I woke up today to news of Libya. People are demonstrating in the streets of that country just as a few weeks ago they risked their lives on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria. Earlier people had laid their lives on the line to topple the government of Tunisia. In Bahrain and Yemen governments have unleashed the military or thugs (or both) on protesters. Doctors and nurses attempting to care for the injured have been assaulted for doing so. Libyan officials in other countries are resigning their positions. Members of the Libyan military have defected.

Everywhere people are demanding more rights and fighting to protect the rights they have.

Except, it seems, in the United States. In many other countries dictatorial governments are being opposed by protesters who are willing to put their lives on the line for sake of a better life for their fellow citizens. In the United States many citizens have stood by, grumbling perhaps but not really protesting, while their government has become more and more the protector of corporations, institutions and movements that are not friendly to interests of the average American.

The rights of women have been under attack in the United States for many years now. It matters little if a woman has the vote if she has no opportunity to vote someone who will represent her interests. The Republicans have seized upon the current economic conditions to find excuses to underfund and defund organizations and agencies that serve women. The Democrats seldom draw a line in the sand in response to such attempts.Women\’s rights are, apparently, always negotiable. Thus women\’s rights are by definition not rights at all but privileges since an inalienable right is not something that can be put up for compromise.

Republicans cannot get up and say \”we do not think women are really people\” and they cannot (yet) get up and say \”we don\’t think women should have the same rights as men.\” They can however strip legislative and fiscal support from every group that provides support for women. And the women cannot fight back even at the ballot box since the Democratic party will gladly take a woman\’s vote but will seldom support a woman where it might cost them the vote of a bigot or a sexist.

In an earlier post I wrote

If the powers that be wish to successfully to carve away at the rights of the public in general the best place to start is with the rights of women.

What seemed like an overstatement a short time ago now begins to look prescient for today when I woke up I saw that the governor of Wisconsin still plans to strip from citizens of his state their rights to collectively bargain. The governments of the United States do not fear the people in the streets. They do not worry about large numbers of protesters flooding the streets to protect their own rights. They worry little that a sufficient number Americans might take to the streets to support the rights of other Americans.

Democracy is struggling to be born in the streets of Egypt and Yeman and Tunisia and Bahrain and Libya.

Democratically elected representatives are negotiating away the rights of their constituents in the United States.

And this is the way American Democracy will end; not with a bang but a whimper.

  
Lucia in London by E F Benson (1927)

As I mentioned in my review of Miss Mapp Lucia in London was originally published 5 years after Miss Mapp and, were the modern day reader not guided by the order in which the books are placed in the Make Way For Lucia compendium, would be read as the third, rather than the second, of the Mapp and Lucia books. Indeed, from the point of view of publication order and such internal evidence as can be derived from the books themselves at the moment Lucia in London was published there was no such thing as a Mapp and Lucia series. Riseholme was mentioned only once in Miss Mapp and Emmeline Lucas never. Similarly neither Elizabeth Mapp, nor any of the other residents of Tilling nor indeed the village itself are mentioned in Lucia in London.

It would not be until 1931 that Benson would return to the village of Tilling or to Elizabeth Mapp as the focus of a book and it seems reasonable to this reader to consider that Mapp and Lucia is the first book of the ‘real’ Mapp and Lucia series with Miss Mapp, Queen Lucia and Lucia in London functioning as prequels to the series.

My first response to Lucia in London was to feel much as did her friends and acquaintances left in behind in Riseholme. The Lucia I glimpsed in London seemed to be strangely unlike the Lucia I had come to appreciate in Queen Lucia. This shingled short-skirted social climber seems more a caricature than a character study. As a reader I may suspect why Benson chose to move Lucia from the village where she so dominated social life to the larger world of London while feeling that the very conceit undermined so crucial aspects of what made the Lucia of Queen Lucia charming.

Benson may have chosen to move Lucia into a different social scene because he felt that she had no true rival in Riseholme since the only person who could truly have been a rival had been conveniently removed from the picture by authorial fiat. Although this reader does not begrudge Olga Braceley her worldly successes she wishes that Benson had been able to introduce a character to Riseholme who would have upset Lucia’s natural social dominance and who lived more continuously in that village.

The things that motivate Lucia in this book demonstrate how different the characters Mapp and Lucia actually are. If Miss Mapp, of the book of the same name, had ever been able to as completing dominate the world of Tilling as Lucia did the world of Riseholme one cannot imagine Mapp moving on a larger venue. This reader pictures her sitting at her garden window watching the world go by forever concerned about the minutiae of daily life. Miss Mapp does not did not need to do stunts to enliven her life in Tilling for each and every day of her life is devoted to the job of maintaining her social control over those with whom she would dine and who she would invite into her home. One might say that Mapp’s will to power was undiluted by any other pleasure or interest. She does not play an instrument nor does she even pretend to read books. Her only “cultured” pastime is that of painting but since everyone in her circle also paints her doing so is not an indication that she particularly enjoys the act of painting or the results of her labour. It is just an acceptable way of passing the time that also gives her opportunities to spy on others and to sit in judgment of others.

Lucia, on the other hand, seems to feel that she should feel things. The preformative Lucia, the Lucia that Emmeline Lucas wants others to think she is, would feel those things therefore Mrs. Lucas must appear to do so. However Mrs. Lucas’ the joy lies not in not in the music or the art but in having others watch her appearing to enjoy music or art.

Since Riseholme provides Lucia with little opportunity to contend with someone else with the same skill at and desire for social dominance, Benson must move her to another venue lest the story devolve into repetitive instances of Lucia triumphing over her hapless neighours. However in moving her activities to London Benson must also alter the nature of the activities themselves since London is full of people like Olga Braceley; people who actually create the art and music that Lucia pretends to enjoy. Thus Lucia apparently sets herself a new goal. Rather than dominating the social world of Riseholme Lucia now sets as her ambition entry into the inner circles of London society. Lucia will work as hard on social climbing in London as the Emmeline Lucas worked to prevent new blood from dethroning her in Riseholme.

Readers be warned—past here there lie spoilers.

Lucia in London begins with Emmeline Lucas and her husband inheriting a London house and a tidy sum of money from his elderly aunt. Instead of selling or renting the house and spending their extra money on life in Riseholme Lucia decides to keep the house and live part of the year in London and thus begins in her campaign to conquer the social scene of that city’s titled and wealthy inhabitants.

Lucia’s drive to conquer London life is difficult to root convincingly in her portrait as drawn in the earlier book. Lucia and her husband had lived in Onslow Gardens in London while Mr. Lucas was in Benson’s words amassing ““a fortune, comfortable in amount and respectable in origin, at the Bar.” It was from London that the couple retired to Riseholme. From Benson’s description it seems that the Lucases were among the first to take part in the gentrification of the village and thus to some degree the Riseholme they lived in was at least in part their own creation. Lucia’s attitudes toward London and RIseholme are made quite clear In Queen Lucia:

As long as she directed the life of Riseholme, took the lead in its culture and entertainment, and was the undisputed fountain-head of all its inspirations, and from time to time refreshed her memory as to the utter inferiority of London she wanted nothing more. But to secure that she dedicated all that she had of ease, leisure and income.

Lucia disparages London frequently, “No one in London has time to listen: they are all thinking about who is there and who isn\’t there, and what is the next thing.” While the reader may be forgiven for not being entirely convinced that all of Lucia’s opinions about London arise from her sense of aesthetics and culture rather than her perception of her relative place in the metropolis Benson makes it quite clear that Lucia wanted to live where she would be able to dominate society. It was a natural and logical thing for a woman with such an ambition to relocate herself to a place of a size that made its fruition possible.

The attitudes that Lucia previously demonstrated towards the titled and the renowned also make her vigorous social climbing out of character. It is not that Lucia the reader met in the previous book was not a snob but rather that she saw others as no more than ways of enhancing her own importance. Lucia did not attend the lunches and dinners of the titled and wealthy because she was impressed by them but rather because she wanted the titled and wealthy to be seen by others to lunch and dine with her. In London she would always be one of many hovering around the brightest of society’s lights while in Riseholme the light that wealthy and titled shone was on Lucia herself.

The change of venue for Lucia also detracted from one of the greatest strengths of Benson’s writing in the Mapp and Lucia books—the minute and loving examination of a small group of people in a restricted environment. The first chapters are vintage Benson and vintage Lucia as Georgie, the Quantocks and various other Riseholmites attempt to determine just exactly how much money has been left the Lucases. In subsequent chapters Benson\’s focus seems to drift. There is not enough about Riseholme nor is there enough about Lucia’s new London friends. Other than in the earliest chapters the passages in the book when the reader revisits Riseholme much of the book feels a lightly sketched series of vignettes rather than serious character studies or plot advancement.

Village life in Riseholme, the reader is told, was dry and flat without Lucia to inspire everyone else and yet over the course of the book Daisy Quantock takes up more than one new stunt and Pillson and his friends successfully launch a monetarily successful village museum. We are told that even with all this activity the Riseholmites are left feeling flat without their one-time queen and yet when we do see them they are as active and involved as they were in Queen Lucia. If Benson had occasionally returned the reader to a Riseholme where all seemed static and stagnant he would have run the risk that the reader would find the chapters in Riseholme boring. However this reader is convinced that Benson wrote the Riseholme chapters as he did not because he feared that readers would look interest in Riseholme but instead because Benson himself actually found Riseholme and its inhabitants far more interesting than denizens of the social circle Lucia works her way into in London. The underwritten nature of the London characters adds to this suspicion. Those characters seem to have an existence only for the purpose of this book and one feels that they disappear like the mist when the last page is read. Daisy Quantock, on the other hand is written so strongly that one would not be surprised to come upon her one day as one is doing one’s marketing.

Lucia in London is not a badly written book nor is it a boring book. It is, however, a letdown for the reader after the dizzying heights of Queen Lucia and Miss Mapp. It convinces this reader that Lucia is best observed in the milieu of the small town with social circle made up at most a dozen characters. Thus this reader is anxious to start the next book in the Mapp and Lucia series, Mapp and Lucia. Benson now has all his players on the stage—it is time for the curtain to go up.

Miss Mapp by E. F. Benson (1922)

[t]heory and research support the idea that human beings are inclined to feel that suffering and punishment, like joys and rewards, should be deserved. . . .Belief in a just world can be maintained by ‘blaming the victim.’ . . .Because of the need to bring ‘ought’ and ‘reality’ into balance, the poor tend to be blamed for their poverty, and the person who is raped is blamed for the rape.”[1]

being self-centered and boastful; constantly seeking attention and admiration; considering oneself better than others; exaggerating ones talents and achievements; believing that one is entitled to special treatment; easily hurt although not always showing it; setting unrealistic goals; and taking advantage of others to achieve ones goals.

All too often I hear or read people complaining that \”kids today\” don\’t read enough. I admit that I am wont to suspect that these individuals themselves are not great readers. Why? Because they speak of \”reading\” in such a way that I doubt they appreciate reading as a skill.

Reading, and the books we read, seems often to be as much about social positioning as it is about learning or gaining anything from the book read. Perhaps the most obvious example of a book whose main purpose is to be seen rather than to be read is the coffee-table book. 

When I, as a child, first heard of coffee-table books I was confused and perplexed at the very idea. In my world books existed to be read. Because my parents were frugal most of the books we read were borrowed from the local library. I visited the library on Saturday and came home with an armful of books.  I took my books to my room and was very careful never to leave a book lying on the coffee table since odds were it would be grabbed by the first member of my family who wandered through the room and thus end up in their room on their pile of books. We went to the library almost every Saturday and every visit I went into the building with my arms full of books I had read and I left the building with my arms full of books I was going to read.

My experience growing up was that books were things you read not things you wanted other people to think that you had read so the idea that one would buy a book not to read but to adorn one\’s coffee table made no sense to me.  When first I visited homes where such books were found I inadvertently embarrassed people by asking about the book since I presumed that if the book was on the table they were reading it and if they were reading it they would enjoy talking about it. This was not, I soon discovered, something that those who display coffee-table books like to do–or at least they don\’t like doing it if the discussion ventures far beyond what they themselves could have gathered from reading the blurbs on the back of the book and the New York Times book review.

What does this have to do with the subject line of this post? I think that many people who talk about reading and praise reading and want their children to do more are themselves very poor readers else they would not describe and discuss books as they do.


Reading is a skill. Not just learning to read as children do but READING seriously and thoughtfully as an adult. It needs to be taught well and it needs to be practiced. Left unused the skill will rust away and yet we may not realize that we have become unskilled at READING because we are still able to read. We can read the labels on the tins at the grocery store. We can read the roadsigns as we drive along. But we are no longer READING we are reading and books have ceased to become things we READ they are objects that we use to position ourselves socially.


If owning a book becomes an evidence of social position then the books themselves both gain and lose power. They gain because they are invested with talismanic powers. Parents will at the same time complain that their children are not reading and that their children are being exposed to the wrong type of books. They complain about their children learning the wrong facts–not because the facts are \”wrong\” but because knowledge of those facts might lead to what the parents consider the wrong conclusions. If those parents were truly in favour of teaching READING skills then they would not be in fear of books or facts since their children would have the skills necessary to check the facts and weigh the arguments put forward in the book.


Books also lose power when what is actually written gets lost as people worry about what owning that book says about their own social position and what having read the book says about them as thinkers and what having liked about the book says about them as people. The book becomes part of one\’s own social presentation and thus criticisms of the book are perceived as criticisms of oneself.

If reading the book allows me to maintain my chosen social presentation but READING the book undermines the book\’s value as a talisman of that social place then READING becomes the enemy of book.

I can be reached at mmycomments at gmail.com

How does the reader decide if a book is good? It depends as much upon the reader\’s meaning of the word \”good\” as it does on the book. A book that is deeply moving to one person can be leaden to another. A book which excites the interest of one person will be dull reading to the next. For a reader (such as I) who likes to sit down after finishing a book, rate it and write a review of it, answering the question as to why I enjoyed a book can take longer than did reading the book.

That said–did I enjoy E. F. Benson\’s Mrs. Ames? Yes. Not, I think, for the reasons that many other reviewers seem to have enjoyed it. I expected another light book about the petty machinations of superficial women and men. I expected to read about upper middle-class people who spent their time manufacturing ways of keeping busy. I expected to read about people who cared more about who preceded whom into the dining room than who was returned in the next election. I expected to read about a small group of people who were so fixated on the petty comings and goings in their own village that they were unaware of the rising level of class discontent and the looming war to come.

Yes, all that was in the book. But there was more. This is a book about what it was like to be a woman in that time and in those social circles. At the heart of the book lies the story of two marriages. Each marriage looks staid and unexceptional from the outside and yet each of the wives is emotionally unfulfilled. The book follows less than a year in the life of the village of Riseborough and yet over that short period of time each woman comes to the realization that, on an emotional level, her relationship with her husband is dead. Or perhaps, had never really been alive. Each woman struggles to find a way out of the emotional deadness at the center of her life and each undertakes a different way of \”solving\” the problem.

I didn\’t pick up this Benson expecting a thoughtful and empathetic examination of the interior life of a woman exiting middle-age. And though Mrs. Ames attempts at regaining her husband\’s interest are often amusing, from the point of view of the cynical watcher, they are never mocked by the author. The reader sees into the secret corners of her life and so appreciates her quiet heroism even when she does not.

Nor did I pick up this book expecting a thoughtful and empathetic portrait of the interior life of a woman who has \”lived on\” her beauty and charm but is now facing the depredations of middle age. Although the reader does not inhabit the mind of Mrs. Evans to the extent they do that of Mrs. Ames Benson presents a finely-etched picture of a woman who has never felt deeply about anything and wants finally to experience some of the emotions she has missed.

Did I like Mrs. Ames? Yes. I plan to read it again, soon. I also plan to read the books its author published before and after in the hopes that I will find something similar.

Was I surprised by Mrs. Ames? Again, yes. Because I have learned not to expect a deep, thoughtful and loving examination of lives of middle-aged women, irrespective of whether the book in question was written yesterday or a hundred years ago. Too often now I hear the excuse that author A or writer B should not be criticized for their misogyny or their racism or their homophobia because everyone was like that then.Well, I would not claim that Benson does not show evidence of racism or elitism or gender essentialism but Benson does not despise his characters. He may not approve of their actions, he may doubt their wisdom, he may be aware of their petty motivations and cognizant of all their weaknesses and vices but at the same time he embraces their humanity.

I wish I could say as much for many other writers.

And no less remarkable than this growth of the league was the growth of Mrs. Ames. . . . The bonds of her barren and barbaric conventionality were bursting; indeed, it was not so much that others, not even those of \” her class,\” were becoming women to her, as that she was becoming a woman herself. She had scarcely been one hitherto; she had been a piece of perfect propriety.

The chairman asked Mrs. Brooks to address the meeting. Another and another succeeded her, and there was complete unanimity of purpose in their suggestions. Sir James\’ meetings and his speeches to his constituents must not be allowed to proceed without interruption. If he had no sympathy with the cause, the cause would show a marked lack of sympathy with him. . . . And as the discussion went on, and real practical plans were made, that strange fascination and excitement at the thought of shouting and interrupting at a public meeting, of becoming for the first time of some consequence, began to seethe and ferment. Most of the members were women, whose lives had been passed in continuous self-repression, who had been frozen over by the narcotic ice of a completely conventional and humdrum existence. . . . To the eagerness and sincerity with which they welcomed a work that demanded justice for their sex, there was added this excitement of doing something at last. . . . To this, a sincere and wholly laudable desire, was added the more personal stimulus. They would be doing something, instead of suffering the tedium of passivity, acting instead of being acted on. For it is only through centuries of custom that the woman, physically weak and liable to be knocked down, has become the servant of the other sex. She is fiercer at heart, more courageous, more scornful of consequences than he; it is only muscular inferiority of strength that has subdued her into the place that she occupies, that, and the periods when, for the continuance of the race, she must submit to months of tender and strong inaction. [Bolding added. Note: This work is in the Public Domain]

  Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn\’t. Nobody ever thought that that\’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don\’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. [California Lawyer]

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

that the exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word \”persons\” should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?\”