South Riding

Product Information

We're so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable that we don't even ask if it is inevitable. We've got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system.”

Cuando hay tantos personajes es fácil que alguno se quede más desdibujado o pueda confundirse con la construcción de otro, pero en este caso Holtby tiene la suficiente destreza como para darles a todos muchísima profundidad y diferenciarlos. South Riding was the last published novel of Winifred Holtby (1898 – 1935), released the year after her untimely death at the age of thirty-six. It remains her best-known work and has been adapted several times for various media. Holtby's early novels – Anderby Wold (1923), The Crowded Street (1924) (re-published by Persephone Books in 2008, having been broadcast the previous year as a ten-part BBC Radio 4 dramatisation by Diana Griffiths) [7] and The Land of Green Ginger (1927) – met with moderate success. I found these letters completely fascinating. They contain no juicy literary gossip, and most are not especially well written. But the relationship at their centre is endlessly intriguing, and when these young women outline their burgeoning ideas about their careers, marriage, happiness and freedom, it’s touching and inspiring. Neither one is afraid of ambition. Can a man ever offer the same understanding to a woman as a member of her own sex? On this, at least, the two of them are equally certain. The answer must be no. Such obliviousness. Such incuriosity. As Brittain writes of her (mostly) kind and stimulating husband: “He never says: ‘Tell me some more!’”

You are sure to find a character or two that you empathize with, feel for and / or admire. There are all different ages to choose from. Como digo todos son excelentes, pero admito que no he llegado a encariñarme con ninguno hasta el punto de convertirse en un nuevo personaje favorito. Si tengo que escoger mis dos favoritos han sido indudablemente Carne, un hombre bueno y entrañable, y Mrs Beddows, que tiene unas líneas de diálogo espléndidas. My mother did all she could to make amends. She edited South Riding, gradually overcame the opposition of Alderman Mrs Holtby and her associates, and advocated the novel in every way she could. That in 1936 it won several of the great literary prizes and became a much praised film in 1938 directed by Victor Saville, with Ralph Richardson among its leading actors, was some compensation for the suffering of its own making. It is the great epic of local government, a monument to the tens of thousands who serve their fellow human beings at the grassroots where things grow. Sweeping themes, a broad canvas, a wide cast of complex characters, vivid landscapes combined with the wide ranging story with its passion, jealousy, regret, ambition, religion, and the all too human frailty make it a compelling 20th century epic. Both harrowing and hopeful, with plenty of humour too. I romped through this classic of early feminism. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this tale. It had much more substance than I anticipated and was epic in its scope. This is a rich novel, full of nuanced well-drawn characters, touching on important societal issues, all told with sharply worded observations by Holtby. Although the novel moves at a leisurely pace and Holtby’s writing had me reading more slowly than usual, the time was well worth it. I savored each moment I was reading, and I was never bored. I thought it especially poignant that Holtby wrote this book, her last, while she knew she was dying, which she did prior to its publication.

I think the greatest strength of South Riding is its sincerity. There is not a cynical bone in this book's body. Some of the characters express cynical views, some of the characters are deceitful and crooked, but Winifred Holtby writes about all of them without passing judgment. All people are good and bad and right and wrong. Sarah Burton realizes at the end of the book that the answer to Mrs. Beddows’s question “Who pays?” (in response to Sarah’s favorite quotation from Lady Rhondda: “Take it and pay for it”—also the epigraph of the novel) is that everyone pays. Everyone is connected; everyone’s experience benefits someone else, someone’s sacrifice is somebody else’s gain. We’re all in this together. South Riding is as an engrossing novel about the mundane workings of local government. Strange but true. Only at the end, I think, where the shadows disperse and the sky brightens, does the author’s hand lose a little of its sureness. Optimism and the will to optimism are different things, and Miss Holtby’s gallant effort to infer from her heroine’s change of heart a more hopeful future for society at large does not ring quite true as I have had the misfortune to read for a very long time. Subversion is also there in other ways, one of the charms of the book are the relationships between women, particularly between Sarah Burton and elderly Alderman Emma Beddows. Sarah buttonholes Emma to try and rescue one of her school girls Lydia Holly. Sarah thinks she is is a brilliant child full of promise but which will be wasted as since her mother has died she will be dragged from school to become principal carer for her younger siblings (the father is a charming rascal who can barely hold down a job let alone run a household). Sarah has a plan which she persuades Emma to help deliver, but here subversion intervenes on the part of the author. The women work together to rescue the girl and give her a chance at life, but in the end she is saved from the housework by the most traditional method possible - her Father deploys his charm and finds a new wife. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Holtby seems to say. One woman's opportunity may come at another woman's cost, but life is not a simple matter of bookkeeping.BBC Press Office (5 August 2010). " Anna Maxwell Martin and David Morrissey to star in new Andrew Davies drama South Riding". Press release. Retrieved 8 August 2010. She also had a successful career in journalism and wrote the first critical study of Virginia Woolfin English. During her lifetime, her fame derived from her work for prominent newspapers and magazines, including the feminist publication Time and Tide. She wrote about democracy and social welfare, feminism and pacifism, education and responsibility, racism and injustice. South Riding is set in a fictional area of Yorkshire. The main characters are Sarah Burton, a young headmistress, Joe Astell, a poverty-fighting socialist, Robert Carne, a conservative who is tormented by a disastrous marriage, and Mrs. Beddows, the first woman alderman of the district. The latter was surely inspired by Holtby’s mother, Alice, who held the same post in her real-life area of Yorkshire. She also had a successful career in journalism and wrote the first critical study of Virginia Woolf in English. During her lifetime, her fame derived from her work for prominent newspapers and magazines, including the feminist publication Time and Tide.