Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 20:23:52 -0700 From: dwalter-AT-ucla.edu (don walter) Subject: Woolf, Vita et al. Dear sharon & rita: thank you for your lovely messages ! I did read one bio of Vita S-W (I forget its name), but I am glad to learn of another, which I will read, and give you a response-- and I was very glad to be reminded of that marriage. rita, you got me a little bit wrong; indeed there are female detectives who are not married, or at best not happily so (Frances Fyfield's lawyer, whose name I forget for the moment, is particuarly on my mind, since a friend recommended her to my wife and me--- but there are lots of others: Warshawski, Scarpetta, Millhone, Pigeon). What I meant to refer to is my impression that the _only_ series of narratives I have found so far, in which a successful marriage is important to the story, are a few detective series, like Heilbrun/Cross's Fansler/Amhearst, Sayers' Vane/Wimsey , and Elizabeth Peters' Peabody/Emerson marriages (all, you notice, written by women). One of P.D.James' early books (perhaps her first) is titled An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, and James' major detective is not married (nor is that Woman), since a traumatic widowing (too long ago to be very important). I wrote Heilbrun a little fan letter a couple of years ago, referring to the unusualness of happy marriages, especially in print; she replied with a nice little post-card, agreeing that such marriages were an unpreditable benison. And both Heilbrun & Sayers were valuable, constructive, early feminists (I don't know about Peters)-- long before there was any fashion for it. Anyway, I will look up the Vita story you recommend, and thank you! Don
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