Two or three months ago there was a lot of talk on Twitter and elsewhere about #Neglectedladynovelists (not my hashtag or definition) which I wrote about here. There were many people who named May Sinclair as being one of their number. So neglected, is May Sinclair that she didn’t manage to win much support in a Twitter vote either. I wondered if that was because people didn’t know much about her or her work.
May Sinclair wrote widely, both fiction and non-fiction – though the majority of her work is out of print now. The Life and Death of Harriet Frean is possibly her best-known work, and along with this novel the easiest to find. Though I believe some print on demand versions of some of May Sinclair’s other books are also available. She was a modernist writer, who – it is said – was the first to use the term stream of consciousness in a review she wrote about Dorothy Richardson.
“If you looked back on any perfect happiness you saw that it had not come from the people or the things you thought it had come from, but from somewhere inside yourself.”
Mary Olivier: a life is a novel – though one can’t help but take the name May Sinclair and put it in the place of Mary Olivier. The novel is enormously autobiographical and tells the deeply personal story of a woman’s life from the time of infancy to middle-age.
Mary Olivier is born into a middle-class Victorian family in the 1860s, the fourth child and the only girl. The novel opens while Mary is a young infant – and the viewpoint is that of a very young child –even the language is more childlike. Time passes quite quickly in the early sections of the novel, and as she grows up we begin to see a young girl eager to learn, with a keen interest (like Sinclair herself) in literature, philosophy, religion and spirituality. Mary is not a girl to merely believe what her elders tell her, she is questioning and thoughtful – her beliefs not always fitting in with those of her conservatively religious family.
The house hold is ruled over by Mamma – little Mamma as she is often called by her sons. She is very much a typical Victorian wife and mother, her strength existing in her apparent weakness. As Mary turns from a very little girl into an older child and then an adolescent, her relationship with her mother becomes ever more difficult. Mary comes to realise her mother doesn’t love her – not in the way she does her brothers, especially the eldest Mark, the brother Mary loves with a fierce, loyal adoration. Mary comes to believe that if only she could have remained a tiny little child her mother would have loved her more.
“Her thoughts about her mother went up and down. Mamma was not helpless. She was not gentle. She was not really like a wounded bird. She was powerful and rather cruel. You could only appease her with piles of hemmed sheets and darned stockings. If you didn’t take care she would get hold of you and never rest till she had broken you, or turned and twisted you to her own will. She would say it was God’s will. She would think it was God’s will.”
As Mary comes to the end of her schooling, the family suddenly leave Ilford, moving North to Greffington Edge, where her father begins his descent into Alcoholism. Back in Essex are Mary’s aunts Charlotte and Lavvy and Uncle Victor, and bit by bit we start to see something of their lives. The narrowness and fear that stopped them from moving forward – a fear that briefly transfers itself to Mary – a fear of madness.
Years pass with terrifying speed, men come along who Mary might be able to love – but they don’t stay around – and gradually Mary’s life becomes one of sad routine and sacrifice. Her brothers go off to see something of the world – her adored bother Mark away for several years – and when he returns they are both changed – and Mary starts to see something of their little Mamma in her brother.
“Mark turned in the path and looked at her; his tight, firm face tighter and firmer. She thought: “He doesn’t know. He’s like Mamma. He won’t see. It would be kinder not to tell him. But I can’t be kind. He’s joined with Mamma against me. They’re two to one. Mamma must have said something to make him hate me.”
Persuaded by her brothers, that their mother is a poor weak little woman, Mary comes to understand that she cannot leave her mother and live her own life as her brothers have– and so she stays.
As she gets older Mary longs for an identity of her own, she wants to know love, and begins to think differently about the drawer full of writing she has amassed over the years. She starts to send things she has written, out into the world, to magazines, and meets a man who will be her greatest love – and her greatest sacrifice.
Although there is a sadness in this novel – Mary is a woman who discovers an inner freedom, and despite everything her own perfect happiness.
This is a brilliant exploration of a mother, daughter relationship, and May Sinclair is a writer who deserves to be more widely read.
I recently read 3 by Sinclair.
ARNOLD WATERLOW–A LIFE
FAR END TREE OF HEAVEN
She is truly forgotten which is terrible as she was an original and important voice.Known as a MODERN VICTORIAN.
Those are books I shall have to look out for.
FAR END can be read in a day.One critic said it was like a thesis
about male infidelity–an enjoyable read which would suit the modern reader.
I think you mean Mary Olivier. Not the Mary Oliver, poet, we know well.
Yes of course, I think I have been mis-reading and writing that all the time.
I bought this for Middle Child a little while back because she loved Harriet Frean so much. I’m obviously going to have to read her work too! 🙂
I think you should, 😉 and I hope middle child enjoys it too.
I’ve had this waiting for a while, but have turned to the May Sinclair free audiobooks on Librivox for my commutes – I’ve been planning a post on her for a while, and this has inspired me further – thanks!
Free audiobooks, that’s good. Pity I can’t get on with audiobooks. It was a good one to tick off the first year in ACOB.
Oh this does sound sad but I’m glad there’s a glimmer of hope and freedom for Mary as she gets older.
It is sad, but not depressingly so, I also really liked Mary as a character.
Wonderful review Ali, you’ve convinced me I need to read this.
Thank you, I hope you enjoy it too.
Somehow I’d convinced myself this was an autobiography of one of the Olivers, doh! Looks like a good read, which I might need to borrow in a bit if I’m still missing 1919 from my ACOB!
Of course you can, though I have three other 1919 books (two of them on kindle). I’m glad I chose this one to read though.
Ooh, what are the other ones?
Heritage by Vita Sackville West (kindle) The Brimming Cup by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (book) and an old murder mystery/suspense thing (kindle) which you wouldn’t be interested in.
I’ve read the other two books by May Sinclair that Virago published and I must read this one too. It sounds different but just as good. I wish she was better known but I understand why she was, in an age where there were so many good established women authors and new ones emerging.
Oh yes absolutely, time passes, writers fall out of fashion and people forget. Then the next generation don’t know. I shall look out for more by her.
[…] short novel about a wasted life. You may also have heard of Mary Olivier, which Ali recently blogged about, and I’ve previously written about The Three Sisters and Uncanny Stories. But she was […]
[…] « Mary Olivier: a life – May Sinclair (1919) […]
When I sat down with this one, I was expecting it to be something of a slog (I can’t remember why, whether it was exceptionally tiny print – some of those older VMCs are challenging that way, or whether it was long or whether I had put it on some sort of reading list for myself). Regardless, I ended up reading it in very short order, barely pausing with it, and I just loved it. I think you’re quite right: she deserves to be better known!
Yes, she certainly does, it’s sad when gifted writers fall out of favour. Glad to hear you liked it so much too.
Project Gutenberg allows free access to read many Sinclair books online.
I am reading THE HELPMATE at the moment.”DIVINE FIRE” “THE TYSONS”and “THE JUDGEMENT OF EVE”are there too.
[…] view of this novel, looking at May Sinclair’s neglected status, can be found on Heavenali’s blog last […]