Constance beresford howe biography of barack

PERSONAL: Born Nov 10, 1922, in Montreal, Canada; daughter of Russell (an surety salesman) and Marjory (a homemaker; maiden name, Moore) Beresford-Howe; connubial Christopher W. Pressnell (a teacher), December 31, 1960; children: Jeremy. Education:McGill University, B.A., 1945, M.A., 1946; Brown University, Ph.D., 1950.

ADDRESSES: Home—c/o Taylor, 55 Argowan Meniscus, Toronto M1V 1B4, Ontario, Canada.

CAREER:McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, lecturer, 1948-49, assistant professor, 1949-61, associate prof of English, 1961-69; Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto, Ontario, professor accustomed English, 1970-88.

MEMBER: International PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS: Dodd, Mead intercollegiate literary togetherness, 1945, for The Unreasoning Heart; Canadian booksellers annual award, 1974, for The Book of Eve; Canadian Council Senior Arts Confer, 1975; Ontario Arts Council Gifts, 1976, 1983, 1985.

WRITINGS:

The Unreasoning Heart, Dodd, Mead (New York, NY), 1946.

Of This Day's Journey, Dodd, Mead (New York, NY), 1948.

The Invisible Gate, Dodd, Mead (New York, NY), 1949.

My Lady Greensleeves, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1955.

The Book of Eve, Little, Brownish (Boston, MA), 1974.

A Population constantly One, Macmillan of Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977, St.

Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1978.

The Marriage Bed, St. Martin's Weight (New York, NY), 1981.

Night Studies, Macmillan Canada (Toronto, Ontario Canada), 1985.

Prospero's Daughter, Macmillan Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1988.

A Serious Widow, Macmillan Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1991.

Author of television script The Cuckoo Bird, Canadian Broadcasting Corp., 1981.

Contributor to periodicals, containing Maclean's, Writer, and Chatelaine.

ADAPTATIONS: Dignity Book of Eve was fit for the stage by Larry Fineberg and performed at high-mindedness Stratford Festival in Stratford, Lake, in 1976, and made give somebody the use of a film in 2002; A Population of One was appointed to television for the Contest Broadcasting Corp.

in 1980; The Marriage Bed was produced let in television by CBC-TV in 1986.

SIDELIGHTS: Constance Beresford-Howe gained acclaim occupy her native Canada as splendid voice of twentieth-century women, uniquely "in their struggle for leeway against popular expectations—both sexist boss feminist," according to Barbara Term in a Dictionary of Erudite Biography essay.

The only lassie of an insurance salesman topmost a homemaker, Beresford-Howe was nobleness product of Depression-era Notre Woman de Grace, Montreal, Quebec. Critical of her parents and brother, she lived in a series castigate low-rent flats; an attack advice rheumatic fever at age xi further challenged the young miss.

Confined to bed for months during her recovery, Beresford-Howe "strengthened her inclination to introspection, exercise, and writing," as Pell well-known. By the time she reached college age, Beresford-Howe had crush her sights on becoming put in order high-school teacher. But Beresford-Howe excelled at writing, winning McGill University's Shakespeare Gold Medal in 1945, as well as the Peterson Prize for creative writing.

A harvest later, Beresford-Howe published her be in first place novel, The Unreasoning Heart. That story of an orphaned juvenescence girl finds acceptance and at last love within a prosperous Metropolis family features "a rather sensationalistic plot," said Pell.

Still, The Unreasoning Heart was named righteousness Dodd, Mead Intercollegiate Literary Amity winner. Other early Beresford-Howe novels include Of This Day's Journey and The Invisible Gate. Both books trace the love lives of young Canadian women.

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In the former, the saucily minted lecturer arrives in Ground to begin teaching at unembellished small college; her "doomed romance," as Pell put it, be introduced to the school's married president propels the narrative. The Invisible Gate, set in postwar Montreal, "portrays the cynical exploitation of fold up sisters by a returned serviceman." While Beresford-Howe's early novels tended to attract critical epithets mean "cardboard figures" and "hammock fiction," The Invisible Gate began set a limit show the author in undiluted better light.

A reviewer human the day, Claude Bissell recognize the University of Toronto Quarterly, cited this novel for dignity author's "lively talent" and come together "easy fluency" of prose lobby group, according to Pell's essay. Spiky 1955 Beresford-Howe published My Eve Greensleeves, a historical novel homespun on an authentic Elizabethan attachment triangle and the lawsuit digress followed it.

But it would be nearly twelve years betwixt that book and the tome of the author's fifth novel.

In the ensuing years Beresford-Howe abstruse a long teaching career put down McGill, her alma mater; she reluctantly left Quebec for Toronto, Ontario, in 1969, accepting a- teaching position at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute.

In 1974 she published The Book of Eve, which tells of a sixty-five-year-old woman who abruptly leaves wise husband of forty years. She also abandons "the bourgeois rough country of Notre Dame de Bring into disrepute to descend into a tundra flat and an eccentric animation as a scavenger," as Scope described it.

"But, in unit freedom from convention and technique, she finds an independent appearance, strength for survival, new restraint, fellowship, and even love."

The Tome of Eve was the foremost of a "Voice of Eve" trilogy that focuses on platoon finding their own fulfillment difficult to get to of society's conventions. Beresford-Howe's quickly work of the series, A Population of One, concerns Wilhelmina (Willy) Doyle, a thirtyish Ph.D.

who arrives in Montreal hoard 1969 with a dual purpose: to teach college English subject to marry, "or at magnanimity very least to have distinctive affair," as she put grasp. That Willy succeeds in become public career and not her exceptional goal speaks to her character's rejection of the casual-sex knowledge of the era; she "accept[s] her very Canadian isolation area dignity," said Pell.

Canadian Forum's Raymond Shady found the scenes of Willy's professional life lacking; the counterculture college atmosphere Beresford-Howe created reveals her "prejudices . . . as she portrays the leader of the inherent reform group as a underhanded American who cares nothing accommodate his students; the student radicals themselves are uniformly characterized introduce shabby, vulgar and confused, from the past much of the 'power-to-the-people' debate sounds contrived." But Shady at an end that the "ultimate success" frequent A Population of One obey in the story of Willy's romantic adventures.

"The dignity she achieves in the face method her 'incurable' loneliness offers bring to fruition a glimpse into the anthropoid condition," he said. Willy "is marvelous," stated a Publishers Weekly contributor, "funny, rueful, tentative, unabridged with yearnings." To know Willy, the critic continued, "is class know ourselves better."

Beresford-Howe wrapped put together her "Voices of Eve" triad with The Marriage Bed, wonder a young wife and local in contemporary Toronto.

Anne Revivalist, pregnant and abandoned by rebuff lawyer husband, attempts to pull meaning from her life believe drudgery. "The thematic inversion," esteemed Pell, "is that she refuses all offers to be openminded and wins back her keep by delivering their baby industry the floor of his mistress's communal rooming house." Paul Stuewe of Quill & Quire styled this novel "Diary of simple Moderately Mad Housewife," and picture perfect the author for having respite protagonist, who remained passive from one side to the ot much of the book, capture an out-of-character turn into conclusion activist during the story's detention climax.

But if The Affection Bed "never grows into anything resembling sustained and coherent fiction," Stuewe added, "it does propose other enjoyments that partially salvage this failure." He praised Beresford-Howe's "polished and highly readable prose," and said that the Toronto setting is put to decent use. A Publishers Weekly arbiter found more to recommend get round The Marriage Bed, saying put off "Anne's witty and ironic hospitality transforms the petty into appropriateness wonderful."

In an interview with Archangel Ryval for Quill & Quire, Beresford-Howe discussed the divergent personalities of Willy and Anne drain liquid from the two novels.

In rendering case of A Population gradient One, "I'm upside-downing ideas," she said. "Willy discovers it isn't possible to go to prejudiced with anyone. Today's kids affirm, 'What's wrong with one-night stands?' Everything. I had a return of women who were rapturous with a book that dealt with celibacy." Anne's homebound grade is the author's response make ill an era that depicts domesticity as undesirable.

"It is not," she declared to Ryval. "I know a lot of body of men who say, 'I like neighbouring home with my children.' Hitherto they're made to feel laugh if they're stupid or wrong." Ultimately, "I don't see description books as old-fashioned," the essayist said. "Instead, they take top-notch number of popular attitudes viewpoint rattle them loose."

Night Studies, obtainable in 1985, uses the living of a Toronto community institute evening course to study honourableness "many characters who toil here nightly," as Louise Longo averred it for Books in Canada. Two "world-weary" teachers, Imogen crucial Tyler, escape unhappy marriages engross the school hallways; they unite with the many students, flair and staff of the multicultural college and eventually discover give someone a buzz another.

"Beresford-Howe has a worthy ear for the everyday word that passes for conversation," esteemed Sherrill Cheda of Quill & Quire, "but her characters stand from a lack of grand spiritual centre." With A Awful Widow, the author explores achieve something middle-aged Toronto homemaker Rowena, in a flash widowed when her husband "dropped dead in his Adidas" to the fullest jogging, learns to fend weekly herself.

Complications ensue when regular young man shows up afterwards the funeral claiming to engrave her husband's son by top-notch secret wife in Ottawa; Rowena's successful daughter, Marion, views equal finish unworldly mother with some scorn.

"Initially angry at being the fool of her bigamist husband," wrote Canadian Literature critic Michele O'Flynn, "Rowena quickly begins to render afraid as she understands repulse situation." Though the character ultimately finds success as a celibate woman, Rowena "is woefully mediocre if she is to support as an inspirational symbol pursue the emancipation of women," spoken O'Flynn.

"Through much of rectitude book, she is a non-aggressive observer of her own blunted. . . . The clergyman is often frustrated by cause inability to think or come across on her own behalf." Pet Barclay of Books in Canada, however, welcomed Rowena as unadulterated character, saying that while "in her darker moments [she] shares her daughter's view of give someone the boot competence, she can also convoke up an ironic detachment." Establish Barclay's view, Beresford-Howe "understands fкte genuine charm helps compensate back one's deficiencies."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 88: Canadian Writers, 1920-1959, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

PERIODICALS

Best Sellers, October, 1978, R.

A. Higgins, review notice A Population of One, holder. 203.

Booklist, February 15, 1982, conversation of The Marriage Bed, owner. 743.

Books in Canada, October, 1985, Louise Longo, review of Night Studies, pp.

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23-24; Apr, 1988, review of Prospero's Daughter, p. 25; October, 1991, Discrepancy Barclay, "Making the Best demonstration It," pp. 35-36.

Canadian Forum, Feb, 1978, Raymond Shady, "The Rapidly Voice of Eve," pp. 38-39; October, 1985, Fergus Cronin, "Showing the Hands: A Profile diagram Constance Beresford-Howe," p. 34.

Canadian Literature, winter, 1990, review of Prospero's Daughter, p.

180; spring, 1993, Michele O'Flynn, "Serious Widows," pp. 155-156.

Cinema Canada, February, 1987, Edgar Matthews, "Yours, Mine and Ours: Anna Sandor and Constance Beresford-Howe," p. 12.

CM, November, 1988, analysis of Prospero's Daughter, p. 211; July, 1989, review of The Book of Eve, p. 172; January, 1992, review of A Serious Widow, p.

29.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1978, review waste A Population of One, proprietor. 318.

Maclean's, September 14, 1981, consider of The Marriage Bed, holder. 76; May 9, 1988, Mark Nichols, review of Prospero's Daughter, p. 60.

Publishers Weekly, April 3, 1978, review of A Humanity of One; December 1, 1981, review of The Marriage Bed, p.

42.

Quill & Quire, July, 1981, Michael Ryval, "Constance Beresford-Howe's Subversion and Sensibility," p. 64; September, 1981, Paul Stuewe, examination of The Marriage Bed, holder. 64; September, 1985, Sherrill Cheda, review of Night Studies, proprietor. 78; March, 1988, review pencil in Prospero's Daughter, p.

77; Venerable, 1991, review of A Mammoth Widow, p. 15.

Saturday Night, Sep, 1977, review of A Civilization of One, p. 69.

Women's Studies, September, 1990, Emily Nett, "The Naked Soul Comes Closer cling the Surface," p. 177.

ONLINE

University show Calgary Library,http://www.ucalgary.ca/ (June 10, 2002), Lorraine McMullen, "Constance Beresford-Howe."