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Tag Archives: Robin Oliveira

Degas and Cassatt: I Always Loved You

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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art, book review, Edgar Degas, feminism, historical fiction, Impressionism, literary fiction, Mary Cassatt, nineteenth century, painting, Paris, Robin Oliveira, sexism

Review: I Always Loved You, by Robin Oliveira
Viking, 2014. 343 pp. $28

In 1877, the painter Mary Cassatt has reached a crossroads. The official Paris salon has just rejected her work, yet again, leading her to question whether her dream of being a painter is an egoistic fantasy. Back in Pennsylvania, her father thinks so, and since he’s supporting her life in Europe, he also thinks that gives him the right to tell his daughter–now in her early thirties–that it’s time to give up her foolishness and settle down to what a woman’s supposed to do. Not that she disagrees, entirely; Mary loves children and would like to have a husband and family, all other things being equal.

Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party, 1893-94, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Courtesy National Gallery, Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party, 1893-94, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Courtesy National Gallery, Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

But they’re not equal. With few exceptions, notably Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet’s sister-in-law, a vivid character here, women don’t paint. They adorn canvases, share artists’ beds, offer admiration, and otherwise stay out of the way. Mary, as a foreigner, a real talent, and a woman unwilling to walk ten paces behind anyone, poses a threat to the fraternity of French painters, as a professional and a prospective marriage partner.

At this critical juncture, when the personal and artistic paths seem blocked, Cassatt meets an artist she’s long admired, Edgar Degas. Right away, he tells her that she can paint but is wasting herself trying to ape accepted styles rather than find her own. To be successful, she must serve her obsession, whatever great theme drives her to put brush to canvas. These words electrify her, as does his rigorous devotion to his art, and since he despises social convention, he takes her more seriously as a fellow professional than many of their contemporaries.

However, the social conventions Degas despises include sensitivity toward others, generosity, courtesy, kindness, keeping promises, or pulling together toward a common goal. He also has no love for anything or anyone other than himself and his art. Cassatt couldn’t be more different, so you know that whatever these two artists mean to one another, it will be a bumpy ride.

Then again, this is Paris, and the characters who populate this novel are artists–vain, gifted, self-doubting, jealous, often careless of others’ feelings. Oliveira excels at portraying this atmosphere, in which only the thick-skinned survive, and half the battle is knowing when not to put skin on the line. Consider this social gathering:

Soon after, the men abandoned their plates for the candlelit corner next to the piano, where a few rested their elbows on its ebony skin and the rest sprawled in armchairs, twirling their delicate flutes of amber champagne, which they held by their stems. No one spoke, but they eyed one another as if waiting for a starting gun, boredom and anticipation warring on their spectral faces as the flickering candlelight painted shadows on the wall. Someone lit a cigar. Mary moved to join them, but Berthe motioned to her to sit beside her on a brocade loveseat away from the men.

This tableau is like a painting, which could be titled Just Before the Verbal Fireworks. In what follows, Mary subtly bests Émile Zola, one way she proves that she belongs. But her struggle is never-ending, because that’s the artist’s lot, whether within herself, her profession, or society at large. I have to think the author is talking about writers too when she has Degas and Cassatt wrestle constantly with the “unbidden terror”: whether their work is as good as they think and hope it is, and whether the right touch will suddenly desert them, if it hasn’t already.

The stakes increase for Cassatt when her father decides to move the family back to Paris (they had lived there in Mary’s youth). Though Robert Cassatt is no longer telling her to pack up her easel and come home to Pennsylvania, he’s an impossible man, and he’s there all the time. Demanding, selfish, self-absorbed, and dedicated to the proposition that if something doesn’t make money, it’s not worth doing, he’s poison for his long-suffering daughter, who expends much energy standing up to him.

That she’s had to deal with him all her life makes her a match for Degas, whose faults loom large in these pages. Thanks to Oliveira’s fully rounded portrayal, I understand him. But I don’t like him one bit, and you have to wonder why Cassatt still bothers with him long after he’s burned her, and others, many times. There are other excellent artists within her circle, and she must have met many kinder, more sensitive men. Why, then, her fascination with a selfish boor?

As an art lover, though, I admit my biases. Degas’s work has always seemed repetitive to me–ballerinas and bathers–and it’s hard to get around his rabid anti-Semitism, though, to be fair, Paul Cézanne and Auguste Renoir shared that prejudice. On the other hand, having seen too few of Cassatt’s paintings, I’d always thought of her as a minor artist, until I visited the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., a year ago. She’s very much the real deal–Degas was right about that–and I Always Loved You does her justice.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Amputation of the Self: My Name Is Mary Sutter

04 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1861, Albany, Civil War, feminism, government negligence, historical fiction, literary fiction, medicine, nursing, Robin Oliveira, Union Army, Washington, women

Review: My Name Is Mary Sutter, by Robin Oliveira
Viking, 2010. 364 pp. $27

More than anything, young Mary Sutter wants to be a surgeon, for which she’s eminently qualified. Like her mother, Mary’s a gifted midwife, known throughout the Albany, New York, region for her skill, tenderness to her patients, and success rate. From a young age, she accompanied her mother, Amelia, on her midwifery rounds, from which she learned to observe, study, and interpret the human body. Mary devours Gray’s Anatomy and other textbooks with a passion other young women of her generation might devote to cooking, music, or embroidery.

But the year is 1861, and mainstream medicine belongs entirely to men, who dismiss Mary’s attempts to apprentice herself–the typical path to medical practice–with contempt, puzzlement, or both. Even Amelia, her sole surviving parent, sometimes wonders why her daughter doesn’t simply accept the barrier, unfair as it is, and continue to do what she does best. Maybe she could also find a husband–not that Amelia’s was a paragon, but Mary locks many feelings inside her, including a yearning for love, hidden beneath a superior mien.

She knew that it was said of her that she was odd and difficult, and this did not bother her, for she never thought about what people usually spent time thinking of. The idle talk of other people always perplexed her; her mind was usually occupied by things that no one else thought of: the structure of the pelvis, the fast beat of a healthy fetus heart, or the slow meander of an unhealthy one, or a baby who had failed to breathe. She could never bring herself to care about ordinary things, like whose pie was better at the Sunday potluck, or whose husband she might covet should the opportunity arise, or what anyone was saying about an early winter or an early thaw . . . .

However, the outbreak of war between North and South changes everything. Mary figures, correctly, that medical practitioners will be in great demand, so she bolts for Washington to look for a posting without telling anyone at home. With typical deftness, Oliveira handles her bold action in its implied feminism: Mary’s flight raises consternation and moral censure, whereas her brother and brother-in-law may go to war without anyone batting an eyelash. Unfortunately for Mary–and the soldiers who don’t know what’s coming-nobody has counted on the complete lack of preparation to care for the sick or wounded. To call the effort disorganized would be a compliment; Oliveira captures this negligence with shudderingly vivid detail.

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross (and the most famous Civil War nurse), around 1866 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross (and the most famous Civil War nurse), around 1866 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Such disarray might have offered Mary her chance to serve and learn, as she hopes, but there again, she faces stupendous obstacles. Among them is the fear, not entirely groundless, that a woman among hundreds of unruly men would be preyed upon. Even Dorothea Dix, who lobbies for a nursing service along the lines of Florence Nightingale’s, will have nothing to do with Mary: Miss Sutter is too young, she has no letters of recommendation, and just isn’t the right sort. That Oliveira cuts a feminist icon down to size on feminist grounds says a great deal.

In the apparently growing subgenre of novels about socially awkward young women who love science–When the World Was Young and The Movement of Stars come to mind–My Name Is Mary Sutter stands out. I like how the author reveals the inner lives of Mary and two doctors with whom she works closely, and how the relationships with her mother, sister, and brother-in-law have dangerously sharp edges. Oliveira also captures the suffering of wounded men, the incompetent army leadership, and what it takes to tend the maimed and dying despite insuperable odds. The hospital scenes are heart-breakingly raw–be warned–but I, who am squeamish, had to read every word. Meanwhile, the narrative retains an impressive grasp of the historical background, as battles unfold and the confusion and rumor become ever more blinding.

I don’t want to give too much away, but when you have a fictional midwife/nurse with a newly married twin sister and two family members who enlist, certain things are just bound to happen. Mostly, Oliveira gets away with these predictable occurrences through vivid storytelling. But she falls short, I think, in her portrait of Jenny, Mary’s twin, who feels more explained than alive, and I want to know more about what drives Amelia, besides her devotion to family. It’s also a little hard to swallow that Mary gets her foot in the nursing door through a chance meeting with John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretary, though such things did happen in wartime Washington. What’s less forgivable, I think, is how quickly certain characters reconcile their differences. When there’s that much fury and hatred between people who love one another, the author owes the reader a fuller, and perhaps not entirely complete, peacemaking process.

Nevertheless, My Name Is Mary Sutter is a very fine novel indeed, especially for a debut effort, and I’m doubly pleased to say that about a fellow Seattle author.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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