cbr16bingo and also
This is a collection of essays written from approximately 1950 through 1990 by proto-feminist Elizabeth Hardwick, primarily for magazines, and more importantly, magazines for the female reader such as Vogue, House & Garden, and Mademoiselle. They are on various random topics such as cheese grits and Parsifal, but the bulk of them are on political topics or what she referred to as “the feminine principle”. Let’s take a look.
The old feminist, the brilliant, self-assertive, daring, reforming woman is as extinct as a dodo, and the movement called feminism could not fill a small lecture hall. There’s not much need for agitation, in the political sense, because legal, social, and economic rights for women are fairly well won.
Written in 1958. Well, I’m glad we got that out of the way. Very much an entitled, white woman, ladies-who-lunch take on the whole matter. No wonder many of these essays ended up being uncollected.
But there are some essays I particularly liked, such as Lexington, Kentucky, her home town until she moved to New York City in her early twenties.
But all I know about planting, all I remember, are the violets and the lilies of the valley at Castlewood , . . . and tomato plants at our own resistant garden, and gladiola bulbs, yielding after effort, finally their pinkish-orange goblets, and the difficult dahlia, forever procrastinating, heavily blooming at last
I could have taken more of that. Tell me more about the horses.