This recently published book is one of the latest in a bookclub to which my grandson belongs. Although an historical novel based on the reporting of an actual event in 1701, much of it applies to today’s world. In 1701, Dr. John Friend reported to the the Royal Society of England about a “rumuor spread” which discussed a report that young girls in the Oxfordshire country side had “been seized with frequent barking in the manner of dogs.”
Five sisters live with their grandfather on an affluent farm in the country. Due to the recent death of their grandmother, they go around dressed in black as was the custom. Because they stay to themselves a lot, roam freer than most girls, they are often looked upon with suspicion by the villagers. One man, who ferries everyone to and fro over the nearby river, has issues with women and loathes these girls because he thinks they are too independent and views them as defiant and thinks they ridicule him because they do not chat with him when they use the ferry. He also has a severe drinking problem and spends all of his free time in the village pub. He is about to be married to a local woman but has severe anxiety over this because he thinks his new wife might try to boss him around.
Most of the men in the village spend their evenings drinking in the pub and often resort of fights and various forms of violence when issues arise. They see this as manly behavior. They view with suspicion any man who does not behave as they do. The woman, Temperance, who serves them hates alcohol and goes so far as to wear leather gloves so the alcohol will not touch her hands. She is one of few in the village who does not believe in rumors and supports rational behavior.
Everything goes awry when during a severe drought, the river dries up, the heat overcomes everyone, and Pete, the ferryman, insists he has seen the five sisters bark and turn into dogs and incites fear in many in the village. It seems to matter little that the two young men who work for the girls’ grandfather, proclaim that the girls are perfectly normal and none of this is true.
This novel raises various issues that continue as issues hundreds of years after the above incident:
-What does it take to make a man? What characteristics define real manhood? Is manhood defined by violence or kindness and compassion?
-How much freedom is okay for women? How much independence and who determines this?
-When is drinking ok and how much? Should people stop people who become violent when drunk?
-What happens to a neighborhood, a society, when people start to believe all sorts of stuff that is not true? Can it be stopped and how?
Published in the US in 1928, banned in England, this is the first, well known lesbian novel and without doubt one of the saddest books I have ever read. Hall was already an award winning and popular novelist when she decided to write this novel. The main character, Stephen Gordon, was born to upper class English parents. Her parents had hoped for a boy and chosen the name Stephen. When she was born a girl, they decided to call her Stephen anyway. From an early age, she was different and preferred to ride horses and do outside activities with her father who adored her rather than wear frilly dresses and do the activities common for English girls at the time. Her mother found all this off putting and never showed any love or nurturing toward her. Later in life, after an unpleasant incident with a young woman who uses Stephen as a distraction from her boring life, Stephen’s mother throws her out of the family home and she moves to London where she writes a highly successful novel.
During WWI, they are desperate for ambulance drivers and Stephen is assigned to an all female ambulance regiment in France. There she meets another young woman who becomes her lover.
An English friend, a successful playwright, convinces Stephen to move to Paris where there are no laws against homosexuality and where there is a large community of similar people, many of whom are highly successful in their careers. She and her lover live there for many years, and Stephen successfully continues her career as a writer. Then an old friend from her childhood shows up and everything changes.
As in Part One, I am only going to provide mostly quotes from the book.
The Rise of the New West:
“The demographic shift west continued with the Cold War. In all past wars, the nation had abruptly turned from military production to peacetime economy, but after WWII, the global tension between capitalism and communism continued to bolster the new war industries. Between 1950 and 1959, defense took up 62% of the federal budget as it expanded 246%, up to $228 billion annually, and much of that money moved west…Eisenhower, and after him, John F. Kennedy, expressed concern about the rising power of what Ike called ‘the military-industrial complex.’
“Westerners and southerners agreed that desegregation, which gave Black Americans benefits paid for by tax dollars, offered prime evidence of a communist conspiracy. In 1958, Welch, the chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers…started the John Birch Society, a secret organization with the goal of stopping the creep of communism…Welch attracted supporters by explaining that the civil rights movement roiling the country was really communism.”
“In the mid-1950s, the new television sets in all those new homes were tuned to Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Bonanza to see hard working white men fighting off evil, seemingly without help from the government…The shows all embraced the myth of the American West where cowboys worked hard, stood for what is right, and protected their women from bad men and Indians…the land unpeopled by anyone of color or women, except as they fit into the larger tale of the individualists.”
“Bozell started from the same point as James Henry Hammond had in South Carolina a century earlier, and for much the same reasons…the Constitution strictly limited the functions of government, and that restrictions on property holders were an infringement on liberty.”
“…a key Republican strategist, Kevin Phillips, identified Nixon’s election as the moment that marked the ending of the New Deal era.”
“…in 1967 men determined to stop the church from embracing rights for people of color and women launched a takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention…to turn religion away from the new ways and back to fundamentalism. These fundamentalist purged moderates, insisted on a literal interpretation of the Bible, barred women from positions of authority, and in 1998 oversaw an addition to the Baptist Faith and Message advising wives to ‘submit…graciously’ to their husbands.
“Milton Friedman explained that if the government stopped worrying about protecting workers and consumers and instead cut taxes and permitted money to accumulate at the top, wealthy people would invest in new businesses…This argument, which echoed precisely what the southern slaveholders had claimed, gained traction in the West, where blaming eastern liberals for the nation’s problems became an article of faith…In the 1970s, a secretive Christian organization know as The Family began to sponsor prayer meetings in businesses, colleges, and government. By the mid-1970s, they were effectively mobilizing white evangelicals as a voting bloc.”
Oligarchy Rides Again:
“When Reagan tapped the 35 year old Michigan Congressman David Stockman to be his Budget Director, Stockman, who had grown up on “Conscience of a Conservative’, set to bring Goldwater’s dream to life…The administration turned to tax cuts. When computer simulations at the Office of Management and Budget showed the proposed tax cuts would not increase revenues but instead would explode the deficit, Stockman simply reprogrammed the computers…To protect the tax cuts that lay at the heart of his vision, Reagan and his team supported…the plan to organize business leaders, evangelicals, and social conservatives into a political juggernaut.”
“Now in control of Congress, Gingrich’s Republicans set the terms of the political debate…In April 1995, an internal memo identified tax cuts as the central principle of Republicanism…and explained why: ‘All reductions in federal spending weaken the left in America….Defunding government is defunding the left.'”
“From the beginning in the 1950s, Movement Conservative leaders had recognized that they could not win over voters with policy, for the activist state they opposed was quite popular. So they shaped their message around vignettes that made a compelling story…leaders stayed in power by deliberately crafting a narrative that harked back to western individualism. The hardworking individual–the cowboy–was endangered by the behemoth state…They invoked the corollary to the American paradox, arguing that equality for women and people of color would destroy the freedom that lay at the heart of democracy.”
“Party operatives had talked of cutting down black voting under a ‘ballot integrity’ initiative in 1986, and they bitterly opposed a 1993 Democratic expansion of voting registration…The Florida legislature took the lead passing a voter ID law to ensure that everyone who voted was a US citizen…the Florida law quickly became a purge of black voters, people presumed to vote Democratic… (this was 1997) This purge paid off in the election of 2000, when George W. Bush of Texas ran against Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore…Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million votes but was four votes short of a win in the Electoral College…the 1998 purge would decide the election.”
What Then Is This America:
“In the 2018 midterm elections, female candidates began to articulate a new vision of the country to replace the old American paradox. They emphasized community and fairness over individualism and the race, class, and gender roles that individualism has always implied. Women and voters of color are helping redefine an America for the twenty-first century…In 1612, English colonists were starving in Virginia…One hundred and seventy-five years later, America’s Founders put that idea into practice in what George Washington called a ‘great experiment’: a government based on the idea that human beings had the right to determine their own fate. Could such a government endure? Our country’s peculiar history has kept the question open.”
Rather than summarize or evaluate, I am going to provide some quotes from the book. I will say that if you want to understand the current state of affairs in the United States of America, this book provides excellent insights based on history.
From the Introduction:
“America began with a great paradox: the same men who came up with the radical idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality also owned slaves, thought Indians were savages, and considered women inferior…it was a key figure of the new democratic republic…the ringing phrase ‘all men are created equal’ did not actually include everyone. In 1776, it seemed self-evident to leaders that not every person living in the British colonies were capable or worthy of self determination. In their mind, women, slaves, Indians, and paupers depended on the guidance of men like themselves…So long as these lesser people played no role in the body politic, everyone within it would be equal. The principle of equality depended on inequality. That central paradox–that freedom depended on racial, gender, and class inequality–shaped American history as the cultural, religious, and social patterns of the new nation grew around it.”
From The Triumph of Equality:
“The accomplishment of white male equality under the law was extraordinary…They argued that their new system made their new nation different from the Old World, which was split between a corrupt aristocracy and the lazy poor.”
“On March 4, 1858, prominent South Carolina slaveholder James Henry Hammond gave a speech in the Senate–to which he had been elected the year before despite the fact that he admitted two years earlier he had sexually assaulted his four young nieces…The greatest strength of the South was not its economy…but rather ‘the harmony of her political and social institutions.’ Every society had ‘a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life’…the people who make up the ‘mudsill of society supporting that other class that leads progress, civilization, and refinement.’ The men in the latter group are wealthy and well connected…In the South whites had made an ‘inferior race into mudsills, dull but loyal people who are content to have their labor directed by their betters.”
“Now a national figure, Lincoln articulated a democratic vision for America, one that refuted the mudsill version of Senator Hammond…he explained that Hammond’s theory divided the world into permanent castes: capitalists driving the economy and workers stuck at the bottom.”
The West:
The last stand of the Alamo became the foundational event for western American history, offering a vision of self-sacrifice and heroism. It prompted the formation of the Republic of Texas, and inspired Texans under Sam Houston to defeat Santa Anna’s troops…In the retelling of what happened at the Alamo, what got lost was the reality that the defenders were rebelling against the Mexican government in Mexican territory, and that they were fighting to defend the right to enslave people. The myth also ignored the fact that many of the defenders were Mexican opponents of Santa Ana, and that some of the defenders–including Davy Crockett–surrendered.”
Cowboy Reconstruction:
After Lincoln’s death, Johnson wanted no part of Lincoln’s and the “Union’s democratic vision. To rebuild the South, Johnson turned not to the Army, or to the ex-slaves who had supported the Union, but to former Confederates. He offered pardons to all but 1500 Confederate leaders…states codified the racial violence that swept across the South in the summer of 1865. As employers cheated workers out of wages, gangs beat and raped African Americans into submissive behavior, and whites attacked their black neighbors, southern state legislatures created the Black Codes.”
The West and The South Join Forces:
“The resurgence of the South’s ideology came from the nation’s new bloc: the western states. Easterners had made the mistake of thinking the westerners would join their coalition, only to discover that due to their peculiar history and extractive economy , westerners had more in common with white antebellum southerners than with easterners. By the 1890s a few wealthy men dominated western society. Poor white men had little opportunity. people of color and women even less, and leaders worked to keep it that way. Still, as in the East before the Civil War, the myth of the individualist convinced Americans that the west was the land of opportunity…Theodore Roosevelt’s war record took the western ideal and put it on the national stage. By the end of the century, Americans embraced the cowboy image and vowed to spread it across the globe, putting into law that some people are better than others. Once again freedom was hierarchical.
“In the early part of the twentieth century, southern towns began to erect statues of Confederates, making them into western style heroes and individualists. The rewriting of the past created momentum for women’s suffrage…Rebecca Latimer Felton was a reformer who wanted educational and prison reform as well as women’s suffrage. She was also in favor of lynching her black neighbors who wanted equal rights…The Ku Klux Klan reformed and rebounded in the 1920s…Meanwhile in the West, immigrants and Indians were falling victim to a legal system that established castes. In Texas, officials were hardening a racial system that classified migrants across the Mexican border by race. In Arizona, a state law singled out ‘treason against the state’ as punishable by death aimed at Apache and Navahos who might fight the legal system ensnaring them. In Oklahoma…corrupt legislators arranged affairs to steal valuable land from Indians.
Although technically not a sequel, “Violeta” seems to be a sort of sequel to “A Long Petal of the Sea”. If you are interested in Chilean history just before, during, and after the demise of Chilean president Salvador Allende and the horrors of Pinochet’s rule which the CIA helped to implement, this novel is for you.
This is the story of one woman, Violeta, told from her viewpoint via a long memoir written for and to her grandson. She begins life as the youngest child of a wealthy businessman whose poor and risky decisions lead to the family’s downfall, forcing them to escape to the remote, far southern regions of the country. It is the tale of a strong, passionate, determined woman who lived a lifestyle far ahead of her time, other family members, the far right Hitler sympathizing German farmers who immigrated to the far south, and others she knew including a renegade pilot who flew contraband and “prisoners” for various nefarious groups. Although not a murder mystery or a work of fiction that could be called adventurous, the story of Violeta’s life is so fascinating that I kept wanting to read on and on.
If you do not want to read history books but want to know some history, many of Isabel Allende’s novels will be perfect for you. The title of this one comes from Pablo Neruda; it is what he called his native land, Chile. Each chapter begins with a quote from several of his poems. The novel begins during the Spanish Civil War; one of the main characters, Victor Dalmau, is a medic for the Republican side. He and Roser, a pregnant young widow who was married to Victor’s brother who is killed, have to escape Spain to save themselves. The novel details their struggles crossing into France, how they are forced to marry in order to board the SSWinnipeg, a ship commissioned by Pablo Neruda to help Spanish refugees emigrate to Chile. With 2000 other passengers they arrive in Chile and make the best of their new life. World War II breaks out and their hope of returning to Spain diminishes.
Victor becomes a successful doctor, their lives become intertwined with that of a prominent Chilean family, Roser becomes a famous musician, traveling back and forth to Venezuela, and the socialist government of Salvador Allende is overthrown in a military coup with the aide of the US. Then Pinochet’s reign of terror comes, once again civil unrest affecting their lives.
The novel demonstrates how little control people sometimes have over what happens to them, how some are better at dealing with adversity than others, and how lies are eventually discovered. It is also a testament to personal character and strength.
Note: Isabel Allende’s father was a distant cousin to Salvatore Allende.
The characters in the eight stories of this collection are people touched by violence of one sort or another, reflective of the violence that has occurred in Colombia’s history. A photographer’s obsession for a woman with a traumatic past, a writer’s fascination with the history of a woman whose grave is outside the official cemetery, two people whose own personal shared histories meet at a grandiose ceremony pretending they do not know each other–are examples of all the tales of complexity found in life and how morals change over time. These are not stories for the faint of heart. They do reveal how traditions of the past harmed people in ways that do not occur today, how lies can catch up with the liar, and how often pretending to be someone you are not often fails.
Last year I read her novel “Gilead” which takes place in fictional, small, Iowa town in which the main character is the father of the main character in this novel, “Jack”. John Ames Boughton, Jack, is the wayward son of a Presbyterian minister. Previously, he has been wrongly imprisoned for a theft he did not commit. He loves literature, especially poetry. He lives off of odd jobs, drinks too much, smokes, and is somewhat of a lost soul who continuously philosophizes about live, religion, and societal rules. One day he sees a woman walking in the rain. When she drops her bundles on the sidewalk, he helps her. She thinks he is a preacher because of the way he is dressed and invites him in for tea. She is Della Miles, a teacher and the daughter of a Black Methodist minister. This is the story of interracial love when it was still illegal in the US, the lengths they go to resist and hide it, and the reactions of her family. Reading this, one realizes how it was not that long ago that most of the US was not only segregated, but sometimes even talking to someone on the sidewalk from another race could get a person into trouble with the police.
Imagine a society where everyone has shelter and love.
My 15th book of the year was “Imagination, A Manifesto”, Ruha Benjamin. After going over the history of racism, poverty, and misogyny in the US, the author, a professor at Princeton, details various ways individuals and groups can imagine and act toward creating a better world for all. She delineates the endless obstacles to attaining this better world but claims through collectively imagining detailed ways the world can be better, people can work together to attain such a world. She admits individuals rarely have the power to do this alone but working with others, we can make dramatic differences, but first we have to imagine what this better world will look like. We now are prisoners of hierarchies, exploitation, and frequent violence, but it does not have to be this way. The Appendix includes Discussion Prompts, Project Based Prompts, and Speculative Prompts to help readers get started imagining differently. She quotes Toni Morrison–“Dream a little before you think.”
I was not looking for this, but rather accidentally found it while strolling through the stacks at the local library. What an informative and entertaining book. When it was first published in Lebanon in 2005, it sort of shocked the Arab world causing public debates about the subject matter and story both pro and con. The novel centers on the lives of four upper class Saudi young women who have known each other for years and are friends. Because the book openly discusses the difficulties young educated Saudi women have pursuing education and careers while also trying to find suitable men to marry, the religious conservatives found the novel blasphemous and wanted it banned. Others said it disrespected Saudi women. Black market copies showed up everywhere and the author became an overnight sensation.
The book focuses on the difficulties these women experience as they navigate the modern world while still living in a society founded in very conservative patriarchal cultural conditions. They want to believe in love and hope they will find someone to marry they also love. However, traditions get in the way of this goal more often than not. Some of them find someone they love and who loves them but families forbid it–the person is not high enough status or has been divorced, or…the barriers seem endless, focused on family connections. Love is considered a frivolous, unhealthy distraction.
Contrary to what I believed before reading this, most of these higher class Saudi young women are going to college, often in subjects like medicine and dentistry, and plan to pursue careers in their fields. Many have travelled to Europe where they are freer to roam, not dress conservatively, etc. Yet they return home because of close family ties and love of country. Several of the fathers in this novel are considerably more liberal than the girls’ mothers. Like any society the view of progress and tradition vary greatly by family and individual.
Because as a reader you get to “know” these young women, I found myself reading nonstop because I really wanted to know what was going to happen, whether any of them would be allowed to marry someone they loved or would be heartbroken and forced into unwanted situations. The latter never occurred thankfully. None were forced to marry someone they disliked. It is a great read for those who are curious about other cultures and how women navigate their lives in a place dramatically different from what is more common in Europe and the US.
writingontherim 