More historical novel than critical analysis, but a lush, well researched, and very engaging read.
A splendid portrait of two Victorian ladies.
Markus (Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, 1995, etc.) expands her exploration of odd Victorian couplings by pairing two renowned women of the period whose lives converged just long enough for the author to cast them in the same filtered light: the wildly successful and enterprising American actress Charlotte Cushman (1824–76) and the brilliant but self-effacing Scottish toast of literary London, Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801–66). Although the author’s study is mostly a biography of the self-made Cushman, a good third of it offers up the self-unmade Carlyle and then links the two as foils in the fruits of their respective life choices. In marrying Thomas Carlyle, Jane Welsh forswore her intellect and passion for his, famously contorting her own creative genius into the forms of hostess, wife, and correspondent. Cushman, ultimately portrayed as the braver and wiser of the two, fared better. Defying most conventions of the day, Cushman played Romeo and Hamlet to international acclaim, comfortably supported herself and her loved ones through shrewd business investments, and shied away from marriage—devoting herself instead to an impressive array of female lovers. Markus portrays the self-reliant actress in hushed 19th-century terms, avoiding evocative 20th-century words like “lesbian” and “feminist.” And perhaps this is the work’s oddest couple: romanticized, veiled language juxtaposed with the author’s mission to reveal these “hidden” lives. But Markus does pay ample attention to the circles both women drew around them (Cushman in Rome, Carlyle in London), highlighting fascinating aspects of all involved as they carved their niches in a man’s world.
More historical novel than critical analysis, but a lush, well researched, and very engaging read.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-44599-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
Art historian Hollander tries to set the record straight about the ``tyranny'' of fashion and to clear its bad name, making a reasonably strong case but offering a surprisingly lifeless account in the process. Hollander (Moving Pictures, 1989, etc.) spends most of the book establishing modern masculine sartorial superiority, setting up the contrast between the men's suit, with its brilliant design- -serious, sexy, timeless—and what, until this century, was mere ephemeral female fashion frippery. From the 1600s until the early 1900s, women's dress became increasingly theatrical and decorative, and received more attention from society (i.e., men), while men's dress set the classical standard. Obscuring female form and motion with tiny waists and voluminous skirts, women's clothing earned fashion the reputation of being manipulative and deceptive. Hollander asserts, to the contrary, that fashion is an ``imaginative art.'' Only in the early 20th century, however, did women's fashion become realistic and dignified. The introduction of short skirts after WW I gave coherence to the female form (and made exposing legs, and thus the wearing of pants, possible). It is just recently, Hollander argues, that female dress has begun to set any significant standards for Western fashion: ``Women finally took over the total male scheme of dress, modified it to suit themselves, and have handed it back to men charged with immense new possiblities.'' Sex and Suits has several major weaknesses, however. Most frustrating, given the book's historical scope (from the Greeks to the Gap), is the profusion of generalizations (``In general, people have always worn what they wanted to wear; fashion exists to keep fulfilling that desire'') and occasional preposterous pronouncements resulting from her attempt to divorce shifts in fashion from social forces. Also, her take on the relationship between gender and contemporary fashion is dated. Still, despite its un-hip feel, a coherent defense of fashion's integrity. (45 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43096-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A measured account of the development of the Soviet bomb program by Holloway (Political Science/Stanford, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 1983) that contrives to be both technically comprehensive and gripping. Using interviews with some of the main protagonists, such as Kapitsa and Sakharov (though before they were able to talk fully), and access to those archives that have become available in Russia, Holloway clarifies a number of issues. He confirms that the Soviets were heavily dependent on espionage to provide both a sense of the seriousness with which the British (and later the Americans) were pursuing nuclear weapons, and guidelines to their methods. Still, the success of the Soviet Union in constructing such a weapon, in almost the same amount of time as the US, was a ``remarkable feat,'' given the devastation of the Soviet economy after the war. The Communist command-administrative system, Holloway notes, ``showed itself able to mobilize resources on a massive scale, and to channel them into a top priority project.'' It was, however, at immense cost both in terms of the hundreds of thousands of prisoners toiling in the uranium mines and elsewhere, the appalling health and safety record, and the damage to the environment. The building of the hydrogen bomb, by contrast, was largely and no less remarkably an indigenous Soviet achievement. Little credit seems due to Stalin, who was responsible for shooting many of the top physicists during the purges and who understood the significance of nuclear weapons only after the explosion at Alamogordo. Nor does Holloway think much of Stalin's postwar policies, which succeeded in unifying the West and causing it to rearm, though he concludes that Stalin's refusal to be browbeaten made the US more cautious about asserting its nuclear monopoly. What could have been a dry technical and analytical study is enlivened by the immensity of the issues at stake and the extraordinary characters populating the story.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-300-06056-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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