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A review by holtfan
A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa
2.0
I feel a bit like a heel not loving this book because I love it in theory. It is a fun idea to explore some of the female, literary friendships of the female British lit canon. (In full disclosure, when I first saw the title, I thought it meant that Austen, Bronte, Eliot, and Woolf were all good friends, and that got me really excited until I remembered they didn't all live at the same time, so that kind of set an impossibly high bar. Can you imagine though???)
At any rate, this bio fell short for me for three reasons. First, it presumes a lot of emotions. For example, it describes the letter Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote George Eliot and spends a good chunk describing how she must have agonized over how to begin it. Which maybe Stowe did. Maybe she really stressed over whether to draft it to "Mrs." Lewes or overanalyzed whether to say "my dear friend" or just "dear friend." But do we know this? The confident, narrative style made the book readable, but also left me feeling seriously mistrustful.
Second, as other reviewers quite aptly point out, this book does not actually analyze how friendship benefited the writing of any of these authors, except maybe Woolf. Austen and Bronte and Eliot had female friends. And at least some of those friends also wrote. So, what? Did it encourage, inspire, challenge them? While we get lots of suppositions, it mostly falls flat on analysis, leaving me feeling like I got only half the story.
Which, third, describes my overall feeling about these friends. The book spends only 3 chapters on each friendship and by necessity paints with a broad brush, but overall the story seems to center more on the romantic entanglements and relationships of the authors than their friendships. Maybe there just wasn't enough content here. Maybe I came in with too high an expectation. But I did expect more about the actual friendships and less about the romantic escapades of these authors.
At least the book is overall short and easy to read?
At any rate, this bio fell short for me for three reasons. First, it presumes a lot of emotions. For example, it describes the letter Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote George Eliot and spends a good chunk describing how she must have agonized over how to begin it. Which maybe Stowe did. Maybe she really stressed over whether to draft it to "Mrs." Lewes or overanalyzed whether to say "my dear friend" or just "dear friend." But do we know this? The confident, narrative style made the book readable, but also left me feeling seriously mistrustful.
Second, as other reviewers quite aptly point out, this book does not actually analyze how friendship benefited the writing of any of these authors, except maybe Woolf. Austen and Bronte and Eliot had female friends. And at least some of those friends also wrote. So, what? Did it encourage, inspire, challenge them? While we get lots of suppositions, it mostly falls flat on analysis, leaving me feeling like I got only half the story.
Which, third, describes my overall feeling about these friends. The book spends only 3 chapters on each friendship and by necessity paints with a broad brush, but overall the story seems to center more on the romantic entanglements and relationships of the authors than their friendships. Maybe there just wasn't enough content here. Maybe I came in with too high an expectation. But I did expect more about the actual friendships and less about the romantic escapades of these authors.
At least the book is overall short and easy to read?