The Crowded Street

Are you ever exposed to a book that you know you have to buy there and then and will subsequently make a special trip to a bookstore to obtain it so that you don't have to wait for online postage? I'm sure it's not just me...

I listened to the first installment of the BBC Radio 7 dramatisation of The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby last week and in the opening few minutes I knew that this was a book that I had to purchase and devour and instantly made plans to visit Persephone Books that day for a copy.

The Crowded Street is one of those rare but wonderful books that is both a Virago Modern Classic and a Persephone (#76), meaning that it once was published in bottle-green and fell out of print but was rescued by Persephone and now appears in dove-grey (another title for which this is the case is A Very Great Profession by Persephone founder, Nicola Beauman). I collect both VMCs and Persephones but as there are a number of Holtby titles that were published by Virago I intended to track all of them down but needing to read it now (and coveting Persephones just the same) I made an outing to the Bloomsbury shop and had the book in my hands that afternoon, along with a beautiful Bloomsbury postcard that coincidentally has something in common with the book (ahem, answers on a postcard will take place during Persephone Reading Week).

I began to read the book on the train journey home (temporarily laying aside my current book) and once home settled down to read it. I was lucky enough to do so with tea and M&S naughty strawberry tarts; why they are branded "naughty" I couldn't tell you as they are petite pâtisseries... perhaps having one is indulgent but both is sheer decadence. Indeed the afternoon of tea, pastries, and this book were a naughty delight.

Very much a Persephone book, The Crowded Street is an inter-war novel about women and their relationships with one another. The central protagonist is Muriel Hammond and her relationships with her socially aspiring mother; her impetuous sister, Connie; her socialite childhood friend, Claire Duquesne; and her idealist, social reformer friend, Delia Vaughan, all of whom are "types". The novel is about what is expected from life and what is expected of us -the pressure to please and to conform- and ultimately freedom from these personal and societal constraints. It is a bildungsroman and also a roman à clef, as the conflict Muriel feels between duty to her family and public service is what Holtby experienced herself. It is also a feminist novel about the emphasis on "sex success" in snobbish, gossippy Marshington, the suffocating home that Muriel later rejects. In many ways The Crowded Street appears to be ahead of its time with women choosing not to marry and railing against the stigma of spinsterhood as well as the subplot of sex outwith marriage and pregnancy out of wedlock, although ultimately those events result in forced marriage and tragedy.

The structure of the novel is divided into four sections (after the prologue concerning Muriel's first dance): entitled Clare, Connie, Delia, Muriel and revolve around the former three women's influence on Muriel. More time could have been spent on the latter two narratives, I thought, as they were to me the most interesting (and autobriographical). Connie's section was melodramatic and there is speculation that her time at Thraile Farm with the odd Todds is the inspiration for Stella Gibbon's satire, Cold Comfort Farm. There is however no sign of the something nasty in the woodshed.

Winifred Holtby lived with fellow Virago author, Vera Brittain, in 1920s London and their life-long friendship is the focus of the latter's autobiographical novel , Testament of Friendship. Moreover, I had the impression that Muriel's friend, Delia, was based upon Vera Brittain and this was confirmed in reading the preface after finishing the novel.

Favourite and central quotes:

"Then suddenly we find ourselves left alone in a dull crowded street with no one caring and our lives unneeded, and all the fine things that we meant to do, like toys that a child has laid aside."

"The thing that matters is to take your life into your own hands and live it, accepting responsibility for failure or success. The really fatal thing to do is to let other people make your choices for you, and then to blame them if your scheme should fail and they despise you for the failure.

I now want to read more Winifred Holtby and add to my burgeoning Virago collection but I am attempting (woefully) to curb buying any more until I have read more of the ones that I already have. Verity's Virago Venture is weakening my resolve however and more Winifred Holtby may feature in the near future!

Reading The Crowded Street has also whetted my appetite for Persephone Reading Week and will inspire one challenge, hinted to above.