First published in 1969, this is the account of the life of one of the author's ancestors. As member of a loving, well-off, academic Quaker family in Hertfordshire at the turn of the century, Winnie Seebohm seems to have had an idyllic life. But the author argues that she was kept back by her parents - a relationship (there are almost no details) seems to have been firmly quashed; and while Winnie was permitted some blissful months studying at Newnham College, she pretty soon was forced back home through severe asthma which led to an early death. Ms Glendinning argues that this is a psychosomatic illness, brought on through tension - and certainly the siblings generally were discouraged from matrimony, and one ultimately ended up in an asylum.
Quite an interesting narrative, though difficult to come to any positive conclusions - if she was seriously ill, perhaps marriage WOULD have been unwise. Can we confidently attribute the illness to family pressures? Certainly there were often unspoken difficulties for Winnie, as the author juxtaposes determinedly cheery letters to her former classmates at Cambridge with diary entries of same day, which show her focussing on bearing with the sufferings she has been dealt. ( )

Is there such a thing as too much love? In A Suppressed Cry, a slim biography of her great-aunt Winnie Seebohm, Glendenning suggests that too much love was a factor in Winnie's illness and death.

Winnie Seebohm was born in 1863 to a very wealthy Quaker banking family in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, one of five daughers. Her family was close-knit, progressive,and philanthropic. Her parents believed in educating their daughters as well as Hugh, the only son. The girls were educated in "Latin, French, German, Mathematics, History, Botany, History, English Literature, Greek and Italian at home." Three of the sisters went to Bedford School and Winnie was one of the early students attending Newnham College, Cambridge. This family loved each other, and even more importantly, they genuinely liked each other. When Winnie was not home she wrote affectionate letters to her parents and sisters. They were full of news, but also jokes and teasing and endearments. Her letters and journals definitely are not the obligatory formal letters or the standard journal of "visits and descriptions of meals" so common in Victorian writing.

Winnie knew her childhood was idyllic and privileged. She had acres to run around and the freedom to explore. She had access to her father's library and to music, plays, and art galleries. She traveled abroad with her immediate and her extended family. She and her sisters worked with the community to help those less fortunate and did it out of goodwill and without the pious superiority of the period. In short, they were a very special and very nice family.

But her great-niece states that this cushion of comfort and affection might be the very thing that brought on Winnie's death at 22. Winnie was given wings but had no place to fly. She was accepted at Newnham and it meant leaving her family to live in Cambridge. Wealthy women just didn't leave home yet to study; it was pioneering and very modern. As much as Winnie loved the university schedule and her studies, she felt she had abandoned her family and her beloved father. She wanted the freedom to study and didn't want to break the bonds of home. The result was enough stress to cause increasingly serious asthma attacks.

And so a vicious cycle began. Winnie was ordered by the doctor to rest and not to have any physical or mental stimulus. She took a leave from school and her sisters cared for her, making sure she read nothing challenging or did anything to tire her. She longed to study and could not. She became too weak to even walk around the garden. The plans to return to school excited her so much she had further attacks. Finally, after one attack which lasted a day and a half, Winnie put her head on her writing desk and died.

Not much happened in her sweet and sad life. Winnie was a true victim of her age, a woman who longed to do something with her life but without an established model to follow. Had she been born twenty years later, she would have been one of many young women who happily left home without guilt. Had she been born 50 years later, her asthma would have been controlled with medication and possibly analysis. Instead, a bright and beautiful woman died too soon, mourned by her family and then forgotten until her great-niece discovered her gracious letters and journals. ( )

This short book tells of the brief life of the author's great-aunt Winnie, who was a proper Victorian girl until her death from asthma in her early 20's. Her family was loving, privleged and socially connected, and she met well-known figures of her time such as Tennyson and Browning. She was a student at a woman's college in Cambridge, so her intellectual needs were not denied. An early courtship was thwarted by her family, but it sounded to me as though the gentleman in question (obscure author Harley Rodney) was no great loss.

The book provides an intriguing portrait of a long-ago era, but the author's attempts to connect Winnie's early death to some sort of psychological or societal oppression are not very convincing. ( )