Abstract
This passage appears in A View of the Harbour, its anger tearing the text apart to reveal an uncharacteristic show of temper by its author, Elizabeth Taylor. It is also uncharacteristic of Beth, whose immersion in her fictional world precludes such a sharp view of male manipulation. Apart from its anger, it effectively states the dilemma any work outside the family presents for a woman, and is still as true today as when it was written in 1947.
‘A man,’ she thought, suddenly, ‘would consider this a business outing. But, then, a man would not have to cook the meals for the day overnight, nor consign his child to a friend, nor leave half-done the ironing, nor forget the grocery order as I now discover I have forgotten it. The artfulness of men,’ she thought. ‘They implant in us, foster in us, instincts which it is to their advantage for us to have, and which, in the end, we feel shame at not possessing.’ She opened her eyes and glared with scorn at a middle-aged man reading a newspaper.
‘A man like that,’ she thought, ‘a worthless creature, obviously; yet so long has his kind lorded it that I (who, if only I could have been ruthless and single-minded about my work as men are, could have been a good writer) feel slightly guilty at not being back at the kitchen sink.’1
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Notes and References
Elizabeth Taylor, A View of the Harbour (London: Chatto & Windus, 1947. Reissued 1969) p. 176.
Patricia Stubbs, Women and Fiction. Feminism and the Novel 1880– 1920 (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1979) pp. 226–7.
Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination (London: Allen & Unwin, 1976) p. 318.
Kate O’Brien, As Music and Splendour (London: Heinemann, 1958. Reissued 1964).
Barbara Pym, Excellent Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980. First published in 1952).
Olivia Manning, The Doves of Venus (London: Virago, 1984. First published in 1955).
Susan Ertz, The Prodigal Heart (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1950. Book Club edition, 1951).
Susan Ertz, Charmed Circle (London: The Companion Book Club, 1957. First published by Collins).
Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek (London: Virago, 1986. First published in 1951).
Ibid, p. 60.
Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Beautiful Visit (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. First published in 1950).
Ibid, pp. 146–7.
See Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981) for a discussion of the possible reasons for Joan’s assumption of male clothing and her tenacity in refusing to give it up.
Surprising because Elizabeth Jane Howard stated categorically that she did not write about ‘social issues or values’. Quoted in James Vinson, Contemporary Novelists (London and Chicago: St James Press, 1986, 4th edn) p. 440.
Elizabeth Taylor, Angel (London: Virago, 1984. First published in 1957).
Ibid, p. 249.
Taylor, A View of the Harbour, p. 36.
Ibid, p. 104.
Spacks, The Female Imagination. See especially the chapter on the woman as artist.
Elizabeth Taylor, The Sleeping Beauty (London: Virago, 1982. First published in 1953).
Elizabeth Taylor, Palladian (London: Virago, 1985. First published in 1946).
See Note 9, Chapter 1, above. Also see Germaine Greer, The Obstacle Race (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1979) for a description of the problems facing women painters.
Taylor, A View of the Harbour, p. 34.
A series of radio programmes on Radio 4 in May 1987. See Note 27, Chapter 1, above.
Elizabeth Taylor, A Wreath of Roses (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. First published in 1949).
Not just in her own time either. See, for example, a review of A View of the Harbour by ‘N.G.’ in Women’s Review, April 1987.
Sylvia Plath, Letters Home. Correspondence 1950–1963, ed. Aurelia Schober Plath (London: Faber, 1975). Quoted from a letter to Plath from Olive Prouty, 19 March 1957, p. 306.
Ibid. Letter to Plath’s mother, 25 November 1962, p. 477. Her mother’s letter, incidentally, was written at the time Sylvia’s marriage to Ted Hughes was breaking up.
Kate O’Brien, The Last of Summer (Dublin and London: Arlen & Martin Boyars, 1982. First published in 1943).
Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1958. Reissued 1979) p. 18.
A view expressed to me by more than one male member of the NAS to explain why women teachers’ promotion prospects were so much poorer than men’s. The attitude to male and female promotion in even the primary sector (where women outnumber men) was summed up in a speech I remember being given by a representative of the local education authority to final-year students in the early 1970s at my teacher-training college. Ignoring the women students, he turned to the significantly less numerous male students and promised them a brilliant future in the primary-school sector.
Florence Howe, ‘Feminism and Literature’, in Images of Women in Fiction. Feminist Perspectives, ed. Susan Koppelman Cornillon (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1973) pp. 253–77, see especially p. 256.
Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Spinster (London: Virago, 1980. First published in 1958).
Her autobiographical description of teaching is in Teacher (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1963).
Kate O’Brien, The Land of Spices (Bath: Cedric Chivers, 1970. First published in 1941).
Kate O’Brien, The Flower of May (Bath: Cedric Chivers, 1971. First published in 1953).
For example, Judy Chicago’s work and the re-evaluation of the art of quilting.
Taylor, Angel, p. 73.
Pym, Excellent Women.
Taylor, A Wreath of Roses.
Taylor, A View of the Harbour.
Taylor, The Sleeping Beauty, p. 37.
Elizabeth Jenkins, The Tortoise and the Hare (London: Virago, 1983. First published in 1954).
See Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing (London: Penguin, 1983) ch. 5, ‘The Double Standard of Content’, pp. 39–48.
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© 1989 Niamh Baker
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Baker, N. (1989). Women and work. In: Happily Ever After?. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20288-1_8
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