Word: woman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...WINTHROP WOMAN (586 pp.)-Anya Seton-Houghfon Mifflin...
There are those who like history and those who like novels; both classes of readers are apt to be depressed by historical novels. This form of literature, which requires a strict convention of disbelief, is perfectly exemplified in The Winthrop Woman, a bulging package of period color, religion, sex, sadism and witchcraft. It is written in what can only be called Williamsburg prose-the settings and costumes are as authentic as money and research can buy, and if the hands and heads that stick through the quaint old collars and cuffs are stuffed with straw, there will be no complaints...
...slalom round every four-poster bed that can be worked into the narrative. Not so: no hussy she. Elizabeth represents a thoroughly modern, interfaith point of view among the heretic-hunting Puritans; and among the schismatics of prerevolutionary New England, she is the spirit of togetherness, a one-woman P.T.A. opposed to discrimination against Indians, be they Siwanoy, NarraganSett, or any other friendly neighborhood group...
Nonaddicts of historical fiction who may encounter The Winthrop Woman will probably experience the half-foolish, half-public-spirited emotions of citizens who have been cajoled into playing a part in some commemorative pageant: there is a good deal of history around, but somehow it seems to have got lost amid the fuss, feathers and false whiskers...
...felt a need for fresh material. He started off toward the Orient in a fishing smack, taking with him a 19-year-old "admiral" decked out in a musical comedy sailor suit. As Dumas wrote to a friend: "The charming little creature is in the habit of becoming a woman at night." Her name was Emilie Cordier, and she became pregnant just before the fishing smack ran into Giuseppe Garibaldi, then busy invading Sicily with his famed "Thousand." Forgetting the Orient, Dumas and the expectant admiral hurried to the great patriot's aid and helped storm Palermo, Dumas wearing...