1919, The McCall Company
I love this book about being a woman, expressed by main character Marise through her inner thoughts on motherhood, marriage, and her attraction to another man. I was also interested in the author's outlook on social justice, also expressed through the characters.
The book takes place in 1920. Marise is an educated and talented American woman who has lived in Europe before moving to Vermont, where her husband owns a lumber company. The couple believe in a type of capitalism where the main goal isn't for the owner to get as rich as possible, but where both employees and owner can benefit and be able to live well. (Vermont has always considered itself different from the other states, and has historically had a distinguishable outlook on equality. I'd like to look more into this at a later date.)
Marine's contented but long marriage to her husband is contrasted with the attraction Marise feels for a rich company owner from New York City who is visiting Vermont for business reasons. His philosophy is business for profit, life for pleasure.
Marise has to decide what to do, with not much more than these words from her husband for guidance:
"...anything that's worth having in anybody's life, his parenthood, his marriage, his love, his ambition, can stand any honest challenge it can be put to. If it can't it's not valid and ought to be changed or discarded." (p 189)
Forced to decide on her own what she wants from her life, Marise finds a new confidence in herself, referred to as 'Marise's Coming of Age' (chapter 25).
Have you had your "coming of age," the moment when you know you can make it on your own without relying on someone else? My "coming of age" started after going through a difficult experience (in my case, divorce), and continued after getting remarried. I started making decisions confidently rather than fearfully. I think it's about doing what you want, not selfishly, but with assurance.
On a different note, I was pleasantly surprised to find tucked into this book in a few short sections, a protest against racism against Blacks in the US South. Marise has a new neighbor who feels a responsibility to leave Vermont, where he has finally retired after a life of hard work, to go down South to help in the fight for civil rights. (Northern racism is not addressed probably because there were few Blacks in the North at this time, before the great migration from the South.)
Some quotes:
Motherhood
"What a policeman I must seem to the children. I wish I could manage it some other way." (Marise, p 93)
"Oh, you mothers use your children as other people use drugs...The baby-habit, the morphine habit...two different ways of getting away from reality." (p 99)
Marise distracts her son who has hurt himself, with the amusing song, Oh No John! (p 194), sung here by Paul Robeson. It's worth a listen!
Business
"Mr. Welles hated and feared the sound of the word ("business") and knew that it had him cowed, because in his long life he had known it to be the only reality in the world of men. And in that world he had known the only reality to be that if you didn't cut the other fellow's throat first he would cut yours. ...he wished that he could have got along without being reminded so vividly... of what paid for the armchair, supported the nice women and children." (p 132)
"What clever folks ought to say was not that the workmen were as good as the head or the same sort of flesh and blood, because they weren't; but that the head exploited his natural capacities out of all proportion, getting such an outrageous share of the money they all made together, for doing what was natural to him, and what he enjoyed doing....He didn't need all the money he could squeeze out of everybody concerned to make him do his job as manager. His real pay was the feeling of managing, of doing a job he was fitted for, and that was worth doing." (p 160)
Finding peace by "getting a glimpse of daylight"
Marise notices that her housekeeper, a Native American woman named Touclé who sometimes goes off by herself in nature, comes back looking peaceful. When she asks her why she goes off, Touclé explains that "people are like fish in an underground brook, a black cave, (but)...there is a place, ...away far off from where they live, where there is a crack in the rock (where they can) get a glimpse of what daylight is." But "if they don't get away, though they can keep swimming around and eating, they'll forget what daylight is altogether...I go 'way off to be by myself, and get a glimpse of what daylight is." p 192
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