Newnham Weekend

It was under a clear and sunny September sky that one hundred Persephone readers gathered in Cambridge, to walk the same corridors and share the same rooms as Amy Levy and Sylvia Plath and eat in the dining hall where, in 1928, Virginia Woolf gave one of the lectures that became A Room of One’s Own: the first Persephone Conference was held to commemorate this event.

Saturday morning began with Henrietta Twycross-Martin talking about that Persephone stalwart, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, as well as the other novels by Winifred Watson: her work was ‘more feminine than feminist’ but does contain feminist messages, promoting companionate marriage as an ideal and arguing for financial independence for women.

Elaine Showalter discussed A Room of One’s Own and the key images she herself takes from it: that the room is a symbolic space for female contemplation not isolation, and that, perhaps surprisingly, it stresses the importance of more materialist needs: good food, and financial independence. Elaine also brought out the negative aspects of the ‘room’ as an image of seclusion and suicide, such as that suffered by ‘Judith Shakespeare’. But the greatest strength of the book is that each generation of feminists reads it differently, as an enduring text with unending interpretations.

Lyndall Gordon continued the discussion of Room and its attitudes towards the true nature of women and fiction. She talked of women’s writing often being seen as encroaching on male ‘territory’, and of the male bias in both history and fiction, where ‘important’ works are still large, fact-filled tomes and history constitutes the Crusades and discussions in the House of Commons. Woolf was concerned with women, alone and together, and how female creativity differs from male creativity, and is elusive: ‘all half lights and profound shadows.’

On Saturday afternoon Jenny Hartley talked about the evolution of the Reading Group, using photographs that ranged from a frieze on Burgos Cathedral showing the Apostles turning to each other to talk about a book to the five pound note which, unknown to most of us, shows Elizabeth Fry with a prison reading group to eighteenth- century female spinners who employed someone to read aloud to them, ending with the modern reading group.

In the evening a magnificent dinner was held in homage to the (notoriously less nice) meal described by Virginia Woolf: pumpkin soup, boeuf Wellington (a defiantly masculine dish) and prune fool (recipe by Jane Grigson, who was at Newnham). Afterwards Katherine Whitehorn talked about male and female differences – men not having the ability to listen and empathise as women do – and whether this will ever change, thereby allowing women to be fully integrated into the male-structured workplace.

Sunday morning began with Anne Sebba’s talk on women and fact (rather than fiction), giving an overview of women reporters and their continuing fight against sexism (women had problems obtaining accreditation even in the 1960s). A firm believer that women do see and report stories differently, Anne showed how they often cover the real humanitarian stories behind war more sympathetically than men.

Pamela Norris’s talk took the revolutionary step of comparing the position of the 12th century nun Heloise with the 20th century poet Sylvia Plath, united by ‘doomed love’ and by the age-old conflict between love and work. Heloise was strangely modern in her attitude towards a love union (‘Love is preferrable to wedlock’) while Plath was groomed for and desperate to conform to the norm of dutiful wife and mother.

Next Julia Neuberger gave an overview of the history of Jewish female writers in England from Grace Aguilar to Amy Levy to Betty Miller, writing as outsiders from the point of view of sex, ethnicity and religion. Julia talked eloquently and passionately of the difficulty of portraying their situation as Jewish women, and the frequently ambivalent attitude in their works towards anti-semitism, given their need to be accepted by their readers.

Baroness Onora O’Neill, our host as Principal of Newnham, then spoke about equality versus exclusion, arguing that to fight for perfect equality is ill-advised, if not impossible, whereas to fight against exclusion is a necessary cause, and one argued by Virginia Woolf. Pointing out that to fight for equal income for all would mean a society of no incentives, and to fight for equal upbringing for all might logically lead to the abolition of the family unit, Onora O’Neill then went on to look at the practical difficulties of striving for equality:employing ‘fairness’ and fighting against ‘exclusion’ can take us further than fighting for equality.

A delightful talk on Gwen Raverat’s Cambridge childhood followed, as Anne Harvey wove a tale of turn-of-the-century Cambridge and an atmosphere of ‘tea-parties, boat-races and May week picnics in tight-bodiced silk dresses’ overtook the room. Described by Virginia as ‘all Cambridge, all Darwin, solidity, integrity, force and sense,’ Gwen Raverat was a Bloomsbury figure who, in Period Piece, described Newnham Grange with its romantic associations and Aunt Etty, who was always ‘going away to rest, in case she might be tired later on in the day’.

Charlie Lee-Potter ended the weekend with further discussion of women and fiction, arguing against Louise de Salvo’s reconstruction’ of Woolf’s unfinished novel Melambrosia, and for a writer’s intellectual freedom to choose whether or not to publish a book. She pointed out the large number of women on this year’s Booker short-list, ending her talk by discussing the sexism women writers still have to face (one journalist dismissed this years Booker short-list as ‘girly’).

Finally Nicola Beauman took the floor to talk about Persephone Books, and there was a spirited discussion about participants’ favourite and least-favourite titles – and about how many they owned! The response to the weekend was overwhelmingly positive: readers found it ‘stimulating’, ‘thought provoking’, ‘uplifting’, ‘magical’, ‘an idyll’ – and we look forward to seeing some of them next year, when we hope the weather will be equally magical.

Ordering books from Persephone

You can see a complete list of Persephone Books and order online here. Or you can email us, telephone on 020 7242 9292, send a fax to 020 7242 9272 or write to the following address: Persephone Books Ltd, 59 Lamb's Conduit Street, London WC1N 3NB All Persephone Books cost £10 each plus £2 postage (see more information on ordering). We can now send a book a month for six or twelve months - more >