The Sheltered Image
1971; University of North Carolina Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1534-1461
Autores Tópico(s)Race, History, and American Society
ResumoEllen Glasgow would have liked J. R. Raper's Without Shelter. She could not have asked for more sympathetic interpreter, and she remains the enigma which she carefully projected, the passionate intellectual. After few weeks in Richmond, gathering material for the authorized biography of Ellen Glasgow, poor Marjorie Rawlings decided she had tackled more than she had bargained for; the half-truths, half-lies, from near and dear friends of the enigma, the restrictions placed on confidences, made her resolve that she would not attempt an intimate biography but one safely to be entitled A Study of Ellen Glasgow, the Social Historian. Anne Virginia Bennett, faithful companion, in her apartment filled with memorabilia of the dear departed, liked to bedazzle graduate students with sensational tid-bits, only to add, if you say I told you, I'll deny it. (Example: Jeremy and Billy, two of Ellen Glasgow's beloved canines, are buried in her coffin with her.) She had doubtless learned the game from the mystery woman herself. In the postscript of letter to James Branch Cabell, Ellen Glasgow added: Now, will you please destroy this letter, for, before I finish it, I must add few warning lines I have wished, for years, to whisper in your inattentive ear. But the opportunity has never come, and probably never will come. Please do not ever, ever, by spoken word or telephone make any allusion to Anne Virginia about my work. I mean never mention it to her, or send me message through her. And do not mention this request even to Percie. Not to anybody. I may explain, and I may not, but that is all. (1) Monique Parent, safely foreign but woman peculiarly endowed by upbringing to understand Miss Ellen, was favored by old ladies and benevolent professors with confidences; however, her Ellen Glasgow, Romanciere was published in French. (2) Ellen Glasgow has been dead for over twenty-five years, and the house and garden tour might reasonably now include the kitchen and work-shop, perhaps even the closets. J. R. Raper does not elect to give us that tour, with reason. He does propose to analyze critically the early of Ellen Glasgow and to interweave interludes of intellectual and psychological biography. In his work, Professor Raper reveals three distinct styles. The first is the pedagogue lecturing us on Ellen Glasgow's mentors, those social philosophers whom she read and who strengthened her rebellion against Southern Romance. In presenting these philosophers, foremost Darwin, Mr. Raper is less than interesting, bordering on the text-book dull. Next, he is the scholar analyzing how these social theorists are incorporated in her novels, and here he is more than brilliant. He even makes these early seem exciting as works of possibilities, to use his recurring phrase. Then he has an easy reportorial style in recounting those biographical details that string the analyses together. The general tone of enthusiasm that runs throughout Professor Raper's work makes it obvious that he likes Ellen Glasgow, that she has captured his imagination, that he would really like to know the woman veiled within. He may even, like others before him, suspect that she was more interesting as personality than is any of her creations. Although Mr. Raper disclaims any attempt to write biography, more vital Ellen Glasgow is glimpsed in his work than in that of Frederick McDowell, (3) whose naive acceptance of the Ellen Glasgow of published sources resulted in wax mannequin. Mr. Raper identifies those conflicts in Ellen Glasgow's life which led her to rebellion and thence to her writing table, in particular her rejection of her father. Then he speculates so generally on the nature of these conflicts that he diffuses rather than sharpens their relevance. In revealing, via Parent, that Ellen Glasgow's antipathy for her father may have been due, in part, to her inability to reconcile his Calvinism with his reputed Negro mistresses, he also observes that her attitude may have reflected little more than the Victorian woman's concept of a sisterhood of suffering, an inherited myth of male brutality. …
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