RECREATING PAST LIVES.
I have always been fascinated by the notion that if Anna Karenina were alive today, that she would have left that dreary husband without a qualm, and taken her son to set up a new household with Count Vronsky. The same goes for other literary figures: Mrs. Bennett would never have been that desperate to marry off five daughters if the daughters had been trained to support themselves. The orphan Jane Eyre would have been adopted by a caring family, and given her startling intelligence, possibly moved into an academic career. The list goes on.
Much like those literary heroines who reflect the situation of women in their times, most families have stories about members who suffered because they were born into a less sympathetic age. My own family tree has a history of profound depression that has debilitated at least one member in every generation. It saddens me to think that if those relatives were here today, they would have been fed Prozac or some chemical equivalent and led happier, more productive lives. Maybe because of this, and because I am inquisitive, I have always made a point of listening to other ‘bad luck’ stories. And it was one of those stories that struck the first spark and led me to the character of Lilbet in BODY AND SOUL: Lilbet’s Romance
My husband had four ‘maiden’ aunts who lived together until they died. Spanning most of the 20th Century, these sisters loved and squabbled and protected each other with equal determination. One aunt was mildly spastic and deeply resentful of both her affliction and the treatment she received. She often said that she wished that she had never been allowed to survive. Until quite recently many disabled folk were perceived as mentally retarded and institutionalised, or stranded in a permanent childhood with never any hope of independence. Intimacy with the opposite gender was discouraged. Sexual needs perceived as distasteful. The author Alan Marshall was a pioneer in an area that needed a lot of rethinking.
Body and Soul’s setting is the summer and autumn of Melbourne, 1938. In this Young Adult novel, my eighteen-year old disabled protagonist, wants little more than to be respected by her father and the outside world, and allowed some autonomy. What makes things extra hard for Lilbet is that this is a time when thinking revolved around the notion of ‘Eugenics’. Eugenics is a pseudo–science that advocated improvements of qualities of race by control of inherited characteristics. Like the ancient Spartans, the idea is that only the ‘racially pure’ and the ‘strong and healthy’ should be allowed to breed and survive.
Much like my husband’s aunt, Lilbet lives under the constant threat of being sent to a Home for Spastics and Retards if she tries to exert ‘a little too much independence’. She is constantly supervised ‘ in case she hurts herself’, discouraged from attempting some of the simplest household tasks, given very little education, subjected to some dreadful surgical procedures, and denied any sexual intimacy. These days some of her spasticity would have been resolved. An intelligent and well-read woman, she would have been encouraged into a career and a more normal existence. She might even have married and had children. So it was when this aunt went down in family legend as someone to whom nothing ever happened I took on the challenge of making something happen.
Body and Soul is Lilbet’s account of the love affair between Felix Goldfarb, a recent migrant to Melbourne, and her twin-sister Ella. As she records the day to day events that occur in Adeline Terrace, she explores Australia heading towards World War 2, the intolerance once shown towards the disabled, the ambivalence she feels towards her family, and the double edged sword of love and envy.
But is Lilbet as badly done by, as she would have us believe?
Authors have a lot of fun creating disagreeable people. Perhaps this is one way they rid themselves of their less pleasant feelings towards the world. In Lilbet, I created a character who exists in a frighteningly constricted environment. She must manipulate her family to suit herself – a task she accomplishes altogether too successfully. In this novel I am aware of being ‘politically incorrect’. I tried to create a more fully rounded character by stepping aside from the conventional view that anyone disadvantaged will always be ‘nice’. And because Lilbet’s family are altogether too trusting and innocent - much like many Australians were in the first part of the 20th century- they are totally charmed by the sophisticated and worldly wise Felix.
Writing this novel meant lots of research into pre WW 2 Australia. Delving into old newspapers preserved in our State Public Library on microfiche, I uncovered a world so different from our own, it seemed a terrible waste not to share it. Thus the novel contains actual snippets from The Argus, The Sun, The Herald and The Age (September 1937- June 1938). I already had some experience in recreating history. Mavis Road Medley(1991) is set in 1933. My Story: Surviving Sydney cove(2000) set in 1790, is one of the My Story series published by Scholastics. In Body and Soul I wanted to lead my readers into a different world, yet make that world utterly convincing. Sixty-five years later, some of our moral dilemmas appear to have changed, though some are universal. But syntax and vocabulary have altered. My problem was how to achieve a thirties ‘voice’ without becoming too wordy. And I needed to use historical facts without letting those facts intrude into the fictional flow. All this meant lots of reading of the literature of the time. And much rewriting. I also took certain liberties in that that the true ‘Lilbet’ would have been far older than eighteen in 1938, but then this was such an interesting year.
In 1938 everything pointed to the beginning of World War 2. Australia was still recovering from the worst of the Great Depression. Swaggies who had lost their families through extreme poverty, and often their self-respect, still knocked on suburban doors looking for a cup of tea and a slice of bread and jam. In Europe, there were two conflicting ideologies; Fascism as espoused by Mussolini in Spain and Hitler in Germany. Communism, as espoused by Stalin in Russia. Having suffered huge losses in World War 1, the Americans preferred to stay out of world affairs. And in Asia, the Japanese had invaded Korea and Manchuria and were gaining control of China.
It was those Japanese invasions that mostly bothered the newspapers of the time. Perhaps Europe was still too far away, though folk still referred to England as ‘Home’. But Australia with its small mostly Anglo Saxon population had a strong White Australia policy. Back then we were either smugly suspicious of ‘foreigners’ or stupidly subservient before ‘European sophistication’. And what was most relevant to my novel, a woman’s place was in the home. A respectable middle-class girl had only four careers open to her - she could teach, nurse or become a secretary. But mostly she was encouraged to marry. Once she did, running a household became her full time activity. And then as George Eliot says in Middlemarch “A woman... has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her”
The Marks girls’ lives pivot around domestic tasks in a motherless household. Though Ella, Lilbet’s twin, insists that ‘nothing interesting ever happens’, I wanted to record that domestic existence where even managing the weekly wash was a formidably muscular achievement; the buying of an electric refrigerator, an unnecessary extravagance; any pre-prepared food, unknown.
What complicates things even more for Lilbet is that the Marks ancestors, like my husband’s family, had come to Australia a century earlier. Their descendants were successfully Anglified whilst still retaining their ancient religion. There were very few of these Jewish families in Australia before 1945, and they melded into the general population. But by 1938 things were very bad for European Jewry. Only four hundred were accepted into this country and Anti-Semitism was rife. Thus Lilbet feels estranged from everyday society by her religion, her disabilities and her dour father. And though she is sympathetic to new arrivals even if she finds them a little strange, she distrusts the smooth talking Felix, and does everything in her power to keep the family ‘status quo’.
Australian writers are often chastised for writing about the past instead of the immediate present - as if only 21st Century problems are relevant. Nevertheless I agree with those who argue that ‘those who are ignorant of history are destined to repeat it’. The number of emigrants this country should accept is still a hot issue, and many of us reject other cultures and religions. As each wave of migrant has arrived, they have had to face hate and bias until time sorted things out and they were absorbed. Australia is one of the few countries to do so successfully. There seems no good reason why this shouldn’t continue.
Why not contact Goldie on her website www. goldiealexander.com for workshops on how to write it up?
BODY AND SOUL: Lilbet’s Romance. www.indra.com.au (adult)
MY AUSTRALIAN STORY: SURVIVING SYDNEY COVE. (children)
A story of our First Fleet. www.scholastic.com.au
