Margaret Drabble, again...

After a life time of reading British writer, Margaret Drabble, initiated at a small British Council Library in Mexico City, I read "A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman", a collection of her stories. Drabble, now in her 70's has said that she will not write anymore, that at 70 one tends towards repetition. In her day, Drabble wrote the many, many books that documented a generation. In the same way, reading the short stories in this collection gives us a condensed version of a life time, the different stages in the lives of a women of a generation.
It is interesting to observe the development of both Drabble and ourselves in this coming of age and multiplicity of revelations that await for us in any stage of our lives. It is uplifting... and who doesn't need some good news? These good news, like lavendar cupcakes, await for us in the last part of the collection, when after a lifetime of external search, her protagonists make a full circle and find meaning and contentment in themselves, it is a closing worth Drabble, a triple epiphany in the James Joyce style in which the writer, the protagonist and the reader acknowledge that some truths come to us in the convoluted teachings of a life time: and here we are with Drabble or looking at the future through Drabble's excellent and generous vision. There is hope in intertextuality; we might even one day meet a certain Margaret that will teach us about lichen and guide us gently out of a broken heart, a path lost or give us a vision of ourselves in old age full of discovery that we can look forward too.

South Riding

I found South Riding very engaging: modern independent woman with her set of sorrows who overcomes her personal strife to be a role model for young girls in a remote coastal village.

I wanted to know more, who was the creator, why this story was so compelling to me…

I dig deeper and I find Winifred Holtby: it is love at first sight. She is exactly the kind of author I would have loved as a philosophy college student. She would have been in my hall of honor along with Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf and Doris Lessing. I am happy to find kindred spirits at any age and also to know that I have not changed so much as to not value what was so important to me in my youth.

Ms. Holtby was born in 1898 and studied at Oxford where she met the most important person in her life: Vera Brittain, after college they moved to London to become writers. They declared themselves to be Socialists, Pacifists and Feminists. Vera married in 1925 and moved to the US, when she came back to England with her 2 children, Winifred moved in with them. By then she had published 3 books and in 1926 became the director of the feminist journal “Time and Tide.” She wrote for other journals and continued to write three other novels and a collection of short stories. Vera’s children described her as amusing and full of energy even when her health stared to fail. Holtby was diagnosed with Bright’s Disease: a general label for kidney disease. This malady was also the cause of death of the poet Emily Dickinson and Bram Stocker, the creator of Dracula.

With the knowledge that her life was to end soon, Holtby dedicated herself to the writing of South Riding, a novel in which she disclosed the politics of her own home town East Riding. 

South Riding was to be published posthumously and was very well received. South Riding was adapted to cinema in 1935, 76 years later it is still vital, it reminds us that we are still role models for the next generation of women and for ourselves. We must pass along the inner confidence to speak our minds, dream big, trust ourselves, and have the absolute knowledge that what matters to us is important, that other women have gone the same path and are awaiting –like Holtby- to reemerge: that energy is never lost, only transformed.

Upstairs, Downstairs and in Between

The excellent Masterpiece PBS lineup for this Spring has created a new schedule for “viewers like us”… we make sure to be home at 9 pm on Sunday to watch the compelling treats that await and transport us in time to the early years of the century. It is strangely satisfying to see events unfold knowing the general outcome and being intrigued by how characters will live through their destiny: what specific set of circumstances brings a set of actions. Thus, we see subjects embracing the cause of Fascism and from our perspective find them repelling; or watch in fascination as Mr. Hudson (in the old Upstairs/Downstairs) navigates ANY social situation with enviable certainty.  Hudson is probably one of the last characters that produces the same result under ANY circumstance. Modern characters –in our new reality shows- are a showcase of every possible human unvarnished uncertainty. It is refreshing to go back in time and watch people become themselves without watching every second of their indecision and never witnessing the outcome.

Hudson is also the only person in the household that can navigate both sets of values and worlds: he can give fatherly advise to Rose and be a comforting figure to Mr. Bellamy. We do not find this in the new Upstairs/Downstairs, Rose is still Rose, and Hudson is no more. 

As we South Ride, sink or swim with the Titanic or travel in the Orient Express, we cling to Masterpiece and know with Hudsonian certainty where we will be every Sunday, DVR or not.

The Janes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Charlotte Bronte disliked Jane Austen. She considered her devoid of the "grand passion" that is the fuel of characters like Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre and herself. While Austen delighted in the merry making and the jovial mingling in Regency soirees, Bronte hid behind a curtain to eavesdrop and not partake in the gatherings organized by her handsome editor George Smith. Perhaps after her experience with "The Professor" she realized that some things were better kept locked in attics. Bronte's passion channeled into the writing of fiction, her comfort zone the isolation of the moors. No creaking door or gossip for dinner. As her friend Elizabeth Gaskell portrayed in her novel "North and South", about industrial England, geography has a huge impact on character, even fictional characters. It seems to be that a rugged terrain produces rugged, convoluted souls that care not for a ball at Netherfield Park.

Must Love Books....

These are (so far) the best books I've read this year. A mix of fiction and non-fiction; although according to French writer Laurence Cossè in A Novel Bookstore, "I never use the word fiction. Every subtlety in life is material for a book (...) novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices or major ordeals (...) there are books that as you read, you wonder (...) literature informs, instructs, it prepares you for life." (150)

• Jane's Fame, How Jane Austen Conquered the World, Claire Hoffman (This book reads like a novel)
• Travelling with Pomegranates, Sue Monk Kidd (About connecting with yourself at different stages in your life)
• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (British writer and author of 101 Dalmations! This is the British counterpart of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith - a book I also love and will be in another book list)
• 4 Seasons in Rome, Anthony Doerr (About being a parent, a writer and living in a different country... everything must be better in Italy!)
• Little Princes, Connor Grennan (About the plight of the children of Nepal and how we can, with our actions, change the world for the better)
• The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey (for all you nature and snail lovers!, very satisfying)

ha-ha n. a ditch with a wall on its inner side below ground level, forming a boundary to a park or garden without interrupting the view.  Oxford Dictionary

As in:

"Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong (of course!) couldn't help making an effort to prevent it. "You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram," she cried, "you will certainly hurt yourself against those spikes - you will tear your gown - you will be in danger of slipping into the ha-ha. You had better not go."
                                                                                                            Mansfield Park, Jane Austen