Hive mind, your literally knowledge please: Examples of mothers who abandon their marriage and children in 1920s/1930s books. Ideally UK. The better known the better? Scandalous / unsympathetic characters fine but more nuance would be better. I know there are some but my memory is drawing a blank. - ThreadSky

loreandordure.com • 16 days ago

Hive mind, your literally knowledge please:
Examples of mothers who abandon their marriage and children in 1920s/1930s books. Ideally UK. The better known the better? Scandalous / unsympathetic characters fine but more nuance would be better. I know there are some but my memory is drawing a blank.

Comments

florilegia.bsky.social•15 days ago

I’d have a look at the Persephone Press list: this sort of thing would be right up their street. https://persephonebooks.co.uk/pages/book-list

jgrassom.bsky.social•16 days ago

I realise that it’s a little later from 1946 by ‘To Bed With Grand Music’ by Marghanita Laski

oletheros.bsky.social•16 days ago

The Green Hat by Michael Arlen (1924) is a fictionalized account of a woman who abandoned her husband and children. I haven't read my copy yet, so I don't know if the fictionalized version has children or not.

mobeena.bsky.social•16 days ago

I’ve got some examples from earlier on, plenty in sensation fiction, I think

loreandordure.com•16 days ago

A little earlier would be interesting too, particularly if it’s a trope of some kind?

mobeena.bsky.social•15 days ago

Generally (very generally) speaking, the 19thC would be a really interesting time to look at, what with their preoccupation with womanhood and motherhood. This sounds super interesting btw!

mobeena.bsky.social•15 days ago

Jude the Obscure - I want to say another Hardy too but I’m not very familiar with him anymore

loreandordure.com•15 days ago

I’m attempting to situate a woman who did exactly this in 1928 in a cultural moment…

mobeena.bsky.social•15 days ago

There will be a LOT of material pre 1928 to support that. Have you tried looking or talking to the folk at Persephone Books? https://persephonebooks.co.uk/collections/grey-books-mothers

loreandordure.com•15 days ago

The literary angle only came up today really so I’ll definitely look at that tomorrow :)

mobeena.bsky.social•15 days ago

Lady Audrey’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon!

florilegia.bsky.social•15 days ago

MEB generally! She also did a version of Madame Bovary (The Doctor’s Wife?) which is very much along these lines. Wilkie Collins almost certainly has this as a plot device at some point too.

mobeena.bsky.social•15 days ago

AUDLEY, bloody autocorrect

mobeena.bsky.social•15 days ago

I want to say East Lynne by Ellen Wood? I need to go and do some research, bear with

comixminx.bsky.social•15 days ago

I had thought I had a couple of possibles for you but alas they are written later. First one by pub date is Georgette Heyer’s “Venetia”, one of her frothy romances (1958). Her eponymous heroine thinks her mother is dead until she meets her on about page 270 of 320. The scandal is a key plot point

comixminx.bsky.social•15 days ago

FWIW, both of these cases have the equivalent of a no-fault divorce involved; the man is gentlemanly enough to sort it out so that the woman doesn’t have to do anything particularly sordid to end the marriage.

comixminx.bsky.social•15 days ago

but Venetia is actually much more robust in her reception of this news than her wilting aunt and morally outraged relatives expect.

comixminx.bsky.social•15 days ago

The second one, treated more seriously, is R F Delderfield’s “A Horseman Riding By” (1966). Main character falls in love with a local noblewoman who is much keener on socialism and the overall wrongs of the world than she really is on him. They marry and a son is born but it doesn’t work out and

comixminx.bsky.social•15 days ago

the son is brought up by the guy, while she goes off on hungerstrikes, suffragette activism, and eventually ambulance driving in WWI which I think his how she cops it. He admires her at least in part; after initial anger and misunderstandings he accepts that it was never going to work between them.

southern-pansy.bsky.social•16 days ago

Mildred in Of Human Bondage. 1915, so a bit early though...

abbaetha.bsky.social•15 days ago

In my recollection, the mother in the Railway Children is kind but functionally absent because she’s trying to get the father exonerated.

otterb.bsky.social•15 days ago

I think she’s writing to support the family. So not meeting the abandonment criterion.

abbaetha.bsky.social•15 days ago

Thank you, that’s right.

loreandordure.com•16 days ago

If they’ve been adapted for screen or people are likely to be familiar with them today, even better.

miandyreading.bsky.social•16 days ago

I can’t remember if any Dorothy Sayers books have this scenario, but it seems possible. She had an illegitimate child, gave him to a cousin, and then later adopted him.

comixminx.bsky.social•15 days ago

The Lord Peter Wimsey ones don’t have that as a plot element but I don’t know if there might be an aspect of it in any other book or short story of hers. Gaudy Night and the Harriet - Peter romance books definitely have women deciding about their own lives but not running away from hub & kid.

twitchymacgee.bsky.social•16 days ago

Sad that the only example I could think of was not a traditional leaving. It's also earlier than you're looking for. Kate Chopin's The Awakening

loreandordure.com•15 days ago

Earlier isn’t necessarily unhelpful, markedly later (not informed by the period) is much less so.

adhd-preacher.bsky.social•16 days ago

Out of scope in some ways, but possibly relevant...

https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/D/DollsHouse1922.html

loreandordure.com•16 days ago

No, definitely interesting. Thanks!

joeatsandreads.bsky.social•15 days ago

Nancy Mitford’s Bolter in her books

norahowley.bsky.social•15 days ago

I can’t do date or title but there is at least one Agatha Christie about the return of a mother who “abandoned “ her child (who is told she’s dead(

overit22.bsky.social•16 days ago

@aliciaandrz.bsky.social thoughts?

paolaoeste.bsky.social•16 days ago

The one that leaps to my mind is The Bolter in Mitford’s Pursuit of Lovr.

loreandordure.com•16 days ago

Yes of course. Thank you x

paolaoeste.bsky.social•16 days ago

The period might be off, however.

loreandordure.com•16 days ago

Close enough.

sallynicholls.bsky.social•15 days ago

Also Linda and Moira in same.

adamcain.bsky.social•15 days ago

Was just going to say this - I think it’s more to the point because The Bolter’s “bolt” is well in the past at the start of the book, but Linda is the main character, treated sympathetically, and takes an instant dislike to the baby.

(Also, adapted for TV three times, rather well each time.)

sallynicholls.bsky.social•15 days ago

Also Linda is 1930s whereas the Bolter is presumably Edwardian.

paolaoeste.bsky.social•16 days ago

Just gone down a rabbit-hole and found (ordered; am nothing if not weak in the face of Mitford-adjacency) this. Might be relevant?

libbyb.bsky.social•13 days ago

This feels like a joke, but I also mean it seriously: does James James Morrison's mother count?

https://allpoetry.com/disobedience

starcrossed2018.bsky.social•16 days ago

not my period and I was probably misremembering Noel Streatfeild's Saplings (which is too late anyway) - but the Persephone Press site has a good search function (by subject) and might jog memory?

turnedtofire.bsky.social•15 days ago

I was just coming to say this! Saplings really made me think about how unsympathetic wife/mother figures were presented at a time when family was both very sanctified as an idea, and very threatened by contemporary reality.

johnmkuhn.bsky.social•16 days ago

was just reading Summer Will Show (1937). Her kids die and she bails on the husband

porschespider.bsky.social•15 days ago

I'm fairly certain that Jezebel by Irene Nemirovsky includes that as a theme - a lot of her works seemed to be about distant mothers and challenging mother relationships, come to think of it.

jkosmicki.bsky.social•16 days ago

The Street by Ann Petrie from the Harlem Renaissance has the main character abandon her son. Treated and shown as a tragedy created by realities of living in Harlem then. It won a literary prize at the time and is still in print and used in classrooms

loreandordure.com•16 days ago

Thank you.

susannatayler.bsky.social•15 days ago

The short story Wednesday, by Dorothy Whipple, has a mother who has lost custody of her children after an affair, but it's very clear that the situation is painful and not her choice.

loreandordure.com•15 days ago

Oh but this is also potentially relevant, thank you!

ghostingdani.bsky.social•16 days ago

Does it need to include children? Ursula Parrott's Ex-Wife became The Divorcee.

loreandordure.com•16 days ago

Child / children are reasonably central to the point I’m trying to make, yes. But still helpful, thanks!

drmaudbailey.bsky.social•15 days ago

Elizabeth Bowen's 'The House in Paris' (1935) may count.

drmaudbailey.bsky.social•15 days ago

Suspect @stuckinabook.bsky.social will have the goods here.

stuckinabook.bsky.social•15 days ago

I have really struggled to think of anything! I'm sure they crop up in minor roles in Richmal Crompton novels, but that is not a useful level of specificity...

aamas739.bsky.social•15 days ago

The Forsyte Saga and The Age of Innocence both feature women leaving their marriages, but not children, if that's a necessary feature

loreandordure.com•15 days ago

Yeah the child abandonment is important for my context; I’m trying to understand the social conversation around a woman who does exactly this in 1928.

drbibliomane.bsky.social•16 days ago

Though she stops her story just shy of the 1920s, @noragilbert.bsky.social would have some great examples for you, I bet, as the author of this:

loreandordure.com•16 days ago

Thank you!

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