Weaving words,spinning tales 1

Once you notice something a whole theme develops 
before you know it. Also see 'Weddings' in April. 

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Chapter XV Knitting,Chapter XVI Still Knitting

Silas Marner,the Weaver of Raveloe by George Elliot

Bobbin Up by Dorothy Hewett (Virago Modern Classics)
Set in 1958, about a group of women working at the Jumbuck Woollen Mills in Sydney,Australia. Based on the author's experience of working in textile mills.

Down and Out

I have tried to read Jean Rhys, notably 'Quartet,' as the idea of a beautiful,lonely talented,young woman leaving the heat of the Caribbean (Dominica) to come to cold,unfriendly Northern Europe appeals.However I was unfortunately put off from the start by having previously read 'Drawn from Life-a memoir' by Stella Bowen. Stella was living with the writer Ford Maddox Ford in Paris when Ford invited Jean Rhys to stay with them to enable her to write.However Jean Rhys repays their hospitality by beginning an affair with Ford.Stella,an artist spends most of her energy caring for Ford and their daughter,constantly uprooted-starting again, home making, supporting, with little money and little time left to paint.To add insult to injury,Jean Rhys then parodies the couple in 'Quartet'!

Having read ' Slipstream' the autobiography of writer Elizabeth Jane Howard I am reminded of how she takes care of Kingsely Amis in much the same way.

But,whilst browsing through 'The Secret Self-short stories by Women Vol 1' I was touched by 'Let them Call it Jazz' -a moving account of how Selina,newly arrived in London from the Caribbean,seeking work as a seamstress,poor and homeless ends up in Holloway prison through simply trying to survive and deal with her situation.I will now read more of Jean Rhys and have 'The Left Bank', 'Tigers are Better Looking' and 'Sleep it Off Lady' to look forward to!

Also recommended:

'Down & Out in Paris and London' by George Orwell (1933)

'The People of the Abyss' by Jack London (1903)-the author's experience of poverty in London's East End.

'A Child of the Jago' by Arthur Morrison (1896)-a novel based on the East End slum the Rookery.

'Behind the Shade' by Arthur Morisson- short story about a mother and daughter set in the East End.

Weddings 3

It seems that everything I pick up to read at the moment has a wedding theme!!

'Marrying Absurd' from 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' (a Flamingo Sixties Classic)

by Joan Didion describes weddings Las Vegas syle in 1967. A work colleague of mine got married in Vegas and all I could think was what's the point? If you are going to go to all the trouble and I do mean 'trouble' of getting married at least do it as if you mean it. But then, reading this, I realised a lot of people getting married in Vegas do mean it as one bride underage and seven months pregnant sobbed,

'It was just as nice as I hoped and dreamed it would be'

'The Group' by Mary McCarthy (Virago Modern Classics but originally published in 1963) begins with the wedding of Vassar college graduate Kay in 1930's New York attended by the seven other female graduates whose lives the rest of the novel follows.The groups experiences of sex,marriage,motherhood,ambition and career versus family are all as relevant to women as much today as in the 1930s and 1960s.

Discovered on the Withdrawn/For Sale shelf of the wonderful Bishopsgate Institue -

'How We Lived Then-A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War'

by Norman Longmate The chapter entitled 'Cardboard Wedding Cakes' details the hardships and shortages of war time weddings in Britain-a best man suddenly posted elsewhere,'The Sugar (restricted use of) Order of 1940' resulting in cakes made with powdered eggs being iced in chocolate and pet white rabbits slaughtered and passed off as chicken in aspic.

.

This is an actual cardboard wedding cake from 1943

- a highlight of the collection from the Museum of Richmond

Weddings 2

Two short (and equally shocking in their own way) stories about the before and after the wedding.

'The Wedding of Zeina' ( from the novel 'Aisha') by Ahdaf Soueif

Set in Egypt, Aisha's nurse Zeina, recounts how she was brutally 'tested' at the age of 15 before her wedding night by both male and female members of her family.

'Child's Play' by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Six weeks after her wedding,feeling that her marriage is already in trouble,18 year old Shirley returns home for a visit to her parents.Abandoned by her husband, indulged by her father and envied by her mother Shirley, young,spoilt,disillusioned;thinking that marriage would be 'candlelit dinners,friends dropping by,using all the presents,setting the table as perfectly as she did her face' is also brutally treated, in this case psychologically by family members.

Both stories from 'The Secret Self;Short Stories by Women selected by Hermione Lee,pub J.M.Dent & Sons 1985

Weddings

Two titles vying for my attention on the subject of weddings:

'Cassandra at the Wedding' by Dorothy Baker set in 1960s California and 'Cheerful Weather for the Wedding' by Julia Strachey set in 1930s England. About a third of the way through both but decide to concentrate on 'Cassandra' as it has to go back to my local library who rather wonderfully tracked it down.It's rather strange & slightly depressing but I am enjoying its strangeness.It has a fine recommendation from Carson McCullers,author of a favourite I read in my 20s ; 'The Member of the Wedding', so I'm hoping it

will be great!!!