Here There and Everywhere

The Dressmaker by Posie Graeme-Evans

When I wrote up this book for another site, I could not even remember the main character’s name. (Ellen Gowan) I found the book annoying, and most of the time, when a book annoys me, I don’t even tell you about it, I just don’t bother reviewing it at all.

I find the plot thin. I find the characters unmotivated. I find many of the choices of the characters unbelievable. We haven’t been given enough back-story to make the characters truly live.

Ellen has a real streak of bad luck. On her 13th birthday, a well-born young man gets fresh with her and in rural Victorian England, it becomes her problem – her reputation is damaged by a callow young man from a wealthy family. On the same day, an earthquake strikes her village, killing her father, and she and her mother subsequently lose their home.

They take up residence with Ellen’s aunt, her mother’s sister, and it is a happy time, all except for her aunt’s husband, a cruel man who isolates and beats his wife, who can do nothing about it. A wife is property. Her marriage was arranged; she has no where to go if she were to leave. She works hard at keeping her husband happy, so he won’t beat her or take it out on anyone she loves.

When you are dealing with an abusive manipulator, however, there is no pleasing, right? Ellen and her mother are thrown out, but also thrown a lifeline, and take up residence with a dressmaker, where Ellen hones and develops a talent for costume design (meaning evening dress, calling clothes, mourning clothes – wealthy Victorian women had huge wardrobes of ever-changing fashionable clothes.)

Ellen makes some really bad choices – in my opinion. I’m not going to tell you what those choices are, because I don’t want to give you too much of the story, in case you want to read it yourself.

Long story short, she ends up a very successful fashion designer/producer in London, only to face ruinous blackmail because of her past.

OK, here is what I really liked about the book. While I found the characters, descriptions, plotlines and dialogues pretty awful, I loved reading about the fashions, and I found reading about the social status of women – not all that long ago – where women in England had few choices and fewer opportunities – fascinating. I have friends in Kuwait and Qatar who face some of the same limitations. How soon we forget; it wasn’t that long ago that we faced the same challenges, the same limitations.

The freedom to live on our own. The freedom to earn and manage our own money. The rights to our children. All these issues are fresh in The Dressmaker, and too easily taken for granted in our own.

March 9, 2011 - Posted by intlxpatr | Arts & Handicrafts, Books, Cultural, Family Issues, Fiction, Living Conditions, Relationships, Social Issues, Women's Issues, Work Related Issues