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.