South Riding

Rating:
Summary: Holtby's Vision
Review: Winifred Holtby's last and perhaps greatest work was published after her death at the age of 37. This novel is a tribute to the land and to the people of East Yorkshire, Holtby's native place.(There is no South Riding in Yorkshire) This is her version of Middlemarch 1935 and it is a masterpiece. South Riding is a novel of Yorkshire between the wars when the social fabric of the society was changing ; the landed gentry were becoming vanishing breed and their lifestyle, like their stately homes, became too extravagent to maintain. It is a novel of social change, Sarah Burton returns to the Riding,no longer the blacksmith's daughter but as an educated woman. She comes home with a Masters (rare in that day),traveled (she has taught in South Africa,)to take over the local girls school. Ms. Burton's goal is to prepare the girls, whatever their social and economic status for their place in a changing civilization. They will become professional women, not soley identified as wives or spinsters but individuals in their own right, their talents developed by their education will be put to use for the communal good. She and the local Squire Robert Carne, who is also on the school board, agree on nothing and her fight for progressive education clashes with his notion of women and their dependence and gentility. Yet, there is an attraction between these antagonists and a respect that transcends their disagreements. There is also a night in a hotel but ... One other major character Mrs. Beddows, the local councilwoman, was based on Holtby's mother who was the first alderwoman elected in Yorkshire, thru her eyes we are made aware of Holtby's belief that when local government puts the needs of their citizens before personal gain, the community benefits and contributes more effectively to the inner workings of a national or global society. Mrs. Holtby was scandalized by South Riding and tried to have it suppressed, fortunately she was not her daughter's literary executrix and to her dismay it was published. The political content was so accurate that Mrs. Holtby resigned. South Riding is a book that acknowledges the cycle of birth and death. There are several deaths in the novel,Holtby virtually willed herself to live long enough to finish her work. Death does not triumph,Holtby's hopes for the new generation foresaw a continuation of love for the land and the community and an elegic respect for the vanished landscape. Through Sarah Burton's eyes, Holtby shares, with the reader, a vision when South Riding would embrace the ideas and progress of the 20th Century and welcome equally the talents of all the Riding's inhabitants.

Rating:
Summary: Holtby's Vision
Review: Winifred Holtby's last and perhaps greatest work was published after her death at the age of 37. This novel is a tribute to the land and to the people of East Yorkshire, Holtby's native place.(There is no South Riding in Yorkshire) This is her version of Middlemarch 1935 and it is a masterpiece. South Riding is a novel of Yorkshire between the wars when the social fabric of the society was changing ; the landed gentry were becoming vanishing breed and their lifestyle, like their stately homes, became too extravagent to maintain. It is a novel of social change, Sarah Burton returns to the Riding,no longer the blacksmith's daughter but as an educated woman. She comes home with a Masters (rare in that day),traveled (she has taught in South Africa,)to take over the local girls school. Ms. Burton's goal is to prepare the girls, whatever their social and economic status for their place in a changing civilization. They will become professional women, not soley identified as wives or spinsters but individuals in their own right, their talents developed by their education will be put to use for the communal good. She and the local Squire Robert Carne, who is also on the school board, agree on nothing and her fight for progressive education clashes with his notion of women and their dependence and gentility. Yet, there is an attraction between these antagonists and a respect that transcends their disagreements. There is also a night in a hotel but ... One other major character Mrs. Beddows, the local councilwoman, was based on Holtby's mother who was the first alderwoman elected in Yorkshire, thru her eyes we are made aware of Holtby's belief that when local government puts the needs of their citizens before personal gain, the community benefits and contributes more effectively to the inner workings of a national or global society. Mrs. Holtby was scandalized by South Riding and tried to have it suppressed, fortunately she was not her daughter's literary executrix and to her dismay it was published. The political content was so accurate that Mrs. Holtby resigned. South Riding is a book that acknowledges the cycle of birth and death. There are several deaths in the novel,Holtby virtually willed herself to live long enough to finish her work. Death does not triumph,Holtby's hopes for the new generation foresaw a continuation of love for the land and the community and an elegic respect for the vanished landscape. Through Sarah Burton's eyes, Holtby shares, with the reader, a vision when South Riding would embrace the ideas and progress of the 20th Century and welcome equally the talents of all the Riding's inhabitants.