Class war between the Wars
Out of the Window by Madeline Linford
I love Persephone Books - not just because they publish such beautiful editions of titles that have been ludicrously unloved or sadly forgotten, but because they introduce me to fascinating women - who happen also to write novels. Madeline Linford is one of these, and this month Persephone are publishing her fifth and final novel, originally written in 1930: Out of the Window. (https://persephonebooks.co.uk/pages/madeline-linford)
It is not a difficult book to read. At one point, Mrs Fielding, the heroine’s mother remarks ‘I don’t care for these modern novels that they say are so clever. No plot and no people that one can admire at all. I like a happy ending.’ I wonder what she would have made of the novel she now features in. There is certainly a plot, although it’s very simple; her daughter Ursula, growing up bored and naive in a small Cheshire village, is introduced at a party to an extremely good-looking young trade unionist, Kenneth, and they fall in love. They marry, much against the wishes of both families, but Ursula is unable to adapt to working class life in an industrial city and the marriage fails.
For a novel written by a woman in 1930, its treatment of sex and its consequences seems pretty daring. Although Ursula and Kenneth believe they are in love, it is obvious that in fact the overwhelming emotion is sexual desire, and Linford is making a strong case that this on its own is no basis for a successful long term relationship. Neither Ursula, closely supervised by traditional middle-class parents, or Kenneth, barely scraping by on his salary as an electrical engineer and living with his mother, have any way of scratching the sexual itch which isn’t sanctified by marriage. As Ursula later says to her aunt:
There ought to be some other solution for girls in love. It isn’t fair that they should be tied all their lives, and have children, just because they once felt passionate about some man and were blind to everything else. The marriage service should be postponed until they had lived together for a while and the glamorous side of it had got less interesting.
Quite a shocking position in 1930.
The picture of the working class society in which Ursula finds herself is sympathetically drawn: it is clear that Ursula fails to fit in because she has never been taught the basic skills of housekeeping, and is too proud to ask for help. She is also ridiculously foolish about money. Kenneth is less well-drawn: we first meet him as a representative of his Union, invited to speak at party given by a patronising woman who loves ‘good causes’. But married to Ursula, this more politically aware side of his personality disappears and he lapses back into stereotypical behaviour, with little understanding of Ursula’s predicament.
I don’t want to spoil the plot, as I hope you will want to read this excellent book for yourself. As far as Ursula’s family are concerned, there is what can be described as a happy resolution. But I think it would be doing the author a disservice to take this at face value, as the triumph of some sort of superior middle class culture. I think Linford wants us to think about the plight of those who have fewer choices in life, and to feel rather as Nick does in The Great Gatsby, that Ursula and her family smashed things up and then retreated back into their money. Kenneth certainly does not share Ursula’s hopeful ending.
For a little light relief, I want to mention my favourite character, Ursula’s maiden aunt, Miss Agnes Fielding. She is the most sensible person of them all: as soon as she lays eyes on Kenneth, she realises the danger Ursula is facing, but her warnings go unheeded. At the end of the novel, she is the one person Ursula discovers she can lean on for sympathy, support, and good advice, even if it is of the rather bracing ‘you made your bed, now lie in it’ kind. After the Fieldings have reluctantly given way to Ursula’s tantrums and hysterics, and agreed to the marriage, Mrs F decides to brazen it out in front of the neighbours by throwing a splendid wedding party:
‘After all’, she told her sister-in-law, ‘we don’t want people to think that we are ashamed of Kenneth.’
‘You mean’, said Miss Fielding, ‘that we don’t want people to realise that we are.’
My favourite passage describes the setting up of the marital home for the newly-weds, furnished by the in-laws as a wedding present. Mrs Fielding and Agnes are awaiting their return from the honeymoon:
Mrs Fielding dodged and blundered round the chairs and the table, rearranging cushions and ornaments and giving affectionate little touches to the roses she had brought. The furniture was all new, and especially attractive to her because it had been her present to Ursula. Agnes had given the unpolished oak bedroom suite upstairs, though she had been tiresome about that and insisted on twin beds…
I wish I could have seen Kenneth’s face…
Madeline Linford has recently been celebrated at an exhibition at the Rylands Institute as one of the ‘women who made Manchester’. Here she is surrounded by her colleagues at The Manchester Guardian. The only woman.
Madeline was born in 1895 and brought up in Manchester. When she was 18 she got a job in the advertising department of the newspaper, and was soon promoted to the editorial department. Her big adventure came in 1919 when the editor, C P Scott, asked her to go to Europe to report on conditions there after the war; she travelled alone through France, Austria and Poland, reporting back on the appalling conditions she encountered. On her return she was appointed to the editorial Board, and then in 1922 she was asked to launch the paper’s Women’s Page. Other papers had already invented this concept, but Scott and Linford were determined that this should be a serious piece of editorial, for intelligent women, not just recipes and tips on housecleaning. Linford continued to edit the daily Woman’s Page until 1939. She also took on the role of Pictures Editor, the first woman to do so for a national newspaper.
Between 1923 and 1930 she wrote, in her spare time at weekends and in the evenings, five novels and a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft: Out of the Window was her last published work, even though she was only 35. After it was published, to not very encouraging reviews, she decided to concentrate on her work at the paper, both as a commissioning editor and as a writer. During World War Two she worked for the Women’s Voluntary Service, manning a civil defence post from noon until 4pm and then returning to do a night’s work at the paper.
I should like to put it on record that during my five years at Main Control I can remember no W.V.S. member absenting herself for a trivial reason. Women came from the bombed wreckage of their homes and at times of bereavement and anxiety. They walked from the suburbs when transport failed. Three weeks holiday were allowed in the year, but at Christmas and other festivals the job went on as usual. Many of us, like myself, had livings to earn and linked part-time and professional work with sandwiches and ferocious Civil Defence tea.
In 1950, after her retirement, she went to live in Windermere, where she died in 1975.
Thank you, Persephone Books, for finding me another wonderful woman!
If you are interested in finding out more about Madeline, here is a wonderful website, from which I have lifted the piece about the WVS:
A wonderful press indeed!