Ex-Wife

Ex-Wife / Ursula Parrott
Rare Treasure Editions, 2025, c1929
283 p.

I first saw this book on Instagram somewhere, when this reissue came out. It sounded really good and I was lucky to find it as an online book via my library. It's another book from the 20s about marriage and gender roles but very different from the last one I read (The Home Maker). 

It was a lot bleaker than I had expected. It follows Pat as she becomes an ex-wife, one of the growing cadre of them in 1920s New York City. Pat was a young starry-eyed wife, inordinately fond of her philandering husband Peter - this seems to be fine, until she's the one who philanders, and suddenly Peter doesn't want her anymore. 

There were scenes in this book that I wasn't expecting; dark, scary ones of domestic violence - heartbreaking ones of abortion and child loss - rape when Pat's back on the dating scene. This feels scarily contemporary. 

This novel was first published anonymously in 1929, set in the mid 20s, and was considered scandalous. I guess it was okay to live this way, but to talk about women's experiences of it was a no-no. It's also semi-confessional, according to the author's son. This was the original Jazz Age story, one of heavy drinking, dancing, divorce, and the effect of women of these sea changes in social norms. Pat moves in with another divorced woman, Lucia, after she is left on her own. Lucia is a no-nonsense woman with a clear vision of their status. She says: 

The choices for women used to be: marriage, the convent, or the street. They’re just the same now. Marriage has the same name. Or you can have a career, letting it absorb all emotional energy (just like the convent). Or you can have an imitation masculine attitude toward sex, and a succession of meaningless affairs, promiscuity, (the street, that is) taking your pay in orchids and dinner-dates instead of money left on the dresser. 

Once Pat is divorced she goes through waves and stages of grief and longing for Peter's return (meanwhile I just wanted to punch Peter in the throat). The depiction of her grief and distress is powerful and realistic, the experience of heartbreak is laid bare. Pat has so many things to grieve over, and this includes her own loss of innocence and growing cynicism. She travels this road and comes out a different person; the conclusion is natural in a way, but also bittersweet. Definitely a must read for anyone interested in women writing about their lives. 

To The Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse / Virginia Woolf
Peterborough ON: Broadview Press, 2000, c1927.
310 p.

Another read from the 1920s for the first week of 2020 -- this time it's Virginia Woolf's classic To The Lighthouse. I read this book many years ago, but had forgotten most of it. So time to reread!

I realize why I didn't remember that much about it, now, though. It's a bit of an impressionistic book, characters who are not well defined, a vague plot, time that passes in a blur -- it's really all about the writing and the concept. 

Mrs. Ramsay and her large family are living in a summer house on the Isle of Skye; the youngest son wants to go across to the lighthouse in a boat. It doesn't happen until the end of the book, many years later. But in between -- well, life itself happens. Marriages, births, deaths, absences, changes, with a few constants that seem to stay themselves without cease. 

It's a book that is coloured by Woolf's own life, and her recollections of her own parents and childhood. And also by her adult desire to capture life still for a moment, and how to do so, and what that might look like in art. For example, Lily Briscoe when painting illuminates the question: 

"...she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstasy in the air. Where to begin?--that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must run; the mark made.”

It's a beautifully written book, delving into the way people, landscapes and history are seen by others. The central section, in which years pass over the span of ten pages, is particularly brilliant. 

Mrs. Ramsay as a beautiful and ungraspable character, Lily Briscoe as an artistic spinster with her own views on everything and everyone, the stable of children - each of them has a part in the book and the investigations of interior thought are the most fascinating parts of the story, for me.

Nonetheless, although I usually love her novels, I found this one has been so far my least favourite of her works. More 'difficult' novels have been more satisfying to me. There is just something about the diaphanous nature of this story that I can't grasp. I can't recall much about the characters and their relationships (and usually I can tell you more about fictional people than real ones) and my mental images of the varied scenes are all jumbled up together. I find this novel hard to sort out. 

It's definitely worth reading, especially for the language, but I don't feel it measures up in character, or even setting, though that's still stronger than some of the characters, and all of that is stronger than plot (this is not about plot). If I am going to love a book, though, it has to have more than just good writing. So while I do appreciate this book, it's unlikely I'll ever read it again. On to the next! 

The Trumpet in the Dust

The Trumpet in the Dust / Constance Holme

London: Oxford UP, c1921.

216 p.

I thought I'd start off 2020 with a book published in the 1920s -- in 1921, to be precise. This little book is one I picked up while second hand book shopping this year. It's unusual because it was included in the Oxford University Press World's Classics Series, along with all of Holme's other novels and her short stories. No other author had their complete oeuvre included. Why was that? She must have known someone, is all I can think. The other authors in this series are all well known. 

In any case, on to the book. It takes its title from a long epigram, an excerpt of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore about taking up the trumpet of duty. It kind of gives away the plot right there. 

Ann Clapham is a charwoman in an English village. But at the book's opening, she is going to give notice to her clients -- why? Because she's applied for an almshouse and is nearly sure to get it. This long-held dream of hers is repeated over and over, and Holme is amazingly thorough at creating tension that lasts the entire first section of the book as the reader waits to see whether Ann Clapham's hope of her retirement home is going to be fulfilled or not. I've never felt such tension while watching someone wait for the postman. 

This first "act" is then followed by three more. In which Ann Clapham expresses joy at life, visits her idyllic potential home, and then takes up the trumpet of duty. It's pretty clear from the first section what the outcome of all this waiting and excitement is going to be, and while I could see it coming, I was pretty annoyed when it turned out just like expected. The Deus ex Machina requirement at the end is expected but quite unnecessary and silly. Why is it noble to always make good women suffer, and to have them prove their goodness by taking on more suffering, willingly? Argh. Old books. Sometimes they illuminate, but sometimes they irritate. 

The good points of this book lie in its examination of female relationships -- gossip, 'good' women vs. slatterns, domesticity, the home as a temple and most of all, maternity and its many facets. Holme has a sense of personalities, and imbues her nearly completely female cast with variations that individualize them very clearly. The slight differences in class are clearly telegraphed as well. But she can certainly draw out a brief, predictable plot into a 200 page book. Of course, this edition was a little pocket book so the pages were also brief! 

So, an interesting excursion into tragic English countryside, but to my mind, Mary Webb does it better and more thoroughly. Constance Holme feels like a bit of a cheaper version for the wider readership. Not sure I'll be looking up more of her work, but I did find this one interesting for its reflection of the crushing expectations on women of the time, even if the author found them more noble than crushing.