Is The Getting of Wisdom anti-feminist? Virginia Lloyd thinks so.

While Miles Franklin tends to get a lot of attention because of the literary award, another prominent Australian who chose to publish under a male pseudonym may not be so well known. That author is Ethel Florence Lindsay Richardson, better known as Henry Handel Richardson. Richardson, a talented musician, was born in East Melbourne in 1870, but moved with her mother to Europe in 1888 so she could study at the Leipzig Conservatorium. She published several books, including Maurice Guest and the trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.

This year, The Henry Handel Richardson Society is running the Henry Handel Richardson Centenary Writing Competition to celebrate the ex-pat author's only return to Australia in 1912. (Entries don't close till August 31, so there's plenty of time to enter.) Here author, editor and agent, Virgina Lloyd, reviews another of Richardson's novels, The Getting of Wisdom.

Virginia Lloyd writes:
 

The Brooklyn Public Library, a brisk ten-minute walk from my apartment, holds one copy of Henry Handel Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom (1910). It is a Dial Press tie-in edition to the 1977 film adaptation. The cover features a still photograph of Sigrid Thornton as the central character, Laura Tweedle Rambotham.

As the library’s holdings of Australian fiction are sparse, I was surprised but glad to find a copy locally. I’m researching musically trained women writers – of whom there are many – and I needed to read it: Henry Handel Richardson was a gifted pianist whose family travelled to Leipzig, Germany, in 1888 so she could pursue her studies. Her experiences as a student there led her to write her first novel, Maurice Guest (1908). Happily The Getting of Wisdom, Richardson’s second novel, is not only shorter but also a far more enjoyable reading experience - at least for this reader.

The ghost of Jane Eyre’s school, Lowood, haunts the pages of The Getting of Wisdom, which is primarily a coming of age story told through Laura’s eyes. In the opening pages of the novel we see Laura clash with her mother and feel stifled by the cloying attention of her younger sister, who goes by the nickname Pin. Laura feels more than ready for boarding school but is shocked and disoriented by the factional behaviour of the other girls once she gets there. Richardson vividly draws Laura’s horribly awkward first day at school and her inept efforts at trying to make friends. As an outgoing but poor student whose mother works for a living - a secret Laura tries hard to keep - she fails repeatedly to fit in to a culture that rejects idiosyncrasy. Richardson writes: Laura “suffered …and it was suffering; for her schoolfellows were cruel with that intolerance, that unimaginative dullness, which makes a woman’s cruelty so hard to bear.” Unfortunately most women have experienced just this sort of thing at one time or another. My own experiences of being ostracized at school made these passages spring brilliantly to life.

My biggest disappointment with reading this 1910 novel in 2012 was that it struck me as anti-feminist. This is not just about the pseudonym that Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson chose to wear like a coat throughout her writing life. As Germaine Greer points out in the introduction to the Dial edition, the tradition of the pseudonymous woman writer had been well established by the Bronte sisters and numerous others over the 19^th century. Richardson claimed that she wanted to test the assertion that had been in the press at the time about how easy it was to distinguish a woman’s writing from a man’s. (Didn’t we just go through this with V. S. Naipaul’s sexist comments about being able to detect a women’s work within a couple of paragraphs - to smell, as Francine Prose put it in Harper’s, the estrogen in the ink? Plus ça change... .) As Greer says, “Why Henry Handel Richardson should have assumed her more ponderous male mask is not so readily apparent” when compared with someone like Marian Evans (George Eliot), whose books’ moral high ground would have been eroded by the revelation of her “scandalous private life”.

I suspect that the male pseudonym was for Richardson a more complicated issue than she would admit even to herself. On reading The Getting of Wisdom, I could not help but feel that Richardson had a great deal of ambivalence about being a woman.

In one early scene, an exasperated visiting teacher accuses Laura’s friend Inez  of having “a real woman’s brain: vague, slippery, inexact, interested only in the personal aspect of a thing.  You can’t concentrate your thoughts, and, worst of all, you’ve no curiosity – about anything that really matters. … It makes me ashamed to belong the same sex.” This condemnation of an entire sex on the basis of one lazy student seems extreme if not pathological. In terms of the plot, however, the teacher’s criticism provides Laura with the motivation she has lacked to now. The narrator writes of Laura: “[S]he did not want to have a woman’s brain, thank you; not one of that sort; and she smarted for the whole class.” From that moment on Laura applies herself to her studies and makes dramatic progress in all subjects except arithmetic.

The most independent woman in the novel is Laura’s financially independent aunt, who makes her own living, lives by herself, and helps Laura to get into the school and to keep her there. But Richardson describes her as “an independent, manly person”, which is a curious and pointed choice of adjective.

The logic of the novel seems to suggest that Laura’s striking independence of thought and behavior reflects the conscious turning away from the humiliation of having a “woman’s brain”. Perhaps in Richardson’s mind this includes being preoccupied with men and marriage. Laura’s lack of interest in these subjects for most of the novel is a refreshing change not only from the obsessions of her peers, but from the subject matter of much fiction both then and now.

In Laura, Richardson gives us a wonderfully complex character. She is willful and intelligent, if not terribly smart. Her lack of shyness causes her to leap into situations she lives to regret, such as when she plays the piano for the headmistress, who condemns her afterward for her “shameless” physical performance and her choice of repertoire (Thalberg instead of Mozart). Laura is vain, lonely, vulnerable, and prone to lying to impress friends. The hole she digs for herself over her stay at the house of the married curate, in which she invents an elaborate story about their wild romance, is hilarious.

I also loved the way Richardson draws this novel to a close. The final third is masterfully controlled in pacing and character development. For any other latecomers to the work I will not spoil it here. It is enough to say that Richardson takes Laura on an emotionally challenging journey towards the end of her school days, and is not afraid to make her heroine suffer.

Germaine Greer contended that The Getting of Wisdom is Richardson’s “only great book, precisely because the subject is like the rest of us, ordinary, and therefore deeply important.” I think Laura Rambotham is a character well worth getting to know. The novel is fascinating reading, if only to provoke a reader to think about how much, and how little, changes in the lives of women.

Viginia Lloyd is a Sydney-born Australian literary agent, editor and freelance writer who currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her memoir, The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement, was published in 2009 by Penguin and is available from a major international bookseller as an ebook.

 

PD James is a guy, right? (I: Do men and women write differently?)

This Thursday is International Women's Day. To raise awareness of The Stella Prize writers, readers and booksellers all around the country will be discussing the proposition: "Do women and men write differently?" This question was, in part, inspired by the widely-reported comments of VS Naipaul last June; Naipaul maintained that no female writer was his equal - not even Jane Austen - and he could tell within a paragraph or two the gender of the writer.

Recent statistics from VIDA, a women in the arts lobby group, show that gender bias in the representation of women in major literary magazines continued throughout 2011. Closer to home, over a year ago now, Sarah L'Estrange interviewed Susan Wyndham from the Sydney Morning Herald about its representation of women writers. Wyndham examined the previous six issues of the SMH literary pages and was horrified to discover the bias towards men (via publisher Sophia Whitfield's blog).

So what, if anything, has changed?

Not much, according to James Tierney, AWW participant and blogger, who conducted a two-month audit of substantial reviews in The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald from October 8 to December 3, 2011

Tierney writes: "More than a year after it became a matter for fresh controversy, less than a third (29%) of the books reviewed in the literary pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian each Saturday are written by women*. The gates were opened a little wider for XX reviewers, but not by a great deal (35%)."

Tierney goes on to ask: 

Why is this a problem? Surely the only thing that matters here is the literary quality of the works under review and, in the best judgement of the responsible editors, this is where the best work lay. 

Well, no. To accept that, I’d have to accept that the best work is generally done by men and that simply does not reflect my reading experience. 

Tierney makes the point that, if women are being overlooked for reviews based on something other than literary merit, the consequences are far-reaching.

I don’t know this for sure but I suspect that the literary review pages of our major newspapers determine -at least in part- the bookish agenda. This leads me to a truth so obvious that it almost doesn’t bare saying but let’s give it a go nonetheless: books that are reviewed well are more likely to be considered by literary judges for inclusion on prize lists, long & short.

If less than a third of books reviewed are by women, is it any wonder that our main literary prize, The Miles Franklin, has been awarded to women only twice since 2001? (Read Tierney's complete article here.)

So why are women under-represented in the pages of our literary journals and major media outlets? Is there something intrinsic to women's writing that makes it less worthy of critical attention?

A few weeks ago, I began canvassing opinions on The Stella Prize question in order to share those opinions on Thursday night when Kirsten Tranter hosts a panel at the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba with fellow authors Tara Moss and Claire Corbett. I approached several eminent bookbloggers wondering whether they would be willing to write on the topic. Only one, Kim from Reading Matters, got back to me, saying she wasn't willing to go near that "hot potato".

A number of women I contacted agreed that men and women writing differently. One, an aspiring local travel/memoir writer, commented via Twitter that she almost never read books by women; her perception was that in her preferred genres (nonfiction and travel-memoir) women didn't publish much. When directed to The Guardian's quiz to see whether she could accurately determine if something was written by a woman, she reported 7/10 accuracy. She claimed women's writing tended to be "soft" and stood out. 

Could VS Naipaul right? Can we tell if something is written by a woman within a few paragraphs? Are being "soft" and/or "sentimental" common to female writers, characteristics anathema to our traditional aesthetic of what constitutes "quality"?

While posting flyers for the Stella event, I sought the opinion of a number of men, including a bookseller and an artist, both of whom answered, "Of course, men and women write differently," but that didn't mean they deserved less attention, they said. The artist went on to say that the situation with Fine Arts isn't so different: there are many examples of female artists, in his opinion, famous in their day, who are nevertheless now virtually forgotten except in relation to their more famous husbands or brothers. 

Peter Karsten from Katoomba Book Exchange had even more to say. He agreed to put down some rough thoughts on the topic for the AWW blog and have them published here (unedited).

Karsten writes: 
As I see it, women’s writing would be different from their male counterparts, insomuch as depending on the genre. That having been said, the genre would determine the difference and or the same writing style, influence, method and manner of the female author in question; as a woman could write with male and or female authority.


Thus it would be a skill needed in today’s society that will determine success or failure in reaching a targeted audience-whether it be male or female. The woman could use a male pseudonym to attract attention to her works, and gain a certain male following by subconscious suggestion that she is a male writer and or not use her full name.

As an example: J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, does not use her first name-Why? It is a subconscious effort to attract the male reader, (now as she is well known-her readership is male and female) but also a marketing ploy to some degree. Also of note are male writers, like P. D. James, who also don’t use their first name either. With these examples, there are many male and female writers who use their initials.

But is this deception necessary in today’s society - if it is a deception by the male and more importantly by the female author?

The answer is simply – NO – Why? The woman of today needs self-recognition of her efforts, and as her writing skills improve and her ability to deliver strong and authoritative word in written form expands, so to will she gain more recognition through efforts in her chosen genre.

For my own part and reading influence mainly in Science Fiction and Fantasy, I have actually found no difference in writing style, but there is a difference as the main character/s are female, not male, with male characters playing secondary roles. It’s as though there is a merging of styles in these genres; could it be that female writers are in their own way are developing a male form of writing in this so-called male dominated world, in order to compete for the slice of the financial pie?

As an example, male cooks bringing out cookery books, which in the past has been female dominated, we see this merging as this genre has both male and female authors, and there is no difference in presentation and or writing style.

So where does this leave the female writer in general? Is there a difference in the written word by female authors?

I said in the beginning, 'woman’s writing would be different', the word ‘would’ is the key; because it is up to the woman to determine the difference in writing style as apposed to a man’s.

All in all I personally am not worried about the so-called difference; communication is the key to understanding, and the written word has a power all on its own, whether written by a man or a woman, as long as we understand what is being written and or read….the word has no sex discrimination label.

The power of the pen is only as strong as the author wishes, and the success of that author is determined by public acceptance.

If there is a difference between male and female writing styles and skills…it is perspective, as this world needs perspective of both sexes, in order to relate and understand the world as we make it and perceive it though different eyes.

So the answer is simple… Perspective is the key…and through this viewpoint does the female writer achieve a perception that differs from their male counterparts.

AWW notes:
Before publishing, I contacted Peter Karsten about his mistaking PD James for a man. Karsten - being the very good sport he is - agreed to have his mistake stand uncorrected as it so well demonstrates his argument: that a woman may choose to write differently from men, but the way she writes isn't biologically determined; when she chooses to write using a unisex name in a genre dominated by men or which attracts male readers (such as crime), her gender is not immediately - or even over an entire oeuvre - obvious to the reader.

Female Australian writers who have chosen to publish under unisex gender neutral names recently include PA O'Reilly, PM Newton and Favel Parrett. (O'Reilly, whose book The Fine Colour of Rust has just been released, wrote a guest post for AWW yesterday.) In the reviews posted by booksellers throughout 2010-11, Newton and Parrett featured highly. In Parrett's case, her novel, Past The Shallows, also featured male protagonists and depicted settings associated with male-dominated activities such as fishing and surfing.

What do you think?