"Game Breakers: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World" is a group portrait biography of five female writers written by the very famous British biographer Lindell Gordon, and recently published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House Yiwenzhi Studio. Recently, translator Hu Xiaoran shared the book with readers at the xunlu library in Chengdu.
Lindell Gordon, born in 1941 in Cape Town, South Africa, holds a Ph.D. in literature from Columbia University in the United States, is a typical scholar-type biographer and is now a senior fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She has published many biographies, the most famous of which has made her highly acclaimed among scholars and readers alike, her biography of the poet T.S. Eliot. In addition to T.S. Elliott, Gordon has written biographies for many writers, including women writers Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë, and the famous American poetess Emily Dickinson. This biography, "The GameBreaker", should be her first female group portrait biography, she selected five female writers and set up group portraits for them. These five women writers, known as world-changing women, spanned the entire 19th century and through the early 20th century, more than 100 years. There are very obvious signs of the times in the biography, when the living conditions of women have created various obstacles and restrictions on their life choices to become a writer.
The following is a compilation of the contents of this sharing session.
"GameBreakers: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World", Lindell Gordon / Hu Xiaoran, Xiao Yizhi, Xu Xiaofan / Translation, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, August 2021 edition
a fifth-place catastrophe
The first writer, Mary Shelley, was born in 1797 and died in 1851, and her last name, Shelley, may be very famous today, because she later married Shelley, the most representative poet of the Romantic period. But she herself is actually a very important writer in the history of literature, almost known as the mother of science fiction literature, and at the age of 19 she created what is now known as what may be the first science fiction novel in history, "Frankenstein", which is "Frankenstein".
Mary Shelley
The second writer was Emily Brontë, whose most famous work is, of course, the novel Wuthering Heights, which everyone knows today. Her surname is also very famous because she has two sisters who are also famous writers, one is Charlotte Brontë, the author of Jane Eyre, and the other is Anne Brontë, author of Agnes Gray. She lived to a very short age, and at the age of 30 she died of tuberculosis.
Emily Brontë
A third writer, George Eliot, was born in 1819, a year after Emily Brontë, and she was also a very important female writer in the history of english and Western fiction in the 19th century.
George Elliott
The following may not be very familiar to The Chinese reader, whose name is Oliver Schreiner, is a British writer born in South Africa, which was a British colony at the time. Born in 1855 and died in 1920, she had a novel that was very famous in England and in The American literary circles as a whole, Tales of an African Farm. Lindell Gordon, the author of Game Breaker, was born in South Africa, and her name is Lindell derived from the name of the heroine of Schreiner's famous novel. It can be seen that Schreiner's novel had a very great influence on the British in the South African colony at that time. Schreiner later became a well-known feminist activist and anti-war activist.
Oliver Schreiner
The last one, who may be more familiar to everyone, is Virginia Woolf, a very famous modernist writer who has also had a very important influence on the entire literary history and literary movement.
Virginia Woolf
Gordon's book, arranged in chronological order of birth time and age of life of the five writers, actually tells a complete story. They are women who lived, or at least were born in the 19th century. Let me briefly introduce what the situation women faced at this time, or what kind of difficulties they faced as women living in that era to become writers.
Angel in the room
A figure who had a great influence on the political situation of the entire 19th century and on social life was also a woman, and she was Queen Victoria of Britain. Queen Victoria succeeded to the throne in 1837 and died in 1901, so to this day she is one of the top monarchs in The reign of the United Kingdom. The period of her reign is known as the Victorian period, which was also one of the most prosperous periods in the world of the British Empire, and its political expansion and capital accumulation were constantly expanding, known as the Empire of the Rising Sun. However, corresponding to this ever-expanding national strength and accumulated wealth is a very serious social problem, and there is also a huge gap between the rich and the poor. In addition, although a queen ruled at this time, the overall situation of Victorian women was very bad, very low status, in social and economic life, hardly enjoyed any rights, could not vote, could not sue, and could not own any private property. In Victorian times, once women were married, their goods, land, property, or whatever income they could earn by virtue of their abilities were ultimately owned by their husbands.
Moreover, Victorian women themselves were the private property of their husbands, so in marriage, men could dominate women's bodies without giving them any returns, including childbearing, sex, and housework, which needed to be provided free of charge by women in marriage. Moreover, since it is the private property of the husband, there is no way for women to resist and appeal in any way when they encounter domestic violence and the husband's infidelity.
At the level of social morality, the requirements of the whole society for women are also very narrow, and it has a morally perfect demand for women. There is a famous saying called "angel in the house", which typically describes the requirements of the entire Victorian period for a perfect woman, that is, she had to have some kind of characteristics of being a suitable wife and mother of children, such as she was gentle, sensitive, selfless, dedicated, and so on. Some of these qualities are in line with the perfect female image of "angel in the room".
The obstacles to be overcome by "metamorphosis"
In this basic historical context, as a woman living in the 19th century, especially in the Victorian period, there are many difficulties that she has to overcome if she has any intellectual pursuits, or if she wants to become a writer, and these are largely the restrictions of a society on her.
What difficulties does she have to face? The first one is actually more important is the economic problem, as I just mentioned, because society requires women so, so her main life choice may be to find a husband after adulthood. In this way, her economy can have a basic guarantee and dependence, but this dependence comes at a huge cost. And if she doesn't go looking for a husband, the career options she has in society to support herself are very narrow, most commonly to become a governess. In order to be able to provide financial support to themselves, several of the women in "Game Breaker" have worked as tutors in many places. Many times because they are not married, the original family has encountered some financial difficulties, they need to earn money, through the role of tutors to support her father and the original family, such as the Brontë family. There were also very simple occupations that were also available to women at the time, such as nurses, as well as typists and secretaries. These auxiliary jobs can bring some meager income to women. Therefore, at that time, a woman, she wanted to pursue an independent life, or wanted to pursue her own professional life, basically impossible, if she wanted to be a writer, perennial need to run in this situation of making a living for herself, this difficulty is extremely huge.
The second important issue when a woman is time. Because it takes a very long and uninterrupted time to enter into deep writing and thinking, she needs to free herself from these daily chores, and be able to have a long, focused time to explore and write, and to constantly sculpt her work. But this kind of long-term stability, and a private space, was impossible for the vast majority of women at the time. In marriage and family, she will be troubled by a lot of housework, some chores, occupying a lot of time, because men do not do housework. Even if she is not married, she faces the same situation. The profession of tutor allows some women to earn a living and gain financial resources for themselves, but the amount of work to be undertaken is very large, which also makes it difficult for them to get out. Several of the female writers in this book are facing such a situation, such as the one just mentioned, Schreiner, who has been a governess since she was 16 years old, and her annual income is very meager, making it difficult for her to survive on her own. And this kind of tutor's work is very busy, she not only has to teach the children at home, but also to help the family to do all kinds of housework, as well as sewing and patching, every day may have to get up in the early morning, very late to sleep, so it is impossible to have any time to read or write. Emily Brontë once taught with her sister Charlotte Brontë at a school near her home, and she went to class from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. In such a very complicated work, they have no time and energy to study and write, which is a very difficult situation for them.
Of course, there were some of the luckier women at the time, who were more typical or mentioned in this book, who were some writers who came from better backgrounds, such as Woolf, and who were not in this book, but everyone must know, Jane Austen... These writers have rich families, which makes them unnecessary to take on complicated work in the family, and even to find a means of making a living, so that they can have time and leisure to read and write.
In addition to economic and temporal issues, there is also the question of undisturbed space. Woolf made this famous argument in her famous speech, "A Room of Your Own," including the title of this sharing. It's a woman who, if she wants to write, might ask for at least £500 a year and have her own undisturbed room. Woolf also gives an example in the book, that is, if Shakespeare had a sister who had the same talent as him, then she might have been schizophrenic at that time, on the one hand, she wanted to seek an expression of her talent, but the society at that time could not have given her such an opportunity.
"A Room of Your Own"
There is also a very important issue, that is, the issue of education. Like the restrictions on women's social life and various career choices at that time, the door to education was largely closed to women. The lack of official education prevents them from being educated in many formal schools. Many of them read and study in their father's or family's study. Of course, by the mid-19th century, there were some girls' schools in Britain that specialized in providing schooling for girls under the age of 18, but most of these schools also had many problems, such as writing in this biography that the schools to which the Brontë sisters went were full of violence, and so on. And the school is actually more so that these middle-class women who have a little money in the family can learn a little knowledge and become tutors in the future. The doors of universities are completely closed to women, such as Oxford and Cambridge, which were established in the Middle Ages and have not allowed female students to appear. It was not until the mid-19th century, in 1869, that Cambridge University established for the first time a women's college, allowing women to attend classes at institutions of higher learning. But even so, the courses taught at these women's colleges were quite different from those taught by men's schools, and they refused to award women official degrees until 1948.
The fifth and most important point is the question of social perception, which is also mentioned over and over again in this book. Especially in the Victorian period, the idea of a distinction between men and women was reinforced, and it was believed that men and women occupied different fields. Men want to get more career development in society, and women need to belong to the family and return to the family. At that time, the development of science was also supporting this view, such as a very funny view that women can't read too many books, and reading too many books is harmful to the uterus, so there is no way to give birth to healthy children.
So at that time, these women who had independent self-knowledge pursuits, wanted to express themselves through writing, and made a voice in the public sphere would face a lot of discrimination and unfair treatment in society as a whole. Almost all of the female writers in this biography used pseudonyms to publish their works. When Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, she didn't sign it at first, so many people think that the novel was written by the poet Shelley. The Brontë sisters also initially used a false male name like Bell to publish books. The name George Eliot itself is the author's new name for himself, her original name is Marianne Evans, so this biography also makes a very touching writing about this inner transformation of the person that occurs from the transformation of the name. Including Oliver Schreiner, who published A Tale of an African Farm also uses male pseudonyms. In addition, some of the very outrageous female figures that appeared in these works were criticized by many male critics and writers as soon as they appeared in the literary circles of the time. There are some highly educated male writers who we think are very important today, who still have a very outrageous idea of these independent and knowledgeable women, whether in real life or in their work.
Frankenstein
So on the basis of such a society, women's pursuit of independence, self-development, and society's opening up a path for women's intellectual pursuits requires a very long process, at least in Western societies.
I have introduced the historical background above, and you can imagine the great difficulties faced by these five female writers at that time if they wanted to receive an education and pursue an intellectual and intellectual growth. And, in the end, they became the great efforts of the writers they are known today, and the life energy that exploded in the process.
How to "Break the Game": Daily Experiences and Inner Explorations
Let me tell you specifically about these writers, how they broke through these historical situations, or how they sought opportunities that this society did not give them. All five writers came from middle-class and above-middle-class families, which allowed them to read and write, even though at an early age, there was no formal schooling to expose them to a large number of books and ideas. With the exception of the first Mary Shelley and the last Virginia Woolf, they may have been relatively lucky because they were born into intellectual families.
Mary Shelley's father was a very famous political thinker named Godwin, and her mother Wollstonecraft was a very important feminist thinker—Mary Shelley's mother was also a pioneer or pioneer figure throughout the book. Woolf's father was a very well-known scholar at the time, Leslie Stephen, and also a knighted man, so Woolf was able to contact some of the most famous figures in the cutting-edge ideological and cultural circles of the time from an early age.
Compared to these two, the three remaining writers, whether it was Brontë, or George Eliot, or Oliver Schreiner, were in a more difficult situation. They either live in the countryside or in the colonies. First of all, the surrounding cultural atmosphere is very poor, and they themselves often face a lot of financial problems, which makes it very difficult for them to really enter the writing. Brontë, for example, had a priest whose father was a priest who, by his own endeavours, started as a very humble apprentice in the blacksmith shop and then slowly reached the position. But the parish of Haworth, the parish where their family moved, was in very poor economic and material conditions as a whole, with the average life expectancy of the villagers being only 25 years. Brontë's father was also ostracized by powerful local families, never promoted in his lifetime, and often in a very difficult financial situation. So even if he could send his daughter to school, he wouldn't be able to pay all the tuition, and he probably put all his expectations on his son, who wanted him to learn Greek and Latin, which was a male subject at the time, and a so-called higher knowledge that only men in college could learn. So for the Brontë sisters, they had to do housework at home and go out to earn money when they became adults. The book reads: "Only at night can they gain time for free thinking. So the night is very important for Gordon in describing the lives of these female writers, who can only live according to the rules and expectations of society during the day, and can only really release themselves at night. Gordon also wrote about the famous poetess Emily Dickinson, who would write every morning from three o'clock and in a quiet time. When describing Bronte, Gordon also has a sentence that I like very much, she said: "Darkness is a cover for liberation, and invisibility is also a kind of freedom." "At this quietest time, they can get rid of their daily predicament and truly release their imagination."
Stills from the biographical film Hidden Behind the Book (2016) about the Three Brontë Sisters
George Elliot's grandfather was a carpenter and his father was a real estate manager, and she lived in the countryside. In her own works, there are also many female characters who live in the countryside and are incompatible with the surrounding environment, and want to pursue intellectual development. George Eliot's education as a child was actually a huge disservice to her, which is also described in Gordon's biography. Because she belonged to an evangelical parish, the language she received that strongly expressed, religious passions, was a very hypocritical performance for her. She needs to renew or resist the ill effects of this hypocritical language and education through her own pursuits and learning. So George Eliot taught herself Latin, Italian and German, and later found the opportunity to translate (such important works as the biography of Jesus) and slowly left the countryside where she was born. One of the most important study opportunities for her was that she came to London and was invited to be editor of the Westminster Review, one of the most famous magazines in the literary circles at the time. Of course, the work of an editor was very complicated, and many times because the person who offered her the job, Chapman, had a lot of financial problems, George Eliot worked for the magazine for almost free, but it was during this period that she was able to contact the most cutting-edge intellectual and literary figures in London at that time. As we mentioned just now, society's demand for women is to support her husband, as well as her former family, and George Eliot made a very selfish choice here, and she almost cut off all contact with her brother's family when they encountered difficulties. Of course, the reason behind this is very complicated, and it may be that she needs to distance herself from the countryside where she was born and draw a line to truly become the person she wants to be. On the other hand, she was very lucky to meet a partner who was extremely supportive of her, and that was Lewis. The relationship between them is described in great detail in this biography. Lewis was very protective of George Eliot's writing time in life, almost eliminating all the daily chores that were very typical of Victorian women at the time, allowing her to devote herself to writing and learning without interruption.
Later, Schreiner, and Woolf, the process of their transformation from the era in which they lived and from the expectations and requirements of the times for them as a woman was also very difficult. For example, Schreiner, after working as a tutor in South Africa, saved up some money and came to Edinburgh. She initially wanted to become a doctor or go to the hospital to study as a nurse, but then she had asthma and was unable to continue her studies. It was also in London that her novel The Story of an African Farm received a great deal of admiration, giving her a platform to enter a small circle of very radical ideas in the late Victorian period, to access and read the works of the famous sexual psychologists, sociologists, and Marxists of the time.
The Story of an African Farm
So this biography actually depicts the step-by-step exploration they experienced before they eventually became great writers, as well as their pursuits, and many times very difficult experiences, little by little. And the moments they experienced being ostracized by society or not knowing where to go really constructed the spiritual core of some of the literary works that they became most familiar with.
In this biography, in addition to describing their daily lives, Gordon is more important to portray their inner exploration, the emotional experience they experienced in overcoming the repression and difficulties given to them by the whole society, and their continuous cognitive progress, which may eventually appear in the works they write. For example, I don't know if you have read some of the literary works of one of these writers, but if you see the stories of these writers behind the works, you may have a completely different understanding of this work. Frankenstein, for example, known as the first science fiction novel, is actually very ambitious, telling the story of an almost crazy scientist who creates a monster by piecing together different corpses and activating them with current experiments, but then unwilling to raise him, or unwilling to be responsible for the monster, and finally incurs very terrible consequences. Why is it so ambitious? Because it actually tells the story of how the development of science in the context of modern society has challenged the traditional western cultural roots, especially the story of where people come from. Its main content is to tell the disaster that science may bring about man, but if we understand the background in which Mary Shelley is creating this story, we will find that it actually tells the story of a family, and its emotional core is very touching. Although there is no plump female figure in the work of Frankenstein, she actually writes about the experience of being a woman from many different perspectives, such as when this monster activated by different dead people through electric current confronts the mad scientist on the top of the mountain, and the monster's words to the scientist actually have a great resonance with Mary Shelley's relationship with her father in real life. Because when Mary Shelley eloped with the poet Shelley, her father decided to break off relations with her, she tried many times to re-establish this emotional connection with her family, but her father completely refused, and her relationship with her sisters at that time was also blocked. So she wrote her feelings for her father into a novel like Frankenstein. In addition, the image of this mad scientist in the book, many people say that there is a lot of overlap with the poet Shelley, and Gordon believes that this is also a story about the terrible consequences of his ambitions. So she reflects in this story her observations of the people around her, even if they are very close lovers.
Another example is the work "Wuthering Heights", the very crazy emotional core of the book, which also comes from many of the most direct emotional experiences in Emily Brontë's own life. Including the male protagonist inside, this devil-like character, a combination between Heathcliff and Casey, and this feeling beyond life and death, it actually comes from a very stubborn call of the author. Although Emily Brontë wants to avoid all public life almost entirely in real life, and she is a person who is very eager to protect her private space, in this story, a flame of independence in her heart that exists in an extremely private life, presented to us through such a relationship, is actually her opposition to the typical Victorian very idealized marriage.
Wuthering Heights
George Eliot actually repeatedly wrote about a type of woman, all born in the countryside, but out of place with the pedantic environment around them, hoping to have their own intellectual pursuits. Some of them fell into very tragic consequences, such as Maggie Talif in The Mill on the Furus River, where she and her brother drowned together. Including in Middlematch, Dorothea Cassupon is a woman with a very intellectual pursuit, but she mistakenly binds this pursuit to a nerdy husband and is trapped in a very tragic marriage. So all of these characters may be some of the female archetypes that George Eliot himself was very afraid of becoming but ultimately did not become.
Including Schreiner, in the story she wrote about this African farm, the heroine Lindell was also born in the colonial countryside, but the rudeness of the countryside is intolerable, and she has suffered a lot of violence and evil deeds since childhood, determined to obtain a new life through her education outside, but she also ends with a very tragic life. This is also very important, the image of a kind of "new woman" promoted by the feminist movement. So later it was said that Lindell in the story of this African farm was the first so-called "new woman" heroine.
In a way, Gordon's biography reads all the literary works that we are familiar with today as a kind of female biography, but this biography is not very simple to write out their own lives directly, but through their genius and imagination to reconstruct a new emotional structure, let us see another kind of women's life possibilities.
Reject a life that is defined
Over the years, there have been many films about women writers, especially some of the books written in this book, including a Mary Shelley film made in the previous two years, the BBC also made a brontë sisters film, and a few years ago, Nicole Kidman won the Oscar for leading actress in it, and the film about Woolf, "All the Time". But in fact, in this book, Gordon has more or less criticized the image of female writers reshaped by these modern cultures and mass media cultures. Because the film reinforces one aspect of these writers in another way, it is to label them in another way, like the movie "Mary Shelley", which must emphasize the elopement of Mary Shelley and the poet Shelley. And "All the Time", Gordon in the book specifically criticizes the film's portrayal of Woolf, because the film begins with Woolf's final psychotic attack, putting a stone in his pocket to commit suicide, which is actually another misinterpretation of her. So this book, the biggest recognition of all female writers is that they reject any kind of defined or labeled life in the era in which they live. They want to use their greatest genius through a way of exploration, which is often very costly, to live a life that is not allowed by society.
Poster of "All the Time"