Mo Moulton
Författare till The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women
Om författaren
Foto taget av: Uncredited image found at University of Birmingham website
Verk av Mo Moulton
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Födelsedag
- 1979
- Kön
- female
- Utbildning
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA, USA); Brown University (Providence, RI, USA)
- Kort biografi
- Mo Moulton is an American author and historian of 20th century Britain and Ireland, interested in gender, sexuality, and colonialism/postcolonialism. They are a senior lecturer in the history of race and empire at the University of Birmingham.
Medlemmar
Recensioner
Listor
Feminism (1)
Priser
Statistik
- Verk
- 2
- Medlemmar
- 139
- Popularitet
- #147,351
- Betyg
- 4.2
- Recensioner
- 5
- ISBN
- 13
It is truly a group biography, and a picture of many of the changes in the English social and cultural landscape between the beginning of the 20th century and the 1980's. The Mutual Admiration Society (MAS) was a group of young women who studied together at Somerville College in Oxford during the period leading up to World War I. Although I might take exception to the assertion that they "remade the world for women", there is no question that they stretched the boundaries of what women of their class were able to achieve in life beyond what had previously been possible.
The "core four" of the MAS included Dorothy Sayers ("DLS"), a theological thinker and writer in addition to the author of the Wimsey books; Muriel St Clare Byrne, a Tudor scholar and author eventually awarded an OBE; Dorothy Rowe ("D Rowe"), a popular and successful teacher and important theatrical innovator; and Charis Frankenburg, a champion of women's reproductive rights and proselytizer for compassionate, informed child care. While [a:Mo Moulton|7888870|Mo Moulton|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] leaves no question that there was much to admire in these women, she is careful to point out that they could be narrow minded, in many ways clinging to the upper middle class privileges into which they were born. For instance, they were generally apprehensive that the careful, wise governing of their educated and monied peers would become a thing of the past once universal suffrage was enacted in England - or when the inhabitants of British colonies became self-governing.
While they shared lifelong camaraderie mutual support, each of these women dealt with circumstances that were unique to themselves as they pursued their career goals. DLS struggled to reconcile her personal religious doctrines with her need for physical relationships coupled with some ambivalence about the idea of marriage. Muriel maintained a life partnership with Marjorie Barber (a teacher who also had attended Somerville), a relationship that was tested as a result of Muriel's involvement with another woman. D Rowe never married or sustained a long term relationship, but hardly fit the classic mold of a spinster, helping to establish and push to extraordinary success the Bournemouth Little Theater company. And Charis, who grew up Christian but whose father had a Jewish background, and who married into a Jewish family and community, was never fully comfortable in either world.
Beyond sharing the stories of these remarkable women, [b:The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women|51998629|The Mutual Admiration Society How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women|Mo Moulton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569300639l/51998629._SX50_SY75_.jpg|68805017] consistently stimulated me to ponder their life trajectories in comparison with my own, and to draw parallels between the challenges they endured and what we face today. This was probably most true in the case of Charis, who fought with many groups, but primarily the Catholic Church, over making birth control widely available, a dispute that continues to this day. Maternal mortality rates, a problem that persists in the United States, was another concern for Charis nearly a century ago. Clearly the world has not been remade for women in this regard.
I got a great deal more out of this book than I had anticipated. And I'm going to make a point of reading Gaudy Nights (a Wimsey/Vane novel set at a fictionalized Somerville) very soon!
Note 1: Although GR doesn't have the Audible copy set up as one of the available editions, I listened rather than read. I'm still undecided about whether I liked the narration, which I found somewhat annoyingly brittle at times.
Note 2: Because the first few chapters include references to a number of other women who were part of the MAS during the Somerville years, it was a bit confusing to sort out all the individuals while listening. Once the stories were distilled down to the main four plus their partners, it was much easier to follow.… (mer)