The Winds of Heaven

I think I must have picked this up at a jumble sale around the time I read my first Persephone, Monica Dickens's Mariana, but a story about an old lady didn't hold much appeal to me as a 13 year old and it's languished on my shelves ever since. Hopefully I'm less ageist now at nearly 22. I was quite excited to read in the Persephone Biannually that it's going to be one of their autumn titles and it seemed the perfect time to take it off the shelf. I have no idea what the rooster on the cover is supposed to represent and I very much doubt the person who wrote the tag line, "Her husband's death leaves Louise with nothing- except her freedom" had read the book. The whole point of the story is that a penniless widow is entirely dependent on others and has no freedom at all. You can only be a merry widow if you have money. Despite this rather gloomy predicament, it's just as enjoyable as Dickens's coming-of-age classic Mariana as it has the same wry humour, well-drawn characters and the feeling that things will be all right in the end.

The Winds of Heaven is set in London and the Home Counties of the early 1950s, familiar Persephone and Virago territory. The protagonist Louise in her fifties (when fifty really was elderly) and is left penniless and homeless after the death of her awful husband Dudley and is passed from one daughter to another: brisk, house-proud Miriam, married to a successful barrister, temperamental actress Eva and (the worst of the lot, in my opinion) Anne, a lazy, hideously insensitive, self-centered brat who could give Mary Musgrove a run for her money. Anne's husband Frank is 'socially inferior' and looked down upon by the rest of the family, but he's the only adult in the family to show any real empathy towards his mother-in-law's predicament. Louise bonds with her eldest grandchild Ellen, a kindred spirit who also doesn't really belong, and unexpectedly makes friends with a bed salesman who writes thrillers with titles like The Girl in the Bloodstained Bikini on the side. In the winter she's packed off to an old school friend who runs a haphazard seaside hotel on the Isle of Wight. Her attempts to help out are met with a lack of enthusiasm ('Oh, Mother, you're living in the past. People don't do great big washes on Monday anymore') and I think this passage perfectly sums up the agony of being dependent:

Going from one to the other and trying to pass the time and keep out of the way in someone else's house, temporizing with visit after visit, and no roots anywhere- what did other women do, who had been left alone without money or purpose in life? How did they bear this futile necessity to be house somewhere, like a surplus piece of furniture?

What did they do? If their children would not have them, they went to shabby hotels, or were pushed into old ladies' homes, if they were senile enough. It would be easier on the family, Louise thought, if I were an invalid. Then they could put me away in a nursing home without any qualms.

A bleak passage, I know, but this is a story about confounding prejudices and taking risks in order to follow your heart and develop the relationships that really matter, regardless of what anyone thinks of them. Perfect for snuggling up in an armchair with. I look forward to reading more reviews of it in the autumn and to seeing what kind of endpapers Nicola & co. choose for it.

Thanks very much to Claire and Verity for organising the second (annual?) Persephone reading week and I've had lots of fun reading everyone's posts. There are so many beautiful blogs out there (some of which I have to admit inspire a bit of lifestyle envy) and I'm making a resolution- in May, I know- to post more regularly on my little corner of the internet. Not because I expect anyone to read it, I just want to feel as if I'm being vaguely productive.

Hostages to Fortune

'He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue, or mischief'- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Well, here's Francis Bacon's analogy from a female point of view. Hostages to Fortune isn't a title that you hear about often, or one that had ever really jumped out to me while browsing through the Persephone catalogue. I was very lucky to receive a token for two Persephones as a leaving present from the organisation I was doing a placement with and chose one that I'd had my eye on (To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski) and took a chance on the other. I'm certainly glad that I did because this is a novel that really challenges preconceptions of the domestic novel as something 'nice' and 'cosy.' In fact, this is a novel steeped in domesticity without a trace of sentimentality.

Like her protagonist Catherine, Elizabeth Cambridge was also a doctor's wife raising three children in isolated rural Oxfordshire after the First World War in middle class poverty (though I had to raise an eyebrow slightly at the way in which they have a house that is admittedly too large for them, a car, a maid and a gardener). Catherine's husband William is invalided out of the army and is ambivalent towards his children upon his return, they struggle with too little money, and Catherine's literary ambitions are stifled by rejection and lack of time.

Perhaps strangely, the book it most reminded me of was Lark Rise to Candleford (Flora Thompson's trilogy is exquisite and infinitely better than the schmaltzy TV show that shares its name, but very little else) in the way in which there is no plot in the traditional sense and it details a way of life soon to disappear over a period of about 15 years, from the birth of Catherine's first child Audrey to when Audrey is on the cusp of adulthood and her youngest joins his brother at boarding school. It's at the end of this era when she realises that the drudgery and tedium has been worth it.

The simplicity of the writing (at least on the surface) and understated tone also reminds me of Dorothy Whipple, particularly in her short stories, but Whipple is an extremely moral writer. As much as I love her, she can be a tad all-knowing at times, while there are no heroes and villains in Cambridge's novel. Her characters are people doing what they feel is best in less than ideal circumstances.

I'm becoming increasingly interested in life writing and autobiographical novels like this seem to blur all sorts of boundaries between reality and fiction. I wonder how Cambridge's children felt about this as Catherine's children aren't always portrayed in the most positive light.

A couple of sample passages:

She didn't want Audrey to love her if Audrey wasn't ready to love. She wasn't bound to, just because she and William had begotten her. Love had to grow, like everything else.  She would have to obey, and at once, without argument, life was so sudden and dangerous for the very young. But love? She loved Audrey, that was enough for the present. (31)

'Fairies poached eggs!' Audrey said, pointing to the floating daisies.
   Catherine laughed, her face close to Audrey's. She kissed her
'You don't encourage her for doing something for you,' Violet said, 'but you kiss her when she talks nonsense. As if she was always going to be a baby!'
   Catherine said nothing. She thought her daughter had really done something more deserving of kisses than the dumping of discarded flowers. She stood up, the bowl of shelled peas in the crook of her arm, and reached for the basket of pea shucks with her other hand. (110)

It's only Wednesday and I'm 'between jobs', so what next? I have a Penguin copy of The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens, one of the autumn re-prints, so maybe I'll have a little sneak preview.