This week’s Best Book is Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell! Also recommended is No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Category: books
Day 816: Literary Wives! The Kitchen God’s Wife
Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club in which we discuss the depiction of wives in modern fiction. Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives! If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.
Emily of The Bookshelf of Emily J.
Lynn of Smoke and Mirrors
Naomi of Consumed By Ink
My Review
Pearl has been keeping a secret from her mother, Winnie. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and is trying to avoid the fuss she is sure her mother will make by not telling her as long as she is mobile. She is dismayed, then, to learn that her cousin Mary has told her own mother, Helen, Winnie’s best friend.
At a family engagement party, Helen tells Pearl that she has a brain tumor. She says she’s sure she is going to die and doesn’t want to go keeping secrets, so she will tell Winnie Pearl’s secret unless Pearl does.
When the two women sit down to talk, it turns out Winnie has secrets, too—a whole life before she came to San Francisco from China and another marriage before her marriage to Jimmie Louie. Winnie’s story makes up the bulk of the novel.
Winnie’s unhappy life begins when she is six and her mother leaves. She never finds out what became of her mother, but Winnie herself is banished from her wealthy father’s house to be raised by aunts. In her aunts’ home, she is given a lower status than her cousins. This even applies to her marriage. She acts as a go-between for her cousin Peanut and Peanut’s suitor, Wen Fu, and then is surprised when Wen Fu asks for her own hand. But she learns later that her aunts have deemed Wen Fu’s family not good enough for Peanut.
And they are not good. They strip Winnie of all her possessions and sell them. Once she sees what they are, she manages to hide away a dozen sets of silver chopsticks. Those are the only things she is able to keep. Worse, Wen Fu is physically and sexually brutal. Along with these difficulties and Winnie’s lack of rights are the hardships imposed by the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
The difficulties between Winnie and Pearl and those between Winnie and Helen serve as the framing of the story set in the past. It is this story that is most interesting, even though I never really warmed up to Winnie. What I found most interesting in this novel were the ways of thinking and the customs of pre-revolutionary China.
What does this book say about wives or the experience of being a wife?
Three marriages are described in this novel, but the most time is that spent on Winnie and Wen Fu. This is a classic abusive relationship, where Wen Fu rapes and terrorizes Winnie, including putting a gun to her head, and Winnie thinks it is her fault. The novel focuses on Winnie’s growth of understanding—that her marriage is different than others’ marriages, that she can stand up for herself by leaving. (Her other attempts to stand up for herself are disastrous.)
There is much less focus on the marriage of Pearl and Phil. We learn that they have tacitly taken the easy way on things, that is, not much confrontation or arguing, partially because of Pearl’s disease. Pearl knows, for example, that Phil disapproves of how easy she is on her girls, but it is important for her to avoid stress. All-in-all, they seem to have a good marriage with the usual minor disagreements, like whether they have to attend her cousin’s engagement party.
The marriage between Winnie and Jimmie is the least explored, as Jimmie is long dead in the present-day story, but it seems to have been a happy one. At the beginning of the novel, Winnie is hurt that Pearl has never seemed to grieve for Jimmy. She doesn’t realize that Pearl’s teenage anger was an expression of her grief. Winnie seems to nearly hero-worship Jimmie, but of course compared to Wen Fu he was an angel.
In what way does this woman define “wife”—or in what way is she defined by “wife”?
This is always the hardest question for me, because unless an author is writing an allegory, nothing about a character should define a whole category of people. Maybe we can say here that as a young girl and according to her culture, Winnie believes that a wife is ruled by her husband. She is naive enough about sex to not realize that some of the things Wen Fu wants to do are not normal practices. So, Winnie suffers, I think, because of a lack of rights for women in China at the time but also because of what her culture and upbringing have taught her—and have not taught her.
The title of the novel speaks to this question. The Kitchen God was a man who left his wife for another woman and then lost everything. When he was a poor, sick man, his wife took him in. After his death, he was rewarded for repenting by being made a minor god. Winnie expresses her disgust for the notion that the husband was rewarded for his bad behavior while the wife’s name was not even passed down in the legend. This is a notion she has had to develop as her notions of marriage change and she develops her own ideas of how women should live.
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Day 815: No Ordinary Time
No Ordinary Time tells of the contributions of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt to the conduct of the United States before and during its participation in World War II. The book relates how Franklin Roosevelt exercised his acute political awareness of public opinion to nudge the U.S. out of isolationism during the war, foreseeing as he did how the world would be changed if Germany succeeded and how assisting England against the Axis powers allowed the U.S. to ramp up for war. While Roosevelt was concentrating on the war, Eleanor remained his social conscience, attempting to hold on to the social advances of the New Deal, taking up the causes of women and their right to work and of African-Americans and their right to equal treatment.
The book also treats of the relationship between Franklin and Eleanor. Although they were always friends and companions, Eleanor had been devastated much earlier in their marriage to find out that Franklin had been having an affair with her own secretary, Lucy Mercer. This discovery ended certain aspects of their marital relationship. Eleanor’s relationship with her mother-in-law was difficult, too. In many ways, Eleanor was never at home in her own house. When she had to find a way to be of use as First Lady, since the traditional role of hostess didn’t suit her, she began to make a life for herself as Franklin’s eyes and ears around the country. So successful was she at this that when Franklin wanted to rekindle their relationship later in life and asked her to stay home more, she didn’t want to give up her active life.
These were two remarkable people, although they had their faults. At times, Eleanor’s zeal for a cause made her oblivious to Franklin’s need at the end of the day for relaxation. She found it difficult to unbend, always wanting to be active. Franklin, although charming and seemingly affectionate, was occasionally selfish and seemed sometimes to have no care for people who had given him unstinting care and friendship.
Reading this book made me feel as if I really knew these people, a feeling I seldom get from nonfiction. This is a fascinating story, sometimes thrilling, sometimes sad, about an important period in our history.
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Classics Club Spin 11!
Classics Club has announced another spin. This time I have exactly 20 items left on my Classics Club list. But I don’t want to end up with Henry VI Pt. III before Pt. II, so I’ve done some creative listing, picking an entry to list twice. Classics Club will pick a number on Monday, and that’s the book I’ll read. (Although to be honest, I’ve read some of these already and just haven’t posted my review yet.)
I do wish the Classics Club would stop making their spin deadline be the first of the month, because I can’t tell you how many times it has ended up being the same day as Literary Wives, which is the case this time. The reviews are to be posted by February 1, so I’ll have to post mine earlier. Anyway, can’t wait to find out one of the books I’m reading in December and January!
- Henry VI Pt. II by William Shakespeare
- The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
- Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley
- Bleak House by Charles Dickens
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro
- Ada by Vladimir Nabokov
- That Lady by Kate O’Brien
- A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor
- The True Heart by Sylvia Townsend Warner
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Day 814: Passion
Passion tells the stories of the Romantic poets from the points of view of their women. It begins with each as a young girl, starting before Romanticism with the broad strokes of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Godwin Shelley’s mother, a famous early feminist, writer, and philosopher.
Mary Wollstonecraft dies shortly after childbirth. Her daughter, Mary Godwin, grows up worshipping her mother and taking seriously the ideals of her father, William Godwin. However, he compromises his principles (he doesn’t believe in marriage) by marrying Mrs. Clairmont, a woman Mary detests. Her ideals and the poisonous atmosphere at home make her open to the advances of Percy Byssche Shelley, even though he is already married. She runs off with him at the age of sixteen, unfortunately accompanied by her stepsister Jane (who later calls herself Claire).
Lady Caroline Lamb loves her husband, but she is prone to a certain instability that her husband’s family deplores. When she sets eyes upon the famous Lord Byron, she is entranced and is soon engaged in a flagrant affair. When he breaks with her, she stalks him, sneaking into his rooms, following him around dressed as a boy. Her behavior is a scandal.
The only woman George Byron really loves is his half-sister Augusta. Even she succumbs to his charms. After he makes the mistake of marrying a self-righteous and vengeful woman, his worst secrets come out and he must leave the country.
Fanny Brawne comes late to the novel. She falls in love with a neighbor, John Keats, but he is a victim to a family weakness, consumption.
This material could be sensationally or romantically told, but it remains at a distance from us, more like biographical writing. We do feel sympathy for some of these women, especially for Mary Shelley, but I was not drawn right in. Although the book is named Passion and we know that this emotion was an important force for the Romantics, we don’t really see much of it in the novel, nor truly understand just what the attraction is to this group of neurotic young men. Sometimes I could catch a glimmer of the attractions of Byron, the only one who did not seem permanently deluded about the virtues of humanity. Still, for firmly setting a background for bits and pieces of information I picked up over time, I mildly enjoyed this novel. Although I admire the intent of Morgan’s more serious depictions of figures from literature, I have so far enjoyed most his romance novel, Indiscretion.
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Day 813: Dry Bones
Craig Johnson explains that his latest Walt Longmire mystery is inspired by the Dinosaur Wars, which took place in the 80’s between a rancher, his tribe, and the FBI over dinosaur bones discovered on the rancher’s land. The dinosaur in this story is named Jen, and she is a T. rex found on Danny Lone Elk’s ranch.
But first, Walt is called by Omar Rhoades, who has found a body in a fishing hole on Lone Elk’s ranch. It is Danny Lone Elk’s body, and it appears the old man has drowned. Still, Walt isn’t prepared to rule the death an accident, because Danny Lone Elk was a good swimmer.
With Danny Lone Elk’s body in his truck, Walt is driving back to town when he hears shooting. The Lone Elks, it turns out, are trying to drive out Dave Bauman of the High Plains Dinosaur Museum, who has been excavating the T. rex. Dave insists that he has permission from Danny and says he will verify it. Jennifer Watt, the discoverer and namesake of Jen, says she has proof of the agreement, which she videotaped. Randy Lone Elk has been actually trying to dig up the valuable skeleton with a back hoe.
Walt is not happy to return to town to find Skip Trost, an ambitious acting deputy U.S. attorney, who is determined to assert a federal claim to the dinosaur bones. In the meantime, Walt is supposed to be preparing for his daughter Cady’s arrival from Philadelphia with her five-month-old daughter Lola.
Cady has no sooner arrived than she receives a call from the Philadelphia Police Department. Her husband, Michael Moretti, was killed on active duty. Cady and her baby are soon rushing back with Vic, Walt’s undersheriff and Michael’s sister. Walt and his friend Henry Standing Bear are worried that Michael’s death is related to a previous case involving a Mexican hired killer.
As usual, this novel includes a lot of action and is peopled by the recurring characters we grow to like more and more. And there is another pinch of the supernatural. The spirit of Danny Lone Elk has appeared to Walt in dreams and is trying to tell him something.
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Day 812: Shirley
Best Book of the Week!
Shirley is both an homage to Shirley Jackson, dealing with some of her own themes and preoccupations, and a novel about her. It works well on both counts. Don’t be mislead by how it is being marketed, though. It is not a thriller, even though its main character becomes obsessed with a disappearance that may be a crime.
Young, pregnant Rose Nemser and her husband Fred travel to Bennington, Vermont, in the fall of 1964. Fred is a graduate student working on his dissertation who has taken a position as teaching assistant with Shirley Jackson’s husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman. The Hymans welcome the young couple and offer them a place to stay in their spare bedroom.
Rose is a shy and unconfident 19. Because of her poverty-stricken upbringing and meager education, she feels inferior to her husband and his family. Surprised at this invitation, she is delighted to stay. She is a fan of Jackson’s work and hopes to become her friend.
Soon Rose believes she has made a friend of Shirley, but Rose is naive and can’t begin to understand the demons that haunt her hostess. Shirley’s husband is a professor at Bennington who is known for having affairs with his students. Shirley, too, is jealous of male colleagues whose work has received more recognition than hers.
Rose begins delving into Shirley’s books on witchcraft and also becomes fascinated by stories of Paula Welden, a Bennington student who disappeared years ago while on a hike in the mountains. She begins having fancies about the house, similar to the ones held by Eleanor in The Haunting of Hill House.
So, the novel develops that mixture of the mundane and the off-kilter that characterizes much of Jackson’s fiction. Shirley is a deeply interesting and atmospheric novel that causes you to sympathize with the fictional Rose while feeling that you learn something about the actual Shirley Jackson. Like some other recent fiction I have read (Miss Emily comes to mind), it combines a completely made-up plot, aggravated by Rose’s fantasies, with biographical details of Shirley’s life.
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Day 811: Linnet
Linnet is another sprightly Sally Watson novel for tweens and younger teens set in the Elizabethan era. We first meet Linnet Seymour on the road to London. She has run away from her aunt’s house because she never has any adventure, planning to visit some cousins in London whom she doesn’t really know.
Unfortunately, she meets a rascal on the road, calling himself Sir Colin Collyngewood. He offers her a ride to her cousin’s house. A naive girl, she accepts. Instead of taking her to the Seymours, though, he delivers her to a filthy thieving ken to live with a bunch of child pickpockets and cutpurses.
Linnet has a tendency not to learn from experience, so when Colley tells her he wants to use her to trap some Papists in a plot against the Queen, she believes him. In the meantime, Linnet’s cousin Giles is the only person who believes she is missing. His parents think she returned home. Giles goes to London to look for her.
Like some other of Watson’s books, this one is a bit far-fetched and also has some lessons for Linnet about treatment of the poor. Still, it is an enjoyable romp.
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This week’s Best Book is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson!
Day 810: The Round House
The Round House looks back to 1988, to traumatic events in the life of 13-year-old Joe Coutts and his family. Joe has had a comfortable life for a kid living on the reservation. His father is a tribal judge, and his mother is a social worker. They live in a homey, not fancy house, and his mother keeps a beautiful flower and vegetable garden.
Joe is enjoying the summer as any 13-year-old might, sometimes running around with his friends, sometimes helping out at home. One Sunday he is digging out saplings that have worked their way into the foundation of their house. His mother has run out to the office to pick up a file. She is usually very punctual, but he and his father realize she has not returned at her usual time. The two decide to go get her.
They pass her coming home, but it is not until they arrive home that they discover something horrible has happened. Joe’s mother has been raped and brutally beaten. They rush her to the hospital.
When the police come, she will not talk about what happened except for the broadest outlines. She was kidnapped from the old ceremonial Round House and taken somewhere else to be assaulted. She escaped after her attacker doused her with gasoline and went for matches. After she returns from the hospital, she retreats to her room.
Because of complicated laws related to who has jurisdiction over what type of crimes and where they are committed, Joe’s father begins trying to sort out how a prosecution could be pursued when they find the rapist. This task is made more difficult by the insistence of Joe’s mother that she doesn’t know where she was when she was raped. Joe himself starts looking for evidence of who could have committed the crime.
Like most of Erdrich’s novels set on the reservation, this novel is as much about heartbreaking experiences as anything else. Erdrich points out in the Afterword that up to 1/3 of Native American women are raped on the reservation, mostly by men who are not Native American. She says that this number is almost certainly an understatement, because Native American women don’t want to report rape. Many of these incidents cannot be prosecuted because of jurisdictional problems.
There were a few things that bothered me about this story, particularly that Joe doesn’t connect some money he finds near the scene of the crime with the crime or that he and his friends drink some beer they find even though they think it is connected with the crime and could be a clue. Even at 13 and in 1988, they had to have watched more crime shows than that.
In general, though, this is compelling reading, about the change in Joe’s family, about how fast he is forced to grow up, about the limitations of justice on the reservation.
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