Tag Archives: Dorothy Canfield

Her Son’s Wife by Dorothy Canfield

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Her Son's Wife cover

Her Son’s Wife by Dorothy Canfield was first published in 1926 but my copy is a Virago from 1986.

Mrs Bascomb is a schoolteacher, she’s a widow with one son who is at college. She has a very high opinion of herself as a mother and a teacher and her overbearing attitude has resulted in her son Ralph growing up without her really knowing what he is like as he has had to hide his real self from his mother, she wouldn’t approve of him. She has plans for her son to become a high flying lawyer like all the men in her family have been. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that he might have different plans.

Her plans go awry when it turns out that Ralph has got married, and to what she regards as a very unsuitable and common young woman called Lottie. The young couple move into Mrs Bascomb’s home which she has scrimped over the years to pay off the mortgage. But it isn’t long before she feels like a stranger in her own home. Mrs Bascomb despises the sort of woman who can’t get along with a daughter-in-law, but it’s hard for her to admire Lottie as she turns out to be a dirty, selfish and lazy flibberty-gibbet.

Not long after the wedding Lottie gives birth to a daughter and of course Granny Bascomb falls in love with the baby, but Lottie complains that her mother-in-law is trying to take the baby away from her and the result is that Mrs Bascomb moves out for a few years, taking up a teaching post in another town. Years later there is a reconciliation and Mrs Bascomb moves back into what is really her home. Ralph is somewhat relieved as Lottie is too busy flirting with any man that she sees to even feed their daughter and money is tight as always.

Mrs Bascomb realises that Ralph is deeply unhappy with his situation and at last it dawns on her that he behaves as he does because of her, her strong personality was the reason that he was so weak-willed. She decides that she has to do something to change his life and arranges for him to get a job that he will enjoy. But Lottie still has to be dealt with and Mrs Bascomb decides to encourage Lottie’s tendency towards hypochondria, employing a quack doctor to order her to bed to help her bad back.

Mrs Bascomb knows exactly what is going to happen and at least she does feel guilty about her actions. She’s going around constantly washing her hands. Ralph even discovers her up during the night – washing her hands. She’s doing a ‘Lady Macbeth’ of course – which is apt because she has just condemned Lottie to a slow death, and sure enough ten years later Lottie is still in that bed, still getting constant visits from the quack doctor and now really bed-ridden from lack of use of her muscles.

I’ve read a few of Dorothy Canfield’s books now and I think this is the one which I’ve least liked. There really aren’t any likeable characters in it. Lottie is ghastly but her mother-in-law is much worse, she’s a manipulative control freak and just gets worse when she wakes up to her own nastiness.

I read this one for the Classics Club Challenge.

The Bent Twig by Dorothy Canfield (Fisher)

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The Bent Twig

The Bent Twig by Dorothy Canfield (Fisher) was first published in 1915. I had only read one book by her before this one and that was Home Fires in France about her experiences in France in World War 1, and The Bent Twig is very different from that. The setting is mainly La Chance, Vermont.

The Marshall family is an unusual one. The father is a college professor and the mother works the land in her large productive garden, they’re an unconventional lot, having no servants, being determined to do their own dirty work. But their home is a popular meeting place for all the more interesting teachers and professors, which is an advantage for the children although they don’t know it.

Sylvia Marshall is the eldest daughter, she has a younger sister Judith and a much younger brother Lawrence. The beginning of the book reminded me so much of Louisa M. Alcott’s books, maybe it was just because it’s about a US family and it’s now historical, but when this book was written it must have been quite revolutionary as Canfield makes it plain that she is dead against separate schools for black and white children. She’s not at all happy about the way that her friends are treated when it gets to be known that they have a teeny amount of black blood in them.

The Bent Twig is about the importance of education for young girls and also the redistribution of wealth, with one very wealthy character feeling seriously uncomfortable about all the money which is earned for him by coalminers.

I really enjoyed this book although I felt it palled a bit towards the end, it wasn’t quite as interesting after the girls had grown up. Canfield was obviously keen to point out what she saw as unhealthy aspects of Edwardian society as far as women were concerned. A time when for a certain section of society money was all and some people, men as well as women were marrying for money and status. What changes?!

Sylvia has always been drawn to clothes and high society but in her heart she knows there’s more to life, but can she pass up the chance to marry for money rather than for love? With that and the subjects of equality for women and people of a different ancestry/colour, The Bent Twig must have been quite a shock for some people when it was first published.

For me it was interesting to see that colleges in the US were way ahead when it came to female education as they were giving degrees to women at a time when women students in the UK were not awarded degrees, although they were allowed to sit the exams.

I read this one for the Classics Club Women’s Classic Literature Event 2016.

Home Fires In France by Dorothy Canfield (Fisher)

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I hadn’t read anything by Dorothy Canfield (Fisher) before I read this one, which is a collection of short stories, obviously inspired by her experiences in France during World War I. She didn’t actually go to France until 1916 but she did great work, amongst other things, setting up a Braille press to help the many soldiers who had been blinded.

There seem to have been quite a lot of American women who were keen to do their bit from the very beginning of the war. Some just did the knitting, which might not seem like much but I’m sure the men in freezing trenches were grateful for the socks, balaclavas and scarves. But there were also high profile women like Edith Wharton and Dorothy Canfield who wrote articles on the subject of the war and generally seemed to feel shame that the US government was not doing anything to help. The US was busy profiteering and doing brisk business with all concerned. Looking at it from this distance and thinking of the futility and waste of the war, it would have been nice if we could all have stayed out of it.

Anyway, I downloaded this book from Project Gutenberg, have a look here if you’re interested. I’ve been reading books on World War I since I studied it at school when I was about 14, but I had never read anything like these stories,and they were a bit of an eye-opener, in parts.

I just hadn’t thought that the French people had been so badly treated by the Germans, but they had a terrible time. The first story is about a French soldier who has not had leave for ages and when he eventually gets leave he decides to go home to the north of France. Everyone he meets tells him not to go, including the man he buys his train ticket from. They all tell him that there is nobody there, everyone has been killed or they have been taken to Germany to be used as slave labour, or worse if they were a young woman. It had just never dawned on me that not all French civilians had managed to get to safety, but obviously there were the usual people who didn’t want to believe what might happen or were too old to move, or had young children, were pregnant or ill.

All in all, according to these stories, it was grim up north, and it makes me all the more sure that France cosies up to Germany so much nowadays in the European Community just because they are absolutely terrified of them, and no wonder!

Not all of the stories are about the battle regions. There’s one about an American businessman who buys hats in Paris, life goes on and women must have their new models.

Other stories are about the society Americans who are in France, supposedly to help but really only interested in getting the red ribbon of the Legion d’Honneur, and young women who only want to nurse soldiers despite the fact that they have no nursing experience and they would be much more useful helping the thousands of refugees. Then there is the very wealthy couple who are incredibly generous with their money but careful to make sure that it is being used for the best and aren’t interested in themselves at all, just want to alleviate suffering.

I’m now wondering how Dorothy Canfield would have viewed Edith Wharton, was she just another high society type or did she actually help?