Book Review: A Daughter of To-Day
Mar. 10th, 2017 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI finished Sara Jeannette Duncan’s A Daughter of To-Day nearly a year ago, and have been meaning to write a review of it ever since, although I have been scuppered by the fact that there are too many things I like about it. It’s a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl book, and it meanders a bit at the beginning - in fact for about the first third; but when our heroine Elfrida meets another young girl artist, Janet, the book snaps into gear.
I’ve rarely seen a portrait of a friendship between two girls as well done as this one: they admire each other, they’re very fond of each other, and yet their understandings of art and human relationships are so at odds that despite their affection, their friendship is difficult and painful for them both.
At one point, for instance, Janet goes on holiday in Scotland, and they agree to exchange letters with each other. Elfrida writes marvelously artistic letters - when she feels like it; “when she was not in the mood she did not write at all. With an instinctive recognition of the demands of any relation such as she felt her friendship to Janet Cardiff to be, she simply refrained from imposing upon her anything that savored of dullness or commonplaceness.
So the fact that she sometimes writes just three lines, and sometimes doesn’t write for three weeks, is meant to be a tribute to Janet as an artist: they’re both above such conventionalities as writing regular missives.
But Janet, although she is just as talented as Elfrida (and I think one of the triumphs of the book is the recognition that the difference here is not one of talent but of temperament, or perhaps upbringing), can’t understand this: She wished, more often than she said she did, that Elfrida were a little more human, that she had a more appreciative understanding of the warm value of common every-day matters between people who were interested in one another.
In Janet’s eyes, their friendship demands a willingness to exchange exactly the sort of commonplace news - and to see it as interesting, rather than dull - that Elfrida feels they ought to be above.
Inwardly she cried out for something warm and human that was lacking to Elfrida’s feeling for her, and sometimes she asked herself with a grieved cynicism how her friend found it worth while to pretend to care so cleverly.
And Elfrida - although the book, which is almost entirely in her point of view in the first half, has moved out of it by this time - clearly feels a sort of mirror image of the same thing: Janet is too bound by the conventionalities to enter into Elfrida’s conception of art; she may be fond of Elfrida, in her way, but to Elfrida there’s always something lacking in that friendship, always something that Janet is reserving. They like each other - like may not even be a strong enough word; they are charmed by each other, enchanted by each other - but they can’t quite approve of each other.
And it is this, more than anything else, that destroys their friendship - although of course Kendal, a young male artist of their acquaintance, also plays a role. It is apparently impossible to write about girls’ friendship without having them both fall for the same boy at the same time, or at least without Elfrida falling for the idea that Kendal is bewitched by her and Janet falling for him.
But even this subplot has its compensations.
Once when Kendal seemed to Janet on the point of asking her what she thought of his chances, she went to a florist’s in the High, and sent Elfrida a pot of snowy chrysanthemums, after which she allowed herself to refrain from seeing her for a week. Her talk with her father about helping Elfrida to place her work with the magazines had been one of the constant impulses by which she tried to compensate her friend, as it were, for the amount of suffering that young woman was inflicting upon her - she would have found a difficulty in explaining it more intelligibly than that.
I have done this - not in exactly the same situation, but still, the same idea, trying to assuage my conscience by doing something nice for someone I am angry at because I know my anger is not exactly fair. I'm not sure I've ever seen this portrayed in a book before.
But getting back to things that bother me about this book, there’s the ending.
Elfrida is, in her way, a New Woman, and as we all know there’s only one end for New Women in books of the 1890s: DEATH. Or marriage. But usually death, and death it is in Elfrida’s case. She commits suicide using poison that she’s carried around with her in “a clumsy silver ring...square and thick in the middle, bearing deep-cut Sanskrit letters.”
Yes. Elfrida has the world’s most theatrical suicide ring. Which she loves to show off to her artist friends! None of whom are like “Hey, Elfrida, maybe it’s not a good idea to carry around a suicide ring at all times.” Admittedly she never shows it to Janet, who would probably find it Highly Alarming, being far too conventional to go in for lines like “When I am quite tired of it all I shall use this, I think. My idea is that it’s weak to wait until you can’t help it. Besides, I could never bear to become - less attractive than I am now.”
Although honestly in between the World’s Most Theatrical Suicide Ring and the fatuousness of a statement like “I could never bear to become less attractive than I am now,” no wonder her artist friends treat this as an affectation rather than a serious statement of suicidal intent. One of the things that makes Elfrida interesting is that in a sense she is always posing - even to herself she’s posing - but she’s trying to figure out who she is through that posing, and it is sincere and authentic even though it makes her seem false to everyone else.
In any case. For the most part I’ve become hardened to characters committing suicide in this type of book, because it’s usually so obviously a result of the fact that the author’s got no idea how else to wrap things up. (I’m not sure why Nathaniel Hawthorne didn’t feel he could just leave Zenobia be at the end of The Blithedale Romance, but clearly he felt that having her dash about the world in all her single glory was simply A Bridge Too Far.) And to a certain extent, the ending of A Daughter of To-Day falls in this pattern.
But on the other hand, I believe in Elfrida’s suicide in a way that I don’t believe in Zenobia’s. It’s narratively convenient, sure, but it nonetheless feels like something she would do - although I’m not sure why; we do spend most of the first half of the book in her head, and suicide ring aside she never gives the impression of being depressed, let alone suicidal.
But we do slip away from her in the second half, and I think what makes it feel plausible is that - if Elfrida did become depressed - she wouldn’t tell anyone; that would doubtless count as a dull commonplaceness in her mind. And she loses, in a perfect storm of events, all the things that prop up her belief that she is not dull and commonplace herself: a nasty rejection of her first book undercuts her belief in her talent, and she loses almost simultaneously her belief in Kendal’s regard and Janet’s friendship - although that’s not really lost; and Janet, coming to apologize and try to patch up the friendship, is the one who finds Elfrida’s body.
Even rereading it a year later, it still hurts.
I’ve rarely seen a portrait of a friendship between two girls as well done as this one: they admire each other, they’re very fond of each other, and yet their understandings of art and human relationships are so at odds that despite their affection, their friendship is difficult and painful for them both.
At one point, for instance, Janet goes on holiday in Scotland, and they agree to exchange letters with each other. Elfrida writes marvelously artistic letters - when she feels like it; “when she was not in the mood she did not write at all. With an instinctive recognition of the demands of any relation such as she felt her friendship to Janet Cardiff to be, she simply refrained from imposing upon her anything that savored of dullness or commonplaceness.
So the fact that she sometimes writes just three lines, and sometimes doesn’t write for three weeks, is meant to be a tribute to Janet as an artist: they’re both above such conventionalities as writing regular missives.
But Janet, although she is just as talented as Elfrida (and I think one of the triumphs of the book is the recognition that the difference here is not one of talent but of temperament, or perhaps upbringing), can’t understand this: She wished, more often than she said she did, that Elfrida were a little more human, that she had a more appreciative understanding of the warm value of common every-day matters between people who were interested in one another.
In Janet’s eyes, their friendship demands a willingness to exchange exactly the sort of commonplace news - and to see it as interesting, rather than dull - that Elfrida feels they ought to be above.
Inwardly she cried out for something warm and human that was lacking to Elfrida’s feeling for her, and sometimes she asked herself with a grieved cynicism how her friend found it worth while to pretend to care so cleverly.
And Elfrida - although the book, which is almost entirely in her point of view in the first half, has moved out of it by this time - clearly feels a sort of mirror image of the same thing: Janet is too bound by the conventionalities to enter into Elfrida’s conception of art; she may be fond of Elfrida, in her way, but to Elfrida there’s always something lacking in that friendship, always something that Janet is reserving. They like each other - like may not even be a strong enough word; they are charmed by each other, enchanted by each other - but they can’t quite approve of each other.
And it is this, more than anything else, that destroys their friendship - although of course Kendal, a young male artist of their acquaintance, also plays a role. It is apparently impossible to write about girls’ friendship without having them both fall for the same boy at the same time, or at least without Elfrida falling for the idea that Kendal is bewitched by her and Janet falling for him.
But even this subplot has its compensations.
Once when Kendal seemed to Janet on the point of asking her what she thought of his chances, she went to a florist’s in the High, and sent Elfrida a pot of snowy chrysanthemums, after which she allowed herself to refrain from seeing her for a week. Her talk with her father about helping Elfrida to place her work with the magazines had been one of the constant impulses by which she tried to compensate her friend, as it were, for the amount of suffering that young woman was inflicting upon her - she would have found a difficulty in explaining it more intelligibly than that.
I have done this - not in exactly the same situation, but still, the same idea, trying to assuage my conscience by doing something nice for someone I am angry at because I know my anger is not exactly fair. I'm not sure I've ever seen this portrayed in a book before.
But getting back to things that bother me about this book, there’s the ending.
Elfrida is, in her way, a New Woman, and as we all know there’s only one end for New Women in books of the 1890s: DEATH. Or marriage. But usually death, and death it is in Elfrida’s case. She commits suicide using poison that she’s carried around with her in “a clumsy silver ring...square and thick in the middle, bearing deep-cut Sanskrit letters.”
Yes. Elfrida has the world’s most theatrical suicide ring. Which she loves to show off to her artist friends! None of whom are like “Hey, Elfrida, maybe it’s not a good idea to carry around a suicide ring at all times.” Admittedly she never shows it to Janet, who would probably find it Highly Alarming, being far too conventional to go in for lines like “When I am quite tired of it all I shall use this, I think. My idea is that it’s weak to wait until you can’t help it. Besides, I could never bear to become - less attractive than I am now.”
Although honestly in between the World’s Most Theatrical Suicide Ring and the fatuousness of a statement like “I could never bear to become less attractive than I am now,” no wonder her artist friends treat this as an affectation rather than a serious statement of suicidal intent. One of the things that makes Elfrida interesting is that in a sense she is always posing - even to herself she’s posing - but she’s trying to figure out who she is through that posing, and it is sincere and authentic even though it makes her seem false to everyone else.
In any case. For the most part I’ve become hardened to characters committing suicide in this type of book, because it’s usually so obviously a result of the fact that the author’s got no idea how else to wrap things up. (I’m not sure why Nathaniel Hawthorne didn’t feel he could just leave Zenobia be at the end of The Blithedale Romance, but clearly he felt that having her dash about the world in all her single glory was simply A Bridge Too Far.) And to a certain extent, the ending of A Daughter of To-Day falls in this pattern.
But on the other hand, I believe in Elfrida’s suicide in a way that I don’t believe in Zenobia’s. It’s narratively convenient, sure, but it nonetheless feels like something she would do - although I’m not sure why; we do spend most of the first half of the book in her head, and suicide ring aside she never gives the impression of being depressed, let alone suicidal.
But we do slip away from her in the second half, and I think what makes it feel plausible is that - if Elfrida did become depressed - she wouldn’t tell anyone; that would doubtless count as a dull commonplaceness in her mind. And she loses, in a perfect storm of events, all the things that prop up her belief that she is not dull and commonplace herself: a nasty rejection of her first book undercuts her belief in her talent, and she loses almost simultaneously her belief in Kendal’s regard and Janet’s friendship - although that’s not really lost; and Janet, coming to apologize and try to patch up the friendship, is the one who finds Elfrida’s body.
Even rereading it a year later, it still hurts.
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no subject
Date: 2017-03-11 04:48 am (UTC)My classic literature is patchy at best, so I'm trying to think of novels I've read where the socially-misfit woman dies by her own hand...I suppose Rebecca counts, in a roundabout sort of way, but that certainly felt in character. The only other example I can think of is The House of Mirth, and that one felt like it worked as well. I particularly liked how Lily's intent was left open; she'd been warned of the risks of the laudanum, yes, but nothing in her manner indicated that she was suicidal; on the other hand, much as with Elfrida here, her whole life was based upon posing - in this case, to be socially acceptable rather than artistic - so she probably wouldn't have admitted that it was her intent, even to herself.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-12 04:50 am (UTC)I actually found the ending of House of Mirth awfully frustrating precisely because Lily Bart's death is presented as basically an accident - it seemed like cheating to me, the same way that having her conveniently struck by lightning would have been cheating. If the book had presented it as intentional suicide (or at least intentional tempting-of-fate that ultimately tempted fate farther than Lily might have liked) - well, I still wouldn't have liked the ending (and Selwyn showed up at her place THE VERY NEXT DAY to sort things out between them and confess his feelings! WHY, EDITH WHARTON), but it would have seemed fair.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-13 08:30 pm (UTC)That said, I suspect the answer to your "WHY" is for precisely this reason - so we would be howling her name in sadness and frustrtaion for generations to come. :)
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Date: 2017-03-13 08:56 pm (UTC)And I think you're right about Edith Wharton, which is probably why the ending annoys me: I can feel her in the background, basking in glee as she envisions generations of tearfully furious readers. Sara Jeannette Duncan doesn't seem to be taking pleasure in my suffering over her ending in quite the same way.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-13 09:02 pm (UTC)Haha, I can totally picture Edith Wharton's gleeful cackling too. Whether or not you consider it bad form or just part of the game depends on your preferences, I suppose. I personally appreciated that she'd gone to the trouble to so well craft her characters that it was a believable ending, rather than an overwrought and melodramatic one. I guess I felt she'd earned my howls. :)
no subject
Date: 2017-03-13 09:31 pm (UTC)And this may be true in some cases, but I suspect a lot of the time people actually do expect to be there to need that charged phone, or go on that cruise, and very well might have been except they were drunk and on a deserted bridge that one night...
Or maybe they were on the fence about suicide and wanted to have the cruise option in case they were still around. Or hoped the prospect of a cruise would cheer them up enough that they wouldn't want to commit suicide. There are lots of states in between 100% premeditation and total impulse, too.