6 Degrees of Separation: From The French Lieutenant’s Woman to A Well-Behaved Woman – 5th January 2019

It’s the first Saturday of the month (and of the New Year) so it’s 6 Degrees of Separation time!

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and BestBooks Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

This month’s starting book is The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles. Click on the title to read the book description on Goodreads or my review.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman tells the story of the relationship between amateur naturalist, Charles Smithson, and Sarah Woodruff, a former governess, supposedly abandoned by a French ship’s officer when he returned to France and married.  Sarah spends much of her time on a stone jetty, known as The Cobb, where she stares out to sea.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman is set in Lyme Regis which is also one of the locations in Jane Austen’s novel, Persuasion.  Persuasion also concerns the relationship between a young woman (in this case, twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot) and a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth.  Previously betrothed to Frederick, Anne broke off the engagement having been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that the match was unworthy.  It is something she has come to regret.

Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion explores a more modern day relationship but one that is no less complex.  When shy student, Greer Kadetsky, meets Faith Frank, a woman who has been at the forefront of the women’s movement for decades, it leads Greer to question her relationship with boyfriend, Cory, and the future she’d previously imagined.

The Dark Tide by Vera Brittain also involves the turbulent relationship between two women – Daphne Lethbridge and Virginia Dennison – but this time set in an all-women college in Oxford soon after the end of World War One.

Skip forward fifty years and we’re still in Oxford but this time at the moment when the University’s male institutions are finally opening their doors to women.  In The Reading Party by Fenella Gentleman, young academic Sarah Addleshaw is asked to accompany a mixed group of students on a college trip where she finds herself attracted to a handsome and intelligent American, Tyler Winston.

Transatlantic relationships are also the focus of The Million Dollar Duchesses by Julie Ferry.  The book focuses on the events of a single year – 1895 – when a number of transatlantic marriages took place between wealthy American heiresses and not so wealthy but titled British aristocrats, negotiated by a select band of very influential society ladies, including the redoubtable Alva Vanderbilt.

Alva Vanderbilt is the subject of Therese Anne Fowler’s latest book, A Well-Behaved Woman.  Alva, previously destitute, finds herself married into the newly rich but socially scorned Vanderbilt clan.  It is a union contrived by Alva’s best friend, Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester, herself the beneficiary of an advantageous marriage to a British aristocrat.

This month we’ve travelled from the story of a so-called ‘fallen woman’ to socially influential woman via the progress of female emancipation in academia.

Next month’s starting book is….Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.