This was either the end of the world or the beginning of a new world for women.
Rating: 4.5/5
Trigger Warnings: mental health, depression
Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t read the book, this review will contain spoilers so it’s up to you if you continue…
Daughters of Decadence is a short story collection, containing the writing of a number of female writers from the end of the 19th century - the fin de siècle. Around the time, there was a lot of daring new fiction. Experimental and courageous, this writing was candid about female experiences around sex and marriage. What seems to have been shocking to Victorian critics of the period (who were used to more… shall we say, repressive texts?) will likely be puzzling and surprising to modern day readers.
I’d presume that a lot of people will have heard of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella The Yellow Wallpaper, but this collection of female authors shoes such a variety of writing that I urge people to have a read.
This was the first time I’d read The Yellow Wallpaper and I have to say, in all honesty, it has me puzzled. I really enjoyed it but (spoilers for its ending) I fully expected the narrator to kill herself at the end. I hadn’t even questioned where else the narrative may go, I had assumed escape meant death. Yet I was pleasantly surprised - more than that, I was amused. The novella ends on the odd image of the narrator crawling repeatedly round her bedroom, perhaps believing herself inside the wallpaper. Without having studied it too closely, I see the wallpaper is an allegory for the entrapment the narrator feels, but the lasting image of her crawling over her unconscious husband has left puzzled and entertained, despite the desperate, almost manic tone of much of the narrative.
Though The Yellow Wallpaper was the only one I had heard of, it has not been my favourite. Many have been equally as surprising or as puzzling, but my favourite has been Theodora: A Fragment. A chapter of a longer novel, I am now incredibly intrigued by the whole novel - Six Chapters of a Man’s Life. The narrative style reminded me somewhat of Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, with a woman so rapturous and engaging, who seems to know so much and be so much to a man who has been everywhere. I was amazed that it had been written by a woman, to tell the truth.
What I’ve found most interesting in reading this collection is the variety in the voices, and the experimentation that was taking place in the period. Inevitably no one module I study can give me an all-encompassing view of a period of literature, but this collection has been like nothing I’ve read before. For one, the number of female voices feels like a breath of fresh air in comparison to the hundreds of male writers I’ve had to look at. More importantly than that though, is that this collection is evidently women finding their voices. There is nothing formulaic about this writing, each expresses itself in a different way, saying something new. Definitely recommend, and would love to discuss any of the many stories within - they are truly fascinating.
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