On the drive home from the Barbie movie not long ago, my niece and I cranked up the volume on songs by Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift, letting their powerful voices swirl around us. My niece had her hands firmly on the wheel, but with the sunset glow in our windshield, we felt like we were in Barbie’s pink no-hands-needed convertible zooming towards her dream house and it’s every-night-is girls-night party.
Totally by chance, I happened to read two books this month about women who would’ve appreciated an invitation to the party. Instead, Adelaide Henry of Lone Women by Victor LaValle and Lotty Wilkins of Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim must figure out their own festivities.
On first glance, Adelaide Henry appears as if she might be a distant neighbor of Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie fame). It’s 1915 and Adelaide has traveled from California by wagon, ship, and train to a rundown shack in the Montana badlands. If she can raise enough food to survive on her ‘claim’ for three years, the government decrees, the land is hers. But food seems like the least of her problems. For one, she hasn’t left all of her past behind. It’s in a trunk, locked, but not for long. And two, being a lone woman—a lone black woman—in a place where many homesteaders are two-faced has dangerous complications.
Author Victor LaValle depicts a landscape seemingly as far from color drenched Barbie Land as one can get—and it’s hard to imagine any overlap between the story of a stoic black woman and a plastic white one, yet as I watched Margot Robbie as Barbie gradually realize that her dream house and everything around it was suspiciously fake, I couldn’t help thinking of Adelaide’s 320 acres of the American dream surrounded by a community that is deeply suspicious. Both need real friends. Barbie finds a guardian angel, and Adelaide can’t quite ditch her demonic guardian. . . depending on how you regard what’s in that trunk.
There’s a lot to unpack in this novel and movie, and both can feel overstuffed at times, but I appreciated how LaValle and film director Greta Gerwig took iconic settings and then turned them inside out. They make you think.
I laughed more than thought while reading The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, but the women in this early 21st century novel set on the idyllic coast of Italy are just as driven as those on the Western plains or the California beaches. One might even call the most passionate of these women the sensual Barbie. Unhappy with English weather and English husbands, Lotty Wilkins recruits three other discontented English ladies to join her in renting San Salvatore, a mediaeval Italian castello, for the month of April. With its sumptuous flower gardens, views of the Mediterranean, and no need to lift a finger to cook or clean, the castle is miles more dreamy than anything in Barbie Land. And the Italian sunshine and salty sea air make each woman blossom like the wisteria that blooms there in profusion. Love is in the air and there’s nary a Ken to be seen.
If von Arnim had written the book today and not one hundred years ago, she might’ve made every night girls’ night for the entire month, and it would’ve been interesting to see that effect. But too soon enough, the Kens show up one by one, and at least the magic of San Salvatore (and von Arnim’s upper hand) makes them open their eyes, minds, and hearts a little wider.
Truly, I have nothing against Ken, but when the women are on their own, both in these books and in the film, they seem most themselves, more able to grow, more able to see what they want and go after it. Maybe that’s why it’s important to take a drive with your niece (daughter, mother, friend), crank up the volume on your favorite music of the moment, and sing your lone woman heart out.
Originally published in the Sullivan County Democrat, 9/1/23
Reading In the Catskills 