Includes:
Life in the iron mills by Rebecca Harding Davis
The yellow wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Country of the pointed firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
Souls belated by Edith Wharton


30 October 2006
Reply to spy-there's message, below:

No, no! I didn't particularly think that you would be interested in the fate of women in the 19th century. I just thought it might be interesting to bring some stories by respected American authors to the Zurich meetup to share with anyone who might have been there ...

Actually, I myself found the Gilman and the Wharton stories quite depressing ... I haven't read the other two. Perhaps you might read them and find them interesting .. perhaps you'll decide they're not worth your time and simpy release them at Cafe Gloria or elsewhere ... I won't be offended!

:-)

For unknown reason Ramya thought I would be interested in the fate of women in the 19th century. I’m not. Not actually.
Book reposes nevertheless safely on my TBR-stack ...

@ramya: too late, I've read them. saw your entry only now ^__^


4 stories by American women – which couldn’t be more different. The choice is hardly to comprehend. As if you would fill a sandwich with anchovy, scrambled eggs, vanilla fudge and pickles.
But well, probably it has to bee regarded as anthology for those who are interested in history ... um, herstory. Mainly students of English literature, I assume. In the 19th century the described topics might have been new and bold (save Orne Jewett’s), but nowadays they bear a glaze of oddity. Nevertheless interesting.

I liked best the brief story from Perkins Gilman about a borderline case. It kept an astonishing freshness. You directly could copy it and sell it to any woman’s magazine (that is, if you are reckless enough) - nobody would suspect it to be 130 years old.

Harding Davis had – in the manner of Dickens – the noble intention to aim with a spotlight onto the of the iron mill workers' miserable lives. Alas ... the icing! The most romantic and affable approach turned the subject into a fairy tale.

Also Orne Jewett likes fairy tales. Her description of a small, happy coast town murmurs in a curling flow of words and joy, «and the days flew by like a handful of flowers flung to the sea wind.» The author must have had a lovely, light-hearted life, methinks.

The last one from Edith Wharton was at least readable - a comprehensible, quite modern language. And Wharton had at least not one of those awkward double-names. Why, the first thing a halfway emancipated female writer does is using her proper and only her proper name for publishing! Must have been dark times then. Yonder ... in the New World.

RELEASE NOTES:

Took it to the meet-up today. Thought it might finally remain on the Gloria shelf. But - whoosh - it disappeared, despite its rather boring cover ...