Adriana Trigiani
Monday, November 4, 2024
NOVELS ABOUT THE FITZGERALDS
A reader commented on last week's post and linked her blog. Through her blog I found Top Five Tuesday. This week is a freebie. I chose 5 books about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Therese Fowler
Story of how Zelda and Scott met from Zelda's perspective
Erika Robuck
A (fictional) institutionalized young woman tells what it's like to be in a psychiatric hospital with Zelda
Sally Koslow
Sheilah Graham, Fitzgerald's mistress, tells the story of their love affair
Stewart O'Nan
Scott's affair with Sheilah Graham from Scott's perspective
Liza Klaussmann
About Sarah and Gerald Murphy, who hosted Scott and Zelda on the French Riviera
Saturday, November 2, 2024
WOEFUL WINTER
Winter can be a time of woe. In certain places the weather traps people inside with little to do then ponder their emotions and their lives. For November and December I am reading novels with themes of emotionality - repressed longing, dissatisfaction, unfulfilled desires.... With the arrival of both a chill in the air and a new loveseat, I anticipate many a winter hour spent under a blanket with a cup of tea and a good book.
~ READING LIST ~
The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall ~ Anne Bronte
Howards End ~ E. M. Forster
The Remains of the Day ~ Kazuo Ishiguru
Washington Square ~ Henry James
The Wings of the Dove ~ Henry James
The Custom of the Country ~ Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth ~ Edith Wharton
Friday, November 1, 2024
T B T - NOVEMBER
We're thankful for this month's TBT subject, both for her advice and creation of a major holiday
Thursday, October 31, 2024
NEVER WERE THERE SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS : THE BOND BETWEEN MERRICAT AND CONSTANCE BLACKWOOD
"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am 18 years old and I live with my sister Constance." (421) So begins Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The novel is a story of sisters, bound together by fear - other people's fear of them, and their fear of the wider world. Constance acts as Merricat's caretaker, but by the end of the novel, the sisters roles and perspectives on their lives, will reverse. Even with the horrific events the sisters endure, their bond strengthens.
Merricat ventures out into the world to provide an necessities - library books and food. Constance "never went past her own garden." (421) Merricat receives harsh treatment from the townspeople. The family, as the town's wealthiest citizens, were never very much liked. The novel hints that there is fear linked to the hatred when children taunt Merricat -
"Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you'll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!" (435)
(ask Lizzie Borden about the power of a good rhyme.)
Merricat idolizes Constance. She depends on her for support and survival. Merricat says of Constance "When I was small I thought Constance was a fairy princess. I used to try to draw her picture, with long golden hair and eyes as blue as the crayon could make them, and a bright pink spot on either cheek ; the pictures always surprised me, because she did look like that ; even at the worst time she was pink and white and golden, and nothing had ever seemed to dim the brightness of her. She was the most precious person in my world, always." (438) Constance in turn dotes on Merricat, telling her "I'm always so happy when you come home from the village, .... partly because you bring home food, of course. But partly because I miss you." (439) Constance is a nurturing person; she tends to her flower and vegetable gardens and cares for their infirm Uncle Julian. Constance cooks for the family; food is important to her. The Blackwood sisters are united against the world as a sorority of two.
Yet Constance longs to return to a more open life. When their mother's friend Helen Clarke comes to tea, Constance seems bolstered by Helen's encouragement to live more openly and actively. The idea of frightens Merricat. During the visit Uncle Julian reveals what keeps the sisters homebound and why the town fears them. Constance was suspected of murdering their parents and Uncle Julian's wife. She was thought to have put arsenic in the sugar bowl. Constance added further suspicion to herself by washing the sugar bowl before the police arrived (she claimed there was a spider in the sugar.) Everything readers learn about Constance to this point contradicts her being a murderer.
Merricat performs rituals as safeguards to protect herself and Constance - burying a box of silver dollars among other things. Constance never shames Merricat for her behavior - in fact, she would sometimes give Merricat a small token to bury. The sisters keep their home clean and organized, trying to keep some semblance of their past. Constance preserves the vegetables she grows, as did the generations of women before, a metaphor for their family preserving their home and place in the community.
The sisters lives are interrupted by Cousin Charles, who arrives suddenly and makes himself at home by wearing their father's clothes and sleeping in his bed. Charles tends to the girls' needs in the village, displacing Merricat from her responsibility. Constance cooks special food for Charles and agrees that Merricat should cease her rituals. When Merricat takes drastic action to get rid of him, Charles abandons the home. Charles leaves the sisters alone and vulnerable at the worst possible moment. In the aftermath Merricat admits a gruesome truth :
"I put it in the sugar."
"I know. I knew then."
"You never used sugar." (543)
The sisters set about returning their lives to normalcy. They refuse to admit the outside world, resolute in their existence again as a sorority of two - "Oh Constance." I said, "we are so happy." (559)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jackson, Shirley. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." Novels and Stories. The Library of America, 2010, pgs 421-559.DON'T BUY A TICKET TO HER LOTTERY
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality." So wrote author Shirley Jackson in The Haunting of Hill House. Shirley Jackson's reality was one of mental hardship and cruelty inflicted on her by those close to her. She chose to make that her millieu - that it is not monsters human should fear, but ordinary humans. Her works reflected a variety of societal ills and the need for natural separation from society.
Born December 14h, 1916 in San
Francisco, Shirley Jackson never fit in with other children. She preferred to read or write instead of pursuing friendships. Her mother became pregnant early in her marriage and resented Shirley for taking her focus away from her husband. She berated Shirley for her weight and appearance and for being an outcast. The family moved to New York when she was a senior in high school. After graduation in 1934, Shirley studied journalism at Syracuse. She met her future husband while they both wrote for the school literary magazine, and they married in 1940.
Her husband became a professor at Bennington College in Vermont. He often carried on affairs with his young female students. Shirley and her husband had four children and Shirley balanced her family, being a writer, being a faculty wife and being well read - their home library contained 25,000 books. In 1948 she published her short story The Lottery in the New Yorker. The magazine and Jackson received hate mail, as the story exposed a darker side of humanity. (I read the story for eighth grade 36 years ago and still can't shake it. )
Shirley wrote several novels and short story collections. She based her second book on the Paula Jean Weldon disappearance (still unsolved today.) Jackson's work continued into the 1950s. In 1959's The Haunting of Hill House, four people (a Paranormal Investigator, a wallflower young woman, a Bohemian artist, and a young man) must stay in a haunted house. The four experience supernatural events in the home. The Haunting of Hill House was made into a film in 1963 and 1999, and as a TV series in 2018.
Jackson wrote her final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle in 1962. Two sisters live alone in a crumbling old mansion. One sister is suspected of murdering their family. When a long lost relative arrives, the sisters resent the intrusion. Jackson's health began to decline. She developed chronic asthma due to her smoking habit. She faced severe anxiety and agoraphobia exacerbated by her illnesses. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep in 1965 at 48 years old. Jackson was a master in fear and taught the world not to be afraid of outcasts - instead be afraid of those who cast out.
SOURCES ~
Shirley Jackson. Wikipedia.
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
HALLOWEEN T T T
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T T T ~ on my history blog I chose as October's theme : Ghostly, Ghastly, Witchy, and Bitchy ~ here are 10 books that fit those four categories -
Ghostly
Shirley Jackson
Four people enter a haunted house but will they make it out alive?
Henry James
A nanny cares for two children in a creepy spooky old house but are they the only occupants?
Ghastly
Truman Capote
Nonfiction novel masterpiece about murder on the Kansas plains
Lori Notaro
Historical Fiction novel about Winnie Ruth Judd, known as The Trunk Murderess
Witchy
Alice Hoffman
Two sisters, after the death of their parents, go to live with their mysterious aunts who may or not be witches, and may or may not be cursed in love
Bitchy
Daphne du Maurier
Atmospheric Gothic thriller about an unnamed young woman who marries a man on a whim. Her new husband takes her to his mansion that maybe inhabited by the ghost of his not so nice ex-wife, and is inhabited by his not so nice housekeeper
Sarah Schmidt
Lizzie Borden took a hatchet ... not exactly a catchy children's rhyme - but was Lizzie Borden really as bitchy as her reputation claims?
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