Book Review: Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue

This fascinating non-fiction book examines the representation of desire between woman in literature in six section: 'Travesties', 'Inseparables', 'Rivals', 'Monsters', 'Detection' and 'Out'. While it's full of detail and so will please any scholars interested in the subject, Inseparable is also an easy, sometimes amusing, read for non-academics. Donoghue infuses her non-fiction analysis with the same edge of humour that I enjoy so much in her fiction. Though, for me, this subject could never be dry and boring, she ensures it isn't so.

The 'Travesties' section looks at cross-dressing within texts from 990 onwards, including brief discussions on Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish and Theophile Gautier amongst others. It examines the recurring depictions of 'The Female Bridegroom' and 'The Male Amazon' in a chapter that looks at the causes and consequences of cross-dressing and its heyday in the drama of the seventeeth century.

'Inseparables' begins with the Biblical account of Ruth and Naomi and covers the representation of love based on similarity. As this is one of my areas of interest, I perhaps found this chapter the most interesting, particularly the discussion on Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. It also highlighted some works I want to read, both for pleasure and study - as every chapter did.

'Rivals' is a fascinating analysis of what happens when a woman and man compete for the same love. It starts with Sappho and goes through Shakespeare, Richardson and some rather brilliant-sounding French texts before moving on to discuss what happens when the rivalry bubbles over. It examined some texts I was already familiar with, such as The Rainbow and The Fox, but, again, the ones I found most intriguing were the ones I've yet to read, most notably The Bostonians.

Perhaps the chapter on 'Monsters' contains the themes most familiar to observers of fiction about desire between women. It's interesting to see the texts these stereotypes stemmed from then we take a short tour through Dickens, Hardy and others. This is quite an uncomfortable chapter, though I particularly liked the section on ghost stories.

The fifth chapter on 'Detection' provided me with plenty of books I want to read somewhere down the line. Again, desire between women is a theme pretty familiar to readers of the crime genre and it looks at writers including Ruth Rendell, Agatha Christie and P.D. James. Given my sensation fiction roots, I was also pleased to see a discussion of The Woman in White in this chapter followed by an examination of two novels by Sarah Waters.

'Out', the final chapter, looks at the 'awakening' motif in texts from George Moore onwards. It's a nice shift in tone from the other chapters, looking at declared love instead of coded texts, but it also highlights the complexities of modern life. There's a section here on 'first love' which covers several texts I was already familiar with and, once more, a number of works mentioned in this chapter are now begging to be read.

Ultimately, Emma Donoghue has written a book that is both informative and fascinating. Her subject knowledge is exemplary and her style engaging. I've already referred back to Inseparable for academic work and I have no doubt I'll be doing that again fairly frequently. Highly recommended!

Book Review: The Aspern Papers by Henry James

This novella follows an unnamed narrator as he travels to Venice to obtain some papers left with Juliana Bordereau by her lover, poet Jeffrey Aspern. Knowing that honesty will result in instant rejection, the narrator enters the house as a lodger and sets about working on the spinster niece of Juliana, Miss Tita. She eventually learns the truth but there's no guarantee that the papers will be handed over.

I said I wanted to read this after watching The Lost Moment (1947, review here) and I was relieved that most of what made the film melodramatic was not drawn from the original story by James. This novella is tight and, really, frustratingly short. It left me wanting more which is, I suppose, quite a good way to be left by an author of exceptional talent.

The crumbling, lethargic atmosphere of Venice and the house itself is possibly the most captivating aspect of the story. The plot itself is rather thin - man sets about to retrieve papers by duplicity - but the setting is everything. The narrator's motivation is, of course, important and brings up questions of the professional and the private and what rights we, the public, have to know all about the personal life of a 'famous' person, a debate we have daily now. Locating these papers in a dilapidated house under the guardianship of an ailing woman and her unworldly niece only adds to the sensation that some things should be left unearthed.

For me, The Aspern Papers was tantalisingly short but it covered what needed to be covered in the story. Economical with words, James nevertheless created a potent portrait of Venice that threatens to stay with me for a while.

Classic Film Review: The Lost Moment (1947)

This film was based on a Henry James novel called The Aspern Papers. Restyling it as The Lost Moment probably had something to do with them changing the name of the integral character from Aspern to Ashton. I can't help thinking that the novel title is a more intriguing one than The Lost Moment though.

Publisher Lewis Venable (Robert Cummings) travels to Venice in search of the love letters of the poet Jeffrey Ashton. Ashton disappeared years earlier quite suddenly and the last place he was seen was this house. His lover, Juliana Borderau (Agnes Moorehead), still survives at the age of 105 and lives in the house with her niece, Tina (Susan Hayward). Venable takes a false name and takes rooms in the house but it soon becomes clear that getting the letters will be hampered by the fact that Tina displays a remarkable tendency to take on her aunt's life, putting them all in danger.

This film worked well on several levels. It was atmospheric with some good performances from the leading players. However, I felt it lost some of its plot tension halfway through, as the mystery of Tina has already been revealed and the secondary concern - what happened to Ashton - has been mentioned so little as to drive it from the mind. The second half of the film is a psychological exploration as Venable tries to make sense of Tina and then cure her.

There are some truly good scenes, such as the one where we finally see the withered face of Juliana and the explosive finale, but in others the narrative descends into melodrama. Words that wouldn't seem preposterous on the page sound bizarre coming from the mouths of actors. The original text was quite short and, after seeing this, I'm keen to read it to find out how much of his characters James actually put across and how much was artistic licence on the part of the producers.