Rosamond Lehmann

 

Apologies for my temporary absence from the blog. I've been knee-deep in Rosamond Lehmann's The Weather in the Street. Published in 1936, this novel caused something of a stir, I gather, on both sides of the Atlantic. Lehmann's focus -- on the affair between a married man and a separated woman -- featured not only an abortion, but an unyielding view of the victimization of women during this period. For a novel written a century ago, Weather packs a considerable punch: its challenges feel modern, its tropes familiar. This is a book about power and its imbalance, and about the extent to which women, in particular, confronted a range of social and economic limitations. Weather was not, perhaps, as brutal as another book which I've written about on the blog: Torborg Nedreaas's Nothing Grows by Moonlight. That said, it's close: this is an unrelenting account of one woman's awakening and the forces, throughout that process, that evolution which conspire against her. The contemporary feel of the novel -- both in its content as well as its fluid, experimental narration -- adds something poignant for the modern reader. This book may be one hundred years ago, but in its preoccupation with class, sexuality, gender, and capitalism, it feels very much of our times. The Weather in the Streets is an inter-war classic and required reading, I'd say, for those interested in British society during this complicated time.