Janet Todd

The protagonist of this well-written, keenly observed, but occasionally tiresome novel is Ann St. Clair, a woman judged unusual for 1816–she’s independent. Ann earns a very modest living churning out Gothic novels, a supreme irony, given that she’s shy, shrinks from gory sights or bad smells, and swallows a hundred times more feelings than she expresses.

Nevertheless, this shrinking violet enjoys her freedom to go where she will, with whom, and to manage her own affairs, even as she show more realizes the price she pays. With no husband, father, or suitor, Ann has no male protector and is therefore an outlier, something that strikes her most vividly when she visits her kindly cousin Sarah, married and a mother several times over. Sarah believes that a woman’s place is in the home, but she doesn’t criticize her (marginally) more worldly cousin.

Enter Robert James, an Irish-born writer who has attracted a coterie of men who hang on his every word. Robert has written nothing except a poetic fragment titled Attila, and he has a gift for cruel mimicry, yet this earns him the title of genius, a mantle he assumes as his due. Ann, who has drifted into this circle—one of two women the group tolerates, though just barely—is thrilled that the great man has noticed her. So starved is she for attention that she willingly becomes his lover, even though he cares not one whit about pleasing her and grows more and more abusive with passing months. Attila, indeed.

If the subtitle were How to Create a Masochist, A Man of Genius would almost qualify as nonfiction. Ann’s mother has hated her from birth, literally slapping her for daring to open her mouth, while lionizing Gilbert, the father who died before the poor girl was born. So of course Ann finds the most criminally narcissistic man available, violent and sullen by turns, and attaches herself obsessively.

We’ve all known someone like Robert, but, I hope, have had the sense to avoid them and, even more important, the self-respect to resist their gravitational pull. Since masochists believe they have no gravity—or more precisely, that its laws benefit them only on sufferance—reading about such people drives me absolutely crazy. In fact, when I reached the rather too lengthy part when Robert spouts dull, pretentious drivel, and his friends lap it up, I realized that I’d tried reading A Man of Genius once before, and that this section had persuaded me to put the book aside.

But this time, I kept going and was rewarded. An ardent feminist, Todd has much to say about the peripheries in which women reside, either for safety’s sake or because men have displaced them from more comfortable, visible quarters. Yet she never pretends that by definition, women are superior, or men, evil, and she sketches out the limits of discourse and understanding between the sexes with a sure hand. The context is historical, yet you get the picture–not as much has changed as we might like to think.

Also, though Todd dares literary cliché by having her characters move to Venice to try to escape themselves, she describes that city so masterfully that you forget you’ve read a dozen other novels about it. Further, the trip to Venice prompts Ann to delve into secrets from her past, which kicks the storytelling into a higher gear, and whose twists and reversals keep you guessing until the end.

Where A Man of Genius falls short, I think, is the dynamic between Ann and Robert. I like novels that render each emotional moment with care—one reason I stayed with this one—but too often here, the psychological currents swirl in tight circles. Robert never gives Ann a reason to think that he cares for her or enjoys her company, for which she blames herself. I’d have believed this part more readily—and skimmed less—had he doled out morsels that tantalized her, only to withhold them otherwise.

That would have positioned Ann as coming back for more rather than holding onto nothing, and her self-blame would have been easier to swallow. It would have also made her initial attraction more plausible; other than her own pathology, I can’t figure out why she’d bother. show less

Don’t You Know There’s a War On? is a hard book to review. Ir is bracketed by a woman named Phyllis, a special friend of Maud, the daughter of Joan Kite, the diarist who writes down a bleak memoir at her daughter’s urging. Phyllis sets our expectations telling us Joan is a monster, but Joan, the monster is telling us her story.

Joan describes a loveless childhood with parents too in love with each other to have anything left for their daughter. Even later, after her father dies, her show more mother is too self-indulgent and vain to care about her daughter’s well-being. There seems to be one person who loved Joan, an aunt whom the rest of the family despised for her oddity, poverty, and unmarried state.

Joan comes of age during the privations of World War II while brought up strictly with a social-climbing mother whose strictures of what is proper will inhibit Joan for the rest of her life. After all, just once she is bullied by her cousin into trying to have some fun, and her world is turned upside down.

I struggle with Don’t You Know There’s a War On? Not because of the writing. It is lush and beautiful. Todd creates such a sense of place and time, it is almost dislocating to put the book down and see the contemporary world around me.

I think I like Joan more than I am supposed to despite her bitterness and selfishness. It is not hard to feel pity for the child and the young woman whose needs were so abominably served by her family. And yet, to her daughter, she is a monster. There are these revelations of love, little glimmers that never break through to tell Maud she is loved. Joan is always withholding and punishing, but so much of it is to spare her the pain she lived through. Much of Maud’s own withdrawal is explained by a horrific confession, one that Phyllis insists didn’t happen. And there’s is the difficulty for me, why do I feel so much sympathy for such a monster?

I received an ARC of Don’t You Know There’s a War On? from the publisher through Shelf Awareness

Don’t You Know There’s a War On? at Fentum Press
Janet Todd author site
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2020/07/29/9781909572072/ show less

La vita di questa scrittrice inglese, Aphra Behn, vissuta tra il 1640 e il 1689, poetessa, autrice di teatro e di romanzi, si legge proprio come un romanzo. Una donna che fu anche una instancabile viaggiatrice, oltre che una spia. In effetti, quest'ultima fu l'attività che, insieme alla scrittura, le diede un vero sostentamento per vivere. E' passata alla storia come la donna che, prima al mondo, si guadagnò da vivere scrivendo.

Leggendo la sua biografia mi ha fatto venire in mente quella show more di un'altra donna. Questa, oltre che scrittrice, fu anche femminista e rivoluzionaria, sempre inglese. Ha un posto importante nella storia della letteratura. Mia moglie scrisse su di lei la sua tesi a conclusione degli studi universitari.
Il suo nome è Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin. In un post su questo blog, la definii una iena col reggiseno. Il confronto con Aphra Behn mi pare sostenibile, pur con la distanza di un secolo.

Oltre che viaggiatrice, scrittrice, poetessa ed avventuriera, Aphra fu anche una spia nella sua pur breve esistenza. Virginia Woolf, altra famosa scrittrice inglese, non si lasciò sfuggire l'occasione di occuparsene scrivendo che "tuttte le donne dovrebbero portare fiori sulla tomba di Aphra in quanto fu lei ad insegnare alle donne a dire e a scrivere quello che pensano con la loro mente, ma anche a quello che fanno col loro corpo".

Un secolo prima della "iena" Mary, Aphra Behn, oltre che scrivere di poesia lirica, si occupò anche di temi in prosa e in versi erotici. Con tutta la possibile e franca sessualità indirizzata all'impotenza maschile, esaltando l'orgasmo femminile, ed anche le indeterminatezze che la stessa sessualità può comportare.

Siamo in piena Restaurazione inglese, è bene ricordarlo. Nesssun'altra donna avrebbe goduto per secoli di una libertà di questo tipo. Nel tempo da lei vissuto, si guadagnò la fama di un certo tipo di moderna poetessa "punk". In vita, i suoi contemporanei non la riconobbero come tale, una "teppista", ma soltanto come una poetessa.

Oltre ai suoi successi teatrali e narrativi, Aphra Behn fu una spia reale in Olanda e forse anche in America del Sud. Fu una propagandista alla corte di Carlo II e di suo fratello molto poco popolare Giacomo II. Venne coinvolta nei tanti conflitti tra l'Inghilterra e il Continente anche in connessione con il traffico degli schiavi nelle Americhe.

Mise su carta le sue molte straordinarie avventure ed esperienze quasi sempre in forma anonima, mescolando nella sua scrittura segreti, luci e oscurità, realtà e fantasie, in una maniera tale che chi legge non sa fare distinzioni. Sappiamo molte cose certe sul suo conto per quanto riguarda la carriera di scrittrice. Ben poco della sua vita reale. Il tempo della Restaurazione in cui visse conferma questa impressione.

La sua tecnica narrativa è tipicamente femminile nella percezione della realtà specialmente se la si vede in relazione con il rapporto con l'altro sesso. La sua scrittura è piena di esperimenti narrativi non solo in prosa ma anche in poesia. Dimostra di essere in grado di affrontare argomenti tanto diversi e contrastanti, come quelli che coinvolgono sgualdrine e libertini, quanto legati alla nobiltà ed alla politica.

Una mistura ed una mescolanza di trame a soggetto come è il caso del romanzo breve Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave che divenne tanto popolare da diventare anche una opera teatrale di grande successo. Un "cocktail" di interessi in cui il sesso sembra avere una parte importante sempre visto nell'eterno conflitto tra mente e corpo.

Quest'ultimo sembra avere spesso la meglio sulla prima, in un'atmosfera culturale in cui la scrittrice sembra come divertirsi a dimostrare quanto sia possibile sovvertire le idee di nobiltà, rango sociale e onore. Difficile addentrarsi nelle sue idee riguardanti la schiavitù, il gender, l'aristocrazia, la politica, le diversità linguistiche e culturali.

Temi ancora oggi molto moderni che trovarono facile interesse in una donna che senza dubbio sapeva "leggere" il suo tempo e taccontarlo a chi voleva conoscerlo, facendoci anche un profitto oltre che una ragione per scriverne. Molti studiosi hanno affermato che i suoi scritti contengono numerose contraddizioni sia politiche che morali e sociali.

Una vita certamente ai limiti, in un tempo quando le donne non avevano diritti. "Diritti" sui quali avrebbe scritto un secolo dopo la "iena in reggiseno" e sui quali, oggi, nessuna donna o uomo discute. Con o senza reggiseno ... show less

The central death in this study of the poet Shelley and his circle is the suicide of Fanny Wollstonecraft, half sister of Shelley's wife, Mary, author of Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. The second death is the suicide of Harriet, Shelley's first wife. Janet Todd's book is a study of the 'cult of the creative genius'. Shelley's famous claim that 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world' was acknowledged at least by the young women who sought liberation from the show more constricted circumstances of their own lives by association with his genius. He had also the advantages of birth, as a member of the minor aristocracy and the prospect of wealth, which allowed him access to virtually unlimited credit. Fanny and Harriet, whom he deserted and slandered, were the least among the minor planets in his orbit. Neither was particularly talented and poor Fanny was plain and scarred from childhood smallpox. She took her own life when it became apparent that she had no prospect of joining the charmed circle and that her life held, at best, the prospect of genteel poverty as a governess or teacher. It is a cruel tale, narrated with controlled compassion for poor Fanny and Harriet and an equally controlled appreciation of the demands of Shelley's selfish genius. Recent studies explore the relationship between creativity and the capacity to lie to oneself and others. Janet Todd's wonderful study of the Shelley circle can be read as an illustration of that particular thesis. show less