Women’s History Month – Marilyn Monroe

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

For the month of March, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. I am devoting a week each in March to one woman I am inspired by. 

For this week, I am devoting the week to Marilyn Monroe.

Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on 1 June 1926 to Gladys Pearl Baker at Los Angeles General Hospital. Gladys was not mentally or financially stable or prepared for a child when Norma was born although her early childhood is being noted as being stable and happy. Gladys placed Norma with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in Hawthorne. It was at this time that Norma did not see her mother very often but in 1933, Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood and moved with the 7-year-old to that place. They had lodgers who stayed with them, actors and the like, from time to time. 

It wasn’t long before Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1934. She spent most of her life in and out of hospitals and rarely made contact with her daughter. Norma became a ward of the state, with her mother’s friend Grace Goddard looking after her. 

In the next sixteen months, Norma lived with friends of her mother and it is assumed she was sexually abused during this time. She’d always been a shy girl but it was around this time that she developed a stutter and became withdrawn. In 1935, she stayed briefly with Grace Goddard and her husband, but just a few months later she was placed in the Los Angeles Orphans Home. It did not last long. Grace returned to take her out of the orphanage in 1937. Unfortunately, this stay did not last as Grace’s husband was molesting her. She ended up staying with friends and relatives of friends in Los Angeles and Compton. 

Norma said that her experiences as a child made her want to be an actress: “I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim…when I heard that this was acting. I said that’s what I want to be.” 

Norma finally found something a little more permanent when she moved in with Grace’s aunt Ana Lower in Sawtelle. This was in September 1938. She was enrolled in school and excelled in writing and contributing to the school newspaper but she was not a bright student in other subjects. Owing to Ana’s failing health, Norma was returned to live with the Goddard’s in Van Nuys in 1941. 

In 1942, Grace’s husband was relocated to West Virginia. California child protection laws prevented them from taking Norma with them, so she was forced to return to the orphanage. Instead, she married her neighbor’s son, James Doughtery, a 21-year-old factory worker on 19 June, 1942, just after her 16th birthday. 

She dropped out of school and later said she was “dying of boredom” during her marriage. In 1943, Dougherty enlisted as a Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island where she moved. 

Norma moved in with her in-laws when Dougherty was sent out to the Pacific and remained there for two years. Norma got a job in a munitions factory. She met a photographer in late 1944 who was told to shoot morale-boosting pictures of female workers in the factory. Her pictures weren’t used but she still quit her job in 1945 and began modeling for that photographer and his friends. Defying her husband’s wishes, she moved on her own and signed a contract in August 1945. 

She began modeling for the pin-up fashion in magazines and advertisements. She dyed her own hair blonde and straightened it so it would give her more jobs. 

Norma signed a contract with Ben Lyon at 20th Century Fox in 1946, but some executives were unenthusiastic about it. The only reason she was signed was so RKO Pictures, a rival at the time, could not sign her. Lyon and Norma chose the screen name, Marilyn Monroe, for Lyon’s love of broadway star Marilyn Miller and Norma’s mother’s maiden name, Monroe. 

In September 1946, she divorced Dougherty as he was opposed to her career. 

She spent months learning how to sing, dance and act. She was given her first roles in 1947 but after consideration, Fox did not renew her contract in late 1947. She returned to modelling but she was determined to make it as an actress. 

She was signed in March 1948 by Columbia Pictures. Here, her look was modelled after Rita Hayworth and her hair was bleached platinum blonde. She performed in one movie for them. Her contract was not renewed in September 1948. 

It was not until 1950 that she was cast in more than one movie through the William Morris Agency, the vice president Johnny Hyde, was her lover. In 1950, Hyde negotiated a 7 year contract for Monroe with Century Fox. Hyde died only days later, leaving her devastated. This was when her popularity began to grow. 

In early 1952, she began a public romance with retired New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio. This was around the time her bombshell and sex symbol personality was starting. She wore a revealing dress when acting as Grand Marshal at the Miss America Pageannt parade, and told gossip columnist Earl Wilson that she usually wore no underwear. By the end of the year she was named the “it” girl of 1952. 

It was around this time she gained a reputation for being difficult to work with which only worsened as her career grew. She was late or didn’t show up at all, couldn’t remember her lines, and would demand re-takes. Her problems have been attributed to a combination of perfectionism, low self-esteem, and stage fright. To alleviate her anxiety and chronic insomnia, she began to use barbituates, amphetamines and alcohol. She didn’t become addicted until 1956. 

In 1953, her sex symbol status was confirmed when Hugh Hefner featured her on the cover and as a centrefold in the first issue of Playboy. Monroe did not consent to the publication. The cover image was a photograph taken at the Miss America Pageant parade in 1952 and the centrefold featured on of her nude photographs taken in 1949. 

On January 14, 1954, Marilyn married Joe DiMaggio in San Francisco due to the studio not wanting to renew her contract and not allowing her to choose the movies she wanted to be in. The press followed her new publicity stunt and not the studio’s. Because of this attack, the studio offered her a new contract, a bonus of $100,000 and a starring role in The Seven Year Itch. 

While filming that scene from the movie, the shoot lasted several hours and attracted nearly 2,000 spectators. It also happened to mark the end of her marriage to DiMaggio who was infuriated by it. In October 1954, Monroe filed for divorce. 

1955 saw Monroe undergo psychoanalysis and started to date actor Marlon Brando and playwright Arthur Miller. She legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe in 1956. Monroe married Miller in June in New York. She converted to Judaism. 

Monroe started to become dependent on alcohol and drugs at this point and even had a miscarriage while working alongside Laurence Olivier. She took an 18 month hiatus to concentrate on her family life. She had an ectopic pregnancy in 1957 and another miscarriage a year later which was linked to her endometriosis. 

During the filming of “Some Like It Hot”, Monroe likened the production to a sinking ship and said, “why should I worry, I have no phallic symbol to lose”. 

The last film Monroe would complete was The Misfits which Miller had written to provide her a dramatic role. Her marriage to Arthur was over by this point. 

Her health was failing, she was in pain from gallstones, and her drug addiction was so severe that her makeup usually had to be applied when she was still asleep under the influence of barbituates. 

In 1961, she underwent surgery for endometriosis and spent four weeks in hospital for depression. She was helped by Joe DiMaggio who had rekindled a friendship with her. She began to date his friend Frank Sinatra for several months. 

Monroe was too sick to work for the next six weeks, but despite confirmations by multiple doctors, the studio pressured her by alleging publicly that she was faking it. On May 19, she took a break to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” on stage at President John F. Kennedy’s early birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden in New York. She drew attention with her costume: a beige, skintight dress covered in rhinestones, which made her appear nude. Monroe’s trip to New York caused even more irritation for Fox executives, who had wanted her to cancel it. 

Her housekeeper Eunice Murray was staying overnight on the evening of August 4, 1962. Murray woke at 3:00 a.m. on August 5 and sensed that something was wrong. She saw light from under Monroe’s bedroom door but was unable to get a response and found the door locked. Murray then called Monroe’s psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, who arrived at the house shortly after and broke into the bedroom through a window to find Monroe dead in her bed. Monroe’s physician, Hyman Engelberg, arrived at around 3:50 a.m.  and pronounced her dead. At 4:25 a.m., the Los Angeles Police Department was notified.

Monroe died between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on August 4; the toxicology report showed that the cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning. She had 8 mg% (milligrams per 100 milliliters of solution) chloral hydrate and 4.5 mg% of pentobarbital (Nembutal) in her blood, and 13 mg% of pentobarbital in her liver. Empty medicine bottles were found next to her bed. The possibility that Monroe had accidentally overdosed was ruled out because the dosages found in her body were several times the lethal limit.  

Monroe’s doctors stated that she had been “prone to severe fears and frequent depressions” with “abrupt and unpredictable mood changes”, and had overdosed several times in the past, possibly intentionally. Due to these facts and the lack of any indication of foul play, deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi classified her death as a probable suicide.

In 2022, it was proved by DNA that Norma’s father was a Charles Stanley Gifford who passed in 1965. He worked with Gladys and they had an affair in 1925. 

According to The Guide to United States Popular Culture, “as an icon of American popular culture, Monroe’s few rivals in popularity include Elvis Presley and Mickey Mouse… no other star has ever inspired such a wide range of emotions—from lust to pity, from envy to remorse. 

Women’s History Month – Hedy Lamarr

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

For the month of March, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. I am devoting a week each in March to one woman I am inspired by. 

For this week, I am devoting the week to Hedy Lamarr.

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born 9 November 1914 to Gertrud “Trude” Kiesler (nee Lichtwitz) and Emil Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. She was a film star in Hollywood’s golden age, and has been described as one of the greatest movie actresses of all time. 

At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna. She also began to associate invention with her father, who would take her out on walks, explaining how technology functioned. 

Lamarr forged a note from her mother and went to Sascha-Film and was able to get hired as a script girl. While there, she was able to get a role as an extra in Money on the Street (1930) then a small part in Storm in a Water Glass (1931). 

While in Berlin, she met Russian theatre producer Alexis Granowsky, who cast her in his debut, The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (1931). 

In 1933, at the young age of 18, Hedy was given the lead in Ecstasy. She played the neglected young wife of an indifferent older man. The film became both celebrated and notorious fr showing Hedy’s face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up and brief nude scenes. 

Hedy played a number of stage roles after this. Admirers would send roses to her dressing room and tried to get backstage to see her. She sent most of them away, including a man who was more insistent, Friedrich Mandl. He became obsessed with her. Eventually, she fell for his charming and fascinating personality, partly due to his immense financial wealth. Her parents, both Jewish, did not approve, due to his ties to Italian fascist leader Mussolini and later, Adolf Hitler, but not even her parents could stop headstrong Hedy Lamarr. 

She married Mandl on 10 August 1933 at the Karlskirche. She was 18 and he was 33. She described Mandl as extremely controlling who objected to her simulated orgasm scene in Ecstasy and prevented her from pursuing her acting career. She claimed to have been kept a prisoner in their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau. 

Mandl had close social and business ties to the government, selling munitions to the country and had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany. Dictators of both countries attended lavish parties at their home. She also accompanied her husband to meetings where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. This was her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science. 

Hedy eventually separated from Mandl in 1937, also leaving her country.  She had described herself as her maid and fled to Paris. 

Hedy arrived in London in 1937 where she met Louis B Mayer who was head of MGM who had been scouting for talent in Europe. She initially turned down the offer he made her ($125/week) but she happened to book herself onto the same New York bound liner as him, and managed to impress him enough to secure $500/week. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr to distance herself from her real identity and her reputation, choosing the surname in homage to the beautiful silent film star, Barba La Marr. Mayer brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the “world’s most beautiful woman”. 

People were known to say things like, “everyone gasped…Lamarr’s beauty literally took one’s breath away.” 

In future films, she was typecast as the glamorous seductress of exotic origin. Due to her boredom of her lack of lines in her films and her archetypal roles, she took up inventing to relieve her boredom. 

Her off-screen life and personality during those years was quite different from her screen image. She spent most of her time alone, rather than in crowds. When she was asked for an autograph, she’d no idea why they would want it. She also had a penchant for speaking about herself in the third person. 

Although Hedy had no formal training and was primarily self-taught, she tinkered in her spare time on various hobbies and ideas, which included a traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a carbonated drink. The beverage was unsuccessful, and was said to taste like Alka-Seltzer. 

During WWII, Hedy read that radio-controlled torpedoes had been proposed. However, an enemy might be able to jam such a guidance system and set it off course. When discussing this with her friend, the composer and pianist George Antheil, the idea was raised that a frequency-hopping signal might prevent the torpedo’s radio guidance system from being tracked or jammed. Antheil succeeded by synchronizing a miniaturized player piano mechanism with radio signals. Antheil sketched out the idea for the frequency-hopping system, which was to use a perforated paper tape which actuated pneumatic controls. 

Antheil was introduced to Samuel Stuart Mackeown, a professor of radio-electrical engineering at Caltech, whom Lamarr then employed for a year to implement the idea. Lamarr hired the Los Angeles legal firm of Lyon & Lyon to search for prior knowledge, and to craft the application] for the patent which was granted as U.S. Patent 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942 under her married name Hedy Kiesler Markey. In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business, or invention fields have significantly contributed to society. In 2014, Lamarr and Antheil were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Although the U.S. Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States at age 38 on April 10, 1953. From 1966 onwards, she committed shoplifting crimes but charges were dropped in return for her promise to refrain from breaking any laws for a year. By the 1970s, Hedy became secluded. 

In the last decades of her life, the telephone became Lamarr’s only means of communication with the outside world, even with her children and close friends. She often talked up to six or seven hours a day on the phone, but she spent hardly any time with anyone in person in her final years.

She died in Casselberry, Florida, on 19 January, 2000 of heart disease. 

Women’s History Month – Amelia Earhart

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

For the month of March, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. I am devoting a week each in March to one woman I am inspired by. 

For this week, I am devoting the week to Amelia Earhart.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on 24th July 1897 to Samuel “Edwin” Stanton Earhart and Amelia “Amy” Earhart (nee Otis) in Atchison, Kansas. She was nicknamed Meeley or Millie, even answering to it well into adulthood. 

Amelia’s mother did not believe in raising her children to be “nice little girls” and allowed them to wear bloomers. However, her maternal grandmother disapproved of the “bloomers” they wore, and although Amelia liked the freedom of movement they provided, she was sensitive to the fact that the neighbourhood girls wore dresses. Amelia was characterised as a tomboy as a child. In 1904, with the help of her uncle, Amelia cobbled together a home-made ramp, fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen, and secured the ramp to the roof of the family toolshed. Amelia’s well-documented first flight ended dramatically. She emerged with a bruised lip, torn dress and a “sensation of excitement”. She had been noted as saying, “Oh, it’s just like flying!” 

Amelia had a terrible childhood with her father becoming an alcoholic and having to move around, and auction their house to pay for their debts. Throughout her childhood, she had continued to aspire to a future career. She kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management and mechanical engineering. 

During 1917, she visited her sister in Toronto. World War I had been raging and Amelia saw the returning wounded soldiers. After receiving training to be a nurse’s aid, she began work with the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital. Her duties included preparing food in the kitchen for patients with special diets and hanging out prescribed medication at the hospital’s dispensary. It was here that she heard stories from military pilots and developed an interest in flying. 

In 1918, the Spanish Flu reached Toronto. Amelia became a patient, experiencing pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis. During the pre-antibiotic era, Amelia underwent multiple operations to wash out the affected maxillary sinus but it did not work. Chronic sinusitis will affect Amelia’s flying and activities later in life, and sometimes when on the airfield she was forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube. 

In 1920, Amelia and her father attended an aerial meet in California. She asked if she could be on a passenger flight which cost $10 for 10 minutes. She said, “By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly.” 

Amelia had her first lesson on 3 January 1921 at Kinner Field on the west side of Long Beach Boulevard and Tweedy Road, now in the city of South Gate. Her commitment to flying required her to accept the frequent hard work and rudimentary conditions that accompanied early aviation training. To complete her image transformation, she also cropped her hair short in the style of other female flyers. In 1921, Earhart purchased a secondhand bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane, which she nicknamed “The Canary”. 

On October 22, 1922, Amelia flew the Airster to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a world record for female pilots. On May 16, 1923, Amelia became the 16th woman in the United States to be issued a pilot’s license (#6017) by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI). 

After Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest expressed interest in being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. After deciding that the trip was too perilous for her to undertake, she offered to sponsor the project. It was then that Amelia was asked. 

Due to her lack of training of the instruments used, she did not pilot the aircraft. Once they landed, she said, “Stultz did all the flying – had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes. Maybe someday I’ll try it alone.” 

Publisher George Putnam, a recently divorce, proposed to Amelia six times before she finally said yes in 1929. She referred to her marriage as a “partnership” with “dual control”. In a letter written on her wedding day, she wrote, “I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. I may have to keep some place where I can go to be by myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.” 

Her ideas on marriage were liberal for the time, as she believe in equal responsibility for both men and women in marriage. 

Early in 1936, Amelia started to plan a round-the-world flight. Even though others had flown around the world, this flight would be the longest at 29,000 miles because it followed a roughly equatorial route. 

Amelia and Fred Noonan departed Miami on 1 June 1937 after numerous stops in South America, Africa and the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29, 1937. Most of the flight had been done, with only 7,000 miles to be completed over the Pacific. On 2 July 1937 at 10 in the morning, they took off from Lae Airfield in the heavily loaded plane. Their intended destination was Howland Island. The expected flying time was 20 hours, so accounting for the two hour time zone difference between Lae and Howland and crossing the International Dateline, the aircraft was expected to arrive at Howland the morning of the next day, 2 July. 

Around 3pm Lae time, Amelia reported her altitude as 10,000 ft but that they would reduce altitude due to thick clouds. Around 5pm, she reported her altitude as 7,000 ft and speed as 150 knots. Their last known position report was near the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles into the flight. 

Amelia and Fred disappeared that day, with no sign of their wreckage found despite years of searching. Many reports have turned up over the years of different stories but none have been verified. 

Amelia Earhart disappeared 2 July 1937 and was declared dead 5 January 1939. 

Women’s History Month – Queen Elizabeth II

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

For the month of March, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. I am devoting a week each in March to one woman I am inspired by.

For this week, I am devoting the week to Queen Elizabeth II.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born 21st April 1926 to the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) in Mayfair, London. Elizabeth had one sister, Margaret. 

Elizabeth was never meant to be Queen. Her uncle abdicated the throne in favour of love and therefore, his brother took over. She went on to be the longest reigning British monarch and had the longest verified reign of any female monarch in history. She reigned for 70 years and 214 days. 

In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince of Greece and Denmark. Their marriage lasted 73 years until his death in 2021. They had four children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward. 

She was known as Lilibet by her loved ones, such as her father, mother, sister and husband. 

She had a love for corgis and horses, having many horses on her properties and a keen interest in horse racing and polo. 

Elizabeth became queen of seven independent Commonwealth countries when her father died in 1952, she was just 25 and a mother of two. 

Upon becoming queen, her duty became paramount and she dedicated her entire life to serving her country and the commonwealth. This was shown when her sister was not able to marry the man she loved who happened to be a divorce and senior to her young age, and keeping silent when the media would hound the family for answers to scandals and the like. She kept her life private. 

Elizabeth endured much in her tenure as the monarch, a lot of scandal, a lot of painful media headlines especially when her former daughter-in-law, Diana, was killed in an accident. She continued to be hounded for decades with multiple scandals, and being called cold due to her inability to speak publicly on private matters. 

Her duty never wavered, even through illness, tragedy. The week of her husband’s death, she returned to work, serving her people as she promised to do. At his funeral, she abided by COVID-19 protocols and sat alone, grieving and saying a final goodbye to her beloved husband. I’m not afraid to admit, I shed a lot of tears seeing her sitting there, frail, and alone. This woman I so adored, so admired, and she was steadfast in her duty. 

In the week of her own death, she met with the new prime minister and was all smiles. She looked frail, and thin. I think we all knew she wasn’t long for this world. Even still, a few days later, when I heard the news. I wept. We’d lost a symbol of womanhood, of inspiration for young girls, an icon. 


Elizabeth died at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 2022 at the age of 96. Her son, Charles, took over as King. 

PRE ORDER – Conor by Kate Bonham

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

☆ BLURB ☆

Being an O’Farrell comes with its own problems but for the most part we were feared and respected. 

Until now. 

A rebellion is rising, trying to oust my brothers and I from our control over the city. 

Enter a fiery redhead who completely blew me away when she happened to yell at me. 

I’d never been yelled at by a woman before. 

For days, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. 

Then, I saw her. 

In the club, alone. I couldn’t resist. I had to know who this woman was. That was the decision that changed everything. 

My enemies are coming for me and they know how to make me hurt now. 

They’ll go after my woman. 

Once I find them, they’ll wish they never laid eyes on her.

Pre Order for 99c

International Zebra Day

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

Today is the day of the Zebra!


As long as I can remember, I have loved the zebra. I, at one time, was even obsessed with zebra print.
No, not real zebra skin, but the print. I was a little Carol Baskins with it.
Still to this day, I love the print of zebras.

In celebration of this awesome day, I compiled a few facts about the Zebra for you:

  1. Closely related to horses and donkeys
  2. Zebras have black skin under their coats
  3. They are endangered
  4. Each zebra’s stripes are unique, just like fingerprints
  5. There are three main zebra species: The Grevy’s, Mountain and Plains
  6. Zebras can bark, bray, snort and huff and the position of their ears can signal their feelings
  7. When under threat, they run in a zig zag pattern to escape
  8. They are herbivores and live on mostly shrubs, bark, grass and leaves
  9. They can live up to 25 years of age
  10. They can sleep standing up

I found all of these facts at the following sites:

https://www.livescience.com/27443-zebras.html
https://a-z-animals.com/blog/10-incredible-zebra-facts/

If you wanted to find out more about the zebra, you can do so at the following link:

https://www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation/zebra

Virginia Woolf Day

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

I must confess, I did not read anything by Virginia Woolf when I was young. I’d not even heard her name until I was in my teen years and even then I hadn’t read anything. I had, however, watched movies based on her books. I found myself startled and yet impressed by the movie ‘The Hours’. I loved that it told the story through different generations and showed you the difference of how women were represented through time.

Today, is her day. She was born on 25th January and although her ending was immensely sad, I hope I have done her justice by noting down her most important works and milestones in her life to give you a little insight into a woman who was ahead of her time and who battled what a lot of authors do – crippling self-doubt.

Virginia was born 25 January 1882 in London, England with the name Adeline Virginia Stephen. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was an eminent literary figure and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. Her mother, Julia Jackson, was a great beauty and had a reputation of saintly self-sacrifice.

Julia and Leslie married in 1878 and had four children, Vanessa (born 1879), Thoby (born 1880), Virginia, and Adrian (born 1883). It is said Virginia was jealous that Adrian appeared to be her mother’s favourite.

The family made summer vacations annually from their town house in London, near Kensington Gardens, to Talland House on the rugged Cornwall coast. This structured Virginia’s childhood world in terms of opposites: city and country, winter and summer, repression and freedom and so on.

When her mother died in 1895 at a young age, Virginia was just 13, and her already booming creativity took a dive. She delved into a depression that took over her. In 1904, her father died, and it was then that Virginia had a nervous breakdown.

While she was recovering, it was her sister that moved the Stephen children to the bohemian Bloomsbury section of London. It was here that the children could live independently, free to pursue studies, to paint or write and to entertain. Virginia would first meet her husband in November 1904, Leonard Woolf. He dined with the Stephen’s just before sailing to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a colonial administrator.

It was in 1906, after a family trip to Greece, that Virginia’s brother Thoby died of typhoid fever at just 26 years old. Virginia was said to have grieved but did not fall into depression. She turned to the written word to grieve and to also recover from the “loss” of her sister to her new husband, Clive Bell.

It was while viewing art in the summer of 1908, Virginia was committed to creating “some kind of whole made of shivering fragments” to capturing “the flight of mind”. She was determined to ‘reform’ the novel by creating a holistic form embracing aspects of life that were different from the Victorian novel. She experimented with a novel which she called Melymbrosia.

In 1911, Leonard Woolf returned from the East after resigning from the colonial service. He and Virginia married in August 1912. She continued to work on her novel while he wrote an anti-colonialist novel called The Village in the Jungle and The Wise Virgins, which was a Bloosmbury exposé. Leonard became a political writer and an advocate for peace and justice.

Between 1910 and 1915, Virginia’s mental health was precarious.

Virginia based many of her novel’s characters on real-life people ranging from her father, her siblings and sometimes even herself.

Woolf’s manic-depressive worries (that she was a failure as a writer and a woman, that she was despised by her sister and unloved by Leonard) provoked a suicide attempt in September 1913. Late in 1915, she overcame the “vile imaginations” that had threatened her sanity. She kept the demons of mania and depression mostly at bay for the rest of her life.

In 1917, the Woolfs bought a printing press and founded the Hogarth Press. They published their own Two Stories in 1917. It consisted of works from both Leonard and Virginia.

In 1919 they bought a cottage in Rodmell village called Monk’s House, which looked out over the Sussex Downs and the meadows where the River Ouse wound down to the English Channel. Virginia could walk or bicycle to visit her sister in Charleston and then retreat to Monk’s House to write. She envisioned a new book that would apply the theories of ‘Modern Novels’ and the achievements of her short stories to the novel form.

In her novel, Jacob’s Room (1922), she achieved such emotion, transforming personal grief over the death of Thoby Stephen into a “spiritual shape”.

At the beginning of 1924, the Woolfs moved their city residence from the suburbs back to Bloomsbury, where they were less isolated from London society. It was here that the aristocratic Vita Sackville-West began to court Virginia, a relationship that would blossom into a lesbian affair. Having already written a story about a Mrs Dalloway, Woolf thought of a foiling device that would pair that highly sensitive woman with a shell-shocked war victim, a Mr Smith, so that “the sane and the insane” would exist “side by side”.

In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Woolf blamed women’s absence from history not on their lack of brains and talent but on their poverty. For her 1931 talk “Professions for Women” , Woolf studied the history of women’s education and employment and argued that unequal opportunities for women negatively affect all of society. She urged women to destroy the “angel in the house”, a reference to Coventry Patmore’s poem of that title, the quintessential Victorian paean to women who sacrifice themselves to men.

Woolf began a novel called The Pargiter’s but she feared she would never finish. Putting it away, she wrote a mock biographic of Flush, the dog of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She went back to her novel and renamed it The Years. She narrated 50 years of family history through the decline of class and patriarchal systems, the rise of feminism and the threat of another war. She was desperate to finish the book, so she lightened the book with poetic echoes of gestures, objects and colours cutting epiphanies for Eleanor Pargiter and explicit references to women’s bodies. The novel illustrates the damage done to women and society over the years by sexual repression, ignorance and discrimination. Published in 1937, The Years became a best seller.

The Beginning of the End

Woolf’s only saving grace against Adolf Hitler, World War II and her own despair was her writing. During the bombing in 1940 and 1941, she worked on her memoir. In her novel Between the Acts, war threatens art and humanity itself. Facing such horrors as the threat of invasion, Virginia found she was unable to write. The demons of self-doubt that she had kept at bay for so long returned to haunt her. On March 28, 1941, fearing that she now lacked the resilience to battle them, she walked behind Monk’s House and down to the River Ouse, put stones in her pockets, and drowned herself.

It would take three weeks for her body to be discovered in the river. In her suicide note to her husband, she tried to offer him comfort.

“I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.”

Her Legacy

Woolf’s haunting language, her prescient insights into wide-ranging historical, political, feminist, and artistic issues, and her revisionist experiments with novelistic form during a remarkably productive career altered the course of Modernist and postmodernist letters.

Her Popular Books

The Voyage Out (1915)

The Mark on the Wall (1917)

Night and Day (1919)

Jacob’s Room (1922)

Mrs Dalloway (1925)

Orlando: A Biography (1928)

To the Lighthouse (1927)

A Room of One’s Own (1929)

The Lady in the Looking Glass (1929)

The Waves (1931)

The Years (1937)

Between the Acts (1941)

Resources:

Britannica.com

National Jane Austen Day

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

Jane Austen is, without a doubt, one of the most prolific writers of the early 19th century. Whether you read her work or not, you know who she is, and for a woman who was unable to publish her work with her name during her lifetime, that’s quite a feat.

Jane writes about strong female leads and broody, difficult men. Can we say we don’t like the broody characters? Don’t we all write about them in our own work? Or can you say you don’t fall in love with them in the books you read?

Her story is quite remarkable. Upon learning about it, when I was in my early twenties, I felt a connection to her as a creative mind. She was a woman beyond the era she was born to. A woman who was intelligent, never wanted to stop learning and for some of her works, I believe she was well beyond her time. I won’t go into my theories about some of her themes because we’ll be here all day but I wanted to celebrate her national day with a little bit about her.

What made me fall in love with her?

I’m not sure. I don’t remember when I first picked up a Jane Austen novel. I happened to ask my mother, but she couldn’t remember either, but she did tell me I was reading a lot around 14-16 so it must have been a library borrow or even an assignment in school perhaps. The first book I remember reading was Emma, followed closely by Pride and Prejudice. Two of my favourites.

Her characters are strong, her prose undeniably eloquent, and her storytelling legendary. I could get lost in her world, time and time again.

What is my fave of her works?

Pride and Prejudice is my favourite novel, and I don’t really have a reason why, but it is one I can find myself falling back in love with, every time. Is it due to Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet’s love, who knows? But I do know this story is one I suggest to young girls who want to read one of her works.  


Who is my favourite character?

I find this a difficult question to answer. However, I put up the question in my reader group to ask anyone who loved Austen’s work to see who they said. To my surprise, the ones who did answer had the same ones as I did.

My favourite male lead was always Mr. Darcy but in the last few years he’s been tied with Mr. Kingsley from Emma. Both strong men in each their own way, but I think if it came down to it, Mr Darcy would win. He struggled with his feelings, trying to remain appropriate and yet despite Elizabeth Bennet’s misfortune, he chose her above many other prospects he could have attained. I know, you’re looking at me and thinking “well love conquers all” but in that time, love rarely came into it. I believe this is because of Jane’s firm belief that you shouldn’t marry without affection (as she had written to her niece).

My favourite female lead would be Emma, she’s headstrong (as most of the females are, possibly due to Jane’s affliction of being herself at any cost) and knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to try and find happiness for her friends, even if she does miss the obvious flirtation toward her.


Which adaptation is my favourite?

I’m going to be controversial here. My favourite adaptation for Emma was the most recent one, with Anya Taylor-Joy. I feel the themes really felt genuine to the story here. I loved the character development by the actors and was able to watch it several times.

Pride and Prejudice is a tie between the ABC limited series with Jennifer Eales and Colin Firth and the movie with Keira Knightley. They are different, yes, but they stick to the story, and both are easy to watch. I feel like the movie was a little more modern and easier to digest, but if you are new to the genre.

Without even realizing it, I watched an adaptation of Emma in Clueless when I was a teenager in high school.

So, with that said, let me introduce you to Jane.

Who was Jane Austen?

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 in Hampshire, England to George and Cassandra. George was a rector of the parishes Steventon and Deane, and he came from an old and wealthy family of wool merchants however, George’s family fell into poverty through wealth being divided by eldest sons.

Jane had multiple siblings, James, born 1765, George, born 1766, Edward, born 1767, Henry, born 1771, Cassandra, born 1773 and Francis, born 1774.

The home was considered to have an atmosphere as “open, amused, easy intellectual” where ideas of those with whom the Austen’s might disagree politically or socially were considered and discussed. Jane was known to attend church regularly, socialize with friends and neighbors and read novels – often her own – aloud to family in the evenings. Socializing meant dancing, either impromptu in someone’s home after supper or at the balls held regularly in assembly rooms. Her brother Henry had said that “Jane was fond of dancing and excelled in it”. Perhaps, this is why balls are such a common theme in her novels.

Jane was educated, in 1783, she and her sister were sent to Oxford to be schooled by a Mrs Ann Cawley who took them to Southampton when she moved there a year later. In the autumn, both girls were sent home when they caught typhus and Austen almost died. The schoolwork possibly included French, spelling, needlework, dancing and music. She returned to school afterward to continue her studies.

Her father was tolerant of Jane’s sometimes risqué experiments in writing and provided both sisters with expensive paper and material for writing and drawing. Jane had written three short plays during her teenage years. She was just eleven when she began to write poems and stories to amuse herself and her family. Between the ages of 12 and 18, she had compiled twenty-nine works into three bound notebooks, which is now referred to as Juvenilia.

When Jane was twenty, Tom Lefroy, a neighbor, visiting Steventon two months. He’d just finished a university degree and was training to be a barrister. It is said the two met while at a dance and spent significant time together. In a letter to her sister, she states she expected an offer from her “friend” and that she would “refuse him unless he promises to give away his white coat”. The next letter, Jane wrote, “The day will come on which I flirt my last with Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it will be all over. My tears flow as I write at this melancholy idea”. This shows just how much she loved him but they both knew their marriage wouldn’t be a good idea. Neither had anything to give to each other, and they would live a life of poverty.

It was in 1796 that she penned a novel called First Impressions which would later be called, Pride and Prejudice. She was just 21. This was an established favorite of her family’s. It was at this time, her father had tried to publish her novels, however, it had been declined. It’s not known if Jane knew of her father’s efforts. After First Impressions, Jane returned to writing a novel she had abandoned years earlier called Elinor and Marianne, now known as Sense and Sensibility, which took roughly seven months to complete.

In 1800, Jane’s father retired from the ministry and moved the family to 4 Sydney Place, Bath in Somerset. It is claimed Jane was unhappy in Bath which wasn’t conducive to her creative spirit and was unable to write but there have been some who claim it was her social life in Bath which prevented her from writing. It was in December 1802 that Jane received her only known proposal of marriage. When she and her sister visited Alethea and Catherine Bigg, old friends who lived near Basingstoke, she happened to meet their younger brother Harris who was home from studying from Oxford. He proposed to Jane, and she accepted. It was a marriage of convenience rather than love as he was heir to a vast estate, and she knew she could provide for her family. Harris was said to be a plain man who stuttered slightly and aggressively spoke without tact. It didn’t last long, the next morning Jane knew she had made a mistake and withdrew her acceptance. She would never marry.

Jane’s father died suddenly in 1805, leaving her mother, sister and herself in a precarious situation. The brothers pitched in to assist with renting a room for them, but it was not until 1809 when they moved to Chawton in a large cottage which was part of the estate of the brother Edward’s, that they were in better lodgings and happier than they had been.

When Jane did publish her works, they were published anonymously like many women authors at the time. Sense and Sensibility appeared in October 1811 and was described as being written “by a lady”. Austen made £140 (equiv. to £10,800 in 2021) from Sense and Sensibility, which provided her with some financial and psychological independence. After the success of her book, all her other works were billed as written “by the author of Sense and Sensibility”. Her name never appeared on her books during her lifetime. This hit home hard for me when I learned this tidbit. The feeling of seeing my own book, my own paperback in my hands and my name on the cover felt amazing. There was no other feeling to describe it.

Even back then, piracy was rife. Without her knowledge of approval, her novels were translated into French and published cheaply, and pirated editions landed in France.

Austen was feeling unwell by early 1816 but ignored the warning signs. By the middle of the year, her decline was unmistakable, and she began a slow, irregular deterioration. Zachary Cope’s 1964 retrospective diagnosis of what she suffered with was Addison’s disease, however, it’s also stated she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She did continue to write, focusing on The Brothers (later Sanditon) completing twelve chapters before stopping, possibly due to illness. She wrote of herself that she was turning “every wrong color” and living “chiefly on the sofa”. She put down her pen on 18 March 1817, making a note of it.

She was known to make light of her condition, describing it as “bile” and rheumatism. She experienced difficulty walking and lacked energy. By mid-April she was confined to bed. In May, her brother and sister took her to Winchester for help but by that point she was in agony and had asked for “death to take her”.

Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817 at the young age of 41.

List of her Works

NovelsUnfinished works
Sense and Sensibility (1811) Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1815) Northanger Abbey (1818) Persuasion (1818) Lady Susan (1871)The Watsons (1804) Sanditon (1817)  
Other works Volumes
Sir Charles Grandison (1793, 1800) Plan of a Novel (1815) Poems (1796-1817) Prayers (1796-1817) Letters (1796-1817)  Juvenilia – First Volume (1787-1793) Frederic & Elfrida, Jack & Alice, Edgar & Emma, Henry and Eliza, The Adventures of Mr. Harley, Sir William Mountague, Memoirs of Mr. Clifford, The Beautifull Cassandra, Amelia Webster, The Visit, The Mystery, The Three Sisters, A Fragment, A beautiful description, The generous Curate, Ode to Pity Juvenilia – Second Volume (1787-1793) Love and Friendship, Lesley Castle, The History of England, A Collection of Letters, The female philosopher, The first Act of a Comedy, A Letter from a Young Lady, A Tour through Wales, A Tale Juvenilia – Third Volume (1787-1793) Evelyn, Catharine or The Bower  

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jane-Austen

Happy Krampusnacht

/ midnightdrearypublishing / Leave a comment

It’s the 5th of December…and today is Krampusnacht.

I learned of Krampus from a movie, funnily enough, isn’t that how we all learn about such historical facts? It was a story which I found a little horrific but also oddly comforting. I mean, we let a jolly old man in a red suit into our houses on December 24 every year, or so we tell our children…why not have a team of good and evil peruse houses and reward or punish children?

I’m not sure how or why the legend came to be, and many have claimed it is over a thousand years old and linked to a pagan ritual for the winter solstice.

So, with that, let me tell you what I learned about Krampus.

Who is Krampus?

It is believed that Krampus is a half-goat, half-demon who punishes misbehaving children. Forget Santa’s naughty and nice list, you don’t want a visit from Krampus. He won’t be delivering coal to your stockings. Instead, it is said he would chase and beat naughty children with sticks, even on occasion eating them or taking them to Hell.

Krampus is the devilish companion to St Nicholas, who funnily enough, has his own day on December 6 which I will go into a little further down.

The Krampus Night (Krampusnacht) story originated in Germany, as most sources state, and given that his name is derived from a German word, I’m tempted to believe it.

After all, Krampen means claw.

What did he do to naughty children?

While St Nicholas rewarded nice children, Krampus, according to legend, beat children who were naughty with branches and sticks. In some cases, he was said to have eaten or taken them to hell. This story was so obviously created for children to behave during the year, and you know, sometimes when I’m in line at the shops and I see kids acting up with their poor mother or father, I understand why a parent would tell them the story of Krampus. What’s a little fear to knock some sense into you?  

How did the story come about?

Krampus was thought to have been part of pagan rituals for the winter solstice. According to legend, he is the son of Hel, the Norse god of the underworld. With the spread of Christianity, Krampus became associated with Christmas-despite the Catholic church trying to ban him.

It is said that both the creature and St Nicholas arrive on the evening of December 5. Krampus deals with the bad kids and St Nicholas rewards the good.

December 6 is St Nicholas Day, where children awaken to find their gifts or nurse their injuries. I think I’d much prefer a lump of coal…wouldn’t you?

I’m sure I know a mother or two who would be horrified to find their child had injuries after waking from a sleep!

Does anyone still believe in Krampus?

Well, festivities do continue to this day. There is the Krampuslauf or Krampus run. This activity involves alcohol, people dressed as the creature parade through streets to scare those who have dared to look upon him and upon occasion, chasing people. There have even been reports that those who participate by chasing, will chase delinquent children, and hit them with sticks.

These festivities are believed to have arisen in the last 20th century in order to preserve the cultural heritage. It is most popular in Austria and Germany, however, over the last few years, some places in the United States have started with parades and similar festivities to mark the night of Krampus.

In summation, I can see a lot of parallels with our Santa. A man who can see whether a child has been good or bad all year round. The old ‘Don’t you make me call Santa. I’ll tell him not to bring your presents’ line which I know my mother used a time or two on me.  It gives a whole new meaning to “you better watch out, you better not cry” from one of my favourite carols.

You can find out more about Krampus below or by checking out these movies: https://screenrant.com/horror-krampus-christmas-every-movie-ranked/

Sources: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Krampus, https://historythings.com/krampusnacht-what-is-it-and-how-did-it-start/