Attended the Persephone lecture last night and only the fact that Elaine Showalter was talking about two of my favourite books, The Home maker and Fidelity, made me get up from my sofa and venture onto the train up to London on a day when I didn't have to. The lecture was held at the Arts Guild in Queen Square tucked away nicely off Kingsway and it is many a year since I ventured here. Step off the main road and there is a garden in the middle, lots of nice pubs, lovely Georgian (I think) houses and all was delightful. Inside the lecture hall, quite superb arts and crafts room with walls covered with the most amazing paintings of worthies gazing down on us all, was a collection of Persephonites all waiting to hear Elaine speak.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Susan Glaspell both came from the mid-west, but certainly did not lack for intellectual stimulus, any idea of living in a wooden hut in the middle of nowhere knocked on the head immediately. There is no record of either Dorothy or Susan meeting each other at any time though their lives seemed to have run on parallel lines. Elaine S gave us a good dose of background and placed them both in the context of the literary scene in New York and America at that time and then contrasted the lives of both authors. DCF had a long and happy marriage, living in Vermont and seemingly all smooth on the surface but with the usual marital ups and downs in such a long union, with the tragic loss of their son, a doctor, on the very last day of the World War.
Susan Glaspell, who Elaine designated The Home Wrecker, believed in the all encompassing power of love and that one should always be in the grip of such strong emotion. This, inevitably, resulted in falling for the wrong men (nothing new under the sun really) and making bad choices which resulted in unhappiness. She married and then divorced and began to take younger and younger lovers and Elaine made it quite clear, she liked a drink or two.
Then the two books: The Home maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher is my favourite Persephone out of the 45+ that I have read so far. I wrote about this wonderful book some time ago, so rather than repeat 
myself please check my earlier post out here.
The ending, which I know some people have problems with (I am not going to give it away), is rather far fetched, but the final outcome of the story merely emphasises what lengths Lester and Eva have had to go to, in order to maintain the balance and happiness they have found in their different roles. Interesting that neither of them were brave enough to admit that Lester was well again but that things were going to go on as before. I had often wondered if the marriage would last. How could it? It was based on a lie and they both knew it and surely, after a while, resentment would set in? I was fortunate enough to be able to speak to Elaine Showalter after the lecture and ask her about this point of view and she said yes, she felt it would implode. Eva had emasculated Lester and sooner or later he would resent it.
Perhaps it is best the story ends as it is and I feel it is a book so far ahead of its time and so relevant today.
Fidelity by Susan Glaspell was one of the earliest of the Persephone books I read and made me cry. Ruth has fallen in love with a married man and, when his wife refuses to divorce him, runs away with him. Years later she comes back due to a family illness, and finds resentment from her family and friends, and shunned by all. She has never thought of what effect her actions had had on those she left behind. 
She has begun to realise that the world is not well lost for love (remember Elaine Showalter's description of Susan Glaspell as the home wrecker and always wanting to be deep in the midst of high emotion) and is disillusioned. She meets another young girl in her home town, on the brink of making the same rash mistake as she:
'But what are you going to put in the place of that social world Mildred?' she gently asked. 'There must be something else to fill its place. What can that be?'
"Love will fill its place' came youth's proud sure answer. .......'Love can fill its place' Mildred said again as if challenging the silence....'Can't it?" Ruth turned to her.........slowly, as if she could not bear to do it, she shook her head"
Oh my goodness, that passage always gets me. So sad and knowing what I now know about Susan glaspell after last night, so full of sorrow.
Ruth goes back to the man she is living with, who she can now marry as his wife has finally given him a divorce. But love has lessened and is almost dead and though he asks her to marry him, she refuses. She has decided to be true to herself, to be faithful to herself, to show Fidelity and to discover what life holds for her.
Writing about these two books has made me want to read them again. I have bought and read many books from Persephone since I purchased these two, and many of them have been wonderful, but these two have a special place in my heart and on my bookshelves. Books to keep and read again and again and I admire both these woman enormously. I have rather galloped through the two stories, I know but I would rather you got hold of a copy of both of these and read them and if I wrote all I wanted to on this subject, I would be here all night, and it is getting late and I feel that this has been a rather rambling post. Not totally satisfied I have managed to impart all I wanted to say. That sometimes happens I know and I am tired and must off to bed so you will have to forgive me for the lack that I feel is here tonight. Sometimes when one feels strongly about something, it is difficult to put into words just how much you feel and these two books are just so much part of my discovery of new authors and new reading that I have undergone over the last ten years, that I find it rather hard to be objective about them.
OK enough - must finish by saying that Elaine Showalter was wonderful, witty, eloquent and carried her formidable intelligence with a lightness that did not make this listener feel inferior in any way (though I openly acknowledge it in the presence of such a great writer) and her book on American Women Writers, due out next year is already on my list of Books I Must Buy and I Don't care if I cannot Afford it, I will Buy it Anyway.
Can't wait.
