The Hours ~ by Michael Cunningham, 1998

I finished reading The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1998) today and can't say I particularly like this book. Is that faint praise, or what? I do like the writing, like this description of water on page 9:

"...at the edge of the pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths."

On the other hand, it was hard for me to keep the three protagonists straight in my mind. When I was over halfway through the book, I finally decided to jot down on paper what I knew about them -- Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Woolf, and Mrs. Brown, as each section is labeled.

Clarissa Vaughan was nicknamed "Mrs. Dalloway" by her friend Richard. She lives in New York City in the 1990s.

Virginia Woolf is in the process of writing the book Mrs. Dalloway. She is living in a suburb of London, and it is 1923.

Laura Brown, who is reading Mrs. Dalloway, is the mother of a boy named Richie. She lives in Los Angeles in 1949.

So the reader must keep in mind three women, three towns, and three historical periods.  All three are planning parties of one sort or another -- Mrs. Dalloway (Clarissa) is planning a party for her friend Richard who is getting an award for his poetry; Mrs. Woolf is planning lunch for her sister Vanessa and her children; Mrs. Brown is planning a family party for her husband's birthday, which includes baking him a cake.  She is so unhappy with the cake that she throws it in the garbage and bakes another one.  Still not happy, she gets someone to babysit with her son Richie and drives off, going nowhere in particular (there's a lot of that going on in the book).  She checks into a hotel to read her book (don't ask -- it's complicated).  Don't forget that the book she's reading is Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

Here is her room then:  a turquoise room, not surprising or unusual in any way, with a turquoise spread on the double bed ... She is so far away from her life.  It was so easy.  It seems, somehow, that she has left her own world and entered the realm of the book.  Nothing could be further from Mrs. Dalloway's London than this turquoise hotel room..." (pp. 149-150).

See how it gets confusing? I had to stop and think if "Mrs. Dalloway" referred to the book, to the Mrs. Dalloway character in the book she's reading, or to the protagonist of THIS book who is sometimes called "Mrs. Dalloway" by her friend. And what's with the turquoise? It was only when I copied this quote from the book that I noticed the color is the same as the water (see the first quote above). I started wondering if the color turquoise had some special meaning, but if it did I didn't discover it.

Richard, the friend of "Mrs. Dalloway" (who is actually Clarissa, which is the name of the protagonist in Virginia Woolf's book), does something at the end of the book that seems crazy. As I try, now, to figure out the meaning of the ending, I can't help wondering if the author wants us to blame the women in his life. Can we? Should we? Did he? Did they blame themselves?

Rated: 7 of 10, because I'll probably think about this one for awhile. Some of the images will continue to run through my mind, but not a one of them is turquoise.

"Sister Suffragette"

Have you ever heard of Emmeline Pankhurst?

No?  Well, my history textbooks didn't mention her, either, but that's not surprising.  Women weren't usually mentioned in my history classes, back in the 1940s and 1950s, unless as the "wife of" -- a king or a president, maybe.  But if you've ever seen the 1964 movie "Mary Poppins," you've at least heard the name "Missus Pankhurst," as the song writer called her.  Let me refresh your memory with this short clip, and then I'll tell you the story of Emmaline Pankhurst.



"Well done"? Okay, eventually women did get the right to vote (in 1920 in the United States). But was it worth all the pain and suffering?  (If the video quits working, click here.)  Take a look at this photo of "the militant campaigner for women's suffrage, Emmeline Pankhurst, being arrested outside Buckingham Palace, London, May 1914."

The blurb I read added, "A short time previously she had been released from prison after serving less than a year of a three-year sentence for a series of arson attacks in 1913." That guy carrying her doesn't look like a Bobby to me. His hat and uniform look more like military. As I studied this photo, I went from thinking the man in the middle was yelling at her, to wondering if he's trying to tell the big fellow that he is HURTING the woman. Look at her face. Her pain is even more evident in the photo below, which seems to be the untouched-up original. I'm pretty sure you can enlarge the photo ABOVE by clicking on it.

I can't help but wonder if he is breaking some of her ribs, carrying her that way.  I wanted to know more about this interesting woman, who went right back into the fray even though she had spent most of a year jailed for her activism.  I know that I am not that brave.  Wikipedia has a very long article about her, beginning with this:

Emmeline Pankhurst (née Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement, which won women the right to vote. In 1999, Time named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating: "she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back."

As part of the Women Unbound reading challenge, I've been reading a lot about women fighting for their rights.  About a hundred years ago, Emmeline Pankhurst was doing all she could to gain the vote for women.  The period from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, when women in England and the United States were trying to get voting rights, is considered the "first wave" of feminism.  Wikipedia has this definition of the word:

"The term feminism can be used to describe a political, cultural, or economic movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women."

The "second wave" began in the early 1960s and lasted through the late 1980s.  Some scholars say the second wave continues to exist alongside the "third wave" of feminism, which has already begun.  I was called a Women's Libber during the "second wave" because I dared to speak up about sexism and the fact that women made less than men for doing the same work and could be told with impunity, "We don't hire women to do that."  It didn't matter if women could do the job, maybe even better than the man hired.  We were told, "Men have to support their families."

My question for this week is, Was the fight worth it?  I ask because when women got the right to vote, most of them (I've read) voted the way their husbands did.  I don't think that is necessarily the case today, but after the pain "Missus Pankhurst" went through, don't you think we ought to take advantage of our right to vote?  Why do so many stay home on voting days, especially if the weather isn't perfect?  So I ask, Was it worth it?

Read more about Emmeline Pankhurst by clicking on her name.
__________

UPDATE:  I have found a BBC News photo of this event, taken from a different angle!

♫♪.•* Merry *•♪♫♪•* Christmas *•♫♪

My great-granddaughter Raegan (7 months old).



My youngest grandchild Cady (9 years old).



My daughter Barbara's family ~ Barbara, Cady, Bonnie, Chase, Cali. (Son-in-law Greg was working yesterday.)



My daughter Sandra's family ~ Jamey, Sandra, Bonnie, Kenzie, Raegan, Michael (Kenzie's husband). (Son-in-law Pat had left to pick up his mother.)



My son David's family ~ Brandy, David, Bonnie, Sharon. (Grandson Kendall and his wife Whitney weren't there, because he had to work yesterday.)

NOTE: I should give the ages of ALL my grandchildren: Kendall (23), Cali (22), Brandy (21), Kenzie (19), Chase (18), Jamey (16), and Cady (9).

A Bookshelf of Our Own ~ a different kind of teaser

Yesterday I picked up another book from the library: A Bookshelf of Our Own by Deborah G. Felder (2005). Felder selected "the fifty most important and admired books by and about women." These books, she says, have defined and shaped our experiences since the Middle Ages. Maria Kochis, in her review for Library Journal, said, "Stretching across the millennium, these works of literature have made the case for female autonomy and helped lay the groundwork for modern-day feminism." I haven't read the book yet, obviously, but I'm curious about her selections.

I NEED YOUR HELP

Here are the fifty books she chose, many of which I have read.  There's a second list of Felder's "Honorable Mentions."  Pick one (or more) of these and tell me how the book was meaningful to you.  You are welcome to tell me how many you have read, if you want to, but I'm especially interested in how any of these books may have shaped any of us, personally.  Is there a book you think should have been listed?  Tell us why.  I'll even write something in the comments myself, after I look over the list and think about it.

Felder's Fifty

The Tale of Genji ~ by Murasaki Shikibu
The Book of the City of Ladies ~ by Christine de Pisan
The Princess of Cleves ~ by Madame de La Fayette
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ~ by Mary Wollstonecraft
Emma ~ by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre ~ by Charlotte Bronte
The Scarlet Letter ~ by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Madame Bovary ~ by Gustave Falubert
Little Women ~ by Louisa May Alcott
Middlemarch ~ by George Eliot
Anna Karenina ~ by Leo Tolstoy
A Doll's House ~ by Henrik Ibsen
Tess of the d'Urbervilles ~ by Thomas Hardy
The Yellow Wallpaper ~ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Awakening ~ by Kate Chopin
The House of Mirth ~ by Edith Wharton
My Antonia ~ by Willa Cather
Cheri ~ by Colette
A Room of One's Own ~ by Virginia Woolf
Gone with the Wind ~ by Margaret Mitchell
Gaudy Night ~ by Dorothy L. Sayers
Their Eyes Were Watching God ~ by Zora Neale Hurston
The Diary of a Young Girl ~ by Anne Frank
The Second Sex ~ by Simone de Beauvoir
Century of Struggle: The Women's Rights Movement in the United States ~ by Eleanor Flexner
The Little Disturbances of Man ~ by Grace Paley
The Golden Notebook ~ by Doris Lessing
The Feminine Mystique ~ by Betty Friedan
The Bell Jar ~ by Sylvia Plath
Wide Sargasso Sea ~ by Jean Rhys
Sexual Politics ~ by Kate Millett
Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement ~ compiled and edited by Robin Morgan
The Female Eunuch ~ by Germaine Greer
Black Women in White America: A Documentary History ~ compiled and edited by Gerda Lerner
From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies ~ by Molly Haskell
Fear of Flying ~ by Erica Jong
Against Our Will ~ by Susan Brownmiller
Looking for Mr. Goodbar ~ by Judith Rossner
The Woman Warrior ~ by Maxine Hong Kingston
Of Woman Born ~ by Adrienne Rich
The Women's Room ~ by Marilyn French
Silences ~ by Tillie Olsen
Women, Race & Class ~ by Angela Davis
The House of the Spirits ~ by Isabel Allende
Beloved ~ by Toni Morrison
The Shawl ~ by Cynthia Ozick
Backlash ~ by Susan Faludi
The Beauty Myth ~ by Naomi Wolf
Bridget Jones's Diary ~ by Helen Fielding
The Bitch in the House ~ compiled and edited by Cathi Hanauer

Honorable Mentions

Twenty Years at Hull House ~ by Jane Addams
Bastard Out of Carolina ~ by Dorothy E. Allison
Kinflicks ~ by Lisa Alther
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents ~ by Julia Alvarez
The Handmaid's Tale ~ by Margaret Atwood
Pride and Prejudice ~ by Jane Austen
Persuasion ~ by Jane Austen
The Death of the Heart ~ by Elizabeth Bowen
Villette ~ by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights ~ by Emily Bronte
Rubyfruit Jungle ~ by Rita Mae Brown
Pavilion of Women ~ by Pearl Buck
Evelina ~ by Fanny Burney
The Three Sisters ~ by Anton Chekhov
The House on Mango Street ~ by Sandra Cisneros
Happy All the Time ~ by Laurie Colwin
The Hours ~ by Michael Cunningham
Life in the Iron Mills ~ by Rebecca Harding Davis
Moll Flanders ~ by Daniel Defoe
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ~ by Annie Dillard
Rebecca ~ by Daphne du Maurier
Cold Mountain ~ by Charles Frazier
The Second Stage ~ by Betty Friedan
The Fountain of Age ~ by Betty Friedan
Women in the Nineteenth Century ~ by Margaret Fuller
Wives and Daughters ~ by Elizabeth Gaskell
In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development ~ by Carol Gilligan
Burgher's Daughter ~ Nadine Gordimer
Writing a Woman's Life ~ by Carolyn Heilbrun
The Children's Hour ~ by Lillian Hellman
Frida ~ by Hayden Herrera
The Portrait of a Lady ~ by Henry James
At the Bottom of the River ~ by Jamaica Kincaid
Interpreter of Maladies ~ by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Women ~ Clare Booth Luce
The Group ~ by Mary McCarthy
The Member of the Wedding ~ by Carson McCullers
'Night Mother ~ by Marsha Norman
them ~ by Joyce Carol Oates
Popcorn Venus ~ by Marjorie Rosen
The Magnificent Spinster ~ by May Sarton
Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen ~ by Alix Kates Shulman
A Thousand Acres ~ by Jane Smiley
The Joy Luck Club ~ by Amy Tan
Breathing Lessons ~ by Anne Tyler
How I Learned to Drive ~ by Paula Vogel
The Color Purple ~ by Alice Walker
The Heidi Chronicles ~ by Wendy Wasserstein
Delta Wedding ~ by Eudora Welty
Mrs. Dalloway ~ by Virginia Woolf

Question of the Week ~ same-sex marriage

With respect to marriage, the government should: a) Recognize marriage only between a man and a woman. b) Recognize both traditional and same-sex marriage. c) Get out of the marriage business, and leave it to private associations.
a.
b.
c.

(Click to enlarge image below.)

When Everything Changed ~ a teaser

Today's teaser is from page 242 of When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins, 2009.

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg applied for a Supreme Court clerkship and Justice Felix Frankfurter rejected her after asking, 'Does she wear skirts? I can't stand girls in pants'."

Question of the Week ~ patriotism

“Patriotism is not a virtue but a vice, a prejudice in favor of one’s own kind that we should try to overcome.” Do you agree?