Here's
a book I had come to believe I'd never have the chance to read. It appeared,
along with four of Watson's five other novels, on my first Hopeless Wish List
back in 2013 (the fifth being, of course, the wonderful Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, reprinted by Persephone). None of
Watson's other books are available much of anywhere outside of national
libraries, and copies come up for sale only rarely and at extravagant prices (a
copy of Watson's debut, Fell Top,
recently came up at just over $100—somewhat tempting, even at that price, I
confess, especially with its intact dustjacket, but I resisted).
So
thrilled doesn't half describe my feelings (not to mention astonished) when
Kelsey, a very kind and generous reader of this blog, emailed me a few weeks
ago and asked if I'd like to borrow her copy of Watson's second novel, Odd Shoes (1936). Wouldn't I just! Although
my TBR list as it stands will take about 20 years to read through, I had to
bump this right to the top, and Kelsey's book had a nice little jaunt to San
Francisco out of the deal. (By the way, you can read Kelsey's own Goodreads
review of the book here.)
I
wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading. Watson's Guardian obit, one of the only sources
of information about her work, called Fell-Top
"a steamy, rustic novel in the Precious
Bane mould" and referred to Odd
Shoes as "similarly racy." And racy it must indeed have seemed in
the mid-1930s. In its way, Odd Shoes
makes Lady Chatterley's Lover look
tame (except that Watson avoids the four-letter words Lawrence enjoyed so
much). But in fact it's far more subtle, intelligent, and compassionate than
any ordinary potboiler, and it's one of only a handful of novels I know of from
the period that focus in any explicit and honest way on female sexuality. For
the most part, women in Watson's story are the desirers, not merely the objects
of desire as they are in so many other authors' work.
A beautiful photo of Watson from the Persephone Post a few weeks back |
Set
in the mid 19th century, Odd Shoes
focuses centrally on Ann MacDonald, whose illegitimate birth, as well as the
preachings of a fanatical Scotch minister in her youth, have constrained what
is otherwise a passionate nature. In the course of Ann's story, more or less
from birth until old age, we come to know Ann as a challenging, conflicted,
often difficult, but ultimately lovable character. But we also get vivid
portraits of an array of other women. There is, for instance, a brief glimpse,
just at the beginning of the novel, of Ann's unrepentent mother, who thoroughly
enjoyed the lovemaking that made her an unmarried mother. And there's Mrs
Lorton, the gruff but soft-hearted woman whose companion Ann becomes in
Newcastle, and whose eventual legacy helps Ann—along with her tame but loving
husband Edward—set up their business.
Ann's
daughter Elizabeth figures prominently, married off at age seventeen to a wealthy
man more than twice her age, whom she initially adores (and has wonderful times
with in the boudoir, we gather) but whose jealousy and dominance wear thin over
time. Despite having been raised for strict moral standards by Ann, Elizabeth
has a mind of her own and, like the grandmother she's never known, sees no
shame in her sexual enjoyments.
There's
Emmeline, Elizabeth's sister-in-law, who, frustrated to be denied the freedoms her brother has, retreats into a loveless marriage of prestige and
prudery. And there's Lil, Ann's daughter-in-law, a vividly sexual former
prostitute who falls in love with Ann's son Ned, but whose love is based at
least as much on Ned's physical beauty as on his personality, a kind of
physical passion often portrayed in men but rarely in women. Intriguingly, Lil
embraces the opportunity to seize on the peaceful respectability Ned offers and
maintains a stubborn affection for Ann even in the face of Ann's disapproval.
The
style of Odd Shoes is surely intended
to evoke the novels of the 19th century in which it's set. George Eliot,
radical as she was for her day, might have been shocked by Watson's oversexed
heroines, but she would have been perfectly at home with the novel's style and
scope. But although the novel is set in the mid 19th century (presumably to
allow Watson to show her extraordinarily liberated women rebelling against the
oppression of their time—there's a fabulous and unintentionally [or perhaps not?]
double-entendre reference to one of the women being "damned by her
period"), there is remarkably little historical detail to anchor the story.
Apart from some references to the American Civil War late in the book, one
knows nothing of what's going on in the outside world, except that society is
moralizing and prudish.
Along
the same lines, it's not entirely
realistic that all of these lusty, independent-minded, self-aware feminists
were grouped in a single family in the middle of 19th century England. But Watson
certainly seems to be having fun with her fantasizing, projecting the
sensibilities of a 1930s author (fairly radical even for the 30s, really) onto
women of an earlier period and imagining how they would have disrupted and
disturbed everyone around them. And although her prose is a bit dry at times,
especially in the early chapters, with lots of summarizing of events that keeps
the reader at a distance rather than part of the action, something kept pulling
me compulsively forward. There are some glimpses of surprising wit (even just a
touch of Miss Pettigrew's wit and
energy in a couple of spots) and a general sense of the joys of life, even when
the characters are experiencing sorrow or pain.
There's
also a really satisfying, if slightly melancholy, ending that involves
significant growth for Ann, who has tended throughout the novel to set herself rather
narcissistically at the center of everything—first as the self-righteous
guardian of everyone else's morality, and then, following a pivotal event, as
the martyr who sees other people's failures as entirely due to her own
influence. It's delightful to meet, at the end of the book, a rather more
subdued and cheerful Ann who doesn't have to be the arbiter of the world.
When
I was first bemoaning the lack of availability of Watson's novels, Nicola
Beauman assured me in an email that I wasn't missing much, and I can quite see
why. Odd Shoes is not a novel many
people would find a "must read," and it's nothing like the
effervescent joy of Miss Pettigrew.
But it's nevertheless a striking novel and perhaps a significant one in the
history of feminist fiction, and it's one I'm terribly glad to have had a
chance to read. Consider these snippets:
Ann
first discovering the sensual pleasures of married life:
Inarticulate in her exaltation and bitterly ashamed and
fearful in the aftermath, she uttered no word to Edward, nor ever tried to. She
may not always be strong enough to conquer the urgings of sin when the flesh
was weak, but never could she shame herself by admitting by word that such
sinfulness could be condoned by being acknowledged to its partner. Furthermore,
though her normal workaday self retained its maternal affection and solicitous
respect for Edward, this secret, terrifying self of hers harboured increasingly
a vague hostility to its bedmate, a resentment verging in her blacker moments
of reaction almost on hatred and compounded of a shrinking from a contact which,
even when it roused her to response, could seldom sweep her onward to
satisfaction, commingled with a morbid horror of the tempter who could lure her
wanton body into the paths of sin.
And
Elizabeth's similar discovery, accompanied by a shockingly immodest discontent
that Ann hadn't prepared her for it:
Richard's delicacy had been rewarded. Sex had come to her as a
miraculous discovery, and she had thrilled to the attainment of heights of
emotional intensity and nervous ecstasy unsuspected hitherto. Her outlook was free
of the taint of prudery and unsullied by the sniggers of pubescent ignorance,
and in her tranquil daydreams she had been aware of a feeling of puzzled
protest against what seemed to have been a conspiracy of silence. She had come
to the opinion that it would have been better had she known a little about it.
She dimly realized Richard's forbearance and knew that had she known only a
little of what her own body was capable, she might have been a less difficult
bride. Ann's surprising recoil of shock was the first suggestion she received
that people might consider wicked what she had discovered was an enchanting,
experience. She did not mean to be condemnatory. She merely sought an explanation
for the failure to enlighten her beforehand. She thought about so important an
experience she should have been warned.
Here's
the status quo of the Wainwright family, into which Elizabeth marries:
The women opened bazaars, visited surrounding country houses,
held afternoon 'At homes' and were pillars of the church. The men had their
professions and Richard had his business. The men had also, be it added, their
hours of privacy, never questioned by their womenfolk, when they moved in
spheres remote from the ken of well-bred ladies and when they indulged in the
more refined vices of the town. But always in a gentlemanly fashion; and only
in sufficient degree to gratify the robust desires of manhood and never, of course,
in such a manner that the ears of their women could catch any distasteful
echoes. The Wainwright women of the thirties and forties were hardly supposed to
be able to understand the words which described the various shades and meanings
of immorality, and the men knew what circumspection befitted the dignity and
respect of their family status.
And
here's the rather wonderful Lil—how often have you seen, in this time period, a
woman taking this sort of pleasure in a man's body, as opposed to the other way
around?:
She rested her hands on his hips and stood a moment looking at
him. His body was so beautiful it was pure delight only to gaze at him.
Necessity had forced her into contact with so many that were the reverse of enchanting
that it was sheer joy to her that her lover should be perfect.
'You are so beautiful. See! Your hips, your thighs, your
chest, your arms. I love every bit of you.'
She touched, with a slow, caressing movement, each part of him
as she spoke, then ran her hands slowly up his body and over his breasts till
they linked round his throat, when she reached and gave him a last kiss.
Here
are complex, conflicted, passionate women who could walk right off the page, as
opposed to the male fantasies of women usually portrayed in "racy"
fiction.
So,
am I still ready to seek out Watson's other four novels? I think I can leave Fell Top alone for the time being, and
as I've never been able to find out anything about her third novel, Upyonder, I'm not actively pursuing it
either. But I think, when I finally get round to a new Hopeless Wish List (I'm
working on it—really I am) I'll have to leave the other two in place. The Guardian called Hop Step and Jump, published in 1939, the same year as Miss Pettigrew:
another variant on the Cinderella theme, in which a young,
working-class woman abandons her husband, becomes a kept woman to better
herself, and finally marries a lower-middle-class man, the upper-middle-class
ex-lover having, meanwhile, arranged her divorce and taken on the ex-husband as
a chauffeur.
Hmmm.
I think I'm game. And although it could be a delight or a trainwreck, I'm
definitely game for Watson's final novel, Leave
and Bequeath (1943) which, the Guardian
said, "marked another change of direction, being part murder-mystery
and part psychological study." If it's set at the time it was published,
it's practically worth a trip to the British Library...
Persephone's
bio of Watson mentions that she "stopped writing not long after the birth
of her son in 1941." Her Guardian
obit provides additional detail:
But then disaster stuck. By now happily married, and with a
small son, Keith, Winifred was bombed out of her home, and had to move into
cramped conditions in her mother-in-law's house, where she found it impossible
to write. "One cannot write," she said to me, "if one is never
alone."
What
other treasures might we have had if child-rearing and war hadn't got in Watson's
way?
Thanks
so much to Kelsey for sharing this fascinating book with me!
I think Leave and Bequeath is definitely worth reading. It's rather conventional as a country house murder mystery, with prospective heirs dancing attendance round a rich, eccentric old woman who's then bumped off. Too bad, since she's the liveliest character, reminiscent of the actress in Miss Pettigrew. The rest of the cast are fairly grim, as befits the moment Watson wrote in. It's definitely thick with mid-WWII mood, and a Luftwaffe air raid abets the dénouement. Oddly (in view of what you reveal about Watson's living conditions at the time) the book is dedicated to its author's mother-in-law.
ReplyDeleteGrant Hurlock
That does sound fascinating, Grant, even if it might not be an absolute favorite overall. I'll certainly keep it on my wish list, however hopeless!
DeleteThanks too for sharing that dedication. Hopefully that means that she got on well with her mother-in-law, even if one might ideally prefer not to have to share her house!
Hi there, I think that this might be my great aunt? Do you know of any biography on her?
Delete