| Letter
A little-known play by the Swedish playwright
Victoria Benedictsson (she was apparently an inspiration
to both Ibsen and Strindberg) is currently showing
at the National
Theatre. ‘While I’m not sure it
has the ambivalence of a timeless classic, it
constitutes…a major act of reclamation’
wrote Michael Billington in the Guardian.
He added: ‘The excitement lies in an unknown
play combining an autobiographic authenticity
with a statement about the role of women in late
19th century society.’
‘The Enchantment’ (1888) is based
on Benedictsson’s affair with the critic
Georg Brandes: 32 year-old Louise visits Paris
from her small town in Sweden and falls under
the spell of the famous sculptor Gustave Alland
(perhaps partly modeled on Rodin, who was also
notoriously charismatic to women). The play is
a fascinating piece of feminist polemic, and Nancy
Carroll as Louise is superb; the problem is that
Alland is so obviously a rotter – from the
first moment he comes on stage – that his
seduction technique seems implausibly successful.
One can understand why Louise would reject the
devoted and sensitive provincial bank manager
who would like to marry her; but it is a mystery
why she would break her heart over such a pleased-with-himself,
unattractive womaniser. And yet Louise has been
bored all her life (‘I want a man’s
work!’ she cries, ‘It can distract
you from unhappiness’) and at least her
seducer makes her feel she has found happiness.
Perhaps if she had read more novels… (There
was a provocative piece about Victoria Benedictsson
by Germaine Greer in the Guardian.)
Otherwise this last fortnight there has been
a great deal on the radio and on television about
Indian Partition on 14th August 1947, and we were
very pleased to see that the display at Hatchards
of Partition-related books included The
Far Cry, which was written just after
Partition and published in 1949.
Do try and get to the excellent new exhibition
at the Dulwich
Picture Gallery called ‘The Changing
Face of Childhood’. It is particularly interesting
because, as Andrew Graham-Dixon pointed out in
the Sunday Times, ‘attitudes
to children underwent a profound shift in C18th
Europe. The publication in 1693 of John Locke’s
treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education
revolutionised prevailing ideas about the nature
of childhood itself, as well as its role in the
formation of character and morals. Locke saw education
as a social rather than spiritual process and
argued against stifling the whims and desires
of children with draconian punishments.’
Shifts in attitudes are the theme of Christina
Hardyment’s Dream
Babies, which is just about to be republished.
This crucial book traces the changes in child-rearing
over three centuries. As the blurb says: ‘Parents
have long been bombarded with conflicting advice
on how to bring up their babies: from Locke, Rousseau,
and Truby King to Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina
Ford. Behaviourist warnings in the 1920s about
physical contact (“Never hug and kiss them.
Never let them sit in your lap”) swung to
Jean Liedloff's 'continuum concept' that babies
should be wrapped round the mother and fed on
demand. Christina Hardyment analyses the anxieties
of our own age and gives parents much-needed confidence
in their own ability to choose the advice that
best suits them and their babies.’
Next week we are off to the North Cornwall coast,
to a Landmark
Trust cottage by the sea. I’m hoping
for a good supply of nettles, having become addicted
to stirring them into everything (stews, risottos,
frittatas, but not of course uncooked into salads).
In the Guardian Guy
Grieve wrote about ‘food for free’
and mentioned the inspirational way Good
Things in England has, for him, ‘transformed
the local country lanes into supermarket aisles.’
Naturally, I have now sent him a copy of They
Can’t Ration These, which in my
view is the best book ever written about food
for free.
And talking of babies, here is the most beautiful
object that I saw in a Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar
when I was in Germany last weekend: a 1922 cradle.
Is there a Persephone reader out there who is
also a carpenter and would be willing to make
a prototype?
Nicola Beauman
15 August 2007
Lamb's Conduit Street |
