Down Among the Women

Product Information

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Eighteen-year-old unmarried mother Scarlet, a lost child recovering from her first abortion, looks at the world with her friends and begins to see the truth. with heavy handed metaphor on every page Weldon also begins to develop her unique turn of phrase and is bitter, pessimistic, true.

THIS IS A BOOK I READ MANY YEARS AGO AND WAS DELIGHTED TO SEE THAT I HAD THE OPTION TO PURCHASE IT VIA MY KINDLE. Her friends are no happier: Sylvia, a born victim; respectable Jocelyn, hopelessly trapped in her dull, bourgeois existence; Audrey, who finally breaks out of her conventional life; and Helen, beautiful, vibrant, and doomed. Once I started it, I was already halfway through the book; then, all of a sudden, I felt the need to slow down and absorb the events of the young female protagonists. We’re introduced to this circle of other women in an initial meeting at Scarlet’s bedside, and we follow them over the course of many years as they have affairs, marry, divorce, and sometimes die. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses.

Weldon paints a truer and harsher image of friendship, womanhood and the flaws of the feminine ideal in this novel than what we expect from novels depicting this period (at least I did). She moved to TV drama (writing the pilot episode of the iconic series Upstairs Downstairs ) then turned to novels - including the classic The Life and Loves of a She Devil and the Booker-shortlisted Praxis . Please Note: This book has been transferred to Between the Covers from another database and might not be described to our usual standards. These women can only try to survive; and then, look with hope at the new generations, raised differently from how their mothers had raised them, destined to break with many of the patterns that had stifled them - once they all land in the tumultuous 1960s. All of them tried to follow some sort of feminine ideal and great unhappiness resulted from squelching their own desires.

Giù, tra le donne, se stai molto, molto attenta e chiudi gli occhi e ti tappi gli orecchi e tieni ben strette le ginocchia tranne in rare occasioni, puoi davvero vivere felice. The novels Down Among the Women (1971), Female Friends (1974), and Remember Me (1976) focus on various women’s reactions to male-and-female relationships. Respectable wife, unmarried mother, divorcee, femme fatale - these are roles that society demands from Scarlet, Jocelyn, Helen, Susan and Audrey. Questo perché il romanzo si presenta come un ritratto ironico della società inglese degli anni '50 del secolo scorso, con focus sul genere femminile; ti inganna, facendoti approdare a cuor leggero alle tragedie che attendono queste donne che (quando lo realizzi, è straziante) non sono neanche per un attimo le reali proprietarie delle loro vite.The tension between mother and daughter is political as well as generational; the former is a tough pragmatist, worn hard by the work of the Second World War, with a bleak and cynical outlook of gender relations. Already we have a fairly complex picture emerging, but this is before we have even introduced the other characters in this multi-faceted book. I used to love them, but now I’m reading this one, it seems like a parody, since she has such a characteristic, flippant style.

There’s Helen, who begins as a model working with artists known only as X and Y; an affair with X soon turns into a far more complicated sort of menage a trois. Follow Wanda, the tough 1930s radical, her daughter Scarlet, unmarried, pregnant and frightened, and Scarlet's friends -- born victims, snobs, obsessive lovers -- in their absurd, nightmarish, often hilariously awful liaisons. Questo romanzo ha segnato l'inizio di quella che so che sarà una lunga conoscenza tra me e Fay Weldon, la sua autrice. Fogli ben conservati, saldi e privi di sgualciture da lettura, tonalità ossidate vintage, tagli bruniti dalla luce. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

To sum up, I found this to be an entertaining, very readable book in Waldon’s usual facetious style; I couldn’t remember who everybody was, but it didn’t matter. Scarlet, starts as a sort of protagonist but the story, and the characters, soon become multi-faceted and Scarlet is the least of all concerns.