My Brilliant Career

1901, 1980 Washington Square Press edition
(Stella Maria Sarah) Miles Franklin
My Brilliant Career
Original price $3.50, purchase price unknown
Somewhat tattered paperback
C+


Meanwhile in Australia, spirited teenaged girls who want to find domineering husbands also want careers.  Well, Sybylla Melvyn emphasises that she's unique, but the anonymous introduction to this edition claims that Franklin "fictionalizes the conflicts of adolescence and of every woman's life."  So, Ladies, I'm sure you remember that conflict you had between marriage to a man you couldn't love because he couldn't control you, although he did once grab your arms violently enough to leave bruises ("a very happy day" for you), vs. a life alternating between dreary farmwork and dreary governessing.


I know, I'm probably being unfair.  Most girls and women don't live lives like Jane Eyre's either.  But at least Charlotte Brontë had Jane rebel against Rochester.  It's supposed to be charming that when Sybylla meets Harold Beecham, he flirts with her because he thinks she's a servant.  (Shades of She Stoops to Conquer.)  Part of this flirtation includes her standing calmly still as he cracks a whip around her to see if she'll flinch.  Of course, their courtship isn't just about his violent gestures towards her.  Like Claudine with her future stepson, Sybylla almost blinds Harold.  The difference is that Claudine claws Marcel when he calls her a gold-digger, while here Harold tries to kiss Sybylla after they've become engaged, so she picks up his whip from the table and hits his face.  Sybylla and Harold have an on-again-off-again engagement over the next couple years, fortunately for them and the reader ending as permanently off.


It's that ending, along with Sybylla's desire for a brilliant career, which keeps me from rating this as low as a lesser Claudine story.  The title is ironic since she doesn't actually get a career, just drudgery.  She has a chance to go onstage, but her old-fashioned grandmother disapproves.  She mostly wants to be a writer but doesn't pursue that yet.  The novel is somewhat autobiographical (although less than Franklin's contemporaries thought), so it makes sense that there's a sequel, called My Career Goes Bung.


I find Sybylla similar to Claudine in that they're both irreverent but charming.  The differences between them fit the stereotypes of Australia and France, with Sybylla being more bitter and hard-working, Claudine more sensual, about nature as well as romance.  I wish they were both less sadomasochistic, but oh well.


I should note that the same aunt who'd later buy me the Claudine collection also took me to see the movie of My Brilliant Career when I was 12.  (It came out the previous year.)  I remember liking the opening line, something like "This story will be all about me."  I didn't particularly care for the romance.  I haven't seen the film since, but I suspect that it won't hold up as the other "feminist movie" I saw that year, 9 to 5, does.  (Not that there aren't problematic themes in 9 to 5, but that's a discussion for my future movie blog.)  I think the problem with things getting called "feminist," as this book often does, is that there are so many versions of feminism, and people aren't going to agree on whether a particular work of art is truly feminist.  So I can see Franklin and Brontë (not so much Colette, but I'll get to that next time) as women who were ahead of their respective times but still rooted in Victorian attitudes towards men and women.  (Well, Brontë also had some Romantic tendencies as well.)  In contrast, I can enjoy the friendship and empowerment of 9 to 5, while the violence doesn't bother me as much, since it's directed towards a piggish boss rather than a lover.


But, yes, back to the book blog....