Elizabeth and her German Garden

Locations
Call Number: Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Warm and thoughtful submitted by Kikumatsu97 on July 27, 2015, 6:13pm This little gem of a book, the first novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim I had read, both delighted and intrigued me. It is about a woman called Elizabeth who has moved, with her husband and children, to their country estate in a remote part of Germany. Elizabeth dislikes the indoors with its responsibilities, servants and other interruptions, and spends most of the time reading in her garden. She does not actually garden, being a lady; she says on several occasions that she wishes she could just get a spade and dig instead of having to give instructions. I got a very sharp impression of the restrictions on a lady's life in the late 1800s.

Anonymous Memoir of Late 1800's (OK, Actually a Novel) submitted by sdunav on June 11, 2021, 11:30am This memoir disguised as an anonymously published novel is surprisingly modern in some parts (mostly the personal reflections, as shown in some of the quotes below), but unsurprisingly dated and disturbing when it comes to gender roles, ethnicity, and social class.

"But why cook when you can get some one to cook for you?" (p. 4)

"....my soul never thinks of beginning to wake up for other people till lunch-time, and never does so completely till it has been taken out of doors and aired in the sunshine. Who can begin conventional amiability the first thing in the morning? It is the hour of savage instincts and natural tendencies; it the triumph of the Disagreeable and the Cross." (p. 23)

"....the dullest book takes on a certain saving grace if read out of doors, just as bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eaten under a tree." (p. 45)

"Oh, my dear, relations are like drugs, - useful sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them." (p. 80