Domestica

I've just watched the AFLW final.  Adelaide won, which is great, but I who am not the least bit interested in sport, feel such joy when these women play.  And such relief.  It is as if generations of suppressed rage at abilities never allowed to blossom and pent up energy are finally finding release.  Generations of waste.  This is a theme never far from my mind but I've read two novels recently which capture that frustration perfectly.

The Loving Spirit was Daphne du Maurier's first published novel.  It is not her writing at its most fluid but it covers themes close to her heart, and the expected role of a woman in 19th Century England is one of them.

This one looks like a bodice ripper and it is in that the protagonist wants to determine her own life and break from the confines  of the expected feminine role, in 19th C Australia this time.  Had the book not been recommended to me (and been written by the author of The Dressmaker) I would not have picked it up.  Perhaps a case of a book cover being too clever.  It is one of the very few books that has made me laugh out loud recently, but always there is a disturbing undercurrent of frustration.  The ending at one level is disappointing but is probably as good as it could be under the circumstances.

On my domestic front

Steve sketched our living room yesterday

while I pranced off to a party and wasted nothing.