What Every Woman Knows (Annotated) E-Book

J.m Barrie

• Herausgeber: ePembaBooks
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

  • This edition includes the following editor's introduction: The traumatic life of J. M. Barrie, source of universal creativity

First produced in 1908, “What Every Woman Knows” is a four-act play written by Scottish author J. M. Barrie, appeared four years after his more famous work Peter Pan. Written before women's suffrage, the play posits that "every woman knows" she is the invisible power responsible for the successes of the men in her life.
“What Every Woman Knows” is considered one of Barrie's most realistic and important theatrical works. Graced with bursts of sly wit and dramatic irony, it will delight all readers and theatre lovers alike.

“What Every Woman Knows”  is social satire set in England and Scotland during the early 20th century. The story centres around plain, spinsterish Maggie Wylie and John Shand, an ambitious young student, who promises to marry Maggie after five years if she agrees and if her family pays for his education. Years later, following his successful bid for a seat in Parliament, Shand keeps his word, but trouble lies ahead…. Attractive woman are drawn to the Scottish politician — in particular, the lovely Lady Sybil Tenterden. Moreover, Shand's speeches in Parliament, which had won him great popularity for their flashes of humour, begin to suffer when his wife no longer helps write them. Soon, both Shand's career and marriage are in jeopardy...

 

Leseprobe

J. M. Barrie

What Every Woman Knows

Table of contents

The traumatic life of J. M. Barrie, source of universal creativity

WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS

Act I

Act II

Act III

Act IV

The traumatic life of J. M. Barrie, source of universal creativity

A trauma that marked the life of the creator of Peter Pan. Although he was born into a British Victorian high society family, his childhood was not a joyful one. The creator of Peter Pan, James Matthew Barrie, when he was 6 years old, his brother David, 13, died when he fell with his skates into a frozen lake. He was his mother's favourite (there were 10 siblings in all) and she never recovered from this tragic loss. When the woman was in her room and James or any of the other children came in, she always thought it was David. When she realized this was not true, she treated them very badly. Also, the father had no contact whatsoever with his children. A child who became an adult too soon. James always wanted to please his mother and take the place left by his brother. She educated him and instilled in him a love of books and study. She always treated him as if he were older than his age (thinking perhaps that she was talking to David). In this way, she did not take into account James' actual age, so the influence of her upbringing would have consequences both psychologically and emotionally. James became a child with adult thinking and behaviour. He was very unhealthy, afraid to grow up, did not relate to other children, was obsessed with the idea that marriage was a disgrace and was very melancholic. Sad and lonely child. The only joys he had in his childhood were related to the adventure books of Robert L. Stevenson and to spending very brief moments with his siblings, neighbours and friends younger than him. Another of the problems he had to face was that his height did not increase in relation to his growing years, reaching five feet tall in his adulthood. Youth, London and his marriage. The life of Peter Pan's creator will change dramatically when he travels to the English capital and settles there, where he will open his mind and will be able to develop and write better. Among his friends at the University were Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert L. Stevenson, who in turn worked on the faculty newspaper. He also forged a friendship with Charles Frohman, producer of his works and victim of the Lusitania ship that was sunk in World War I, an event that marked James considerably. As for his personal life, he married British actress Mary Ansell in 1894, but they divorced a few years later. There are several theories regarding the end of their marriage, one of the strongest is that she married him because of his social position and the fame he could offer her. Another hypothesis says that the marriage was never consummated because he was not looking for a sexual partner but for a mother. At the time of the separation Mary was dating another man. The belief of the creator of Peter Pan that love was a misfortune could have caused the end of their marriage. After the divorce, James sought solace in friendship with brothers he met on a walk in Kensington. These children were named George, Jack, Nico, Peter and Michael. When their parents died he adopted them and from there he was inspired to write the most important novel of his career, "The Adventures of Peter Pan", which was published at the beginning of the 20th century. But there is also tragedy in this story, as George died in the war, Michael committed suicide by drowning himself in a lake with his lover (he was homosexual) and Peter threw himself under a subway car some years later. The literary career of the creator of Peter Pan. Several of his works were set during his years in Kirriemuir, Scotland, and it was common for some of the stories' dialogues to be written in Scottish. He later wrote plays such as "Quality Street" (1901), " What Every Woman Knows" (1908) and "The Admirable Crichton" (1932). The last of this style was called "The Boy David" and was performed in 1936. He also specialized in novels, which were very successful in his time. Some of them are "Auld Licht Idylls" (1888), "A Window in Thrums" (1889), "The Little Minister" (1891) and "Sentimental Tommy, The Story of His Boyhood " (1896) with "Tommy and Grizel" (1902), related to what later would be the character of Peter Pan. This was undoubtedly his best known work, which was performed for the first time in December 1904 but had the name of "Wendy", inspired by a girl who had died at the age of five in 1894, which he knew. However, Peter Pan as a character had appeared earlier, in a book of stories called "The Little White Bird." In this work, completed in 1904, he deals with his favorite themes: the feminine instinct of motherhood and the preservation of childhood innocence. The eternal adolescent was the protagonist of the story, who left the family home to avoid becoming an adult. In Kensington Gardens, London, you can see the statue of this character. The same place where Barrie met the Llewalyn Davies brothers, on whom he based the story.

Later, like the rest of Europeans, the First World War marked Barrie's life, and also his work. In 1918 he published "Echoes of the War", a delightful collection of stories about the life of several families in London during the war. James Matthew Barrie died in June 1937 of pneumonia and was buried in his Scottish hometown, Kirriemuir, next to his parents and two of his nine siblings. The creator of Peter Pan left his entire estate (except for the proceeds of Peter Pan which went to Great Ormond Street Hospital) to his secretary Cynthia Asquith.

Life and literature. James Matthew Barrie was not the only author with a complicated life and famous work. Edgar Allan Poe, Emile Cioran, Charles Bukowski, even Oscar Wilde himself, persecuted for his homosexuality, have been tormented writers at one or more points in their lives. Some even from the time they were born until they died. In a way, James reflects how to take advantage of a difficult life to capture it in stories that would go down in history, such as "Peter Pan."

Despite being shaken by misfortune, Barrie knew how to channel his creativity through literature and leave his mark over time. Would his work have been the same without having lived through everything he did? Would we be able to enjoy "Peter Pan" today without a life full of sad events? What James Matthew Barrie's story reflects, is that misfortune can be channelled and not only in the form of anger, but in the form of art. An art that can remain immortalized by great stories.

The Editor, P.C. 2022

WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS

J. M. Barrie

Act I

James Wylie is about to make a move on the dambrod, and in the little Scotch room there is an awful silence befitting the occasion. James with his hand poised—for if he touches a piece he has to play it, Alick will see to that—raises his red head suddenly to read Alick's face. His father, who is Alick, is pretending to be in a panic lest James should make this move. James grins heartlessly, and his fingers are about to close on the 'man' when some instinct of self–preservation makes him peep once more. This time Alick is caught: the unholy ecstasy on his face tells as plain as porridge that he has been luring James to destruction. James glares; and, too late, his opponent is a simple old father again. James mops his head, sprawls in the manner most conducive to thought in the Wylie family, and, protruding his underlip, settles down to a reconsideration of the board. Alick blows out his cheeks, and a drop of water settles on the point of his nose.

You will find them thus any Saturday night (after family worship, which sends the servant to bed); and sometimes the pauses are so long that in the end they forget whose move it is.

It is not the room you would be shown into if you were calling socially on Miss Wylie. The drawing–room for you, and Miss Wylie in a coloured merino to receive you; very likely she would exclaim, "This is a pleasant surprise!" though she has seen you coming up the avenue and has just had time to whip the dustcloths off the chairs, and to warn Alick, David and James, that they had better not dare come in to see you before they have put on a dickey. Nor is this the room in which you would dine in solemn grandeur if invited to drop in and take pot–luck, which is how the Wylies invite, it being a family weakness to pretend that they sit down in the dining–room daily. It is the real living–room of the house, where Alick, who will never get used to fashionable ways, can take off his collar and sit happily in his stocking soles, and James at times would do so also; but catch Maggie letting him.

There is one very fine chair, but, heavens, not for sitting on; just to give the room a social standing in an emergency. It sneers at the other chairs with an air of insolent superiority, like a haughty bride who has married into the house for money. Otherwise the furniture is homely; most of it has come from that smaller house where the Wylies began. There is the large and shiny chair which can be turned into a bed if you look the other way for a moment. James cannot sit on this chair without gradually sliding down it till he is lying luxuriously on the small of his back, his legs indicating, like the hands of a clock, that it is ten past twelve; a position in which Maggie shudders to see him receiving company.

The other chairs are horse–hair, than which nothing is more comfortable if there be a good slit down the seat. The seats are heavily dented, because all the Wylie family sit down with a dump. The draught–board is on the edge of a large centre table, which also displays four books placed at equal distances from each other, one of them a Bible, and another the family album. If these were the only books they would not justify Maggie in calling this chamber the library, her dogged name for it; while David and James call it the west–room and Alick calls it 'the room,' which is to him the natural name for any apartment without a bed in it. There is a bookcase of pitch pine, which contains six hundred books, with glass doors to prevent your getting at them.

No one does try to get at the books, for the Wylies are not a reading family. They like you to gasp when you see so much literature gathered together in one prison–house, but they gasp themselves at the thought that there are persons, chiefly clergymen, who, having finished one book, coolly begin another. Nevertheless it was not all vainglory that made David buy this library: it was rather a mighty respect for education, as something that he has missed. This same feeling makes him take in the Contemporary Review and stand up to it like a man. Alick, who also has a respect for education, tries to read the Contemporary, but becomes dispirited, and may be heard muttering over its pages, 'No, no use, no use, no,' and sometimes even 'Oh hell.' James has no respect for education; and Maggie is at present of an open mind.

They are Wylie and Sons of the local granite quarry, in which Alick was throughout his working days a mason. It is David who has raised them to this position; he climbed up himself step by step (and hewed the steps), and drew the others up after him. 'Wylie Brothers,' Alick would have had the firm called, but David said No, and James said No, and Maggie said No; first honour must be to their father; and Alick now likes it on the whole, though he often sighs at having to shave every day; and on some snell mornings he still creeps from his couch at four and even at two (thinking that his mallet and chisel are calling him), and begins to pull on his trousers, until the grandeur of them reminds him that he can go to bed again. Sometimes he cries a little, because there is no more work for him to do for ever and ever; and then Maggie gives him a spade (without telling David) or David gives him the logs to saw (without telling Maggie).

We have given James a longer time to make his move than our kind friends in front will give him, but in the meantime something has been happening. David has come in, wearing a black coat and his Sabbath boots, for he has been to a public meeting. David is nigh forty years of age, whiskered like his father and brother (Alick's whiskers being worn as a sort of cravat round the neck), and he has the too brisk manner of one who must arrive anywhere a little before any one else. The painter who did the three of them for fifteen pounds (you may observe the canvases on the walls) has caught this characteristic, perhaps accidentally, for David is almost stepping out of his frame, as if to hurry off somewhere; while Alick and James look as if they were pinned to the wall for life. All the six of them, men and pictures, however, have a family resemblance, like granite blocks from their own quarry. They are as Scotch as peat for instance, and they might exchange eyes without any neighbour noticing the difference, inquisitive little blue eyes that seem to be always totting up the price of things.