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I expected to enjoy but have conflicted feelings about Lissa Evans' Old Baggage, much as I enjoyed but had some conflicted feelings about Their Finest Hour and a Half, and indeed I did! But different ones than I thought!
Old Baggage, set in 1928, focuses on Mattie Simpkin and her housemate, Florrie Lee, usually called the Flea - a pair of middle-aged militant suffragettes in the aftermath of the movement's heyday. The Flea, in addition to her more-or-less full-time job as Mattie's lovelorn secretary, has an actual full-time job as a health visitor for low-income families; Mattie lectures and writes articles about the movement, but doesn't have much other scope for her enormous levels of Activist Energy ...
UNTIL she discovers, to her horror, that an old comrade who has gone full militant nationalist and started running a local proto-Fascist youth league, which spurs Mattie to set up a RIVAL youth league called the Amazons, focusing on encouraging young ladies of all classes to hone their political and mental acumen through activities such as javelin-throwing, jujitsu, and freethinking debate.
Enter the two other leading characters, young members of the Amazons representing the kind of duality you might see in a nineteenth-century novel: Ida, bright and ambitious and lower-class and very interested in the opportunities the Amazons represent, and Inez, daughter of a tragically dead former suffragette with a connection to Mattie's tragically dead brother, who joins the Amazons to learn more about her mother but otherwise demonstrates extremely little interest in anything. Most of the plot of the book hangs on the way that Mattie interacts with both of these young women, and how that reflects on her and her relationship with the Flea.
And I really do like almost all of this -- it's honestly great to read a novel that engages genuinely and affectionately with older women, with older activist women, with the aftermath of major movements and the relationships between different generations -- but we've got to talk more about Mattie and the Flea, the dynamic revolutionary straight woman and the practical, pining lesbian.
(In describing this book to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti, Gen was like "you can just refer to them as Rose and Pearl", and, honestly: I one hundred percent could, except at least Rose is not actually straight...)
Towards the ends of the book, as a consequence of Mattie's obsession with making something compelling out of Inez, the Flea moves out. Mattie, as a result, comes to realize how important the Flea is to her and her life, finds the Flea lying ill with rheumatic fever in a boardinghouse, and swoops her away back home, effecting a reconciliation and a happy ending in which they return to living together exactly as before except now Mattie appreciates and takes care of the Flea more.
Which is all perfectly nice ... except that the Flea is still in love with Mattie, and Mattie is still a straight woman?
The moral of the story, more or less, is that Mattie has been putting so much mental effort in grieving for her dead brothers -- in the idea of Inez as a new opportunity for family -- that she hasn't realized that the Flea is actually the family she cares about. Great! Let's celebrate platonic and/or queerplatonic life partnerships! I'm all in favor ... if the Flea was, perhaps, a lesbian who was not textually, undeniably interested in sexual relationships and textually, undeniably, romantically in love with Mattie! But! Alas!
I honestly can't imagine that Lissa Evans would write this story the same way about a woman who was in love with a man who didn't love her back. And of course there are reasons for that, Lissa Evans is interested in important relationships between women, I get it. But I'm really not thrilled that Lissa Evans seems to think that for a lesbian to have a more or less happy ending, romantic and platonic devotion are one hundred percent interchangeable.
On the other hand, you know what I am thrilled about? The five pages of epilogue in which Ida kidnaps her baby from the institution, is like "Mattie I'm calling in the favor that you owe me ... this is your baby now! have fun!" and then saunters off to pursue a promising nursing career in Gibraltar. Ten points to Ida, book MVP.
Anyway it turns out this book is a prequel to a previous Lissa Evans book about a Blitz evacuee and the con artist he's billeted with and how they Form An Unlikely Family, which means despite my qualms I will almost certainly read it.
Old Baggage, set in 1928, focuses on Mattie Simpkin and her housemate, Florrie Lee, usually called the Flea - a pair of middle-aged militant suffragettes in the aftermath of the movement's heyday. The Flea, in addition to her more-or-less full-time job as Mattie's lovelorn secretary, has an actual full-time job as a health visitor for low-income families; Mattie lectures and writes articles about the movement, but doesn't have much other scope for her enormous levels of Activist Energy ...
UNTIL she discovers, to her horror, that an old comrade who has gone full militant nationalist and started running a local proto-Fascist youth league, which spurs Mattie to set up a RIVAL youth league called the Amazons, focusing on encouraging young ladies of all classes to hone their political and mental acumen through activities such as javelin-throwing, jujitsu, and freethinking debate.
Enter the two other leading characters, young members of the Amazons representing the kind of duality you might see in a nineteenth-century novel: Ida, bright and ambitious and lower-class and very interested in the opportunities the Amazons represent, and Inez, daughter of a tragically dead former suffragette with a connection to Mattie's tragically dead brother, who joins the Amazons to learn more about her mother but otherwise demonstrates extremely little interest in anything. Most of the plot of the book hangs on the way that Mattie interacts with both of these young women, and how that reflects on her and her relationship with the Flea.
And I really do like almost all of this -- it's honestly great to read a novel that engages genuinely and affectionately with older women, with older activist women, with the aftermath of major movements and the relationships between different generations -- but we've got to talk more about Mattie and the Flea, the dynamic revolutionary straight woman and the practical, pining lesbian.
(In describing this book to
genarti, Gen was like "you can just refer to them as Rose and Pearl", and, honestly: I one hundred percent could, except at least Rose is not actually straight...) Towards the ends of the book, as a consequence of Mattie's obsession with making something compelling out of Inez, the Flea moves out. Mattie, as a result, comes to realize how important the Flea is to her and her life, finds the Flea lying ill with rheumatic fever in a boardinghouse, and swoops her away back home, effecting a reconciliation and a happy ending in which they return to living together exactly as before except now Mattie appreciates and takes care of the Flea more.
Which is all perfectly nice ... except that the Flea is still in love with Mattie, and Mattie is still a straight woman?
The moral of the story, more or less, is that Mattie has been putting so much mental effort in grieving for her dead brothers -- in the idea of Inez as a new opportunity for family -- that she hasn't realized that the Flea is actually the family she cares about. Great! Let's celebrate platonic and/or queerplatonic life partnerships! I'm all in favor ... if the Flea was, perhaps, a lesbian who was not textually, undeniably interested in sexual relationships and textually, undeniably, romantically in love with Mattie! But! Alas!
I honestly can't imagine that Lissa Evans would write this story the same way about a woman who was in love with a man who didn't love her back. And of course there are reasons for that, Lissa Evans is interested in important relationships between women, I get it. But I'm really not thrilled that Lissa Evans seems to think that for a lesbian to have a more or less happy ending, romantic and platonic devotion are one hundred percent interchangeable.
On the other hand, you know what I am thrilled about? The five pages of epilogue in which Ida kidnaps her baby from the institution, is like "Mattie I'm calling in the favor that you owe me ... this is your baby now! have fun!" and then saunters off to pursue a promising nursing career in Gibraltar. Ten points to Ida, book MVP.
Anyway it turns out this book is a prequel to a previous Lissa Evans book about a Blitz evacuee and the con artist he's billeted with and how they Form An Unlikely Family, which means despite my qualms I will almost certainly read it.
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Do they talk about this? Or is it just sort of longingly, unconsciously, not actually resolved?
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Argh.
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I don't know anything about Odd One Out, what's that one about?
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I have conveniently reviewed it! Top onel
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