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landofnowhereThe Call, Edith Ayrton Zangwill. Re-read, so I knew what was coming.
Ursula Winfield is the sort of character who some might be inclined to call a Mary Sue: she is a brilliant chemist despite having left college to research full-time in her home lab, from an upper-class family and with enough of an inheritance in her own name that she doesn't have to worry about being disowned, a natural public speaker, and good-looking in every respect except that she's not blonde and has better things to worry about than her appearance. I'm not so inclined: I adored Vesper Holly growing up, and Ursula is a more human, flawed, and rounded character -- if "rounded" is the right word for someone who throws herself headfirst at everything she cares about -- anyway, Ursula is the sort of protagonist that I'd expect to see in a Courtney Milan novel or similar, and it's neat to see a version of it written in the early 19th century.
At the start of the book, she probably thinks the biggest problem she has in life is that she has to leave her lab to chaperone her flirtatious mother on outings. But really, her main problems are loneliness and living the sexist society of pre-WWI England.
Suffragette stories, especially British ones, resonate now because the basic themes of moderation vs. militancy, respectability politics, appeals to reason vs. emotion, how people become radicalized, are still very relevant to modern social justice movements. But it's also comforting to know that the suffrage struggle at least had a happy ending (though I expect Ursula to get back on the social justice warpath once WWI ends and she realizes that womens' suffrage does not magically make everything better).
I have more to say about this novel, but I'll leave it for later as it's getting to be bedtime.
Ursula Winfield is the sort of character who some might be inclined to call a Mary Sue: she is a brilliant chemist despite having left college to research full-time in her home lab, from an upper-class family and with enough of an inheritance in her own name that she doesn't have to worry about being disowned, a natural public speaker, and good-looking in every respect except that she's not blonde and has better things to worry about than her appearance. I'm not so inclined: I adored Vesper Holly growing up, and Ursula is a more human, flawed, and rounded character -- if "rounded" is the right word for someone who throws herself headfirst at everything she cares about -- anyway, Ursula is the sort of protagonist that I'd expect to see in a Courtney Milan novel or similar, and it's neat to see a version of it written in the early 19th century.
At the start of the book, she probably thinks the biggest problem she has in life is that she has to leave her lab to chaperone her flirtatious mother on outings. But really, her main problems are loneliness and living the sexist society of pre-WWI England.
Suffragette stories, especially British ones, resonate now because the basic themes of moderation vs. militancy, respectability politics, appeals to reason vs. emotion, how people become radicalized, are still very relevant to modern social justice movements. But it's also comforting to know that the suffrage struggle at least had a happy ending (though I expect Ursula to get back on the social justice warpath once WWI ends and she realizes that womens' suffrage does not magically make everything better).
I have more to say about this novel, but I'll leave it for later as it's getting to be bedtime.