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Book Review: Extraordinary Women
May. 13th, 2022 07:22 amA couple of facts about Compton Mackenzie’s Extraordinary Women: I read it because Mary Renault recommended it in her afterword to The Friendly Young Ladies (in which she panned The Well of Loneliness), and Compton Mackenzie wrote it after becoming acquainted with the lesbian social circle on Capri (Sirene in the book) when his wife had an affair with one of the members.
I don’t know if that particular woman was the basis for Rosalba Donsante, who spends the book seducing her way across Sirene and disrupting relationships between scads of women in the process, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Mixed feelings about this book! Parts of it I really liked: it offers a vivid sense of place, both in its beautiful descriptions of its gorgeous island setting and its incisive eye for its social milieu. (In this sense it reminds me of Jane Austen, if she turned her sarcasm up to 10 and kept it there for the whole book). It has a sense of humor, something The Well of Loneliness notably lacked. (Could an author with a sense of humor call a book The Well of Loneliness with a straight face?) And unlike Stephen and her invert friends, who spend most of The Well of Loneliness tormented by qualms of conscience about their sexuality and gender identity, the characters here are blessedly unbothered.
However, this is because the only character who visibly possesses any kind of conscience is Rory Freemantle, a ridiculous person who spends most of the book convinced that she’s having an epic love affair with Rosalba, when in fact Rosalba has the emotional depth of a puddle and is basically mooching off Rory for money. (I’m fairly sure Rory Freemantle is based on Radclyffe Hall, who I devoutly hope never read this book.) Otherwise the characters have the morals of goldfish.
It’s very 1920s - very reminiscent of, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, that same sense of post-war nihilism and ennui. You could read this as a commentary on the characters’ sexuality, but in fact the men (straight and otherwise) who occasionally drift into the narrative are exactly the same, only even more easily misled by Rosalba’s flirtations. (She doesn’t seem to have any genuine interest in men, but they are occasionally useful pawns to make other women jealous.)
This, anyway, was how I felt for the first two-thirds of the book. The last third complicated my thoughts on the matter. ( Spoilers )
I don’t know if that particular woman was the basis for Rosalba Donsante, who spends the book seducing her way across Sirene and disrupting relationships between scads of women in the process, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Mixed feelings about this book! Parts of it I really liked: it offers a vivid sense of place, both in its beautiful descriptions of its gorgeous island setting and its incisive eye for its social milieu. (In this sense it reminds me of Jane Austen, if she turned her sarcasm up to 10 and kept it there for the whole book). It has a sense of humor, something The Well of Loneliness notably lacked. (Could an author with a sense of humor call a book The Well of Loneliness with a straight face?) And unlike Stephen and her invert friends, who spend most of The Well of Loneliness tormented by qualms of conscience about their sexuality and gender identity, the characters here are blessedly unbothered.
However, this is because the only character who visibly possesses any kind of conscience is Rory Freemantle, a ridiculous person who spends most of the book convinced that she’s having an epic love affair with Rosalba, when in fact Rosalba has the emotional depth of a puddle and is basically mooching off Rory for money. (I’m fairly sure Rory Freemantle is based on Radclyffe Hall, who I devoutly hope never read this book.) Otherwise the characters have the morals of goldfish.
It’s very 1920s - very reminiscent of, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, that same sense of post-war nihilism and ennui. You could read this as a commentary on the characters’ sexuality, but in fact the men (straight and otherwise) who occasionally drift into the narrative are exactly the same, only even more easily misled by Rosalba’s flirtations. (She doesn’t seem to have any genuine interest in men, but they are occasionally useful pawns to make other women jealous.)
This, anyway, was how I felt for the first two-thirds of the book. The last third complicated my thoughts on the matter. ( Spoilers )
