I read a book a while back on unconventional marriage/romantic/sexual arrangements around this time period (Katie Roiphe's Uncommon Arrangements - I've been meaning to review it for ages), and Von Arnim's totally fucked up marriage was among those covered, many of which vie for the distinction of "Most Complicatedly Neurotic and Dysfunctional Domestic Shit I've Ever Read About That People Actually Inflicted On Each Other." Elizabeth and Her Coping Mechanisms is just about right. Von Arnim was worldly, lively and accomplished, so the descriptions in Uncommon Arrangements of her codependence with her husband (who seems to have had bipolar-like symptoms?) were heartbreaking to read about. He exerted this horrible magnetism on her - every time she tried to break from him, often with the help of her children, she would end up rushing back.
German Garden seems to have been the contemporary equivalent of, I don't know, Eat Pray Love or similar - something for women of a similar social situation to bond and sigh over together, although in this case sighing longingly over Von Arnim's quirky idylls. (sorry if any of this was already covered in the edition you're reading, btw?) Sort of like Shirley Jackson's writing about her family, which was wildly popular in women's magazines for its "charm" and "scampishness" but clearly thinly veiling a shitton of dysfunction. It's bizarre how these things get put out for public consumption, and most people completely miss the underlying wtfery. Errr, I guess that's how you get Twilight-like phenomena.
Oh wow, that book sounds really fascinating -- I'll look it up. It does make a lot of sense out of EHGG; I came to it cold, not knowing anything about her, except that she wrote Enchanted April. I was just really thrown by this book that the preface, and the copy on the back, extol as charming and pleasant, that turned out to be really kinda disturbing! A turn of the century Eat Pray Love sounds about right.
German Garden seems to have been the contemporary equivalent of, I don't know, Eat Pray Love or similar - something for women of a similar social situation to bond and sigh over together, although in this case sighing longingly over Von Arnim's quirky idylls. (sorry if any of this was already covered in the edition you're reading, btw?) Sort of like Shirley Jackson's writing about her family, which was wildly popular in women's magazines for its "charm" and "scampishness" but clearly thinly veiling a shitton of dysfunction. It's bizarre how these things get put out for public consumption, and most people completely miss the underlying wtfery. Errr, I guess that's how you get Twilight-like phenomena.
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