Author: Clarissa

Book Notes: E.M. Delafield’s The Way We Are

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

The Way We Are was published 2 years before E.M. Delafield’s smash hit The Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930), and one can very clearly see how the writer’s mastery of her craft develops between the two novels.

The Way We Are starts from a setup that is identical to the one we see in the later novel. There’s a provincial lady – Laura Temple – her nice but boring husband, two kids, three servants who keep quitting at the most inopportune time, fussy neighbors, silly activities at the Women’s Institute, and intractable flower bulbs. In The Way We Are, Delafield hadn’t yet found the winning strategy of narrating the life of her provincial heroine in the first person. It’s the charming inner voice of the main character that makes The Diary of a Provincial Lady so irresistible but The Way We Are is narrated in a clumsy third-person. To compensate for the shallowness of what a third-person narrative can transmit about a character like Laura, Delafield involves her in an incongruous and poorly written love affair that is completely absent from the later rewriting. The Dairy of the Provincial Lady is interesting without the added romantic complexities because the interest in the nobel resides in the narrative voice.

None of this means that The Way We Are is a bad novel. It’s less skilled than its successor but that’s normal in an author who grows and improves. Delafield’s novels are much more relatable for today’s women than any other author of the interwar or post-WWII era that I’ve read. This happens because Delafield’s characters are much wealthier than those of Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor and others. Today we don’t have servants, like Delafield’s provincial ladies did, but we have appliances that give us the same degree of freedom from domestic drudgery. If you are a 30+ married woman with children, there’s zero reason for you not to be reading Delafield.

In spite of being mega relatable, Delafield’s novels give a perfect glimpse into the life in the late 1920s in Great Britain. Plus, the author has a beautiful sense of humor. Oh, just go ahead and read the novel already. I promise you’ll have a good time.

Comment Section Change

~ Clarissa ~ 14 Comments

Readers, I’m trying to change settings so that I don’t have manually to approve anonymous comments. Since WordPress is pushing people into the anonymous function in some way, I’m trying to make things easier for everyone.

Please leave an anonymous comment to see if this new method works.

An Obvious Hoax

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

Nobody needed an investigation to prove that  Jews don’t write the plural of “family” with an apostrophe.

No New Wars

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

I heard a snippet from the Trump speech at the Libertarian convention (which speech his supporters are stanning for in embarrassing and needy ways), and he said, “I’m proud to be the only president in 70 years who started no new wars.” This is very cryptic because Biden started no wars either.

I’m beginning to understand the neediness of Trump supporters because if this is the kind of stuff they are being given, the desperation is the only normal response.

The raptures about the extraordinary political skilfulness of the Trump speech are cringe. All he did was try to bribe potential voters in exactly the same way that the Dems do by offering reparations. If this is skilful, you deserve all you get, honestly.

Before the Biden supporters perk up, folks, your candidate spoke to black students at a college recently and told them they are in danger of being murdered by whites just because they are black. You’ve got nothing to celebrate here. What Biden did in that speech is immensely worse.

Not Wrong

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

https://x.com/CallaWalsh/status/1758549634052497617?t=vC3LAoj9_enlMuuzV6iRpw&s=19

People are piling on this person but she’s not wrong. In socialism, nobody would lock these products because there would be nothing to lock.

I briefly looked at her other posts, and this silly little thing despises Ukraine and adores Hamas terrorists. These creatures are very predictable.

Self-care Woes

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

Went on Facebook, saw the following:

Did a facepalm, left Facebook.

I’m starting to break out in hives whenever people say “self-care.”

Ignorant Academics

~ Clarissa ~ 23 Comments

Here is an excerpt from last week’s article that came out in Ukraine. I translated it with GT because it illustrates really well the abyss of ignorance in which Western academics have chosen to exist:

Last fall, after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, I received a phone call from a university colleague from Canada. The professor asked me a somewhat unexpected question:

— Ihor, how many pro-Hamas demonstrations have taken place in Ukraine recently?

— ???

— Well, if not for Hamas, how many pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli demonstrations were there?

- Practically none... Why do you ask such strange questions?

- The questions are not strange. At our university, and at other Canadian universities, the majority of faculty and students support the Palestinians and, by extension, Hamas…

https://uamoderna.com/blogy/teror-teroryzm-i-palestynska-problema/

It takes a very special kind of moron to look for pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Ukraine where everybody knows how involved Russia has been in managing Hamas and Hezbollah since their inception.

Drowning in Lies

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments
https://twitter.com/CityNewsVAN/status/1795256755716563433?t=-pNjBIzNfqgizJYRx_e-SA&s=19

Even after these allegations were exhaustively researched and exactly zero bodies were found in these “mass graves”, the lies get repeated again and again. The public’s confirmation bias kicks in, and people start believing in these utterly imaginary mass murders of indigenous children simply because they heard about them so much.

There are so many of these extraordinary lies that a normal person can’t keep track. Our shared public space is being poisoned with falsehood. And the only reason this happens is because we allow it. We never punish the liars. Instead, we keep consuming the lies they peddle.

Night Owls

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

People who didn’t have much privacy and were too severely controlled in childhood often end up being habitual night owls. Nighttime feels comfortable because it’s the only time they weren’t policed.