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A review by fearandtrembling
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
4.0
I guess you're meant to sympathise with the main protagonist, Miss Burton, who is the right kind of spinster--despite her quirks and her angular features and her red hair (good or bad depending on who you talk to), she's well- adjusted and charming. There's one Miss Sigglesthwaite, however, who's the Doomed Spinster, who was meant for a lifetime of research and learning and instead became a teacher, and is ill-adjusted to the work, but because of her position (she has to care for her mother) she can't simply quit her job and do what comes naturally to her. Worst of all by the standards of the slightly lean-in bourgeois feminism of Miss Burton, Miss Sigglesthwaite has not learned to monetise her hotness and so exists forever in a drab display of undone buttons and falling hems or whatever. She appears for a bit and is gone, but she's the one I could identify with:
"It's true. I know I can't keep order. I've lost confidence. I can't trust myself to keep my temper. It's being always so tired. Those dreadful nights, when you can't sleep, waiting for dawn; and then the dawn comes and you dread it, because in an hour you must get up, in two hours you must face that dreadful staff-room. The young mistresses. It's so easy to be unafraid when you're strong and pretty. Girls get crushes on Belinda Masters. She pretends it's a nuisance, yet it gives her power. Power. Confidence. That's what I'm needing. Oh, if only Father hadn't died quite so early. He believed in me."
Miss Sigglesthwaite is not treated fairly at all by the narrative. She is just made to disappear into oblivion, as though it should be perfectly natural why no one should believe in her. All because she didn't realise early enough that she needed to be liked and had to make an effort to appear pretty even if she didn't care for pretty.
Wanted to give the book three stars because of that but that would be unfair because the book is otherwise very good and rich in ideas.
"It's true. I know I can't keep order. I've lost confidence. I can't trust myself to keep my temper. It's being always so tired. Those dreadful nights, when you can't sleep, waiting for dawn; and then the dawn comes and you dread it, because in an hour you must get up, in two hours you must face that dreadful staff-room. The young mistresses. It's so easy to be unafraid when you're strong and pretty. Girls get crushes on Belinda Masters. She pretends it's a nuisance, yet it gives her power. Power. Confidence. That's what I'm needing. Oh, if only Father hadn't died quite so early. He believed in me."
Miss Sigglesthwaite is not treated fairly at all by the narrative. She is just made to disappear into oblivion, as though it should be perfectly natural why no one should believe in her. All because she didn't realise early enough that she needed to be liked and had to make an effort to appear pretty even if she didn't care for pretty.
Wanted to give the book three stars because of that but that would be unfair because the book is otherwise very good and rich in ideas.