Miss Horeham seems to have walked straight out of a Barbara Pym novel: an older woman with standards which are disappointed with some regularity. She has lived in this pension for long enough to see families come and go, long enough to recognise the rhythms of the seasons there, and
Bette Bao Lord's In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (1984) opens when Bandit is living in China in her grandparents' home. She is ten years old (nine in Western birthdays) and she is about to learn that she will be going to live in the United States.
Alice Munro's hired girls like to read too.In "Sunday Afternoon", Alva asks Mr. Gannett if she could borrow "King Lear" and, also, Stendhal's The Red and the Black. Mr. Gannett agrees to share his books with Alva, just as Mr. Montjoy gifts the young Alice with his copy of Seven Gothic Tales at the end of
There were “few openings for women in the nineties” and, so, Mary Wakefield is forced to consider work as a governess in the 1890s. She is fortunate, in fact, that Ernest Whiteoak is seeking a governess for his brother’s young son (nine years old) and daughter (seven years old). Their mother
As is fitting for the opening story of Mavis Gallant's second published collection, My Heart is Broken, many themes feel familiar. The question of what constitutes a "good" woman, particularly when she is not a wife. The dilemma of trying to live an interesting life while maintaining a sheen of
