Get Started On The Pumpkin Eater Originated By Penelope Mortimer Compiled As Printable Format

beautifully written story of one woman's descent into madness,
A gripping book which is utterly compelling,
Mrs Armitage has three husbands a brood of children, her only role in life to keep on having children.

Then she meets Jake a script writer,
The vision of building a glass tower in the country to finally settle, is this reality or a dream
She then breaks down in Harrods in the linen department.

A dark comedy which made me feel for Mrs Armitage as the book reaches its conclusion,
Do we always make the right choices
Semi autobiographical, this story makes one look at relationships in a different way.

Every woman should read this book, If I wanted to, I could stand on a street corner and loudly proclaim, “I am a Buddhist!” Or, I could proclaim, “I am a Democrat!” My merely saying one or both of those things would make it so.


But a fella cannot proclaim himself a Feminist, A male has to earn that, first, and even then its up to the eye of the female beholder.
Like the balk call in baseball, And while I like to consider myself prowoman, Im not sure I would ever pass the test to be a fullfledged Feminist.
I just dont take anything seriously enough and sooner or later my attempt at humor would be misconstrued,

But its not just that, I just dont know the rules, the qualifications, I suspect theyre slippery and evershifting, maybe intentionally so, For example, at about the same time, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton got in trouble, Thomas allegedly made a comment “Who put this pubic hair on my Coke” in the presence of a female lawyer.
Clinton penetrated a female intern with a cigar, let her perform oral sex on him in the Oval Office all while married and allegedly sexually assaulted another female, also in the White House.
Of course, both men lied about it, I viewed Thomas behavior as boorish and, if an attempt at humor, not the

funniest thing Ive heard, I found Clintons behavior abhorrent, When I expressed this distinction at the time, every woman who heard me tsked loudly and hooted me down as if I was an idiot.
They thought Thomas should be banished but defended Clinton vehemently, The cynic in me felt the distinction being drawn was a political one, that if ones politics are right then ones actions can be treated differently.
But what I was told was that I DIDNT GET IT! And thats probably true,

What does this have to do with The Pumpkin Eater Well, in the obligatory NYRBClassic Introduction to the edition I read was this: Before the advent of Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer.
there was Penelope Mortimer. But I dont get it,

The patently autobiographical female protagonist in this novel marries, serially, and has children, A lot of children. Although, she doesnt take care of them a nanny does, Her husbands an asshole.

Thats it.

Oh, theres some running plot: she drinks, she sleeps, she languishes, she has babies, She doesnt work she has few interests, She doesnt even have a name, Shes just Mrs. Jack Armitage. And her children, but for one, dont have names either, We dont even really know how many, Too many to count perhaps, She lets her father and her husband set the rules, make the choices for her, She has no gumption just a constant fog,

The story was modeled on the authors own life, complete with many husbands, many children, drinking, a suicide attempt.
But the author wrote, had a career, had success, chose her own lovers, She made a cuckold of one husband, and infamously so,

So I dont understand how The Pumpkin Eater is some bellringer for the Feminist movement.
But, I have already confessed, I dont get it,

Nudging movements and philosophies to the side for a moment, I didnt even like the book on its own merits.
Just a story about a woman who keeps having babies she doesnt appear to want, and whose life is out of control.
At least NYRBClassics chose, as it usually does, a great cover, with Susan Bowers Downhill in a Pram hiding behind the title:



This book was amazing.


Much is put in place using dialogue, but this is not the dialogue of a Gaddis or a ComptonBurnett.
They use their dialogue to get at abstract ideas, to worry over a problem of some kind, or, in the case of Gaddis, to make something that is built entirely from language itself.


This dialogue does not leave you lost in time and space even when unattributed and unmarked, the movements from person to person, from period to period are clear and easy to follow.
This dialogue is the kind of writing you see sometimes in Elizabeth Bowen the sharp ear of someone who knows that people's words tell you everything about them, even things they don't know about themselves.
Heartbreaking. One of the best final chapters of a book from recent memory,

I would like to think myself a champion for all things feminism but this book has me feeling down about my maleness.


More Mortimer needs to be reprinted I will definitely be seeking out her other books, Thanks to Proustitute for the recommendation, “Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn't keep her
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.
”

It would be only fair to begin with this seemingly innocent poem which, on reading carefully, wont seem all that innocent.
The harsh aspect of this poem is not that He put her in a pumpkin shell but, to intend that he kept her very well in a shell.
Well, it is not all that fair to draw conclusions from a childrens poem whose meaning increases our curiosity.
Perhaps, perhaps thats why we need to read this dark, indispensable work of motherhood and Womanhood which are mostly celebrated and empowered.


The unnamed narrator of this story is no different from the poor wife of Peter: Mr.
Armitage keeps her well and he gives her everything any woman could wantclothes, a car, servants, But, is that all The story opens in a bleak office where she uncomfortably sits in a couch and talks to her unreasonable psychiatrist.
There are questions on her privacy and pregnancy, But, she is willing to be diagnosed and, most importantly, paid attention to, through her evocative dialogues, However, the psychiatrist goes on holiday and she is expected to live normally,

In her own shell of a world, she puts up every day with her demanding children and her unfaithful husband besides languorously performing household rituals.
When she sits listlessly, smoking a cigarette and watching her kids play with their nanny, she feels that her life is no different than that of the fly on the window pane looking bemusedly at all the inanimate objects.
The cheerful echoes of her children make her worry that they would fall in love someday, Life seems interminable after smoking every cigarette and inquisitive, She has a life maybe not her own,

There are too many children already, they say, Will the arrival of one more make her life bearable Does she think that continuing having children is the only way to save her identity Do you even know her name

The book treads along the onceunmarked territories of domestic sordidness, which hangs over the house like a cobweb over the chandelier, but casually ignored or put away for later.
Mortimers poignant writing offers an unaccountable reality of an otherwise normal story and leaves us with the same question "Was she really kept well".
and here's to you, mrs, armitage / jesus loves you more than you will know wo wo wo,
così diverse, eppure. eppure la mrs. robinson de il laureato e la signora armitage di penelope mortimer hanno avuto entrambe, a distanza di tre anni, il volto e il carisma di anne bancroft.
e hanno dato voce entrambe allo stesso malessere, esistenziale ed epocale: quello di un certo tipo di donna, in un certo ambiente, con certe aspettative.
dopodiché una quella per cui simon amp garfunkel adattano il testo scritto per eleanor roosevelt veste la propria frustrazione con l'abito aggressivo della spregiudicatezza e dell'accanimento.
l'altra non ha spigoli vivi, e anzi si lascia scivolare nel buio oltre la siepe ordinata, si annichilisce di un amore oblativo per il marito, fino a rimanerne svuotata.

questo romanzo delè costruito sulla sofferenza e la illogica, contraddittoria, lucidità di una donna che racconta in prima persona il proprio disagio emotivo.
che poi è quasi totalmente lo stesso dell'autrice, perché nella finzionenonfinzione di mrs, armitage, mortimer dà forma con molte meno variazioni di quel che si potrebbe credere a uninquietudine progressiva che fu anche sua.
e allo sgretolarsi carsico che a volte si insinua sotto la crosta di un matrimonio proprio quando, a rendere la vita apparentemente più facile, arrivano le sicurezze e gli agi del tuttocompreso.

d'altra parte nel caso di penelope mortimer l'infelicità e la depressione non collimano banalmente con la vita della casalinga disperata.
e qui sta l'unica sostanziale differenza tra l'autrice e il suo personaggio, il fatto che mentre quest'ultimo non cerca nulla al di fuori del ruolo familiare, mortimer come in quegli stessi anni sylvia plath è scrittrice apprezzata e sposata a un brillante collega.
dal quale viene però serialmente tradita e umiliata,
la mangiatrice di zucche il titolo originale viene da una filastrocca inglese, e allude al suo restarsene chiusa in casa mentre il marito sfarfalla in giro parla in prima persona di depressione, di figli concepiti serialmente, di come ladorazione per un uomo possa essere un riempitivo contrapposto al nonamore per sé.
tanto che alla fine, l'approdo di questo sentimento di proiezione continua è inevitabile, mortimerarmitage lo dice senza sussulti: non c'era più niente da dare, il racconto è edificante, e dimostra che è meglio prendere la vita a passi precisi e piccoli sorsi anziché credere, come credevo io, che esista una pienezza costantemente rinnovata.

non amando però in un romanzo laspetto edificante, personalmente mi tengo la extraordinarietà della propria vita che lautrice fa trapelare in queste pagine, insieme all'ironia di certi dialoghi e allacume di certi incisi.

tre stelle e mezzo, .