Hey Amanda,Thank you for that great review of
Beyond the Pale, bud.
The one thing I loved about this novel is the way E. Dykewomon intertwines the lives of her characters with real historical events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
Here is a blurb on the
Triangle Shirtwaist Company [wikipiedia]:
The company employed approximately 600 workers, mostly young immigrant women from different places in Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe. Some of the women were as young as twelve or thirteen and worked fourteen-hour shifts during a 60-hour to 72-hour workweek. According to Pauline Newman, a worker at the factory, the average wage for employees in the factory was six to seven dollars a week[3], at a time when the average yearly income was $791.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company had already become well-known outside the garment industry by 1911: the massive strike by women's shirtwaist makers in 1909, known as the Uprising of 20,000, began with a spontaneous walkout at the Triangle Company. During the strike, owners Blanck and Harris, two anti-union-leaders paid hoodlums to attack the protesting workers and hired prostitutes as replacement workers to show contempt for the strikers.[5]
While the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union negotiated a collective bargaining agreement covering most of those workers after a four-month strike, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company refused to sign the agreement. [...]
On the afternoon of March 25, 1911, a fire began on the eighth floor, possibly sparked by a lit match or a cigarette or because of faulty electrical wiring. A New York Times article also theorized that the fire may have been started by the engines running the sewing machines in the building. To this day, no one knows whether it was accidental or intentional. Most of the workers who were alerted on the tenth and eighth floors were able to evacuate. However, the warning about the fire did not reach the ninth floor in time. [...]
The ultimate death toll was 148, including 141 who died at the scene and seven survivors who later died at hospitals.What a horrific tragedy indeed. It is sad to know that an event as tragic as this was what it might have taken for labor/safety regulations and workplace conditions to be changed.
I had not heard about the Triangle Shirtwaist Company prior to reading this novel (I later did a little research on it), and so I was not prepared for the painful experience that was to come when Rose left Chava that morning and headed to work. I was not prepared for Rose's death. It shook me up and I cried when I read that part of the novel, just like I did when Chava witnessed her mother being raped and murdered during that pogrom in Kishinev. Rose's death was yet another heavy blow to Chava, a young woman who had already seen so much grief and felt so much pain in her short life.
Not unlike Brokeback Mountain,
Beyond the Pale ends on a more or less tragic note, as you pointed out...
And that is the haunting impact it has on you; it leaves you wanting more. I would've loved to see how Ennis' life unfolds after Jack's death, just like it would've been awesome to catch a glimpse into Chava's life in Ohio, her role in the suffrage movement, her next love after Rose ...
Reading the novel, you got a sense that Chava was meant to accomplish great things in her life - you are just not given the opportunity to see them or to experience the full, happy life you hope she finds down the road.
Yeah, the character of Dovid/Dovida was fascinating indeed. One might have characterised her as the typical 'sexual invert' of her day, but like you said, she was content being a woman when she was at home with Gutke. Out in the world, she bacame a man - she walked, talked, acted, worked like a man...and earned as much money as only a man could at that time. I can only imagine the risks she bore; how she must've worked hard to overcome the fear of being 'discovered' as a woman masquerading as a man living with another woman, like a married couple would. I guess you could say that her adoption of a male persona 'out in the world' made it possible for her to work in a profession, in a job that may not have been granted to a women - thereby earning enough money to live as comfortably as she did; it allowed her to live openly with her partner. I guess the benefits of her chosen 'lifestyle' must've outweighed any risks she had to contend with. Very interesting indeed.
I loved the character of Gutke because of her ability to instill a sense of calm in me; her outlook on life, her wisdom, her kindness, and of course...the maternal role she played in Chava's life - all very inspiring.
The following is an excerpt from Gutke's journal, after she meets Dovida in Kishinev:
Dovida was such a pleasure to me that even when other opportunities presented themselves — an unhappily married woman reaching for my hand, a friend of Dovida’s from Berlin trying to sweet-talk me — I was never tempted. The way it was between Dovida and me was what I wanted, not because it was the only possibility but because Dovida absorbed my attention, even when I wasn’t sure I liked her. The flame I saw the night I met her never left, though it often changed shape, intensity or color.
So beautiful.
And of course there is this Gutke quote from the beginning of the book:
"Whenever you tell the story of one woman, inside is another."
