Tag: modern classic

Book Review: The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby

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The Crowded StreetAbout the Book

This is the story of Muriel Hammond, at twenty living within the suffocating confines of Edwardian middle-class society in Marshington, a Yorkshire village. A career is forbidden to her. Pretty, but not pretty enough, she fails to achieve the one thing required of her – to find a suitable husband.

Then comes the First World War, a watershed which tragically revolutionises the lives of her generation. But for Muriel it offers work, friendship, freedom, and one last chance to find a special kind of happiness…

Format: Paperback (288 pp.)                    Publisher: Virago
Published: 19th November 1981 [1924]  Genre: Modern Classics, Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Crowded Street on Goodreads

My Review

“In books things always happen to people.  Why doesn’t somebody write a book about someone to whom nothing happens – like me?”

 
The Crowded Street follows Muriel Hammond through the years 1900 to 1920.  The reader first glimpses Muriel as a nine year girl attending her first formal party and experiences with her the anguish of feeling left out and unable to understand the expected rules of behaviour, to the disappointment of her status conscious mother.

This early experience sets a pattern for Muriel throughout the book.  Serious, thoughtful but timid, lacking in self-confidence and with a liking for certainty, Muriel finds herself always the one left without a partner – whether at a dance, the tennis club, even at school.    ‘Was she more stupid than other people, or did everyone feel like this at first? She was travelling in a land of which she only imperfectly understood the language.’

This changes when the confident and worldly Clare Duquesne joins Muriel’s school and offers her the friendship she has always sought.    Clare ignites a sort of hero worship in Muriel.  Clare seems to be everything that Muriel isn’t.  As time goes on it turns out others are equally in thrall to Clare.

Muriel allows herself to be persuaded by others that her academic interests, in astronomy and mathematics, are not suitable subjects for her to pursue.  Her headmistress asks: “How will it help you, dear, when you, in your future life, have, as I hope, a house to look after?”  No, Muriel’s duty lies in staying at home and assisting her mother until a suitable marriage can be made.  Indeed, her mother’s sole ambition seems to be to manoeuvre Muriel and her sister, Connie, into a position in society where they can secure themselves husbands.  This overwhelming desire will have tragic consequences and act as a stifling influence on Muriel, making her feel that life is passing her by.

The outbreak of the First World War and the renewal of an old acquaintance bring change and the possibility of a different future for Muriel if only she can find the courage to grasp it.  ‘A respectable marriage had not always been the one goal of her life.  She had dreamed dreams.  She had seen visions, but her visions had faded before the opinion of others; she had lacked the courage of her dreams.’

Living in an age where equal opportunities are for the most part a given, I’ll admit I found it difficult at times to understand Muriel’s inability to escape from her situation and her lack of…gumption, I suppose.  However, on the other hand, I’m guessing the author intended to create a sense of righteous anger in the reader, at the waste of talent and at the prevailing notion that a woman’s role was merely as an appendage or helpmeet to a man and not as a person in her own right.  Like me, you may give a silent cheer at the end of the book.  “The thing that matters is to take your life into your hands and live it, following the highest vision as you see it.”

The Crowded Street was the book I drew in the recent Classics Club Spin #17.  You can find my full Classics Club list here.

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In three words: Elegant, insightful, thought-provoking

Try something similar…Testament of Friendship by Vera Brittain

Winifred HoltbyAbout the Author

Winifred Holtby (1891 – 1935), novelist, journalist and critic, was born in Rudstone, Yorkshire.  With the exception of South Riding, this is her most successful novel; powerfully tracing one woman’s search for independence and love, it echoes in fictional form the years autobiographically recorded by her close friend, Vera Brittain, in Testament of Youth.

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Book Review: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

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The House of Mirth2About the Book

Lily Bart, beautiful, witty and sophisticated, is accepted by ‘old money’ and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect.

Whilst many have sought her, something – fastidiousness or integrity- prevents her from making a ‘suitable’ match.

Format: ebook (268 pp.)                            Publisher:
Published: 16th May 2012 [1905]             Genre: Literary Fiction, Modern Classics

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The House of Mirth on Goodreads

My Review

Knowing Edith Wharton’s reputation as a writer but not having read any of her books, I was anticipating wit and dry humour.  What I wasn’t quite expecting was the deft way in which the author wields the literary equivalent of a scalpel to dissect the snobbery, hypocrisy and downright cruelty of the New York social scene. I mentioned the mocking humour and here are a few of my favourite examples:

On the eligible but tedious bachelor, Percy Gryce: ‘Mr. Gryce was like a merchant whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable commodity.’

On Lily’s aunt, Mrs Peniston: ‘To attempt to bring her into active relation with life was like tugging at a piece of furniture which has been screwed to the floor.’

‘It was the “simple country wedding” to which guests are conveyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.’

‘Lily presently saw Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined way through the doors, and, in the broad wake she left, the light figure of Mrs. Fisher bobbing after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug.’

And I have to mention the elegance of the writing that can convey so much in just a few sentences. For example, as Lily observes those she has regarded as friends: ‘That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way.  Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.’

Throughout the book, my sympathy was always with Lily and the situation she finds herself in.  Yes, she has a role which is largely confined to being an ‘adornment’ to the social scene.  However, I admired her determination to use the gifts she has been given, even if that does involve a degree of manipulation.  Unfortunately, an entirely innocent action and a chance meeting set in motion a chain of events that put Lily in the power of others, risking her future happiness.  Lily believes her beauty allows her to manipulate men but, sadly, she finds it is she who is being manipulated because of a mistake and the need to maintain her social status because of her (relative) poverty.

It transpires that navigating the social scene is akin to a game of snakes and ladders. Working your way up takes time, requires skill in order to cultivate contacts and involves being seen in the right places with the right people.  ‘She had been fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird’s breast?  And was it her fault that the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled among social beings than in the world of nature?’  However, one misstep, one troublesome rumour or item of mischievous gossip and you can slide down very quickly.   ‘Lily had the doomed sense of the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.’

Very few of the characters in the book come out well.  So-called friends (I’m looking at you, Mrs. Fisher) prove to be anything but in Lily’s hour of need – because they are too timid, too afraid of what others will say or possess ulterior motives.

I’ll confess, I was unprepared for the impact the ending had on me.  Part of me could understand why Lily did what she did and part of me wished she had found the strength to take another course.  The romantic in me wanted another outcome altogether which, I’ll admit, would not have been true to the spirit of what the author was trying to communicate in the book.   Call me an old softy.

This will definitely not be the last book by Edith Wharton I read.  What an amazing author to have discovered; even more amazing when you realise The House of Mirth was Wharton’s first published novel.

The House of Mirth is a book from my Classics Club List and also forms part of my list for the 2018 TBR Pile Challenge hosted by RoofBeamReader.

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In three words: Tragic, elegant, moving

Try something similar…The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

Edith WhartonAbout the Author

Edith Newbold Jones was born into such wealth and privilege that her family inspired the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.” The youngest of three children, Edith spent her early years touring Europe with her parents and, upon the family’s return to the United States, enjoyed a privileged childhood in New York and Newport, Rhode Island. Edith’s creativity and talent soon became obvious: By the age of eighteen she had written a novella, (as well as witty reviews of it) and published poetry in the Atlantic Monthly.

After a failed engagement, Edith married a wealthy sportsman, Edward Wharton. Despite similar backgrounds and a shared taste for travel, the marriage was not a success. Many of Wharton’s novels chronicle unhappy marriages, in which the demands of love and vocation often conflict with the expectations of society. Wharton’s first major novel, The House of Mirth, published in 1905, enjoyed considerable literary success. Ethan Frome appeared six years later, solidifying Wharton’s reputation as an important novelist. Often in the company of her close friend, Henry James, Wharton mingled with some of the most famous writers and artists of the day, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, André Gide, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, and Jack London.

In 1913 Edith divorced Edward. She lived mostly in France for the remainder of her life. When World War I broke out, she organized hostels for refugees, worked as a fund-raiser, and wrote for American publications from battlefield frontlines. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her courage and distinguished work.

The Age of Innocence, a novel about New York in the 1870s, earned Wharton the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1921 – the first time the award had been bestowed upon a woman. Wharton travelled throughout Europe to encourage young authors. She also continued to write, lying in her bed every morning, as she had always done, dropping each newly penned page on the floor to be collected and arranged when she was finished. Wharton suffered a stroke and died on August 11, 1937. She is buried in the American Cemetery in Versailles, France.