South Riding

Product Information

Born in 1898 on the cusp of the 20th-century, Winifred Holtby was a thoroughly modern woman. Hailing from Rudston in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Holtby was a feminist campaigner, a civil rights supporter and a socialist – as well as a highly regarded journalist and author. Rudston and East Riding

Winifred Holtby: author, feminist, campaigner - The Guardian Winifred Holtby: author, feminist, campaigner - The Guardian

Holtby's fame was derived mainly from her journalism: she wrote for more than 20 newspapers and magazines, including the feminist journal Time and Tide (also serving on the board of directors) and the Manchester Guardian newspaper. She also wrote a regular weekly column for the trade union magazine The Schoolmistress. Her books during this period included two novels, Poor Caroline (1931), Mandoa! Mandoa! (1933), a critical study of Virginia Woolf (1932) and a volume of short stories, Truth is Not Sober (1934).Todo empieza con Sarah Barton, una mujer de unos 4o años no muy agraciada pero sí atractiva y con unas ideas muy progresistas, convirtiéndose en la nueva directora de la escuela del pueblo. A partir de este vas conociendo a otros personajes y familias: Lydia, una chica brillante pero de familia muy pobre que asiste a la escuela; Carne, un hombre más conservador con muchos problemas familiares y económicos; Mrs Beddows, personaje inspirado en la madre de la autora, que tiene cierta fascinación por Carne y lo ayudará con su hija Midge; Tom y Lily, un matrimonio que tendrá que sobreponerse a la enfermedad, y un largo etc. Como digo los personajes abundan y he de admitir que no fue tarea fácil asentarme. A veces resultaba lioso y confuso, pero finalmente si te dejas llevar acabas situándote. A pesar de esto, son uno de los elementos más importantes y fascinantes de la novela, ya que todos y cada uno de ellos están dotados de mucha profundidad y complejidad. A través de los diferentes capítulos en los que se te introducen estos personajes vemos explorar su psicología con lupa y somos capaces de ver toda su riqueza interior. Personajes como Lily que al principio me causaban rechazo terminaron despertándome cierta empatía por todas sus contradicciones y matices. I lean against that gate in the ivied wall under the ash tree, and hear the clump of farm horse hoofs coming from the drinking pond, and see the sunset beyond the horse pasture and the sixty-acre stretch that lies, dark plough-land, up to the flaming sky.” Winifred Holtby, 1934 Holtby provides no neatly tied ends and happy endings and her characters sometimes have a difficult time of it, but there is still running through a sense of the need for the struggle to improve the lot of people especially through socialism and feminism; it isn’t a depressing book.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby | Hachette UK

She demolished Somerset Maugham’s view of marriage as an end in itself as “flatly immoral”. Her careful appreciation of Woolf’s The Waves showed her to be as keen to engage with the formal experiments of modernism as the politics of the day. Somehow, though, they embarked on their passionate friendship: a falling in love, of a kind. After Oxford, they flatshared in Bloomsbury, and for the rest of Holtby’s life, they more often lived together than not, an arrangement that didn’t change even after Brittain married and had children; eventually, Holtby moved in with her and Catlin, taking over the childcare when they were away. She was happy to do this, for all that she was now a published novelist and a prolific journalist, but what amazes is that Brittain was so casual about her generosity, accepting it as her due. South Riding covers two years in the life of a fictionalised borough in Yorkshire (though with a real name), and immerses you into the local politics and social life of the area. I felt myself being drawn into a gentle vortex where all human virtues and shortcomings intersect and revolve around each other – power-seeking and corruption, dutifulness and rectitude, greed and pettiness, generosity and kindness, but where there is equally a recognition that human beings are usually a blend of both the admirable and the not so admirable qualities. This method of storytelling, if well done, can provide some truly profound insights into human nature, and it’s very well done indeed here, through some excellently drawn three dimensional main characters, and a huge cast of convincing and memorable minor characters. Bishop, Alan (26 May 2005). "Holtby, Winifred (1898–1935), novelist and feminist reformer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/37563 . Retrieved 4 January 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)Minute Drama: Winifred Holtby - The Crowded Street Episode 1 of 10". BBC Online. BBC . Retrieved 19 January 2017. This is an epic portrait of the fictional Yorkshire county of South Riding in the 1930s. It describes the events following the hiring of a new headmistress of the girls’ school, Sarah Burrton, a 40ish progressive, self-confident woman returning to Yorkshire after years of teaching in London. There are many characters, and the plot involves many elements. Several South Riding county aldermen are prominently involved. The most prominent is Robert Carne, a conservative and manly gentleman-farmer, struggling to make ends meet because his wife is in an asylum and trying to bring up his daughter alone. Carne and Burton’s relationship figures prominently and, while there are Jane Eyre elements in the story, their relationship fo Bostridge, Mark (15 March 2012). "The story of the friendship between Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 29 March 2012. Holtby takes a community in Yorkshire and, using the framework of its local government, builds up a narrative which tells the stories of many people in the community, all intertwined. It reminds me a good deal of George Eliot in the organic feel of the community, how decisions and events affect everyone, and of Elizabeth Gaskell in the concern for social issues. As well as her journalism, Holtby wrote 14 books, including six novels; two volumes of short stories; the first critical study of Virginia Woolf (1932) and Women and a changing civilization (1934), a feminist survey with opinions that are still relevant. [8] She dedicated the latter book to composer Dame Ethel Smyth and actress and writer Cicely Hamiltion, both strong suffragists who "did more than write " The March of the Women", [9] the song composed in 1910 for the Women's Social and Political Union. [10] She also wrote poetry, including poems about Vera Brittain's dead brother, Edward.