Read the 1940s - Mar 2019: Women

International Women's Day is March 10, so it seems fitting that our March topic be Women.

As a reminder, books can be fiction or nonfiction, Viragos, Persephones, books by Virago/Persephone authors, or books that otherwise embody the "Virago spirit." They can be set in the 1940s, or published in the 1940s. In short, there are no rules here -- participants can set rules to suit themselves. For questions, comments, and general chat about the theme read go to our General Discussion thread.

Visit the Book Recommendations thread for help choosing books that fit the theme & monthly topic. Or, check out the fabulous Google spreadsheet created by Heather/souloftherose, which compiles and classifies all the book recommendations mentioned on the thread:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-b4Y2YrG4VseFT5qn546IjWy0JYst7cOVIrmeBHB...

And here's a special view of the spreadsheet, filtered on the "women" category: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-b4Y2YrG4VseFT5qn546IjWy0JYst7cOVIrmeBHB...

There aren't all that many books in this category on the spreadsheet but luckily most Viragoes and Persephones would fit our topic.

What are you planning to read in March?

I may not mange both but I would like to read The Persimmon Tree and other stories and Liana

>2 Heaven-Ali: I'm also planning to read Liana. I've been meaning to read Martha Gellhorn and this Reading the 1940s theme has provided me with the perfect nudge to do so. I've slotted another Gellhorn in for one of our future monthly topics.

I am so limited in what I can read for this thread because I have already read so many of the recs. (WW2 is my favorite era in history.) So, for want of something better, I think I will read Long Live Great Bardfield.

I've read quite a few of the recommended titles for this month, but there are still some that are on the TBR pile: Testament of friendship, The street, Tell it to a stranger, A Chelsea concerto and Long live Great Bardfield. I'm not planning to read all of them!

Long Live Great Bardfield is BRILLIANT.

The obvious read for me this month is Testament of Friendship which has been TBR for ages.

I've started The street, which I expect to take me out of my comfort zone.

I started reading Liana by Martha Gellhorn

I read Liana a while ago and found it beautiful but very sad. I look forward to your review.

I'm two chapters into Long Live Great Bardfield. So far, so good except Ms. Garwood seems determined to describe every single thing that ever happened to her. Every.single.thing. It should be tedious and yet every.single.thing is interesting.

I'm planning to read The Street by Ann Petry.

I have The Street by Ann Petry, Long Live Great Bardfield, Cindie by Jean Devanny and The Persimmon Tree and Other stories by Marjorie Barnard.
Very ambitious for my March reads but I have also added A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell on Kindle.

>10 Sakerfalcon: I finished Liana last night, a beautiful book but quietly devastating. I won't forget it for a while.

>11 romain: Ha! you're not wrong!

>14 Heaven-Ali: "Quietly devastating" is the perfect description of Liana.

I've almost finished The street. It's a powerful depiction of how badly the system was stacked against African Americans in the 1940s and how the burdens fell especially hard on the women. I can't see this having a happy ending ...

Yeah Lyzzy. I'm up to chapter 7 now and still engrossed.

I avoided the preface/intro on the Garwood book but finally read the back cover flap. Apparently this was an informal biography and not published until 60 years after her death.

This made me feel a tad better about enjoying Garwood, who is ruthless in her descriptions of people and their fates. They are fat, stupid and boring, with bottle shaped legs etc. They wind up being dumped, having nervous breakdowns, and in one case confined to a lunatic asylum where they had previously been a cheerful volunteer visitor. She describes her future husband as effeminate, the lady mayoress of Eastbourne as 'an amiable hippo'. She even moans about her father (perhaps rightly), who had to be locked out of his daughters' bedrooms for being too physically affectionate.

I was sitting in bed last night thinking 'Crikey! How did she not get sued by all these people?' But, of course, they were all dead.

Happy International Woman's Day!

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

I reviewed Liana today.

https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/liana-martha-gellhorn-1944/

I finished The street which was an excellent though harrowing read. Lutie the single mother seeks a better life for herself and her son, but the system in which she and those around her are trapped makes this almost impossible. We see not just Lutie's story but those of her neighbours and acquaintances, showing how destructive a society this was for non-whites and for women in particular. Of course, even though laws have changed since then, I suspect many people are just as trapped today.

Now I'm reading Long live Great Bardfield, having been encouraged by praise from romain, LyzzyBee and others. It's a complete change of tone and quite delightful in its garrulous style.

I've started Mr. Skeffington by Elizabeth Von Arnim. So good so far.

Finished Mr. Skeffington by Elizabeth von Arnim.

I've written a review WITH SPOILERS here:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/301404#6769094

I may be way off-base in my thoughts, so would appreciate feedback, especially if you've read the book.

I started reading Liana the other day. I haven't read Ali's review yet (>20 Heaven-Ali:), although I look forward to doing so after I finish the book. We often have similar feelings about Viragos but she states them much more eloquently!

Kathy - I wrote you a long and thoughtful response and then somehow lost it. Grrhhh. I saw the film and read the book of Mr. Skeffington and for me it was just a story about a superficial woman who loses her looks and then has to take back the man she has abandoned many years before.

I then went on to discuss my favorite book of all time. The Roots of Heaven. This book changed my life to the extent that I use the author's name as my name on this site. In my opinion, every word, every page, of this novel drips with greater meaning and yet this is what the author himself said about it.

Let's speak a little about symbols. We may as well, as there has hardly been a critic who has not referred to The Roots of Heaven as a symbolic novel. I can only state firmly and rather hopelessly that it is nothing of the sort. It has been said that my elephants are really symbols of freedom, of African independence. Or that they are the last individuals threatened with extinction in our collective, mechanized, totalitarian society. Or that these almost mythical beasts evoke in this atheistical age an infinitely bigger and more powerful Presence. Or, then again, that they are an allegory of mankind itself menaced with nuclear extinction. There is almost no limit to what you can make an elephant stand for, but if the image of this lovable pachyderm thus becomes for each of us a sort of Rorschach test--which was exactly my intention--this does not make him in the least symbolic. It only goes to prove that each of us carries in his soul and mind a different notion of what is essential to our survival, a different longing and a personal interpretation, in the largest sense, of what life preservation is about.
-Romain Gary, Author's Introduction to the 1964 Time-Life Books version of The Roots of Heaven

So perhaps Gary is right and every book IS a Rorschach test for the individual reader :)))))

I read Mr Skeffington a while back and found the book much more powerful and with much more depth than the film (much as I love Bette Davis). In fact I was quite moved by the book and I certainly though there was a darkness and a consciousness of what was happening in the world that wasn’t so strong in the film.

>25 romain: Thanks, Barbara, I did get your response and makes me feel that I can "own" my interpretation ;)

>26 kaggsy: I've never seen the film (or if I did, I don't remember it at all). I just can't shake the fact that she called the novel "Mr Skeffington" (and not "Fanny" or "Mrs Skeffington"); that he's always hovering in the background, just like the casually mentioned "European situation." Anyway, looking at it as I did, it makes the novel so relevant to this 1940s theme.

I continue to work my way through Long Live Great Bardfield. A chapter a night and I have to say I am absolutely loving it. I looked up their art work on line and am so impressed! I particularly like the work of their great friend Edward Bawden, and Garwood herself was really attractive.

https://alchetron.com/Tirzah-Garwood

I finished reading Liana the other day. I posted a review on the book page, but encourage you to read Ali's more thorough and truly excellent review (see >20 Heaven-Ali:).

>28 romain: I'm also reading Long live Great Bardfield and loving it! Garwood's chatty style is delightful; she must have been an entertaining and fascinating person to know. I saw an exhibition of Ravilious' work a couple of years ago, which was wonderful. I really like the style of printmaking that he and his colleagues produced.

I just posted one of the last photos taken of Tirzah Garwood in my member gallery. I have forgotten how to photo copies to the message board! Maybe someone can transfer it here.....

elaine

from Elaine:



Tirzah Garwood with her children. One of the last photographs taken of her.

Thank you, Belva. I just checked my copy of the book and saw the picture was already in there. Still, maybe this photo will pique the curiosity of someone who doesn't have Long Live Great Bardfield. What a lovely woman she was.

Just started reading The Persimmon Tree And Other Stories by Marjorie Barnard.

>33 Liz1564:,
She was quite lovely and beautiful children too, Elaine. I must admit that I am not familiar with Tirzah Garwood myself so all of the comments on this site and the photo are tapping my 'curiosity grey cells'. I have this on my wish list for later in the year. Need to see what all the raves are about. Everyone seems to be enjoying it a great deal.
hugs,
:-)

Last week I saw an exhibition of "Fifty works by fifty British women artists, 1900-1950". One of the pieces on show was a little collage by Tirzah Garwood which you can see at the following link It was delighful, and if you stood back from it the house seemed to be three dimensional.

Finished the Garwood book last night in tears. I am so glad I read this book. A definite 5 stars for me. I learned so much about the artistic community in England at that time and, in particular, at Great Bardfield. In the end Garwood was as tough on herself as she was on others, including her forays into 'free love', which wound up pleasing most of the men and hurting most of the women. But what impressed me most as the book wound on was how bleak day to day life was for women even in our most recent past: freezing houses with no running water and an outside toilet. Not to mention raising 3 children, while fighting cancer and trying to do her own painting.

There is a lovely photo of her on this link which I hope I have attached properly. It shows her in bed in 1951. Given that she died in March 1951 she was definitely terminally ill - and yet still SO beautiful.

http://the-golden-fleece.co.uk/wp/tirzah-garwood/4/

I don't think the link is working from here but is worth looking at if you are interested in Garwood.

I read O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith, which was published in the 1940s but set several decades earlier - and qualifies inasmuch as it is about the childhood of a girl and her coming of age. More importantly, it is absolutely wonderful - creates such a vivid world, in turns funny and poignant. Reminded me of a slightly more serious I Capture the Castle.

I reviewed The Persimmon Tree and other stories by Marjorie Barnard today. Lovely collection of short stories.

https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/the-persimmon-tree-and-other-stories-...

Late reporting but I finished Good Daughters on Sunday for the March theme - technically set in the 1930s but so much about life leading up to WWII it seemed to fit (and I want to read the sequels later in the year). It took me a while to get into this because at the beginning it felt more like a collection of vignettes about the Fairley family than a novel but as the book progressed I got more drawn in and the ending was very moving. This would fit the Family theme as well (which was where I originally meant to read it)