Sunday, January 22, 2017

The Real Motive, by Dorothy Canfield

The topic of "comfort reading" comes up often in book discussions. Ever since the presidential election in November, I have drawn comfort from the books of Dorothy Canfield Fisher. On election night itself, sick in body with what turned out to be a sinus infection, but also sick in heart and soul at the results, I had the strongest urge to read something of hers. I chose Hillsboro People, published in 1915. It is a collection of stories set around the town of the title, which perhaps stands for her own hometown of Arlington, Vermont. As Inauguration Day approached this week, I felt the same urge toward her books. This time I chose The Real Motive, another short story collection, published in 1916.

I've been trying to figure out what it is in her books that calls me so strongly right now. I think it is in part the balance, the humanity, the compassion that I find in her writing. Her characters are not all paragons. They can be weak and fragile, they can make bad choices and do harmful things. She shows us these things, but she wants us to understand the people who do them. And they can grow, learn, change their minds, sometimes. There is a basic human decency, a strength of character, an unshowy goodness in so many of them. Maybe it's also how clearly Canfield Fisher's stories express her values, her beliefs. She is not the most subtle of writers, and I know that some people find her overly didactic, too much the preacher. I don't. I feel like her fiction reflects the writer, the person that I came to know through reading an excellent collection of her letters a couple of years ago.

The stories in The Real Motive are an interesting mix, with some familiar elements. There are a couple set again in Hillsboro, but others in New York and Paris. Two of them take place around small colleges in the Midwest. DCF grew up in a small college town in Kansas, where her father taught at the state university. Perhaps that's where she developed her intolerance of the pretensions, the pettiness sometimes found in academic life. (I was a "faculty brat" myself, growing up in similar small college towns.) "From Across the Hall" is a sweet story of two parents watching their daughter fall in love, with very mixed feelings. "Vignettes from a Life of Two Months," about a new mother and her infant son, discusses breast-feeding with a frankness that I found surprising for 1916. Three of the stories involve immigrants, considering their motives in coming to America, their struggles here and the prejudices they face. I braced myself when one story introduced a "big, black-browed Semite, with the big diamond in his scarf and the big plaids on his protuberant waistcoat." But if his appearance had something of the stereotype, his character and the story didn't. I did cringe when the sole African American character to appear in the stories - a maid, traveling with her employer in France - spoke some of the worst "Gone with the Wind" style dialect ever written.

I realized only after finishing the book that while it was published in 1916, there is no hint of the Great War in it. At the time she was writing these stories, she and her husband John were planning to take their two children to France to work for the war effort.

I have collected and read most of Dorothy Canfield Fisher's novels. I still have her last, Seasoned Timber, on the TBR shelves. I also have A Harvest of Stories, chosen by DCF for this collection published shortly before her death in 1958. I even gave in to temptation and bought a copy of her Memories of Arlington, Vermont, because I wanted to know more about the real "Hillsboro." I think she is an author I will be re-reading for years to come.

22 comments:

  1. I have only ever read The Home-maker but would love to read more of her work. I think I am searching for compassion in novels right now and it has been hard to come by - so I am grateful for this recommendation and will seek out more of her novels soon. Thank you!

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    1. I'd recommend The Deepening Stream and Rough Hewn, Anbolyn. I don't know if they've been reprinted, but they might be available through Google Books or Gutenberg - or I've found most of them available in older print as well.

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  2. Your post has brought Dorothy Fisher to my attention. I do comfort reading too; Anthony Trollope is my favorite for creating worlds we can enter, full of romance and where good often prevails. I see he is on your sidebar.

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    1. Terra, I am a huge fan of Trollope, particularly the Barset novels. I'd have to think if I consider him "comfort" reading - though it's so easy to get lost in his world.

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  3. In a world going mad reminders of authors with principles and values are extremely welcome. Especially in the middle of the TBR Dare when I have a couple of their books in the house unread!

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    1. Jane, the word "sanity" keeps coming to mind when I think of her books.

      I hope the Dare is going well!

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  4. I've still only read The Home-maker, despite my best intentions: she really grabbed me with that one, though I suspect it was more an un-comfort read!

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    1. Not always comfortable, true! Her Son's Wife was painful to read, but I couldn't look away.

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    2. I've just finished Understood Betsy now, which really makes me feel I should read Anne of Green Gables again, though I'm trying to do less re-reading this year.

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    3. Yes, Cousin Louisa has some Marilla-ish tendencies - but her parents and the kitten more than make up for it.

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  5. Welcome back! :) and thanks (grumble) for adding to my reading list...

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    1. Thank you, it feels very right to be back :)

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  6. The Homemaker is the only one of her novel's I've read, but I certainly felt the compassion. Need to make more of an effort to acquire her books.

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    1. Yes, I was thinking of The Homemaker, how clearly but compassionately she presented everyone in that story. Only the one witchy neighbor seemed beyond redemption!

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  7. I've read a few of her books. The last one was The Bent Twig which must have just about the nastiest mother-in-law in print, but I did enjoy it.

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    1. Even worse than the mother in Her Son's Wife? From what I gleaned from the letters, DCF got on with her own in-laws, but she surely could write fraught families.

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  8. I love authors you can count on when you need them most. I haven't read any of Fisher's novels, but it sounds like I need to give them a try. :)

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    1. I think The Home-Maker is a universal favorite - and since it was reprinted by Persephone, it's easier to find than some of the others. And there's always her children's book Understood Betsy - which I only read a couple of years ago, but fell in love with completely.

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    2. I forgot she wrote Understood Betsy! I have read that one...and liked it. :) It's just her adult novels I haven't ever read.

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    3. They're definitely harder to find! I think the Virago editions from the 1980s have gone out of print, and of course the Persephone of The Home-Maker is a special order.

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  9. Comfort reading is so important. I've just reread Elinor Lipman's book The Family Man, which is one of the newest additions to my very limited stable of comfort reads, and it made me feel excellent. I'm thinking about launching on a mini-rereading thing of Elinor Lipman -- or I may just reread my Number One Comfort Book for Some Reason, Robin McKinley's Sunshine. :p

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    1. Oh, Elinor Lipman! Then She Found Me is one of my top comfort/distraction reads. And I love The Inn at Lake Divine. I may need to look for more of her books - I think there are a couple I haven't read yet.

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Thank you for taking the time to read, and to comment. I always enjoy hearing different points of view about the books I am reading, even if we disagree!