And what will you find in this collection of short stories, edited by Lynne Knight and published under this title (and under The Secret Woman) in 1993?
Thoughts and ideas about many things.
About marriage:
“If she had never, from the first, regarded her marriage as a full cancelling of her claims upon life, she had at least, for a number of years, accepted it as a provisional compensation – she had made it ‘do’.”
Edith Wharton “Souls Belated”
And, not:
“Well it is usually to be among that crowd that we pay large prices for small portions,” he said, much to his own surprised, for he had always considered himself a lone wolf, and his behavior had never belied this. He sensed this same quality in Mrs Perry, but he was moved by a strange desire to mingle with her among the flock.”
Jane Bowles “Plain Pleasures”
About being married-but-not:
“Endless years of waiting, of living the life of neither a wife nor a widow, pitied by her relatives, wept over by her mother and mother-in-law, hag-ridden by her misgivings that Arshad might die or marry again, wrung the spirit out of her.”
Attia Hosain “Time is Unredeemable”
About something-in-between:
“Two sophisticated women, keeping their poise on the rather skiddy surface of a serial husband, was how she saw the situation. For a while, she managed to keep conversation on a black-coffee level: foreign travel, television, the guitar. But you could see the poor thing’s heart really wasn’t in it; grieving for what could never again be hers, she just tagged along.”
Sylvia Townsend Warner “An Act of Reparation”
About wanting to be more-than-married:
“She also had a few scruples about Charlie, but they were not so insistent as the cicadas. After all, she thought, she had never had a holiday romance – not even a honeymoon with Charlie – and she felt that life owed her just one.”
Elizabeth Taylor “Flesh”
About being not-exactly-happily married:
“For years they had talked of nothing else but butter and eggs and the prices of things, and now they had as much to say to each other as people who meet after a long separation.”
Willa Cather “The Sentimentality of William Tavener”
About being unhappily married:
“Yeah, when me mates get to twenty or twenty-one, they see the girls they mucked around with getting married and they think, ‘If I don’t hurry up all the best ones will be gone.’ So they get married and then they’re bloody miserable…”
Nell Dunn “Out With the Girls”
And beyond-unhappily married:
“All men begin by loving a woman for what she isn’t and end by perceiving what she is. In the beginning they caress the skin with kisses, and in the end they puncture with the pistol.”
Djuna Barnes “The Jest of Jests”
And isn’t that a grand note on which to end this sampling?
Have you read this collection, or have you enjoyed some of the authors’ works in other forms?
Contents: Sylvia Townsend Warner “An Act of Reparation”; Penelope Gilliatt “Living on the Box”; Jane Bowles “Plain Pleasures”; Tillie Olsen “I Stand Here Ironing”; Elizabeth Taylor “Flesh”; Willa Cather “The Sentimentality of William Tavener”; Rosamond Lehmann’s “A Dream of Winter”; Djuna Barnes “The Jest of Jests”; Antonia White “The House of Clouds”; Nell Dunn “Out With the Girls”; Edith Wharton “Souls Belated”; Jessie Kesson “Until Such Times”; Leonora Carrington “As They Rode Along the Edge”; Attia Hosain “Time is Unredeemable”; Grace Paley “Seen from Paradise”; Rebecca West “The Salt of the Earth”
What a lovely anthology! I’ve never seen this one, but I do know many of the authors. I’d love to read the one by Nell Dun. I seem to find less Viragos than I used to at used bookstores. One to note for the wishlist at Amazon!
I’m not sure exactly what my previous impressions were of Nell Dunn, but this story challenged those expectations for sure. The Djuna Barnes was quite a surprise too, but in a different way. It’s a great collection to have on your shelves for sure!
[…] of short stories. The latter is very existing and timely, as I was only reading about it on Buried In Print’s lovely blog the other day, and this particular copy is in amazingly good condition. So huge thanks go to […]
That definitely looks like a collection I would love.
It’s definitely right up your street.
I haven’t read this collection, but it sounds marvellous – and I confess to just having sent for a copy…. 🙂
I spread the stories out and I think you will enjoy them that way too; even with so many thematic similarities, I never felt any cunfusion between the tales. But be warned, you’ll soon want to read all the novels by these writers too! (And maybe need to order some of those too!)