Cbr17bingo purple
Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen — these are just a few of the 17 women writers whose works are featured in this collection. While I enjoyed most of the stories, the publisher/editors made some very strange and aggravating choices that left me bewildered. No editors are listed, and no forward or afterward is offered to explain what criteria were used to determine which writers and stories were included. The 17 stories range in original publication dates from 1832 to 1926, which is pretty limiting if you are talking about great short stories by women. It probably means, however, that the stories are in the public domain and therefore cheaper to publish.
Let’s start with the all of the editorial choices that bothered me. There are two entries that genuinely pissed me off: “Lady Susan” by Jane Austen and “The Lifted Veil” by George Eliot. Neither story is actually reprinted in this collection. Instead, the publishers provide summaries of the stories! This is like buying the collected works of Austen only to find the SparkNotes version of Emma in it. I’m guessing the stories were too long, in which case find some other short stories to include. It’s not like there aren’t other writers out there. Another odd choice was Charlotte Bronte’s “Stancliffe’s Hotel,” which I found to be unreadable. I wondered if parts of the story had somehow been left out, but then I did a little Googling and discovered that this story is part of a larger arc and that if you haven’t read the first part, it is indeed hard to follow.
A few of the stories were kind of “meh,” in my opinion. These include Jean Rhys’ “Vienne,” which involves some confusing relationships amongst military officers and ‘dancers’ in post-war Europe; and “Breakfast” by Elizabeth Bowen, which is about a man living uncomfortably in a boarding house. Other stories are quite famous classics like Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on the Wall,” Agatha Christie’s “The Witness for the Prosecution,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (which freaks me out every time I read it), and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” which is a very short gut punch of a story.
The remaining 8 stories were quite strong, some written by famous writers and others by writers unknown to me. Amongst the new-to-me writers are Katherine Mansfield (Australia) whose 1922 story “The Garden Party” focuses on class disparity and manners through the eyes of a sensitive girl; “The Martyr” by Kathryn Anne Porter, which is about a Mexican artist who falls apart when his muse leaves him; “The Bedquilt,” by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, which is a touching story about an “old maid” who finally feels her own worth; and “The Fat of the Land,” by Anzia Yezierska, whose tale of an immigrant family’s rags-to-riches experience in American also reveals the generational divide that accompanies it. The known-to-me authors include Willa Cather, whose 1905 story “Paul’s Case” appealed to me in part because it is set in Pittsburgh and features areas of town that I recognize, but also because it is a fascinating story of a teenaged boy who has big dreams and a shocking way of realizing them. “The Invisible Girl,” by Mary Shelley is a mix of romance and Gothic, with a brooding lovelorn young man, a dark and stormy night, and an abandoned lighthouse that might be haunted. Zora Neal Hurston’s 1926 story “Sweat” has a “war of the roses” vibe, with a married couple who hate each other and are ready to battle to the death. “My Red Cap” by Louisa May Alcott is a touching story set in the Civil War and the years after, following the relationship between an injured soldier and a nurse; Alcott has an important message about providing proper care for those who risked life and limb to protect our country which still resonates.
Overall I would say this collection of short stories by women is okay but not great, and that is not because of the quality of the writings but rather because of the weird editorial choices that the publisher made.