File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-06-15.140, message 341


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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