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REREADING: Sylvia's Secret
Feb. 27th, 2010 07:42 amRereading Sylvia's Secret
Sylvia's Secret A Tale of the West Indies: Bessie Marchant (Blackie)
I know I've read this book before, but I didn't remember anything about it, however everything seemed oh so familiar, because it is a generic Bessie Marchant adventure story, like the last one that I read, but didn't write about (The Unknown Island) on an exotic island, with a strand of racism that made me cringe. Halfway through, I went searching and found this article from the Dictionary of Literary Biography on Bessie Marchant. It contains some biographical details and an overview of her (numerous) books, using a few as examples.
These quotes stayed with me and influenced the rest of the reread:
Women are weak, yet capable, in these novels, and in that paradox contemporary readers can see something of the flux that women's roles were in during the first part of the twentieth century.
and
Marchant's readers could not have taken her novels seriously. They are at best escapist melodramas, filled with outrageous coincidences, offering the young women who read them safe, uplifting adventures that seemed exotic but which were, in actuality, not at all far from home.
( Read more... )
Sylvia's Secret A Tale of the West Indies: Bessie Marchant (Blackie)
I know I've read this book before, but I didn't remember anything about it, however everything seemed oh so familiar, because it is a generic Bessie Marchant adventure story, like the last one that I read, but didn't write about (The Unknown Island) on an exotic island, with a strand of racism that made me cringe. Halfway through, I went searching and found this article from the Dictionary of Literary Biography on Bessie Marchant. It contains some biographical details and an overview of her (numerous) books, using a few as examples.
These quotes stayed with me and influenced the rest of the reread:
Women are weak, yet capable, in these novels, and in that paradox contemporary readers can see something of the flux that women's roles were in during the first part of the twentieth century.
and
Marchant's readers could not have taken her novels seriously. They are at best escapist melodramas, filled with outrageous coincidences, offering the young women who read them safe, uplifting adventures that seemed exotic but which were, in actuality, not at all far from home.
( Read more... )
