Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Lives of the Wives

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Some books have titles that jump out right out at you, Carmela Ciuraru’s new group biography Lives of the Wives is definitely one of those books. She tells us about her five wives and the hazards of literary relationships.

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. Some books have titles that jump right out at you. Lives of the Wives, a new book by Carmela Chiraru, is definitely one of those books. And upon closer inspection, I noticed that one of the wives Chiraru writes about is Elaine Dundee, the wife of British theatre critic and writer Kenneth Tynan, one of the main characters in my upcoming propaganda and art miniseries that I'm going to be dropping later this summer. Like Elaine, all five of the wives in Lives of the Wives are more than mere wives, but yet all five were reduced to playing the part of the wife because their partners were, well, writers. I met up with Carmela Chiraru to talk about her book and the hazards of literary relationships, and to learn more about her five wives,

Elaine Dundee, Jane Howard, Elsa Marante, Patricia Neal, and Una Trubridge. It's really interesting that you begin the book with a story of a lesbian couple, and even though it's from an earlier era, some of the problems, like the issue of a younger woman who shows up on this scene, feel really relevant to the other stories of women and men in your book. But maybe you could tell us about this couple and why you chose them. Yeah, they were such crazy characters. Una Trubridge and Radcliffe Hall, they were both British. As you probably know, Radcliffe Hall wrote The Well of Loneliness, which is still a minor classic. They both grew up with some money, Radcliffe Hall much more.

But Una Trubridge had been married to a man and really hated being a wife. As a child, she was kind of a prodigy and she had a promising future as an artist. And then she became a translator. She was very intelligent, very well read. And she loved art and music and everything. She was just such a cultured, intelligent woman. And she really hated being a wife. She was so depressed. She was a terrible mother. She didn't really want to be a mother. And yet when she met Radcliffe Hall, it's like everything was transformed for her. And she wanted to devote herself to this woman and and became a full time, full on wife serving what the career of what she believed to be a genius. to me about them is that they were a lesbian couple and there was no kind of equality. It's

like some people have said that in, you know, gay relationships, there's more equality in the roles. There was no such thing here. She had to oversee the household staff and she had to, you know, fend off fans from Radcliffe Hall. Everything was about serving her partner. And Radcliffe Hall had a bad temper and could really be abusive toward her. So it was really a thankless role, but she was proud of it. And so I thought they were very interesting. And because they were so conservative, Radcliffe Hall didn't really like women. She didn't like women making a fuss about women's rights and voting. She really was like, that's inappropriate. In business dealings, oddly enough, she said, I prefer to deal with men. You know, she didn't take women seriously. So she was kind of, you know, sexist in her own way. And they were very conservative in general politically. So they were a really interesting couple, not at all what you expect, you know, full of contradictions. Yeah. But I feel starting off with that makes you, it's almost like you're throwing down a gauntlet about like maybe our expectations about what

equality could be, what might be possible. In other words, you're starting this off with a story of two women, but yet the issues are exactly the same. Exactly the same. Everything played out the same where, you know, Una was always apologizing for herself and Radcliffe Hall was like, you know, you're not a good enough wife and would compare her to the previous woman who sadly died. I think partly from all the stress of Radcliffe Hall cheating on her. Yeah, she had a heart attack and died one night. But yeah, it was really, it was a lot to take in. And all of that stuff played out exactly as it did in the other relationships. It's just that their relationship endured until Radcliffe Hall's death. And I think Una Trubis just took it and, you know, she accepted it because she felt that this was her calling to be this person's wife. There's something that Elaine Dundee writes in a book, you know, the last novel she wrote, The Injured Party. And Kenneth Tynan is in all of her books. But there's a moment when the character, the female character's name is Rilla, and she's married to this editor of a New Yorker-like magazine. And they're at a cocktail

party and someone says, who are you? And she says, I'm just the wife, to which her husband says, she's my wife. Oh, that's such a great line. That is such a great line. And it feels like that really resonates with exactly what's going on. It's not just that they're the wife. They're somebody's wife. Yeah, yeah. At least in the struggle of your stories.

Yeah, it's kind of a possession. And I think it was really sad that when she got all the success with The Dut Avocado, her first novel, she sort of had to make herself small because she didn't want her husband to freak out, which he did. You know, he really started to wrinkle him that she was getting so much praise and so much success. And so she would kind of minimize it around him. And his friends would tease him about it. And it just really made things so much worse. So even when the wife was able to write the book and get it published, she couldn't even really enjoy her success because she had to worry about her husband's ego. That makes me think of something that Cyril Connolly says to Elaine Dundee or about her book when she published.

He says, just another wife trying to justify their existence. Yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine? Yeah. And just all of the comments that these women were subjected to. And even now, I think when I read interviews with fiction writers who are women, they're often asked about their families or children, their husbands in ways that male writers are not. So I always find that interesting. It's like they always have to cover the kind of, you know, mom aspect. Yeah, yeah. You know, just thinking of that struggle in terms of, you know, two writers, it does seem that, you know, on almost a practical detail level, you know, it's like who gets the writer's room? Who has to write on a board propped up on the washing machine?

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, as you know, you know, and I think you probably already knew this, you know, she would sort of be, Elaine Dundee would be crouched in the living room with the typewriter on her knees and her back hurt. And other wives, too, were relegated to the living room or the kitchen table and not having the, you know, the famous room of one's own that Wolf talked about. There's a line in my book about what does it mean to live every day in second place? And I think that's what these women had to deal with, even if they had not only the ambition, but the talent of their husbands, sometimes more so.

But they kind of had to sort of work around whatever their husbands needed. He bought two ranches, two houses, two cars, two boats. And two problems, one how to stay alive and one how to stay a star. This is Elaine Dundee and Kenneth Tynan in 1955. Their friend Orson Welles asked them to host a bullfighting documentary that he was making for British TV.

They seemed to be so at ease with each other here, not just as partners in marriage. But alas, it was not meant to be. Their divorce was ugly, and it took years for Elaine to regain her footing. That's a common fate in Carmela Chirara's Lives of the Wives, especially for writer Jane Howard, who was the second wife of the writer Kingsley Amos. So of the women in the book, Jane Howard, it just her story really broke my heart because she knew and talked about, as you know, that she had always given herself up for the man she was with. And often that man was married. This is before Amos. And she just was always letting go of everything that was about her needs and her

desires for the person she was with. So it was really sad. But later in life, she found herself as a writer. She was alone when she died in terms of a romantic relationship, but she had found that creative fulfillment. Yeah. It's almost like a before and after. When you look at her writing career, it's like the Amos years are when she's not writing. Yeah. And she has to garden to do something creative, you know, because that's all she had time for because she was constantly cooking and cleaning. And she did the quote unquote, you know, traditional husband duties where she was changing light bulbs and fixing things like he did nothing. He just drank and

drank and wrote. And she said, you know, she admired his productivity. She couldn't do it. She didn't have that luxury. But he was always sober in the morning when he wrote, and then he would just drink, you know, in the afternoon, evening, which would have been the time that they would have had together as a couple. But he was just completely out of it. He was horrible to her. And the first time, you know, she really admired him when they met. And they had a very passionate introduction to each other. But when she showed him her work, he read it and said, oh, I'm so relieved. I didn't think it would be any good. So I was like, that was his way of complimenting her, but it felt bad. And she was

someone who already was a writer. Yes. And and, you know, and very talented. But she really had to suppress all of that until they divorced. And, you know, she did everything for him. And as you know, he was afraid to be alone in the house at night. So he really needed kind of a babysitter. And even his first wife, whom he'd left for Jane Howard, you know, when he when he ended contact with Jane Howard, the first wife came and sat with him at night. And she said, oh, I'll watch television with him until he goes to bed. You know, he really needed a caregiver. That era seems to be when gender roles were maybe starting to change. And because so many of the stories that you're really focused on are set at this moment, you know, late 50s, late 60s. It's fascinating to kind of see these stories play out in that larger context. And it seems that it doesn't work. Like it's just kind of like there's emancipation up to the wife. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Up to a point. And I think, or there are periods when the wife is allowed to sort of roam free, but to a point always, and always is kind of snapped back into wifely duty.

So Kingsley Amos really found it very sexy that, you know, Jane Howard was so intelligent, right? But then again, it's like to a point, you know, you can be, I want someone who's smart, who challenges me, but to a point. It was always kind of putting them into second place. You're a good housekeeper. You're a good cook. You're a good laundress. What else are you good at? I've taken care of myself. Shouldn't have to. A woman looks like you do.

Oh, that's what my ex-husband used to tell me. The most famous wife in Lives of the Wives is Patricia Neal. When she married the author Roald Dahl, he was a total unknown, The most famous wife in Lives of the Wives is Patricia Neal. When she married the author Roald Dahl, he was a total unknown, whereas she was a rich and famous Hollywood actress. And the winner, Patricia Neal. But her A-list status may have doomed their marriage from the start. When they met, she was already so famous.

She was so beautiful, and she had already become wealthy. And I found in the newspaper archives the headline from the New York Times from their wedding day. And I can't remember it exactly, but it's something like Patricia Neal marries Ryder, which he was so furious about. But she was a famous one and already had all the money. And he was a nobody. He wasn't really doing so well. And, you know, he kept sending his stories out and kept getting rejections. And he would get, you know, some stories eventually in The New Yorker, but it didn't really take off until he turned to children's literature. And I think that always

bothered him that he never found success at that level with adult literature. It's also the money. Yeah, the money is a problem. The money is a huge problem. Rather than sort of appreciate that their spouse, you know, made all his money, it wasn't acceptable. And a Roald Dahl's friend, Charles Marsh, who was older, this older man who was kind of a patron of Dahl's and supported him in many ways, kind of pulled her aside and said, look, it's OK for you to earn more money, but you have to let your husband control the bank account. You know, just hand the checking account over to him and you must do all the cooking and cleaning. You know, you've got to start taking care of the house. And, you know, she's a famous actress. She's this beautiful woman who's really well loved in Hollywood and also on the stage. And she's like, oh, my God, I have to do all of that. But she was

willing to do it. You know, he had his little his famous writing hut and she had to, you know, ring the bell to disturb him and couldn't couldn't interrupt him and had to manage all the kids. And yeah, you know, it's hard to imagine this Hollywood actress, she turned herself into a housewife for him. And she said, this is my role now. I'm a housewife and I accept it. And when they did joint interviews, he would say, well, she likes it. She wants it that way. You know, he would speak for her. There's only one literary partnership in Lives of the Wives that doesn't end in total disaster for the woman. And that's the one between Elsa Morante

and Alberto Moravia. Alberto was more famous and more prolific, but Elsa was a success as well. She had her own critical prizes and her own bestsellers, just as he did. But still, the marriage didn't work. I think they're a complicated couple because he was endlessly supportive of her work, but she had this thing of like, I don't want to be associated with him in terms of my writerly identity. And so, as you know, she hated being called Mrs. Moravia and she wouldn't even answer to that. So, but yeah, I did love how much he endlessly praised her work and she admired

him. So in that sense, it was probably the most successful. It seems like that still wasn't enough for her. Like she would really bristle if someone invited them both out to a party. Right. I mean, the thing to do as one of her friends learned the protocol was to invite her first and then to extend the offer of inviting them as a couple. But she didn't really like her identity bound to his. She was fiercely independent and yeah, couldn't stand that.

So she was a difficult person but I think he appreciated her for her volatility but ultimately the marriage didn't make it but they remained friends and he supported her financially and emotionally until she died. I believe if I remember correctly they never kind of formally divorced they just sort of drifted away from each other and yeah and they were friends and they were better off that way. And he went on to remarry. I mean, one thing I think that's interesting about the book,

and again, some of these things, you know, just occur to you after you put something together, but none of the women remarried and all the men did. Some, multiple times. I mean, there's one question that kind of looms large over all of the stories is that, you know, her husband were successful together. So I don't know. I think it really depends. I think both people need a lot of space. And clearly, you know, they did. But yeah, I think generally it can be tough. It can be really hard. Carmela Chiraru is the author of Lives of the Wives, a new book that you can find wherever you get your books.

This episode was produced by me, Benjamin Walker, with special thanks to my pals at Radio Diaries. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia from PRX, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Discover award-winning audio with vision at radiotopia from PRX.