Book Review: "South Riding" by Winifred Holtby

So you're telling me this woman was friends with Vera Brittain, who then also knew Virginia Woolf...and I'd never heard of her until right now? Well, I've been going through the Virago Modern Classics books and yes, yes, I've probably bought more Daphne Du Maurier novels - but this book was making the rounds on the lists I was looking at. Even though South Riding has so many characters that there are a few pages before the story dedicated to telling you who they are and how they're related/married, I cannot say I was bored. This is a provincial modernist masterpiece. Believe me, it is well worth the read even though there are lots of people and it is longer than your average modernist novel.

***

The first thing I will begin by saying is that I do not appreciate cast lists in books though this is a personal thing and nothing against the author. The reason I don't like it is because the book is presenting to me that there are far more characters than required. You aren't writing a play. Please, you don't have to do this. This book has far more characters than required.

Sarah Burton is a progressive woman who arrives in the fictional town of South Riding, Yorkshire to be a headmistress at a high school for girls. Of course, she's going to take this opportunity to empower the girls at the school, many of which are either from traditional or disenfranchised backgrounds. Now the vast majority of the characters seem to express their own political and gender-based opinions throughout the book, yet there is special importance put on the gender argument of whether it is a good idea to spend time and money on educating girls who are poor and from these traditional backgrounds where they are told they must help at home first. Yes it was a different time, but there is much to learn for online conservatives who are rage-baited by women getting PhDs in Twitter pictures.

This is where Robert Carne comes in. He's unlikeable as hell. He's rich and conservative and lives in some weird ancestral home which makes you think he could be Dracula or something (the way he sucks the joy out of reading this book, lord give me strength). I don't care that he has tons of debts, he's an arse and thinks of his wife's psychiatric care as costly and suggests it is making his life insufferable and difficult. Oh no, spending money on things you need to spend money on is costly and difficult. I just cannot get over how much I didn't like him. I don't think the author wanted him to be so unlikable but that's how I felt about him anyway.

We then have a character called Lydia Holly and there's still hope yet. She's a really clever young woman and yet, she's struggling. The more we learn about her, the more we feel for her. She's really struggling as she has to go to school and get her education and because she's the eldest girl of a household without money, she's in charge of doing lots and lots of the caregiving. It's just terrible. She is the exact type of girl that Sarah would want to help out. It becomes even worse once Lydia's mother dies and she has to fully leave education for a time so that she can look after her younger siblings. This is a highly intelligent girl and yet, it is attitudes like those of Robert Carne that keep her down and keep her from receiving the help she needs (this help is the topic of discussion in the local council from time to time, including housing projects and how they may play into or against private interests).

Sarah Burton is a great character, Lydia Holly is a great character, Robert Carne can get lost - but he's a necessary evil. I just don't like the fact that he only gains empathy when something horrific happens to him. The other character such as the ones who are in all those council meetings present to us a corrupt system which is powered by a bunch of rich folk trying to keep their pockets full and the poor people working to death for them without knowledge of what is truly going on.

Does it sound like a system you know?

Oh yeah, it's this one. The one we are living in right now.

That's depressing.