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| Tea Roses - William Schneider, it compliments perfectly the dove grey Persephones.
Of the three recently purchased Dorothy Whipple's I read The Priory first. Like all Whipple novels there is something in the narrative that compels you to race to the end but when I got there I was in two minds about what I really thought about it. There are, as usual, characters that you love, characters that you empathise with and characters that you loathe. The note on which the novel ended also left me thinking of what we know was about to come. However you have to admire any book that keeps you reading well into the small hours to find out what happens next. Although it is about the upper middle classes it reminded me of some of the same style of plot twist, intrigues, trials and tribulations of Downton Abbey. I wonder if Julian Fellows has read this!
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Next up was High Wages. Set in the period before and after the First World War it tells the story of shop girl Jane Carter and her ambitious drive to own her own business. For a novel published in 1930 it must have offered a glimmer of hope to women of the time. The course of Jane's journey is, of course, not exactly smooth, but it is a window into another world we little understand. It will surprise many that there were woman at this time who had the same ambitions, drive, strive for independence and single-mindedness as women today.
Lastly I tackled They Were Sisters. Published in 1943 but set mostly in the 1930's, it is the story of three very different sisters; Lucy, the mother substitute, Charlotte who marries the first man to take an interest in her, despite her being second pickings after her glamorous and spoiled sibling Vera, and the effect that their choices of husband had on the course of their lives and their happiness.
Whipple perfectly captures the lowly status of women in society at that time. It was with complete frustration that I found myself shouting in my head "LEAVE HIM!" at every exchange between Charlotte and Geoffrey and wondering why she couldn't. On reading the afterward I found out that once married, women, however closely related, could only visit one another's homes with their husband's permission and could only freely spend money they themselves had inherited. It is the bitter truth that a woman at that time had almost no chance of freeing herself from a bad marriage. It is a gripping book and a fascinating insight into women's lives in the 30's. The book was turned into a film starring James Mason as the vile Geoffrey.
Whipple perfectly captures the lowly status of women in society at that time. It was with complete frustration that I found myself shouting in my head "LEAVE HIM!" at every exchange between Charlotte and Geoffrey and wondering why she couldn't. On reading the afterward I found out that once married, women, however closely related, could only visit one another's homes with their husband's permission and could only freely spend money they themselves had inherited. It is the bitter truth that a woman at that time had almost no chance of freeing herself from a bad marriage. It is a gripping book and a fascinating insight into women's lives in the 30's. The book was turned into a film starring James Mason as the vile Geoffrey.
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| Another Schneider in Persephone tones. |