Paula Blanchard

"Emily Carr was one of Canada's most gifted painters and writers. Born in colonial Victoria, British Columbia, in 1871, she showed an early desire to commit her life to art, and before she was twenty had persuaded her family to allow her to attend art school. Study in San Francisco, London, and Paris followed, but her heart never left the British Columbia coast, which remained the strongest influence on her life and work.
"Fiercely independent and defiantly individualistic, . . . and working largely in isolation, without the example of strong women artists to look up to, and years ahead of of the art of her time and place, Carr demolished some traditionally cherished notions about women artists." - from book jacket… (plus d'informations)

I'd give this 5½***** if TPTB allowed it.

The biography of Jewett is thorough, along with sufficient of the life of Annie Fields – a force in her own right – to understand the two women's relationship. And a generous amount of photographs are also included.

But beyond biographical details, the book (chs. 8 & 20) also includes literary analyses of Deephaven (a book I've really got to get around to reading) and Pointed Firs respectively. My one quarrel, in the Deephaven chapter, is with Blanchard's unfair depiction of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford as a book all of sweetness and light.

For those interested in Willa Cather, the concluding chapter, right before Jewett's death, segues into a discussion of her relationship with and influence on Cather, particularly O Pioneers!.

My one slight regret – but this is just me, given my interest in Maine literature – is the merely cursory reference to Mary Ellen Chase, who was also significantly influenced by Jewett and in fact was the successor to Jewett among Maine novelists.… (plus d'informations)

I was pleasantly surprised by this book, which was recommended to me by a member of my dissertation committee. I expected something dry and difficult to plow through. Instead, I found a book that is compulsively readable. Believe it or not, I have even set aside pleasure reading in order to read "just one more chapter" of this biography.

Some of this has to do with the subject that Paula Blanchard is discussing. Margaret Fuller is often dismissed as an egotistical and unproductive member of the Transcendental movement. While Blanchard does not debate her egotism -- sometimes to a fault -- she does reveal an emotionally complex person behind the figure. Margaret Fuller, as Blanchard argues, was the first radical American feminist. She was highly educated, but at a young age her intense classical education was thwarted and replaced by attempts to socialize her into true femininity. In order to produce her Conversations, her "Woman in the 19th Century," and her work for the Transcendentalist journal The Dial, Fuller had to resist crippling headaches, common opinion, family crises, and her own self-doubt. Reading Blanchard's careful exploration of Fuller's various duties and challenges, it is no longer a wonder that Fuller did not produce more, but that she produced as much as she did.

Blanchard does not attempt to paint her subject as perfect, sometimes to the point where I did not feel she was being entirely fair to Fuller. I suspect that Blanchard felt the need to appear unbiased; this is an understandable pressure, but sometimes made her criticisms of Fuller seem to come from out of nowhere. This could be seen as a positive statement about the biography, however; Blanchard reads Fuller's letters and her journals fully and completely, often letting excerpts stand for themselves, and the person she reveals is radically different from the woman known in popular narratives.

One criticism I would level at Blanchard's writing is that the pieces are not always fully integrated. She loads down the openings of her chapters with historical and cultural context, without necessarily making it clear why it is important, or maintaining the flow from the previous chapter. With that said, Blanchard's writing is clear and interesting, never heavy, and features plenty of illuminating detail. She obviously knows Fuller backward and forward, and shows that knowledge through careful citation of the letters and journals.

As a white woman academic, I identified with Fuller much more than I expected. I suspect that Native American and Black American readers might not enjoy the book as much as I did. Fuller was a moderate on the subject of slavery, and it is not often mentioned; Blanchard unfortunately adopts her subject's elegiacal tone when discussing the "vanishing Indian." In general, however, I would recommend it, even if the reader is not interested in Transcendentalism.… (plus d'informations)

I've probably read hundreds of biographies. This one stands out as one of my favorites. I like Sarah Orne Jewett, but I love Blanchard's biography. She gets everything right in this book. It's well-written, excellently researched, and of course includes index, bibliography, and notes. She doesn't dump every fact she knows into this thing; the length is proportional to the life. She gives the reader enough details of place and time to put the subject into context. Blanchard's analysis of Jewett's body of work is solid and perceptive. This book is an excellent example of the biographer's craft. If this book disappeared off my shelf, it's definitely one I would replace.… (plus d'informations)