening to you, which made me scared most of the time.

I was lucky to get the job after all the walking and hunting Clara and I had been doing. I was lucky to have Clara showing me how to wander on the street and not be picked up by plain clothesmen and police matrons. They will pick you up, Clara told me, and give you tests and sterilize you, or send you to the women's prison.

I liked to be with Clara and hear about it, and now with Belle, who, with Hoink, her husband, and Ack, his brother, ran the German village. It wasn't German, but lots of even stylish people came there after hours for the bootleg Belle and Hoink made. Clara told me all about what was going on up there, and it scared me.

The men who came in the back alley door and went past the bar and upstairs scared me. Clara told me about Gans, who brought in bootleg from Dakota and paid protection for the place. I shivered when he passed me. And Clara would take my place when Belle told me to take them beer, because she said she could field them better when they tried to make a home run or a strike with their two free paws.

Sometimes I didn't even know the words Clara spoke. I had a lot to learn, Clara said. 

So we see her naivete, her innocence.

KIM: Yeah. I mean, she just feels so real to me from the very opening passage that you just read. I mean, I was transported instantly reading this book. I didn't know anything about it when I started reading it, but I loved it. If the German Village is the hub of what's happening in the novel, I feel like women are the heart of it. There's a lot of suffering on their part. There's abuse. Um, but there almost seems to be a spiritual aspect to it in the way that Le Sueur is describing it. I'm thinking, for instance, of "the girl"'s mother, when she's talking about her love for her husband and children, it has a sacrificial feel to it. She says, it's a fierce feeling you have for your husband and children. Like you could feed them your body and chop yourself into little pieces. 

ROSEMARY: This is such a striking image, of women so intensely nurturing and caring for others that they feel they're feeding them their bodies, chopping yourself up into little pieces. For me, that image captures something very familiar, a very familiar embodied experience that's kind of at the heart of the contradiction of care work. The fierce love that drives it and the toll that self sacrifice exacts. Le Sueur is so good at conveying this tension in women's reproductive labor between that fierce love and its costs. So in the novel, I think we see lots of examples of this. And "the girl"'s mother is one. She's literally been eroded by a thankless and violent marriage and one pregnancy after another, and yet, as "the girl" acknowledges, chased like by a pack of wolves. She kept us alive. And at the same time, women do sustain one another. When "the girl" leaves home for the city, she develops this friendship with Clara, who becomes a mainstay and a support. She also gets support from Belle, who, now, I don't know about Dirty Helen, but when you describe her, Belle sounds a lot like her.

AMY: Oh yeah.

ROSEMARY: She runs the tavern. And then there are other women who come through, including Amelia, and surprisingly for me, Butch's mother.

AMY: Who, Butch's mother keeps being depicted as a woman who's not even in her right mind, like she's lost it. But yes, you still have an affinity for her, and, also she says some of the wisest lines sometimes in the whole novel, even though she's off in the corner, kind of being the crazy lady. Something will come out of her mouth. Yeah. 

KIM: Yeah. The oracle. 

ROSEMARY: And the effect, I think, is that you get a range of generations, from the ingenue girl to this perhaps demented, quite elderly woman.

KIM: Mm hmm.

AMY: The community of women, it kept reminding me of the novel and the movie Women Talking. I don't know if you guys have either read the book or seen that movie, but just, women of all generations kind of coming together to talk about their collective trauma, and supporting one another.

KIM: She doesn't leave the men out either. They're not necessarily flattering portrayals, but they aren't flat. She really develops the characters really well. Um, a few of the men seem capable of love on some level, but they're pretty much thwarted at every turn too. They're on the edge. And it almost feels like they're a pack of wolves looking for a reason to attack because they're on the defensive all the time. And I'm thinking of one particular scene that I found really chilling. The Christmas tree lighting scene where they're kind of all gathering. 

ROSEMARY: Yeah, it is a chilling scene, I mean, not only because it's cold, but because it's so dark and so menacing.

KIM: Mm-hmm.

ROSEMARY: It's important, I think, for us to remember this is the nadir of the Depression years. The men who are gathered there in the public square are there to get some food, maybe donuts and coffee, it seems, which never appear. And the word Christmas is repeated several times and it took me a little while to realize that it's printed as X mas. And in fact, a lot is canceled out here, besides the holiday cheer. It's a scene, I think, that's really preparing the bank robbery. The crowd of men are depicted as weak. The gangsters among them, as you said, are like hungry wolves. So the effect is a scene that's a spectacle of alienation, of, paralysis, really, and of something basic that's broken. So at one point "the girl" asks, why don't they do something? And then goes on to describe the crowd as crouched over our hollow stomachs, nursing our hungers like cancer. And never looking at one another or never seeing a way. So for me, what's so brilliant here is that Le Sueur is knitting together sexual politics into this scene when she has Butch basically give her, "the girl", to the lead gangster, and then he pushes her and she falls as if she's reduced to an object of exchange between two men. So on the one hand, we may think of this scene that's a kind of justification for the robbery, because people are desperately hungry and the state has completely failed to provide for them. But on the other hand, Le Sueur is helping the reader to see that the gangsters are really beaten down by a narrow idea of what's required of a man. They're part of a system, too, that is using people up and pitting them against one another. Never, as "the girl" remarks, never looking at the other or never seeing a way.

AMY: It's interesting. I'm thinking of "the girl"'s best friend, Clara, and she's described as always having an idealistic vision of her future. You know, she's always planning what her kitchen is going to look like someday, or, you know, what fabulous life she might have. And of course, you know, that that's never going to happen. But yeah, it's the first time I'm really thinking that Butch is like that, too, in a way. He always says, I'm a winner. I'm a winner. And when it's clear that he's so pathetic, he's such a loser, but he keeps trying to talk about like, I'm a winner and things are going to get better when we can have our gas station and we'll run a business and it's all going to work out. They're just clinging to a shred of hope. Yeah. Men and women. 

ROSEMARY: And, what's pathetic is not just Butch as a character, although he is, but that narrow script that men have to compete, to win, to get ahead. and then there's what's available to fill in even what that means.

KIM: Right. So let's talk a little bit more about gangsters, because apparently Le Sueur was actually somewhat familiar with the underworld of the Twin Cities. Is that right, Rosemary? What can you tell us about her knowledge of that?

ROSEMARY: Yeah, St. Paul in the 1920s and early 30s was really widely known as a place for gangsters and some famous ones actually passed through or stayed there: Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone. So bank robbers and bootleggers really from all over the Midwest came there to run their operations or to hide from the FBI. And the plot of the story is really drawing on very much real life events that were happening in that city.

AMY: So, yeah, I feel like we've been discussing all this social messaging and forgetting the fact that this is a gangster novel and it does build up to this big climax, the bank robbery, and as we said, "the girl" is tapped to drive the getaway car. Now, side note, my daughter listens to nonstop Taylor Swift all day long. There's a Taylor Swift song called “Getaway Car,” and every time I hear her sing it, I think about this book now. Um, but yeah, the bank robbery scene, it is so gripping. I love the way Le Sueur writes it. You can hear the ticking clock, you can see the moments, the waiting in the car on the sidewalk, the like, footsteps of, you know, the people on the sidewalk. It's just, I was gripped by it. 

KIM: Yeah. After I read this book, I watched the Robert Altman film for the first time, Kansas City, and it's a gangster film. I love Robert Altman, but this is not my favorite of his movies having seen it now, because I actually wish that he had used the plot from The Girl because she does such a great job. It is cinematic. 

AMY: It's totally cinematic. It's great. And the thing that struck me the most is that it's actually "the girl" who has the most composure while this crime is playing out.

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: She's the one that keeps her wits together when it all goes south.

KIM: That's a great point. 

AMY: I kept thinking of the movie Badlands, with Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen, because after the bank robbery, they go on the run, and, um, you know, her innocence, combined with his kind of recklessness, reminded me of that story. I think Badlands is set more in the 1960s, but if you're a fan of that movie, I think you would really like this novel also,

ROSEMARY: Doesn't it make you wonder why this was never made into a movie?

AMY: I feel like Angelina Jolie needs to get on this one. This feels like her kind of directorial project.

KIM: Yeah.

ROSEMARY: Maybe you can reach out to her.

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: Maybe she's listening? 

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: We always hope.

AMY: I thought it was interesting in this book that there's no use of quotation marks or punctuation to set aside the dialogue, right? it works, it's not difficult to read. It's, you know, you would think that would make it more confusing, and it really doesn't. so seamless.

It 

KIM: almost makes you closer to "the girl" by reading it that way. I don't know, on some sort of

AMY: Like, inside her 

KIM: Yeah. Unconscious level. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

AMY: I think so, too. 

ROSEMARY: She really had an ear for ordinary people's talk. and she listened. She got them, you know, not from her imagination, but she got these ways of speaking from listening to people. 

AMY: So the novel has been labeled a Proletarian novel, and there's the socialist subplot with the labor organizer, Amelia, that we mentioned. I was thinking, I know that this, it ultimately wasn't published until the 70s. And I kept thinking, gosh, if this had come out in the late 30s, early 40s, what a recruitment tool this would have been for the Communist Party, right? By the time you're done reading it, you're like, where do I sign? Because we got to fix things, you know? That sounds crazy to say, but she really... lays her point out so well. 

ROSEMARY: And Amelia really carries the book's political message. I think in the manuscript she didn't have quite the sort of foregrounded carrier of the political message role that she does in this final version. But she is there now from the very beginning. Serving as a midwife as a cat is giving birth to kittens and the guys are betting on how many kittens are going to be born. But she's really more than a midwife to kittens or to a baby. I think of her as the Meridel figure, actually. 

KIM: Interesting. 

ROSEMARY: She is there as a teacher, as a supporter to "the girl", and also to the other women, and she's a counterweight, really, to Butch, and the gangsters, and mapping out another way that we can be a whole other set of values.

AMY: Yeah. Um, okay, so you mentioned the birth of the kittens. the first scenes in the bar. It's a fun moment. So we start with the birth and then we also end with the birth. Very symbolic, because women's reproductive power winds up being a through line of this novel. And you see childbearing as both a weight that holds women down, but it's also kind of their superpower. So Rosemary, you write in your book about the ways that Le Sueur likes to tie women's reproductive bodies to the land, right? 

ROSEMARY: Yeah, you know, I think there definitely was, I'll call it a generation of feminist critics who saw that connection between women and the land as not a very productive one because it kind of equates women with Nature as if that's all they can be. and in that way robs women of a certain kind of agency in the world. I don't read Le Sueur that way at all. In fact, I see her as putting what I think of as a radical ecology. She's really expanding how we can understand the reproduction of life as involving, yes, the need for humans to give birth, reproduce, but also for the natural world to reproduce. That humans and the land, they're quite interdependent and entangled. I'd like to refer to one of my favorite passages in one of my favorite stories of hers. It's a widely anthologized story called Annunciation. This was published in 1935, and I think it captures what she's referring to as remembering. I think of it as re, you know, like re-membering, putting back together. So in this story, a woman is reflecting on her experience of pregnancy through her relationship to the pear tree that's outside of her window. She remembers a time in the early weeks of her pregnancy when she had morning sickness and she, quote, “must give it up with the people all looking. And her boyfriend was angry, and he walked away so that these people wouldn't think that he was with her. So then she goes on to savor the memory of a night when the two of them rode on a riverboat to get out of the cold, and she hears the scurrying of tiny animals on the shore, and their little breathing seemed to be all around. I think of them, she says, wild, carrying their young now, crouched in the dark underbrush with the fruit scented land wind in their delicate nostrils, and they are looking out at the moon and the fast clouds. Silent, alive, they sit in the dark shadow of the greedy world. There's something wild about us, too. We too are at the mercy of many hunters.

KIM: Whoa, that is beautiful. 

ROSEMARY: So for me, this is the sensibility that so epitomizes Meridel Le Sueur and remains really at the heart of her politics.

AMY: I think it's also interesting in terms of women's reproductive bodies, which she brings up in the novel, the value to the economy for the work we are providing. Like talk about a labor movement! Literally, we're keeping this whole thing going with our bodies. That was fascinating, and I think just the cyclical nature of the seasons, then you're also thinking in this book about like the, the seasons of women, the generations of women. I kept going back to thinking about my grandmothers, my great grandmother, who I don't even know, their mothers, you know, like thinking about the generations of women that came before us. There's a very strong sense of the interconnectedness.

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: The generations. 

KIM: So, Le Sueur, maybe not that surprisingly after some of the stuff we're saying, but she was blacklisted, unfortunately, in the 1950s. What happened and how did this impact her legacy, Rosemary? Mm hmm.

ROSEMARY: The 1950s were really tough for her. She was a member of the Communist Party, and she never denounced that fact. Her grandson, David Tilson, told me that she kept open for years, the Communist Party bookstore in St. Paul, so even through these difficult times. Her parents died in the mid 50s, and so did her partner, Bob Brown, the artist. So that was tough. She lived then in the boarding house that her parents had kept, and she taught creative writing courses through a correspondence program, and through all of that, she was hounded by the FBI to such an extent that her boarders, like, left. And her students quit. She was summoned by the House Un American Activities Committee, and they couldn't find her. She lost jobs, and it was then that she went to work at the Minnesota Asylum for the Insane. So, yes, she was also blacklisted and unable to get published except in Communist magazines and presses. So basically, the U. S. government wanted to relegate her to oblivion. They almost succeeded in doing that. 

AMY: So we mentioned in the introduction that The Girl didn't get published until 40 years after it was written. Why? What's the story there? And, when it was eventually published, what were some of the changes made in the intervening decades, or were there any?

ROSEMARY: Well, men in the Communist Party definitely voiced their criticism of her writing. It really speaks to what you had been mentioning before, the ways that women's lives, women's reproductive capacity, women's labor, matters to Le Sueur. All of that was just completely unrecognizable to male critics, because she just didn't conform to their priorities. Men in the party also saw her erotic sensibility as bourgeois, you know, as not working class. When she tried to publish her novel, it was rejected for being too lyrical. It was rejected for not being written in the style of Ernest Hemingway, and because publishers didn't think that a woman could write a crime novel.

AMY: Think about this. If we're to tell you right now, this is a crime novel that is written in the most beautiful lyrical style, isn't that a draw?

KIM: Yeah, exactly. 

AMY: What's wrong with that? That's amazing.

ROSEMARY: And so we would say, now, this is a woman who was clearly ahead of her time.

AMY: Yeah.

ROSEMARY: And because of that, what she was doing was unrecognizable. So then she put aside her manuscript and it stayed out of sight until the early 70s. What happened, basically, was that historical conditions had made it recognizable as groundbreaking. John Crawford, who founded the left wing publishing house West End Press in 1970, he learned about the manuscript and approached her and suggested that she dust it off and revise it. And she did. As I said, she modified Amelia's role, and she changed the ending. Uh, the baby originally was a boy, and this time around it became a girl. And she wrote to Crawford that she also had deepened the sexual perception of "the girl" and women. So by 1978, when the novel was published, we know that the women's liberation movement by then was in full flower. And, um, and she was able to represent "the girl"'s sexual experiences and women's discussions of sex more openly, more frankly, than she would have been able to do in 1939.

AMY: What a moment in the book that is. 

KIM: Mm

AMY: When "the girl" has her first sexual encounter and when it's over she goes immediately to the women. It's such a communal moment of all the women being there for her, sort of recounting their own experiences. I mean, it was very powerful.

ROSEMARY: Yeah, and she talks about, the phrase that stuck with me was, how awful wonderful it was.

KIM: Yes. 

ROSEMARY: And how it was really scary, and it hurt. And... The things that many of us may have wanted to say and maybe got to or maybe didn't. So I think it absolutely still resonates now, that scene. Also, this is a novel that talks about sex work. And that's part of "the girl"'s education too.

KIM: Right. Right.

ROSEMARY: Abortion is gonna feature in the novel, and we really get a picture that women's control over their reproductive capacity is also at the center of this book.

KIM: So with these changes that Le Sueur made to the manuscript, the story arc gets stronger. "the girl" goes from being this quiet pushover to becoming an empowered woman. And I felt like the ending was unexpectedly hopeful and I loved that about it.

AMY: Those last two chapters or so of this book left me speechless. I will never forget reading the end of this novel and how, how powerful it is. It's interesting, Rosemary, I didn't know that she changed the sex of the baby from a boy to a girl, because to me, that's 

the ending. It's the daughter, it's the, 

KIM: It's so perfect. 

AMY: The next generation of women. And this whole idea of she's called "the girl" the whole time. She doesn't have a name in the novel. She's just "the girl". Her mom calls her girl, you're not quite sure if it's a term of endearment or maybe kind of just dismissive in some ways, the way her mom says it. So, it comes up again at the end of the novel, and it's such a sisterhood moment. 

KIM: Right, right. Definitely taking it to the next generation.

ROSEMARY: Absolutely. I love the ending too. And in addition to all of what you've said, I really love that here, Le Sueur is weaving together those private spaces of women together, and the public space of what's happening outside the warehouse. Uh, and the two then kind of converge in the sense that collective action in the streets and in this warehouse home where the women are all huddled together to support each other in, like, the most dire circumstances, that that organizing that they do together then turns into a public demand for the resources that Clara didn't have and others of them don't have. So that's, for me, what really makes this powerful. That women are able to come together and do something that is so not scripted for us as women, which is demand, in public, what we need. 

AMY: So Le Sueur lived until age 96, which is incredible. Uh, she had such an interesting life. Rosemary, is there anything about her later years that you'd want to share? 

ROSEMARY: Yeah, sure, sure. During the 70s and the 80s, she was very much embraced by the feminist movement. It really enabled the recovery of a lot of her work, I mentioned that earlier. She also made a very beautiful film entitled My People Are My Home in 1976 and that's available actually on YouTube. One thing that is important to know about her later years is that she just kept writing into her 90s, even on her deathbed. And the writing that she did then was continually reinventing forms. When she was 91, she published a novel, it's called the Dread Road, and it's written in three columns. And one column is an excerpt from an Edgar Allen Poe short story, “A Message in a Bottle.” Another column is excerpts from Le Sueur's copious journals. And a third, which is the core narrative, is based on a trip that she had actually taken. It's narrated by an old woman, and this old woman gets on a bus in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in the bus station, she meets a young Mexican woman who is carrying in her backpack a dead baby. So the journey passes through a nuclear test site, the town of Ludlow, Colorado, where there had been a massacre in 1914. And so there's this history of slow violence that hangs over the story. This is a book that really speaks to who we are in the 21st century, now trying to comprehend the ways that slow violence has materialized, especially in the climate disaster that we're living through, also in nuclear threats, and we're certainly reminded of them by this recent movie Oppenheimer. And we're trying to imagine what it means to restore a relationship to one another and to the land. So Meridel Le Sueur is writing about all of that. It's packed into the columns of this crazy novel.

AMY: So when you say columns, do you mean typeset columns? 

ROSEMARY: Yes. 

AMY: Wow.

ROSEMARY: So it's very unsettling. Like how the heck do I even read this? 

AMY: Yeah.

ROSEMARY: Right? I mean, she was pretty brilliant. And I think in many ways, a really great American writer.

KIM: I mean, she is an incredible woman, not just because of what she wrote, but that she was actually living it. She put herself out there in these situations, not just to be able to write about it but because she believed in it and she was really living out her beliefs. I mean, it just seems incredible. 

AMY: I was thinking a little bit reading this book about The Grapes of Wrath, too, and how this is such a good alternative in terms of getting a woman's perspective on that era.

KIM: Yeah. I always said my grandmother on my dad's side of the family was, we always say it was very Grapes of Wrath, in their life and experiences during the Depression. But now I'm thinking of my grandmother in a whole other way. No, she was more The Girl, and I wish she was still alive so she could read this and we could talk about it together.

ROSEMARY: You should definitely read some of her journalism, Kim, yeah, because you will maybe see your grandmother there, too.

KIM: Yeah, I think so. I think so. Rosemary, we can't thank you enough for coming on the show to talk about Le Sueur, and we love this discussion so much.

ROSEMARY: Well, I'm so happy you're doing this. Yeah, so, so grateful to you, because your listeners will now know something about Meridel Le Sueur. This has been a real honor and a real, fun conversation.

KIM: So that's all for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review if you enjoyed the show, and visit our Facebook Forum to chat with us and other listeners. Until next time, keep exploring the lost gems of women's literature. 

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

161. An England Travelogue

KIM: Hi everyone. Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I'm Kim Askew here with my co-host Amy Helmes, and we're squeezing today's episode in during our lunch hour. But I'm actually really excited for this one because Amy is going to tell us all about her recent trip to England. 

AMY: Um, I think maybe listeners might start to groan a little bit because personally, that's the last thing that I enjoy doing is listening to people talk about their vacations. I promise, well, actually, I cannot promise 100%, but I hope that this episode will not be as tedious as all that. I've already been to England a couple times, so I didn't do any of the standard landmarks, you know, well known that everybody kind of has to hit up. I had an opportunity to really explore some lesser known sites. And yes, I may have even encountered a few lost ladies!

KIM: Oh, I can't wait to hear more about that. I'm so excited.

AMY: Okay. So highlights: day one, Hampstead Heath. You've been there, right? 

KIM: Yeah. I used to live near Hampstead Heath, so I went there all the time. 

AMY: It's so pretty. We went to this really cool modern home that's in Hampstead: Number 2 Willow Road. It was the home of an architect named Erno Goldfinger. It's in this modern style that sets it apart from all the other architecture in Hampstead, right? And remember our friend Ian Fleming, who likes to throw squid at his girlfriends? 

KIM: Yes. 

AMY: Well he, when this home was being built, did not like the look of it. (I guess a lot of neighbors protested and took it up with the neighborhood council or whatever.) And Ian Fleming was so annoyed about the whole thing that he wound up naming his one villain in the James Bond “Goldfinger.” 

KIM: I was gonna make a joke about that! About Goldfinger and James Bond. Oh, wow. And there is a connection. That's so funny. Okay.

AMY: Anyway, we're on a group tour there. We were told explicitly when we walked in, “Do not touch anything.” This one guy could not stop touching everything. He kept getting yelled at.

KIM: Citizens arrest time!

AMY: It was shocking. I am such a rule follower. 

KIM: Oh, totally. Me, too. I was with my old college roommate, Meg, I should say. So she and I were silently horrified. The guide kept telling him, “Sir, please stop.” Anyway, this house, 2 Willow Road, is my first connection to a Lost Lady of Lit because prior to leaving on the trip, I was reading an article. There's a new biography out on Leona Carrington, who wrote, um, The Hearing Trumpet, was a kind of surrealist writer. Anyway, I was reading the review for this book and it mentioned that she met her husband, the painter Max Ernst, at the home of her friends, Erno and Ursula Goldfinger. And I was like, “That's where I'm going! That's 2 Willow Road!” So Leonora Carrington met her husband at a party at this house. 

KIM: Mm-hmm. .Yeah, the Lost Lady serendipity continues. 

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. after that we walked into Hampstead Heath, we looked at Kenwood House. I did not go in Kenwood House because there's only so many houses that my travel companion Meg can do, and we had already done one that day, so I was like, alright. But I would've loved to go in. Keats' home is in Hampstead Heath also. 

KIM: Oh, yes, yes. 

AMY: I didn't have time for it. And also I was spending way too much time, keeping my eyes peeled for Harry Styles, because apparently it's his neck of the woods. Did not see him. Alright, moving on to Day Two. The John Soane’s Museum. He was one of England's greatest Neoclassical architects. This was his house. It's beautiful. It's got all these cool skylights, but what's really interesting about it is he was a collector of all these classical antiquities, from coins to full-size sculptures. 

KIM: The kind of hoarder we like.

AMY: Yes, but I wouldn't even say hoarder because he has it all meticulously placed. I am just marveling at everything I'm seeing. Also he's got this art gallery in the house. It's like all these hidden panels, so a wall that you can actually open up then there's another layer of paintings inside. So this guy owned William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress. 

KIM: Oh my God! 

AMY: Hidden in one of these hidden compartments. So I think they could tell that I was super geeking out about everything in this house, so they opened the cabinets and they took you through each painting and explained the whole story. 

KIM: I have to go there.

AMY: I know. I can't stop raving about it. It's so beautiful. Alright, after the John Soane’s Museum, I got to meet up with one of our guests for lunch: Lucy Scholes. 

KIM: I am so jealous about this. We love her. 

AMY: She did our episodes on Rosamond Lehmann and Kay Dick, and how great is this? So she picked a restaurant called Toklas, as in Alice Toklas. And I was like, oh, what a great coincidence. And she's like, “Of course I picked that for Lost Ladies of Lit!” So anyway, great seeing her. She says, hi, Kim. Then I went to this really cool place. It's like a tiny storefront, but it's called Novelty Automation, and I saw it on Instagram… 

KIM: Oh my God. That is so you.

AMY: What? 

KIM: I just already… Novelty Automation.

AMY: I know totally. You go in and you buy tokens, and then there's a bunch of, like, arcade games, I would call them, but they're mechanical, and then, um, you just play all the games and they're like… I'll give you an example of one. It's this cage and it has a ferocious dog's head that's probably made out of paper mache or something. And you have to stick your hand in the cage, and then a meter comes on that shows how courageous you are and you start hearing the dog panting and growling and stuff. And you're seeing how long you can keep your hand held in this cage. Then at the last second, the dog snaps and then of course you pull your

KIM: Or do you?

Right. Exactly. Maybe a better person than I could have lasted. 

AMY: But yeah, like it's all super creative. I was obsessed with this. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: I would've gone back if I had had more time. 

KIM: Have you been, there's one in San Francisco and it's definitely got a creepy side to it, but it's basically old carnival-type games like that. 

AMY: Okay. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah.

AMY: It's kind of like that, like the Zoltar machine kind of thing. They all have that kind of vibe. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: And I don't even wanna talk about any of the other ones 'cause so much of it is about the surprise.

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. 

AMY: So then that night, we went to this place called the Viktor Wynd Museum. It's in an absent bar, and it's this very tiny museum that's packed, I mean, thousands.

That sounds crazy, but it's really a lot of weird curiosities. it's like

real weird 

stuff.

And I'm talking, 

it's not for children 

and it is not for the faint of heart. Like some of 

it is hard to look at. Taxidermied animals out the 

wazoo. There's like a whole, remember how we talked in the, um, Jurassic Technology episode about the, um, 

house flies that were dressed up like ballerinas. So there's a housefly picnic at the Viktor Wynd Museum.

It's a bunch of flies that are having a picnic have little 

wine glasses 

KIM: Oh my God. You found all the perfect places. 

AMY: I found 

the perfect places for me. 

Amy: if you're into all those curiosities and stuff. Sometimes my tastes run

a little to the strange

for sure.

KIM:: yeah, hidden because it's like meeting you at first you would not realize that, but you have depth. That's 

AMY: Viktor Wynd is a real guy who just has collected all this stuff for a long time and has it all set up here. Um, he has a whole section on Stephen Tennant, the famous English

dandy, I guess what, however you wanna describe him. He would, 

So while I was looking at the Stephen Tennant displays, . Another little framed photograph caught my eye and lo and behold, who do we find again? But 

Leonora 

Carrington. 

KIM: wow. 

AMY: Apparently she was friends with Viktor Wynd. I was like, what are the odds? Like two days in a row, Leonora Carrington is popping up. It just made me think we're supposed to do an episode on her clearly. cause it's like she was shouting to me. Yes. Okay, so I went to this immersive theater experience by a theater company called Punchdrunk. The name of the performance was The Burnt City, which is basically ancient Greece, like like Troy, Agammemnon, like a combination of two ancient tragedies that they take and my friend, Meg, has already been to one of these in New York City. She's like, “it's really cool. Just trust me.” She started being kind of hesitant to tell me, and I was like, “is this gonna be something super weird?” And so you get in, it's this dark warehouse. They give you a mask because the mask is the only way to differentiate the audience from the performers, because the are like walking around 

you. There's all these rooms. 

It's like a haunted house, like you walk in, you're not even supposed to stay with your friends or anything. You're supposed to go totally on your own. You can open any door, you can open the books on the shelves. You can open the drawers on the nightstand. 

KIM: That’s amazing. It is like our kind of Disneyland. 

AMY: It was a little bit unnerving. And then there's lots of like, performative dance done by very sinewy, half naked people. Sometimes fully naked people. 

KIM: Okay. 

AMY: Um, I was kind of done by the end of the two hours. 

KIM: Oh, I'm intrigued. 

AMY: But I'm glad I did it. Um, Uh, I will jump ahead to day four. We did some other fun stuff on day three, but I'm just gonna jump ahead to Blenheim Palace 'cause this takes me back to our episode Number 24 on The Gilded Age and Consuelo Vanderbilt. That's where she lived. So there were tons of pictures of Consuelo everywhere, like beautiful giant paintings of her. I think we talked about the fact that she didn't really love living at Blenheim Palace. And I kind of get why, because she was an American coming to marry the Duke of Marlborough. This house, I mean, it's a palace. It's bigger than Buckingham Palace. It dwarfs her giant mansion from Newport, Rhode Island, right? Like, it makes her Newport home look like a tiny house. Um, so it was interesting to see, but I got why she found it very kind of cold and oppressive to live there. It's also the home where Winston Churchill was born. So if you remember Jenny Churchill, Winston's mother. She was staying there for a while, like before their house in London was ready, and Winston was born “prematurely,” I say in quotation marks, um, 

KIM: Mm-hmm. One of those.

AMY: Yeah. One of those, probably. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: So, yeah, after Blenheim Palace, I had cream tea with another of our former guests Simon Thomas of the Tea or Books? podcast.

KIM: We love him. 

AMY: Yeah. He was on to discuss O the Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith 

KIM: Yeah. I hope we'll have him on again. 

AMY: Yeah, I think he's gonna come back on, you know why? Because while I was visiting him, he gave me a new book from the British Library Series that he consults on, and this one is by Angela Milne called One Year's Time. 

KIM: Mm. 

AMY: It's really good. She is actually the niece of A.A. Milne of Winnie the Pooh fame. 

KIM: Okay, 

AMY: I think it would be cool to have him back on and discuss that. And he's, uh, just as charming in person as he was on our podcast recording.

KIM: Aww.

AMY: We almost got attacked by bees while we were eating, but we were fine. We had to retreat indoors. but yeah, fun visiting with him. And that launched the start of my visit to The Cotswolds, 'cause he's kind of on the edge of that area. The Cotswolds are called An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty 

KIM: Hmm. 

AMY: It's not a misnomer it's like the, like the quintessential idea of an English village. So like the stone houses, the thatched roof cottages, the little rolling streams, the um, kissing gates. All that kind of stuff that you think of in England, or like a Thomas Hardy novel or something like that. Unrelenting beauty. At one point we were, um, parking to go to our next place that I'm gonna talk about. But there was a field of sheep and we got out of the car and we were totally in the way of everyone pulling into the parking lot. And so the person like waving people into the lot was like, “ladies, you have to get outta the way.” My friend was like, “Sorry, we just, we don't have sheep in Brooklyn!” Like, we were just like, everything was stopping us dead in our tracks. We were so excited. So in the Cotswolds, we went to this place called Snowshill Manor. Another architect. His name was Charles Wade, and he was also an artist, very eccentric. I would kind of describe him as like an architect version of Willy Wonka. I mean, he even kind of looks like that in some of pictures… he likes to dress up and wear weird hats and things like that. So he had this, um, manor house that he. I think he redesigned it. I'm not sure that he built it from scratch, but he used it to house 22,000 items that he collected in his lifetime, which I use the term “hoarder” with one of the docents, and they got a little bit outraged with me, so we're not supposed to call him a hoarder. He collected things and he had 'em all curated, sort of like John Soane, again, like curated very nicely. But you would just walk into a room and it would be filled with spinning wheels. You’d walk into another room and it was all baby prams or Regency costumes or suits of armor. Everywhere your eye rested, it was on something fabulous that you were just like, “Oh my God, what?” His motto was “Let nothing perish.” So he just didn't like throwing anything out. He actually didn't even live in the house. The house was for the objects and he lived in a little cottage in the backyard, like a shed that didn't have any electricity or anything. And apparently, Queen Mary visited Snowshill Manor in 1937, and she said that of all the collection, Mr. Wade was the most remarkable piece in the collection. So he was quite a character. Virginia Woolf visited too at one point, and she got annoyed because she didn't know when to leave to catch her train because he would not tell her the time. And there was like more than a hundred clocks in the house, but they were all set to different times. So that's where the Willy Wonka thing is coming in and she was getting really frustrated. So yeah, very much a character. I love him. But while I was visiting this museum, there was yet another instance of a guy touching stuff. There was a weird children's toy, and he didn't understand quite how it worked, and he just reached out and grabbed it and started spinning it, despite the sign. It had a sign that said, “Extremely fragile. Do not touch.” There's no way you should have been touching any of this. But once again, I was appalled. Okay. That night, we wound our way to Stratford on Avon and we caught a production of Macbeth

KIM: Oh my God. 

AMY: At the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

KIM: One of our favorite plays. 

AMY: I'm making you sick with envy.

KIM: Oh, this is, yeah, this is, I'm, I'm like, happy for you, but also like, oh, when am I gonna get to do this?

AMY: Okay, next day, I decided we had to take a pilgrimage to go see the grave of Nancy Mitford. If you guys remember we did an early episode on her with her biographer, Laura Thompson. It wasn't too hard to find. She's buried in a church yard. It's Nancy, then next to her are her sisters, Unity and Diana. So all three of their headstones in a row. I was hoping I was gonna have this quiet moment of reflection.

KIM: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

AMY: There was a gardener mowing the grass like five feet from us. And so I was super annoyed, but then I thought about it after the fact and I was like, “No, Nancy does not want a quiet contemplative moment at her grave. Like, that's the last thing she would want.” She would, like, play some sort of joke or whatever. So like the lawnmower actually wound up being perfect.

KIM: Right.

AMY: Um, went and drove by the two Mitford homes. Um, the one we kind of saw driving up on like kind of a, a higher road and we just looked down and there was all these rolling hills, and then you could see Asthall, the whole big sprawling mansion in the distance. And that was amazing. And then I wanted to also see Swinbrook, which was another house that they lived in, so the GPS took me right to it. Take a right here. So I take a right and all of a sudden I realize I drove up their driveway! 

KIM: Oh, they're probably used to it. 

AMY: A cooler person would've totally gotten out and knocked on the door and became best friends with whoever lives there now, but I was like, “Throw it in reverse! We're trespassing!”

KIM: Rule follower. Yep. 

AMY: But that, basically, those were the highlights of my trip, I guess I would say. 

KIM: Wow. 

Amy: So thanks for coming along on my journey. I’ve already shared a few. photos from the trip on our Lost Ladies of Lit Facebook forum page. But I'll add a few more and we'll include a link for all the sites that I mentioned. And, we'll be back next week with another full-length episode. Our lunch break has ended.

KIM: Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone. Our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and KIM: Askew. 

160. Mary Wollstonecraft — A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Susan J. Wolfson

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew here with my co-host and writing partner, Amy Helmes. 

AMY HELMES: The lost lady we're discussing today. Mary Wollstonecraft, is known to some as the mother who tragically died giving birth to future Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. Today some consider Wollstonecraft the mother of feminism, though we should note the concept didn't really exist in her day.

KIM: Right. She used a framework of philosophical arguments to champion women's rights and was privately referred to by the writer Horace Walpole, as a quote, “a hyena in petticoats.”

AMY: Is that like some 18th century equivalent of “nasty woman?” 

KIM: I think so, yeah. Wollstonecraft's 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a feminist declaration of independence. She argued that women, despite being rational beings with minds equal to men, were kept powerless by a system that denied them an education and treated them as sexual commodities.

AMY: Wollstonecraft's words were revolutionary. Sadly, her husband's sincere endeavor to preserve her legacy following her death ended up having the opposite effect on how she was remembered. Her work molded an obscurity for almost a century before modern feminists took a renewed interest in her. 

KIM: If, like Amy and I, you've heard of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but have never actually taken the time to sit down and read it, you're in for a treat. Today we've got a special guest with a new book out on Wollstonecraft's seminal work, and she's gonna take us through the author's fascinating life as well as some of her key arguments in her vindication.

AMY: And since we're still fighting this fight, it only makes sense that we should take a closer look at Wollstonecraft's ideas. So let's raid the stacks and get started. 

[intro music]

KIM: Our guest today, Dr. Susan J Wolfson, is a professor of English at Princeton University. Her scholarship focuses on British writers of the Romantic period. She has written and edited numerous books, including a 2022 compilation of Keats’s poetry called A Greeting of the Spirit, and 2018's Romantic Shades and Shadows, as well as annotated editions of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. So cool.

AMY: A Guggenheim and NEH recipient, her most recent title is called On Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in April by Columbia University Press. Susan, congratulations on the book and welcome to the show.

SUSAN WOLFSON: Well, I'm delighted to be here.

KIM: Wollstonecraft was born in 1759, and Susan, the first words in the first chapter of your book are, “She was destined for this.” Do you wanna elaborate on how her upbringing and her background set the stage for what would come?

SUSAN: Well, it wasn't just Wollstonecraft's family horror show, but this is rather typical. Women had no power in the family. She had an uneducated mother. The budget went entirely to the first son. The rest of the children were not educated. The father was a spendthrift. He was a drinker. He beat her mother. He beat the children when he could. She slept outside her mother's bedroom in order to protect her. And as soon as she could, she devised ways to get out of that family horror show altogether. She made friends with neighbors, with a clergyman, and became kind of self-educated with those resources. She knew early on from the example of her parents and a lot of what she saw that marriage wasn't for her. It wasn't just marriage to a husband who could do what he liked with her body; beat it, rape it, whatever else, but it was also the serial pregnancies that came with marriage and were eventually a death sentence. Not in your first or second pregnancy, which is what took her mother out, but in your 14th or 15th pregnancy. And yet the opportunities for women who did not want to marry were really quite scant. So what's a brainy woman like Wollstonecraft gonna do? Well, she tells herself and she tells her sister, my nature is pulling me in a different direction, off the beaten track, and I've gotta figure out how to make this work. she was, you know, fairly young when she made that decision. So she was already sensing that the social structure that governed women's lives was not something that she could embrace, and she wanted alternatives. So that's her being born for this. Meanwhile , the French Revolution happened and a form of government that people thought, you know, was baked into human history, monarchy, suddenly got overturned and a new Republican form of government based on participation, the famous motto was “Liberty Fraternity and Equality,” um, that was the French Revolution. The American Revolution had already happened. It seemed that revolution in social structures was not only possible, but inevitable. I mean, this was the coming political order, and Wollstonecraft was excited about that. She was a strong supporter of the principles of the French Revolution. However, women were excluded from the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft felt that the unfinished work of the French Revolution was The Rights of Woman.

AMY: So yeah, so it's clear that she's looking around as a young woman and saying, I don't like what I'm seeing. We gotta fix this. 

SUSAN: I mean, that's the poignancy. There wasn't a community, a community of women who [unclear].

AMY: And so I think it's kind of fascinating that in 1783 she actually sets up an all girls school. 

SUSAN: Yes, she did. I mean, she wanted girls to have an education that stressed their brains and not their bodies. She wanted to introduce science, history, botany, physical exercise, subjects, uh, you know, of wider concern than preparing for the marriage market. It didn't work out. It turned out there wasn't that much of a market for that kind of education for women, and she was not an experienced businesswoman. So when she had to leave the school to go help out her dear friend, Fanny Blood, who died from her pregnancy in Portugal, and when she came back, the school was pretty much in a shambles. And to, you know, raise her spirits and raise some money to pay off the debts that the school owed, she wrote her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. So she's teaching by another means. She's discovered that you can teach through publication, through writing.

KIM: Okay, so when the school floundered financially, she ended up taking a governess position with a wealthy Irish family, and it was a twist of fate she equated with being sent to prison. Was there any upside for her in taking this job?

SUSAN: Yes. And of course Wollstonecraft has a real knack for turning dead ends into new pathways. And this is one of the first of those adventures. Through friends in London who were impressed with her, she got employment at 40 pounds a year with the wealthy Kingsboroughs. Now 40 pounds a year, I mean, this serious change. Um, but it took her far away. Her, this was gonna take her to Cork. I mean, 140 miles southwest of Dublin. uh, She said when she entered the household she felt like she was going into a Bastille, the French prison. But it turned out that this Bastille had a pretty decent library. So at night, Wollstonecraft read a lot. She also liked the daughters that she was hired to educate, particularly the oldest daughter, Margaret, who became very attached to her and Margaret herself, had a very interesting life. Afterwards, she became a doctor But Wollstonecrafter took the daughters outside, educated them by showing, challenging them intellectually. Meanwhile, um, Lady K as she called her, was a kind of bimbo out of the world of Jane Austen's novels, very wealthy, very vain, spent a lot of time dressing for dinner, um, doting on her dogs, taking baths of milk and rosewater. Wollstonecraft's letters of her are quite sarcastic and I mean, entire paragraphs could be, you know, exported to Jane Austen's novels, Lady Bertram, and those sort of wealthy aristocrats. And then Lady K fired Wollstonecraft. So she had, you know, just her salary. Her salary, um, no prospects, no letter of recommendation, no plans. And she goes back to London. And meets with Joseph Johnson, who had published a book that she had written while she was, in Ireland, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. He knew her and he thought she was really smart, that she wrote clearly, she wrote logically, she was lively. Um, and he was a mensch. I mean, he just said, I'll help you out. He set her up in rooms above his bookshop and then helped get her established in her own apartment. Um, he gave her employment, gave, he decided to publish her next novel called Mary. Then he soon hired her at this new sort of progressive journal, something like The New Yorker or something like that of the day called The Analytical Review. Wollstonecraft worked there as a translator and as a reviewer. That became a kind of second education for her. She got to read a lot of stuff and a lot of stuff that women usually don't get to read. But since the reviews were anonymous, she could write about boxing, politics, history and science as well as a shelf load of novels that really just disgusted her as being kind of junk literature. She's really funny in writing about them because you can tell she's just exhausted with the sort of recycled plots and character types over and over again. But she wrote a ton for him. Johnson had a kind of virtual college. He had these weekly dinners in his rooms above the bookshop. And the bookshop itself was a kind of de facto library. Um, you know, anybody could come in there and read the books. But at this table there was William Godwin and William Blake and Joseph Priestly, and Joel Barlow, Anna Barbauld, um, and Mary Wollstonecraft. 

AMY: Dream job.

KIM: Yeah. 

SUSAN: You know, this was a genuinely intellectual circle. I mean, Virginia Woolf writes a wonderful essay about this, where Virginia Woolf, excluded from Oxford, you know, had great sympathy for Mary Wollstonecraft's enthusiasm for this. She said, you know, she was an honorary young man. Basically she was just called “Wollstonecraft.” There wasn't any sort of polite, um, differential, you know, of manners or things they couldn't talk about. So this just completely jazzed her that she had an intellectual life at last in London.

AMY: Yeah. This Joseph Johnson guy who would wind up publishing so much of her stuff for her, I mean, he comes across as a really great guy.

SUSAN: He is. And he published a lot of 'out there' writers. I mean, he was somebody who took risks with writers that he believed in, and, you know, was a real force in the London publishing world.

AMY: I wanted to touch, uh, really quick again on Thoughts on the Education of Daughters because in a previous episode, Kim and I had discovered, I think his name's John Fordyce?

SUSAN: James Fordyce.

AMY: James Fordyce. Yes. He wrote that very condescending book about how to educate your daughters, right? Yes. And so this book that she wrote is kind of almost like an answer back to that, right? 

SUSAN: Yeah, I mean, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters is very cautious. She's not yet "Mary Wollstonecraft."

AMY: Okay.

SUSAN: The real reply to Fordyce comes in the chapters in A Vindication where she takes his conduct manual, Dr. John Gregory's conduct manual and Jean Jacques Rousseau's conduct manual for women, uh, called Sophie the chapter of Emile [or a Treatise on Education], and she basically opens the book and says, “here's what they say; here's what's wrong with what they say.” In other words, she's teaching us how to read against the grain of the three most prestigious books that have been given to parents on how to educate their daughters. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters is just her kind of putting her toe in the water. Once she becomes Mary Wollstonecraft, she's a famous person by the time she's writing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Then she lets it all rip open.

AMY: Okay. Love it. 

SUSAN: Now you might remember that Reverend Fordyce, um, James Fordyce, is set up for parody even by Jane Austen.

AMY: Yeah, exactly. In Pride and Prejudice. 

SUSAN: Mr. Collins takes it off the shelf and reads it and all the girls in the household just titter.

AMY: It's such a hilarious scene. And you know, the women at the time were doing that, you know, like, Oh, this guy. Yeah.

SUSAN: Well, yeah, Austen is writing this in the late nineties. Pride and Prejudice gets published in 1813, but yet it was already a kind of ironized discourse. But they still had to do it. I mean that middle class women who wanted to marry well pretty much had to shape themselves into marriageable young women. You know, “Don't be smart, Be deferential. Um, if you have any learning, hide it. If you have any physical vigor, don't show it because it's considered indelicate.” These were still the codes. And for most women, securing a good marriage with what you had was the life goal. And you had to make all those decisions in your twenties. By 28, you were a spinster and your shelf life was toast.

KIM: All right, well that's a perfect segue talking about marriage. So Wollstonecraft turned down a marriage proposal. She had a very memorable reply though. Can you tell us about that? And also her views on marriage, um, why did she see it as such an unappealing prospect? We can kind of guess, but.

SUSAN: The idea that you marry for love is a very late, you know, romantic notion that happens mostly in novels, which is why Wollstonecraft is so cautious about novels. Because it gives false expectations. It was an economic arrangement. You find the kindest and most prominent man, and then prostitute your body to that person. That's what she saw. And some women, you know, wound up lucky and happily married, but most really just made that kind of settlement. Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, for instance, the spinster who takes the odious, Mr. Collins on the rebound, makes a rational judgment. He's a bit of a clod, but 

KIM: Yeah. She knows exactly what she's getting into.

SUSAN: She knows exactly what she's getting into and she figures out how to make the best accommodation with it. So marriage is a very, very severe compromise, especially for an intellectually lively woman like Wollstonecraft.. Her husband could prohibit her from writing if he wanted to as a dereliction of her domestic duties. He certainly had an entire claim on any income she made from her writing, even claim on her manuscript. So she gets this proposal from an intermediary, someone who had noticed her and thought she was pretty hot. And she was, she was a really good looking woman. She was physically vigorous, she was smart, she was lively, and she refused it by proxy. And then the guy tried again and she was insulted. She said, I won't submit myself to prostitution just because I've fallen on financial hard times. It was the first time that she used the word prostitution for marriage, legal prostitution. Now, she did fall deeply in love with a really bad husband prospect, Gilbert Imlay, in France, had a daughter with him, but he just wasn't husband material. And he broke her heart, um, almost broke her body. She tried to commit suicide twice out of despair of his, you know, ever loving her and wanting to set up a home with her. She finally met William Godwin again; a mutual friend reintroduced them. And they began an affair within months. They would not get married. That was something they didn't wanna do because of the legal constraints on marriage for a woman. But when she got pregnant again with little Mary, um, they put aside principle and got married. It cost Wollstonecraft a lot because people hadn't realized that she wasn't married to Gilbert Imlay. She had been calling herself Mrs. Imlay; she had a daughter, little Fanny Imlay. And when she signed herself, “Mary Wollstonecraft, spinster,” in the church register, it was obvious that she had not been married and that Fanny was illegitimate and that she had had an affair out of wedlock. And a lot of their friends cut her, basically refused to see her. She was heartbroken by that. But her other friends stayed true.

AMY: So it really, in some ways, there's no winning. You know, you talk about all the bonds of marriage and how it, would chain her, but not marrying also cost her, you know, so,

SUSAN: Yeah, it did. But she was really happy with Godwin. I mean, that was a really good marriage, finally. It was her last great adventure. Um, it was somebody who loved her mind, who loved her courage, who admired her vindications, and uh, expected to have a life with her. Um, they had separate sort of apartments for working, then they got together in the evening for dinner and sex. So they, you know, they kind of figured out, you know, how to have a marriage that would work for both of them, where they would have intellectual independence and they would both be professional writers. And they would have a marriage. And he, you know, he adored her first daughter, little Fanny. Everybody expected that this was gonna work out.

AMY: It sounds like a very modern marriage by today's standards, right? You know, like they would fit in well today. Alright, so let's talk about her vindications now. Let's switch gears. You mentioned the French Revolution earlier. This really galvanized Wollstonecraft so tell us about this first work A Vindication of the Rights of Men and, uh, the importance of that.

SUSAN: So Edmund Burke turns out to be the father of both her vindications in some ways. Um, Edmund Burke was a liberal Whig parliamentarian. He sided with the American Revolution, um, basically on the issue of taxation without representation. He was against corruption of the colonial administration in India. He was for the abolition of slavery. In other words, she wasn't dealing with a right wing troglodyte. So Edmund Burke, however, saw the French Revolution, said, this is not good. Monarchy is a divinely sanctioned institution. Even though there are inequalities, it is the pattern of Nature. Nature is not uniform. Some trees grow big, some don't. And those who are talking about equality are really destroying the world. He writes about the French monarchy as if it were divinity on Earth. And Burke really knew how to rock a sentence. I mean, it was just, it became an instantaneous bestseller. Wollstonecraft was reviewing for The Analytical Review at the time, and so thinks that she wants to review Burke for The Analytical Review. And it was quite clear, even though The Analytical Review could sponsor a dozen pages for a review, she said, I can't do it. And she decided she had to just sit down and write this out. She wrote it in a blaze in about a month. It was the first response to Burke. There were several responses to Burke. This was the first one that came out. was called A Vindication of the Rights of Man. The Rights of Man being the French Revolutionary document. And this wasn't just “thoughts on,” or “reflections on,” or “letters on” the Rights of Man. She goes out for an aggressive genre, a vindication. That means literally “to speak with force.” It means that you're gonna make a really powerful argument. So this comes out and it's noticed. It sells out. The first edition sells out. Her name is not on the title page. The second edition comes out about three or four weeks later, and it's got "by Mary Wollstonecraft." Now that's really unusual for a woman to sign her name. It's considered extremely unfeminine to go public that way. It's a very short pamphlet, very powerful, very funny, and very sarcastic.

AMY: I love that it wasn't even like a preconceived thing for her. She was just so fired up, you know? It's just like she had no plans to write something like this until she was galled by it, basically.

SUSAN: You know, so Burke became the sort of accidental muse. And then in arguing with Burke, she also kind of started writing paragraphs that she realized had the argument of a vindication of the rights of women. When she started talking about equality, she realized that women were involved in that. That there was a social system that created inequality in which ideally citizens would be fellow citizens and be equals. And I think as she was writing that the, um, idea of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was beginning to take shape, because as soon as she finished that, I mean, this was out in, you know, the second edition in, December 1790, by January of 1791, she was already kind of, you know, planning out A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and she was speaking to the political left. If you are for the rights of man, you have to be for the rights of woman. You can't have it both ways. 

AMY: I'm sure there were other women that were maybe writing or at least discussing fairness and inequality for women. What is it about this work that made it so persuasive and made it such a sensation right off the bat? 

SUSAN: Well, there were women who were writing, but they were accommodating themselves to the world in order to make a living. So you don't find, except obliquely, what we would recognize as a kind of feminist argument in the works of Frances Burney or Maria Edgeworth or even Anna Barbaugh, who distressed Wollstonecraft with some of her poems about female delicacy. So she got very interested in the linguistic politics in the Rights of Woman. Um, and she takes that on right away at the beginning. She has a real attack on comparing women to flowers. She said, that's just admiring them for their beauty and delicacy and short lived value. You're toast at the end of the day, and it can only be a barren blooming. She takes on the stigma of being called a “masculine woman.” That would be the version of a nasty woman, and she has this really funny satire. She says, Well, by that you mean that a masculine woman is somebody who's into hunting and gaming and swearing and cursing and drinking, I'm with you. Who wants to be a masculine woman? And then she says, if you mean by masculine power of intellect, moral self-accountability, the practice of civic virtue, may they every day grow more and more masculine. One of the most stunning passages in the Rights of Woman is when she says about Catherine Macaulay, who had just died. She said, “I will not call hers a masculine understanding because I do not want to give men that arrogation of, you know, the adjective. She is forceful and strong and there is no sex to that.”

KIM: Wow. Preach.

SUSAN: So she's amazingly detached the descriptors masculine and feminine from biological destiny and read them and what we would, you know, kind of call, um, you know, critical gender theory, seeing it as part of a political system of value and not inherent in any one particular accident of birth.

AMY: And she does it all in such an entertaining way. It's like, you know, her style of writing, she's laying out rhetorical gems that are almost irrefutable, really, but then at the same time, she has this kind of tone that I love where she's just like, “oh, I don't know, riddle me this.” You just kinda like her personality as she's laying it all out. 

SUSAN: It is funny. I mean, I'm glad you like that. 'cause some, some people find her boring to read, but I don't think, you know, you don't wanna read this all in one night. But the takedown on Burke is hilarious. My students are always quite surprised by that but she also has really interesting little insets and kind of narratives or character sketches that carry her argument forward too.

KIM: Yeah. I felt like, um, her humor was unexpected. 

AMY: Listeners, you know, we mentioned that it might feel overwhelming to sit down and read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that's what's so great about Susan's book is you incorporate a lot of the best bits into your book and explain it.

SUSAN: Well, give it a try. Um, I think pretty much you could read the first two chapters, the introduction and the first two chapters because she packs everything into there. I mean, readers sometimes complain that this is repetitive. But she's figuring it out for the first time. So of course it's repetitive and she's describing a worldwide web. Everything is connected to everything else. And you know, as soon as you start talking about one thing, you you find Mm-hmm bringing in something else

KIM: Mm-hmm. Good point. 

AMY: I mean, that's the power of the repetitiveness is like society needs to kind of have it hammered in over and over. 'cause if you just see the rationale, once you're like, oh, okay, that's a good point. But as the book builds, by the time you get to the end, you're like, this I can't argue with what this woman is saying. 

SUSAN: It has that cumulative force. I mean, I'm glad you felt it. I'm not even sure it's a hammering, but it's a kind of, um, relentless education. You know, she's teaching us how to read, even the vocabulary of praise. Well, what's wrong with a woman being called "innocent," "delicate," flower-like? Isn't that the language of love? And she teaches us how to read that not as a language of love, but as an insult wrapped in a language that feels like love. like innocent? She said, this is just a pretty name for ignorance, infancy. And within a chapter, she's calling it imbecility. 

AMY: That idea of infantilizing, even today, like "baby doll," you know, the terms of endearment that women are given sometimes. 

SUSAN: Or just, “don't worry your pretty little head about it.”

AMY: Yeah, yeah. 

KIM: So, some of her chapters seem to be juicier than others, and they may have shocked her readers at the time. We know she wasn't a puritanical person, but it seems like there's a cautionary view of sex in her work. Could you maybe explain her perspective?

SUSAN: Well, you know, 1980s feminists made a great deal about, you know, her being puritanically hysterical about sex. And she's writing this in 1792 before she's ever had sex, and she's only seen bad consequences. Moreover,

AMY: Oh, I didn't realize this was before Imlay and everything!

SUSAN: Yeah, before she fell, she meets Imlay in '93. And then Godwin, with whom she has really good sex, too, she meets in 95 96. So, I mean, this is, you know, while she's still a virgin, and a very intellectual virgin, and she's seeing only bad consequences of women indulging, or being manipulated as sexual beings. Moreover, as Wollstonecraft herself experienced, if you get pregnant out of wedlock as a young woman, you have no social viability. You will never be marriageable. The only option for you is to become a prostitute or to kill yourself. And that was the frequent outcome. So there's a way in which sexual self discipline is not just prudery. It's a rational assessment of what the severe penalties are for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. So there is that caution. What very comfortable birth control era 1980 feminists, you know, condescend to Wollstonecraft for, is something they've never had to contend with themselves. So I think that there's a historical situation for what gets called prudishness, but I would say just rational restraint. The woman who was writing in 1792 really sees female sexuality and men's exploitation of it as part of the tremendous problem of being a woman in the world, she'll call it the wrongs of woman. So I don't want to sort of downplay that she's extraordinarily cautious about this, but there are very good reasons for her caution.

KIM: Yeah, it's like a life-saving issue

AMY: Yeah. 

SUSAN: Literally life saving. Literally.

KIM: Yeah, yeah, 

AMY: Even, I didn't even get the sense that she was placing a moral judgment other than the practical outcome.

SUSAN: Well, she does have the distaste of having boys pigging together, you know, in those boys schools, and girls learning nasty tricks from servants and each other. I mean, there's a kind of lurid, softcore porn that is in her head. 

AMY: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I could see people skip ahead to chapter eight or whatever chapter she's talking about this.

SUSAN: She is worried about that, though, because she doesn't want girls to become too interested in sex at the expense of rational self control. 

KIM: Right, right. 

SUSAN: What looks to us like, you know, kind of excessive prudishness. It is a real concern for her about becoming a sexual body, what that can mean for a woman. 

AMY: All right. So in this work, she so skillfully lays out all of the problems that she sees with society's treatment of women. Does she have any concrete ideas for how to fix things? Does she offer up any solutions? 

SUSAN: Well, the solution is the last chapter, if you lasted that long, on national education. She is for free national public co education. Uh, the first side of education is the Republic of Home, where boys and girls, sons and daughters, are treated equally and where parents regard their children as future citizens and not as, um, subjects, merely there to be grateful to their parents and to obey their parents. This was her plan, educating everybody and developing a rational citizenship from this factory of education. But she ends by saying, it's not up to me. The men have the power. They have to start changing the system or put in a fresh order for Russian whips. 

AMY: Oh, I know, that goes back to one of my favorite lines, that she wrote, which is, Let women share the rights, and she will emulate the virtues of man. For she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty. It's basically like, call my bluff on this. Give us a chance, and if we cannot rise to the occasion, then we are justified at being held down. And we'll shut up. You can't even argue with that really. It's just, give us a chance. And if we don't do it, then you win, you know? 

SUSAN: And she's, she knows that that's the key point. The first chapters have a whole bunch of words that begin with pre. Preconceived, prejudice, prevailing, prescribed, prescription. That's the world into which we're born. So she wants to remove all those pre constraints and say, yes, exactly right, you can't say that we are weak, irrational, stupid, and incapable, essentially, when this, in fact, is an effect of the system we live in, and not the cause for that system's reinforcement. So you're exactly right. I mean, she's proposing a grand national experiment. Um, redo education, educate us, and see if we can share rational responsibility.

KIM: Yeah, so gauntlet thrown, and then what was the response to this work when it was published? 

SUSAN: Two things. Uh, pretty good reviews in the 1790s. There was one sort of, um, right wing journal, which just wasn't buying it at all, you know, and said that this is, this is just, you know, disrupting the ways of God to man. Next thing we're going to talk about is the rights of children and the rights of animals, and this is a ridiculous, slippery slope. But most other reactions were very positive. It's about time. Yes, this is exactly right. John Adams loved it. Abigail Adams loved it. Aaron Burr loved it, and gave it to his daughter. Um, a really interesting American feminist, Judith Sargent Murray loved it. It went international, and women around the world said At last someone has put this together. I've seen this in my classrooms too, I mean, where women, not U. S. women, but women who attend Princeton from very patriarchal cultures completely recognized the situation Wollstonecraft was describing. Obviously they were exceptions, being sent by their parents to Princeton, but this was completely readable to them as, you know, education is the first step. So that was the plan. Everyone thought it was a good idea. What killed it, you mentioned earlier, was Godwin's grieving memoir, in which he reproduced Wollstonecraft as a fallen, corrupt, deviant woman. He didn't mean to, but the enemies jumped on it.

AMY: Why do you think he, I know he wasn't trying to vilify her. He was just trying to tell her story, but her sexual past and everything. Why would he have included some of that? 

SUSAN: That's the big question, you know, what was he thinking? His philosophical commitment was to candor. But, you know, his best friend said, You stripped your wife naked. How could you do such a thing? And you know, immediately, Wollstonecraft was described as a prostitute, as a whore. The Rights of Woman was the philosophy of a whore. Her reputation was incinerated immediately, and was not recovered for about a hundred years. 

KIM: Wow. 

AMY: It's like she was canceled. 

SUSAN: Her name could not be mentioned in polite society. And it was only when women suffragists were reading her, she was being read sort of underground. She was being read in countries other than England. And they started, um, producing centennial editions of her work. And then Virginia Woolf writes this amazing essay about her. And then Wollstonecraft gets taken up by second wave American and British feminism in the 1970s. But as you can see in my book, there's still a reaction. I mean, there's David Levine's atrocious cartoon of her. The archetypal nasty woman, right? With that hatchet face. Um, really sarcastic reviews of new editions and new lives of Wollstonecraft. Then you have, you know, Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia Farnham writing in 1947 that, um, pretty much, you know, they could have been writing this in, in 1801, that, um, you know, that feminism is only the philosophy of bitterness and resentment and female deviance and penis envy, um. That passed as science. You know, history is always uneven progress, but the back and forth about, um, you know, about feminist principles is still very much with us.

KIM: I mean, there's more of a conversation at least today that we're starting to have, but Amy and I talk about this all the time, but it still feels like in some ways we're at the infancy of a feminist movement, even, uh, you know, even after this amount of time. Yeah. Yeah. 

SUSAN: I mean, I still, um, you know, I'm 75. Will I ever see a female president? I don't know.

KIM: I hope so. Someday hopefully people will be looking back on this time and it'll be closer than we think 

SUSAN: You know, they'll look at our conversations and say, “What were they talking about? We're so past that!” 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

AMY: But getting back to, Mary Wolf, Mary Wollstonecraft (I still can't say her name, even at the end of the episode), Susan, I knew so shamefully little about her before reading your book. Um, I'm so glad that I now have a better understanding of her life and her work and her impact. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about it all with us. It's been great. 

SUSAN: Well, no, this has really been fun talking to you. I didn't know anything about her when I was an undergraduate because she just simply wasn't on our syllabuses or in our books. Um, you know, that was a kind of act of recovery on my own part. is to learn about her and then just to be amazed.  I think Wollstonecraft is, you know, is a teacher. And that you, you know, you felt that too, you felt that you were not just studying something that you should know, but you were actually being taught about how to think. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: Love her. Love her. So that's all for today's episode. Don't forget to give us a rating and review wherever you listen to this podcast, if you enjoy it. Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew. 

158. Sylvia Townsend Warner — Lolly Willowes with Sarah Watling

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew, here with my cohost, Amy Helmes. The book we're discussing today is about a woman who breaks the mold in a most bewitching fashion. The author who wrote it. You could say she did, too.

AMY HELMES: Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes, (or The Loving Huntsman is the subtitle), features a heroine who, as an unmarried woman, has been written off and relegated to the role of spinster. She's everyone's favorite auntie, but she feels like an invisible woman.

KIM: Not everyone is discounting the spinster though.

AMY: That's right. The loving huntsman of the book's subtitle sees our heroine for who she really is. The spell he casts on her allows her to approach life in a bold new way. Who might this savior, this dark knight, possibly be? Oh, I don't know. Could it be Satan? 

KIM: That's a Church Lady reference for you “SNL” fans out there.

AMY: Yeah. The Prince of Darkness turns out to be her Prince Charming of sorts. This early feminist classic, it was Townsend Warner's debut novel, actually, it's so fun. It is quaint, and yet it's also incendiary in terms of its social commentary, and Kim, the visual I get is one of Sylvia Townsend Warner crouching behind a chintz sofa and then occasionally popping up to lob a hand grenade.

KIM: I love it. Yep.

AMY: In 2014, The Guardian listed this book among its 100 best novels in English, and director Greta Gerwig is a fan of the book, too, which certainly speaks for it. Our friend and two time guest on this podcast, Lucy Scholes, described it in a 2012 review as “an elegantly enchanting tale that transcends its era.”

KIM: We've got another guest joining us for today's episode, Sarah Watling. She knows quite a bit about Sylvia Townsend Warner.

In fact, she's got a new book out in which Warner features.

AMY: By the pricking of my thumbs. I think we'd better raid the stacks and get started!

[intro music plays]

KIM: Our guest today, Sarah Watling, is the author of 2019's biography, Noble Savages: The Olivier Sisters; Four Lives in Seven Fragments. It's the story of four brilliant, beautiful, and precocious English sisters who led fascinating lives in the first half of the 20th century. D. H. Lawrence thought these sisters were quote-unquote “wrong,” and if that's not reason enough to learn more, I don't know what is.

AMY: Yeah, I actually have this one all lined up on my Kindle ready to go because I have a long flight coming up. Um, I was like, ooh, I'm going to read this one on the plane. 

SARAH WATLING: It's nice and long. It'll keep you going for a long time.

AMY: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Uh, Sarah's latest work is Tomorrow Perhaps the Future, a group biography of a handful of creative minded women, including several lost ladies of lit, from America and Britain, who took a strong political stance during the Spanish Civil War while attempting to rally others to the cause. Sylvia Townsend Warner is just one of the impassioned writers featured in this scholarly work, which The Daily Mail calls “exhilarating.”

KIM: Yes. And Sarah admits to having a weakness for people with an instinct for rebellion, which pretty much makes her the perfect guest to talk about Sylvia Townsend Warner. Sarah, welcome to the show.

SARAH: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

AMY: So Sarah, my interest in the Spanish Civil War was piqued a few years ago when we did an episode on the war reporter Virginia Cowles, who pops up a few times in your book, I think. What actually prompted you to write this book?

SARAH: Well, I mean, I've been interested in the Spanish Civil War for a really long time, partly because it's so often been regarded as this kind of tragic missed opportunity to defeat fascism before the Second World War. But I really didn't think that I had something new to say about it. until I came across this pamphlet that was published in 1937 called Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War. And this was essentially a collection of responses from authors from Britain and Ireland, to a question that had been posed to them by a woman called Nancy Cunard. And she had asked them very simply to just state publicly whether they supported the Democratic Republic of Spain, the government that had been elected the year before in Spain, or the military generals who were attempting to overthrow that democratic government. When she wrote to these writers, she said to them they should make their position plain because it is impossible any longer to take no side. And I was really struck by that idea that, you know, history could present a moment when it was almost a kind of moral imperative to work out where you stood, which to me sort of felt like it spoke to our contemporary moment in various ways. I was interested, Nancy Cunard had chosen to direct this question to writers, you know. I wondered why she felt that writers in particular should take a position on politics. And also I was like, who is this woman? You know, like it was, it was such a kind of bold and impassioned. political intervention to make and, and what I knew about the Spanish Civil War really came from people like Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, you know, and the more I delved into Nancy Cunard's story, the more I realized that actually there were so many other writers who were mobilized by this cause, but who just really hadn't received the same kind of airtime and lots of them were women.

KIM: So in the book, you write about Sylvia Townsend Warner's political and literary activity during this fight against fascism. One might initially think it doesn't really have much to do with the plot of her debut novel Lolly Willowes, which came out in 1926. This book is more of a light comedy of manners, but there is actually a synergy between this novel and the outspoken political role she would go on to have later in life, right?

SARAH: I mean, in person, Sylvia Townsend Warner could be extremely outspoken. You know, one of the things that happens when she's first drawn into anti fascist activism is that she discovers she has this incredible flair for heckling, which she's really proud of, you know. but in her fiction, I think she was a lot more kind of wily about getting her point across. And there is so much that's going on under the surface in Lolly Willowes, which to me makes it quite clear that, you know, she was already dissatisfied with the way that conventional society operated, even before she got involved in what we might consider sort of organized politics.

AMY: So, Sylvia Townsend Warner lived from 1893 till 1973, and she once famously said, When I die, I hope to think I have annoyed a great many people, uh, speaking to your point of heckling. Um, so we usually start an episode talking about the author's life first, but I think in this case it makes more sense to switch things up and talk about the novel first.

KIM: Yeah. And listeners, it's pretty much impossible to discuss this novel, really, without revealing a bit of a spoiler about what happens to Lolly in the book.

AMY: Yeah, but it's not that big of a secret, it's pretty much... always talked about on every blurb you'll find about the book online. The edition I read, kind of, the cover art says it. So I think we'll be fine in saying it.

KIM: Yeah. And we'll get to that twist in a moment. But first, Sarah, let's talk about who Laura, AKA Lolly Willowes is at the start of this novel. Do you want to describe her a little bit for us?

SARAH: Of course. So, well, the way that Warner describes her in the novel is as a gentle creature. Um, so someone who's adored by the children in her family, for example, which is important because when we first meet her, she's moving into her brother's house where she's going to sort of help take care of his children. She's 28, she's not married, and she's been living, you know, in the ancestral family home with her father, who's just passed away. And from this very first line of the novel, Laura Willowes is kind of situated for us by reference to her family, and specifically the men in her family. So the first line reads, When her father died, Laura Willowes went to live in London with her elder brother and his family. So this is kind of her passing from the care, or depending on how you look at it, the property of her father to that of her brother. And we immediately sort of have this sense of someone whose life is dictated by other people's expectations rather than somebody who's exercising, you know, a great deal of autonomy. And that's also hinted at in the next sentence, which is spoken by her sister in law, Caroline, who says, “Of course, you will come to us.” You know, and that “of course” is holding so much kind of inevitability. You know, no one is really expecting Laura to have any plans or ideas of her own. Um, and everybody thinks it will be good for her to move to London because there's more people there. And so there's a better chance that she'll find a husband before it's, you know, too late because late twenties is getting a little bit late to get married. Um. And I think another important thing that we come to learn about Laura is her connection to sort of the natural world and to the earth and to cultivation. And that's something that will become more and more important, I think, as the novel goes on. Um, you know, at the beginning of the novel, she's in mourning for her father, but she's also already mourning for this life in the countryside that she's going to have to leave behind. In the novel, it's.

It says London was very full and exciting, but it undercuts that immediately by listing all the things that London doesn't have, you know, like her greenhouse and her apple room and her potting shed and all of the spaces where she can sort of create the natural remedies that she's taught herself to make.

AMY: Yeah, this, uh, beginning part of the book really reminded me a lot of Joanna Scutts’s nonfiction book The Extra Woman, just in terms of, you know, what happens to these unattached women. In Lolly's case, she is kind of just passed around. Townsend Warner writes, Feeling rather as if she were a piece of property forgotten in the will, Laura was ready to be disposed of as they should think best. So she's like a piece of furniture or something. Um, she also later says that Laura was put away. So it's kind of that idea of a woman on the shelf.

KIM: Yeah. And the way she just sort of is like accepting of it too. everybody's complicit in this “extra woman” thing.

AMY: Yeah, and The family members are all patting themselves on the back, like, We're so charitable to this single, you know, sister, and oh, we're going to give her the second best bedroom because we have to save the best bedroom for real guests, but she can have this sort of smaller bedroom.

KIM: Where she's working for free, basically, like, she's going to be the nanny. She's going to be the companion. She's going to run the extra errands. You know, she's busy from morning till night.

SARAH: There's that line that I think is so brilliant when Townsend Warner is describing Caroline's planning for Laura's arrival and she says, They could not give up the large spare room to Lolly. You know, like it's not even explained. It's just this kind of assumption that really exposes the way that they regard Lolly as this kind of, you know, extra wheel that they're doing this big favor to.

AMY: I think she refers to herself as an inmate. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah. And it's all in this kind of gentle way that it's explained but yet this undercurrent of like, Wow, this is pretty mean and harsh. So, the novel is actually fairly short. It's divided into three sections. The first section is pretty conventional. We see her attempts to settle into this new life as a guest, basically in her brother's home. She has no agency. She's stuck at home with her sister in law doing needle point and cleaning the canary cage, right? She feels trapped.

AMY: Yeah, and also in this section we learn a little bit about Lolly's childhood. She was sort of a tomboy who had taken an interest in brewing and botany as Sarah was talking about. So this is a bit of foreshadowing for what's to come. There's also a great line where Townsend Warner writes that “coming out,” like for young women debutantes, we have this idea of “coming out,” but it really ought to be called “going in,” which I thought was great. I had never heard that before because it's sort of like, when she got to that age, life stopped for her. The life that she wanted stopped. 

KIM: So, Sarah, is any of this lining up with Sylvia's own childhood at all? Did she have a similar childhood to Laura Willowes in any sense?

SARAH: I mean, I think there's definitely an interesting parallel in the father daughter relationships. Um, so in the novel, Laura's father is really delighted when she's born to have a daughter. Laura's brothers are much older. They're sent away to boarding school. So most of her childhood, it's almost as if she's an only child, which Sylvia Townsend Warner was as well. Um, and Laura's father really dotes on her and her mother is, you know, it's not really gone into much detail, but her mother is some kind of invalid. So. Laura Is pretty much kind of left to her own devices, which means that she and her father can live this kind of perfectly happy, quite quiet life together, which continues even after her mother dies and then of course, it kind of ends completely when her father dies. As I said, Sylvia Townsend Warner was actually an only child. Um, and though her mother was around for her whole childhood, she was especially close to her father, George. And he was kind of an ideal father for a future writer. He was a schoolmaster at Harrow, which is a kind of, it was a fairly prestigious public school, as in fee paying school in England. And he had this reputation for being a really brilliant teacher. Um, his subject was history, but he was very strong on the importance of good style in writing. And he wrote his own books. He also wrote poetry. So while Sylvia Townsend Warner didn't have a formal education, she did have the benefit of these kind of private lessons with the most brilliant teacher at a really good and expensive school. And she became extremely erudite very young, which also made her quite off putting to potential suitors, which is another connection.

AMY: Yeah, that's exactly what is going on with Laura in the book, which is hilarious. Um, her relatives are all like, Alright, we'll keep her here in London with us for however long we need to, but hopefully we can get her married off. She is not exactly cooperative, right, Sarah?

SARAH: Right. And, and what I especially love is how Townsend Warner manages to refer to the men they line up for her as undertakers. It means it as in men who might undertake to marry Laura, but it's a wonderful kind of double meaning about, you know, the role they would play in her life if she actually married any of them. But yeah, I mean, Laura in the novel, she seems to have almost a kind of passive resistance to these potential suitors that her brother brings home, and she makes no real effort to please them or to appear attractive or interesting to them. Uh, Warner says that She did not feel herself bound to feign a degree of entertainment which she had not experienced. And the same deficiency made her insensible to the duty of every marriageable young woman to be charming. And as Sylvia herself liked to, you know, Laura would kind of turn the conversation to obscure topics or say things that these kind of conventional men will find really off putting. And I think part of the problem is that, you know, she just talks about whatever's on her mind and because she's surrounded by all these people who are so different from her, what's on her mind is almost never like what they're actually discussing at the dinner table. One brilliant example is that she manages to scare off the most serious suitor that she has by talking about werewolves.

KIM: Yes.

SARAH: She sort of ends up by implying that maybe he could be a werewolf, which obviously, you know, would not be a very respectable thing to be.

AMY: It's just a total record scratch moment. Yeah. Okay, so this first section of the book that's all kind of quaint and charming, it ends with the specter of World War I hanging over it. Can you talk a little bit about that, Sarah, and the significance?

SARAH: Sure. So, I mean, I think one thing that's interesting is that of course, World War I arrives in the novel and it's obviously this kind of cataclysmic event, but on the other hand, what's almost scary, especially to Laura when she's thinking about it, is how in some ways, or maybe for some people, it actually hardly changes anything. And it seems at first like the main kind of changes and opportunities for women in wartime are going to be for women a generation younger than her. So actually that would be women of Sylvia Townsend Warner's generation. And those women are kind of embodied by Laura's niece, Fancy, who marries at the start of the war to a soldier, then gets a job in a factory, then is widowed and ultimately leaves her young daughter in London to go and drive lorries in France, all of which is kind of totally incomprehensible to her mother, but sort of represents these new opportunities for women. Meanwhile, Laura is, you know, doing up parcels at some charity and basically kind of carrying on as normal. But she obviously has kind of noticed the changes for the younger generation and there has been some kind of subterranean change in her too that will become apparent not that long after the end of the war. And there's this moment when she's sort of watching Fancy's children on the beach, you know. Her niece now has two daughters of her own, and she sort of realizes that she's going to be called on to help raise that generation as well, you know. So this is a bit of a kind of escape or stay forever moment. And in terms of, you know, for Sylvia Townsend Warner, she was much younger than Laura when the war broke out. She was only 20. So in a way, it represents more opportunities for her. Um, and at first, you know, at her home, they only really feel the war in the way that all of her father's former students start, you know, disappearing and going to the front. And just really sad things like the school newspaper filling up with obituaries. But early on, Sylvia gets involved in kind of charitable efforts to help Belgian refugees, and then she moves away from home and works in munitions factory. So it kind of gives her this taste of freedom, but it's actually also, interestingly, the period where she comes closest to the kind of life that Laura Willowes lived, because it's during the war that her father dies unexpectedly. And that kind of leaves her in the position of being the kind of dutiful companion to her quite demanding widowed mother, but it is also the period when she decides that she's not going to tolerate that kind of life, and when Sylvia herself leaves for a job in London. More generally, it's maybe worth mentioning that the British suffrage movement, which, you know, had really been gaining ground before the outbreak of the war, uh, and the suffragettes famously kind of gave up their campaigning to work for the war effort. So on the one hand, it represents this kind of fallow period for women's cause, but it's also, there is this kind of real sense that it's their big chance to prove themselves. All of which is to say, you know, the First World War lasted from 1914 to 1918, hundreds of thousands of British men were killed, millions of people worldwide. So however people are affected personally, this is a huge trauma for British society that changed things in ways that perhaps weren't entirely clear at the time. And so from then on, you know, life is always going to be divided into before the war and after it. So, you know, it really makes sense as this kind of big dividing moment in the novel.

AMY: So, if Laura is trapped in Part 1 of the novel, Part 2 is all about her making her escape. She feels like she's being pulled towards something, she doesn't quite know what. And Townsend Warner writes, Her mind was groping after something that eluded her experience. A something that was shadowy and menacing, and yet, in some way, congenial.

KIM: Yeah, she has this lightbulb moment. She's out on a secret expedition to buy flowers. (Her brother and sister in law judge her for buying fresh flowers; they think it's wildly extravagant.) Anyway, she's standing in the shop buying herself some chrysanthemums, and she has an almost out of body moment. She instantly knows she needs to move to the place where these flowers were grown, a village called Great Mop in the Chilterns.

AMY: So she goes home and announces this decision to the family, and they all think she's absolutely nuts. Her brother predicts that she is gonna go there and end up becoming the village witch, and she sighs and says, “How lovely.”

KIM: Right. More foreshadowing. Um, and then she also learns around this time that her brother who was acting as steward of her finances has mishandled her money and there's actually less to live on than she imagined, which is really infuriating, actually. Um, and she gives him a real piece of her mind. It's really an amazing scene.

SARAH: I think Sylvia Townsend Warner is so good at kind of using humor to depict the kind of ordinary, sort of non-ogre-like tyranny of people like Henry. 

KIM: Yes. 

SARAH: You know, she kind of exposes them for what they really are by not taking them as seriously as they take themselves, you And there's a great line where she says, Henry was kindly disposed to those who did not thwart him by word or deed.

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: And I love that scene too because Laura is just so calm throughout it. She's just sort of patiently sitting there like, Yes, tell me more. Tell me what you did with my money. And then he has to grudgingly admit he misspent it and she just sort of sighs and is like Well, okay but still got my plan and I'm going to do this anyway. It's a very empowered moment for her. I love it.

KIM: Yeah. Me too.

AMY: So I feel like once she finally moves, she gets to this new village, Great Mop, we start to see a shift in the tone of the book a little bit. It almost felt to me like a couple of types of books put together. It still has that quaintness, but there's a more allegorical feel to it, maybe. So she spends her early days there just sort of walking the hills, but she doesn't really quite know what to do. It's sort of like “wherever you go, there you are” kind of feeling. Um, she stumbles across an inn called The Reason Why.

KIM: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And the villagers all seem a bit odd. It's almost like, is it going to be Wicker Man or something? Like this stuff going on? 

AMY: Just going to turn into a Stephen King novel, yeah. 

KIM: Exactly. she can't quite put her finger on what it is, but there's something a little mysterious, a little spooky about it all, um, that she finds herself absolutely in love with country living. The thing she's much more worried about is that her grown nephew, Titus, is going to pay her a visit. And then once he gets there, he decides he wants to stay with her and work on writing a book. It's a huge problem for her, right, Sarah?

SARAH: Yeah, it's a big problem. Um, partly because Titus is going to need taking care of basically, but also partly because Great Mop is her place, you know. It's somewhere that she's had all to herself, it's somewhere that she's finally found her independence. Part three opens with her in despair and rebellion, the novel says, because Titus turning up kind of threatens to put her right back into the kind of bondage that she's just escaped. And I think it's worth noting that Titus is actually her favorite member of the family. So it's not that she has a problem with Titus in particular, but it is really this thing that he intrudes on her peace. And, you know, there's a sense that this time her entrapment is going to be much worse because she's now had a taste of freedom, you know? She knows what it's like to not be beholden to anyone, to not have to kind of account for herself or anyone. And I think, you know, the obvious connection you can make with this novel is to Virginia Woolf's “A Room of One's Own,” which actually isn't published until a couple of years later, in which Woolf kind of recognizes that a woman writer needs financial independence, yes, but also privacy.

KIM: Yeah. And the entitlement that Titus has to just immediately begin asking for whatever he wants. And she's basically it's, it's her space, but also the servitude aspect of it.

AMY: Yeah, and feeling like she can't even escape him. She's like, “I'm gonna go for a walk,” and he's like, “I'll meet up with you!” It's like, no! This is the point in the podcast where I wish we didn't have to worry about music copyright infringement, because I would so want to...

play the opening bars of "Sympathy for the Devil" right now.

KIM: You can sing it. It's never stopped you before.

AMY: Um, but to quote Townsend Warner, She, Laura Willowes, in England in the year 1922 had entered into a compact with the devil. The compact was made and affirmed and sealed with the round red seal of her blood.

KIM: And this is where you want to cheer.

AMY: Yeah, 

KIM: Go for it.

AMY: So, the pact is sealed with her blood because she gets scratched by a kitten and this animal becomes her familiar. Long story short, we're not going to give anything else away here, but she embraces witchcraft and she ends up being able to solve the Titus problem by the end of the novel. So we're just going to leave it at that. But anyway, this whole Satan coming into the picture, it's quite the plot twist.

KIM: Ha! 

AMY: I thought it was funny, Sarah, reading your book, because you mention an anecdote about Townsend Warner having her own strategy for getting rid of unwanted guests.

SARAH: Yeah, I love this so much. Um, when she was living alone in London as a young woman, if she hadn't an unexpected visitor, she would put her hat on before she opened the front door so that she could seem as if she was about to go out, you know, if she didn't want to actually let them in and have to deal with them. And, you know, she did this to protect herself, really, from, you know, from the amount of time that visitors can take up when she wanted to be writing or working on something else, but also, I think, to protect herself from the kind of emotional and practical demands of other people, know, because she's particularly vulnerable to that as a young woman living on her own, and this is something that both Woolf and Townsend Warner are aware of, and that they're both protesting, I think, is that, you know, they're living in a society that relies on the idea of women as self sacrificing. You know, it's a society that teaches women that their purpose in life is basically catering to the needs of others, you know, ideally as wives and mothers, but, you know, as maiden aunts, if they can't manage that, and as you say, you know, as you mentioned in Lolly Willowes, Titus doesn't even warn Laura that he's coming, you know, it's actually his mother who kind of bothers to give her the warning and he, presumably, he doesn't think it's necessary because of this assumption that single women are always available, you know, and this is what Sylvia Townsend Warner was kind of battling against a little bit, um, because they don't have any men or children to attend to. And if you think of, you know, her brother Henry getting his hour to himself in his study every evening after dinner, which, you know, it gets described in the first part of the novel, you really see the injustice of that. And this, again, I think is one of the things that's so interesting about Lolly Willowes. And I talk about it a little bit in the book is that, you know, Laura doesn't turn to witchcraft to get her money back from Henry or to get revenge on him for losing it, or to become beautiful or make someone fall in love with her or anything like that. She does it when her space is invaded, you know. That's the crucial moment, the big threat to her way of life.

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. So Lolly gives a dramatic speech while speaking to the devil and she compares all women to sticks of dynamite. Warner writes, Even if other people find them quite safe and usual and keep on poking with them, they know in their hearts, how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are. Even if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they know it's there ready.

AMY: Oh, it's such a great speech. It takes up a few pages, right? But she goes on to say, That's why we become witches, to show our scorn of pretending life's a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. One doesn't become a witch to go run around being harmful or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It's to escape all that, to have a life of one's own, not an existence doled out to you by others. So, Sarah, that goes back to what you were just saying. And we talked before about Lolly being disinterested in male suitors in this book. Do you think there's any queer subtext here? I mean, didn't realize until after I read the book that Sylvia Townsend Warner had a long term relationship with a woman.

SARAH: Yeah. I mean. I keep talking about Virginia Woolf, but there is this story about Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Townsend Warner meeting at a lunch after the book was published and Woolf supposedly asked Sylvia how she knew so much about witches and Sylvia told her it was because she was one. Um, you know, and if anyone is going to pick up on queer subtext, I think Virginia Woolf would be the person to do it. But as you say, the love of Sylvia Townsend Warner's life was a poet called Valentine Ackland and her given name was Molly,, who she fell in love with, actually, a few years after Lolly Willowes was published in 1930. And they remained together until Valentine's death in 1969, and there was really never any doubt for either of them, I think, about the significance of that relationship. And they kind of explicitly referred to it or regarded it from early on as a marriage, even though obviously under British law, they weren't, you know, afforded the same recognition as a heterosexual couple would have been.

KIM: So when Lolly talks in her speech about not wanting to take the safe route, Sarah, does that tie into the decisions Townsend Warner makes later in life politically? What were some of the other ways Sylvia was defying convention and living dangerously, so to speak?

SARAH: Oh, there are so many ways. Um, I mean, I think Sylvia Townsend Warner was someone who was very comfortable living on the margins. And I don't mean that she didn't want to have influence or power, because I think she did. And I think she wanted to get attention for her ideas and her causes. I mean that she had, you know, she really had no interest in conventional respectability, you know. As we've talked about from early on, she was much more intellectual than the usual kind of young lady of her class and of most men, to be honest. After her father died, she refused to be the kind of dutiful maiden daughter and she went to London. She had a job, you know. For most of her adult life, she was supporting herself through her writing, although she did have a small inheritance. Um, but, you know, as you say, the key thing is her politics, which is actually something that is also very much part of her relationship with Valentine, who is the person who encourages her in the 1930s to take a more kind of organized approach to her convictions. Because, you know, Sylvia Townsend Warner, she wasn't just outraged by the inequalities of gender, but also of class and of race and of those caused by imperialism, for example. And all this kind of stuff really comes to a head for her in the 30s. That was a time in Britain, and obviously in the US as well, of real kind of social and economic turbulence. And it was also the period when fascism was kind of on the rise in Europe, and Valentine and Sylvia were paying really close attention to what was going on then. And their kind of big decision in the mid 1930s was that they joined the Communist party. And this actually, you know, it wasn't that uncommon among intellectuals of that era to be sort of enthusiastic about Communism. You know, they had this kind of, in some ways, very inspiring example of the Soviet Union. This is before Stalin's purges, or at least before, you know, the Great Terror is really known about outside of Russia. Um, but obviously it was still an extremely radical and very kind of suspect decision for most people in mainstream society. It's not a kind of secret decision. They're not kind of silent members of the Communist party. You know, they're very active. They do things like make posters. They attend meetings. They sort of arranged to ferry their neighbors to polling stations when there are elections to make sure that they can vote. They kind of use their personal book collection as a kind of lending library to help sort of convert the people who lived around them in their village. And because the party is so small, and actually because, you know, a lot of the famous male writers who get enticed to join the party prefer to play a more kind of symbolic role, they actually kind of managed to establish a fair amount of influence within the party. On the one hand, Sylvia and Valentine are these sort of two middle aged ladies living in sort of rural isolation in Dorset, you know, like what could be more harmless than them? But on the other hand, you know, it's a queer communist household that by this time is under police surveillance.

AMY: And actually, didn't the Nazis have a list of British citizens that they were going to go after the moment they invaded? And she was on the list.

SARAH: I mean, they're very public, kind of anti fascist. intellectuals. So yeah, I mean, absolutely. They would have been at terrible risk if the Germans had invaded.

KIM: So, thinking of the description of Lolly's brother and sister in law in the book, it seems like Townsend Warner had a real disdain for people who lived in a bubble and were oblivious to those real pressing issues of the day that she obviously cared deeply about.

SARAH: Yeah. And I think that's a really large part of what her campaigning during the 1930s is about, you know. It's about getting people to sort of wake up from their complacency and to see that what's happening in Germany or in Italy, you know, or in Spain can have a real relevance. You know, she sees her fiction as something that can be deployed to help persuade people, you know, to help them kind of imagine their way into these other lives. And you know, I think both of them, she and Valentine, were really aware that the kind of life that they were leading, you know, which requires freedom to write what you want, to love who you love, you know, to not be reduced to your gender. That that kind of life wouldn't be possible for them in a fascist country, you know. So I think that is , partly what galvanizes them when the Spanish Civil War comes along. And there's this tragic, but brilliant letter that Valentine writes in 1936 where she says, you know, she's expecting a war to come and she's not optimistic that either of them would survive if it came, you know, but they use that fear to sort of power their activism. You know that they're not kind of overcome by it.

AMY: And I thought there was a really interesting line from your book, Sarah, that seems suited to Lolly Willowes. You write that "Sylvia played up a nothing to see here persona in much of her writing, letting what was radical infiltrate beneath A comforting sense of eccentricity." That really caught my eye. I think it's a perfect description of the tone of Lolly Willowes, with the sort of radicalness hiding underneath. All that, you know, pastoral imagery and it's like she pulls a bait and switch on the reader, almost.

SARAH: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I read Lolly Willowes in a way, as a reminder not to underestimate women like Laura Willowes, you know. It's a reminder that behind every maiden aunt there's an individual with a mind and desires and opinions. Of course, this is what gives Satan his edge in the novel isn't it? You know, that he not only notices these women who are so used to being overlooked, but he actually goes to the trouble of pursuing them.

KIM: Right. Right.

SARAH: You know, as you say, Sylvia Townsend Warner is so kind of skilled at enticing her reader rather than confronting them, It's not a kind of Disneyfied version of witchcraft,, you know. Laura's not kind of like a cuddly old lady with a broomstick who's, you know, taking the local children flying or whatever. She's, I mean, not to give too much away, but she very explicitly sells her soul to the devil, which, you know, is pretty shocking, right? But Warner has kind of readied the ground for this with her humor and by making Laura seem so kind of gentle and eccentric. A lot of her point in the novel comes across quite gradually. She sort of builds up slowly to this cri de coeur at the end of the novel, because, it's only as Laura gets happier at Great Mop that she realizes how unhappy she was before in her previous life. And there's this brilliant passage where, you know, she says Laura doesn't blame the family for her unhappiness, because she sees that they're the product as well of their time in society. And she writes, If she were to start forgiving, she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer book, the Bank of England, prostitution, the architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilization, you know, i. e. there is this enormous edifice that is supporting conventionality and that's kind of holding women back. And I think, you know, the fact that Laura makes this extreme decision of selling her soul to the devil highlights how few options that women have in that world. The point is that Laura kind of sees everything that the kind of respectable bourgeois life offers a woman like her, and she sees that there's not enough in it for her.

AMY: It's almost like the end of the book becomes a manifesto, you know?

KIM: Definitely. Um, what was the reception to the book, when it was published? Were people shocked by this?

SARAH: Well, it was very well received. Um, there were lots of reviews that were very positive. It sold very well. It was probably her best selling novel during her lifetime. And it, you know, really helped with her not very big income at the time. But it doesn't really seem to have been the kind of reception that she was hoping for. Um, so she wrote to one friend quite early on saying that people were calling the novel “charming” and “distinguished,” and that was making her heart sink lower and lower.

KIM: Yeah, it's like, did they finish it?

SARAH: Exactly. But it's all, you know, it's, it's kind of the, you know, she has this skill at lulling her readers into a full sense of security and she almost does that too well, you know, and they kind of overlook some of the more provocative points that she's making. And I think it's quite notable that, you know, her subsequent novels are a lot more kind of explicit in their messaging.

AMY: That's funny. She's like, “Yeah, we're going to have to bring the hammer down now on the future books.” That's funny. Are there any other themes of this novel that you think we ought to discuss? Anything else relating to the book that we didn't touch upon?

SARAH: Um, I mean, I think time is a really important aspect of this novel, and I love the way that the novel kind of uses it. And I think that sort of also connects to another theme, which is, you know, the sort of difference between urban and rural life. Townsend Warner dedicates several pages to the sort of unchanging daily routine of Henry's house. And yet 15 years pass in a sentence, you know. And I think that's sort of maybe a comment or, you know, even a demonstration of how time can really lag for women in the short term when they're bound to this kind of domestic life. But it also passes so fast when they've got nothing to show for all these years, you know. And Laura in London always seems to be kind of busy with things that she doesn't think are important, like, you know, cleaning out the canary cage, as you said. And that's something to do with being in London as well, you know. She really loses control of her time and therefore she kind of loses the pleasures of idleness. And Warner writes, Even Laura, introduced as a sort of extra wheel, soon found herself part of the mechanism, and into working with the other wheels went round as busily as they. And that I think is also, you know, it's sort of about rural life and the values and the pace of rural life kind of coming up against the city and the demands of, you know, of capitalism, basically, for efficiency and quantifiable productiveness. And how that's sort of an anathema to the way that Laura would naturally kind of move through the world.

AMY: Yeah, she has that whole segue about the train coming to London with the cabbages on it, you know, and, and, and her brother and sister in law having no clue where the cabbages come from sort of thing. Definitely. Something she's interested in. Um, given how popular this book was at the time, I don't think it's ever been made into a film. Correct me if I'm wrong there. But hearing that Greta Gerwig is a fan of this novel gives me a lot more hope. I mean, can you imagine? And honestly, I was, I was thinking about it and I'm like, maybe the Barbie movie is sort of doing a similar thing, you know? 

KIM: Oh, yeah, I can see that. 

AMY: Some radical ideas hidden under all the pink. That's kind of what Sylvia was doing.

KIM: I like that idea. That's great.

AMY: Uh, so yeah, Greta, if you're out there, or maybe somebody British, this is such a quintessentially British book that maybe it has to be a British director.

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. 

SARAH: I think Olivia Colman would make an excellent Lolly Willowes.

KIM: Oh my god. Absolutely. She's so great. 

AMY: Yes, perfect casting, yes.

KIM: She would be fantastic. So Sylvia Townsend Warner would go on to write six other novels, a handful of short stories, collections of poetry, a biography of T. S. White. Is there any book you would recommend that we read next in our discovery of her works? Are there titles you particularly love that you want to recommend?

SARAH: I'm obviously quite biased, but I would wave the flag for the novel that was inspired by her time in Spain, which is After the Death of Don Juan, which is really actually one of her most overlooked titles, but it's a great example of how freely she switched between comedy and tragedy, and how often she deployed comedy in quite kind of sly ways to express her outrage. And it also sort of features the devil as well, so another Lolly Willowes connection.

KIM: Great. 

AMY: Yeah, and I just saw Oppenheimer this weekend, so I feel like your book is actually very good in helping explain... I get so confused about the Spanish Civil War, you know, when it, when time goes by, I kind of forget it all because it's like, Which side's the good side, which side's the bad side. So your book does a really good job of explaining all that, but also kind of explaining, you know, people involved in communism at the time, all of the political underpinnings that now we're a little confused by. I felt like your book really did a great job of helping me understand it all. So thanks for writing it. And also I wanted to say your book really interested me and some other writers that I didn't know about, including Josephine Herbst. So we're going to add her to the list for a future episode, I think.

SARAH: Yay, that's great.

AMY: Thanks so much for joining us to talk about Sylvia Townsend Warner. This was so much fun.

SARAH: Thank you for having me. It was great.

KIM: So that's all for today's episode. Join us on our Facebook forum to learn more about this episode and see behind the scenes clips.

AMY: And we will see you next week. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

157. Back to School Prof Edition

AMY: Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Amy Helmes, here with my co-host, Kim Askew. Fun fact about Kim: she works on a college campus by day. Are you guys gearing up to welcome a new class of students, Kim?

KIM: Yeah, we sure are. It's always exciting to see. I work at a fashion college. So good to see everyone's outfits on the first day. They take it to a whole other level.

AMY: Oh, I bet. Do you feel like you have to up your style game?

KIM: No, I don't anymore. Maybe when I first started, but no. Um, so

we know that a lot of our listeners out there ALSO work on college campuses. Many of you out there are academics — so this week’s mini is dedicated to you.

AMY: That’s right. A few years ago around this time we did an episode called “Backpacks and Boarding Schools” which was all about novels that take place in a school setting. That was a fun one. But today, we’re going to be discussing some books which center around the lives of university professors.

KIM: There’s a lot to love about college professors, not the least of which is because they literally have inspired an entire Tiktok subculture.

AMY: Yeah, I assume you're talking about Dark Academia, uh, which I actually read a New York Times article that said that the pandemic is what kicked off the Dark Academia. trend. There were so many young people who  couldn't be on campus, so they wanted that college-y vibe. Because they couldn't have it!

KIM: Right. That's one trend we were way ahead of. Our blog, if you'll remember from the early Aughts, Romancing the Tome, it had a skull, a stack of books and a quill pen for our branding. 

AMY: The skull! [laughs]

KIM: I mean, I don't even know where we got that. 

AMY: The only thing missing was like a candle with dripping wax. 

KIM: Yeah, exactly. But I’m thinking if there’s one book that epitomizes this concept of Dark Academia, it’s The Secret History by Donna Tartt, the origin book of Dark Academia.

AMY: Yeah, yeah, I think everyone listening knows this book, and the best place to learn more about it is the “Once Upon a Time at Bennington” podcast, which we both loved listening to. 

KIM: We were OBSESSED with it when we were listening to it. It was so great.

AMY: It tells the real story behind the character of Julian Morrow, the classics professor in that novel. Donna Tartt based him off one of her real instructors when she was at Bennington. Did I ever tell you, Kim, The Secret History anecdote about Mike, my husband, at the library?

KIM: It's not coming to mind, but maybe there's a vague memory there somewhere. Remind me what happened?

AMY: Okay, so he’s always looking for book recommendations from me, so I had told him to read The Secret History. He did, and he loved it. So he, on his own, like a lunch break at work sort of thing, went to the library  and a librarian comes up and is like, “Can I help you find anything?” And he's like, “Yeah, actually.  I just finished a book that I really, really liked and I'm hoping to find something similar.” And so she's like, “What was the book you just read?” And he said, “The Secret History.” Her knees buckled. Like, she did like a gasp!

KIM: I do remember this. She was like, “This is the best day.” 

KIM: She had an ecstatic moment, and she put her hands on her knees,  she was so excited.

KIM: Yeah. Oh, that's adorable.

KIM: So that said, let's dive into some other books  in which there's a university setting, and specifically professors. 

AMY: Yes, there are actually a LOT of books out there featuring characters who are professors. but since this is a mini episode, we're just going to stick with  a few that spring to mind and,  the first one I'll mention just because. Okay. It's Fresh in My Brain is Lucky Jim by Kingsley It had been on my reading list for a really long time, I kept putting it off for some reason, and I,  wonder if maybe I was confusing it with Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, 

KIM: Totally different, but absolutely. I could see where you… that’s so easy to confuse.

AMY: Yeah. And I think I have read Lord Jim, so I knew it wasn’t that book…but I still had those vibes from it, so I didn’t want to read it. But anyway, I think the death of Amis’s son, Martin Amis got me to dive in, and I found it so wildly entertaining! I was laughing out loud. You’ve read this one, right Kim?

KIM: Yeah, it’s so fun. It’s about a junior-level medieval history professor, James Dixon, at some unnamed university in England. He has zero job security and he’s trying to get his scholarly writing published, and everything he does to try to advance himself kind of blows up in his face. But we get to follow his romantic travails as well. I haven't read that in a long time, but I just remember laughing hysterically too. It's so great. I need to reread it.

AMY: I feel like it should be subtitled “Curb Your Enthusiasm at College,” because he is a dead ringer for Larry David! His behavior is so cringey and inappropriate. Like, not cringey in a sexual way, but he does the wrong thing. He’s hilarious. His job requires him to suck up to people, but he’s so jaded, privately. He’s always ducking behind pillars and things to try to avoid having to interact with people he doesn’t like. He hates his students, even. He’s constantly drinking too much. The anecdote that comes to mind the most is the story of him accidentally burning a hole in the sheet when he is staying over as a guest at his boss's house, and like, the lengths that he goes to to try to cover up the cigarette burn in the sheet. That will forever live in my memory.

KIM: Yeah, it's unlucky because all these things happen to him, but he keeps getting away with everything terrible that he does.

AMY: Right! That’s what makes him “Lucky” Jim.

KIM: Yep, yep.

AMY: Um, Christopher Hitchens called this the funniest book of the second half of the 20th century. I mean, I don't know if I'd go that far, but I was surprised that I was laughing as much as I was because I didn't expect it to be that funny. There's actually a few film adaptations of this book too,  including one from 2003 that I might like to see because it stars Helen McRory, the late Helen McRory, Keely Hawes, whom we love, and Penelope Wilton, who is from Downton Abbey. They play all of the key female characters from the book.

KIM: We got to bring back a movie night for that one. That sounds so fun.

AMY: Okay, so can you think of any prof-related books?

KIM: Okay, so one of my favorite authors is Michael Chabon. I love him. In one of his early books, Wonder Boys from 1995 (I think maybe it was his second book out….) It’s kind of a fictional Kitchen Confidential, almost, about college writing programs. The professor is like this pot-smoking guy, Grady Tripp. I think he’s in his forties. He was a literary wunderkind but is stalled on his fourth novel, and he just keeps writing and writing and writing. It’s like this massive tome that’s never ending. But he’s kind of lovable, in a weird way, too, even though he’s a jerk trying to stay forever young. Have you read it?

AMY: No, When I think Wonder Boys… Michael Chabon,  What's the one about the… maybe I'm getting the title wrong…

KIM: Kavalier and Clay.

AMY: Yes, that’s what I was thinking of. 

KIM: Yeah, this is totally different. And there’s a movie adaptation, too. It’s from 2000. It’s got Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey, and Frances McDormand. I’m sure you heard of the movie. I mean, it has such a big cast.

AMY: When you say he’s a “loveable jerk,” that reminds me of Jim from Lucky Jim.

KIM: It’s definitely similar vibes.

AMY: Yeah, A little bit different vibe, but also a male professor that I'm going to talk about next is the  hero of the novel, Stoner. 

KIM: That is one of my favorites.  It's the one that was rediscovered, basically, and brought back into print by New York Review Books.

AMY: Okay. Yeah, and I think I borrowed this from you.

KIM: I’ve loaned it out so many times, I've had to buy it, like, four or five times.

AMY: Oh my god. 

KIM: It’s, like, one of the books that I pass out. Now, I think everyone's read it, but initially, like, people were kind of rediscovering it, I was, like, handing it out, like, candy.

AMY: Yeah, that's funny. I hope I wasn't the one that hung onto it. I know I wasn't because I don't keep books.

KIM: Yeah. You always give the good books back.

AMY: I first heard about it, though, in an interview with Natasha Lyonne, the actress. She mentioned it, and then I thought it sounded interesting and I said something to you about it and you were like, oh, I own it. It was published in 1965. The author's name is John Edward Williams. 

KIM: He wrote several, I think three other novels that are all totally different and they're amazing. Butcher's Crossing, there's one I believe, I think it's about Caesar, and then I can't remember what, there's like a sci-fi one that he wrote,   

AMY: It reminds me a little bit of, like a Thomas Wolfe novel, like You Can't Go Home Again or Look Homeward, Angel or one of those.  The vibe is similar,  but basically it's a sad story.

KIM: Everything goes wrong with him and unlike Lucky Jim, the bad things that happen just keep getting worse. I mean, he starts out with such hope and promise as an English major and then professor, but It just doesn't go well, but it's so beautifully written about the frustrations of life. They just eat away at him. I mean, the subtitle of this book should be why you should never become a humanities professor because it's just, it's, it's too hard. Yeah. It's so hard

AMY: And it's funny, because his parents want him to study something practical. I think they're the ones that want him to study agriculture, but he wants to be an English major and that's reminding me of how many English majors start college with their parents being like, “Nooooo!!!!” 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. My parents were always like, “Well, she can go to law school afterward.”

AMY: The English major’s defense!

KIM: Exactly. Yeah. “Oh yeah, sure, Mom and Dad. Yeah. We'll look at it again in four years.”

AMY: I think my dad kept out of it, but I remember my mom kind of trying to nudge me toward engineering, which is  a lot of the people in my family are engineers. Everybody's super smart. If that had happened, there'd be many a bridge on the verge of collapse out there had I taken her up on it. 

KIM: I think you could have done it, but you would have been the most, like, creative, poetical engineer, but I feel like you do have that strong analytical ability.

AMY: Hmm. Maybe. 

KIM: You don’t see it?

AMY: No. Anyway, alright,  let's find a different book to talk about.

KIM: Okay, so I wanted to throw in TWO Charlotte Bronte novels based on her real life experiences teaching at boarding schools in Brussels. While teaching in Belgium, Charlotte fell in love with a married man who ran the first school where she was both enrolled and taught English for her keep, Constantin Heger. (I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right), but the first book she wrote actually came out posthumously. It was called The Professor, but in the second book, Villette, Lucy Snow is the main character and she falls in love with the professor, Monsieur Paul Emmanuel, and it's a widely held belief that the character of Emmanuel in Villette is closely based on the real life man, Heger.

AMY: Oh, yeah. It kind of lines up closely. I have not read The Professor, though.

KIM: Yeah. That’s about a male professor’s adventures in work and love while teaching in Brussels. So it definitely goes with our theme today.

AMY: Okay,  so another one  I wanted to mention just because I read it probably in the last five years or so was Philip Roth's The Human Stain, which is set at an eastern (I don't know if it's a fictional) college. I can't remember. Um, that novel came out in 2000, but it's still very timely because it's about a professor whose job is on the line after he makes a remark in the classroom that is interpreted as racially insensitive.

Philip Roth wrote in The New Yorker that the book was inspired by a very similar incident that happened to a friend of his who was a professor at Princeton.

KIM: I think I read the article, but not the book. Um, and I believe there might be a movie.

AMY: There is. Anthony Hopkins. Nicole Kidman. It's kind of weird… Anthony Hopkins is weird casting for it, once you read the book and know the whole story. I don't think he would… I don't think you would want to cast him…

KIM: Yeah, well now they wouldn't cast it like that. 

AMY: Right. Okay. So then in terms of “lost ladies” of lit, I think there's another one that neither of us have read, Kim. It's by Dorothy Sayers. It's called Gaudy Night. And it's part of her Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels. 

KIM: Oh, yeah, I started Gaudy Night during lunch yesterday at Bottega Louie!

AMY: Wow!

KIM: I took it with me and started reading it, and I love it. I'm totally into it.

AMY: You know me, I'm not into mysteries at all…

KIM: Oh, then… it's a very traditional mystery. but it's got the fun vibe.

It’s set at Oxford. I mean…

AMY: Yeah, so this installment, Gaudy Night, it's basically about  a series of crimes that are taking place.  It's kind of an all girls, an all women's college…?

KIM: Shrewsbury college at Oxford.

AMY: Okay, okay. And there's some incidents of obscene graffiti and vandalism and a series of “poison pen” messages that are turning up, and so Harriet Vane is this character who is the love interest of Lord Peter Wimsey… she's a mystery writer, and so the college knows that she maybe could help figure out whodunit. And then she recruits Lord Peter Wimsey to come help her.

AMY: Right. I mean, this is just a basic mystery novel and I'm reading it on my phone and my Kindle app, and I've already  underlined or highlighted so many passages, because there's so many interesting, like, philosophical thoughts, observations about people, observations about being in a rarefied environment that are so good. I feel like you would love it.

AMY: Okay, so yeah, if there's a little bit more to it beyond just the playing out the plot…

KIM: Yeah, I think that's what you'd love about it. It's almost like the mystery so far is incidental, but I mean, it's also set at the old girl's school, which we love those things too. And that's also a hotbed for bad behavior, right?

AMY: Apparently! This idea of all the obscene vandalism that's taking place on the campus, it's making me think of, did you ever watch that Netflix show “American Vandal?”

KIM: No.

AMY: Oh my god, Kim. I hesitate to even recommend it on this podcast because it is filthy, filthy, but it is so funny. It's like a spoof of a true crime podcast  like “Serial” or something like that. And it's these high school kids that are trying to solve a mystery that's going on at their high school in like true crime documentary fashion. And it's really, really funny. It got canceled after two seasons, 

KIM: Okay. 

AMY: It’s worth watching

KIM: You know what? This reminds me of (totally not related) but, um, when we watched the British “Office” together and we were so obsessed with watching it..

AMY: Speaking of British television, the BBC did a miniseries  of Gaudy Nights, this Dorothy Sayers mystery. 

KIM: Oh, after I read it I want to watch it.

AMY: It’s all on YouTube, and we can link to it in our show notes. A young Harriet Walter plays Harriet Vane.

KIM: Who's Harriet Walter? Remind me of…

AMY: Harriet Walter is the mom from “Succession,” and she's

the mom from “Ted Lasso,” Rebecca's mom.  We love her. She was in Sense and Sensibility. She played the bitchy…

KIM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

AMY: Um, one more campus novel I wanted to point out is Mary McCarthy's Groves of Academe. We all know Mary McCarthy from The Group. That's her 1963 novel. Um, this one came out in 1952, and it's considered one of the first novels in this campus genre. This kind of idea of a campus novel. She was one of the first. It's a satire of her time teaching at Bard and Sarah Lawrence. The school in this book is called Jocelyn College. So she fictionalizes it. Um, but yeah, and then I guess, you know, The Group isn't really set on a college campus. It kind of begins on a college campus.

KIM: Right. It's like the afterlives after they graduate. 

AMY: And we are going to be. Doing an episode on The Group.

KIM: Yeah, I'm so excited we're doing a Mary McCarthy episode.

AMY: If you want to be all caught up to speed with that, you can start reading the group  you haven't already. In terms of other comic novels about college, we should probably check out A Campus Trilogy by David Lodge. The titles in this trilogy are Changing Places, Small World, and Work, and they were published in the mid 1970s and mid 1980s, and they all sound very “Lucky Jim”-like. Based on what I've read about them, I think we would really like them. 

Okay. All right. I'm interested. Adding it to the long, long list of books.

AMY: Yeah.  I'm sure you listeners know many more, so reach out and let us know what YOUR favorite novels that feature college faculty as characters. Email us, give us a shout-out on social media, or head over to our Facebook forum to post ones we ought to have included in this episode. 

KIM: And we’ll be back next week! Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost ladies of lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

156. Susan Taubes — Divorcing with Rosemary Kelty

AMY FOWLER: Hey everybody, welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off great books by forgotten women writers. I'm Amy Helmes, here with my writing partner Kim Askew.

KIM ASKEW: Hi, everyone. When the book we're going to be discussing today, Divorcing, was first published in 1969, the critic Hugh Kenner, in his review of the book in the New York Times, dismissed the author Susan Taubes "as a quick change artist with the clothes of other writers." Tragically, Taubes took her own life mere days later.

AMY: In recent years, Susan Taubes's work is being reassessed. New York Review Books published a new edition of Divorcing in 2020, and just this June they reissued her coming of age novella, Lament for Julia.

KIM: Our guest today, Rosemary Kelty, is one of our longtime listeners and a passionate advocate for literature written by women. We can't wait to discuss Taubes and Divorcing with her.

AMY: So let's raid the stacks and get started.

[intro music plays]

AMY: Rosemary Kelty is a prospect research coordinator at Weill Cornell Medicine. She has also worked at New York Cares, Penn America, New York Public Radio, and Columbia University Press. She has her master's in English from Queens College in New York City, and she is a proud fifth generation New Yorker. I was expecting her to have this very thick New York accent, and you can see that she doesn't. 

ROSEMARY: I've been trained out of it.

KIM: Oh, yeah. Okay. You started 

out with one. Yeah. Rosemary is also one of our most devoted listeners from the earliest days of this podcast. If doing this podcast, Kim, is like running a marathon, Rosemary is the person on the street corner handing us water at every mile marker.

Yeah, she's got the sign 

AMY: Yeah, it's a reminder to all you other listeners out there that we love [00:02:00] to hear from you guys. And you know what? You might get asked on the show like Rosemary.

KIM: Yeah. She has made so many great suggestions for books we should cover. We just had to have her on to discuss one of them. Welcome, Rosemary. We're so happy to have you.

ROSEMARY KELTY: Thank you so much Kim and Amy, I'm thrilled to be here.

KIM: All right. So let's get down to it. How did you come across Susan Taubes and her novel, Divorcing?

ROSEMARY: It was last summer. I was browsing through the uh, Strand Bookstores. That's an independent bookstore in New York. They have a Central Park kiosk. Um, It's really beautiful. They sell books right outside Central Park. And I came across their New York Review Books Classic section. And I always look at that series. You never know what gems you're going to come across. And that's how I came across Susan Taubes's Divorcing. And I was struck by the description in the back.It says "the question that haunts Divorcing, however, is whether any novel can be fleet and bitter and true and light enough to gather up all the darkness of a given life." So I just thought that sounds really interesting. What is this novel about? I expected it to be completely about the dissolution of a couple's marriage, and while it is most certainly the premise of the book, it's about divorcing from so much more in your wider life. And I also saw that the author was described as having a tragic death, and I wanted to read the book and learn more about Susan Taubes and her life and works.

AMY: When we had agreed to do this book, I didn't know anything about it other than the title, and we had recently done an episode on Ursula Parrott’s Ex-Wife and I thought, do we want to do Ex-Wife and then do Divorcing? Is that going to be too similar of books? No, not at all.

KIM: Couldn't be more different, really. 

AMY: Alright Susan Taubes. What can you tell us about her early life?

ROSEMARY: She was originally born Judit Zsuzanna Feldmann in Hungary. In 1928, Dr. Sándor Feldman, who was a Freudian psychoanalyst, and her mother's name was Marion Batory. Pardon me if I mispronounce the name. Susan Taubes was also the granddaughter of Mózes Feldmann, who had been the Grand Rabbi of Budapest. Her mother left the family in 1939 to marry another man. Susan and her father thus emigrated. to the U. S. in 1939, and they settled in Rochester, New York. I also wanted to mention that Susan Taubes changed her name from Judit to Susan when she arrived in the U. S. And thankfully, Susan's mother also survived World War II in Hungary. I believe that she also emigrated to the U. S. eventually or at least visited her daughter and her ex husband. Susan also received a BA from Bryn Mawr College and received a PhD in history and philosophy of religion from Radcliffe And she also did various work at the Sorbonne and Hebrew University. She met and married her husband, Jacob Taubes, while she was an undergraduate student.

AMY: I've seen it pronounced “Yakob” a lot, so I don't know.

ROSEMARY: Yeah that sounds right. He was born in Europe. 

AMY: Yeah, Jacob, Yakub, take it for what you will. They had a son in 1953 and a daughter in 1957. And by 1960, she began teaching at Columbia University where she was curator for the Bush Collection of Religion and Culture. She and her husband divorced in 1963, but their relationship continued to play a significant role in her life and work. Rosemary, can you talk about the dynamics of their marriage and maybe, if you know, what influence they might have had on each other's intellectual pursuits?

ROSEMARY: This is very tricky uh, in terms of anything definite. I've read that Jacob and Susan Taubes's marriage was pretty fraught. They supposedly had an “open marriage.” Again, I can't substantiate that; I've just read that in an article. He supposedly had many affairs, and that is similar to Ezra Blind in the book Divorcing. And I haven't come across anything about Susan Taubes having any affairs. I'm not sure if she had any romantic relationships after her divorce. Did either of you come across that? 

AMY: I don't remember seeing that anywhere either. 

KIM: We know that the book is somewhat autofiction, but we don't have actual facts to know which things are specifically true. We just know the gist of it 

AMY: Even if you take away the extramarital affairs and all that, it just seems like, um, two very cerebral people getting together, it might be explosive. 

KIM: Yeah. 

ROSEMARY: And what's interesting, too, is Jacob Taubes was also an ordained rabbi as well, which I found very interesting. One thing I will say, I can't speak to marriage dynamics necessarily between Jacob and Susan in any detail other than what we know of their divorce, but at least in the novel, Sophie mentions that Ezra wins the arguments every time. 

AMY: Because he has to win the argument and she has to let him. 

ROSEMARY: Yeah, and I wonder if she's actually even convinced.

AMY: Yeah. And also the idea of him so focused on his work. In the book, the Ezra character, he's the genius at work and he must be left to be able to do his great magnum opus. At the same time, she says, “I would like to write a book someday. Will I get to? Because I have to be the woman behind this great genius.” So just the idea of she had to sideline her own ambitions a little bit. (At least Sophie Blind in the book does.) 

ROSEMARY: Yeah it's interesting, though, in terms of her career, because she taught at Columbia. She went to all these prestigious institutions, was clearly highly respected by her peers. The author had (I know it's not good to use these types of phrases) but a more successful career than Sophie Blind in the book. So the basic premise of the novel is that the main character, a woman called Sophie Blind with three children, she's in the process of getting a divorce from her husband, Ezra Blind. But from the very beginning of the novel, so this is giving away the first page, but she is killed in an accident, and she is, beheaded. And throughout the rest of the novel, this decapitated head, who still appears to have the consciousness and the awareness of the main character, is basically rolling around through the character's life. So we just go through her entire life, basically, and not necessarily in traditional chronological order. We learn of her very intimate life with her husband Ezra. How they meet, how they get engaged and married, their actual wedding. We also, as readers, get an experience of the backstories of the characters' parents and grandparents lives and families. She also takes us through her entire past as she arrives in the U.S., her brief childhood in Hungary, and her return to Hungary post-war. So it's a real whole compilation of the character’s existence on this planet. It's so wacky, too! I don't know how else to describe it. Like, how do I describe this novel?

KIM: Yeah there's this severed head, her severed head wandering through her past. There's multiple funerals um, this nightmarish fantasy trial that's going on. And this is all woven throughout this idea of marriage using (as far as we know) her own personal experience with divorce and gender dynamics with her husband and possibly other partners and sublimating it into this novel. 

ROSEMARY: I think that Sophie Blind, as well as clearly Susan Taubes was also affected by her own parents’ rather unusual marriage, their divorce. Also, it's so hard to distinguish between the character and the author sometimes. I’m trying to be very careful here. In the novel too, the discussion of Sophie's paternal grandparents’ marriage.

KIM: Yeah. She's the product of all these relationships and she's bringing that potentially into her relationship with Ezra. 

AMY: And it ties into the whole Jewish tradition too, like going back to these previous generations and the rabbi grandfather and how they lived in Hungary and things like that. 

ROSEMARY: That's another issue, too, for me, I'm not part of that religion or culture. I wondered what other issues she was addressing in the novel that I didn't understand in terms of culture. I actually love how she describes different celebrations in the novel. It's very brief, but they're very descriptive about certain foods for holidays, or certain particular religious practices at home, anyway, I just wanted to bring that up, but that's something I can't speak to in terms of religion or culture.

AMY: Same. I felt that. I feel like if you were coming to this book with more of a knowledge of that, you would probably be able to extrapolate so much more. (Not just the religious background, but also the philosophy.) I realize how ignorant I am on every level when it comes to all this philosophy she's trying to weave in.

ROSEMARY: Yeah, same here. 

KIM: Freudian psychology, the biblical, the Old Testament, everything. I know. You almost have to be a scholar of all these things, which she and her husband together did, and their um, milieu.

ROSEMARY: Yeah, that's amazing too, isn't it? Her interweaving of all of these figures from the 20th century, the 19th century, but people further back, I'm sure, as well. There's just so much going on philosophically. 

AMY: And it’s like a fever dream.

KIM: It is a fever dream. Yeah.

ROSEMARY: Yeah, in terms of the philosophical stuff at the end, I don't know if that's supposed to be before she passed, before she was so brutally decapitated, or are we supposed to assume that this was actually a dream?

KIM: It’s an episode of “Dallas!”

ROSEMARY: I've never seen that show. 

KIM: This is a Gen-X thing. 

AMY: You're too young. 

KIM: Yeah, it was a huge controversy, 'cause everyone was like, what? 

ROSEMARY: Oh. 

KIM: … or if it was true..

ROSEMARY: Oh, wow.

AMY: I'm just thinking of all of the really highbrow analysis of this book, and we are the  only one that have or will ever make a comparison between this book and “Dallas.”

ROSEMARY: That's interesting, though. 

AMY: But yes, I think there's some merit to that. 

KIM: It was all a dream. Exactly. That's what I wondered too. There's no answer. Yeah. 

AMY: There's no knowing what's real and what's not in this. 

ROSEMARY: My initial reaction is that, “Oh, wait a minute, maybe she's okay.” But there's nothing definite. Then you know that she died so young and it's so tragic, and so when you read the book and you know that, then the ending, that feeling of could it all have been, is she okay? 

AMY: It brings a whole other layer to the experience of reading thebook, knowing what her fate was. 

KIM: Considering it's about death and dying and, yeah/

AMY: And we're going to talk about the reviews this book got in a few minutes here. And some people say oh, the bad reviews prompted her to walk into the ocean. And I texted you, Kim, and I said “I can see from reading this book that maybe that was gonna happen.”

KIM: I know; it's almost like she presages her own death. Yeah.

AMY: Yes. reading the book, at least from Sophie's perspective, you're like, “Wow, she's grappling with an awful lot of big, heavy stuff.”

ROSEMARY: Yeah. I completely agree with you, Amy.

AMY: I was just gonna say, too, that… so it starts off and it's, like I said, a fever dream. You're on an acid trip, almost. It's all over the place, you have no idea at times what's going on, it's first person, it's third person, it's really jumbled. And then I felt as the book progressed and we got closer to her European origins and her reconnecting with her roots and all that, that the prose actually got so much more clear. 

ROSEMARY: Well, I agree. 

AMY: It started to read like a typical novel almost by the end, and I thought that was interesting too.

KIM: It's like she has more clarity and it feels clearer. 

ROSEMARY: I'd have to agree with that too. I found the first 80 pages a little bit difficult to get through the first time. The second time, I'm a big fan of it and I saw it as definitely, it seems like it was related to the severed head as well. I remember a few times she mentions that you go through all your life, all your memories before you die. It's very macabre, I know. But I was wondering: is that the structure she was trying to evoke?

KIM: I thought that, too. 

AMY: I also saw it, especially with the Freudian psychoanalysis stuff… I read the word “shattered” used to describe this book and I thought that was the perfect word for it. And it made me think of a broken mirror on the sidewalk or something. And she's looking at the reflection of all these different shards and seeing different sides of her life reflected back at her sort of thing. There's a mention in a New Yorker article about this book that says “it does not even attempt stability.” 

ROSEMARY: Yeah. 

KIM: That's so perfectly said, I think! You just don't know what is going on at first. And it takes a little bit to understand even a little bit what's happening. And then once you do, everything starts to make sense. So I guess then reading it again, you're going into it, knowing what to expect, and it probably makes it easier. But I was just like, wondering “What is happening??”

AMY: Yeah, Kim, you likened it to reading Joyce's Ulysses.

KIM: Yeah, definitely. And I think that also speaks to what you were saying earlier, Rosemary, about there's being so much in there. Where you almost need an annotated book that explains, just like you would read Ulysses where you understood what all these references were because you're missing out on so much without that context.

AMY: I read it halfway through the first time and I had to just put it aside. I was like, “I can't.” It's funny because I said to you, Kim, we switch off who writes the questions for each episode, like for the guest. And I was like, “Kim, I need to hand the baton to you on this one. Cause I don't even know what to say about this book. I don't even know where to begin.” Of course I went back and read it a second time and I think because it wasn't so jarring anymore, I knew there was a severed head, I knew what to expect. Then I was able to immerse myself in it, and I had no problem the second time reading it. And what's funny is I feel like now, having thought I would have nothing to say about this book. I feel like I have so muchto say about it!

KIM: Yep. I couldn't agree more. 

ROSEMARY: The topics of the book, they're difficult to get through as well, right? There's a lot of tragedy. For the Sophie Blind character and Susan Taubes herself, they both lost family members In Auschwitz and the concentration camps. She, thankfully, did not have to experience Nazi persecution of Jews firsthand, but her former neighbors, her family members did, you know? And that, when I was reading that particular section, that made me cry too. The desperation of war. It's just so vivid. 

KIM: Vivid is the perfect word for that. I've never read anything quite like that about post World II in that way.

ROSEMARY: It's so personal. You get it from the first hand accounts, and you can see the psychological trauma.

KIM: Mm hmm. Absolutely.

AMY: I was getting Sophie's Choice vibes in that section. It was almost like the inverse a little bit, where she was gonna have to leave with her father and leave her mother behind, and it wasn't like she had the option, really, of making the choice, but there was that same gut-wrenching feeling

KIM: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm.

AMY: And it just had that whole setup in that you see them in the modern era and then you go back in time to the war and it illuminates why that person is the way they are in later years.

ROSEMARY: I really wonder if … were the horrors of World War II a significant shadow for the author, as they appear to be, for the character Sophie Blind? How do you even make sense of that? I was watching, listening to this interesting panel from this other independent bookstore here in New York and Brooklyn, the Community Bookstore. They interviewed David Rieff, who wrote the introduction to this book. And he's the son of Susan Sontag… and Susan Taubes’s son, Ethan Taubes, was on that panel. And another scholar, Jess Bergman, was on that panel. They were discussing the launch of the book. And David Rieff had mentioned an author, an intellectual figure, who said “How do you write poetry after seeing Auschwitz?” After hearing that, I wondered, was this particular book something like that for Susan Taubes, I wonder? 

KIM: Mm hmm. 

AMY: so speaking of Susan Sontag, let's turn our attention to Taubes’s friendship with her. Rosemary, do you know much about that? 

ROSEMARY: Well, I know that they were very close friends. During the Taubes’s marriage and afterwards. I know that Susan was apparently a student of Jacob Taubes. Sontag was very intertwined with the Taubes couple, and I've read that Susan Sontag also identified Susan Taubes’s body when her body was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean. So clearly, they were very close. And I know that, from David Reiff's introduction, and David Reiff is Susan Sontag's son, he mentions in the introduction to the book that his mother once said she couldn't forgive Susan Taubes for taking her own life.

AMY: Also I had seen that in one of the articles I read this week that Samuel Beckett was a fan of Taubes. And that made a lot of sense to me because when I think in the book Divorcing about that trial, it's like her trial at the end of her life, but it's also the divorce proceedings, and it's very Theater of the Absurd, right?

ROSEMARY: Yeah. It's just, I can't, how do I just, how do I describe it?

AMY: Yeah, It's bonkers. To me it was like, Beetlejuice when he's in the waiting room. Same vibes. 

KIM: But also terrifying, at the same time.

AMY: Yeah. Disturbing. The other movie that kind of came to mind. So everything's, like we said, it just jumps from one thing to the next. But when it was talking about the marriage itself, I kept thinking of that Adam Driver/Scarlett Johansson A Marriage Story, just because there's a lot of discussion. Very much analyzing what went wrong, and he wants to save it. 

KIM: In a very Rabbinical scholar and Freudian way 

AMY: Who, who doesn't want to ever lose an argument. 

KIM: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

KIM: Oh, so speaking of Rosemary, do you want to read a passage from Divorcing? Because I feel like we need to give our listeners little bit of an idea of all this that we're talking about.

ROSEMARY: Yeah, I have two sections. They're pretty short. I just thought they connected so well. [Reads a passage.]

AMY: I love that passage, because it's reassuring you, the reader, as you're reading this book, which is “baffling and blundering.” 

KIM: Absolutely. “It's just a book.” Yeah.

ROSEMARY: And then I'll just read real quick when I read this, I just thought, Oh, wow, this is exactly like the book passage. [reads passage]. It's so true! It's so true! You're gonna go on to the adult world and it's gonna be…

KIM: Yeah, at least you know that you can depend on that you're going to be in school every day, you're going to have those clocks, you're going to have the uniforms telling you what to do. And that is a sanctuary from what is reality when you hit the adult world. Beautifully, beautifully put. 

ROSEMARY: Yeah, there's a comfort in there and so you're given that structure as a kid, and then you're fooled, you're an adult, it's no, it's gonna be a wild roller coaster.

KIM: The same with marriage, as far as society she got the structure from being married and then when she was cut off from being married, it set her adrift in society. And then you know that corresponds with the severed head I think. 

AMY: Yeah, she even says in the book that “marriage is a cloak,” a disguise that you can wear, that it keeps you protected from the truth, and once you get divorced, you have to take the cloak of marriage off, and then you're forced to confront the real truth of your existence. The other thing I wanted to connect back to the passages you read, I was just thinking of this today. I mean, “divorcing.” I think you mentioned Rosemary. It's not just a book about marital divorcing. She's divorcing from her. father. She's leaving America. So it's “divorcing” on many levels. But when you think about like a “marriage plot” book, you know exactly what to expect. They conform to a certain thing that you're used to, right? They're tidy, they're simple. That's a marriage plot book. So, this is the opposite, this is a “divorcing book,” and therefore, stylistically, it has to be the opposite too. It has to be messy, not tidy, all over the place; like an explosion, almost, of what the “marriage plot” book is.

ROSEMARY: No, that's interesting, Amy. You mentioned that about the explosion. Because there's one passage or line in the book where she does actually describe the dissolution of a marriage as like a building falling apart. I'm trying to find that. Oh yeah, on page 153, she says just that “it is at a calamitous moment that the past opens into view. A block of high apartment buildings, raised in 15 years of marriage, has been bombed away, revealing a long forgotten landscape which lay hidden behind the walls.The clearing of the wreckage must wait. As for the price or damage to body, soul, and mind of fifteen years of her life blanked out. Or is it more?” And she says “the sensation of forgetting comes back first. How one walked through years sealed in oblivion.” Wow. I can't understand how anybody who reviewed this, whether you like the style of the novel or not, you have to admit how beautiful the language in this book is! I don't know how to describe it, it's just like, when I've read certain lines like that or passages, I'm like, “Oh, I get that I can identify.

AMY I highlighted in this book more than I have highlighted in any book that we've done for this podcast. There were so many lines that I, even though there was so much I was confused about, there was so much that resonated. And at the same time (and I feel like we've been going on and on marveling at this book), I haven't decided that I love this book.

KIM: No, I agree. 

ROSEMARY: You don't have to. 

KIM: Yep. 

ROSEMARY: I'm not saying that this is my favorite book, although in terms of analyzing the darker sides of the human condition, I'd have to say it's probably one of the best I've read.

KIM: I agree with you.

ROSEMARY: In analyzing, she's so open, to what she wants to say about her life, her intimacy with her husband I mean, it's, it's, wow I agree though, you don't have to love it or like it, but I mean, that's something I've come to terms with in more recent years about giving books a chance.

KIM: Yeah. 

ROSEMARY: Because even if it's not your thing doesn't mean you can't appreciate it. 

KIM: Yeah. So we had mentioned that Harsh New York Times review of Divorcing. Can you talk though about how her book was received when it was first published? 

ROSEMARY: Yeah, sure that was the first review I came across, by Hugh Kenner. When I read it (it's very short, too) I initially thought “Okay, this is very dismissive to say the least.” That's being kind about the review. But that video, which I would highly recommend to everyone to check out, it's on Community Booksters YouTube channel. In that interview or discussion, David Reiff called it “unspeakable.” He found it so offensive. And later on in that discussion, Ethan Taubes said yes, it was “extremely vile.” Those are his words. And I was like, yes, it is completely vile, because Hugh Kenner's not analyzing the book at all. I get it. The first part is…you have to get through it. You gotta keep going through it to really appreciate and understand what she was trying to do. But I was looking for other reviews. I did come across one from The Chicago Tribune by Sarah Blackburn, and she was much kinder. She loved the language, the craft. She just wasn't a big fan of the characterization. To me, reading that article, she wanted something more traditional, but it was a much more glowing review. I wonder if Susan Taubes read that review. But yeah, it does seem that Hugh Kenner's review really affected the life of the novel. David Reiff also said in panel discussion or it might have been in the intro, I'm sorry, to the book, that apparently at the time, if your book was reviewed in The New York Times, if it got thumbs up, It was popular.If it got thumbs down, you never saw it again. That was interesting to me when David Reiff said that one review basically consigned the book to oblivion until 2020. I couldn't find too many other reviews. I don't know, did you? It was frustrating. I don't know why. It was published by Random House and everything. I guess it could be very controversial at the time. It's pretty raw, like, oh, I was blushing when I was reading certain things. 

KIM: Yeah. She was pushing boundaries.

ROSEMARY: Yeah. Yeah. 

KIM: Within a few days of this review, she took her own life. And I guess we don't really know why. We can make guesses. Obviously, the review did come out a few days earlier, but she was struggling with a lot probably.So it's all just surmising what may have happened. 

ROSEMARY: We'll never know. But one thing I took away from that panel discussion, you know, it was really touching, too, of her son, Ethan Taubes mentioning that she was engaged in life. He also said that he views this novel, the writing of this novel, as her way to continue to be engaged in life, and I thought that was interesting. He clearly has a positive remembrance of his mother 

KIM: And let's fast forward to 2020 and she's gaining recognition. As you mentioned, Dr. Merve Emre and Leslie Camhi, they both wrote about her novella, Lament for Julia, too in a recent issue of the New Yorker and the New York Times.

ROSEMARY: Yeah. 

KIM: And the novella sounds fascinating. Have you read it? 

ROSEMARY: Yeah. No, I haven't gotten to that, but I was super excited to see that, “Oh my goodness! There's a review of Susan Taubes’s other work, which in 2020, you know, her son and Susan Sontag's son were talking about, “We're trying to get that published,” and here we are. So clearly, people want to read more. 

KIM: Yeah. And clearly you are on the pulse, because you are the one who mentioned doing this book before those articles came out!

AMY: I know you had suggested this for the episode before that stuff started coming out. I think it's clear that everyone out there is gonna have to make up their own mind about this novel. There's a lot to it. We did our best at trying to break it down a little bit. I'm not sure if we succeeded or not, but it's that kind of book. We would encourage you to take a look, though. And Rosemary, we cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. We're so happy we finally got to meet you over Zoom. You've given so much insight today. It was really fun to have this discussion with you. 

ROSEMARY: Thank you both. I was so thrilled when you asked if I wanted to discuss something. I was like, absolutely! And this book has literally just opened up a whole new world for me in terms of literature and what’s read, what's not read, what's not published, and again I really appreciate you ladies inviting me. It's no words, it's been awesome. 

 ROSEMARY: And I would encourage readers, other listeners, just try to appreciate a book on its own merits. 

AMY: Yes. And also, just as in life, be willing to step out of your comfort zone. That's how you grow. 

ROSEMARY: Yeah, this podcast has encouraged me to do that. So thank you. I just adore this podcast. Thank you so much.

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Don't forget to join our Lost Ladies of Lit forum on Facebook if you want to connect more with Kim, myself, or Rosemary. You will find her over there chatting away. It's kind of a central hub for all of our listeners to be in conversation about the Lost Ladies we've covered and books in general.

KIM: Yeah, see you over there. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

154. Ismat Chughtai - The Quilt and Other Stories with Tania Malik

AMY HELMES: Welcome to another episode of Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off great works by forgotten women writers. I’m Amy Helmes…

KIM ASKEW: And I’m Kim Askew. Regular listeners of this show will probably remember an episode we did last year on Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a lifelong collaborator with Merchant and Ivory. She was married to an Indian, lived in India for several decades and wrote about her experiences there, but she was actually German. It’s a common misconception that she was an Indian writer. (That’s episode #93 If you want to go back later and have a listen.)

AMY: Today we will be focusing on one of India’s own lost ladies of lit. (Or maybe we should say an author who is unknown to many westerners). She’s an iconoclastic writer of the early 20th century who’s considered the “Grande Dame of modern Urdu fiction.” 

KIM: Ismat Chughtai was one of the boldest and most outspoken writers of her day. Her cleverly-crafted short story “The Quilt” sparked a years-long obscenity trial, but it also helped establish her as a writer who wasn’t afraid to shine a light on taboo subjects and speak frankly about women’s experiences both in the traditional and modern Indian world.

AMY: Time to peek under the covers, if you’ll pardon the pun, to learn more about Chughtai. We’ve got another Indian-born author with us to discuss her.

KIM: Yes, it’s time to raid to the stacks and get started!

[intro music plays]

 Our guest today is Tania Malik, who was born in New Delhi and raised in India, Africa, and the Middle East. She now divides her time between San Francisco and Milwaukee, where she writes for outlets including Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Salon, Calix Journal, and other publications. Publishers Weekly called her 2014 novel Three Bargains honest and astounding. And her most recent book, Hope You Are Satisfied, is a suspense story set in Dubai, which NPR recently recommended in their summer reads list. Yay. If you loved HBO's White Lotus, you would probably enjoy the vibes of this book, listeners. Tania we're so glad to have you on the show and we're particularly happy to get to discuss an Indian author with you. 

TANIA MALIK: Thank you so much for having me on. I have admired this podcast for a long time and have been introduced to so many new writers with your podcast, so I'm very excited to be on. Thank you.

audioAmyFowler11475091194: So you were educated at boarding schools in the foothills of the Himalayas, which may or may not be relevant to our discussion, but it sounds so cool. It actually reminds me of Out of Africa: I had a farm at the hills of Ngong, or whatever it's called.

AMY: Was Ismat Chughtai part of the curriculum when you were in school? Or what was your first introduction to her? At

TANIA: I wish she had been part of the curriculum. You know, it was a Catholic boarding school run by Irish Catholic nuns and their reading curriculum leaned more towards Dickens and Shakespeare. Besides, I think the nuns would have been scandalized by Chughtai's writings, especially the way she wrote about, you know, women's sexuality. So, yeah, I wish she had been part of the curriculum, but she was not. But... I came to know her in a very roundabout way. My father introduced me to the writings of Saadat Hasan Manto, who was a contemporary of hers. And when I was reading about him, I came across her name, and I said, Wait a minute. Who is this writer? When you read that someone's writings were considered indecent, you know, you're curious at once, and you want to read them immediately. So I started looking more into her, and then I, you know, saw that she wrote screenplays, and I did recall her from movies I had seen as a child. But the contradiction of this person who wrote such incisive and, you know, nuanced fiction, you know, was also writing these heavy-handed Bollywood movies was quite a contradiction to me. But the more I read about her fiction, the more of a fan I became.

KIM: All right. Let's talk a little bit about her background. So Ismat Chughtai was born in 1915 in Badaun, India, which isn't too far from New Delhi in Northern India. And Amy and I admittedly don't know very much about India that isn't the British colonial perspective, sad to say, let alone about Indian literature. So is there anything we should know about the Urdu literary tradition to maybe better understand her and her literary significance?

TANIA: Urdu literature, you know, evolved from and Arabic literature, and it has a very long and storied history and encompasses many genres. For example, one of the forms of Urdu literature is the Ghazal, which is a kind of poetry that speaks a lot to love and spirituality. But the other very important form is storytelling. And this was a tool used by Urdu writers, especially when the British ruled India. They used it to spread the resistance and the rebellion and to encourage a national identity. And even after the partition of India, when, you know, Urdu became the national language of Pakistan, it still very much flourished in India. But Chughtai, she grew up in a colonized India in a time when you were a second class citizen in your own country and had almost no rights. And she was a woman as well. And she was born in a conservative and patriarchal society, so I think it definitely made her the writer she was. She was very outspoken and unapologetic in her writings, in her opinions. And the universality with which she wrote about women's experiences still holds ground today, I think. And she was considered, she is considered one of the four pillars of Urdu fiction. It has to be noted, though, that the other three are men. She is the only woman.

KIM: Okay. Interesting. Okay.

AMY: At least we got one woman in. One woman holding up the building. 

KIM: Yeah. As usual. Yeah.

TANIA: There always has to be one in the room. 

KIM: Mm hmm. Yep.

AMY: ha. So what do we know about her early years, her childhood, and how it might have shaped the writer she would go on to become?

TANIA: Well, she was born in a kind of a middle class Muslim family. Her father was a civil servant. And she was one of among 10 children, and she was one of the younger children, I believe. Her older sisters got married off when she was young, and they left the house. So she grew up in the company of her brothers. And I think you can really see how this exposure to this frank conversation of these men really influenced her writing style. And for a Muslim household, I think they were not very segregated, you know, the men and the women. So there was a lot of mixing between the sexes, and she got to climb trees and play football in the streets and do other activities which probably, girls at that time, they were forbidden to do. I think most importantly, her father supported her education, even when he said that he would be ostracized and that educating a girl was even worse than prostituting them. And so, you know, he did support her, he let her go to college. I think that was very important for her. She had an older brother who was already an established writer by the time she was a teenager, and he was a modernist and a very liberal thinker. And so I think when you have someone dear to you who is an example of what a writer should be, , that must have influenced her in some way. And he did become her first mentor.

KIM: That's great.

AMY: Yeah, it sounds like conversation around the dinner table in that household, nothing was off limits, you know. There was no taboo. You could just be open and all kinds

TANIA: Right. Yeah. And they've talked about sex, which is, I can't imagine my grandparents ever mentioning the word or even 

AMY: No. Yeah, exactly. Ha ha ha. Um, so speaking of this older brother, after her first work was published, people actually assumed that he had been the one to write it. 

TANIA: Yes. I think no one could believe that a woman had written, you know, the subject she had written about, nor in the style that it had been written in. Uh, you know, her brother was an inspiration and influence. So he probably had, you know, some impact on her writing style, at least initially. The misconception, I believe, started when her first story was published and everyone saw the name Chughtai and said, Why did he change his first name? But she was writing about things she saw and observed and what no one would talk about. No one could conceive that a woman would do that. She joked about her brother as well, that he said, “Who is this person writing in my name and my style?” You know, so, but yeah, even while he was a progressive thinker, he was still a man. And so she was able to shine a light more intimately and accurately on the women's issues in her stories.

KIM: And speaking of progressive, in her mid twenties, she became associated with the Progressive Writers Movement. How did the connections with this group impact her? What were some of her other major literary influences?

TANIA: So the Progressive Writers Movement, I think she attended the first meeting when she was in college, and it was an association of writers who were hoping to bring about political and social change through literature and highlight, um, issues with marginalized communities. It was here that she met Rashid Jahan, who was a doctor and a political revolutionary. And she was just blown away by the way Jahan would just speak her mind, and she just loved her, you know, her fiery writings and speeches and the tone of her voice. I think Jahan really inspired her to write challenging female characters. And she really wanted to be very much like Jahan. She was very much an impact on Chughtai for the rest of her life. But at college, Chughtai read voraciously, not only a wide range of Urdu writers, but also, you know, Somerset Maugham and Dostoevsky and Thomas Hardy, and I think they all had a great impact on her. She says that she learned the conventions of storytelling from O. Henry, and you can certainly see the similar wit, and then the similarity in the way they have their characters, um, you know, creative solutions to get out of difficult situations. There is a lot of similarity there.

AMY: Oh yeah, for sure. You definitely see the connection.

KIM: Mm hmm.

AMY: Chughtai was the first Indian woman to obtain both a BA and a BT, which is a bachelor's degree in teaching. She became the headmistress of an all girls school and then eventually she moved to Bombay and became an inspectress of schools, which sounds very impressive. In 1942, when she was 29 years old, she married a film director. Her family was... vehemently opposed to the match, but she later said that she married him not for love, but for independence. And I found that really interesting because it seemed like it could almost be a plot from one of her stories, don't you think?

TANIA: Absolutely. Yes. She was determined to go to college. She even threatened to run away from home if she couldn't continue her education. And she did meet her husband when she was getting her teaching degree. And later when he proposed, he was at that time in the film industry, he was writing dialogue for the Bombay talkies. I think her family disapproved because anything to do with the film industry kind of had this whiff of disrepute about it. It wasn't something appropriate for a young girl from an upstanding family. But there were very limited options for her as a single woman at that time, and when she got married, she got to move to Bombay or Mumbai, as it's now known, it was a much more cosmopolitan city. And it gave her a chance to write a lot more and work, to be a working woman. And I believe, like, when he proposed to her, she said something to the effect of I've been trying my whole life to cut the chains that fetter me, and so I don't want to take on this other shackle that is marriage. Um, so he must have known, especially from that statement, that he was getting an independent spirit. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah. So just prior to marrying, she publishes the story we mentioned in our intro in it's called “"Lihaaf",” or “The Quilt,” as we know it in English. So suffice to say the Indian world kind of freaked out at the publication of this story. I mean, when I read it, I knew nothing about it. I try not to find out anything about the writer or the book before I read them so I can just take it in. And I was so surprised. 

AMY: Yeah, so let's dive into it, and then we can branch off to some of her other stories. But Tania, do you want to summarize what “The Quilt” is about?

TANIA: Of course. The story, like you say, did freak everyone out and it landed Chughtai in court on obscenity charges. The story is told from the point of view of a young girl who goes to stay with her aunt while her mother is out of town. And the aunt is married to a wealthy man. Now, as we learn, this man is neglectful of his wife and is busy entertaining young men rather than paying attention to his marriage. And you know, women at that time, their one duty in life was to get married and be a wife. And this aunt is unable to fulfill that duty. She gets despondent. And all that can help her are the oil massages from her maid. Now when this young girl comes to stay with her aunt, she's sleeping in a cot next to the aunt's bed. And she's awoken at night by the quilt moving in a way that frightens her. And when she calls out, her aunt says, Go back to sleep. And we come to understand what is really happening between the aunt and the maid.

KIM: Yes, listeners. It's what you think. 

TANIA: Exactly. Yeah. It's only a few pages long, but it touches on all these things like gender and class imbalance and, you know, women's sexuality, the frustration and suppression in heteronormative marriages and even just, like, loneliness and friendship. And it does go into some darker territory when the aunt's attention does briefly land on the young girl as well.

KIM: Definitely. It's interesting that there's a young girl as a narrator because you're seeing it through her eyes, not quite understanding, and you're having to make the connections almost. Why do you think she did it that way?

TANIA: It must be because a child is an innocent figure and relates what she sees without judgment. You know, when a child speaks, unfiltered and uncensored. and we are the ones who are making all the connections and , the child is not doing any deciphering. We are doing all the deciphering, which is very interesting.

KIM: Yeah.

TANIA: But at the same time, there is some kind of discomfort, because you are understanding all of this from a child's point of view. And she never let you out of that discomfort.

KIM: Yeah. That's true. 

AMY: Think about the leeway that this gives in terms of publishing this story, because it's not really explicit in the language. The child doesn't know what's happening, so the child says the covers are moving, and it's like an elephant and what's going on you know, the shadow of the blanket and there are sounds Yeah. So it gave her the freedom. Although still she landed in court, but, you know, ostensibly it allowed her to go farther by using this child's point of view.

TANIA: Oh, yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, that imagery of an elephant moving under the quilt is so childlike and so sweet and innocent. Like, she is so confused about what is going on. You feel sympathy for her as well, but at the same time, for the aunt and the maid, too, and the situation they are in, they have kind of formed this makeshift family, you know, because there are these two women who are relegated to the seclusion of their side of the house, and how they support each other and help each other in many ways. But yes, having the child tell us all of this just through her very basic understanding, actually non understanding, of what is going on was a very interesting device.

KIM: Yeah. It's kind of darkly funny. I would say there's definitely humor.

AMY: Yeah, but 

KIM: got a darkness to it. 

AMY: I just read it another time before we hopped on this call, and this most recent time reading it, it was far more disturbing to me. I think I honed in a lot more on the child abuse, you know, that was actually going on. It's kind of unclear how far it was taken because again, it's a child describing it, but it wasn't good, you know, and it becomes almost more and more like a horror story. The child is frightened and she doesn't want to be alone in the room with her and 

KIM: Yeah.

Yeah. 

TANIA: She is very and she does kind of say things that a child who is put in sexual situation in which they do not know how to express themselves, you know, they want to call their mother, they want to call an adult, but they don't know what they're going to say about it. Um, I think also, at the beginning of the story, how she opens the story, we meet the child narrator as an adult who kind of slyly says, I'm not going to tell you about the liaisons I've had in my own quilt, but, uh, the quilt is reminding me of this incident from my childhood. And I actually feel that's Chughtai's way of saying, yes, the child was probably very traumatized and confused when she was younger, but she's now grown up and she almost has sympathy for her aunt. She understands so much more of what the aunt and the maid were going through as being an adult. And she now doesn't judge it and is not as traumatized as you would think, because of the understanding that has come with age.

AMY: Yeah, and I think as a reader, you're having all these same questions in your head. You're having sympathy. You're seeing how kind of awful it is at the same time. But, you're right, at the very end, there is that little kick of humor. Why don't you just read the last few paragraphs. 

TANIA: Absolutely. I'd love to. So this is, uh, the young child again, she's sleeping next to the aunt in her cot, and she's awoken again at night. 

Once again, the quilt started billowing. I tried to lie still, but it was now assuming such weird shapes that I could not contain myself. It seemed as if a frog was growing inside it and would suddenly spring on me.

“Ami!” (That means mother.) I spoke with courage. But no one heard me. The quilt, meanwhile, had entered my brain and started growing. Quietly creeping to the other side of the bed, I swung my legs over and sat up. In the dark, I groped for the switch. The elephant somersaulted beneath the quilt and dug in. During the somersault, its corner was lifted one foot above the bed.

Allah! I dove headlong into my sheets. What I saw when the quilt was lifted, I will never tell anyone. Not even if they gave me a lakh of rupees. 

And a lakh is a lot of money. It's about a hundred thousand. So…

KIM: Wow. So great. 

AMY: I feel like every kid does have that realization when you first hear about sex in any way shape or form. A little bit horrified, a little bit grossed out, you know, so

KIM: So, the story first appeared in a literary journal. Um, what was the initial reaction to it? Do you know?

TANIA: Well, the story caused tremendous controversy, as you can imagine, and it was condemned by many readers and critics. Her publisher received so many letters calling her all sorts of names. I think it frightened her to a certain extent. And as the story goes, she's at home a couple of months after the birth of her daughter, and she's warming milk for her two month old, and there's a knock on the door and there's a policeman and he has these summons. She is being charged with obscenity by the British court, because at that time the British still ruled India. Interestingly, Saadat Hassan Manto, who I mentioned earlier, who was her contemporary and fellow writer, was charged at the same time. So they were both dragged into court on obscenity charges for stories they had written. The court did give them the chance to apologize formally and avoid any serious consequences, but they chose to contest the charges and they appeared in court together. She does tell this funny story about Manto, and he had been accused of using the word bosom in his story. And he jumps up in court and says, “What do you expect me to call a woman's breasts? Peanuts?” So…

AMY: That's hilarious.

TANIA: It was all very ridiculous. I think in Chughtai's case, her lawyer argued that there wasn't any explicit suggestion of a sexual act or lesbianism, and there was no profanity used. So her charge was dismissed on the basis that there were no four letter words in the story. Interestingly, I have to note, there was no furor over the fact that the husband in the story was entertaining these young men. All the invective was kind of targeted towards the woman in the story.

KIM: Of course. 

AMY: Because that's so obvious in the story as well. Like, he's hanging out with all these good looking young boys. 

Yeah, 

funny. 

KIM: Could there have been serious ramifications for her if things had gone another way in the trial? Or at that point, was it more of just kind of a farce? 

TANIA: No, I think it could have gone in all sorts of directions, up to like a big fine and jail time. I think the whole thing did disturb her tremendously. She did base the character on a woman she had heard about from her hometown neighborhood. And years later, she ran into this woman at a social gathering. And she was a little concerned about how the woman would react, but this woman embraced her and said that after reading the story, she had been inspired to change her life. She had gotten out of her toxic marriage, she had remarried, she had had a son and she introduced Chughtai to her toddler. And I think that did hearten her a bit. Because between the court case and the backlash, I think Chughtai was derailed for some time. She never came to regret the story, but she did go on to say that she was forever pigeonholed by it and that everyone had just read this story only or heard about it, and they couldn't think of her as anything more than the quote unquote obscene writer of “"Lihaaf".” She did say something to the effect of It was used as a proverbial stick to beat me with, and anything I wrote after that, I was buried under the weight of it.

AMY: And it was one of her earliest pieces, right, to be published?

TANIA: It was. 

AMY: So imagine being a new writer and having this huge brouhaha surrounding it and being so young. 

TANIA: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people around her, like her husband was like, “Why don't you apologize?” Friends were saying, “Why don't you apologize?” You know, “Get out of it.” And, she stuck to her guns and she chose to contest the case, being this lone woman appearing there, even though Manto was there with her. But they had to get these lawyers and go to Lahore, which is now in Pakistan, and appear in court. She believed in her story and she believed in her words. And she always said, I'm just writing what I see and what I heard about.

KIM: That's so brave. Really brave. 

AMY: Yeah, and didn't she say something like, Why would you want to sweep all these taboos under the rug? Like, let's air them out, let's shine a light on it all and talk about it.

TANIA: . Yeah. She had this way of turning this, magnifying glass on this very conventional side of life. Um, I know you did an episode on Jhabvala, and she kind of had the same thing where she had this kind of insider's look, but this outsider's detachment almost in her writing. 

AMY: And we actually reached out to Ruth Jhabvala's daughter. To see if they might have ever crossed paths in their lifetime, um, and she checked with her sisters and they ultimately thought that they wouldn't have met because they lived in different parts of India and were in different social circles. But she said (her name is Firoza, Ruth's daughter) she said she was excited that we were doing this episode because she's like, “The Quilt” is brilliant. You know,

so. 

TANIA: Oh, that's so interesting to hear, yeah.

AMY: Yeah. And listeners, I'm sure you're very intrigued now by this story. If you would like to check it out, as well as the others from Chughtai that we're going to still be discussing today, there's a 1994 compilation called The Quilt and Other Stories out from Sheep Meadow Press, which includes an introduction by Anita Desai. And you can also just find The Quilt online. We'll link to a copy of that in our show notes if you just can't wait. 

KIM: Right. And almost all of the stories in this particular collection revolve around marriages and family relationships. Tania, what would you say are some of the other hallmarks of a Chughtai story?

TANIA: She was in essence a chronicler. She wrote about women from every socioeconomic class, every age. She also wrote about these women who lived in these segregated societies of their own. And they had this particular kind of vernacular, which was expressive, but a little bit coarse. And she used that to great effect in her stories. You know, I think she didn't do much of narrative interpretation, as we said before. She presented the stories in a realistic manner, and she left you to draw your own conclusions. Um, I know she has writings on taboo topics such as like rape and sex between women, teenage pregnancy, misogyny, uh, the evils of the patriarchal system. So I think when she wrote this literary realism, it made her writing accessible in many ways. It made it urgent and immediate, especially for the common reader out there. She had a very pithy, straightforward style of writing. And I think that did lend itself to her stories as well.

AMY: One of the things I noticed is these large Indian households, and all the interpersonal dynamics that that entails. They hate each other, but at the same time they love each other and a good example of that, it's called Choti Apa. It's about two sisters, and the one sister at the beginning of the story, she's kind of bitching about her sister and doesn't like her. They clearly don't get along, and she has discovered her diaries, and she is going to read through these diaries, and she's going to find some juicy dirt, and she's going to get her sister in trouble, and it's going to be great. So she starts skimming the diary, and as you go along we start to see everything that this poor sister has gone through in her dating life, I guess you could say, and all the different suitors she's dealt with, and poor treatment by men, things like that. And by the end of the story, the sister who's snooping has this new respect and sympathy for her. And I just, I kept going back to that one, it's my favorite.

KIM: I loved that story. Did you all see the movie Polite Society? It's recent. It's a British movie, but it's about two sisters. I don't know if they're Indian or Pakistani but it's about two sisters and one of them goes through dating. They want to get her married, and she has to, like, rescue her sister, basically. So it's like a kind of Bollywood action thriller. I loved it so much. And it almost feels like taking the story to the next level. It's so good.

AMY: I love that. I remember seeing the trailer for that and wanting to see it.

KIM: It's so much fun. I loved it. Yeah. But it totally reminded me of that story. 

TANIA: Yeah, my daughter saw it and she said the same thing. She loved it and, you know, just could identify with what she had seen when she visited India a lot, you know. Yeah, especially at that time, I think, you know, what was a woman's one job is to get married and run a household and, if you can't, if you kind of miss the bus on that, you're ostracized by society almost. So the stakes are very high.

AMY: Yeah, yeah. Another theme that I kept seeing was this idea of beauty standards for women and what happens when beauty fades. Several stories in the book have to do with this.

TANIA: I, you know, like I think The Rock and the other one I always go back to is Scent of the Body because there are maids in the household who are brought in to satisfy the sexual satisfaction of the male members of the household. But what is interesting in a lot of these stories, like The Rock or Scent of the Body is she highlights how hard it is for women to have any kind of sisterhood when, um, they live in a system which takes away all their power, right? They can't influence their fate. They can't influence the women around them, the men around them. They can't change their destiny. So their value is their physical form and their labor. How can they give power to another woman when it affects how much agency they have?

And, 

KIM: It pits women against women.

TANIA: Absolutely, they're living in this domestic system that encourages them to kind of mistreat the women, even if it is to their own detriment.

KIM: Yeah. And you've got the mother in law's and the new wives and all the tension there. Yeah, absolutely.

AMY: I have a good passage that's talking about this from the story The Eternal Vine, and it's a group of women sitting around and they are trying to brainstorm for who the next wife should be for a new widower that they know. And so they're like, We got to find somebody young, right? And they basically choose like a young teenager for this guy, who is like, What are you guys doing? She's a child. So one of the women says, “Dear God, brother, watch what you say. A middle aged man and a young wife in her twenties. Two or three children later, all the silver coating wears off. When surrounded by wet diapers, little will remain of this beauty, this coloring, or the tiny waist. The arms won't stay as supple either. If she doesn't begin to look your age soon, you can punish me as you see fit. I'm sure in another ten years she'll start looking like Bari Mumani,” which is his former wife who had kind of aged normally. So it's just basically like you have value until you don't.

And then there's another short story called The Morsel, which is similar. There's a woman who always sees an eligible bachelor on the bus every day. He seems like he's maybe kind of into her. kind of gets mentioned to a group of the other women in her life, and they're like, Girl, make over time. The makeover montage, right? So they put all this makeup on her, they fix her hair up in a big beehive, she's uncertain about it, but she's looking glamorous, I guess. And she gets on the bus, and the guy's there, and he proceeds to ignore her, and it's devastating, So Chughtai writes:

 When she arrived at the bus stop wearing high heeled gold sandals, swaying and tottering, she found stars dancing before eyes that were now bereft of glasses. (So I guess they've taken her glasses off.) Her whole body was drenched in sweat. Is it not enough to be a woman? Why should one need to stuff in so many condiments and chutney in just one morsel? 

KIM: Such a great line. 

AMY: That Indian metaphor. She does have lots of food in these stories. 

too. 

TANIA: yes. Yeah, I, I think, you know, reading about it, you can see that even for a Western audience, this is so identifiable where your friends are like, Wait a minute, hold on, we're going to work on this, you know, 

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: Oh, Yeah. I mean, we always make this comparison, but it's like Sex in the City episode 

KIM: Hmm. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

AMY: The other theme was traditional women versus modern women, too. A lot of women getting traded in, like sort of the traditional conservative woman who's, you know, having babies and cooking and doing all the household duties, and then you have these modern, more Western seeming women who come in and swipe the husbands. But then there's always sort of a feeling of maybe the traditional wife was the way to go or, you know, that they've been wrongly set aside.

TANIA: I think what she's saying is that women can't win.

KIM: Yep. Exactly. Patriarchy. Yeah. 

TANIA: You know, between patriarchy and internalized misogyny, you know, it's like, you know, when you're young and beautiful, everyone is worried you're going to run off and cause a scandal. And then when you get married, like in this story, I think it's called The Rock, you know, you get married, you become a traditional housewife, then your husband starts straying.

KIM: Yeah.

TANIA: I think especially in that story where that happens, the husband keeps moving from one woman to the other and a younger, more westernized woman, it's almost like a kind of abuse, even though he's not physically hitting her. You can see how he is asserting authority over her and kind of getting this kind of perverse pleasure from being the better looking one, quote unquote, you know, the one who's fit and handsome compared to the wife who's kind of become slovenly and is only looking after the children and eating all the time.

AMY: And again, still kind of a concern today, you know, when you have children and you're exhausted and you're working and you're doing everything and Sorry I can't be a sex pot right

KIM: Yeah, 

Yeah, 

AMY: And it also makes sense, what you mentioned earlier, the O. Henry connection, and we do see that in so many of these stories, the ending has that little twist. 

KIM: Yeah. And Tania, I thought of this too in your own latest book, Hope You Are Satisfied. Um, I'm thinking of the scene where there's a jealous husband on a trip to Dubai. He thinks his wife is cheating on him and she keeps insisting she's not. But then the scene ends with her confessing that she had already cheated on him in the Maldives.

AMY: Yeah, I had the same thought as soon as I read that I was like, Oh, there's Chughtai!

KIM: A Chughtai story right there. Do you think she inspires her writing at all? No pressure.

TANIA: But how could she not? She writes in a way that compels one to consider just absurdity and the hypocrisy of the conventions that we are often forced to live under. You know , the women in Chughtai's stories are born into this world that they cannot break free from. They can't change the system they're born into. And so they're trying to make the best of the situation they're in. They're just trying to survive the hand they're dealt. And you know, my novel is about these guest workers who come to the Middle East, and this group of young people who are working in Dubai at the time of the first Gulf War when Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and American troops start pouring into the region. And these young people, they are white collar workers, but they're low level and they're in an indentured kind of system. So I think that was definitely something I thought about when writing about these people, these characters who have to negotiate living in a world where they're considered insignificant.

AMY: And I think that's why it gets the comparison to White Lotus a little bit because it's like you have this upstairs, downstairs. Two segments of society and having to kind of kiss up to 

TANIA: Yeah, 

AMY: basically, 

TANIA: Absolutely. Yeah. I think everyone's like, it's White Lotus during wartime, which I

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

AMY: Did you have a job like that 

KIM: Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.

TANIA: I did live in Dubai. My family lived there for many, many years. And so while I was in college, I would go back and forth, and I did briefly work for a small tour operator like that.

So 

KIM: That's why you've got it so well. Oh my gosh, yeah. You definitely made it feel very real.

TANIA: So I say everything is true, but untrue as well.

KIM: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. 

AMY: So we should add also that Chughtai did write novels in addition to all these short stories. Are there any that you've read or can recommend?

TANIA: Um, you know, I think what comes to mind is like her semi or quasi autobiographical novel, The Crooked Line. It is set against the waning days of the British rule when India has got its independence and is trying to settle on its identity. And the protagonist in the story, as well, is wrestling with questions of identity, especially when she's, you know, trying to break free of the secluded world and be an independent woman. What is very interesting about this novel is that it features these women's relationships with each other, how complex they are and how complex they can be, especially when the culture around you is changing and, uh, you know, you're pushing back against entrenched mores and values of your time. So yeah, The Crooked Line is definitely one I would pick up on.

KIM: Okay. Great. So, you talked a little bit about her connection to the film industry through her husband. He was already working on Bollywood productions when she made a career transition into the film industry as well. What else do we know about this part of her life?

TANIA: Well, you know, when she did meet him, he was writing dialogues for movies and then they did open their own production company. She wrote screenplays for him. She wrote dialogues for other movies and for their own movies as well. She got nominated for many, uh, Indian film awards. The film industry supported their life and she was grateful for that income. I think she always lamented that she didn't have enough time. Like, writers, they had to take up screenwriting work because they couldn't pay the bills by writing books, which is very much the case even today.

KIM: Yep.

TANIA: And, you know, and she understood the labor and the time that is required for writing. And so I think she did lament that fact for a long time. Yeah. But she, you know, after her husband died, she continued in the film industry. And, you know, like I said, I still recognize her from a couple of movies that I saw in my childhood.

AMY: Um, it was sad to learn that she suffered from Alzheimer's in her later years. When she died in 1991, she requested that she be cremated upon her death, and this was sort of another example of her defying convention. Right, Tania? Yeah.

TANIA: Yes. I mean, she was a nonconformist to the end. You know, she was a Muslim, and cremation is forbidden in Islam, because the belief is that the body should be respected in life and in death. And burning the dead is considered a form of mutilation and forbidden by Allah. Yet she chose to be cremated like a Hindu, and it was very controversial. I believe people refused to attend her funeral. From what I read, what her daughter has said, I believe it wasn't anything against Islam. She thought it was a good and great religion. I think she just did not like the idea of being buried under all this earth and dirt above her. I think that didn't appeal to her. And actually this is my own kind of idea as well. I remember reading that her friend, Manto, Saadat Hasan Manto, his writings were really reviled when he was alive and he was a pauper for a long while. He ended up in an insane asylum, but when he died, he was given a marble gravestone. And I think that hypocrisy rankled. She was like, Where were these people when he was alive? And when you're cremated, you're kind of gone. You're in the ether. There is no physical marker for anyone. Especially, I think, with the backlash that she received from "Lihaaf" is that there's no place for anyone to honor or revile you .You're just gone.

KIM: That said, do you feel like she's pretty well known among Indians today or not?

TANIA: That is an interesting question, because she did receive the Padma Shri in 1976, which is one of the highest civilian honors in India. So I think, you know, certain writers, uh, journalists, many readers of a certain age would know who she is. I think a lot of people would have to be prompted to remember who she was, and if they do remember her, it would probably be from one of her film roles. 

AMY: So we also understand that today the Urdu language and Urdu literature is under attack by certain factions of the Indian government. It's part of a kind of right wing agenda to marginalize Muslims living in India and to stamp out the Urdu culture. Is there anything you know or can add about this?

TANIA: Yeah, you know, with rising Islamophobia, unfortunately, there has been a pushback on Urdu language. The pushback is nothing new, but it has kind of intensified lately. Uh, Urdu is so much part of India. It's contributed so much to its history and its culture. It has such deep roots. And, you know, Chugtai herself was a very liberal Muslim. Her kids married outside the faith. She read not only the Quran, but the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. I would just say that if we want to claim such great writers like Chughtai, like Manto, as our own, you know, we want to give them awards and honor them and venerate them, then at the very least we have to accept the language they chose to express themselves in.

KIM: Right, 

AMY: It goes back to her talking about the hypocrisy and not wanting a monument if you're going to be treating people this way. Yeah.

TANIA: Absolutely, yes.

KIM: Yeah. And, uh, also, as Amy mentioned earlier, we had corresponded with Firoza Jhabvala about this. She had brought up that Anita Desai, the writer, actually wrote a book about the demise of Urdu. It's called In Custody, and it was adapted into a movie of the same name by Ismail Merchant of Merchant Ivory fame.

AMY: Yeah, um, I guess we'll just end it there. I loved reading all of these stories by Chughtai. They reminded me a lot of one of our other Lost Ladies of Lit, actually, Kim, I don't know if you would agree with this or not, but Lucia Berlin. Just because there's so much pathos in them, and they're dark in a way, but then written in such a sharp, caustic, sometimes really funny style, and she doesn't pull any punches, like Berlin.

KIM: No, she doesn't. I hadn't made that connection, but I think that's perfect. I love that. Um, Tania, thank you so much for introducing us to Chughtai.. We loved this discussion. And I also just want to congratulate you on Hope You Are Satisfied. I loved reading it. I'm so excited for you and I hope our listeners go read it as well.

TANIA: Thank you so much. This was so much fun. And thank you so much for letting me talk about Chughtai, and I hope your listeners get to discover her as well. Thank you.

AMY: That's all for today's episode. Don't forget to come find us over at our Facebook forum if you want to interact with us and other listeners, all of whom are amazing, we should add. We like to share extra stuff over there, so if you don't want to miss it, come find us.

KIM: Yes, we'd love for you to be a part of it. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

Janet Lewis — The Wife of Martin Guerre with Iris Jamahl Dunkle

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off great books by forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew.

AMY HELMES: And I'm Amy Helmes. The book we're discussing today reminds me a little bit of an episode of Law and Order. 

KIM: I'm totally down with that. I'm ready for the suspense, the intrigue, the slew of witnesses taking the stand.

AMY: Oh yeah, we're gonna have all of that. But the crime and trial that's the focus of this historical novel, it's based on a real incident, happened a long, long time ago in 16th century France.

KIM: And yet this book, Janet Lewis's The Wife of Martin Guerre, was originally published in 1941.

AMY: Hollywood a spin on the same premise in the 1990s and that was set during the American Civil War.

KIM: And that's maybe because this story resonates no matter the place or time. It's the tale of one woman's struggle to reconcile cold hard facts with the truth within her own heart.

AMY: The subtitle for this episode could probably be, Love the Player, Hate the Game. What would you do if you found yourself in the tricky predicament of the book's title character? It's a question we're sure author Janet Lewis would have wanted you to consider.

KIM: Yeah. And we've got tons more questions for our guest today, returning guest, in fact, who suggested we consider this lost lady for an episode. We can't wait to welcome her back. So let's raid the stacks and get started. 

[intro music plays]

AMY: Our guest today originally joined us on the show back in 2021 to discuss her biography of Charmian Kittredge London, that's the wife of Jack London, an author in her own right. And I think Iris was Incredibly brave to come on when she did, because we were just brand new fledgling podcasts. She didn't know what to make of us. But Charmian and that episode made me want to channel my inner Valkyrie, for sure.

KIM: Me too. Iris, who teaches at University of California, Davis, also wrote the 2021 poetry collection, West: Fire: Archive, and she's hard at work on another biography we can't wait to eventually get our hands on, it's about lost lady of lit Sanora Babb, whose Dust Bowl novel got lost in the shadows of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

 Side note: Steinbeck used Babb's research material to write his book.

AMY: Which is causing me to feel an altogether different kind of wrath. But I will save my Sanora Babb indignation for a future date, because today we have another lady to discuss. So welcome back to the show, Iris Jamahl Dunkle.

IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE: Thank you so much. It's so great to be back with you guys. I love the work that you're doing here. It's so important.

KIM: So you'd suggested Janet Lewis and this novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre, as a potential topic for our show. And little did you know that we would instantly rope you to come back onto the show to discuss it. When did you first come across Janet Lewis and what made you think of her for this podcast?

IRIS: So as a biographer of lost ladies, your next biography on this person, which usually I'm like, Okay, thanks.

But in this case, the request came from one of my dear friends, my mentor Dana Joya, the poet. He immediately sent me a copy of her novel in the mail and was like, Just read it. You need to write her biography. And I was like, Okay. So of course on New Year's Eve, because I am a nerd, on New Year's Eve I cuddled up with a book. I started at, I don't know, like five o'clock and I'm like, I'll read a little bit and then have dinner or do something fun. I literally read it cover to cover. I didn't stop, much to my family's chagrin. I was like, This is the most amazing novel I've read in years. And after that, I just obsessed a little bit on who Janet Lewis was, and I found so many overlaps, just by doing the initial research of trying to understand who she was and why I didn't know about her.

KIM: I love your New Year's Eve. You're such a kindred spirit there.

AMY: Heh, totally. Your husband's standing there with two glasses of champagne. 

KIM: A party hat.

Yeah. 

IRIS: Totally. I'm like, Shut the

door, I got to finish this book.

AMY: Yeah, so speaking of connections, Janet Lewis was a poet. It's something the two of you have in common. You were actually the poet laureate for Sonoma County back in 2017. So what can you tell us about her poetry, and did she think of herself as a poet first and foremost?

IRIS: Yeah. So this is where the first amazing overlap happened when I started researching her life. I was like, Oh, of course she's a poet. That's why she writes such amazing novels. And it turns out that her first work was published in Poetry magazine, which is where the American version of Imagism really started. And she was a part of that movement, and I wrote my dissertation on the poet Amy Lowell, who was an Imagist. And so her poetry immediately made sense to me. And she was first known as a poet. She married one of the most famous male poets of the West Coast, Ivor Winters, who was a New Critic and they both believed that poetry was superior to prose. And so what I've noticed is that she thinks through her novels through poetry before she writes them in prose, which is my process. So I was like, I love her.

KIM: Oh, that is so cool.

AMY: For the non poets among us, including myself, can you briefly define what Imagism is?

IRIS: Yeah. Imagism started in England. So we've got Ezra Pound and H.D. And Arlington. They're at the British Museum meeting at the tea room and translating all these new Greek fragments being discovered. And through that process, they realize the image is the most important unit. You may have heard of In the Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound. So it's this two line poem that was originally like four pages long. And that was the essence of images poetry, but of course, I love the women who write Imagist poetry, like Amy Lowell. And H.D., she was actually called De Imagiste, so the Imagist, at the bottom of the page in the first issue of Poetry magazine that published Imagist poetry.

AMY: Yeah, we need an H.D. episode

KIM: We do. Cause she's come up a few times. 

IRIS: I've visited her grave. It is, it's in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It's amazing. She is a strong, fierce woman.

KIM: Okay. Mental note. We've got to come back to her. So do you have any favorite Janet Lewis poem, maybe a short one you could share with us so we could get a feel for her poetry?

IRIS: Yeah, I thought I would share one of the poems from her first collection which is collected in Poems Old and New 1918 to 1978. Some of her poetry is hard to find but this one is called The Reader. Sun creeps under the eaves and shines on the bare floor while he forgets the earth Cool ashes on the hearth, and all so still, save for the soft turning of leaves. A creature, fresh from birth, clings to the screen door, heaving damp, heavy wings. 

KIM: Beautiful.

AMY: It's really making me think of this novel, in fact. In descriptiveness of these like, country peasant houses. It's got that sort of quiet, distilled feel to it. 

IRIS: Totally. And this poem is actually from one of her earlier collections where she's writing, she's considered this regional writer because she wrote about Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And so this was really the Ojibwe community she was living in. And um, can you hear the dog

AMY: It's yeah, it's fine. Don't worry.

KIM: We both have dogs too. It's fine.

IRIS: My shih tzu's name is Shirley Jackson. 

KIM: Oh, great. Oh, my God. I love it! Yeah.

IRIS: So in the Upper Peninsula she wrote about the first really invasion of white settlers in her first novel, but she first wrote about that through poetry, and this poem comes from that. So that idea of moral brooding and what is truth and what is real and her always questioning that because the truth that's represented in the history that's presented to her doesn't seem quite right. So she's thinking of this rebirth of how we think about the frontier, which to her was completely, the definition of the West at the time was completely ridiculous because it didn't include women, it didn't include indigenous people. 

KIM: Yeah. And we're going to be connecting that idea of truth and what is truth when we talk more about the novel too.

IRIS: Awesome.

AMY: So what else do we know about her life?

IRIS: She grew up outside of Chicago. Her father was a professor at a community college, and she actually attended that college, and she really identified with her father. He's the one that, when they go to Michigan, they went every summer, he would take her boating, he would take her fishing, hunting. She was out in the wild, basically with him, and so he encouraged her to become a writer because he saw that's how she processed the world. She grew up in Oak Park and she went to the same high school as Hemingway. Very different writer, but another poet of the same Lost Generation, right? She attended the University of Chicago. And at that time, University of Chicago was deeply connected with Poetry Magazine. And so it's at that time that she applied to be part of the Poetry Club, and unknowingly her future husband is the secretary, Ivor Winters. But she ends up attending these meetings and really focusing her craft as a writer, as a poet. And then once she graduates, as one biographer said, she didn't even wait for her diploma. She just went to Paris. She was a French major. And so was living in Paris right after the First World War, and so she's rooming with a war widow, working at the passport office. She's really immersed in this culture, and she comes back to the U. S. six months later and gets tuberculosis, which, as you probably know, at this time could be very fatal. So many writers died of tuberculosis. So she went to a sanitarium in New Mexico, spending time recuperating in bed, but also she began to write her first novel. She ended up marrying Ivor Winters while she's recovering from tuberculosis. They moved to Stanford where he does his graduate work and then just gets brought on as a professor. And they live in Santa Clara near Stanford in this small home for the rest of her life, basically. She ended up really spending a lot of time as a wife and a mother, which Tilly Olsen pointed out was a huge loss for the rest of us, because if she would have had all this time to write, we would've gotten even more of her writing. She actually dismissed Tilly Olsen's words, but did admit that women that didn't have children and a husband were able to write a lot more. Which is the truth.

KIM: Yeah. And on the plus side compared to our recent Elizabeth Smart episode of getting involved with a poet, they actually had a very stable, happy relationship. 

IRIS: They did. They did. And a lot of that had to do with the compromises that Janet made, I'm pretty sure, because she really, at the heart of all of her novels, and we'll see that when we talk about this novel, is this hearth, like this well ordered kitchen, this well ordered homestead like experience. To her, that was the epitome of morality, and it was a symbol to her of a real stable environment.

KIM: So let's start talking about The Wife of Martin Geurre, which was first published in 1941. Upon its publication, The Atlantic Monthly called it one of the most significant short novels in English. The New Yorker described it as Flaubertian in the elegance of its form and the gravity of its style. Larry McMurtry, in a piece for The New York Review of Books, called it a masterpiece. And he was actually a big fan of Janet Lewis's writing. Anyway, the story behind the inspiration of this novel is very interesting in its own right. Do you want to talk about it a little, Iris?

IRIS: Definitely. There's different versions of this, but the essence of it is there's this murder that happens on the campus at Stanford. This woman is found next to her bathtub, and immediately the husband is suspected and put on trial. And it's hugely public, and Ivor Winters, her husband is deeply disturbed by this because it's all circumstantial evidence, and because of that, I'm sure that's all they talked about in their household. And he's working on the defense for the accused and eventually someone gives him this book called Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence, which was published in 1873. And somehow he gave it to his wife. And at the time, she was still trying to finish her second novel and was stuck. And so she started reading this book, and as she read it, she started to really identify with the female characters in these cases. How they were put in these horrible situations and had to deal with moral decisions that were really just life changing. And so this book inspired three novels that she ended up writing and they're called The Circumstantial Evidence Novels, which I love. So the idea is that she was so inspired that she just sat down and wrote this novel.

AMY: Wow. It's funny. I didn't know about the Stanford murder connection. I just thought the husband had given it to her like, Thought you might enjoy this. 

KIM: Or it 

AMY: this book for you. Yeah. I didn't know about the murder. That's interesting. Okay. So this novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre, it's really more of a novella,it's a very quick read. It's Lewis's vivid imagining of one of these court cases that she stumbled across in the book. And it's pretty salacious. It's like something you would see on Medieval Court TV.

KIM: I love that.

AMY: True crime aficionados, this is the novel for you.

IRIS: I want to watch that show.

KIM: I know. We need a Medieval Court TV. 

AMY: Can you totally picture them in costume?

KIM: I love that elevator pitch.

AMY: Iris, why don't you go ahead and set up the plot and what this actual real court case was about.

IRIS: Yes. The book is about... Bertrand de Rols,, a young woman who is married to the son of a wealthy landowner. The name of her husband is Martin Guerre. And they ended up being married at 11 years old. Everyone comes over for a big feast again in a very well ordered kitchen. We get so much description of the kitchen and the stores they have, and really, you can tell how important the symbol of the kitchen is for Janet Lewis. So after they're married, they don't actually have to live together yet. Eight years later, she moves into this household and we watch her mature. She ends up having a son and the husband, Martin, he has big plans for how he is going to run his successful farm. And basically does not agree with his father and has ideas of how he wants to do it. Like any teenager, right, he wants to do his own thing. And so at some point, he ends up stealing from his father and realizes he has to run away. And he promises to come back once he makes his money and they can go live on their own, but he leaves his wife and his son alone in this household. And he's gone for eight years. Meanwhile, all this time, she's growing up. She's a mother. She's learning how to farm. She's learning how to run a household. And by the time he comes back, she's a lot more sure of herself. The beautiful part of this book is her character and how we actually get to see her as she evolves over this long period of time in the short novel. And so when the husband comes back, the thing is, she doesn't know if it's really him.

KIM: That's a great setup. And it reminds me a little bit of Aphra Behn's The History of a Nun, which is also about the predicament of a young woman who moves on to a new husband after her first goes missing. And then the original husband reappears. So let's talk about Bertrande, Lewis's heroine. What do we make of her and the fact that Lewis chose to make her the focal point of this story?

IRIS: I think it goes back to the idea of truth. That's so important to her as an author. Her whole essence as a writer is to reestablish this idea of history with women in it, with these strong characters with agency, who actually change and are dynamic characters. And so it's not surprising that she chose to focus on that character. What's amazing about our view into this protagonist is, when Martin first appears, he's literally like a body double, right? He's nearly the same physically, but what's different is that he's actually kinder, right?

KIM: He's a nicer person.

IRIS: He's a nicer person. He's a better lover. He's a better father. He's just better. That's how she knows something's wrong. It makes the moral decision even harder.

KIM: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's Okay, this guy's great. Do I need to do anything about this? Why would I do anything about this? It's a good fit for her now.

IRIS: Right? It's not only her. Everyone's Yeah, this guy's great. I like him so much better than the other guy.

KIM: Yeah. The servants like him better. 

IRIS: Yeah. Even the priest is like, “That's your truth. Not mine.” 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: His own sisters like him better, the original guy. And I think it's important to point out, too, that this case had been the stuff of legend. But in anything else that it was written about, whether history books or whatever, it never really focused on her. She was peripheral. So this is the first time somebody's like, Let's look at it from her perspective.

KIM: She's the one that's most impacted by all of this, obviously. Come on. 

AMY: Funny. 

IRIS: Totally. Even, I think you guys know that there were two film adaptations of this book, and even in those adaptations, who is featured in the films?

AMY: The guy.

IRIS: The story is not about them 

AMY: yeah.

IRIS: After several years of living with this person that she realizes is an imposter, Bertrande finally realizes that she has to make a decision, right? It's creeping in her brain like she keeps realizing more and more. This person is not her husband. She ends up having another child with this quote unquote imposter. And she's growing up in this era of the Catholic Church, which is both a compass and a prison, right, for a woman. And at the time she's like, I am, cheating against my husband. This is wrong. I'm doing wrong. Even if I like this guy, I can't actually condone this. So finally her uncle sides with her. Yeah, there's something different about this guy. And they end up telling the courts. They tell the police that they feel like this imposter has come into their life and it's a real moral dilemma for her because she has a child with this man and she actually likes them better than the previous Martin, right? She's faced with this man that she actually likes being on trial, and it goes to trial, and they can't quite convict him. And they're about to do a second trial and this man walks into the courtroom and guess who it is?

AMY: Bachelor number one. Husband number one.

IRIS: The grumpy Martin comes back 

AMY: What a moment. And it really happened . That's what's crazy. 

KIM: Yeah.

IRIS: Yeah, and that's the scene that I want to read to you is once that happens. She's, like, trying to explain to him that she's doing the right thing. And he's like, You were an adulterous, right? You slept with another man, I don't like you anymore. So this is that scene: After a time, the door to the courtroom opened and she was admitted. She made her way through the crowd to the space before the judge. Without looking up to see it, she yet felt the intense curiosity of all these unfamiliar faces bent upon her like a physical force. In the silence of the room, the insatiable interest of the crowd beat upon her like a sultry wave.

She reached the open space and stopped. There, she lifted her eyes at last and saw, standing beside Arnaud Duteau, the man whom she had loved and mourned as dead. She uttered a great cry and turned very pale. The pupils of her partly colored eyes, the lucky eyes, expanded until the iris was almost lost.

Then, reaching out her hands to Martin Guerriere, she sank slowly to her knees before him. He did not make any motion toward her, so that after a little time, she clasped her hands together and drew them toward her breast and recovering herself somewhat, said in a low voice, My dear Lord and husband, at last you are returned.

Pity me and forgive me, for my sin was occasioned only by my great desire for your presence, and surely from the hour wherein I knew I was deceived, I have labored with all the strength of my soul to rid myself of the destroyer of my honor and peace. The tears began to run quietly down her face. Martin Guerrero did not reply immediately, and in the pause which followed, one of the justices leaning forward said to Bertrand.

Madam, we have all been very happily delivered from a great error. Pray accept the profound apologies of this court, which did not earlier sufficiently credit your story and your grief. But Martin Greer, when the justice had finished speaking, said to his wife with perfect coldness, dry your tears, Madam.

They cannot, and they ought not, move my pity. The example of my sisters and my uncle can be no excuse for you. Madam. Who knew me better than any living soul, the air into which you plunge could only have been caused by willful blindness. You and you only madame are answerable for the dishonor, which has befallen me.

KIM: I mean, the women get blamed all the time for everything, and this is just another time where it happens. She put herself in complete jeopardy by coming forward in the first place.

AMY: I know, and it's Arnaud du Tilh,, this Husband Number Two, he's the one who's on trial, but it almost feels like she's on trial. 

IRIS: Totally. 

KIM: Yeah, totally. Yeah. The victim is on trial again. 

AMY: I know I mentioned Medieval Court TV but I'm also thinking like Medieval Dateline because whenever I watch Dateline I always waffle back and forth between commercial breaks. I'm like Guilty Oh, no, he didn't do it. And I knew the whole time that du Tilh was an imposter but I kept waffling in my brain about what her response should be, because it's like, Girl just keep your mouth 

KIM: shut!" 

 The whole family was telling her to shut up, basically. 

IRIS: Totally. When this book came out the reactions were mixed, right? They were like Why didn't she just take what she had? Why didn't she just stick with what was good? But one thing that Lewis said in response was It's just not the truth. And that was the most important thing about this character, was that at her essence, she could not live with not following the truth. And I think that is so suggestive of who Janet Lewis was as a person.

KIM: That's so interesting. And also, doesn't Bertrande feel like she's going to be punished in the afterlife if she doesn't come forward too? So she honestly has a true fear for her very soul.

IRIS: Yeah. And that's the prison of Catholicism at the time, right? You were just on earth getting ready for your future life in heaven or hell, right? Or purgatory. 

AMY: It's also making me think of the real case, and there's a historian, Natalie Zeman Davis, who wrote about this trial as a nonfiction book in 1983, and there's a lot more information about the real story in that, but one of the major differences between what she claims is the real version and Janet Lewis's version is that I feel like Janet Lewis makes Bertrande more noble, more of a victim almost. If you're looking at it from the real world, like, why did she do this? It's saving her skin, because she was vulnerable to accusations of adultery. So if she was the one to come forward and say, I'm just going to put it out here before I get in trouble, it's a little bit different than how Janet Lewis presents it, which is interesting.

KIM: Yeah, and what do you think is, what do you think is correct based on what you know. Do you know about the real trial?

IRIS: Yeah, I do. And actually, Janet Lewis also knew, she learned about that at the same time. And she was like, Oh, man, I'm so glad I didn't know that when I wrote that book. She said she couldn't have written the book that she wrote if she 

KIM: Knew it at the time. 

IRIS: Exactly. So it was actually a mistranslation, right? And because of that mistranslation, she was able to find the story of a strong woman who was really battling with morality at a time when evil was like in the news all the time, right? That idea. And that was really the premise of the book for her. What would happen if we didn't have the power to turn away from evil, even when it was better, it felt better? Yeah. When we knew what was good, right? I think that's why this book is so deep. It's not just about the trial. And I don't know about you guys, but I couldn't stop reading it. It's such a page turner. 

KIM: Yeah. It totally is. And the way that she goes about letting herself believe and how she slowly, those barriers that she put up to the truth for herself get stripped away. And it's so fascinating reading that as it's happening.

AMY: And also in today's climate, truth almost doesn't even exist anymore, sadly. That this woman had this conviction that she was going to do what was true, no matter what it cost her, the love of her life. And just the idea of like memory and testimony to memory and trials, even still today it's not reliable evidence. And du Tilh in the novel, he is able to come up with a lot of information that even though you knew this guy's an imposter, I can see how that court case would have been so daunting to decide. Because he was able to come in with minutia. 

KIM: And some of the weird physical things, too, that were like, okay, 

AMY: Yeah. 

KIM: Yeah.

IRIS: The way she tells the story, you are slowly developing through her point of view, right. So you don't see everything that's different at first. She still wants that to be her husband. Wouldn't you want your husband to come back? This reveal is really slow. You feel this like dialogue in your head of Why isn't she doing anything? Or Why is she doing something, right? You have a moral dilemma yourself about what is integrity in this situation? And I think that's what's so brilliant about this book. It makes you question that. 

AMY: Question what would you do.

IRIS: Yeah. 

KIM: Yeah. Can we also say she was very lonely during those years? She had fallen in love with her first husband, as grumpy as he was. He wasn't perfect, but she had a sexual relationship with this new imposter that was passionate.

AMY: And side note, Kim, part of what was brought up in the real case was when she and the original Martin Guerre were together, they could not consummate their marriage because he was having issues and they tried all kinds of things. They went to witch doctors. So for several months, that marriage was not consummated. That would have been an out at that time for her to leave the marriage. She would have been able to walk away when that happened, but she stuck it out. And they were able to use that in the trial to justify that she was telling the truth. Look, if I didn't want my original husband, I would have left him back when he couldn't get it up. 

IRIS: Exactly. I know in the trial they make a point of saying that's a sign of her commitment to her husband, but at the same time, what other choices does she have? She needed to make it work because if she didn't, she would be a used woman, right? Even if it wasn't consummated.

KIM: Yeah.

IRIS: So it was a Catch 22 for her.

KIM: So Lewis spent a short stint living in Paris that you mentioned after she graduated. She wasn't there long, but reading the book, you get a sense she really was familiar with the French countryside. She writes about the natural surroundings so beautifully and maybe that's also the poet in her. Do you see shades of her poetic style in her writing, or what other strengths do you see in her writing?

IRIS: Totally. You can see that idea of Imagism. When we enter a room, everything is described. When we go out into the fields, we feel what it feels like to be there in this place. And you know that she's been there. She stood on that soil. She smelled the landscape. She's felt the sensory experience of being there. She did end up going back to France when she's writing the third of this trilogy of Circumstantial Evidence Books. She got a Guggenheim and ended up spending some time researching the last of the three novels. The final book in the trilogy was called The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron, which she published in 1959. But she got a Guggenheim in 1951, and that's when she went back to Paris. 

AMY: Are the other two books in this trilogy as enticing? Are the court cases as good? 

IRIS: They're different, right? Like the trial of Soren Qvist, the first four chapters are basically about the ending of the story. This guy's been accused of this murder and the person who they thought had died comes back. And that one is also a page turner. I haven't read the last one yet. It's on my list and I can't wait, but I'm trying to read her books in order. What's sad is that she did stop writing novels in 1959. But she did write a lot of short stories. And you can see that probably that had something to do with her domestic duties and what Tilly Olson was pointing out the idea that she didn't have as much time to because she was so focused on running a great household, being a great partner supporting all these like graduate students that are coming to their household all the time. But she didn't spend as much time writing, and I think it's a real loss because she's a brilliant novelist, especially with the novella.

AMY: And she wound up turning this into an opera libretto.

IRIS: Yes, she wrote several of them, actually. In fact, I'm about to interview Alva, a gay man who was living with her after Ivor Winters died. He was writing operas, and she started writing these librettos and they are beautiful. Um, I can read part of them. Let me find one.

Okay, this is from Songs for Cora, which was from The Last of the Mohicans. She composed this with Alba Henderson. She composed the libretto. One on the way to Fort William Henry.

Green covers us green leaves that screen us from the summer sun. Let shine the sunlight through a brighter green. God's wilderness surrounds us in a maze. Of leaves of light of fragrant air, evil forbear into this wilderness, trusting in God, we dare.

AMY: I love it, but aren't you going to sing it?

KIM: Yeah. I know. I thought you were going to sing it. Yeah.

IRIS: I'd need several margaritas for that.

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: So she lived until the age of 99. Wow. 

IRIS: Yeah. She lived a very long life, especially for someone who suffered from tuberculosis, right?

AMY: Yeah,

IRIS: She taught some classes at Stanford, but she was a part of the whole essence of the literary community. Everyone would like, go visit Janet Lewis. And actually, in the Stanford collections there are sound recordings of her reading all of her poems, and I can't wait to listen to all of it.

KIM: That's so cool.

AMY: I just was inspired by hearing about how normal she really was and how normal her life was. I mean, no offense Iris, but you think of poets being wacky and having crazy drama in their life, or that you can only write if you've had some wild experiences that are really unique, but she lived a pretty normal life but was able to write this masterpiece just by drawing on history. 

IRIS: Right? Think about it, the conflict that she saw was history. She didn't need to have issues within her own personal life. And perhaps there were some issues, but the reality is that she saw issues with American history, with the way women were depicted in these trials, right? Saw these places that she could have a conversation with and open up a new space where we could see the experiences of women in a different way. And I am so grateful that was her focus. 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's great that yes, we might've had more from her, but she had a stable, happy life. That's pretty good.

IRIS: I'm like, should I write a biography about her? Because 

AMY: Oh yeah, is there going to be enough to make it intriguing? Charmian had all kinds of wild times. 

IRIS: Sanora Babbs, too. I can't wait till you guys read Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb, which I just found out it's getting published in Germany. It's being translated. So the push for Sanora Babb's work coming into the world, so to speak, is happening. And I'm really excited about it. 

AMY: And when is your book on her going to be available?

IRIS: So my book comes out next fall, so fall 2024. I'm in the final edits. 

KIM: So exciting. Yeah.

AMY: I saw you on Instagram doing this erasing of Steinbeck's What was that? It was so interesting. You were changing his book?

IRIS: Yeah. I started writing this biography a couple of years ago, as you guys know, and the idea of it came from the fact that my grandmother came over in the Dust Bowl. And so when I read The Grapes of Wrath, my grandmother was like, That is the worst book. He totally got it wrong. And I was like, Okay, Grandma. Years later, I reread The Grapes of Wrath. And I read Sanora Babb's Whose Names Are Unknown next to it. I'm like, Oh my god, this is so true. But to take on Steinbeck as a writer who grew up in California and was raised on Steinbeck as THE author, Steinbeck and Stegner, they were like, Oh, You know, it was really hard. I was scared to be like, Oh Steinbeck got it wrong. So what I did to empower myself is I got my copy of The Grapes of Wrath. And actually, I was flying to Oklahoma to do a reading at University of Oklahoma, so I actually stopped in the bookshop in the San Francisco airport, bought a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, got some colored pens and just started erasing it. So what I do is I like, find letters and words and I use those to create my own poems. And so what I've written out of The Grapes of Wrath is a book of poetry called The Rape of Worth, which is from the title The Grapes of Wrath that are about Sanora Babb and what happened to her, about my grandmother and what's happened to her. Because this ghost of my grandmother kept talking to me as I'm trying to write my biography, and you can't have your grandmother's ghost in your biography. So she came out in the book of poems.

KIM: All right. Oh, that's great.

AMY: Amazing. And it's like a work of art, too. Because it's just colorful and beautiful. And

IRIS: Yeah, it's been super fun to be on planes and I'm putting gold leaf in there and I'm, like, stitching and, people that sit next to me on planes are, like, Oh, that lady. But It's really been an exciting adventure to use erasure as a form of empowerment. I feel a real sisterhood with Janet Lewis for the same reason, so she used her poetry as a way to warm herself up, to be able to write in prose. And I totally get it as a poet. You gotta process it imagistically and emotionally before you can create a narrative out of it. Like you said, Kim, the idea of the imagery that you see in the novels. It's so vivid. You feel like you're there. She inevitably wrote poetry about these novels, but I've never found them. Maybe I will 

someday. But 

KIM: That would be amazing to publish them together. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.

AMY: Yeah, it's an interesting way to approach it. And until I'd met you, I didn't even know that anyone did that.

KIM: Yeah. 

IRIS: There are several weirdos out there. 

KIM: Love it.

AMY: I'll just mention really quickly that there are two movie adaptations of this story. One is from the 1980s starring Gerard Depardieu. It's called The Return of Martin Guerre. I haven't seen this one, but it looks really pretty. It looks like something we would like, Kim.

KIM: Sounds like it. I love Gerard Depardieu, especially 80s Gerard Depardieu.

IRIS: Right.

AMY: And then the other one is from the 90s. It's called Somersby starring Richard Gere...

KIM: I've seen that one. Jodie Foster

AMY: It's cheesy,

but it's, 

yeah. 

KIM: yeah. 

IRIS: I totally want to rewrite it, don't you? Cause Jodie Foster could rock this.

AMY: Oh 

KIM: She totally could. So much more depth in this story from Janet Lewis.

Yeah. Imagine a 

Jane Campion version of The Return of Martin Guerre. Wouldn't that be perfect? Yeah.

IRIS: I was going to suggest the woman who did Lady Bird. 

AMY: Greta Gerwig. 

KIM: Oh, yeah. 

AMY: I want her to just do every single one of our episodes, just turn them all into movies. 

KIM: Yeah, she's 

going to be too busy making sequels to Barbie now.

IRIS: I know, right? 

KIM: Iris, it's been a blast reconnecting with you over this book. I'm so glad you shared it with us. And thank you for filling us in on the Sanora Babbs book too. We're so excited. We can't wait for that. And just thank you for coming on the show.

IRIS: It's been my absolute pleasure, and it's so fun to get to hear episodes every week from you guys. So keep up the good work. I really appreciate it.

KIM: Thanks. We will. We love talking to you.

So that's all for today's episode. If you want to talk more about this book or the movies surrounding this case, jump on over to our last ladies of lit Facebook forum. We'd love to know your thoughts and what you would have done had you been in Bertrande's shoes. You can find out what we do as well.

AMY: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm sticking with the con artist all the way. 

KIM: Amazing.

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew. 

151. Elspeth Barker — O Caledonia

AMY: Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I'm Amy Helmes here with my cohost Kim Askew, and today we're going to talk about an author and book, which dovetails really well with our episode last week on Elizabeth Smart.

KIM: Yes. If you listen to that episode, you'll know that Smart wrote a masterpiece of poetic prose called By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. It was all about her obsession and affair with the English poet George Barker.

AMY: And Kim, I still don't understand how many women could so slavishly throw themselves at this guy. I guess you had to be there. I didn't get it.

KIM: I feel like it must be that he must have had laser charm or something. But anyway, after 19 years romantically entangled with Barker, Smart eventually snapped out of it a little bit. She never stopped loving him, but she did stop wanting that hassle of a life with him, which let's face it, usually was a life without him being there.

AMY: Yeah. I get the sense that raising her four children on her own and not really getting any help from Barker, financial or otherwise, is what sort of turned the tide for her, because it was one thing for her to carry this torch for him and be sort of treated like an afterthought. But she was definitely a mother bear to her four kids, so once she started seeing that he wasn't there for the kids and he was just sort of like a come and go presence in their lives, she was like, “No.”

KIM: Yeah, and I imagine she was also just exhausted with it all at a certain point. That kind of passion, maybe it isn't sustainable.

AMY: Yeah, at one point she had even written a letter to him, a sort of breakup letter in which she said, “I see no beauty in lopsided true love. It really is in sorrow and not anger that I say, I do not want you anymore because I simply cannot bear it.”

KIM: Wow. Yeah.

AMY: So she kind of recognized like, “Okay, I am enthralled with this man, but he's not giving me…”

KIM: It's never gonna be enough, basically.

AMY: Yeah. Yeah.

KIM: It's never gonna be enough.

AMY: And she actually wrote that letter six months prior to the birth of their daughter Rose. She was pregnant and she's realizing like, “This is done.” And George didn't even see that kid until she was six months old.

KIM: Hmm.

AMY: That's how he operated.But anyway, what I really wanna talk about today is Elizabeth's relationship with George Barker's final lover, Elspeth Langlands. She would go on to marry him and become Elspeth Barker. She was a Scottish writer. She was about half the age of Elizabeth Smart, but Elizabeth knew her very well. They were good friends in London before Elspeth ever met George Barker. And in fact, Elspeth met George one time at Elizabeth's place, and she said she found him “incredibly rude.” But later George and Elspeth met again in Rome. She was an aspiring writer at this time, and he sort of mentored her the same way he did with Elizabeth back in the day. And then one thing led to another. And, uh, we know how he operates. She fell madly in love. He charmed her, too. Uh, so Elizabeth finds out that, okay, Elspeth and George are now an item. She was furious at first, not because they were together (it's not that Elizabeth still wanted George) but because Elspeth turns up pregnant with George's kid, and Elizabeth knew that this meant they would have, like, a real lasting connection. So she was definitely jealous of Elspeth at first.

KIM: Yeah. I wonder if she just also felt it was like more competition for her own children's time.

AMY: Yeah, because we know he had 15 children with an assortment of women. Um, in Rosemary Sullivan's biography of Smart, she recounts an incident at one of George Barker's book launches where a photographer asked, you know, “Could Mrs. Barker step into the shot?” Well, both women stepped forward.

KIM: Awkward! Oh my God.

AMY: I know, I love that. So anyway, the two women were pretty chilly with one another for apparently around six or seven years. But then gradually a thaw occurred and eventually they became incredibly close and they remained really good friends for the rest of their lives. All three of them really, Elspeth, Elizabeth and George, they were all chummy despite everything.  And looking back, Elspeth Barker once said “Grand Central Station was a marvelous book, but as a human being, Elizabeth went far beyond it.” And she also said that Elizabeth “never did anything despicable. She was the glory to the world.”

KIM: Wow. What an incredible thing to say about someone. I love that they managed to form this friendship. I mean, they both kind of knew what it was to love George. They have that in common. 

AMY: Yeah, that kinship. And actually we have a leftover anecdote from last week's interview kind of about that. Um, it's a story that Rosemary tells that's kind of funny. So let me just play that here. 

ROSEMARY SULLIVAN: And then there was this lovely moment that Elizabeth describes in her diary where Elspeth begs Elizabeth to take George back. And she says, “No way.”

AMY: She had learned by then. Yeah. 

KIM: Oh, that's so great. I think I read that Elspeth sometimes referred to Elizabeth as her “co wife,” so maybe there was a part of Elizabeth Smart that was like, “He's all yours, Elspeth. You deal with him.”

AMY: Like, “I'm washing my hands of him, but I'll come visit and play cards with you guys or whatever. Come over for dinner. But he's yours. He's all yours.” Um, and this is interesting also, George had told Elspeth that her poems were crap when he first met her. You know, I said she was an aspiring writer. He kind of dealt her a blow. It was not for many years when she was in her fifties, actually, that she finally published her one and only novel. O Caledonia. 

KIM: Maybe that was part of his method. It's like, tear you down and then build you back up because they, you know, when we talked last week, I think that seemed like something that he did with Elizabeth. 

AMY: Yeah. And Rosemary said that he actually kind of did that with her the time that she met him.

KIM: Oh, that's true. You're right. Yeah.That's his way. 

AMY: Tear him down, then build him up. And then they're so grateful to you. 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. 

AMY: Um, O Caledonia, that came out in 1991, the same year George Barker died. Prior to that, she taught classics at an all girls school. But with the publication of this novel, which won several literary awards, she began to work as a contributor to many British outlets, including the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and The Observer. She also went on to teach creative writing at Norwich University of the Arts.

KIM: Interestingly, around this time, she got to know a young Maggie O'Farrell the author of Hamnet and A Marriage Portrait. It's her most recent book, I think. Amy and I love those books. Anyway, she actually wrote the introduction to a recent 2021 reissue of O Caledonia, and I want to read from that. She says, “On one level, it's possible to read O Caledonia as autobiographical fiction.The strict upbringing in a windy castle, the fiercely bright and non-conformist heroine, who finds love and companionship only in the animal kingdom. But this would be a reductive take on a skillful and brilliant novel because O Caledonia is a book that at once plays with and defies genre to give it that most vague and limiting of categories.The coming of age novel is to miss its point and to underestimate the ingenuity and droll subversion Barker is employing here.”

AMY: Hopefully that little blurb enticed you a little bit. Uh, but Kim and I are gonna talk about this novel a little bit more. I was originally interested in checking it out only because I knew she was Elizabeth Smart's romantic successor, you know. So I saw the name and I was like,” Oh, wait, I know this name.” But then I read the book and was like, “This is great.” Kim, I know you loved it too.

KIM: Yeah, this is another situation where Amy and I are texting each other. I was like, “Oh my God, this book is so good.” And she's like, “I knew you would love it.” It's incredible. Um, and it's basically about, this heroine named Janet and this is not a spoiler alert, but we find out in the beginning that she has been murdered. And it's not a traditional mystery story. It's not really a whodunit, but it's more her life from birth up until that point where she is murdered. And it is absolutely fascinating and the language is just thrilling. It is so, so gorgeous.

AMY: I kept thinking while I was reading it… well, first of all, the novel, um, it kind of gets compared a lot to I Capture the Castle because they are living in the Scottish castle and it's kind of that world. Um, I also was thinking a lot of O the Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith, which is a book we did a previous episode on, and I kept thinking, “Oh my gosh, Simon Thomas would love O Caledonia.” Simon, if you're listening and you haven't read this one yet, it is so up your alley. 

KIM: Yeah. Oh yeah, totally. I'm sure he's read it. I bet.

AMY: Yeah, so it's that kind of coming of age. Um, Janet is a naughty girl, kind of terribly misunderstood even by her own family. There's all these little vignettes about her childhood and her life. That's part of what really reminds me of O the Brave Music is the way it's kind of sectioned off into these little vignettes. Um, but another thing I kept thinking of Kim, was Wednesday Addams.

KIM: Oh yeah, absolutely.

AMY: Goth, dark. Wednesday Addams meets Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, but set in like this pastoral Scottish realm, you know. She just, she doesn't fit in with anyone. I kept thinking too of that Radiohead, “I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo.” Like that would be the soundtrack to this book. And she's got a pet crow or a pet raven, right? I mean, so that just kinda adds to this aura of…

KIM: It's slightly got a supernatural feel. You know, like the castle is decaying and it's its own character almost.

AMY: Yeah, and the aunt is kind of like hidden away, like Rochester's wife or, you know, doesn't she end up in the asylum later and Janet goes to visit her there?

KIM: Yeah, she goes to visit her there and it doesn't go the way she planned. I mean, there's so many things. She's so sensitive. And she's just so, so loving of everything. 

AMY: Yeah, but even her parents are just kind of like, “You're the bad girl.” Like, “Go away,” You know? She's always getting in trouble.

KIM: Yeah, she overhears her mom saying she only loves babies. She doesn't really like them when they get older. And she alludes to Janet, you know. They wanna get rid of Janet, and she loves where she lives, so she may have all these things with her family and stuff, but she gets sent away to school, and it's devastating. At first she thinks it's gonna be great, you know. She's so open to all these things being great, and then they just are terrible. She doesn't fit in at all.

AMY: Right, but it's exactly how a lot of girls feel when they turn that kind of awkward. 12, 13. And you feel like “My parents, not only do they not understand me, but they think I'm weird.”

KIM: No one understands her. She is weird. Yeah.

AMY: And she is 100% weird. 

KIM: Yeah. yep.

AMY: And then she also, she loves language so much. She loves poetry. She's obsessed with poetry, and that kept making me think, “Okay, if this is even semi autobiographical of Elspeth, no wonder she fell for George Barker,” right? Because she's obsessed with poetry and he's like the quintessential poet of his day or whatever. So you're like, “Okay, now I'm starting to see why she fell so hard for him.”

KIM: Yeah, that's true.

AMY: …based on this young girl's attitude toward poetry. She's witchy almost, right? like a little witch in training.

KIM: Yeah, which… Lyla's kind of a witch, too, the relative. And you almost think she's going to sort of train her in that. I, you know, I'm getting Lolly Willowes vibes like the cousin could have become Lolly Willowes, but instead she just gets thwarted, too. 

AMY: We’re gonna be talking about Lolly Willowes a few episodes from now, uh, which also has some witchy vibes. So, yeah, 100%. Um, and yeah, it was a startling way to begin the book with this dead body in a purple gown lying on the stairs of a castle. And you're like, “what the hell?” And, like you said, it's not even a whodunit? It doesn't even matter at the end who did it. Although you do kind of think as you're reading, she's starting to have all these growing pains and issues with all these different people. So occasionally you do hearken back and think, “Oh, is this the person that's gonna kill her? Is this?” 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. We could totally say more, but we don't wanna spoil it. But there's definitely hints dropped throughout the novel as to who it might be. But it, like Amy said, it isn't about that. It's really about, um, you know, her life and this potential for beauty and brilliance that she has because of the way she sees the world. And it just keeps getting… 

AMY: And lots of dead animals throughout this book.

KIM: Absolutely. Decapitated rabbits, sitting in a bowl in the kitchen, you know, hanging off of someone's belt. Um, 

AMY: Speaking of her little crow pet that she has that kind of lives in the dollhouse in her room. I went to Disney World this summer with my kids. At Disney's Animal Kingdom, we watched the wild bird show or whatever and they had a crow come out and do funny little stuff and it untied some guy's shoelaces. And I was watching it thinking of O Caledonia and being like, “You know what? A crow would make a really good pet. They are very smart.”

KIM: Oh, right, okay.

AMY: It seemed almost a little, like, fantastical that this girl would have this pet crow. But once I saw that, I was like, “No, I could see somebody having a pet crow.”

KIM: It felt like her familiar a little bit too. Um, it was like the animal….

AMY: Like her spirit animal.

KIM:It's her spirit animal. Yeah. And I mean, the thing that's strange about this book, too, is like her mom wants her to have this beautiful, girly room. But that bird is literally pooping all over the room, and it's very strange. It's like, how is she living in that? It's a bit fantastical in that way, I would say.

AMY: Dark academia. This is that vibe.

KIM: Oh, it's totally that vibe. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely am gonna be reading this book again, by the way. And it's a quick read, too.

AMY: Yeah, it is quick. I listened to it on audiobook. 

KIM: Yeah. Was it a Scottish Accent?

AMY: No. I don't, I don't think so. Actually, the narrator might have, I'm not sure. I can't remember. It was a couple months ago. Um, oh, another thing that made me laugh, you got the conventional mom and Janet doesn't wanna live a conventional girly life at all. The scene where she goes to the hairdresser…

KIM: Oh…

AMY: It’s like she's going to a lunatic asylum or something.

KIM: It's the worst. The worst ever. Oh my God. Yeah.

AMY: So there's lots of humor in the book. 

KIM: You want me to read a passage? Okay. [reads passage].

AMY: The magic of the Scottish moors or wherever she is. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and speaking of, I don't think we mentioned this, but I think Barker did grow up in a castle in Scotland. 

KIM: That would make sense. Yeah. 

AMY: I think the intro talks about that.

KIM: Yeah. Cause it did say you could see it as autobiographical, but it's more than that, so yeah. 

AMY: So anyway, Elspeth Barker actually just died last year in 2022. I kind of wish she would've written more novels based on this one, right?

KIM: Yeah. I hope George wasn't responsible for her not writing or novels, but, um, we should also add that her eldest child, Rafaella is also a writer, and we'll link to her books in our show notes for this episode.

AMY: So, yeah, that's all for today's episode. We hope if you've enjoyed it, you'll consider giving us a five-star rating and review wherever you listen.

KIM: Yeah, we really appreciate it. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

150. Elizabeth Smart — By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept with Rosemary Sullivan and Maya Gallus

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew.

AMY HELMES: And I'm Amy Helmes. Today's lost lady hadn't been on our spreadsheet for potential future subjects, but it seems like her book almost picked me. It caught my attention at the library on one of those paperback carousels that you sort of casually glance at, you know? This title, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, intrigued me right away, and so did a blurb on the cover, which read "Like Madame Bovary blasted by lightning. A masterpiece." So of course, I took it home and started reading it, and I felt instantly in love with it.

KIM: Yes. I'm so glad you did, and actually seems like a fitting way to discover Elizabeth Smart, especially once you know the details of the deeply personal and enthralling love story she elogizes in this book of poetic prose. First published in 1945, it sold very few copies and disappeared without much fanfare, but in the decades that followed, it began to acquire a cult following and was reissued to much acclaim in 1966. Literary critic Brigid Brophy called the book "One of the half dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in the world," and it's also said to be a favorite of the songwriter Morrissey. You can see the book's influence in certain songs by the Smiths.

AMY: I want to circle back to that line comparing this book to Madame Bovary blasted by lightning because that was written by the novelist Angela Carter in her Guardian review of the book, but she privately admitted to a friend that this was the book that inspired her to join the editorial board of the feminist publishing house, Virago Press. She said she wanted to make sure that "no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to be able to write By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, exquisite prose though it might contain. By Grand Central Station I Tore Off His Balls would be more like it, I should hope." End quote.

KIM: Okay, as that statement pretty much indicates there is a lot to unpack with this book and with the life trajectory of its Canadian born author. Luckily, we have two of the best authorities on Elizabeth Smart with us today to help us talk through it.

AMY: Yes, their respective works helped feed my newfound Elizabeth Smart obsession, and I can't wait to introduce them. So let's read the stacks and get started. 

[intro music plays]

AMY: Our first guest today, Rosemary Sullivan, is an award-winning biographer whose titles include Stalin's Daughter; Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen, and The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out. Her latest book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation has been sold in 20 countries since its publication last year. In 2012, Rosemary was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. And yes, if that sounds big time, that's because it is. Rosemary also wrote a wonderfully insightful and engrossing 1991 biography of Elizabeth Smart called By Heart. We should add that Rosemary actually knew Elizabeth Smart, and we can't wait to find out more about that. Rosemary, it's so good to have you here. Thank you for joining us.

ROSEMARY SULLIVAN: Thank you for inviting me.

KIM: Joining Rosemary today is filmmaker Maya Gallus. She's the co-founder of Red Queen Productions, which specializes in making documentaries about women in culture and the arts, frequently exploring the female gaze. This includes her debut documentary from 1991, Elizabeth Smart: On the Side of the Angels. This one hour film shares Smart's story through candid interviews with Smart's children and friends, rare archival photos, and visual dramatizations excerpting from Smart's works. Listeners, we'll share in our show notes how and where you can access this movie online. It's really worth checking out. Maya has directed, written, and or produced 15 films to date, the most recent of which is 2018's The Heat: A Kitchen Revolution, which opened at the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival. A year prior at that same festival, Maya was honored with a mid-career retrospective highlighting her work. Maya, welcome to the show.

MAYA GALLUS: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, and, I might add, it's a pleasure to revisit the world of Elizabeth Smart.

AMY: Okay. Rosemary, I'd like to start with you. Would you tell us about your experience reading this novel for the first time? Because it wound up being your introduction to Elizabeth Smart in more ways than one, right?

ROSEMARY: Right. Well, in fact, I probably read it for the first time in university. But it became important to me in the late Seventies because I was experiencing the kind of obsessive passion that Elizabeth Smart talks about. And I had actually gone to live in London to turn myself into a writer and to put the ocean between me and this love object, as Elizabeth would say. I went in 1978 to London and I wrote to her and said I was Canadian living in London, and could I come and visit her? And she said yes. So I got myself down to her house. She was very shy. I felt shy. She had prepared this beautiful meal, and we drank too much, you know, and, and collapsed in the afternoon. Um, I had expected to ask her about her novel as a solution to my own obsessions, but in fact, that's not what happened. I started asking her about something curious that struck me in the novel, which was that you had no description of the men. Here's this huge figure who totally enmeshes her emotions. And yet I can't tell you what he looks like. So I said, "Elizabeth, he has no face." She said, "Of course. He's a love object." And it took me a long time to understand what she meant by that. In fact, she had come to the realization, but we'll get there later, that in fact, it was an auto drama that she was experiencing in this obsessive passion.

KIM: Mm. Okay. I can't wait to talk more about that. So, Maya, we're gonna ask you the same question. How did you first discover Elizabeth Smart and this novel, and what made you decide to make her the subject of a documentary film?

MAYA: I had first heard of Elizabeth Smart in the early Eighties. She had returned to Canada from London in 1982 as a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept had been republished around the same time. There was a lot of writing about that, so I read the book out of curiosity and, um, it didn't, really engage me at the time. I felt it was a bit, um, over the top. So a few years later, in 1986, after she passed away, I just found this little article in the paper that 85 boxes of material had been donated to the archives in Canada, including diaries, photographs, grocery lists, uh, manuscripts, you name it. And I had been casting around for what might become my first film, and I thought, "Oh, someone should make a film about this extraordinary writer and this extraordinary life." And I posted it on my bulletin board and forgot about it. And then a few months later, I thought "I should make this film." But in order to do that, I thought, "Okay, well if I'm going to make this film, I have to reread the novel because it has to have meaning for me." I read By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, and it just knocked me flat. I was so blown away by the power, the intensity, the beautiful language, the um, extraordinary description of obsessive love written from the point of view of being in the eye of the hurricane. I had never read anything like that before. It was just so beautiful. And that was the beginning of the journey of making the film. 

KIM: Amazing.

 AMY: It's funny when you say, you know, your first reaction was that it was over the top, because this is not the sort of book I would normally like. But I couldn't put it down. I got so wrapped up in it. Um, we'll talk about that all a little bit, but, um, let's talk about Elizabeth Smart's life. She was born into a prominent and cultured family in Ottawa, Ontario in 1913. But maybe we should jump ahead a little bit to the start of the book itself, because it features a very pivotal autobiographical detail that kind of shaped her entire destiny. I'm gonna go ahead and read the first three paragraphs from By Grand Central Station. I Sat Down and Wept.

I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my terror to face the moment I most desire. Apprehension and the summer afternoon keep drying my lips, prepared at ten-minute intervals all through the five-hour wait.

      But then it is her eyes that come forward out of the vulgar disembarkers to reassure me that the bus has not disgorged disaster: her madonna eyes, soft as the newly-born, trusting as the untempted. And, for a moment, at that gaze, I am happy to forego my future, and postpone indefinitely the miracle hanging fire. Her eyes shower me with their innocence and surprise.

   Was it for her, after all, for her whom I had never expected nor imagined, that there had been compounded such ruses of coincidence? Behind her he for whom I have waited so long, who has stalked so unbearably through my nightly dreams, fumbles with the tickets and the bags, and shuffles up to the event which too much anticipation has fingered to shreds.

KIM: Wow. So it's obviously a huge moment. and Maya, because most of our listeners probably don't know the story, can you please explain what Elizabeth Smart was doing at that bus station in Monterey that day?

MAYA: She was waiting to meet George Barker, and as it turned out, his wife, Jessica. She discovered his work in a bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London, and immediately was just blown away and drawn to his work. And she began a correspondence with him.

AMY: She decided " I'm going to be with this man." Right?

MAYA: Well, she had started working on the novel before she even met him. So she was already interested in the idea of love in love with love, if you like, perhaps in the same way that people talk about Romeo and Juliet being in love with love. When she discovered his work, I think she was really in love with his writing and with him as an artist. But she also felt it was predestined, and that there was no turning back. From the point of view of an artist, she recognized that he would provide the vehicle in order for her to be able to write this prose poem, and she knew that she had to live it before she could write it. He was living in Japan at the time and wanted to get out. It was during the Second World War. And she arranged money for him to come across the ocean to California. I think it's when he asked for the second passage that she realized he was married, which didn't quite work into her plan. So this was their first actual meeting in person. And as she describes in what I think is one of the most extraordinary openings of a book, she was underwhelmed by his appearance, and really, in many ways, overwhelmed by, um, the presence of his wife, I think for many reasons.

AMY: I think it's interesting that even though George Barker is the sun around which her world would revolve for years to come, she starts the novel off with Jessica, the wife, you know, in this love triangle. What do we make of that?

ROSEMARY: I would say one has to think of who Elizabeth Smart was before she entered that bookstore in Charing Cross Road and encountered the poetry of George Barker. She came from, as you described it, a very conventional, upwardly mobile, upper middle class family where her mother was dedicated to propriety , cocktail parties and so on. And Elizabeth was a rebel. She goes to the Charing Cross bookstore. She sees this book, she reads it. That's what she wants to write, that level of poetry. There's no picture of him, but he's the right age. She had already been hunting for the key. How did a woman in those years, in the 1940s, declare herself a writer? The only way was to attach yourself to a literary circle or another person. And these extraordinary relationships between very talented women and priapic, epic, bohemian, self-indulgent men is kind of the pattern of that time. So here she is, she finds the poetry she wants to write, she lets it be known among all her friends, she wants to meet and marry George Barker and have his children. That's so strange, really. She never did marry George Barker, and she said she never really cared that she did or not. We think when we read Grand Central Station that it's all about just love, and it is. But surrounding that is the person who was Elizabeth Smart.

 KIM: So she was able to play out this perceived destiny. She ended up having this affair with George. They actually ended up having four children over the years. But loving him ended up being part of a quote, "cruel bargain" that she'd entered into. She was frequently living as an impoverished single mother. She had to make do with these little scraps of time with George. He was running back and forth between Elizabeth and his wife. And that gets us to the title of the book By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. It describes the time he was supposed to meet her at Grand Central, and true to fashion, he just doesn't even show up. And the line is also a play on a line from the Book of Psalms: By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept.

AMY: Yeah, and there are actually a lot of biblical references woven into Smart's work, which is one of the things that makes it so beautiful. And of course it left me wondering about Elizabeth's relationship to religion. Rosemary, you write that she was really more interested in the mystical than in any organized religion, right?

ROSEMARY: I would say she was in love with language. For me, the line that I hold in my imagination from that book is "I could no more resist him than the earth could resist the rain," you know?

MAYA: Then the earth could refuse the rain. Yeah.

ROSEMARY: Yeah. Yeah. It was always at that level of extremism, a wonderful, rhetorical extremism that Elizabeth was working. He was never going to be faithful to her, she knew that really from the beginning. Uh, they did run away, leaving Jessica in San Francisco, and Elizabeth ended up in New York and he didn't show up. Um, but, but that time she had the child that she wanted. Interestingly, it was George who gave her the title By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, and he fed her passionate commitment to the assumption of rogues and rascals you know? She wanted to be part of the extreme, dramatic set of people. The last thing she wanted was the conventionality of her Ottawa, neo-colonial, home, right? So she's always looking out for drama. I once said to her, "Elizabeth, how could you keep opening the door to George?" And she said "He had such a good sense of humor."

KIM: Wow, he must have.

ROSEMARY: He's the myth in the core of her story. When I asked him for permission to quote him, he refused. Uh, but I said, “I need to make it clear that you had a relationship with her.” And so I said, “Can I quote your description of her, which was, ‘She's summer over the Rockies.’” You get a few of those and it's pretty exciting.

KIM: Yeah, for sure.

MAYA: He was a very charismatic person. And I met him, um, before he died. He was brilliant, difficult, funny, charismatic. He didn't want to be in the film. And actually I was okay with that, because if he had been in the film, he might have overshadowed some aspects. And it really was a relationship of two artists, in the same way that we hear about many relationships with creative people who write their own versions of their relationship, whether in song and novels and poems and films. And they kind fed each other and fed off each other. So it was both positive and negative. I mean, he wrote his own version of their love affair, a book called The Dead Seagull. And it's not very flattering in the sense that he casts himself as this man who is being devoured by this woman. Perhaps that's how he saw himself in the relationship, but at the same time, he would show up and he was constantly leaving. And Elizabeth was using that for her poetry. She used it for her second novel, The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals. She really took everything that was happening to her. You know, as Nora Ephron said, “everything is copy,” you know. So she really did take that to heart and whatever happened she wrote it down and made it into art.

ROSEMARY: At that time, T.S. Eliot said that the poet who was going to continue his legacy was George Barker. He had that level of reputation, so, uh, yeah, she was aiming for the top. But George's work now, it doesn't really hold up. And George was afraid of being consumed by Elizabeth, and in fact, he would've been in a way because, uh, she had a romantic myth, a version of what, you know, as you said before, a predestined relationship, dictated from eternity. Not everybody wants to walk into that. So, you know, there's a part of me that has some sympathy for George. The only reason I don't have full sympathy is that there really was a model of the male poet who sacrificed everything to his genius, while some female supported him. I mean, the opportunism and expediency of the male genius of that time was really rather depressing.

KIM: Yeah.

MAYA: And, and it and it was very much the narrative of the time, still actually is, but not as much. There are so many different ways, I think, to navigate having a relationship, possibly family, but also pursue one's art. And for women, it really was a dilemma at the time. It's still a dilemma for many women. What was interesting though is that here was Elizabeth writing in what has been called a confessional style, writing in what has often been derided as "female literature" and therefore diminished because it's personal, it's inward looking rather than outward looking. She's writing about matters of the heart rather than matters of the world. That was 1945. Nobody was writing like that then. And of course, later we had Sylvia Plath, Margaret Duran, even, uh, you continue the line today if you look at auto fiction writers like Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, also writers who made their success in television like Lena Dunham with “Girls,” and before that, um, “Sex and the City.” And these stories of women that are reflecting in some ways popular culture, so they're not perhaps deep and profound. Some of them are, some aren't. But it's so interesting that it has taken this long for that form to be celebrated.

KIM: Yeah, for sure. Sure. And also given the time that you mentioned and everything, she was talking about some other things too. She was talking maybe about the bigger political picture that was going on. The events play out in North America while World War II was raging in Europe, and she references the war on multiple occasions. So what sort of connections do you think she was making between this love affair and World War II?

ROSEMARY: Well, um, one of the most entertaining moments I had in writing this biography was when I examined the text Grand Central. Um, I noted that the lovers, as they crossed the Arizona border, were arrested there. You know, there's no border crossing in Arizona. so obviously they were being followed. At that time there was I think it was called the Man Act. You weren't allowed to cross borders. As Elizabeth put it, you could cross borders, but not with sex in mind. So she was at the time, what, 28 or something. But still, they were arrested, and she ended up spending three days in jail till her father came and bailed her out. So Elizabeth, there's a politics to her book in that the prudery of the FBI following her, arresting her for her love affair, it confirms her commitment that the intensity and privacy of our emotions is more important, if you want, than the bureaucratic politics. She was very much aware of the war and horrified by it. And her solution to the war was in some ways to intensify the integrity of our emotional relationships. Uh, but Maya's description is excellent of the return to the personal narrative, because, you know, there was always this separation between the political and the personal. And now we understand that they're absolutely intimately connected. 

MAYA: The other interesting thing about her writing that at the time is, you know, as you say, the personal and the political is that she was always rebelling against whatever the prevailing notions and norms were. And here, you know, one was supposed to be writing about the ravages of war, and she was writing about the ravages of grand passion and love, but she was writing about it as if they had been through a war. And so there was this interesting kind of parallel of going to war and falling into obsessive love and surviving it, which is very much, when you read her later follow up, The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, there is this feeling of someone who has survived the war or the wars, but it's not a literal war, it's the war of love and passion and is now experiencing the ravages of that.

KIM: It's incredibly harrowing reading the experience of her getting arrested, and frightening on an emotional level, a psychological level, so it does feel like warfare in a lot of ways.

AMY: But then she elevates that whole interrogation with this sublime addition of biblical passages from the Song of Songs, right? She intersperses it and in a way it's almost funny, but it's beautiful the way she meshes that all together. I also, let me, let me find, there's a little section where she's talking about what's happening in the world.

 …I saw then that there was nothing else anywhere but this one thing; that neither nunnery nor Pacific Islands nor jungles nor all the jazz of America nor the frenzy of warzones could hide any corner which housed an ounce of consolation if this failed. In all states of being, in all worlds, this is all there is. 

And then later she says: With it I can repopulate all the world. I can bring forth new worlds in underground shelters while the bombs are dropping above; I can do it in lifeboats as the ship goes down; I can do it in prisons without the guard's permission; and O, when I do it quietly in the lobby while the conference is going on, a lot of statesmen will emerge twirling their moustaches, and see the birth-blood and know that they have been foiled. 

Love is strong as death. 

So it basically goes back to what you were saying, about this inner stuff that's going on, this one connection with this other person is almost bigger than everything that's going on in the world. She's very intense.

 I kept going back to, especially reading your biography, Rosemary, like, okay, George Parker to me seems like no prize. I know you're saying he was charismatic. He must have been. But the way he treated the women in his life, God, you're almost frustrated with Elizabeth at times. Like, why? But I think it's true that you can just interchange George and the bigger idea of poetry. She saw him as an emblem for her true passion, which was language and poetry, right?

KIM: Yeah, she's living on another level.

MAYA: I would imagine that even though she had a very strong sense of herself as an artist, she hadn't quite developed that sense of entitlement yet, that she actually could stand on her own as an artist.

AMY: I mean, she writes about it, too, in both this book and The Assumption of Rogues and Rascals, she talks about the kind of unfair circumstances for women. There's another little bit that I'd love to read, just this sort of idea of what men are able to do versus what women are able to do. She says:

So between worry and action the faces of women fall away. Can they walk off, leaving behind everything spurious, futile, ignominious, love-lack, over those fields mysterious with mushrooms, over the hill spotted with cows shapeless as slugs in the dusk, and reach at last, that evening, ease in a London pub, where faces glow through smoke and sometimes through distracted anguish? Even a slight parole? 

No. They must stay. They must pray. They must bang their heads. Be beautiful. Wait. Love. Try to stop loving. Hate. Try to stop hating. Love again. Go on loving. Bustle about. Rush to and fro.

The truth clings onto them and bites into their beauty. 

The womb's an unwieldy baggage. Who can stagger uphill with such a noisy weight? 

And I mean, she was a mom of four kids. She was making her dandelion soup because they didn't have anything to eat half the time…

ROSEMARY: But I wanted to read, um, the other thing about Elizabeth Smart, in 1965, she became the editor of Queen magazine and she changed Queen entirely. I interviewed Edna O'Brien, the wonderful Irish writer, and she said, Elizabeth gave a place to women. And this is what Elizabeth writes. She says, "I see a phenomenon, women talking, women daring to tell the truth about themselves, women being intelligently articulate. Surely this wasn't always. So in the great folk tradition, the cleverest women smiled and said nothing is against their own interest to speak. And anyhow, who was there to listen? Men hate clever women. Be good, sweet maid and let who will be clever. And besides women were so busy, can it be irrelevant that Jane Austen, Christina Rosetti, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, and Virginia Woolf had no children, or that Virginia Woolf had a husband. 

So, you know, uh, that issue of Elizabeth's commitment to having children is also so fascinating. What was it that compelled her to keep having her children? As you talked about it, the burden of the womb carrying the seed of new life.

AMY: But yeah, that was another side of her need to create, right? She loved being a mother. It was so clear.

MAYA: She did love it. And you know, sort of predictably, George, um, had many children with five different women, only two of whom he formally married. Including Elspeth Langlands, who was his last wife, and an extraordinary woman in her own right, and also a writer. But he had 15 children with these women, so he was very prolific in that regard as well. I think Elizabeth, despite how difficult it was, was really showing something that was really close to my heart, which is that the passion and intensity of living your life and your commitment to your art is perhaps more important than living a conventional life. And certainly she was really, as Rosemary pointed out, really rebelling. In fact, it seems that a lot of her choices were about rebelling against her mother, rebelling against that high society way of life. It was suffocating, and the only way that she could really find her expression was to completely reject that and live what was then, I guess, considered Bohemian life.

KIM: So what was the general reaction to this book when it came out in 1945? Did it get much critical response? Were people shocked by it?

ROSEMARY: When it came out in 1945, uh, there was rationing of paper. So it was a tiny little book, with very intense print. It did get a couple of good reviews. Cyril Connolly, I think, called it a good book, and then it just disappeared. I don't know what Elizabeth expected, but she just went into a kind of seclusion after that. The part of Elizabeth's life that, uh, is most powerful and tragic. Well, there's two elements to her life. The first is her mother, and the last is her daughter, Rose. Uh, as I said that afternoon when I visited her for the first time, we were both shy and somewhat intimidated by each other, and so we drank, and she took me up to this bed that was like Rapunzel's bed because it was cold. Winter. And then I heard her tossing in her sleep and she was crying, "Mother! Mother! Mother!" And this was 1979. I mean, she's born in 1913, right? I think, with her mother, there was an intensity of attachment and control and also an indifference. And then by the end, uh, her daughter, Rose, did have a drug addiction, which was not surprising. That's happened to many people, who were part of the Bohemian set in Soho and so on. Uh, and she was actually quitting. She had quit drugs, but it had compromised her liver, and so that's how she died. And it was an unbelievably painful thing for Elizabeth to deal with that. Here's Elizabeth writing in her diary: 

The fragile vulnerability because of the Rose blow — welling up into any vacuum in piercing detail and making so many words, signs, situations, excruciating—and now it becomes more and more difficult to speak of this, which at first and for a while I could naturally, sadly but not so sadly that it embarrassed the listener. Pain crouches everywhere, in ambush, as I totter unprotected, by. Which makes any plan to stand wobbly. Which makes lying down in sobriety dangerous. Which causes panic. So I stuff books in. 

Her diaries are very moving.

MAYA: Hmm. I'm glad you read that passage because when I think about Elizabeth and, um, I, I never met her when she came to Canada, but many people did meet her either in Edmonton or Toronto, and described this woman who had been ravaged by this passionate love affair and destroyed and drank too much and all of that. But my sense of her was that what she actually was ravaged by was the pain of the death of her daughter, and could never get over that. She was, yes, perhaps destroyed by pain, but it wasn't about the love affair. It was about the loss of her child. 

AMY: Yeah, it seems like her life was hard. 

KIM: Yeah.

 AMY: Well, getting back to her mom, her parents did not approve of the relationship with George Barker, and then her mother definitely did not approve of the book, right? I mean, she successfully got it banned in Canada.

MAYA: Well, I think her mother was a narcissist, and she somehow saw the book as being about her, that it brought shame to her. And so she needed to get rid of it. Maybe on some level, she was right in the sense that so much of Elizabeth's rebellion was about her mother, but certainly the book was not about her mother. It was Elizabeth exploring her own interests and passion and doing it beautifully. She was constantly looking for different ways to express her sexuality and herself, and also find a way to connect that to her art. And that would've just been anathema to her mother. So, uh, she couldn't escape the guilt. Even By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has a sort of moralistic underpinning to it. And perhaps even her inclusion of the biblical references is kind of a sly wink. And certainly in The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, there's a sense of, okay, now the debt must be paid for what I have done. So here's a passage: After being knocked out on the battlefield of love of passion, nevermind. Now I lay a long time like Lazarus waiting for Jesus to come and tell me to get up. He may have come or he may not, or he may have come and I have moved to another address, or maybe he kissed me in a spot where too much local anesthetic lingered. Anyway, there has been no resurrection.

ROSEMARY: Wonderful. I think that's, it's so, so, right on. And the idea that her mother, uh, she went to the prime minister to get Grand Central Station banned. It must have been rewarding for her mother to know that she could go to that level and get the book banned. And the book was banned because A, it's promiscuous, you know, a woman having a love affair with a married man, but B, she's not even really in it. There's a couple of sentences about the parents, and as you say, as a narcissist, "Where am I in this book?" 

AMY: There was one other little bit about her mother that made me laugh in Rogues and Rascals. She just writes:

 "Mother, Mother, my soul's on fire.” 

“Yes dear. Is that a new little pimple I see appearing? Shall we try milk of magnesia?" 

So it perfectly illustrates her soul's on fire and her mother is so conventional and like Donna Reed kind of character, that you can see why they would be so at odds with one another.

MAYA: I think it must have been terrifying for her mother and actually for many people when the book was initially published because, in its way, it was explicit. It was explicit not only in terms of acknowledging that this was a sexual relationship between a man and a woman who were not married, but also explicit in terms of its emotion. And one of the things that I love about Elizabeth's writing, in addition to the beautiful language, is that she wasn't afraid of the messiness, that she wrote about the birth blood. Those are the things that again, have been derided in women's, you know, confessional writing, and that only now, um, you know, a writer like Lidia Yuknavitch or um, maybe Mary Karr, you know, who are writing about the messy, really deeply personal aspects of a woman's life. And, um, the fact that Elizabeth was doing that at that time would've just been shocking and yet also is so extraordinary and ahead of its time.

AMY: It's nice that she was able to see renewed interest in this book in her lifetime, right? People gradually started to, you know, come around to it. What sort of sparked the renewed interest in the 1960s?

ROSEMARY: I think it was Brigid Brophy's comment and review that this was “one of the half dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in English.” She was by then, uh, editor at Queen magazine and pulling in all these women writers, so people turned to that book and discovered it, as it had been, as it were overshadowed or lain dormant for so many years. 

MAYA: I don't know how much, um, enjoyment she got from the later discovery of her work. It seems to me that some people described her as masochistic in some way. And I don't think she was masochistic. I think she understood that perhaps there was a price to be paid for the intensity of the way that she was pursuing her art and the way that she was pursuing her life in order to create art. And, um, there's a passage I'd like to read from Rogues and The Rascals because she really, in that book is coming to terms with her choices and trying to make peace, maybe, or at least reconcile in some way. Okay, these are the choices you made. Um, as she says, at one point You expected a bill and a bill is what you get. This is the bill. Now pay it. So she's very matter of fact about it, but at another point, um, she says:

But where, woman wailing above your station, is that you want to go to, get to accomplish, communicate? Can't you be amply satisfied with such pain, such babies, such balancing? 

No. no. There is a blood-flecked urge to go even a step further.

Above the laughter, above the miseries, above the clatter of glasses and the cries of children, I hear a voice saying: Isn't there some statement you'd like to make? Anything noted while alive? Anything felt, seen, heard, done? You are here. You're having your turn. Isn't there something you know and nobody else does? What if nobody listens? Is it all to be wasted? All blasted? What about that pricey pain?

AMY: I loved The Assumption of Rogues and Rascals for everything you're saying. I think they have to be read 

MAYA: together. 

Mm-hmm. It's a companion piece.

AMY: Yeah. But it's like all the things that I was frustrated about with George, you know, masochistic was a word that came to mind for me. But in the second book, she has the blinders off and she's able to reflect on it all. We see a wiser woman, in some respects. I was torn between which one I liked more, to be perfectly honest.

MAYA: Well, I mean, there's no question that By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept is the literary masterpiece, but at the same time, The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals is the companion piece. And, like so many works, one can be understood much more deeply by reading the other, and then you can go back and forth between the two. And also, who does one relate to? Do you relate to the young woman in the throes of passion, or do you relate to the older woman looking back on her life and reconciling the choices that she's made?

AMY: Right. And it probably depends on what period in your own life you're reading these. If I had read Grand Central Station in my twenties, I would've had an entirely different relationship to it as now being older and looking back on it, too. 

MAYA: She was clearly a very deep feeling and deep thinking person, and she thought a lot about the choices she had made and what may or may not have been the consequences of those choices. But it's so important to remember that she had agency every step of the way. She chose her path. She made those choices and she made them deliberately because she knew that it was the way through in order to create a masterpiece, which is what she did.

AMY: Absolutely.

ROSEMARY: That is a theme of my book. I remember one of the chapters, uh, was called “Marginal Notes, Never the Text.” And she turned herself into the text, because it's she and her book that we celebrate.

MAYA: It's true. 

AMY: Listeners, to get a more complete chronological picture of Elizabeth Smart's story, her life, I would encourage you to check out Rosemary's biography of her. Watch Maya's documentary online at, I believe it's called vucavu.com. That's V U C A V U.com. Just create an account and stream it from there for $3. There were no weird strings attached. (I'm sometimes nervous about signing up for things like that, but it was all simple and easy.) Um, the film is great. And by the way, Elizabeth Smart is so gorgeous. It's worth checking out this film just to see all the old, amazing photographs of her.

KIM: There's also a really great interview with Elizabeth Smart from later on in her life it's really amazing to watch. Um, you can't look away from it. And we'll link to that in our show notes and also in our Facebook forum so you can watch it also.

AMY: Maya, Rosemary, thank you for being with us.

KIM: Yes.Thank you so much. 

MAYA: And it's actually, I have to say, it's been wonderful to have this discussion, not only with both of you, but with Rosemary as well. I think it's extraordinary that here we are, all these years later, we're talking about this extraordinary piece of work and this amazing author. And that's how it's going to continue, that Elizabeth will continually be rediscovered with each decade because there's more and more layers for us to discover. 

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Be sure to check back with us next week because we will be talking a little bit about George Barker's final wife, the final lady in his life. Elsbeth Barker and her book O Caledonia. So we have more to say on the topic.

KIM: Yeah, I love that book. I can't wait for that mini episode next week.

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes. 

148. Winnifred Eaton — Cattle with Mary Chapman

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew, here with my co-host, Amy Helmes.

AMY HELMES: Back in our early days of this podcast, we did an episode on Sui Sin Far, a.k.a. Edith Maude Eaton, with guest Victoria Namkung. That was episode No. 15, if you want to go back and have a listen when you're finished with this episode.

KIM: In that episode we mentioned that Edith had a sister, Winnifred, who was also a writer, and we talked about wanting to eventually circle back to do an episode on her. She sometimes wrote under the Japanese sounding pseudonym, Onoto Watanna.

AMY: Well, the day for circling back is today, and the timing couldn't be better because Winnifred Eaton's novel Cattle is about to turn 100, and a new edition of the novel is being released next week by Invisible Publishing, which describes this book as " a curious Canadian mixture of Hardy and Steinbeck."

KIM: I was also reminded of Edna Ferber's So Big, which was published just one year after Cattle came out.

AMY: And if you're a fan of the hit TV series “Yellowstone” and its prequel “1923,” you are going to absolutely love this novel. It gives off a lot of classic Western vibes. It's about a group of cattle ranchers and is set amidst the sweeping landscape of Alberta. 

KIM: Yet there's an unmistakable darkness that pervades the book, and a pandemic also factors into this novel, which modern readers will undoubtedly be able to identify with. We are so thrilled to have the director of the Winnifred Eaton Archive joining us today to discuss the novel and its fascinating author. So without further ado, let's raid the stacks and get started. 

[intro music plays]

KIM: Our guest today, Mary Chapman, is a professor of English at the University of British Columbia, where she was the founding academic director of the Public Humanities Hub.

AMY: She's also the author of Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture, and US Modernism, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. And she edited the book Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction Journalism and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton. In addition to overseeing the Winnifred Eaton Archive, she's written extensively on the Eaton sisters for a variety of scholarly publications. Later this month, she'll be spearheading a conference in Calgary called “Onoto Watana's Cattle at 100,” at which leading scholars on Winnifred Eaton will convene.

KIM: And if anybody listening lives nearby, there will be several public events happening in connection with the conference, including a “Winnifred Lived Here” walking tour of Calgary. Oh my gosh, I wish I could go and we'll share our details for it in our show notes.Mary Chapman, I'm sure you must be very busy gearing up for this event, so thank you for taking the time to talk with us today, and we just wanna welcome you to the show.

MARY: Thank you so much for having me.

AMY: I think few people are more perfectly suited to tell us about Winnifred Eaton than you, Mary. So let's start with her upbringing. There were 14 children and of those 14, 12 children survived. So, huge family. The eldest sister was Edith, who was our previous lost lady from a few years back. Winnifred was the eighth child to come along in 1875. The family lived in Canada. Their father was a painter and a British merchant, and their mother came to England from China as a young girl. This is interesting, she was a performer in an acrobatic troupe. Mary, what else can you tell us to shed light on Winnifred's childhood and how it might have shaped who she wound up becoming?

MARY: All I can say is they were a wild family. The mom had been an enslaved child acrobat. She performed in the gold rush in San Francisco in 1852, and she toured the world and then sort of escaped the man who was considered abusive and trained to be a missionary and went to China.So she met Edward Eaton there, and as you said, he was a merchant. They married and settled in Montreal and had this huge family. So I imagine the space where Winnifred grew up as a crowded, loud, strong personality space with all kinds of vulnerability and volatility. I mean, how did the dad support this big crowd? How were they treated as a mixed race family in the 1870s and eighties? I think Winnifred had to speak up to get attention and she had to assert herself and she's certainly a strong personality.

AMY: Didn’t she also kind of have a penchant for fudging the truth? 

MARY: Yeah. Um, she's an opportunist. So if there's a story that will work to advance her in some way, she will. She's just a strong ego with grand ambitions, and so she's going to tell whatever version of the truth can get her where she wants to go.

KIM: Right. And she has the imagination to, to get away with it.

MARY: Yeah. Yeah.

KIM: So I'm curious how the two sisters, Winnifred and Edith, differed in terms of their personalities. So was Winnifred influenced at all by seeing her older sister getting her stories published?

MARY: Yeah, their relationship is so interesting because it's kind of undocumented. They're separated by 10 years. I think Edith, as the eldest daughter, has to be the responsible, maternal, and possibly bossy older sister. Certainly in some of the autobiographical stuff that Winnifred writes, there's an older, disapproving, chaperone- like sister, and that seems like Edith. But at the same time because Winnifred is so precocious, she does stuff first. So she goes to Jamaica as a 21 year old and works as a stenographer journalist, and then leaves Jamaica and Edith follows her. So it's a little bit, you know, uh, contrary to what we would expect. Edith published earlier, but Winnifred published in better journals sooner. Winnifred was so egotistical and such a strong personality that I think Edith probably found her hard to take, but I also think they had very different relations to their ethnic backgrounds, and that probably caused a rift. So, for example, in the papers that Winnifred left behind, there are letters to other sisters, there are photographs with other sisters, but there's nothing with Edith. So is it because they were geographically separated? Is it because they were personally at odds? I don't know.

KIM: Interesting. So while big sister Edith embraced her Chinese heritage and writing, Winnifred actually took an altogether different approach when she was starting out as a novelist. Mary, can you walk us through this?

MARY: Yeah, this is a crazy story. So Edith starts writing stories under a Chinese pseudonym, Sui Sin Far, or we could say [Chinese pronunciation] that would be my best effort at a Mandarin pronunciation, she published a lot of stories that were sympathetic chronicles of Chinatowns in North America, and she lived in many cities with large Chinatowns like Seattle, San Francisco, L.A. Winnifred started publishing Orientalist stuff around the same time, but she published them not only under a kind of faux Japanese pseudonym, but she also wore kimonos, spoke with the halting Japanese accent, sort of did the whole channeling of this persona. Most critics have seen them as, you know, the “good sister,” the “bad sister.” The one who embraces her authentic makeup and the one who doesn't. But I think there's a more complicated story there. So the reason I would say that is A, Edith also publishes about non-Chinese people. She publishes about Japanese. She publishes about Persian. She writes a lot of children's stories featuring children from around the world. She doesn't assume that she is from those ethnicities, but anyway… but Winnifred, also, one of her earliest stories was about Montreal Chinatown. But for some reason she starts pretending to be Japanese at this point. I have a lot of theories about why, and they have to do with: She flees Jamaica. She doesn't go home. She goes to a brother in Cincinnati. She hangs out in Cincinnati for a few months. She starts wearing kimonos, high-waisted body covering gowns. I think she got pregnant in Jamaica. I have no documentation about this, but I think she got pregnant, and I think it was what any 21-year-old, panicked girl from an upright family would do. Just hide it as best she could. And then speaking of lies and what happens to them, that lie got legs. She was encouraged by an editor in Cincinnati to write a story about Japan since she clearly was a Japanese noble woman. So she said, “Okay.” And she did, and it got published. And then one imagined world kind of took flight.

KIM: That's fascinating.

AMY: Yeah, I haven't read any of these Japanese stories or novels, but are they accurate? I mean, how hard would that have been to pretend to be from a culture that you're not. I mean, what was she even drawing on and wouldn't somebody have been like, “Wait a second…?”

MARY: Right. Yeah, that's a great question. So two answers. One is that her father's brother moved to Japan and he lived there for 27 years, and he married a Japanese woman and he had at least one child. I think the families were close. But there was a Japanese connection for the Eaton family, so it's not completely out of the air that she embraces some of the stories and the history and the clothing and traditions, right? The other thing is, I think she was an excellent researcher. I've found some journals, some magazines about the Far East published by, you know, the Asiatic Society or whatever. She's clearly read these because in some cases the material that she puts in her books is word for word from these articles. So she's doing her research, and many Japanese scholars, even as late as the 1960s, found her descriptions of some of the landscapes and clothing and traditions very accurate. So I think she did her homework and she had a family connection. Did somebody see through this charade and this masquerade? Yes. So by about 1903 or 1904, the story of her ancestry got more, um, more modest over time, and then she really tried to step away from it. So in 1907, 1908, she really is moving away from the content, moving away from the pen name, but she's a brand. And the publishers will not let her relinquish that profitable, bestselling brand. In many ways that's why I'm sympathetic to the arc of her career. I don't condone that ethnic masquerade. I think it was really destructive, and she took the space that might have been available to Japanese authors or Japanese American authors. So I don't think we can condone that. But I think when she recognizes just how offensive and problematic that masquerade was and she moves on. This Alberta phase, what she writes is fantastic and very much based on experience.

AMY: You know, she's got this legacy today of what we would call cultural appropriation. Does that contribute at all to the fact that we don't hear about her as much? And people being hesitant about celebrating her?

MARY: Yes. I think she's easy to be completely fascinated by, but she's hard to love. Her works raise challenges. There are a lot of racial slurs against Chinese people, against Japanese people, against indigenous people, so those texts are hard to teach, possibly more so because you have a racialized writer who doesn't seem to be taking good care with issues like respect, authenticity, appropriation, et cetera. However, I think there have been a number of calls for a fairer kind of attention to her. But then the momentum is lost because we're living in a cancel culture. We're living in more of a contemporary literary culture, and contemporary writers are going to navigate some of the questions with greater skill to meet our expectations. Whereas writers in the past are going to disappoint us. They just aren't going to navigate many of the questions as well. So that's one of the reasons we're having this conference. Can we pay attention to her career in enough detail to fairly assess the value of her output, and not to condone the phases that we find problematic, but to give more attention to the phases that are less problematic, that have frankly not been given enough attention because people have been so quick to keep the conversation solely focused on the Japanese phase.

KIM: Right, right.

AMY: Okay, so her debut novel is Miss Numé of Japan, which was a sensation. She eventually found her way to New York where she was part of the New York literati, wouldn't you say, Mary?

MARY: Absolutely. She knew everyone. You know, she went to Mark Twain's birthday party. She hobnobbed with Jean Webster. Um, Edith Wharton seemed to be on her radar. She hung out with a lot of playwrights and people who at the time were, you know, prominent movers and shakers, but maybe we wouldn't have heard of now. And she was a bestselling novelist, so her works were getting adapted for stage, made into films, uh, translated. She was very well connected with the New York scene, for sure.

KIM: So soon after moving to New York, she meets and marries a journalist. They have four children together, but they divorced after 16 years of marriage. He was an abusive alcoholic and she was the main breadwinner of the house. And then soon after her divorce was final, she remarried. And this is where circumstances start leading her toward the writing of Cattle.

MARY: Yeah. I, I don't know enough about how she met Frank Reeve in the New York area and what possessed them to pull up stakes and move to Alberta. 

AMY: Can I interrupt for a second? Just because this is fresh in my mind. I thought they met in Reno when she went for a quickie divorce. I think that's what I remember happened, and I'll, I'll double check that. But um, yeah, so then the divorce went through and she has already met her new man.

MARY: All right. Well, he was a very, um, you know, manly, confident guy, and he had some farming roots. You know, he had sort of people in the family who had done farming and she loved horses. She rode horses in Central Park as often as she could. So I think somehow, so, leaving town, getting away from her past was a good move. And certainly Alberta at the time was a really weird space. Wealthy people, aristocrats, the Prince of Wales, for example, were buying ranches in Alberta. So there was kind of a glamorous life, even as one would also be having a rural, possibly quiet, possibly anonymous life. So yeah, they moved to Alberta.

AMY: I didn't know the Alberta connection when I was reading Cattle, and I kept wondering about it because it was so clear that she knew what she was talking about in this case. You know, she might have been winging it with the Japanese stuff but this area she knew.

KIM: Absolutely. Absolutely. So let's dive into our discussion of the novel now. Mary, do you want to give the listeners a quick spoiler free rundown of the plot to just start us off?

MARY: Sure. So, the main antagonist is a guy nicknamed Bull Langdon. He's a rancher. He's violent towards everyone and everything, and he has this covetous eye. He wants to brand everything. So branding is almost the primary trope of the novel. Bull wants to put his brand, his ownership, on everything he sees. So of course he has conflicts with neighboring farmers, um, and a servant girl. It all takes place against the backdrop of the Spanish Flu. So there's a sense of a pandemic that's going to separate people, keep people private, keep people away from one another, and yet people all come together to help one another. And that ethos is completely foreign to Bull. So without giving too many details, he gets his just desserts by the end of the novel. You said, no spoilers, so I just…

AMY: Yeah. I think we can talk about Nettie a bit though, um, because she's the heroine.

MARY: Sure. So let's talk about Nettie. Yeah. So the story really is about his rape of his servant girl and what she does in response and who helps her. It's a realistic depiction of somebody being raped, which was not where fiction writers and editors wanted to go in the 1920s. And so I think it was a challenging depiction for some people, but there's also a sense that the rape figures as a kind of allegorical take on all of Bull's behaviors. You know, he is raping the land, raping the community, raping the indigenous people, and this is his settler, colonialist approach to possessing the land.

AMY: Mary, I think I emailed you when I was reading this that I was thinking of the “Access Hollywood” tape a lot because he just thinks of women as cattle. I mean, there's the title right there. He puts them in the same classification. And there's a point where he basically says something to the effect of, Any woman I want, I can have her. 

MARY: I can get, yeah. Yeah, and as you said when you were reading this text, you felt like she understood this world she was writing from experience. I think she's close to the grittiness and the challenge of the Alberta frontier. People live in wide open spaces. They're vulnerable to the environment, to weather, to potential violence, to neighbors. Uh, it's not a heavily policed space. You know, people aren't attending to, you know, basic civic proprieties like they might in a city. So all the vulnerability, she's really aware of it. And the story of the servant girl, she says in something she wrote that she heard that this had happened to someone nearby.So obviously that was a starting point for the novel.

AMY: Would you mind sharing a favorite passage from Cattle? Anything you would wanna pick out? 

MARY: Okay, this is from early in the novel, and it really, conveys Bull's personality and sort of reflects back on what Amy was asking about the former president of the United States. 

You recalled when first the Bull, or to give him his proper name, Bill Langdon, came into the foothills.

His brand blazed out, bold and huge before the trails were staked and the railroads were pushing their noses into the new land. Even at that early period, his covetous eye had marked the Indian cattle. Rolling fat in quotation marks as the term is in the cattle world, and smugly grazing over the rich pasture lands with the ID Indian department brand upon their right ribs, a warning to rustlers from east and west and south and north.

These were the property of the Canadian government. Little cared Bull Langdon for the Canadian government. And he fat contemptuously at the word Bull had come hastily out of Montana. And although he had flouted and set a defiance, the laws of his native land away from it, he chose to regard with supreme contempt, all other portions of the earth that were not included in the Great Union across the line. 

Here's one more thing I want to read:

If the Bull considered men of the same breed as cattle, he had less respect for the female of the human species. With few exceptions, he snarled, spitting with contempt. Women were scrub stock, easy stuff that could be whistled or driven to home pastures a man had, but to reach out and help him himself to what he desired.

AMY: So, yeah, very recognizable villain there. Um, I was shocked the rape happens kind of early in the novel, so that's not a major spoiler for any listeners. I did not expect that Eaton would take that scene as far as she did in the book. It was shocking.

KIM: Yeah, it's like, it felt like she didn't really hold back in it. It's harsh, it's disturbing. It's sort of reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles or something like that, and you're just, when you start reading it, you don't think it's going to go there, and it really does pretty quickly.

MARY: Yeah, I had an undergrad student working on the Winnifred Eaton archive, helping us digitize many of the works, and the number of times she suggested to me that we needed to build in some kind of trigger warnings, because it's harsh. She doesn't hold back, as you say. She doesn't hold back from depictions, and sometimes it's really unexpected what's going to happen.

KIM: So, as we said, the Bull is going around stealing other people's cattle wherever he finds them. And you had alluded to this too, but in the introduction to this new edition, Lily Cho talks about colonialism with regard to this book. Is there anything more you wanna say about that?

MARY: I was shocked when I taught this book for the first time. My students found it so fresh, so immediate, so contemporary, they were shocked. It addresses so many of the issues that we're dealing with right now. It addresses #MeToo. It addresses rape allegations, sexual assault trials, et cetera. And then it's got this added level of dealing with in indigenous people on the land who have no control over what an avaricious determined powerful brute of a man will do. So settler colonialism is everywhere here. I also love that, a Chinese man who's working as a cook on the ranch is the one who administers the justice of the situation at the end to Bull. It seems to me very contemporary too, because 1923 was the year that Chinese immigration halted in Canada. So she's making space for heroism on the part of this lonely Chinese man separated from his family, vulnerable, working for a brute of a man.

AMY: And speaking of how relevant so many issues in the book are today, the backdrop being the Spanish flu epidemic, um, which would've matched up to the time that she was living in Alberta. She would've gone through that. But yeah, you're thinking, “Oh, I remember this from a few years ago.” You know, like the talk around town like, “Oh, that's in the big cities. It's probably not gonna get all the way out here. We don't need to worry about that.” Um, and then of course, people start dropping like dominoes. Why do you think she might have chosen to incorporate the pandemic into her story beyond just the fact that that time period she lived through it?

MARY: Yeah, it's a great question. Settler colonialism really believes that the individual can just come in, take what he needs and does not need to collaborate, negotiate, share at all. But the people surviving the pandemic in this novel survive because they collaborate. So an older woman who's farming on her own, she's an eccentric older woman. What is she doing out there with her own farm? She basically brings the pregnant servant girl into her home and takes care of her, and then she gets sick and the servant girl Nettie takes care of her. Nettie helps the doctor who's driving around a broad rural area take care of people during this pandemic. And so the communal shared caring for others ethos that the pandemic brings out in these marvelous characters is really and antithetical to what brings Bull down, his selfish, individualist approach to his career, I guess.

KIM: you mentioned the character who's farming on her own. Her name's Angela, and she's described by her neighbors as a quote “man-woman.” She's isolated, she's working her own land. And Amy, this also reminded me of So Big, a book we did early on in the podcast. Um, the main character, Selena, also successfully works her farm on her own. In Cattle, Angela actually comes across as the hero of the book, wouldn't you say, Mary?

MARY: I think there are multiple heroes. There are kind of heroic cameos like the Chinese cook. There's the caring heroine of Angela just helping Nettie have that baby, raise that baby, care for that baby. When the baby's born, Nettie is kind of remote from it. She can't quite love after such a traumatic experience. So Angela is full of love. She's an angel figure of a sort. The “man-woman” is such an interesting idea, because my students thought there was definitely a queer potential to the structure of this unusual family, you know, a woman who's wearing pants and farming, a young girl who's been raped, and then maybe this doctor figure who's coming and going, but seems to have a more traditionally feminine affect in his caring. He's kind of very maternal in his attentions to both of the women. And then there's Nettie's love interest, who loves singing and just is almost like a lullaby singer, you know? So the roles that people play in terms of gender are quite free and unbridled, and I think really nurturing where Bull's definition of masculinity is so narrow. He cannot feel, all he can do is strike out.

AMY: The novel as a whole reminded me a lot, I'm probably the only one among us three that watches the “Yellowstone” series on Paramount, but “Yellowstone” and, um, the other series … “1923,” which “1923” there's very much a Bull Langdon character in that show. Um, so yeah, it feels very cinematic.

KIM: I thought Power of the Dog, too, which is a recent one. There's like that simmering darkness in there too. Yeah.

AMY: Yeah. 

MARY: Power of the Dog, you really feel the vulnerability of the women, you know, you're out in the middle of nowhere and you're completely vulnerable. Um, yeah. For me, I mean, you also mentioned Edna Ferber's So Big. So there's Willa Cather's My Antonia. The most memorable image that people tend to have of that novel is this strong immigrant girl at the plow. So women as farmers… it seems a kind of gender disconnect for us now because even if I say the word farmer, one will assume I'm talking about a man. But in this story, and I think it's true in My Antonia, and I'm not sure about So Big because that's a Ferber novel I haven't read. But women as farmers, there's a closer connection than you think because they're close to the land, they're close to lunar cycles, seasonal cycles, they're nurturing something vulnerable so that it can grow. So it's a very maternal trope and not a surprise that it appears in all three of these novels within six or seven years of one another.

AMY: Yeah. And in this book it's the women working, Nettie and Angela working the farm together is what winds up helping them to heal, each in their own right. And. It makes me think of Winnifred Eaton's own work ethic. And she's clearly trying to say that, you know, it's important for women to work.

MARY: Yes, exactly, whether that work is going to Hollywood to run Universal Studio’s Script Department, or being a freelance writer and you know, churning out best selling novels or if it is cooking up enough food to feed all the ranch hands during the harvest. I mean, one of the things that I've loved about directing the Winnifred Eaton archive is that we have,you know, doubled her oeuvre, basically. We've found a ton of stuff, um, maybe not doubled, but we found many works that were never published. We brought to light works that are hidden in the archives. We've found things buried in little local newspapers that people weren't aware that she wrote, and they're full of hard work on the ranch, cooking, preserving, planting, harvesting the risks of a sudden storm wrecking a wheat wheat harvest. So it really comes through to us how much of a commitment she'd made to that life she'd chosen.

AMY: This book didn't sell as well as her Japanese novels, right?

MARY: That's right.

AMY: Why do we count it as significant in comparison to her many other works?

MARY: I think often what sells at the time might not live on and what doesn't sell at the time might become a classic. My favorite anecdote about Walden, you know the book that Henry David Thoreau wrote? He says, “I have a library of 700 volumes, all of which are my own.” And so what that means is that book was remaindered, sweetie. Nobody bought that book. And you know, similarly, some of the novels that we associate with the greatness of Herman Melville were not the ones that sold at the time. So she has a perfect formula in her bestselling novels, and I can see why they were popular. This one I think is going to endure, and the reason why I was so delighted that Invisible Publishing wanted to reissue it is because I know from the classroom that students are going to engage it because it's so immediately fresh and urgent in its concerns.

KIM: So her film career, you know, she was writing screenplays early on in her career. She was involved in motion pictures. What happened? She took on a more prominent role at one point? What happened with that?

 MARY: Yeah, I think her marriage was kind of struggling, you know, she had all these kids and they were on the ranch and finances were tight. She packed the kids up onto the train and went to New York and worked in the screenwriting department at Universal Studios. And then the studio moved her out to Hollywood. So this goes back to Amy's question about the literati. Hollywood was this hungry machine and it needed content. It's sort of like, you know, Netflix today, right? Like they're just looking for stories that they can film. And so, uh, Hollywood mostly turned to New York, to New York writers. “You're a novelist, you're a playwright, you can write dialogue. Give me a story.” So Winnifred recruited lots of people. Many of the screenwriters she worked most closely with aren't household names now, but she was well connected. So she definitely brought, um, writers out to Hollywood. She started there in, I think, 1924, and seemed to be pretty active through to 1930 or so. Then the trail gets a bit cold. Uh, there are a lot of screenplay drafts in her archives in Calgary. They are undated, and it's unclear if other writers wrote them, sent them to her, she was editing them or giving them feedback, or if she wrote them. But there are all these mysteries about the screenplay aspects of her archive because it's such a collaborative process, and the titles of films change from the draft script to the eventual production. So we're not even sure how many of these have been filmed.

KIM: So now that we've read Cattle, what do you suggest we check out next by Winnifred Eaton? 

MARY: I think Me and Marion are both fascinating novels because she's writing them at mid-career. They're based on things she knows. They're not her Japanese masquerade and, and I think she covers a lot of, topics that would resonate with people. So definitely Me, Me could be subtitled #MeToo. It's definitely that kind of book. Marian, I think the subtitle is The Artist's Model, and it's basically about a young woman who has artistic, uh, ambitions of her own, but the best way to get a job is to serve as an artist model and kind of negotiating independent young womanhood in that kind of environment. So I think those are great reads.

AMY: Another great read is the biography of Eaton. It's by her granddaughter, Diana Birchall. I mean, we've just spent almost an hour talking about her and there are so many stories from her life that are pretty crazy that we just didn't even have time to get into in terms of her personal life. I know that Diana Birchall is gonna be participating in the upcoming conference too.

MARY: Yes, Diana has nurtured and mentored a whole generation of scholars. She calls them Winniers. We're all Winniers, because we work on Winnie. she's just been so generous and encouraging. She's kind of the family's literary executor of Winnifred, and so she has graciously agreed to start the conference off with a few words about her amazing grandmother and her amazing connection to her grandmother. I mean, Diana, in addition to writing that biography, has written fascinating Jane Austen fan fiction. Before fan fiction was a thing, Diana was doing it. She's a very creative, talented writer. Anyway, so we're completely honored to have her present at the conference and just hang out with the family. Many descendants of the Eaton family are going to come to this conference. And the whole spirit of the conference is to give scholars an opportunity to presents scholarly work, but also have some complimentary events like screenings of Phantom of the Opera, which Winnifred Eaton wrote the screenplay for, uh, discussions of her Hollywood career, a banquet inspired by the crazy Chinese Japanese cookbook Winnifred wrote with one of her sisters. 

KIM: How fun.

MARY: Apparently, if you actually cook those recipes, they're terrible. But, we're giving a very skilled set of cooks at a Chinese restaurant free reign to do their own impression of Chinese banquet eating. So we'll have that event, and we're also having a genealogical workshop for people who are curious to trace Chinese ancestry or do this kind of tricky biographical research, especially now.

 AMY: I feel like once you start having a conference surrounding you, maybe you're not quite so lost anymore. 

MARY: Yeah, 

AMY: You're getting to be unlost a little, which is good news.

MARY: That's the hope. That she will be found. So with the addition of Cattle and the Winnifred Eaton Archive and the conference, we're hoping that's kind of a, a perfect, uh, trio of celebratory moves to put her back in people's, uh, lights.

AMY: And listeners, in our show notes we're gonna link to the Winnifred Eaton Archive, just because there is so much amazing information on it about everything that she's written, a timeline of her life, and some really cool old family photos. She really did lead quite a life and it's worth going on there to just explore a little bit more.

KIM: And Mary, thank you so much for all the work you've done and continue to do to keep Winnifred Eaton's literary legacy alive. And thank you for joining us on the show today. We really loved having you.

MARY: Thank you so much for having me, you guys. That was an invigorating conversation and I enjoyed and appreciated all your great questions.

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Don't forget if you enjoyed it, to give us a rating and review. Five stars, please, to show us that you are out there.

KIM: Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone. Our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.

147. Mercy Otis Warren — Revolutionary Scribe

KIM: Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode, everyone, and Happy Independence Day! (This episode drops on July 4.)

AMY: Yes, which has us thinking about all the women who were involved in the founding of our nation. So many, many names spring to mind, right Kim?!

KIM: [Jokingly] Uhhhhh…. Okay, I can only think of Betsy Ross! I mean, I can think of wives, I guess, of founding fathers. But no, I mean…

AMY: I know, I'm being facetious When I said so many, many names spring to mind. It's hard. It's hard to come up with them.

KIM: We need a lost Ladies of the revolution. Or something like that. Anyway. Weren't there a bunch of women who served as spies? I think we talked about doing an episode about some of them at one point.

AMY: Yeah, that's true. Um, and maybe we will do that at a later point. Maybe this time next year we'll do the spies. But believe it or not, we also have a lost lady of lit from this time period in American history.

KIM: That’s interesting. Because when I think of people who wrote during the American Revolution, it’s always one of the “founding fathers.” Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine…

AMY: Same. Interestingly, Jack, my 11-year-old son, was studying the American Revolution this year in school and they put on a little pageant for the parents where they all dressed up as different pivotal figures and that’s where I got the idea for the subject of today’s mini: Mercy Otis Warren. She was one of the characters in this little show they put on.

KIM: Okay, that name sounds vaguely familiar, but I don’t think I would have been able to say much about her prior to the prepwork we did for this episode. 

AMY: Yeah, I didn’t know anything either. And I wound up checking out a book by Nancy Rubin Stuart for more information. It’s called The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation. So most of what we’ll be sharing for this episode comes from what we gleaned from this biography.

KIM: Okay, so Stuart refers to Warren as the “first female reporter of the American revolution.” As the wife of a high-profile patriot with connections to many of the big names we associate with the time period, Warren ended up chronicling the events she lived through. Her History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution was first published in 1805 and is considered a seminal and detailed account of the colonial cause. 

AMY: And like you said, Kim, we don’t really think of many writers from this time period being female. The poet Phillis Wheatley is one that most of us know… but in terms of Mercy Otis Warren, scholars are not completely sure why she received the terrific education she did (because most daughters would not have been educated. There’s a line from Ben Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac:  “Girls, mark my words: and know, For men of sense/Your strongest charms are native innocence.”

KIM: Okay, so… just be dumb.

AMY: Yeah. I didn't know we were gonna have to cancel Ben Franklin in this episode. No, I'm, I'm just kidding.

KIM: Kidding not kidding.

AMY: Yeah. So Mercy’s dad was a member of the Massachusset congress… and he fostered her intellect. But also keep in mind that she was the eldest daughter in a family of 13 (7 of the children survived) so as the oldest girl, she had a lot of domestic responsibilities. Scholars think she probably learned a lot by proxy from her older brother Jemmy, whom she was very close to and he attended Harvard.  So he was sharing a lot of what he knew with her, including the work of philosophers like John Locke and this idea of “man’s right to perfect freedom.” (Jemmy suffered a mental deterioration later in adulthood, but prior to that he had been a real leader in the patriotic movement so it’s almost like Mercy felt compelled to pick up her brother’s banner where he left off.) 

KIM: Right. So she went on to marry James Warren (who was a college chum of her brother Jemmy) and the couple settled into married life. They lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, had some kids and seemed like they had a happy domestic life. James Warren really appreciated his wife’s intelligence. Eventually, they befriended a young couple by the name of John and Abigail Adams.

AMY: And this is important, because John wound up having an important influence on Mercy’s writing career. He sort of became her mentor, reading her writing and encouraging her along the way. She had started experimenting with writing political poetry. (Prior to that all her poems had been more personal or about nature.) At one point, she wrote a poem for the Royal American Magazine which criticized colonial women for not making sacrifices on the homefront. Colonial women wanted all the lace and frippery and fine materials that came over from Britain, and she was like, “C’mon now, girls. You’ve got to be willing to give up the fancy clothes right now. This is not the time.” She writes: “...yet all unite/At once to end the great politic strife/And yield up all but real wants of life.”) I also love this poem, because she makes an allusion to the water-cooler book of the day, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa!

KIM: I love how you call it the water cooler book of the day.

AMY: Yeah, it was the book everyone was talking about.

KIM: I love that. So longtime listeners of this show will know that that book is Amy’s albatross! You mentioned it in episode #1 and Amy… update?

AMY: I still haven’t finished it. It’s on my nightstand.

KIM: I’m going to have to come over when we finish this and read it to you!

AMY: I’m going to be like, “Jack, you need to start reading this to me!”Yeah. I didn't know we were gonna have to cancel Brynn Franklin in this episode. No, I'm, I'm just kidding. Kidding. Um, Yeah. So Mercy's dad was a member of the Massachusetts Congress and he fostered her intellect, but you also have to keep in mind that she was the eldest daughter in a family of 13 kids.

Seven of the children survived. As the oldest girl, she would've had a lot of domestic responsibilities, so she wasn't having a ton of time to sit around reading and learning. But she did have this older brother Jimmy, that she was very close to, and he attended Harvard, had tutors, all that kind of stuff.

And she kinda learned a lot from him by proxy. He was sharing a lot of what he knew, including the work of philosophers like John Locke and this idea of man's right to perfect freedom. So later on in life, big Brother Jimmy, unfortunately, suffered a mental deterioration that kind of took him out of the cause.

 But prior to that, he had been a real leader in the patriotic movement. So it's almost like Mercy felt compelled to pick up her big brother's banner where he left off.

Right. So she went on to marry James Warren. He was a college chum of her brother Jimmy. And the couple settled into married life. They lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, had some kids and seemed like they had a happy domestic life. James Warren really appreciated his wife's intelligence and eventually they befriended a young couple by the name of John and Abigail Adams.

and this is really important because John Adams wound up having an important influence on Mercy's writing career. He sort of became her mentor. He'd read her writing, and he encouraged her along the way. So she had started experimenting with writing political poetry because prior to that, all her poems had been more personal or you know, about nature, just lovely stuff.

But then at one point she wrote a poem for the Royal American Magazine, which criticized colonial women for not making sacrifices on the home front. Basically what was happening was colonial women wanted all the lace and the frippery and the fine materials that came over from Britain. And Mercy said in this home, come on now, girls, you've gotta be willing to give up the fancy clothes right now.

This is not the time. this is what she says. Yet all unite at once to end the great politics, strife and yield up all but real wants of life. And I also love this poem because she makes an illusion to the water cooler book of the day. Samuel Richardsons. Wait for it. Larissa.

I love how you call it the watercolor book of the day  

Yeah, it was, it was the book everyone was talking

I love that. So longtime listeners of this show will know that this book is Amy's Albatross. You mentioned in episode number one and Amy an update.

I still haven't finished it. It is still on my

I'm gonna have to come over and read it to you after you finish reading the.

I'm gonna be like, Jack, you need to start reading this to me.  It's sitting there on my nightstand, taunting me. but yeah, So this is what Mercy Otis Warren has to say about Clarissa. In this same piece.

Clarissa reigns no more a favorite toast. [Sort of a “let’s boycott Clarissa and all things British.”]

So what she's saying is, let's all boycott Clarissa and all things British we're acting like we love this book, but like, maybe let's not love it.

KIM: So maybe you don’t need to finish reading it, Amy! You’re taking a patriotic stand! So what else did Mercy Otis Warren write?

AMY: Well, she started getting into political plays. (I didn’t know this, but plays in New England were banned, so there really was no actual theater. Mercy had never even seen a play. 

KIM: Because of Puritanism?

AMY: I think so. But plays were published in newspapers and you read them.) So she wrote this one play, anonymously, called “The Adulateur” which satirized Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson. Warren’s biographer Stuart writes: “With the  publication of The Adulateur, Mercy made her debut as the patriots’ secret pen, whose barbed lampoons provoked laughter and longing for liberation from British rule.” (p. 49) She was in her late 40s when she wrote this. She went on to write other plays that satirized well-known Tories around town. Everyone knew who she was hinting at. At one point she wondered if maybe she’d gone too far with one of her plays lampooning someone, and John Adams wrote to her husband asking him to send “most friendly regards to a certain lady — tell her, that god Almighty (I use a bold style) has instructed her with powers for the good of the world, which … he bestows upon few of the human race. That instead of being a fault to use them, it would be criminal to neglect them.”

KIM: Ooh, that gave me chills. 

AMY: Yeah, he gave her the green light.

KIM: Like yeah, you’re amazing. Keep doing what you’re doing. Oh, that’s so cool. I want to read it. And then following the Boston Tea Party, John Adams actually commissioned a piece from Mercy. He wanted her to memorialize that incident in a poem. 

AMY: Yes, she called it “The Squabble of the Sea Nymphs,” and she wrote it in the mock-epic style of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. When he read it, John Adams called it “one of the incontestable evidences of real genius.”

KIM: Wow. This all actually seems really daring of her! To be calling people out in her writing?! And knowing that the representatives of the crown would be seeing it all?

AMY: Yes, well, she was publishing anonymously, remember, but yes, it was dangerous! In a letter to Abigal Adams, Mercy actually made mention to the fact that as the wives of the patriots, they could also be accused of treason. (The Coercive Acts passed at the time said anyone suspected of treason could be immediately apprehended and taken back to England.) It’s easy to forget how fraught and scary these times would have seemed (and possibly even futile… it would have been difficult to think you could take on England and win!) They must have felt at times like, “What the hell are we doing?!” She was writing anonymously to avoid retribution but it also worked to her advantage in that no one knew a woman had written it. It was taken more seriously because of that. (All of her work was anonymous until 1790 when she published a compilation of two decades of her work.) Like hey, surprise!

KIM: Hey, it’s me. Also, I’m thinking of that famous line from Abigail Adams: “Remember the ladies” (That needs to be part of our podcast branding, come to think of it!)

AMY: Yes! Oh, i love that! Let’s put it on a mug or something. I should also mention that Mercy has another mentor during this time. She wrote a fan letter to a famous female British historian, Catharine Macaulay, and the two ended up in a correspondence where she would tell her about everything that was happening in the colonies.

KIM: So as she’s living through all these incidents, her satirical writing for newspapers is galvanizing the colonists and getting them really fired up. 

AMY: Yes, and then she’s also getting people fired up in her correspondence. During Britain’s siege of Boston in 1775, her husband wrote to John Adams urging him to stop trying to hammer out some sort of deal with George III. Mercy wound up adding her own paragraph to the letter and says, “You should no longer piddle at the threshold. [Piddle meaning pee, i assume?] “It is time to leap into the theatre to unlock the bars, and open every gate that impedes the rise and growth of the American republic.” And don’t piddle at the threshold…

KIM: I mean, Lady Macbeth, right there.

AMY: Don’t piddle is don’t pee. 

KIM: Right, don’t piss there, actually go do something. Yeah. Whoa. And for a woman to write this, too.

AMY: She was also privately recording everything she was hearing. (Her home in Plymouth was basically a meeting place for secret meetings of the patriots, including the Sons of Liberty, and her husband is a political big-wig, so she’s hearing A LOT) News of Lexington and Concord… and then all the subsequent battles and hardships… she’s observing it all and recording her thoughts with her eye toward eventually writing a history of it all. I will say that I haven’t read this history. It’s three volumes and 1200 pages, so…

KIM: Will you be finishing Clarissa first?

AMY: I’d rather finish Clarissa.

KIM: But this book effectively made her America’s first female historian.

AMY: Yeah, but this book also prompted a little bit (actually, no, a lot) of flak with her old pal, John Adams, though.

KIM: Not her biggest fan!

AMY: Yeah, the tide turned. As the fledgling republic had its growing pains, Mercy and her husband started to part ways politically with John Adams. Adams was a Federalist and they were anti-Federalist (siding with Thomas Jefferson in the debate) and some of that philosophy spilled over into her work. I guess she kind of threw a little shade at Adams in her big history of the revolution, which Adams did not appreciate. He ended up telling someone that “History is not the province of the ladies.” So suddenly he is not singing her praises any more.

KIM: Yeah, apparently that rule about not discussing politics with people applies even to your friends who are ACTUAL POLITICIANs.] Mercy Otis Warren died in 1814 at the age of 86. In 2002 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY. And she has a spot on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.

AMY: Okay, I have done the Freedom trail in Boston several times but I didn’t realize there was one for the ladies! 

KIM: Yes, you can do Freedom Trail Revolutionary Women’s Tours if you’re visiting Boston. Also, Mercy and James Warren’s home still stands on a street corner in Plymouth, Mass. It’s called the Winslow-Warren house. I love that it’s still there.

AMY: And we’ll still be here next week with another Lost Lady of Lit to learn about. Hope you tune in — and also, we really hope you could take one more minute now that this episode has wrapped to leave us a rating and/or a review wherever you listen to the podcast. It’s an easy way to tell us that you appreciate what we’re doing, and we appreciate it so, so much!

KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

146. Jane White — Quarry with Helen Hughes

KIM ASKEW: Hi everyone. Welcome back to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to championing forgotten classics by women writers. I'm Kim Askew here with my co-host Amy Helmes

AMY HELMES: Today we're back with another lost classic that absolutely deserves a spot on your nightstand. Or maybe in your freezer.

KIM: All right, Amy is referring to a couple months back when I mentioned this Friends episode where Joey puts scary books in his freezer. I think this definitely qualifies because Jane White's, Quarry is unsettling. It's a gripping read and it ranks right up there with some of the most frightening and disturbing books we've discussed on this podcast.

AMY: Yes, it's quite a psychological thriller. When Quarry was first published in 1967, a review in The Scotsman called it The most frightening novel of the year, and it was written by a mother and housewife, which was shocking to some reviewers. We'll talk about that later on in the episode.

KIM: Suffice to say we can't stop thinking about this book, so we are thrilled to have with us today Jane White's daughter-in-law, Dr. Helen Hughes, who wrote the afterword to the new edition of Quarry. We can't wait to discuss this book with her, so let's read the stacks and get started. 

[intro music plays]

AMY: Our guest today, Dr. Helen Hughes of the University of Surrey, wrote the afterword to the new Boiler House press edition of Quarry, which just came out about a month ago. Helen's husband, Martin, is Jane White's son, and he illustrated the cover, so this is really a family affair to be sure. Both Helen and Martin teach German and film studies and are experts on Kafka adaptations, by the way. Helen, we are so grateful to you for joining us for this discussion, welcome to the show.

HELEN HUGHES: Thank you. I'm really pleased to be here and really interested to hear your questions and, uh, what you think about the book.

AMY: Oh, we have questions.

KIM: Yes. Oh, we do. We have a lot to say. Um, and we'd also want to credit past guest Brad Bigelow's Neglected Books site. He posted the biographical info that was included, I believe, on the dust jacket of the first edition of Quarry. Brad also connected us with Helen. So thank you, Brad.

AMY: So first Jane White was born in Cambridge in 1934, and soon after the family moved to a farmhouse in the countryside. She was educated at home by a governess through the age of nine before attending a convent boarding school. She then won a scholarship to Girton College, cambridge. And after graduating, she was employed for about five years at BBC World Service as a news clerk.

KIM: In 1961, white married a lecturer in German at Birkbeck College, London University, and they had one child, Martin. White wrote prolifically in her youth. In fact, she completed her first novel at age nine, which I think is about two years before Jane Austin's first juvenilia. So precocious. Helen, what else can you tell us about your mother-in-law's early years? 

HELEN: Well, she wrote about her early years herself in a memoir called Norfolk Child. She writes particularly about her father, that she had a very special charm about him, he was able to tell lots of stories, because he was a historian and he wrote historical novels and was also very interested in children's literature. 

So she writes about her feeling of security with her parents. And then she describes what it was like to move from a relatively urban place, Cambridge to a relatively remote farmhouse. So her parents didn't actually run the farm. I think it was a tenant farmer who ran the actual farm, but they were surrounded by the farm, and she just describes in her memoir how magical it was to show up there one day and start to live a completely different life. She makes it sound quite isolated. They didn't have too much contact with people in the outside world, and so she just describes being very free, playing with her brother and with her sister. And she turns it into a generally quite magical story,

AMY: This is how I would like to live on a farm. Not actually having to do any of the work. That sounds right up my alley.

KIM: Yeah, absolutely. I did read The Norfolk Child and you explained it perfectly. It sounds so magical and she and her siblings just ran wild. It seems like just living fully this life there on the farm.

HELEN: Yeah, I wouldn't describe it so much as running wild because her mother was obviously quite a self-conscious person. and so kept them in good order. And the governess, too, made sure that they used the right vocabulary when they spoke, and they were very conscious of being middle class children. And so in the memoir, she does also talk about seeing other children, but feeling that they were in a different world to the world that she was living in, so that there was no possibility, for example, that she might go to a school with those other children. She would have to go away to a boarding school.

KIM: Yeah, really poignant at the end of that. I highly recommend reading that memoir.

AMY: And so not quite so feral.

KIM: There was lots of falling in ponds and 

HELEN: It's a strange mix, isn't it, of, freedom and, sort of self-government almost.

KIM: Mm-hmm. That's a good description. Yeah. 

AMY: And that's actually a real good leap into our discussion of this book, which was Jane White's debut novel. So first off, Helen, what did you make of Quarry the first time you read it, and when did you first read it?

HELEN: I guess I had two goes at it. Um, when I first got to know Martin he told me that he had a mother who was a novelist and obviously I was curious. And I started to read Quarry. But for some reason at that time I just didn't get into it. But then, more recently, I think it was just a little bit before we went into the pandemic period, actually, I thought I would, uh, give it another go. And then I just got hooked immediately and I couldn't understand why I hadn't got hooked the first time around.

AMY: That's what I'm thinking. How could you not get drawn into this book? I, I'm shocked to hear you say that you didn't get drawn in the first time. You were in love.

KIM: You had other distractions, yeah. 

AMY: So do you wanna give our listeners a quick, kind of spoiler free summary of the book?

HELEN: Yes. Okay. So, the world has changed in which Jane White exists. So she's no longer in this remote farm in Norfolk. She's in what we call a commuter town in Surrey in England. And the story she sets in this small town is a story of three teenage boys who are at a grammar school, and they form a friendship. And the friendship is somewhat unlikely in the sense that they are almost programmatically from different parts of society. But they form this kind of alliance, which is a little bit sinister. At the very beginning of the book, they decide to carry out something which they've discussed, amongst themselves. It involves kidnapping a small child who's younger than them. They spot a child, and they take him to a disused quarry where they found, a, a cave, a hidden cave, and then the story unfolds from there. We gradually learn a little bit more about each of the characters. Just builds to this climax that takes place during a heat wave in a small commuter town in Surrey, which is probably one of the most verdant counties . It has the highest number of trees of all the counties in England, so what you notice is a person who's describing this sort of verdant landscape in a way that turns it into something like a jungle. And it's a little bit threatening, partly because of the heat that's there throughout the novel, but also because there's just too much of it. It's too rampant. and it sort of infects the characters, the boys with its verdant nature in some way.

AMY: Mm-hmm. I would say it's a lot threatening, not a little. 

KIM: Yeah. You're making me think of, um, well, Lord of the Flies, which we'll talk about I think a little bit later. But also Heart of Darkness and everything too, just the verdant jungle like, atmosphere and how it impacts what happens with the characters.

AMY: Yeah. Closing in on you. Yeah. 

KIM: So the quarry ends up being this physical manifestation of that dark side that we're talking about. It makes me think of the cemetery underneath the suburban housing track in, um, Spielberg's Poltergeist. I mean, 

HELEN: Right. 

AMY: Like a force that's drawing you to it. 

KIM: That's perfect. Of course. Exactly.

AMY: And it's kind of simmering with temptation and danger, as we said. And the action takes place during this epic heat wave, which adds to the tension. So Kim, I think that you were maybe gonna read a passage from Quarry to give listeners a feel of all this.

Right.

KIM: Yeah. And, um, I'm gonna read a few pages so we might end up cutting it down later if it ends up being too long. But I'll go ahead and read it.

 It was five o'clock in the afternoon and the sun still seemed as high and hot as midday. The air hummed with flies and butterflies hung like motionless shreds of colored paper over the gorse bushes below them.

The boy stood motionless in the glare. Todd said “He'll do.” The others did not answer him. They went on looking down the slope of sun at the boy. Todd said again, “He'll do.” He shifted his feet in the hot grass and looked over his shoulder at Randy and Carter. “Well?” he said. Carter gave his little high pitched giggle.

“Okay, if you say so. Call him.” “You call him, Todd,” said Randy. He too shifted his weight and looked obliquely at the others. He had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and now he clenched them into fists so that they looked like two balls resting against his size. The material stretched tight and then ran away into little creases as he flexed and unflexed his fingers.

“You call him, Todd,” he repeated. Todd looked away from the other two. He stood still for a little while longer, slightly in advance of them as if smelling the air. They could hear nothing except the flies and the distant drone as an airplane cruised through the hot sky. Todd stiffened his neck and they saw the muscles bulge as he opened his mouth and called softly to the boy.

“Hi, you.” There was no response. The boy went on standing quite still as if he had not heard, Randy said, with an edge of malice, “Speak up. What are you afraid of, Todd?” Todd tightened himself again and called more loudly. “Hi, you. Can't you hear me?” His voice was still soft, but it seemed to carry down the slope.

The boy turned towards them without lifting his head, merely swiveled his feet that had seemed rooted in the grass and faced towards them without actually looking up. “Can't you hear me? I'm calling you. Come on up.” The boy did not move. Randy said, “Come up. There are three of us. You'd better come up.” Still without lifting his face the boy began to walk up the slope towards them. He moved his feet slowly and carefully through the tough grass, pushing the brambles out of his way with his hands. When he was about six feet away from Todd, he stopped walking and stood again in exactly the same posture as before. The three of them looked at him.

He was smaller than they had thought, yet Todd, at least, felt that, seen at close quarters, he was older than he had seemed at first. Eleven, perhaps, or 12, not more. Carter who was 15, was infinitely weightier. There were years between Todd and Randy and this seeming child. Yet now he was standing there. He contrived to confuse them by his silence, his hidden face, his lack of resistance.

There seemed to be nothing in his appearance that they could grasp and make use of, certainly not fear. Todd said, “You're coming with us. If you don't want to, and if you try to fight or run away, we shall knock you out and carry you.” The threat uttered in a voice tentative with nervousness was incongruous, but he was too intent to notice it.

“Are you coming?” Behind him, Randy said, “Better knock him out, anyway. He looks as if he could run if he tried.” For some reason he was breathing faster. He moved forward nearer to the boy. “We'd better knock him out.” Todd put out a hand as if to ward him off, a gesture at once protective and angry.

The boy looked up at them and said, “I'll come.” 

AMY: I feel just listening to that, when a storm's brewing and you can feel the electricity in the air and it's sort of like crackles, right? That's how I feel when I hear that. And there's so much also in just that passage that you read that I kept thinking, Lord of the Flies, Lord of the Flies. The airplane, the droning of the flies. She even says that. The positioning of the sun, which always comes up in Lord of the Flies. And so I cannot wait till we get to that part of the discussion. And sorry, listeners, we keep teasing this, but um, let's wait for a second and talk about this book, first.

KIM: Yeah. This is a great place to talk about the writing style of the novel. So let's talk about that and then we'll get to the other stuff. Um, Helen, you were able to actually refer to White's intentions as far as her writing style. Can you talk a little bit about that?

HELEN: Yeah, I think that's for me one of the most interesting things about, going after this book. Uh, wondering where it came from, and how she could have written it. We've got several boxes of papers, um, manuscripts, photographs, um, some notebooks. She was a great collector of scrapbooks as well. But with respect to Quarry, what I found was actually I guess the original manuscript. It's not the final version, so when you talk about the crackle of electricity in the air and things like that, there are aspects of the earlier version which is more like a fantasy novel. And so there is some discussion about whether it's a literary novel or a fantasy novel. And whether this cave is another world type of place , as part of a fantasy, or if it's real. So there's that ambiguity there already. There's an aspect about the style that has to do with sort of being between a popular genre of book and a piece of literary fiction. And then the other thing that was important was, uh, this notebook, which is quite a thin notebook and it has all sorts of things in it. And there's some of her lecture notes from her time at Cambridge. Um, uh, but there's also, um, the very, very beginning of her thinking about this book, when it kind of came to her. She's got notes about Plato. Plato's Republic is obviously about education and class. She's talking about a suburban area and she's describing the characters. So it was very interesting to see these early notes and then to see how then she translated those into a narrative, that's so realistic. So there's a contrast, um, between the ordinary lives at home and the dream life with the boy is what she writes. And then she has "therefore two styles, one flat realistic, one tight, heightened." And then she has it in capital letters, "difficult" exclamation mark, exclamation mark. So I think all of her energy in the writing was trying to get these two to marry so that you did realize that you were transitioning into a different space, but not that you'd left reality somehow. So it always retains that kind of slightly ambiguous aspect to it.

AMY: There's like that tension, that push and pull, where you're in the real world, you're at the boys' homes, household life and it feels very realistic. And then you have this other side every time they go to the quarry, especially, that feels so otherworldly. Like it's, it's pulling you into this different dimension that's philosophic, that's, you know, psychological, you know, something's brewing and there's turmoil and then suddenly she'll drop you back into suburbia. The back and forthness almost adds to the tension for me. So when she was saying it was difficult, and I'm sure that was difficult to achieve, but she did it really well.

KIM: Yeah. She pulled it off, for sure.

AMY: And there's also so much mystery. 

KIM: Completely,

AMY: What am I supposed to be thinking?

KIM: What's real, what isn't, and there's just enough fantasy to make you wonder, like you said, what if this is fantasy? What if this is real? What are we supposed to think?

AMY: Yeah. So much of the mystery revolves around this younger boy, the victim. He submits to the kidnappers so willingly and he has this sort of disconcerting way of looking at them. He sort of deflects any questions about who he is or where he's from. We don't get any information about being concerned about his whereabouts or anything like that. So not only did I keep wondering who he really was, these three teenage boys that kidnapped him, they're wondering the same thing. Like, wait a second, what? This kid is weird.

KIM: Right. Is he supposed to be a Christlike character? Is he an alien? Is he even real? I mean, all those things and more literally were crossing my mind while I was reading this book. So what are we supposed to make of this child, Helen? Do you have the answer?

HELEN: Of course I don't have the answer. And obviously part of the point of the novel in that you are wondering about the boy and of course, I formed my theory as everyone else will form their own theory. So I have him down as a kind of composite. But a key element in there besides the Christ-like elements of the boy and his kind of rational way of being, is a sense of this boy as being an English literary child, particularly a Peter Pan type of child. Jane was, very, very , keen on the Victorian era. She loved Victoriana. And if you look at some of that literature in the raw as opposed to the expedited versions that we get via Disney or, or even in the sort of abridged versions that one reads as a child, if you look at the actual originals, some of the child figures in there are truly freaky, and Peter Pan is one of those. So modern Peter Pans retained some of that, but nowhere near as much as the original. So I see this child as being this kind of odd, unexpectedly potentially negative character. Um, so we can see the three teenagers as being delinquents in that, you know, late sixties, seventies way, but we don't expect the child to be like that as well, or potentially like that as well. So the turning of the tables that goes on at various twists in the story, you know, really adds to the novel, its tension I think, because you have a feeling you don't know what this child is gonna do next.

AMY: When you in the afterword made the Peter Pan connection, my mind was blown. That was almost my favorite revelation about all of this. And it all made complete sense. Because there's times in the cave where the boy winds up having them play pirate ship, you know? And there's like real references to that. But yeah, at first. I was like, Oh, he's so clearly a Christ figure, you know? And then I'd be like, no, he's pure evil. You know, that kind of troublemaking, puckish, he's supposed to be the victim, but maybe he's the one leading them to their doom sort of thing. It's fascinating.

HELEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

KIM: I was thinking about how you are an expert on Kafka adaptations, which I think is so interesting, and it got me wondering if there's any way it could help us understand the character of the boy. So, are there any connections to make maybe between Gregor and The Metamorphosis and the boy and Quarry? I don't know.

HELEN: Yeah, so I actually, I discussed this with Martin, because I was very skeptical about this idea in relation to Quarry. But she wrote another novel in which I would say yes, it's very strongly there. This one, which is called Beatrice Falling, um, has a character, who is called something like Ques, but she gives him just the letter Q and so in the same way that Kafka in The Castle gives the character just, uh, a letter at the beginning of his name. And also the way in which that novel is organized is very like a Kafka novel. Um, so I was wondering, could you also say that there are Kafkaesque elements in Quarry, and I guess you could say the way that she tends towards allegory in all of her stories, so that you can always interpret them on two different levels. I guess that that is very like Kafka and Kafka was a great realist, so everything is recognizable in Kafka, but at the same time it's odd. So I think, yes, I can see what you're saying about, um, the ways in which some of the characters are kind of, you could turn them into insects or something else. So particularly Randy, I think you could turn him into an animal in the way that Kafka turns his characters into animals in order to bring out their particular human characteristics. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that for sure.

KIM: Well, thanks for going there with me on that.

AMY: Kim, did you have a theory about this?

KIM: Well, I was just thinking about the scapegoat thing because talking about the boy as possibly being a scapegoat, that's one of the theories, and then thinking about, in The Metamorphosis, Gregor being the scapegoat of society also. So that was the parallel I was thinking of, but 

HELEN: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. it's interesting because there was a great discussion going on at the time that Jane was writing, and time she was studying English literature at Cambridge around the problem of the scapegoat and the problem of scapegoating as a kind of social mechanism to try to relieve, um, society of the burden of guilt. We have to remember that, you know, this is not so long after World War II and it's not so far away from all the debates around the Holocaust. Um, people are still worried about the atom bomb. One thing that Martin told me about Jane she told him the story of when he was born, because he was born in the same week as the Cuban Missile Crisis. And she describes, you know, holding him in her arms and saying that she didn't know if he would live a week. So that kind of anxiety is very much still there in debates and, and literature is definitely there in order to bring those anxieties out into the open, uh, into the public sphere so that people could work them through.

KIM: I had some great context about the time to help us sort of figure out more about the puzzle of these characters.

HELEN: Yeah.

AMY: Why it is so anxiety inducing, the book.

KIM: Yeah. And there's also even a, I don't wanna say too much, but even a Judas character feel, at one point. And there are also three tests, as there are in fairy tales. So each of the kidnappers meets with the boy privately and has a unique interaction with him that tests and reveals something about their character. Helen, you wanna talk a little bit more about what's going on here? What do you think White was trying to say with the relationships between the captors and the child, the victim?

HELEN: Yeah. So again, it's there to be experienced and interpreted for each reader. Um, for me, I guess I see the central character as Randy. A very sort of high libido, a libidinous person. 

AMY: I mean his name is Randy.

KIM: Yeah.

HELEN: I think from that we can see that there's a lot of humor there, right? 

KIM: Mm-hmm.

AMY: Yeah. 

HELEN: One can switch out of the anxiety, the weirdness, the unsettled feeling, into straight social satire in this novel as well. And each of the boys represents a type and the mums represent types and the way in which we see this town, which is Godalming, really, where Jane lived. We can see this town through her very, very satirical eyes. Martin describes her as having quite a caustic sense of humor, of really enjoying Jane Austen as a writer. and really being a sort of Jane Austen plus the history of women's crime fiction, if you like, we're all put together.

AMY: That's a good mashup. yeah. 

HELEN: Uh, but the satire is there because it's small town life, right? Not far from London. So it's a place where during the day all of the men have gone into the city of London to work and the ones who remained there are the housewives and the children. So you can see that these teenage boys are in this environment, but they're growing out of it, right? And they're thinking about what's coming next, who they're gonna be next. We just come at them at a particular moment in life where one transitions from being a, uh, a child, who's not responsible to being an adult, who is responsible. And there's some thinking there about, well, what has this life actually turned them into? What kind of adults are they, are they going to be? And some of the answers to that are quite funny. So the question is there about, you know, who are these people who are going to be the future of England? 

AMY: It's clear that the book is an allegory about the process of adolescence, right. And that it's sort of like a crucible moment, like the phoenix, like it has to burn to the ground before it can rise up, and you have a child on one side of the story, this kidnapped victim, and then you have all these kind of lame adults on the other side of the story. And it's what lies between-- these three boys and, you know, the intensity of these few days where they're, committing a crime. It all stands for like the, the turmoil and the trauma of, of growing up, 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah, And you related that in your afterword to White's own childhood abruptly ending as well and going through that process.

HELEN: Yeah, definitely. So I've kind of been looking across all of her novels and I think it's a theme she keeps coming back to, this theme of adolescents plus the transference of, of guilt or the taking on of guilt, and I think it is a little bit mysterious to be honest, in, in the way that the whole scapegoat idea is mysterious. So it's a kind of a movement from childhood into accepting an adult world, which is much more complicated and along the way, something is lost. And I think she mourns that loss of something. And it isn't quite innocence. It's much more complicated than that. It's, it's more, um, I don't know, atavistic or something than that. But she captures it. Whatever it is, she captures it in the book and in her other novels as well. And so I think that's why they're kind of worth reading because they give you something more complex than simply lost innocence or something like that.

KIM: Right.

AMY: In the introduction to this book, Anne Bilson says that “the story functions on multiple levels and that it's up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.”

KIM: Yeah, conclusions plural, because you can walk away and feel like there are many conclusions and they could all be right. 

AMY: Maybe all books are like this to a degree, but I feel like, you, Helen, me and Kim, we were each given the same box with a jigsaw puzzle in it, and we each solved the puzzle, but we each get a completely different picture, you know, and, every solution is the right solution, whatever you come up with. Because it is such a psychological novel, so how, how would you not bring your own psyche to what you're reading? 

KIM: Really good point.

HELEN: Yeah.

KIM: So, do you know much about the critical reception for Quarry when it was first published? I think some critics were perplexed that a wife and mother wrote it. I'm thinking of that headline: “Surrey Housewife Writes Unhousewifely Novel.” 

HELEN: Yeah, that's a really fun headline, but it was imagined by Jane herself when being interviewed by a journalist about having written a novel. Um, I particularly liked that article because it's a kind of more of a feature article where the journalists went to their house and, so, um, Martin's father, Philip, describes reading the novel the first time and getting grit in the way that we did, and, uh, reading it through the night and coming down very pale the next morning, a bit shocked that his wife has written such a novel. 

AMY: I can see that. It's like a sleep with one eye open sort of moment. 

KIM: Yeah. 

HELEN: Yeah. And she explains how she wrote it with a small child in short bursts in the evening on the dining room table sort of thing. So yeah, I guess the reception is thinking about this new novelist, because it's her first novel. It's a debut novel. Um, it's asking all the same questions that we are asking about, what the hell is this about? The reactions kind of divide through those who think it's just a lot of effects, you know, a skill in manipulating the reader through various suspenseful scenes but ultimately not about anything substantial, and then those on the other hand, who think it does have something to say about society and that there's, um, actually nothing wrong with the fact it draws on all of these techniques to do what it's doing. It got a lot of attention, I think, for a first novel. All the broadsheets included it in their lists of new books and commentaries. And it also got into the, you know, the tabloids, so The Sun and newspapers like that, too. So it managed to cross the divide of the literary and the popular, which is something quite remarkable, I would say.

AMY: I can imagine that there must have been comparisons drawn between this book and Lord of the Flies, which had come out, what, like 13 years earlier. That came out in 1954. They're both very allegorical. I actually just finished reading Lord of the Flies again because I was reading it to my 11 year old son, which I don't know if that's appropriate, but, uh, it's not really a kid's book, but we did read it. So I have it fresh in my memory and it's very interesting to have read these both kind of side by side, as companions to one another. So I'm very excited to discuss this a little bit. You know, we see the similarities to Golding's work. In this one we have more interaction with kids and adults, it's not, you know, set on this secluded island. And I, I don't think it's as allegorical. We do have the realistic elements in it as well, the everyday, you know, moments of life. So you point out, I think in the afterword that White actually had included a reference to Lord of the Flies in her original manuscript, right?

HELEN: Yeah. Yeah. I was very excited when I found that in the original manuscript. There's a whole scene in which Todd and Randy are in a classroom and they're discussing The Lord of the Flies. I mean, they're there giving an interpretation of it in the novel. Randy starts to talk about violence and the meaning of violence in The Lord of the Flies. So I was a bit outraged that this had been taken out of the book because I thought, well, surely this is a kind of a key in understanding it. 

AMY: Yes. Yes. It goes from making this book appear maybe derivative or like a ripoff, when the fact that she references it makes it so clear that that's not what it is, that she's acknowledging the book in her book. I wanna have a conversation with this book. It's a, it's either like an answer to it or a follow up on it. I think it's crazy that they removed that. And I wonder what she, well, first of all, do you know why they asked her to remove it?

HELEN: So it's taken out on the grounds that it's too self-conscious, right? I mean, we can't get our heads around that now because authors are so self-conscious now that they are, you know, there are layers of self-consciousness in novels that we read now. But at that time, maybe she was just pushing a little bit too much into what would eventually become the postmodern novel, and they couldn't cope with that level of awareness and felt that it would break the spell of the novel if that was, was, suddenly there. So in some way, I can understand what they're saying, and maybe it's the case that the tautness of the novel is maintained because there isn't that stepping outside and thinking, Oh, this is a novel. That doesn't really happen. You remain gripped by it as a narrative. So maybe they did have a point and maybe it does work better without it. 

AMY: I'm of two minds. Maybe it is a little too on the nose to call the book out in the book, but at the same time, I wouldn't want people to have read this and been like, Oh, well, she was just doing what he already did, you know?

HELEN: Yeah. No, but I think she like takes it on further. I looked a little bit into The Lord of the Flies and discovered that there'd been a lot of intervention into that novel, as well, to create that kind of allegorical seamlessness, um, which I guess must have been the fashionable way to write in the 1950s, even more so. But I think she must have objected, or she must have raised questions about it because it is so present then in the promotion of the book. So they must have said to her, We'll make sure that readers and reviewers are aware that it's being written in the context of what had already by that point become a classic and was already on the school curriculum.

KIM: So White went on to write several more books and the memoir we talked about Norfolk Child, which I loved, uh, highly recommend it. She also taught English at a girls school in Surrey, and it was a very feminist school, which matched Jane White's beliefs as well. Sadly, she contracted multiple sclerosis in her forties, and as an adult, she had to stop teaching and writing. She died in 1985 at the age of 51. But I'm so glad that Boilerhouse Press decided to do this reissue and that it's being newly appreciated. 

AMY: Any other anecdotes about her that you'd like to share? You never met her, correct?

HELEN: I never met her, no. I just know that she was obviously quite a force to be reckoned with.She left a mark, as it were, on the world. 

AMY: We should also add, listeners, that Helen was kind enough to put together a few audio snippets of Jane from many years ago reading from “Romeo and Juliet.” So if you'd like to actually hear from Jane herself, we are going to be posting that on our Facebook forum, which many of you already are part of. So jump over there and you can listen to Jane. And also Helen's gonna take a few snapshots of her journals and her, her scrapbooks maybe. We'll post that over there as well.

KIM: Helen, it was so great to have you on, and really an honor to get to speak with you about your mother-in-law. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I have really enjoyed this discussion.

HELEN: Great. I've, I've really enjoyed talking to you about how you've understood Quarry. Um, and yeah, it's just great. Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of it. .

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Thanks for supporting us and consider doing so more publicly by recommending us to a friend or leaving us a five star review wherever you listen. We love those reviews,

KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

145. Unlikely Children’s Authors

AMY: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Amy Helmes, here with my co-host Kim Askew. And Kim, with a four-year-old at home, you are probably pretty knee deep in children’s books over at your house.

KIM: Um. her bookshelf looks like my nightstand, and you know what that means.

AMY: Oh yeah.

KIM: It’s a disaster.

AMY: She is your daughter.

KIM: She is. Yep, yep, yep.

AMY: Are there any favorites in her rotation?

KIM: There's one called me and Mama that we really love. the author is named Cosby something or other. She's amazing. It's really wonderful. Um, we love all the Margaret Wise Brown books. I just ordered a few more in fact, cause I'm afraid she's gonna get too old for them. So I wanna get them all now while she's young enough to still enjoy them. But we love like Fur Family and Goodnight Moon and Good Day, Good Night. I mean, basically anything she does is magic. 

AMY: Yeah. I know, I feel really lucky because my kids are older now (11 and almost 14)

KIM: I can’t believe it.

AMY: I feel lucky that I’ve been able to read to my kids for as long as I have. Jack the younger one, he still likes me to read to him at night.  just started the Westing game by Ellen Raskin  it won the Newberry medal. I had never read it before. Um,

KIM: When’s it from?

AMY: What’s that?

KIM: When’s it from? Like when was it published? Is it an old book?

AMY: Oh, yeah, it’s old. I remember the title from when I was a kid.

KIM: I feel like I’ve heard of it.

AMY: It's kind of almost like an escape room kind of mystery. You have to solve who murdered somebody. But anyway, so like, it's fun because we're actually getting to read more “novel” novels, you know? 

KIM: It doesn’t have to have pictures.

AMY: Yeah. So we did, S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, which was great. And The Lord of the Flies (which is dark. I wasn’t sure it that was going to be okay for him, but he seemed into it.) We did Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. 

KIM: How fun.

AMY: What’s funny is that Julia acts like she’s too cool to be read to, but she sometimes sneaks into Jack’s bedroom and listen while I’m reading. I try not to acknowledge her because she will scamper away. the second you make eye contact. And then also our dog, Sunny, she'll be like fully passed out in her crate at night and then I'll say, “Sunny, you wanna go read with us?” And she gets all excited and she comes downstairs and she likes to be read to.

KIM: It’s a family affair.

AMY: And that reminds me, did i ever tell you my Harry Potter and the chickens story?

KIM: I don’t think so. I think I would remember that if you had told me. What happened?

AMY: Yeah. Speaking of animals, Enjoying or not enjoying in this case, getting read to. we had stayed on vacation at a farm in Texas a few years ago, and it was when we were reading, Harry Potter and I was reading it aloud to the kids  so we had all these chickens right outside our door, and in the morning you'd go get eggs from the chicken coop and everything. And there were roosters and stuff and so we'd sit outside and I'd read Harry Potter and this one rooster just kept interrupting  it would be in the early evening or whatever. It wasn't the morning like it was as if he was getting like super annoyed that I was reading and he just kept crowing.

KIM: The more you read, the louder he crowed.

AMY: Yeah, he wasn’t a J.K. Rowling fan.

KIM: Clearly. 

AMY: But yeah, so you know, also that I have been volunteering at the library at Jack's school. Right?

KIM: I love that, yes. That is so cool.

AMY: I went from being the art mom, which was a frustrating experience….

KIM: This is more your speed…

AMY: Yeah. It's much more my speed. It took me back to my high school years working at the public library. But anyway, at Jack’s school I mostly reshelve books, and of course I can’t help but browse. Which brings us to the topic of today’s episode. A few months ago I was glancing at the shelves and I saw Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, which was a movie that I LOVED. I can still sing the theme song, do you want to hear it?

KIM: Yes.

[Amy sings…. Kim interrupts with a rooster crow.]

AMY: Okay. All right. Yeah, was going on a little too long, but needless to say, I love the movie. the songs are all so good from that movie. But anyway,  I definitely did not know that Ian Fleming of James Bond fame was the author.

KIM: Yeah, that’s crazy. I did not know that either. The one where the car flies, right?

AMY: Yeah, yeah. Dick Van Dyke.

KIM: That’s crazy. Oh my gosh.

AMY: So I'm standing there, I'm like, wait, Ian Fleming. And I even said to the school librarian,  did you know this? And she's like, yeah, it's pretty wild. Right. 

KIM: So according to Wikipedia, Fleming wrote the book for his son Caspar. It was published in three volumes (wow, who knew?) the first of which came out in 1964. And here’s more intel that will blow your mind: Roald Dahl helped write the 1968 film adaptation. (And the guy who produced the James Bond films also produced Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang.) You would just never put those things together.

AMY: No. But when you think about how weird that movie is, it does sort of track. I mean the Roald Dahl addition sort of starts to makes sense. But yeah, I would never in my head have thought the guy who wrote James Bond would be the same guy who wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

KIM: No, that is very strange. Side note, listeners, Ian Fleming was a former lover of Rosamond Lehmann, once of our previous Lost Ladies. She wrote the book that I really love, Dusty Answer. You can go back and listen to that episode. But apparently the affair ended by Fleming flinging a live squid at her. So it just got weirder, listeners.

AMY: Yeah, According to the woman who wrote the biography of Rosamond Lehmann, Selina Hastings, she was pissed that he mistakenly double-booked both her AND his wife at their vacation house in Jamaica (which how stupid can you get?) 

KIM: Uh, okay, there’s some problems going on if you can get that mixed up.

AMY: Lehmann recalled that Fleming’s wife was “unbelievably rude to me.” It’s like, “Well, you ARE his mistress.”

KIM: Yeah, what do you expect?

AMY: But to think tossing a squid at someone is going to smooth everything over? 

KIM: I know, if it lands in your face or your hair, it’s like, never forgiven! Anyway, i think we’re getting off on one of our famous tangents that we like to go on..

AMY: We’ll get back to this subject. This whole Ian-Fleming-wrote-Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang blow-my-mind fact actually got me wondering what other unlikely connections I could find between children’s books and authors you wouldn’t necessarily think of as writing kids’ books. I was trying to come up with other examples like this and I couldn’t think of any per se, but then I found a Mental Floss article by Lucas Reilly which highlighted a few more examples, so I thought I’d share a few.

KIM: I can’t wait to hear them. I wonder if I’ll know any.

AMY: Yeah, we’ll see. Okay, the first is Upton Sinclair. I wouldn’t have pegged the muckraking author who exposed all the horrors of the Chicago meat-packing industry in The Jungle as a guy who could turn on a dime and write a kids’ book, but the book was called called The Gnomobile: A Gnice Gnew Gnarrative with Gnonsense but Gnothing Gnaughty. (All n-sounding words spelled with a “Gn” to match Gnome, by the way.

KIM: Oh, of course. Naturally, yeah. As one would do.

AMY: Yeah, that book came out in 1936 and the Gnomemobile (if you google the cover of this book) is giving me some major Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang vibes! (It was made into a Disney movie in 1967 with the same adorable kids who were in Mary Poppins. Who knew? This is blowing my mind.) Okay, here’s the plot: “an amusing tale of two gnomes Glogo and Bobo, who travel to America in the company of two human friends in their custom gnomobile.” So apparently the book has an ecological message because the gnomes don’t trust the “big people” who are cutting down their forest home. 

KIM: Ooh, that’s 1936. That’s pretty good. That’s before The Lorax.

AMY: Yeah, it was an anti-pollution, anit-industrialization tale.  Last I checked, it was on Kindle for .99 I might need to read this one to Jack just for kicks. I’m curious.

KIM: Oh, yeah, and I need you to report back. 

AMY: Yes, I will report back in our Facebook forum where we give all our extra little info,so everybody needs to come over and find us 

There. And We'll be We'll be talking about the Gnomemobile and I'll put up a picture of the cover. Okay. So moving on to our next unlikely children's author, James Joyce. Were you aware that he wrote any kids books?

KIM: Nope, I am not aware of this.

AMY: He wrote a few stories for his grandson, Stephen, in 1936, which were later published posthumously. One is The Cat and the Devil. A mayor asks the devil to build a bridge for the town, and the devil agrees under the condition that he gets to own the soul of the first person to cross the bridge. When the bridge is complete, the mayor outsmarts the devil by tossing a cat across the bridge. So then the devil has a pet cat. And then he wrote another cat book, The Cats of Copenhagen. I saw the words “strange” and “subversive” used in one review of it.

KIM: Sounds about right. It’s also making me think of T.S. Eliot’s book about cats. What was the title of that one? 

AMY: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is the one that T.S. Eliot wrote.

KIM: Okay. So listeners, go listen to our mini episode on cats if you haven't yet. We have some opinions on the musical Cats. That's episode number 64, so if you love cats, I think Amy does sing in that episode too, so if you, if you like cats and Amy singing, go listen to that episode. What other unlikely children's authors did you find in this Mental Floss article?

AMY: Aldous Huxley.

KIM: Okay, another one you wouldn't expect. Let's hear about it.

AMY: Okay. So he is, you know, Allice Huxley of Brave New World Dystopian Fame. He wrote this book for his niece called The Crows of Pear Blossom.

KIM: Ooh, I like the title.

AMY: All right, well, hold, hold on. I'm not sure once you hear the gist of the story. Um, like Joyce's books, this one was published posthumously.

It's about Mr. And Mrs. Crow who are dismayed that their neighbor, Mr. Snake, always steals and eats their eggs. So they decide to leave him some fake eggs in their nest. He eats them. He suffers an excruciating stomach ache, so painful that he actually twists himself around the tree branches until he's tied up in knots and then I think he dies.

KIM: Okay, so uplifting, 

AMY: It made me think of that Instagram account. “Sad beige clothing for sad beige children.” Do you know that?

KIM: Yes, totally. Oh, that's hilarious. 

AMY: And actually this, um, all this Huxley Children's book has, um, a beige cover, so it's perfect. Maybe we should, send this to her as an inspiration.

Okay. I got one more. You gotta end with Ernest Hemingway, right?

KIM: Oh, he's gotta be in there. When you mentioned these other names, 

it's, it kind of makes sense even though I never would've guessed that.

AMY: Yeah, but only he could find a way to turn his fascination with blood sports like hunting and bullfighting into charming tales for children.

KIM: Of course he did. Was it for a relative as well? Do I even want to know? 

AMY: Not quite. It was for the son of a “lady friend” of his in Italy. She had challenged him to create stories for her young son (or nephew, not sure). These fables eventually appeared in a 1951 issue of Holiday Magazine. The first story is called The Good Lion, which is about a winged, pasta-eating lion from Venice who hangs out at Harry’s Bar. When he takes a trip to Africa, the other lions tease him for being different. This is appropriate, right? So Hemingway writes that he simply flies away from the bullies instead of engaging with them. “Adios,” he said, for he spoke beautiful Spanish, being a lion of culture.”

KIM: That’s kinda cute. I like that.

AMY: Yes, so this lion would drink Negronis or Americanos instead of “the blood of Hindu traitors” like the other lions. (Hemingway’s words, not mine!) They end up calling this poor lion a “Son of a Griffin” instead of “son of a bitch.” Of course by the end of the story the good lion is back at Harry’s Bar in Venice and he ends up actually hankering for the blood of Hindu traitors.  (Travel has changed him). He asks the bartender at Harry’s if they have it in stock. So I think it’s pretty classic; I love it. His other story is titled The Faithful Bull and it’s actually a parody of The Story of Ferdinand, if you know that children’s book. Hemingway starts it off saying, “One time there was a bull and his name was not Ferdinand and he cared nothing for flowers. He loved to fight and he fought with all the other bulls of his own age, or any age, and he was a champion.”

KIM: This sounds like Hemingway.

AMY: Yeah, yeah. This bull in Hemingway’s tale ends up dying nobly (in Papa’s eyes, anyway) killed by a matador in a bullfighting match.

KIM: Okay, well, a little violent. But so are fairy tales.

AMY: Maybe not ready for Cleo. Not “primetime ready,” not “bedtime ready.” I feel like these two are “children’s stories” in quotes. Holiday Magazine wasn’t a children’s magazine and The Faithful Bull is kind of his “eff you,” to the author of The Story of Ferdinand, which was published right after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and was seen by some as a political allegory promoting pacifism.

KIM: Yeah, yeah, right, okay that makes sense. That absolutely makes sense why he would parody that and have some fun with that.

AMY: Listeners, the Mental Floss article I referenced in this episode features 8 other authors who you might not anticipate would have written for kids. We’ll link to it in our show notes so you can find out whom some of the others were.

KIM: I think Cleo might be traumatized by some of these books we talked about today, so I might just stick with some other time-worn classics for now, but maybe I’ll go read them for myself.

AMY: So that’s all for today’s episode. Thanks for supporting us, and consider doing so more publicly by recommending us to a friend or leaving us a five-star review wherever you listen.

KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

144. Theodora Keogh — Street Music with Maud Newton

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. Kim Askew…

AMY HELMES: And I'm Amy Helmes. We're traveling to Paris for this week's book. Think lively cafes, the Luxembourg Gardens, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Boulevard St. Germain. Or to quote today's lost lady, Theodora Keogh: “the tender banks of the Seine, the sidewalks thick with chestnut blossoms, and the wide splendid vistas laid out by kings.”

KIM: Paris in the spring. It all sounds so lovely. So blissful and ebullient!

AMY: Yeah, well, maybe hold that thought for a second, because while Theodora Keogh's 1952 novel Street Music is delightful in its depictions of Paris, it is also incredibly dark. 

KIM: Yeah, some might even call it lurid. The subversive nature of her writing may have shocked some who classified her novels as pulp, but it impressed many others, including novelist Patricia Highsmith. She was known to be stingy with her praise for other women writers.

AMY: Our guest today is also a big fan of Theodora Keogh's novels, and we're fans of her work, so we can't wait to introduce her and hear what she has to say. 

KIM: Cue the theme song, then it's time to raid the stacks and get started! 

[intro music plays]

KIM: Today's guest, Maud Newton, is a critic, essayist fiction writer, memoirist and pioneer of the blogosphere, whose astute online observations first caught the eye of the media and literary world in the early two thousands, and I often linked to her on my long, long defunct blog, Kim Said. Since then her writing has appeared in an array of outlets, including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, Harper's Magazine, Time, and The New York Times Book Review among others. Her first book, published just last year, is Ancestor Trouble: a Reckoning and a Reconciliation. It was named one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe Time, Esquire, and Entertainment Weekly. It was also a finalist for the 2023 John Leonard Prize, which was awarded by the National Book Critics Circle Award. Wow.

AMY: [facetiously] It's okayyyyy.

KIM: I feel like I, because I've read your blog since the very beginning and just watching it all happen and that it came out to such glory makes me want to cry. I have to say that.

AMY: Yeah, and I read it a few months ago. Actually, I listened to it on audiobook. The glowing reviews are so well deserved. You clearly poured so much work into the book. It's part memoir, but then also just a lot of thoroughly researched nonfiction, but told in a really entertaining way, so congrats on the book and welcome to the show.

MAUD NEWTON: Thank you so much to both of you, and thanks for reading my book. And Kim, I also, I feel like I have known you since the early two thousands because of, yeah, all of our interconnections back then and linking back and forth.

KIM: Yeah, it's great to finally meet on Zoom.

AMY: And we should add that Maud has been a writer in residence at Yaddo. We needed you around, Maud, actually; we did a mini episode on Yaddo earlier this year about like the hauntings, the ghosts and the history there. 

KIM: Yeah. Did you encounter any ghosts?

MAUD: I didn't, but I was staying in one of the newer, like standalone work sleep studios, which are, I have to say, really nice. Um, but you don't get that like Sylvia Plath, walking the halls at, you know, one o'clock in the morning. So yeah…

AMY: Maybe that's good. It let you sleep so you could get some work done. You don't wanna go to Yaddo and then be up all night like, “Oh my God, there are ghosts! I'm not getting any work done, because I'm panicked!”

MAUD: I got so much work done. I actually cried the first day I was there. I was like, “Oh my God, all I have to do here is work on my book? What? What?!”

AMY: What a luxury.

KIM: A dream come true. All right, so let's drive right into our discussion of Theodora Keogh. When did you first discover her?

MAUD: I first discovered her in, I believe she died in 2008. And there was a really, kind of shocking, in a great way, obituary in The Telegraph, and it talked about how she was Theodore Roosevelt's granddaughter and her ear had been bitten by her pet margay, which is the type of wildcat, at the Chelsea Hotel and a bunch of other details. And I was just drawn in, as one sometimes is, irrespective of literary merit by this sort of larger-than-life story. At the end of her life she was living on 10 or 20 acres in North Carolina, and I think she had a chicken farm or something. And I vibed with that because that's sort of like something someone in my family would do. And then I just started reading her and was really blown away by how much I liked her work and how forgotten it is.

AMY: And ironically, you hadn't read Street Music, the book we're discussing today, until we started talking about having you on. So I'm curious to know why you suggested that title of hers if you hadn't even read it yet.

MAUD: Yeah. Well, I was curious. I think I wanted to give myself an assignment to read it because it's the only one of her books I haven't read, and my friend Kevin Wilson…

AMY: The author.

KIM: Mm-hmm. The Family Fang. 

MAUD: Yes, and many other wonderful books. Um, it's his favorite. And he had started reading her because I told him how much I liked her. So I was just like, well, it has to be good if Kevin likes it. It's kind of a leap of faith, but I confess I was a little bit like, “I hope I like it!”

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: We often feel like that when we decide on a book, because most of the time we haven't read them before. So we're just usually very lucky. Um, we can't wait to find out what you thought of the book, and we'll get to that in a minute. But first, let's talk a little bit about the author's life. So Theodora Keogh likely wouldn't have wanted us to start with this tack or maybe even included it all, but you did hint a little at her family history talking about her obit. So maybe let's just get that out of the way right off the bat. Her name offers a hint. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more?

MAUD: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, there unfortunately is no comprehensive biography, and some of what I'm getting ready to say is, you know, from my memory of my fascination with her years ago. But that said, yes, she is Theodore Roosevelt's granddaughter. Um, she grew up in a fairly privileged home, as you might expect, in Manhattan. I believe her father's name was Archibald, but I might have made that up. 

AMY: That's correct because I just Googled it before we jumped on Zoom because I actually wanted to see if there was a family resemblance at all to the Roosevelt side of the family. And ironically, she doesn't really look like her dad, Archibald, that much, but she does kind of look like Alice Roosevelt Longworth, her aunt.

MAUD: Yes. Her, you know, kind of notorious aunt who was also kind of a rule breaker. Yeah, she really does favor her. And according to Patricia Highsmith's late biographer, Joan Schenkar, she was Alice's favorite niece, so they had a special relationship. But to sort of go back to your question, Kim, she, ended up in Paris as a young woman. She married someone who was part of The Paris Review crowd, and he was an artist. Um, I believe they were both dancers, and if memory serves, that might have been how they met each other. But he became really embedded in this Paris Review community. And actually, the first issue of The Paris Review has an illustration of her by him in it. And you can see that online. And I'm, I'm kind of going on it a little length here, but my favorite book of hers, which is called My Name is Rose, I think it satirizes The Paris Review of that era.

KIM: Ooh, I've gotta read that. That sounds great.

MAUD: It's really fascinating. So the main character, the female protagonist, has married this man who presents himself as a great writer. They move to Paris, and slowly she realizes that there's not really any “there” there, you know, that he is a critic, but he's kind of reciting ideas. Whereas she was raised by artists and has always been interested in writing, but has kind of left it behind. And as you might imagine from having read Street Music, she really turns her lens on that world in a really interesting way.

AMY: I want to go back for a second to the fact that she didn't really like connecting her name to her grandfather's because she was kind of well known, I believe. I found an old advertisement for Ponds cold cream. An illustration of her face is part of the ad. I think the text says, “You know her famous grandfather, but Theodora Keogh is also a woman who likes travel and adventure.” And, and basically her face was selling the Ponds cold cream, which I thought was interesting. And also going back to the dancing, I think she had ballet training, but didn't she wind up in Brazil at one point as a dancer? And then I think I read that she danced at the Copacabana, which, I forgot the Copacabana was even a real place. But apparently she danced there.

MAUD: That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, you're kind of jogging my memory. Well, first of all, that's fascinating about the Ponds cold cream, and it does cast this different light on things.

KIM: Nepo baby!

MAUD: I mean, I really do think it's fascinating that she wrote these books though, because, especially for the time, they were fairly salacious. They were part of like the pulp novel trend of the mid 20th century. She wrote about street kids, and she wrote a lot about queer relationships.

AMY: And I think also this first husband, Tom, who she went to Paris with, he was a famous costume designer for films also. And I know he illustrated the cover of the first edition of Street Music too, I think. It was her third novel, published in 1952 by Farrar Straus and Young. And the book is set in Paris, so yeah, I did have that moment of, “Okay, is she really drawing from her life?” But can you give us maybe a little more insight into what the literary marketplace at that time was?

MAUD: I mean the pulp era, there were so many women writing really interesting stuff that, you know, was later sort of dismissed as kind of commercial or tawdry. So I have a really old copy of Street Music and... 

KIM: Oh, yeah. The cover looks very pulpy. 

AMY: Yeah, that cover says everything, right? 

KIM: Absolutely. It feels noir or pulp. Yeah.

AMY: I don't necessarily, when I read it, if I hadn't seen that it was considered a pulp novel, it wouldn't have crossed my mind.

KIM: I agree with you because there's something lyrical and literary about it. I never would've, juxtaposed that cover with it. And if you take a picture of it, Maud, we'll put it on our social when the episode goes live so people can see what we're talking about.

MAUD: Absolutely. Yeah, and here's the back of it: "This is the subtle and terrifying story of a marriage that founders when a young bride discovers that her husband's past contains the seeds of evil that threaten to destroy their life together."

KIM: Okay. Oh my God. This is like, “Okay, make it pulp.” I mean, in my opinion they took a beautiful novel and they just wrapped it in a pulp package to sell it.

AMY: Yeah. If you look at The New York Times original mention of this book, this is the description: "A story about a young American girl who goes to live in Paris with her music critic husband, and of her endeavors to make her marriage last." So contrast those two things that we just read. I mean, they clearly just pumped it up, like you said, Kim.

MAUD: She had a good publicist, right?

KIM: Yeah. 

MAUD: It's like wink, wink, she might be Teddy Roosevelt's granddaughter, and it's a literary novel. And then on the other end for mass consumption, it's this sort of pulp packaging. 

KIM: Which may have pigeonholed her, and that might be why people don't know her today.

MAUD: Yeah. And I agree with you, Kim. I mean, the writing is so beautiful. The verbs are so perfect. The metaphor, the lyricism and the visual description... She's really a very deft writer sentence by sentence. 

AMY: All right, so let's dive into the book here. So we have the young American bride and her music critic husband, and their "endeavors to make the marriage last" as The New York Times summarized. Uh, Um, why don't we elaborate on that a little bit? Maud, uh, can you tell us about Claude and Linnet Mitan and their individual crises?

MAUD: Yeah. So Claude is a slightly older man, with a kind of ravaged face who has married Linnet, I think in New York City is where they were living. They moved to Paris. He is a radio critic, she is a young bride who attracts him in part because of her innocence and the way that the innocence connects to her beauty. And then Claude transforms when they get to Paris. He has this nostalgia for his youth, which was troubled, and she doesn't really know very much about his youth or why he is a lot more distant and doing things like going out by himself for drinks and often hanging out with this other major character who's an 11-year-old girl named Félice.

KIM: The orphan girl, Félice, she's introduced in the first chapter in a really striking passage.

AMY: Yeah, and I'll go ahead and read from that section of the book. This is the first time Linnet... she's recalling the first time she ever laid eyes on Félice. A group of boys and girls were playing wedding. They had formed an aisle down, which they were walking the bride and groom. The bride was a thin child with the kind of red hair that looks black inside. Red copper washed over the true denseness of the hair. There was something disturbing about the color, as well as the sharp tense face beneath. The child was dressed poorly, in a skimpy black apron or smock, such as school children wear in France. Her legs were encased in brown stockings that were guarded above the knee and just below the edges of her skirts. She had her hand on the arm of a young boy who was the groom. The groom's face wore a curious expression and Linnet, coming, coming near, was astounded to see, or think she saw, a stamp of real love on his features as they came abreast of the children. Claude had called out teasingly and with an exaggerated American accent, "Hello, Red." The little girl had turned her opaque brown eyes his way, and once again, Linnet had been surprised. The child had obviously read an invitation into Claude's teasing words. She had lifted her chin and then darted a glance at the man's companion. The boy groom frowned. His arm on which the bride's hand rested, grimy, yet gracious twitched. The other children giggled. Then the red-haired girl had snatched her hand away and taken to her heels up the street. "Félice!" The others called after her. "Félice!" But she kept running, the wooden soles of her boots knocking on the cobbles.

"You hurt her feelings, Claude," said Linnet as they walked on. " She can't understand English, and she must have thought you were saying something mean." "Nonsense," Claude had laughed. "You couldn't hurt her feelings if you tried. I know these Paris brats and you don't. No, it was for another reason entirely that she ran. A reason of pure caprice." So it's interesting that a wedding scene is how this child is introduced to us, right?

MAUD: Yeah, and hearing that read aloud is so fascinating, too, because it really foreshadows all of the themes of the book in a lot of ways. 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. 

AMY: That scene had taken place in front of the house, kind of where Félice lives. Um, but I wanted to just mention it because it's described in the book, it's No. 6 Rue de Tournon, and Keogh describes it as an arched entryway that leads into the building and there's two angels carved in stone sitting over the arch. And if you Google No. 6 Rue de Tournon, you will see it. It's clear as day and you're like, “Wow, that's exactly what she was describing there.”

KIM: It really makes, yeah, it makes you go, Okay, she definitely had something in mind. I mean, she might have even like stayed across the street just like 

AMY: Living there. Yeah. exactly. So this little orphan, when I was taking notes reading this book the first time, I wrote down Little Orphan Annie, because, you know, we have this red-haired girl about the right age and she's always fantasizing about who her mother could be. You know, that sort of [sings] “Maybe far awayyyyy….”

KIM: I love when you sing! I love when you sing!

AMY: I'm thinking of this in my head and I'm like, “Oh this is so sweet,” and then a few pages later we find out that Félice is actually the neighborhood drug dealer and petty thief. So she's not quite as innocent as Little Orphan Annie.

KIM: Right, but through no fault of her own. And she is still quite innocent in a lot of ways too. So it's an interesting mix in her personality. She's only 11 after all. And she's sort of a Cinderella, with a stepmother figure that's her guardian. She has stepsisters and she has to earn a living so she can retain bed and board there in an already really impoverished household. And they all despise her. It's really complicated. And speaking of complicated, Linnet and Claude each have very different, very strong emotional responses to Félice. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that Maud, because it's interesting.

MAUD: Yeah, it's fascinating, and I'm really glad that you mentioned her stepmom, because the stepmother is like a mild villain, you know. She's treated as this sort of pitiful and disposable child. And it is really interesting how in that first passage that you read, Amy, Linnet is concerned about Félice. But for the most part, she becomes kind of suspicious of Félice, and at times, almost finds herself thinking of Félice as a rival. And Claude, his relationship to her is at times really touching and at times disturbing. It's never clear exactly what the nature of his feelings toward her is. On the one hand it seems like he's just trying to re-inhabit his own Paris childhood, and he views her as an echo of himself in some way, or of kids he knew. But then on the other hand, there is this sort of undercurrent of is he attracted to her? She's placed him on this pedestal and, in that like 11-year-old way, is infatuated with him, and he knows that and he kind of encourages it.

KIM: And he shows his hidden self to her in a way that his wife wishes that he would. 

AMY: Yeah, I think Keogh does a good job of juxtaposing the adult characters in the book with the kiddie antics of Félice's guttersnipe gang, because she hangs out with this bunch of scrappy neighborhood boys. But then at one point, Claude, he's feeling this existential need to revisit his own delinquent youth, as we said. And he asks Félice, “Hey, how can I prove to you guys that I'm really one of you? What do I need to do to prove it?” So Maud, can you explain the task that she dares him to take on?

MAUD: Yeah, so she says that he needs to get them into a locked Metro station. And so he agrees. He comes up with a plan. He is going to wear workers' clothing, he's going to go down through the tunnels, and he's going to unlock the gates and let them in. Yeah, that whole scene is, is really, really artfully done because you're not really sure what is going to happen, whether there's gonna be some terrible calamity or they're all gonna get caught. I don't wanna spoil too much of it, but I think what's interesting is that he's kind of trying to bond with all of them, but he ends up driving more of a wedge between Félice and Andre, the boy she's marrying in the beginning, and he comes into focus fully for Andre at that point as a rival, I think. 

AMY: Okay, so there's a ton of weirdness about this book. I keep thinking of the person who might have read that first New York Times blurb and been like, “Oh, that sounds nice.” And then actually read the book and been like, “Whoa!” Um, one of the weirdest characters is a woman who is also staying at the same apartment, place, boarding house as the Mitans. Uh, her name is Ms. Bush. 

KIM: Yeah. I mean, I felt some real Miss Havisham vibes going on there. Um, she tried to be androgynous, but she also had a weird sexual obsession. Maybe weird is unfair, but she had a sexual obsession with the landlord. It was intense. Yeah, it was weird. It was weird. Yeah. Let's just say it was weird.

AMY: So what's, yeah, what I mean, I just was trying to figure this woman out. Maud, what are your thoughts?

MAUD: I mean, she is so fascinating because on the one hand, she is like binding her breasts and sort of aligns herself with suffragettes, you know, and she's already an elderly woman by the time the book has taken place. But then as you say, she has this sexual obsession with the landlord, and it's unclear... mostly it seems to be something she's dreading. She's anticipating that he is going to turn his attentions from the young women he hires to clean the, uh, boarding house slash hotel, um, and forces to sleep with him. He's going to turn his attentions from them to her, that she's his ultimate object of desire. And probably that is a complete delusion, but it's not entirely clear to me that she is completely wrong. So she's, to me, a really interesting character. Like the portrayal is borderline ageist and misogynistic, but somehow it lands outside of that to me. Um, maybe, what do you two think about that?

AMY: I'll admit that it was beyond me like what the message was in terms of her purpose In the book. There are sexual undertones for sure, and she's a little bit titillated by the idea that he might ravish her, you know? Very weird. But, speaking of sexual undertones, let's get back to Félice and Claude, because there are some major ones with these two. 

KIM: Oh, yeah. 

AMY: Do you think Keogh aimed to shock readers in her books?

MAUD: Yeah, I do, and I think she enjoyed going up to lines and not crossing them, or slightly crossing them. 

AMY: Which is evidenced really well, I think, by that scene in the book with the peach.

MAUD: Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah. Do you wanna talk a little more about it?

AMY: Um, yeah, we can. Claude and Félice are sitting in Luxembourg Gardens, I believe. The tension is kind of ratcheting up. They pass a fruit stand and they get a peach off one of the stalls, and then, I don't know who takes a bite first. One of them takes a bite, and then the other one takes a bite. 

KIM: I think she takes a bite and then he takes a bite.

AMY: Okay. It's very suggestive.

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. And she notes it too. Félice notes that he took a bite of her peach, so it made an impression on her. It's a very big symbol. It's like, it's not subtle. 

AMY: Yeah. Yeah,

KIM: It’s a big symbol.

MAUD: Yeah, agreed. Their relationship is really, um, at best walking on fine line, you know?

AMY: I wasn't quite getting Lolita vibes, but I definitely thought of it.

MAUD: Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, and again, I don't wanna give away the whole ending, but I do feel like he comes off as an exploiter of both Félice and Linnet, sort of disturbing both of their worlds. I mean, I do have sympathy for him in a certain way, which is interesting. But he doesn't come off as any sort of hero. 

AMY: Yeah, we talked in previous episodes about noir of this time and the idea that men were coming back from the war damaged. Claude, in this book, he was a prisoner of war in some sort of concentration camp. The scar across his face is a visual representation of the fact that he's been damaged somehow. So, yeah, I think you're right that there is a certain element of sympathy, and the fact that he is so pining for his youth and like the innocence of his youth in a weird way, even though his youth wasn't completely innocent. There's like the big secret about his past for part of the book. You're like, “What did he do? What's the big secret?” And then these New York friends come over drinks one night and they find out what the big secret is. And they kind of laugh it off. 

KIM: Which is weird because it, I mean, I don't wanna spoil anything so I won't say what it is, but it's pretty bad. Um, but they're, they don't seem to be shocked by it at all. 

AMY: I expected it to be something far worse, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah.

MAUD: I expected it to be far worse too, but I also think, yeah, if she had chosen to spin it differently, It could have been a big deal. And I feel like the fact that it isn't to the New Yorkers and that it makes him somehow more intriguing underscores like their kind of cravenness and the hollowness of the enterprise that, you know, that Claude was involved in in New York in a way. 

KIM: I just had a thought about Ms. Bush going back to it. So we've got Félice, we've got Linnet, and we've got Ms. Bush. All different ages of women that are being exploited in some way by, I guess men and society or male society. I don't know, just a thought.

AMY: There's a whole scene where the women are at a bar and they're all kind of fighting with one another, and the bartender looks on and even says that I think like, Oh, you got four generations there of women at each other's throats.

MAUD: Yeah. Yeah. And I think he reduces them in some really awful way. I can't remember what slur he uses, it wasn't quite like bitches or sluts, but…

KIM: Cat-fighting or…

AMY: Hens or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I had another thought about the pulpiness. I guess I just keep going back to like, we talked about the language. Her writing style is the beauty, and if you took that away, the plot points might add up to some sort of like James-Patterson-esque story. Yeah. Um, but that's why I want to reinforce that to our listeners that it's really beautifully written and lyrical and um, I think also just the setting of Paris and how she describes it adds to all that. 

KIM: Yeah, there's almost a Lost in Translation feel to Linnet's character. She has a fantasy of what it's going to be like in Paris, and instead she's kind of alone and looking at this completely different society as an outsider. And it's very fascinating in that way. And again, very, very beautifully written.

MAUD: Yeah, and we also haven't talked about the fact that the first place we see him taking her is a lesbian bar filled with women who are very short. As a fairly short person, you know, I don't wanna praise it too much because I do think it's probably problematic in certain ways, but at the same time, it's not really like a cliche, you know, it's not like, “Oh here are some hot ladies getting it on.” I mean, he does have a male gaze, but it's also not exactly the kind of gaze that you would expect. You know, it's not like, “Oh, here we are, let's see if we can get a threesome going on” or something. It's, it's very interesting and I feel like in a way that might be one reason that her books haven't survived or like, they haven't continued to be sort of acclaimed, because there is this kind of complexity and slipperiness of perspective. So you're not getting a moral “yes” or “no” in a lot of cases. And to think about somebody writing this stuff in the fifties. I know there was like lesbian pulp and all of that, but to portray this in a complex way that wasn't necessarily centering that world, but also wasn't just presenting it as like, "Ha, haha, look at this crazy," you know, it's really interesting.

KIM: Yeah, I agree. 

AMY: I think the weirdness of the book, I mean, that scene, like you said, it wasn't just a lesbian bar, it was a lesbian bar where she explicitly says everybody here is petite, shorter. Uh, and so there's just, there's so many weird moments throughout the book that if you had told me this is an English translation of a French book, I would've believed it. Because it's weird in like if a mime had shown up… like that kind of weirdness. 

MAUD: Yeah. Yeah. All of her books are like that.

AMY: Okay. Even the ones not set in Paris.

MAUD: Yeah. They're all like that. None of them are like, “Oh, here's a straightforward story about, you know, these characters who are either relatable or villains.” It's always kind of a mess like this, which I think is part of what I like about it, that you're just never really sure what's going to happen or how you're going to feel about a character ultimately.

KIM: Yeah, that's what I loved about it. You don't expect what's going to happen to happen. You don't expect that you're going to have this bar and the slice of life be like that as you start the book. We also mentioned that Patricia Highsmith publicly praised Keogh. What exactly did she have to say, Maud, do you know? And do you see any similarities at all between Keogh and Highsmith's work?

MAUD: Yeah. Um, so I actually, I printed out something that I wrote on my blog ages ago as I was preparing for this. And it quotes Joan Schenkar and Patricia Highsmith, so I'll just read this little paragraph: “In the last sentence of her critique of Meg, Pat left no doubt how much of herself she saw in Theodora Keogh's young heroine. ‘Such an admirable personage is she with her banged up knees, her dirty sweaters, her proud vision of the universe that remembering one's own childhood, one wishes one had kept more of Meg intact.’”

KIM: That's beautiful. 

AMY: So that's her first, that's her debut novel, then, that Patricia Highsmith was bowled over by.

KIM: Wow.

MAUD: Maybe somebody listening to this podcast will be like, “Oh, you know, should I write a biography of Theodora?” Please do. And also, I have meant for many years to go to the New York Public Library, there are some Farrar/Straus letters between her and her editor in their archives. So I've always meant to go and see if there's anything juicy in there. 

AMY: You mentioned the part about this margay, the wild cat. The legend was that the cat bit her ear off?

MAUD: Yeah, Joan said that the margay just bit like a tiny bit of her ear left off.

AMY: Just a little piece. Just a little.

KIM: It makes for a good story. 

AMY: And I think in one of the things Joan wrote that I read, uh, she mentioned that Theodora was still doing her bar exercises for dancing. As a senior citizen, I mean, she was still practicing her bar work. And then I think she either, she lived on a tugboat for a while or she was married to a ferry boat captain, something like that in a later portion of her life.

MAUD: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and then there's the land in North Carolina and I can't remember the story around that. [police siren sounds in background] Here we have our siren.

AMY: Okay.

KIM: Street Music! 

AMY: Street Music! Yeah.

KIM: Maud, I can't tell you what an honor it is to have you join us. I'm so glad I finally got to meet you, um, sort of in person or at least visually. And we love learning about Theodora.

MAUD: It's really my honor to be on the show and to meet you finally, and to meet you too, Amy. Yeah, it's really wonderful. I love the show.

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Please keep those five-star reviews coming. They give us so much joy. And head over to our Facebook forum. (It's not the Lost Ladies of Lit Facebook page. You have to take one extra step and go to the forum) which is where everybody's hanging out, talking about each week's episode, interacting with former guests. We have sneak peaks of future episodes. We wanna see you all. 

KIM: Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.

Episode 141: Hard-Knock Life Memoirs

KIM: Hi everyone, welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I'm Kim Askew, here with my co-host Amy Helmes hi.

AMY: I'm excited about today's topic actually, Kim, you sort of know, I think about my particular love of nonfiction, quote unquote survival books, right?

KIM: Yeah, it's kind of an area where we diverge in taste. 

AMY: Right. I'm into it. You're not? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm talking like polar expeditions. Ernest Shackleton, Lost City of Z, all that kind of stuff. And there's a couple of titles just recently out that I'm very excited for, one's called Wanderlust: Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, A Lost Age, and it's by Reid Mitenbuller. I can't wait to read this. There's another one called The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann, and he also wrote Lost City of Z, so yeah, all these books about people out in the wild, on their own, exploring uncharted waters, 

KIM: Wait, have you read? Have you read Patrick Lee Fermor?

AMY: No, what's

KIM: Oh my God, I think our tastes will converge in this. He was an adventurer. I think he was a spy at one point. Like an early 20th century kind of guy and, oh, you would love this. I have some of his books and has writing won tons of awards. But a lot of his adventures took place like around World War I, World War II.

AMY: I love it. 

KIM: Yeah. Oh, you would totally love it.

AMY: I don't even like to go camping really. So it's, it's very funny 

KIM: I know, I I, know. I'm the same. We, yeah. Yes, I'm the same. 

AMY: It's something that I kind of like to read in my cozy living room, witnessing somebody else who has just kind of tested the outer limits of human endurance. know, how much your body can take, how much your mind can take. Because a lot of it's a mind game. Anyway, that's not even what the topic of today's episode is really about. 

KIM: No. 

AMY: But it is related because sometimes the most fraught journey is simply making it to adulthood.

KIM: Hell yeah.

AMY: So I've just happened to read a number of memoirs by people who survived very unusual, traumatic, or deeply troubled childhoods, and for the sake of this episode, I just decided to call them Hard Knock Life memoirs. And there is kind of a connection, the idea of how much you can take psychologically. 

KIM: Mm-hmm.

AMY: You know, that Tolstoy line, All happy families are alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way. 

KIM: Of course. Yes.

AMY: That's true and that's why these books always make for fascinating reads, if told the right way by a gifted writer, I think. 

KIM: Oh yeah. Okay, so right off the top of my head, I'm thinking of some classic works. I'm thinking Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. There's Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. There's so many.

AMY: There's so many books in that vein, right?

KIM: Right. So what other ones have you been reading recently?

AMY: Okay, so a few of these books were absolute bestsellers that our listeners will have known or read. But I run into people like, Oh, have you read this? And people say, No, I never heard of it. So just on the off chance that people have never heard of these, I'm gonna say 'em. Anyway, so the first one was Educated by Tara Westover. That came out a few years ago. And I'll tell you, I think I first saw it in an airport bookstore, and that's why I I didn't read it.

KIM: That's exactly the same for me. I thought, 

AMY: Too mainstream. 

KIM: like it.

AMY: I just was like, No, I'm not interested. Um, so it was available on audiobook and I remembered my friend saying that was pretty good. So I was like, uh, I'll give it a shot. It is so good. So basically the author. She was the child of fundamentalist Mormon parents who are living off the grid in Idaho. They don't trust government. They are survivalists. They don't believe in formal education, highly skeptical of the outside world. So her knowledge of the world is very insular. You cannot believe all the things that happened to her, living out in the middle of nowhere with these crazy, crazy parents. And long story short, it's not a spoiler, it's like the premise of the book. She goes on to earn her PhD from Cambridge University.

KIM: Oh, that is so cool. I do wanna read 

AMY: true story of triumph. So I enjoyed that. So then I happened to see another one that was compared to Educated. It maybe was on a list, like if you like Educated, you'll like, this one. Again, I don't know how I didn't know about it because it was on The New York Times bestseller list for seven years. It's by Jeanette Walls. It's called The Glass Castle. Have you heard of it?

KIM: You know what? Yes. I don't know anything about it. I know I must have seen it in bookstores for years because I picture the cover even.

AMY: Why do we do this where we see like 

KIM: it too much, that's what happens. If we see it too much, we just get over. It's like too much for us and we just don't wanna see it. Because it's like being pushed too 

AMY: it seems 

KIM: something. So we think 

AMY: I'm, 

KIM: If it's everywhere, it's too mainstream.

AMY: Okay, so this one came out in 2005. She is a New York City journalist. Like a celebrity gossip columnist, lives on Park Avenue, but her background is the complete reverse of that. Her story is unfreaking believable. You just keep saying, No, there's no way, there's no way that happened. Same idea, the dad danced to the beat of his own drummer, I guess you could say. The mom was an artist. They had no money. She was hungry all the time. This one was turned into a movie recently starring Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts as the crazy parents. Um, the parents are kind of geniuses though. It kind of like both Educated and The Glass Castle, what I love about them both is that they tell story in very matter of fact ways. They just tell you what happened. And they let the reader make the judgment calls on it. You know what I mean? And that, that makes it more powerful in a

KIM: Yeah. You don't feel like they're trying to like blame someone and get you on their side.

AMY: And they're not trying to milk emotions or anything like

KIM: Because that's the thing I have sometimes trouble with.

AMY: No, and I will say also they're not upsetting to read. Because they did survive it and going through it, they don't know any different, they don't realize that that's not how the world is. 

KIM: Right. Yeah. And they always say, children are so adaptable.

AMY: And 

KIM: they just kind. It's like, that's what you know, so that's your life

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Most of us have very comfortable childhoods, but like you said, the resilience, it empowers you in a certain

KIM: Yeah. Trial by fire and they come out of it and then they're able to draw on that in whatever way creatively for their lives.

AMY: Yeah, and Jeanette Walls actually has a new novel out, Hang the Moon. It's set in Prohibition Era Virginia, and it's inspired by her moonshine grandparents, who also kind of factor in The Glass Castle a little bit. So now I wanna read that too, because Glass Castle it's really one of the better books I've read in the past year, like not for the podcast,

like 

KIM: definitely am going to be reading it. So I, I mean, you've, you've sold me completely. I, I for sure wanna read that as soon as

AMY: Yeah. And even you not liking non-fiction as much. I think you'll really, you'll find it beautiful. 

KIM: Yeah. So what else? 

AMY: Okay. So another one that was intriguing because it involves kind of a lost lady of lit. Um, this one is called An Abbreviated Life, and the woman who wrote it, Ariel Leve, l e v e. So I think that's pronounced Leave or "Lev" I'm not sure, or Levy. She grew up on the opposite end of the spectrum from these first two books. She grew up with money. Her mother was a well regarded American author, a kind of literary phenom. They lived in New York City. Um, Philip Roth was a big fan of the mother's work. I will say the daughter and the memoirist, she does not identify who her mother is. 

KIM: Oh, that is interesting. 

AMY: Now, obviously the internet exists so.

KIM: to figure it

AMY: Well, you don't even have to try. 

KIM: it and it comes up?

AMY: Yeah, you can just Google it. But because the author doesn't identify her, I'm not gonna identify her as well for this podcast, just to, to follow suit. Google it if you want to. So her childhood was hard in an altogether different way. The mom was a narcissist, had boundary issues and I would say it's an example of geniuses don't necessarily make terrific parents, you know? So the book is about the trauma that she suffered as a result of being raised by this woman, and then how she found a way to spiritually heal and kind of separate herself from her mother. So one more that I wanna mention because I just read it recently once I started getting on this, bandwagon, is called North of Normal by a woman. I know that's a great title. Um, the author is Cea Sunrise Person. And that name kind of might give you a little hint of what her childhood was like because she was living With her hippie family who were very into nudity and free love and all the drugs basically. Lived in teepees, it's set in the seventies. So again, just cuckoo anecdotes. Not the best situation for a young girl to be raised in. And when you think about these first books that I mentioned you're thinking, wow, if only like a social worker could have intervened or helped get them out of these horrendous situations that they were in. When the government steps in and tries to help, it actually can be more horrific. The next book is about a young girl that gets sent to an institutional facility for foundlings. This book is called The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames by Justine Cowan, and she actually wrote this about her mother. She was raised by a British mother, very upper crust, very polished, and she comes to find out after her mother's death that she did not have that aristocratic upbringing at all. She was given up by her single mother to this founding hospital in England, which is supposed to give them the best life possible. Well, that is not what happened to this woman at all. It is horrific. It makes Miss Hannigan's set up in Little Orphan Annie, it makes that look like Club Med 

KIM: Oh wow. 

AMY: This book is interesting though, because Justine Cowan, she's on a journey of figuring out why did my mother and I never get along? Why did we not have a good relationship? And the answer is because of this experience that her mother went through as a child. 

KIM: Traumatic, very traumatic experience. 

AMY: Dickensian bad. Everything they did was regimented, like the military. You had to go to the bathroom all at the same time. And it was just emotionless and cold and the whole philosophy behind the hospital was like to create these machines, basically, for Britain, to go on and be servants . So they didn't want them to have any emotional connections with people. They didn't want them to be too educated. They just didn't show them any love. Like they And as a result, all sorts of psychological stuff happened to these kids. This is a book from Virago, which I didn't realize when I first started reading it. And then I saw that Lucy Scholls had a She does the Our Shelves podcast and she had the author Justin Cowan on. So if you wanna learn more about this book and her mother's time in the founding hospital, you can listen to that podcast episode as well. But it wa it was good, but there were times when it was almost like, this is hard. This is hard to hear. What is the most heartbreaking is that the unwed mother that had given her up when World War II started, she's like, I'm in a position where I can take her again. Can I please reclaim my daughter? And they said no. She didn't have to be there. Um, so 

KIM: is a, 

AMY: there's more to the

KIM: That's like a novel that, you almost can't believe that that could be true.

AMY: Yeah. all these books feel this way to me though. That's why I think I've gotten into them you keep thinking like, That can't have happened. That can't possibly have happened to that person, but it did. I mean, of course then we have other memoirs like remember running with

KIM: Yeah, I know. I was gonna say that earlier, because that's also maybe why I haven't been as tuned into the memoirs.

AMY: Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. so it's A Secret Life of Dorothy Soames gets into a little bit the idea of how these traumatic childhoods then get passed on because you know, obviously Dorothy Soames 

KIM: Intergenerational trauma.

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. So she had a bad childhood and then she didn't know how to be a mother because she didn't have a mother. So she didn't know how to be nurturing. She was never shown an example of it. So then her own daughter, the author of the book, has her own psychological struggles and it just goes on and on. And that is reminding me of another book that I read. Um, Maud Newton's Ancestor Trouble.

KIM: wanna read that so bad. She's gonna be a guest coming

AMY: Yeah, she's gonna be a guest on the show. 

KIM: Yeah. I, I wanna read her book because I've known her forever online. I've never met her in person, but I've known her online for years. And just with all the other books we've been reading for the podcast, I haven't had a chance, but I really wanna read it. So you read it.

AMY: Yeah, it's called Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation, and it kind of ties these two ideas together. She was raised by a father that was very overbearing, racist, demanded perfection from his kids. Troubled in a lot of different ways, and so she goes back in time and it's like, why did he turn out that way? Is this a cycle that is gonna keep continuing and does that then affect me forward? A lot of the book is also looking into the science of intergenerational trauma and ancestry and all the sorts of things that will help her answer that question. So it's interesting. Um, we could get into the celebrity bent of the hard knock life memoirs as well. if you remember, like Christina Crawford's Mommy Dearest, uh, about. Joan Crawford. Yeah, I be, I believe I read that one way back when.

KIM: I think I read it to a skimmed dick quickly, but you know, I watched the movie multiple times. There's something like about just, it's fascinating, you know, fascinating to see 

AMY: there's. 

KIM: relationship.

AMY: Yeah, and it goes back to like rich, poor, famous, um, living in the wilds of Idaho. Everybody can have their version of this story. You know, there's another memoir by Roseanne Barr's daughter, Jenny Pentland, it's called, This Will Be Funny Later, and it's a all about like, what it was like to grow up being her daughter.

KIM: Oh, I bet that's interesting. I did not know about that one.

AMY: And then there's one that I just started that I keep seeing. I think it's on the bestseller list. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy. She was a child actress. 

KIM: I've been seeing that everywhere and wondering about it. The title is very provocative. 

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: You're like, what is that about? Yeah.

AMY: It's the classic kind of crazy stage mom who got her daughter into basically being the breadwinner for the family and being kind of obsessed with it. Like Gypsy Rose Lee, another one. Um, know, same idea. There's a couple other ones that I want to read as well. Fun Home. You've heard of that one, right? You haven't because that got turned into a Broadway. 

KIM: No, I don't know this at

AMY: Okay, so this was turned into a Broadway musical.

KIM: Okay.

AMY: And fun it's short for funeral home. So it's a, she was raised, she, her dad was a funeral home director. It's part memoir and it's also part graphic novel, which I didn't realize. I didn't know that about it. But yeah, it inspired the Broadway musical of the same name, so the author is Alison Bechdel who created the Bechdel called Beck. 

KIM: the name, Alison Bechdel

AMY: The Bechdel test. Do you know what that is? She came up with the idea of a movie needs to have two main female characters. Who 

KIM: that, 

AMY: other about something other than men.yeah.You know that. So that it's this, she wrote this book. So her dad is like closeted gay in addition to being the funeral home director. But apparently I think we would like it because it features a ton of literary illusions as well. That's what I've read about it. Yeah. So that, I think that would make it interesting for us. Um, there's another one, Somebody's Daughter, uh, by Ashley C. Ford. 

KIM: Ashley Ford. Yeah. Ashley ford. I mean, Ash Ashley, I, I follow, I've followed her for years. I don't know if she's even on Twitter anymore, but I've followed her for years, so I remember her talking about that. I knew her book had come out and everything. 

AMY: Yeah, yeah. And it's like her father is incarcerated and she doesn't know why and, and it's just her trying to

KIM: Figure it out. Yep. yeah, I've been curious about that one for sure. 

AMY: And then finally, and I'm gonna, bring it full circle because there's one more that I was interested in.Um, it's called The Wild Truth by Karine McCandless. She is the sister of Chris McCandless from that book Into the Wild. He was the guy that went off in the school bus.  The John Krakauer book. Um, so she's his sister.

KIM: Oh, 

AMY: She tells about their childhood and what actually prompted Christopher McCandless to go out in the wilderness.They had a horrible childhood.She goes into more detail about why he felt the need to escape from it all so that just brings me full circle a little bit in terms of now we're back to a actual survival wilderness 

KIM: It's all coming together,

AMY: marrying my two loves here.Yeah, so listeners, I recommend all of those books that I mentioned. I don't wanna say they're entertaining. But they're just gripping. I, I guess that's the word. And if you have any other ones, any other favorites tell us some of your other hard knock life memoirs that you suggest,and I will check em out. 

KIM: Yeah, and we will list all of the books that we mentioned on our website, Lostladiesoflit.com. We'll probably be talking about it in our Facebook forum, there's a lot of fun conversation. 

AMY: Yeah, and I should mention too, like it makes me very grateful. We all felt probably that we had challenges in our childhood. Things that were hard. But when you read these, you're like, by comparison 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: was very fortunate 

KIM: Yeah, you're calling up your parents and being like, thanks, appreciate you. for sure. Yeah,

AMY: thanks for, not 

KIM: yeah, 

AMY: go live in a quonset hut

KIM: yeah. If you're listening, dad, I love you. You did come up with a lot of interesting ideas, but they weren't to this

AMY: it wasn't quite to that 

level. 

KIM: not at all. Not at all. Yeah.

AMY: Um, all right, so we'll be back next week with another lost Lady of Lit. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo is designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

The Letters of Zora Neale Hurston with Melissa Kiguwa

KIM: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to forgotten women writers. I’m Kim Askew, here with my co-host, Amy Helmes.

AMY: Hey, everyone! Now a lot of you out there listening probably saw the topic for this episode and thought, “Zora Neale Hurston? She’s not lost!” 

KIM: Right. She’s a huge name in American literature. Her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is widely considered to be a masterpiece.

AMY: Yeah, and I’m willing to venture a LOT of our listeners have read that one. If you haven’t, you need to bump it to the top of your list, pronto. That said, when our guest today suggested we focus on Hurston for this episode I had a brief moment of pause wondering if she was too well-known. Then I did a little more investigating and discovered that she was very much lost for a portion of the 20th century until author Alice Walker ignited a new interest in Hurston and her work.

KIM: Yeah, were it not for that renewed push in the 1970s, Hurston and her legacy might have been obscured along with so many of the other women authors we feature on this show. We’ll dive into all that a bit later in this episode. 

AMY: Yes. But suffice to say, there’s so much about Hurston I didn’t know prior to preparing for this episode. We have today’s guest, Melissa Kiguwa, to thank for encouraging us to check out Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, which was edited by Carla Kaplan and published back in 2003.

KIM: Yes, reading her letters is such a great way to get to know the real Zora, and we’re thrilled to have Melissa joining us to discuss them, so let’s raid the stacks and get started!

[intro]

AMY: As host of The Idealists podcast, Melissa Kiguwa interviews visionary women for the inside scoop on their lives and experiences, their research and musings, all with an aim to help listeners reach their own highest potential. Her show’s past guests have included poets Nikki Giovanni and Joy Harjo, fashion designer Norma Kamali and many other female entrepreneurs and CEOs. And Melissa, I listened this week to your interview with neuroscientist Dr. Vivian Ming. I think it was a replay, but that was fascinating. And listeners, uh, it will have you rethinking your whole dependence on GPS to get places. Trust me.Um, so yeah, you always cover such an array of interesting topics. I love it. Melissa's also the founder and CEO of a new company called Breakthrough,  which, Melissa, can you tell us about it? 

MELISSA: Absolutely  Breakthrough dovetails well with what we do at The Idealists. We've been doing The Idealists for almost two and a half years, and we've aggregated so much data around the pain points of women who are audacious in the world and who push against the status quo and try to achieve extraordinary results and actually do it. And so we've been able to create a leadership, sort of service or platform where we're able to support women to, like you said, achieve their highest flourishing. We have  executive coaches that are able to help them, especially women founders.

We work with corporate clients who are stuck at that mid-level management level.  So we have self-coaching platforms  and then we work with venture funds that want to put their money where their mouth is and support  their founders, um, in their portfolio, their female founders. And so we provide a lot of support that way. So we do a lot, but it's all with the goal of making sure that the women who have the audacity and are gallant enough to say, I want to change the world. That they do it with support and are resourced.

KIM: That sounds amazing.

AMY: Yeah, we love the idea of women, uplifting other women  and giving them opportunities that they need.

KIM: So, before founding her company, Melissa worked as a radio and television host and producer in Uganda for outlets including the BBC World Service. She was also a 2020 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and was lauded internationally for her first collection of poetry, Reveries of Longing. Melissa, welcome to the show!

MELISSA: Thank you so much! I’m happy to be here.

AMY: I want to start off this episode by saying that when I was in my twenties, I had a photo of today's literary ladies, Zora Neale Hurston, taped up on my bedroom wall. And you probably both know the photo that I'm talking about. She's wearing that black fur collar coat. She has this cute little hat with a feather in it, and she's looking off camera with this big, bright kind of mischievous smile. And I don't even remember if I saw that photo first and then read Their Eyes Were Watching God, or I read the novel and then put that up. I, it, it all kind of happened around the same time.  And I remember just being like, “This is a woman I would've liked,” you know? And now that I've read her letters, I'm only validated in that belief. Um, so  what was your introduction to Zora Neale Hurston? And what about her do you find most compelling?

MELISSA: Yeah. I, similarly in college, was introduced to Zora Neale Hurston, and during that time, I think I was exploring a lot of the canon of black women writers. So, you know, Toni Cade Bambara and Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler. I was just, you know, going deep Sonia Sanchez for poetry. And of course, you have to meet Zora Neale Hurston along the way. I didn't know much about her life, though, but I did know that, emblematic of many black women writers at the time (and you know what, writers in general, let's be real) that there was a sad note to it. Um, but I didn't know how sad. And I also didn't know how  mercurial she is. I think that if I had to put a word to Zora, it would be that she is so mercurial. And so I think that my introduction to her was really one dimensional in the sense of I got the Zora that said, you know, I don't know how anyone can discriminate against me. Like I'm a joy. Like  it's your loss if you are discriminatory, right? Like that sort of braggadocious. Um, and then I would learn more about her later on.

KIM: Yeah, her letters really give… we'll talk about it more, but they give such a depth of the character, that you think, you know, there's so much more there and you get to read it in the letters. PBS’s American Experience aired a documentary earlier this year called Claiming a Space which is all about Hurston. It merges really nicely with this collection of her letters that Carla Kaplan edited. That documentary is available on the PBS streaming platform, so definitely check that out. I think maybe we ought to work backwards to start this episode, though, because Hurston basically died in obscurity, and it’s kind of a miracle that so many of her letters were saved at all. Melissa, can you explain?

MELISSA: Yeah, it's actually a phenomenal story, right?   We now know and we being the general populace, we know Zora's story because of Alice Walker. She was the one who sort of went on a journey to find Zora's unmarked grave and put together a collection of her writings and sort of said, wow, there's this extraordinary thinker, an extraordinary writer, and how have none of us heard about her? And we almost lost the bulk of Zora's writings, because when Zora did die in complete obscurity, penniless working as a maid, um, she was in her sixties, and I think the person who was cleaning out the house had literally put it in a trash bin outside and set it on fire. And there just so happened to be a police officer,  driving by. And he knew Zora  very, like casually, I think she casually called him the devil, but they had like a, you know, a cordial relationship. He enjoyed her personality. He saw the fire stopped in just to see if it was a threat or there was some sort of fire hazard and realized that the thinker, the writer, the novelist, the woman who'd won a Guggenheim, um, you know, her papers were being burnt, and so he stopped it, took it, put it in a box and put it on his porch. Um, and it stayed there for about two years while he tried to write to her friends and family, trying to figure out who would pick it up. I think it was, it was eventually picked up by a university, I'm forgetting the name, but, um, it took him two years of just those papers sitting on his porch. So really, I mean, just  happenstance, coincidence and maybe the universe wasn't the kindest to her during her lifetime, but the universe did want her to live on in posterity, you know?

KIM: That story is so chilling. Oh my gosh.  And uh, I feel like I'm gonna cry. Just you. It's so incredible. 

AMY: It’s such an intriguing story, and one of my takeaways from learning more about her is how she was routinely, at every turn, undervalued. She had to  elbow her own path every step of the way in life. And in these letters, we see this from the very beginning, from letter number one, she's just bold. So this very first letter  that exists is a letter from Zora to the dean of the high school that she was attending at the time.And it's like, Girl, you are ballsy! But I love it. You have to admire it. Melissa, you wanna talk a little bit about this very first letter?

MELISSA: Um,  it was just the level of audacity that you'd be like, I need to meet this girl because she was like, “One, I wanna know movers and shakers and you're a mover and shaker. Two, I wanna know your wife because if you are with her and you're a mover and shaker, there must be something about her that's interesting. And three, it will benefit me to know you because eventually you're gonna wanna write your autobiography and I should be the one to do that.”

AMY: Yes. I mean,  was maybe late teens. At that point. I can't imagine getting that letter. But at the same time, you would chuckle if you received that and you'd be like, well, I kind of wanna get to know this girl, too!

MELISSA: You absolutely would chuckle. I mean, imagine sending that to the dean of Smith or the dean, you know, of um, I don't know, Harvard or Columbia. Right. The president, I should say. And just being like, “Hey, you're famous and I should know you, and also like, you should know me too, because I'm gonna be important and you're gonna want me around.”

KIM: Yeah. Like you're talking about women leaders, I mean, and she is doing this and she's doing it all through her letters because that was the means of communicating with people and getting them to know who you are.

MELISSA: Yeah.

KIM: So after attending Howard University, Hurston ended up in New York City, and after winning a prestigious writing honor there she entered the orbit of some very influential people. The author Annie Nathan Meyer recognized her nascent talents and secured a scholarship for her at Barnard College. It’s at Barnard that Zora’s passion for anthropology took root. She also met a wealthy philanthropist named Charlotte Osgood Mason who took an interest in financially supporting Hurston’s scholarly pursuits after she graduated. Zora’s goal was to collect Black folklore and study the culture and language of Blacks living in the Southern United States.

AMY: Yes, and so reading the many letters from Hurston to Charlotte Osgood Mason, it seems like they had a complicated relationship, right Melissa? I kind of hated her, but then you also have to acknowledge that Hurston wouldn’t have been able to do the work she did without an angel investor type.

MELISSA: One hundred percent. She was an angel investor. You kind of see in a very obvious way when Zora writes to individuals she needs something from… on the one hand, we know that she's radically  outspoken and she has this perspective of the world, but when she is confronting individuals of power that have the ability to do something for her, these gatekeepers, she becomes deferential, she becomes, uh, reverent. It's like, um, her tongue is laced with honey. And you couple in like how race-aware she was, it becomes even more complicated because, you know, she knows what she's doing. And so in that sense it can feel really grimy. But then if you extrapolate it like, who is not doing that, right?

 Aren't we all  shifting and, you know, converging ourselves so that we can get what we need in the world? The question becomes how good are you at it? Sometimes she was good at it, and sometimes she was not, because coming back to her personality and her mercurialness, after a while she'd kind of be like, I'm tired of all of this. I'm tired of having to bend down low. And she'd just yell at somebody or tell them off or call them a name, and then they'd get sick of her.  

KIM: Yeah. It seemed like she had to work hard for Mason. Go ahead, Amy, what?

AMY: Oh, no, that's, that's true. But I, I was gonna say also, like when she gets to Barnard, she's the only black girl there, and so she's something of an object of fascination for all of her classmates, you know? And I think, well first of all, the relationship with Annie Nathan Meyer and Charlotte Osgood Mason, that gave her a little bit of cred at the school. Like, look, these very distinguished women are supporting me. You know? But also I think she kind of plays up that like…

MELISSA: The exoticness.

AMY: Yes. In her letters to Mason, doesn't she kind of sometimes sign off with like “Your little pickaninny?”

MELISSA: Yeah, yeah.

AMY: … which is shocking.

MELISSA: She goes all in. She would prostate herself in these letters, 100%.  Again, because we know the woman she was, we know how substantial what she was doing is.

KIM: Yeah, she called her “godmother,” too.

AMY: She needed their money. She would have to write out to Charlotte a detailed line item budget of like, “I need tampons.”

MELISSA: Right. 

AMY: …Which is kind of humiliating, but it's also like,  I'm gonna have to do what I'm gonna have to do. And she probably didn't enjoy it, but they're interesting letters. Yeah.

MELISSA: They're super interesting.  I just did an interview with a woman who raised her own venture capital firm, and when she talks about all the asks she had to make of individuals, she used the word humiliating, right? 

And this is supposedly a professional circumstance of a business asking an investor to invest in their business, but those human indignities that happen. Again, like we're talking about power and it's sad that some of these things haven't changed, right? Like even she calls it “featherbed resistance,” and I know we're gonna get into this a lot, but basically she talks about what does it mean to be of a marginalized community or a disenfranchised community? You know that you need to perform something to get something in the mainstream culture. You need to give them something. But what she said black people are really good at is the ability of saying, “Okay, I'll do your little dance, but you don't get to actually see my heart, my soul.” And we see her doing that on, off, on, off. And I think the saddest thing in Zora's story is that even when she prostrated herself, it still wasn't enough for her to be able to quote unquote, “live her best life.”

It wasn't, you know, enough for her to be able to do the research as she needed, right? You still always feel the foot on your neck. You read her stories and you just feel like that she was so free in one way in terms of like her wild imagination and where her mind could go and what she wanted to see and the things she did see through her own anthropological research.

But then you also realize just how contained her body was, within the material reality of the life she lived. Such  extremes she lived in.

KIM: I love that juxtaposition between the freedom and then being contained because it almost feels like when she's writing and she's having to detail these things, like the tampons or medical things, it's like she's writing to the prison warden or something. Like, give me just this minutiae; I need this to survive.Yet she's so free in her writing, so yeah, it's incredible.

MELISSA: I also wanted to mention just this element of how free she was. Anthropologists at the time, and this is still I think, an issue that like, you should be an objective witness. You should not be in the thing with, you know, don't, don't become native, right? Like, don't, don't go wild. And she did. She would participate in these like ritual dances where they'd sacrifice a goat; orgiastic dances… like she was in it. She'd go to Haiti to study voodoo. Who knows all the things she saw? I mean, she was studying black magic, like the blackest, and would go to the swamps. It's not pretty like tarot cards and crystals. It's like slaughter chicken heads and drink the blood. So, I mean, she was wild, you know? Yeah.

AMY: But look how much more information she was able to get by doing that? Because people are so shut out from the stranger coming in to see their world. They're not gonna tell you anything, you know? But by her coming in and saying, “No, I'm one of you,” quote unquote, they're willing to open up. And that kind of gets back to the idea of the featherbed resistance as well, right?

MELISSA: Yeah. And there, there was a note about that in the book, how she was applauded for being able to get in and break featherbed resistance when she talked about how featherbed resistance is actually how people are able to survive. Right. Um, it's actually better if your inner self is not known. And, I'm of two minds about it because what we then have is we don't know the truth of the work.  And this is a big element with Zora. You read different works and they will say totally different things. Sometimes she's pandering to white gaze. Sometimes she's like “F– off,” white gaze. Sometimes she's conservative, sometimes she's liberal. So we don't know the truth of her. And maybe that is the truth of her, that she was even mercurial in that way. But just knowing how big she believed in featherbed resistance and playing, right? Like just tap in, tap out, tap in, tap out. It's so hard to get a sense of what she genuinely believed about certain things.

AMY: Yeah. Mercurial is not necessarily a word that scientists would want to have used to describe them, right?  

MELISSA: I love that you keep calling her a scientist. I love that. We should do that.

AMY: Well, to me it was! I mean, I know she didn't really have a scientific process, but I think of anthropology as a science. I mean, I know she wasn't using the scientific method and everything like that, but it was kind of an emerging field still at the time, and she had ideas on how to do it differently. And unfortunately people shut her down at every turn because they didn't really like her approaches all the time. But I liked in her letters when she would be out in a rural community in Florida or the Caribbean or wherever she was, and she would write back cataloging a lot of the idiomatic phrases and slang terminology that she was discovering in her research. I thought that was super interesting.

MELISSA: I think she had a deep respect for the people that she learned from. I think that that is a constant about Zora. I think she had a deep love for what did she call it? “The people furthest down there.” I think Langston Hughes also did as well, and that's why they bonded. They both really loved  their people. And not middle class bourgeoisie, but like, the untamed raw, right? Um, and so again, she's countering against a lot of the cultural narratives at the time, because in the Harlem Renaissance, it's like, don't play into the idea that we are primitive and that we are wild. But we know that that's a class thing, right? Like, lower classes have always been deemed to be, quote unquote, more wild, more sexual, more, you know, uh, lawless, more, um, debaucherous, right? And so she played within all of this, because she said, “Well, but if someone is lawless and debaucherous, why can't we own that?”  But I come back to like, you genuinely get the sense that she really loved and admired the communities that she would go into and see and learn from. And she just thought it was so fascinating  and she traveled internationally doing that. Bali, Honduras, you know, wherever she could go, she'd go.

AMY: And she was able to bring that language into her work. I mean, for me, Their Eyes Were Watching God…the dialogue being written in the Black dialect is what makes it the beauty of it.

MELISSA: And going between both, right? Showing her deftness of skill at being able to do both. But I think she, in some books, she could do it better than she could do it in the real world. It's really hard to go into a room of white patrons and explain the complexity of the worlds that you're participating in. Similarly, it's really hard to be in a swamp in like Louisiana, where people are like doing dances by the full moon and talk about these wealthy spaces that you're in that you have to pander to, right? So within her own embodied reality, she's experiencing this in real time, but also collecting the research to map what she's experiencing. So, I mean, so much cognitive dissonance, right?

KIM: Yeah. I love the way you put that. So you mentioned Langston Hughes. Let's talk a little bit about their relationship next. They seemed like best friends, very close friends for years, and they had a falling out that turned quite nasty. Do you want to fill our listeners in on the story there?

What happened?

MELISSA: They'd been friends for a long time. Uh, I think that Langston was one of the first people she met when she arrived in New York. Part of her charm is that Zora was apparently known by everybody. And so she met Langston pretty early, moving to New York, and they became close friends, um, and wrote to each other extraordinarily over the years, you know, about all sorts of things. And so they had planned to do, I believe it was a theater project together. And suddenly it started falling apart in the sense I think of she felt she was doing more work than him, things like that.  She shared a copy  of the work with somebody who shared it with somebody else who shared it with somebody else. And Langston didn't know about it and he's thinking Zora's trying to cut him out. So there was a lot of external and internal sort of things happening, which I think just speaks to maybe a lack of trust there and a lack of communication around how do we do business together. As a business person, I know how big those things can be. They're basically trying to be co-founders and, uh, they hadn't had some, some deeper conversations.

AMY: You can't always go into business with your bestie. It just boils down to that. Kim, it's worked out all right for you and I, knock wood.

KIM: I think we don't have very big egos. And also they're just both so incredible in their own right with their own projects and their own work. I think it would be really hard to supplicate that. 

MELISSA: And it doesn’t sound like either of them would, because I think that does come in a dynamic with not big egos where you're able to say, it's okay if you're right in this moment. Right. Um, but I think that they both didn't have that capability to say “I'm gonna let you have this and I'll get the next one.” I think they both were like, “Oh no, baby, this is mine.”

KIM: Yeah, yeah.

MELISSA: But according to the letters, Langston was still there for her  over the years and they were still cordial for some time before they just stopped talking altogether. I don't know what exactly was the thing that made them both say we're not communicating again for the rest of our lives. Um, It's an interesting element of like big friendships, you know. Do big friendships last a lifetime you know? It's like that lover that is so passionate and so wild and like, oh my god, but like when you gotta do the dishes every day and you have kids and you gotta pay bills, does that bigness and wildness and passion last? And I think that, you know, there's a question there on that too. 

AMY: Yeah. Uh, so we get to see evidence of so many of her friendships in these letters, but what we don't really see is much evidence of her romantic partnerships, which is really interesting.

MELISSA: Yeah, what’s your take on that?

AMY: I wonder if she destroyed some of the letters.  It's shocking how dismissive she is of, like, there might be a passing reference to somebody that's her husband and then, “Oh, we're getting divorced.” Unless she was trying to really keep something private and personal to herself, I don't know. What do you think?

MELISSA: Because she wasn’t a private person.

AMY: No, she wasn’t. 

MELISSA: She did orgiastic dances under the full moon and wrote about them.

AMY: Or she just wasn't really that into them? I don't know. 

MELISSA: I wonder what love felt like in her body at that time. I think that it's hard for brilliant women to find love in general. I think that it'd probably be harder to be a poor, brilliant woman because you're always straddling two things. You're straddling higher upper echelons, but at the same time, your material reality doesn't allow you to live like the higher echelons.

And what kind of men is she meeting, right? Um, and how much space could they hold for her? Whether they were men of well means, what would they have needed her to be and do in order for her to fit into their world? Can she just go to Honduras for three months and dance with the natives, right? And similarly, what does it mean to meet a man who maybe isn't as intellectually savvy as her? Was that interesting to her over a certain amount of time? She married a lot. She divorced a lot. She had lovers here and there. And I was reading even the accounts of, um, the records when they, she divorced a young guy. She was maybe in her fifties, they'd been married for maybe a year. Um, he was very, very young, maybe in his twenties. And, when she divorced him, she wrote that “he doesn't work and he expects her to take care of him.” And he wrote that “she's mean tempered, she practices voodoo black magic. And she promised that she'd take care of him, and  she's not.” So, you know, and I think that there was a lot of, uh, naughtiness there and, you know, just going with the flow.

AMY: It might have been tough to handle. Yeah. But then there's some other letters that almost hint that she was in love with a woman, right?

MELISSA: I’m sure she was.

AMY: Jane Bellow. Yeah.

MELISSA: The other element, and again, this is all speculation because we don't know because we literally don't have enough context. Maybe love was not that big of a priority to her.

KIM: Yeah, that could very well be.

MELISSA: There are some famous, uh, women writers who talk about sex and just being like so done with it.

KIM: She's like, “I've got voodoo; I've got dancing around…”  What's gonna top that?

AMY: I don't know, but then you have Their Eyes Were Watching God and  I feel like that younger husband maybe inspired Janie's relationship with the younger guy in that book. But she obviously thought about romance and..

MELISSA: I mean, she killed him off,

AMY: Yeah, that’s right.

MELISSA: It was very short-lived. No one gets bliss forever in Zora’s world.

AMY: Yeah, and it was a pretty startling way to go, yeah. Okay, so there’s a lot of humor in her letters, and there are also moments where her beautiful writing really shines through. I want to read a section from a letter she wrote to Annie Nathan Meyer when she was still quite young… she has had to apologize for something related to her schooling that she let slip and she chalks it up to forgetfulness and a sort of brain lapse. So she ends the letter saying: 

I shall try to lay my dreaming aside. Try hard. But, Oh, if you knew my dreams! My vaulting ambition! How I constantly live in fancy in seven league boots, taking mighty strides across the world, but conscious all the time of being a mouse on a treadmill. Madness ensues. I am beside myself with chagrin half of the time, the way to the blue hills is not on tortoise back, it seems to me, but on wings. I haven’t the wings, and must ride the tortoise. The eagerness, the burning within, I wonder the actual sparks do not fly so that they be seen by all men. Prometheus on his rock with his liver being continually consumed as fast as he grows another, is nothing to my dreams. I dream such wonderfully complete ones, so radiant in astral beauty. I have not the power yet to make them come true. They always die. But even as they fade, I have others.

   All this is not a reason, not an excuse. There is no excuse for a person who lives on Earth, trying to board in Heaven.

    Most cordially yours,

Zora Neale Hurston

I mean, can you imagine getting letters like that?

MELISSA: Yeah, the other side of me is like, if I was the professor and she had missed something for that, I'd be like, “This girl is so dramatic! Are you coming or not? What are we doing here?” You know, it's so funny. Um, no, but it's, it's stunning. 

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: A born writer.

KIM: It beautifully captures that idea, I mean, like you feel that especially I think when you're younger too, but just that feeling like you have all these dreams and you wanna have the wings, but you don't, I mean, it's just..

AMY: Yeah. She does, she has these lofty ambitions that she's just bursting to achieve really all her life. She had so many things she wanted to accomplish and she just could never figure out the means.

MELISSA: Yeah. And she tried. And I think what that letter demonstrates, especially going back to how banal the context is, is that she gave all of herself all the time. And maybe that is also the later on in her life, especially her later years, um, maybe that's where all the jadedness and bitterness came in. Because  it's a particular way of moving in the world where you believe if I give all of me, the world will embrace me back. If I show who I am with dazzling certainty all the time…You read that letter and you know the level of the person you're dealing with. You know the vastness of the interior world of the person you're dealing with. And so it's almost like if I show up and I give all that I have, and you're, you're able to see me undeniably, then of course the world will also give to me in that way.

And that's one of the saddest things about Zora's life is that the world consistently said no. No, we don't. But  she kept going. She kept writing, she kept creating. She kept all the things, you know? Put out extraordinary work over and over and over and over again.

KIM: Melissa, are there any other moments from any of these letters that really stood out to you or made you laugh or do a double-take? 

MELISSA: You know, we've discussed a lot of it. We've also discussed how she lives to gossip, you know, uh, and, and talk, talk about her friends, right?

AMY: I mean, honestly that's relatable. She's in one letter nice to somebody, and then she turns around in a letter to someone else talking smack about them, and you're like, “Yeah, we all do that. I'm sorry, but we do.”

MELISSA: Exactly. And because her friends were all important, she was talking shit about all the leaders, like W.E.B Dubois. It's like talking crap about former president Barack Obama, being like, “Oh, you're so great. First black president.” And then you're like, “Oh my God, if he talks 

about hope one more time! I swear to God, we are tired of change, okay?”

AMY: That's exactly why this is fun to read.

MELISSA: Because of the humanness. And then I'd say, you know, one of the most startling things that comes up in the book, and I've never read this about her anywhere, is that she had allegations thrown at her later in her life that she molested a 10 year old boy sexually. They were found to be unsubstantiated, probably done by a really big hater who was after her, a really malicious man. But whoa, did that do her in, because the black press got wind of it, didn't really do any journalistic research around it, and just started seeing that, “Hey, Zora Neale Hurston, the acclaimed novelist and author, is a child molester.” Um, and that really sort of brought her to her knees. You know, I think that there's Zora's life before that, and then there's Zora's life after that. 

 AMY: Yeah, it was like the turning point, you could see. Let's get back to, you know, when she's doing her anthropological work. She's going down to Florida, doing all this research in the Everglades, in the swamps. She's driving a car that she nicknamed Sassy Suzie, she has to carry a gun for protection. This is this segregated South! Think about how scary this would've been for a woman by herself driving around, going up to strangers, being like, “Hey, let's talk!”

MELISSA: Coming back to this question of love, is that a woman you think can easily be a wife, like in the traditional sense?

KIM: Hell, no!

MELISSA: A woman going to the Everglades by herself to do voodoo rituals with a gun in her strap by herself? 

AMY: Also, you know, we kind of talked about her spat with Langston Hughes, but I'm also thinking of the letter that she wrote, um, she basically got really mad at Alan Leroy Locke, who was an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He basically gave her a not so great review of, I think it was Their Eyes. And she was not happy about this review and  I'm just gonna read what she wrote somebody in a letter about Alan Leroy Locke: 

I get tired of the envious picking on me. And if you will admit the truth you know that Alain Leroy Locke is a malicious, spiteful little snot that thinks he ought to be leading the Negro because of his degrees. Foiled in that, he spends his time trying to cut the ground from under everyone else. So far as the young writers are concerned, he runs a mental pawnshop. He lends out his patronage and takes in ideas which he soon passes off as his own….

KIM: Ooh, that’s good.

AMY: Oh, yeah. Do not get on her bad side! Later, they totally patched things up.

KIM: Yeah. There's other letters where they're friendly and everything,

so she at least got over it.

MELISSA: I think people knew her personality, so they just knew, “Oh, that's just Zora.”

AMY: Yeah, they knew she was just venting.

MELISSA: It was also something I thought is interesting, like, she's wildly individualistic, right? She believes in the individual's ability to make up their decision. And I think that that was a really rough thing too, because at the time, and I think we still see this today in different communities, are you for us or are you against us? And if you're gonna have a voice in the public sphere, then you should probably speak party lines, right? We don't put our business out in the streets. We can fight amongst ourselves, but when we're out, we have to be of one accord because we know that we're in front of enemy lines. And she just didn't do that. She just wasn't interested in participating. Even if she could, she'd get into an organization and be like, “This sucks.” She like, she just couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand authority. She couldn't stand bureaucracy. Then she would go out and talk about the issue she had with that organization with others. So people in the Black movement tended to be upset with her about that because they were like, well, where is your true loyalty?

AMY: But then in other instances, she has valid points. Like I'm thinking of the Federal Writers Program, which we did another episode on. Zora had signed up to participate in this, going to do her anthropological work in Florida and contributed to the writer's guides. And she realized like, I'm actually more knowledgeable than the editor  but I'm being treated like an assistant! So she got really ticked off about that. And then the other thing that was appalling is that she really wanted to earn her PhD in anthropology. And she had everything lined up. She had some sort of scholarship situation that she had secured. And the school wanted her to go through the traditional  scholarship of earning a PhD in anthropology, which would've been like early Mesopotamia, you know, like all this stuff

that was not her focus. And she's like, “Hey, I would like to create my own program, which is studying Black culture, and I have a plan to do it this way.” And they're like, “No, we really need you to study ancient Mesopotamia.”

MELISSA: Columbia had no Africana studies at that time. 

AMY: Right. There was no option for her to do what she wanted to do. So she was trying to find a way, and she was very tactful about like, “Hey, why don't we work together and navigate it in a way that works for what I'm actually have been studying for years and I've been contributing to you guys this research?” And they wouldn't let her do it. And then the scholarship got rescinded. 

MELISSA: Yeah. Yeah. That was rough, because she really did try. But, uh, it goes back to like, she was a maverick and sometimes when you are a maverick trying to do things on your own path, it doesn't always work out. I don't think that that's specific to Zora. I think she was trying to create a program for something that would already have been underfunded in a school that didn't even have a plan for it. So  it was just gonna be difficult.

AMY: Yeah, that's true, but I think it was always a disappointment to her because I think she really wanted to earn that. Um, and at one point in the 1940s, she contemplated suicide. There's one letter that kind of refers to it, and, um, I didn't know about that detail of her life either. That came after  the molestation accusation, right?

MELISSA: [responds… can talk about how demoralized she became after the false accusation of child molestation…]

KIM: Do you think this incident was sort of the beginning of the end for her in any way?

MELISSA:Yeah. Yeah, she was like, I'm, I'm kind of done with life.

KIM: Do you think that there was a moment that was the beginning of the end for her? I mean, was it the molestation accusation or is that too pat of an answer? Was, you know, was there a beginning of the end?

MELISSA: It was always difficult, you know? It was always a difficult run, but I think that she had amazing moments of ecstasy and joy and absolute fulfillment with her work. She was always trying to make her life bigger than it was, but never got there. There's these spurts of everything's clicking, running this theater, getting these gigs, I've got these patrons, I just got published. And like any artist can tell you, there comes a time when the tides turn suddenly  you're no longer the hot thing anymore. But also, the Harlem Renaissance is a particular time period, right? Things moved on.  People wanted new things. There were new, novel things happening culturally. And then I think also just life took its wear on her. She didn't stop creating the things she wanted to create, I just think the appetite changed.   The Thirties were her best decade. Um, she just did the most, she got the most, she was able to like, just accomplish. And it sounds like every other decade was just trying to grapple and get a piece of hers, but it never quite landed.

AMY: I really, I, I said at the top of the episode, I was like, oh, Zora Neale Hurston. Everybody knows her. She's an institution. But knowing her story and reading these letters,  it's like, “No, it wasn't like that at all.”

She could have been lost with everybody else.

KIM: Yeah.

MELISSA: And how many other women are sitting there, their brilliant minds, very fascinating thoughts, fascinating lives, complicated lives, that we just don't know about, right?

KIM: Definitely. Changing topics for a moment, Melissa, since you spent time living in Africa and your mother is from Uganda, we were wondering if there are any African lost ladies of lit (and I know that’s a big continent) but is there anyone you’d care to give a shout-out to?

MELISSA: Um, yeah, so someone who was introduced to me, years ago, um, it's called Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera. she was introduced to me by a Zimbabwean writer, actually, uh, who is well known.  And I said, oh, are you influenced by Toni Morrison? And she goes, “Oh, no. Before Toni Morrison, there was Yvonne Vera.” And so when you read it, you know, she's talking about sort of apartheid, not even South Africa, more of like the Zambia, Zimbabwe, you know, former Zaire areas. But, the richness of the language, it's like pure poetry. It's like reading a poetry book. So lyrical. Um, yeah, I would, I would say Yvonne Vera.

AMY: Great! Never heard of her.

KIM: Thank you. We're adding her to the list, for sure. She sounds wonderful.

AMY: So we are going to continue to follow you on The Idealists. We are so happy that you were able to drop by and talk Zora with us!

MELISSA: Well, thank you so much, and I love what you all are doing and I love that you're giving voice to women who have voices. We're just, as a culture, not always attuned to listen.

KIM: That's for sure. Yeah, we're learning so much. So thank you very much for coming on. So that's all for today's episode. You can visit lost ladies of lit.com for more information and our show notes, and we would love it if you visited our Facebook forum. You can meet up with other listeners and share your thoughts on the episodes.

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.