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A review by veelaughtland
Fidelity by Susan Glaspell
3.0
Fidelity follows Ruth Holland, a young woman who runs away with a married man to the shame of her family and friends back home, and when she returns around 10 years later to attend to her dying father, she begins to fully comprehend how her actions have affected those closest to her. And in a way this book isn't so much about the idea of fidelity, as it is a critique on the institution of marriage itself.
This was a really interesting read, mainly because I had so many conflicting feelings while reading it, and this is mainly due to personal opinions on the subject matter. The writing is very sentimental and internal throughout the novel, with long drawn-out sections of wistfulness on various characters' parts, wondering on the true meaning of love, the true meaning of friendship, what is owed to someone and how society expects you to respond to certain things. Ultimately though the narrative is one where we are meant to feel sorry for Ruth, and see how unfairly maligned she is by the people she used to hold dear. I take some issue with that, because at the end of the day Ruth knowingly went away with another woman's husband, and my own personal feelings on cheating are that I am completely against it. However, I feel like Ruth is still a sympathetic character in that she sacrifices everything for love, when she knows it will affect her ten times worse than Stuart who she leaves with. Stuart to me was a bit of a deplorable character - it was his wife, no matter how unloving, that he left, and yet no one in their town critiques him at any given moment. The hatred is all directed at Ruth, and it is her family who ultimately suffer. So mixed feelings is putting it lightly.
The whole concept of divorce, and the sanctity given to marriage is also very interesting, and I imagine that at the time this was published (1915) Glaspell's take on the subject would have been somewhat controversial. The focus is so much on the self and what an individual wants that I imagine it would have gone against everything people felt about marriage and its importance at the time - I would have loved to be a fly on the wall to see peoples' reactions when this was published. I find Glaspell's approach really fresh and interesting, and I liked the fact that she showed perspectives from many characters so we really felt in their shoes. The character of Deane Franklin, Ruth's best friend, in particular was very interesting because we see his obsession with validating Ruth alongside the tensions it causes between him and his new wife. I feel like her character was unlikable but perhaps a bit unfairly treated due to the specific nature of her surroundings and circumstances, but that might just be my opinion. I just found every single character to be grey in this novel, with pros and cons to them, and I found myself siding with them and against them all simultaneously.
I think the main thing that drags this book down for me though isn't so much the conflict it brings up in terms of how to feel about the characters, but by the long-winded and musing nature of the writing style. Glaspell was sometimes a bit too flowery for my liking, and she could say the same thing in about half the words more often than not. I found many sections to be quite repetitive, and although I was never bored as such, I did feel like I was ready to move on from those moments. But overall I'm glad I read this, it's definitely a very different type of narrative from any I've read before from Persephone, and if it sounds at all appealing I'd say it's still worth a try.
This was a really interesting read, mainly because I had so many conflicting feelings while reading it, and this is mainly due to personal opinions on the subject matter. The writing is very sentimental and internal throughout the novel, with long drawn-out sections of wistfulness on various characters' parts, wondering on the true meaning of love, the true meaning of friendship, what is owed to someone and how society expects you to respond to certain things. Ultimately though the narrative is one where we are meant to feel sorry for Ruth, and see how unfairly maligned she is by the people she used to hold dear. I take some issue with that, because at the end of the day Ruth knowingly went away with another woman's husband, and my own personal feelings on cheating are that I am completely against it. However, I feel like Ruth is still a sympathetic character in that she sacrifices everything for love, when she knows it will affect her ten times worse than Stuart who she leaves with. Stuart to me was a bit of a deplorable character - it was his wife, no matter how unloving, that he left, and yet no one in their town critiques him at any given moment. The hatred is all directed at Ruth, and it is her family who ultimately suffer. So mixed feelings is putting it lightly.
The whole concept of divorce, and the sanctity given to marriage is also very interesting, and I imagine that at the time this was published (1915) Glaspell's take on the subject would have been somewhat controversial. The focus is so much on the self and what an individual wants that I imagine it would have gone against everything people felt about marriage and its importance at the time - I would have loved to be a fly on the wall to see peoples' reactions when this was published. I find Glaspell's approach really fresh and interesting, and I liked the fact that she showed perspectives from many characters so we really felt in their shoes. The character of Deane Franklin, Ruth's best friend, in particular was very interesting because we see his obsession with validating Ruth alongside the tensions it causes between him and his new wife. I feel like her character was unlikable but perhaps a bit unfairly treated due to the specific nature of her surroundings and circumstances, but that might just be my opinion. I just found every single character to be grey in this novel, with pros and cons to them, and I found myself siding with them and against them all simultaneously.
I think the main thing that drags this book down for me though isn't so much the conflict it brings up in terms of how to feel about the characters, but by the long-winded and musing nature of the writing style. Glaspell was sometimes a bit too flowery for my liking, and she could say the same thing in about half the words more often than not. I found many sections to be quite repetitive, and although I was never bored as such, I did feel like I was ready to move on from those moments. But overall I'm glad I read this, it's definitely a very different type of narrative from any I've read before from Persephone, and if it sounds at all appealing I'd say it's still worth a try.