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International Women’s Day
Mar. 8th, 2018 09:31 amThis morning my inbox is full of emails, mostly from publishers, about inspirational women. I’d like to join in the celebrations, I really would, but I have all this cleaning to do …
Bluestockings, Jane Robinson
Jan. 18th, 2014 03:23 pm
When I read Clare Balding’s My Animals and Other Family, one thing really shocked me. Her mother was not allowed to go to Cambridge because Clare’s grandmother said she wouldn’t have any ‘bluestockings in the family’. It was the 1960s!. Just goes to show we shouldn’t assume that education for women has been one long march of progress. Reading Jane Robinson’s book, I was impressed by the amount of social mobility in the early days. A surprising number of girls from very poor backgrounds did make it to university, often pushed there by teachers who helped them get grants and scholarships and even took on their parents. Things are not yet perfect on that score. I found an article in The Girl’s Own Annual for 1905 saying that ‘in twenty years’ time’ people would be laughing at the idea that women should not have an Oxford education. If only!
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Women Need Refuges Not Outreach
Aug. 20th, 2009 08:32 amThis makes me angry. I heard the story on the Southern News this morning. Needless to say, it was impossible to find out anything about it under 'Dorset' on the BBC's p**s poor website. To see a male councillor talking smugly about the 'proven' benefits of 'outreach' made me so mad. (I hasten to add that there are plenty of men demonstrating against the closure.) Outreach indeed! What good is that to a woman under threat. Is she supposed to get on her mobile to some counsellor and say,'Oh dear, I think he might be about to hit me.'? Women need somewhere thay can feel safe and refuges work. More here.
One Woman's Room: Marilyn French
May. 6th, 2009 06:46 pmI was reading in today’s Times about the death of Marilyn French. When I was young I read The Women’s Room. I read it while I was eating, I read it over the baby’s innocent little head as she sat on my knee, I read it every moment I could until I’d finished: that’s why it was a best seller. After all these years I can still remember a great deal about it; the truths French expressed but also the aspects of the book which caused me to start mentally shredding it once I’d got through. There’s a scene, for instance, where a group of women sits around discussing their husbands as though they were faddy children (he likes this, he won’t eat that) which stuck in my head as being absolutely true. There’s also a lot to dislike: the narrator’s childish desire to shock her parents once she was a mature woman, for instance.
I have a problem with the bleakness of outlook which can see no happy relationship between men and women unless it’s based on no-ties sex. Not only are old fashioned notions of duty and loyalty thrown out of the window but love means nothing in the empty marriages French describes. This is very sad and a dishonest foundation for feminism, which should be less subjectively argued for. Nevertheless The Women’s Room was an important book and Marilyn French an influential writer.
I have a problem with the bleakness of outlook which can see no happy relationship between men and women unless it’s based on no-ties sex. Not only are old fashioned notions of duty and loyalty thrown out of the window but love means nothing in the empty marriages French describes. This is very sad and a dishonest foundation for feminism, which should be less subjectively argued for. Nevertheless The Women’s Room was an important book and Marilyn French an influential writer.
The Leaden Notebook
Sep. 6th, 2008 11:35 amLast week’s Woman’s Hour drama was The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, which was first published in 1962. This is from the BBC web site:
The Golden Notebook is one of the great novels of the 20th century. It portrays the complexity of one female writer's experience of life in the 1950s, as well as the bigger picture of a society on the brink of massive social change.
Anna is a writer, divorced and bringing up her daughter in London in the mid 1950s. She spends a great deal of time with her close friend Molly, also divorced, also raising her son. The two women are negotiating the difficult territory of Britain in the post war years, when many women were beginning to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of marriage and domestic bliss.
The introduction to each episode described the novel as ‘iconic’ and ‘shocking’. It’s many, many years since I read The Golden Notebook. I failed then and still do fail to see just what is so wonderful about it. More shocking than A Taste of Honey (1958) or The L-Shaped Room (1960)? More accurate in its portrayal of women’s problems than The Weather in the Streets (1936)? The divorced heroine is always hanging on the phone waiting for a call from her married lover. (I would like to line up all the real and fictional women in this situation in front of an enormous billboard and force them to read: He Will Never Leave His Wife, You Fool.) After the failure of that relationship (he doesn’t leave his wife) Anna starts to crack up but is rescued in the end; by a man, of course. As I see it, there is nothing remotely feminist about the novel, which is why I’d be very interested to know what young women think of it nowadays.
Of course, the structure of the novel, in the form of the different notebooks, is what makes it ‘literary’ and gives rise to the critical acclaim. The radio adaptation did the book no favours as it couldn’t use the same format and went for straight narration. Listening to it, I was strongly reminded of hearing Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence in the same slot earlier this year. Which says it all, really.
The Golden Notebook is one of the great novels of the 20th century. It portrays the complexity of one female writer's experience of life in the 1950s, as well as the bigger picture of a society on the brink of massive social change.
Anna is a writer, divorced and bringing up her daughter in London in the mid 1950s. She spends a great deal of time with her close friend Molly, also divorced, also raising her son. The two women are negotiating the difficult territory of Britain in the post war years, when many women were beginning to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of marriage and domestic bliss.
The introduction to each episode described the novel as ‘iconic’ and ‘shocking’. It’s many, many years since I read The Golden Notebook. I failed then and still do fail to see just what is so wonderful about it. More shocking than A Taste of Honey (1958) or The L-Shaped Room (1960)? More accurate in its portrayal of women’s problems than The Weather in the Streets (1936)? The divorced heroine is always hanging on the phone waiting for a call from her married lover. (I would like to line up all the real and fictional women in this situation in front of an enormous billboard and force them to read: He Will Never Leave His Wife, You Fool.) After the failure of that relationship (he doesn’t leave his wife) Anna starts to crack up but is rescued in the end; by a man, of course. As I see it, there is nothing remotely feminist about the novel, which is why I’d be very interested to know what young women think of it nowadays.
Of course, the structure of the novel, in the form of the different notebooks, is what makes it ‘literary’ and gives rise to the critical acclaim. The radio adaptation did the book no favours as it couldn’t use the same format and went for straight narration. Listening to it, I was strongly reminded of hearing Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence in the same slot earlier this year. Which says it all, really.
The Grass Ceiling
Aug. 23rd, 2008 11:28 amThe BBC has announced the appointment of a new front man for Gardeners' World, one Toby Buckland. Who? Nobody's ever heard of him. This is a top job and for me, no one could replace Geoff Hamilton. I never liked Monty Don because, like me, he is an amateur gardener and so I objected to his lectures and his didactic preaching of the organic message. All previous presenters had been professionals; if Alan Titchmarsh showed you how to take a cutting or do some grafting, you knew it was the Kew way and the right way.
This is Carol Klein. She has been a horticultural professional for years, running her own nursery and winning six gold medals at Chelsea Flower Show. She's been a regular TV presenter and took over Gardeners' World at short notice when Monty Don became ill. Apparently, viewers have assumed that Carol turned down the job but no, she was never even offered it. Could the fact that she is a woman and aged 63 have anything to do with that decision? TBH she's not my favourite person but this has made me fume.
This is Carol Klein. She has been a horticultural professional for years, running her own nursery and winning six gold medals at Chelsea Flower Show. She's been a regular TV presenter and took over Gardeners' World at short notice when Monty Don became ill. Apparently, viewers have assumed that Carol turned down the job but no, she was never even offered it. Could the fact that she is a woman and aged 63 have anything to do with that decision? TBH she's not my favourite person but this has made me fume.
