Middle Chapters: Winter and Spring (9 - 17)

[JerseyAngel]

I just finished reading this section today. I'm having some trouble keeping up, which is a first. I like the book, but it doesn't excite me I guess. Even after finishing I don't have a big desire to discuss it.

Iris seems to be a puzzle piece that hasn't found it's spot yet. I have no doubt that she will play an important part but we just haven't seen it yet. Part of me is wondering, with her new connection with Emma, if it's a letter to Emma concerning Will's death that she will not deliver. I could be wrong... maybe it's a letter to the German man. My curiousity is growing though.

Frankie, after he friend's death, seemed more concerned with telling a story that meant something. Before she was only concerned about getting on the air or getting a big story. After Will's death, this seemed to grow stronger... and then Thomas. With each personal loss she seems to change a little. Also becoming more daring with the censors, knowing she could be arrested.

Emma seems lost. Alone in a place with no friends, pregnant, the only thing she looks forward to are her letters from Will & we know they soon will end. I was a little frustrated that she never told WIll of the pregnancy. Perhaps this news would have given him another look on life, his purpose, and he would have returned home. Or maybe he would have just been bitter and only felt obligation to come home.

[Deltadawn]

Very well said - and a great observation.

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thewanderingjew wrote:

I wonder if it meant that capes were mere windowdressing, symbols of pomp and circumstance, and he wanted his life to have more meaning than that. Perhaps he realized with Maggie's death how mortal humans really are and then he realized how much he wanted to do something worthwhile instead of always living in the shadow of his father's guilt and now his own. He said as much, himself for Maggie. I found it sad that, in the end, he dies in such an "accidental" way. Perhaps the larger message is that Maggie's death was truly and accident too and he could not have prevented it.

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Carmenere_lady wrote:

What did Sarah Blake mean by this quote.............."The old words sounded in his ears like capes for kings."  P149?

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[Deltadawn]

Very good points  - I like your prediction, too!

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DSaff wrote:

I had the same thought about Jim Tom and Emma. You are not alone. <grin>

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thewanderingjew wrote:

At first I thought that Emma was acting like a spoiled brat. Then I thought, wait a minute, she is pregnant. Her hormones are bouncing around. She is alone in a strange place, in essence abandoned. She has no family, no one to confide in. She has to be plain lonely and scared and she is reacting out of those confused emotions.

I wondered if, after Will's death, she and  Jim Tom might not team up. In a weird sort of way it might seem like the ultimate form of justice being played out. The children would no longer be motherless, Emma would not be alone with her new baby and if Will was in heaven looking down, maybe his soul would finally rest. He would feel justice was done. I hope this theory doesn't sound too warped but Jim Tom seemed to be handling his crisis far better than Emma was, so it seemed like a workable solution to me, in a more perfect world. I will have to finish the book to see what ultimately happens so I may eventually feel foolish for positing such a plan. I am reading on schedule this time!

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Rachel-K wrote:

How does Emma hold up? At the end of our current section, Emma is still getting daily letters from Will from before his death--how do you expect her to handle the news? Has your impression of Emma changed as the story progresses?

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[Choisya]

Also was it common for women to travel alone thru Europe during that time period?

Some women have always travelled alone, even in Victorian times and it has been easy to travel through Europe since the days of The Grand Tour.  Frankie was a journalist, doing a job which required her to travel and the women she encountered travelling alone were probably doing so because they had no husbands or were doing so in sheer desperation.  In many ways it was easier for women to travel alone then, especially by train, because there was far less crime and women were treated more respectfully.  There were even 'women only' carriages on some trains, which were next to the guard's van. (Children also travelled alone next to the guard's van.) I travel Europe alone now and have been doing so from the age of 65, when my husband died but it is riskier now than it was in my late teens, when I first did so.  In the last five years I have been 'mugged' twice and in Italy a couple of years ago I was deliberately knocked down by a 'motorino' (scooter) whose passenger stole my handbag - a common crime there.     

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laurajzzz wrote:

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How has Frankie's relationship to her job changed in these chapters? Is she as tough minded and directed as she was when we first met her in London? How does she treat the story of the Jewish refugees moving across Europe? What effect did her brief contact with Will have on her?

These chapters is where the story really takes off for me,   Frankie's journey thru Europe and the recording of the stories of the refugees really make the most impact for me.   Part of that is because I have read other accounts of this part of the war so I feel like I know what is going to happen to these people and none of it seems to be good.   I think that the combination of Harriet and Billy's mom dying then Will and then hearing Thomas's story has really changed Frankie.   It has made her more compassionate but I think that it makes her more determined to get these stories recorded.

How have your feelings for Iris changed during these chapters? Compare your initial impression of her in a doctor's office to the woman we observe efficiently managing this small town the post office. How well do Harry and Iris understand each other? Are they similar at all?

I find myself liking Iris more as she is there watching out for Emma.  Iris and Harry are a good fit.   Both are obsessed with their idea of order - her with the post office and him with the watching out for the enemy.

Will said to Frankie that his experience of London during was was that everything "adds up."  What does he mean by this? Why does Will seem happy? What effect did it have on you that Will's death is a traffic accident, rather than a war death?

I just had a feeling that something unexpected would happen to Will,  that he would die from something not related to the war and this phrase from the begining of the book came to mind:  "Every story- love or war- is a story about looking left when we should have been looking right."

How does Emma hold up? At the end of our current section, Emma is still getting daily letters from Will from before his death--how do you expect her to handle the news? Has your impression of Emma changed as the story progresses?

Emma is alone, pregnant and at some point I think she realizes that something has happened to Will but she does not want to face it.    She thinks that she is invisible because she has no family but once she has that baby she will make her own family.

Couple of things that stand out for me:    Will left a letter with Iris in case something happens,   Frankie has a letter that Will hadn't mailed yet and she assumes that the news of his death will make it back to his family.  Do these connect somehow?

Also was it common for women to travel alone thru Europe during that time period? 

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[meme1]

I totally agree.  Will was not the strong man that Emma wanted him to be.  He seemed to have trouble facing the reality of life.

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Will ran to London to escape death and his own sense of failure.  The fact that he had to face death over and over in London is how he expects his life should be.  I found it quite obvious that Will was killed by looking the wrong way.  He has spent his life looking the wrong way.  Expecting his father's curse to befall him; seeing a mother's death in labor as his fault; running to London to assuage his guilt.  He is always looking at things the wrong way.

[meme1]

Frankie seems to be on a mission to carry on Harriet's passion.  I believe that she has lost some of her objectivity and is letting her emotions enter into her reporting.  ~  So far, Frankie seems to be the focal character in the story, so I'm having trouble accepting the title of the novel.  I'm sure this will work itself out in the last portion of the book.  ~  Since she hasn't mailed the letter yet, will she personally deliver it?

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Rachel-K wrote:

Please use any of the following questions to start conversation about the Winter and Spring sections of The Postmistress.

How has Frankie's relationship to her job changed in these chapters? Is she as tough minded and directed as she was when we first met her in London? How does she treat the story of the Jewish refugees moving across Europe? What effect did her brief contact with Will have on her?

[meme1]

Just a random thought - if Frankie delivers the letter to Emma, will she be the postmistress?

[Choisya]

PLEASE be careful about spoilers - not everyone has read the whole book yet!  The 'postmistress' issue is explained quite clearly in the book at a relevant point. 

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JoyZ wrote:

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MsReaderCP wrote:

Regarding discussion of who is Postmistress:

I do think Frankie is a Postmistress of sorts, she has a letter to deliver and she decides to do wha Iris tells her a postmaster would never do which is to keep silent, to never deliver the letter.  Frankie never gives emma the letter from Will, the one which she goes to Cape Cod to hand deliver to her and finds for the first time in her life she is afraid to deliver the news. 

My personal opinion is not that the book is called the Postmistress because Frankie is actually the Postmistress, but because she is a more dominant character than Iris in the book and her version of what Iris is is a Postmistress.

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In rereading the opening pages, Frankie's letter, she comments about a letter being pocketed and never delivered.  She states it is the war story she never filed.  It is Frankie's story.

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[Tarri]

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Sunltcloud wrote:

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 Literature, I don't think you have gone too far; I love the idea. I will refrain from giving all the characters their chores (I think I went too far with the last book - UTUS - by speculating on everybody's future.) But I do think your idea of selling cakes (or muffins or zucchini bread) would work well for Emma. Frequently war widows walked into a type of support system by doing something publicly that they had been good at privately. Sewing, cooking, catering, gardening, organizing.

My mother was not a war widow, but she did, for a while, knit new garments from old ones while my grandmother sewed old clothing into new dresses for food. In the country the farmers had what everybody needed, what everybody wanted - milk, eggs, flour, meat, and they were paid with services or goods.

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Not that this is integral to the story, but you started me thinking.  Would Emma be considered a war widow by the townspeople?  The war had not really started for the United States and Will was hit by a taxi, not killed in a bombing. 

[mamawli]

Frankie's relationship to her job does indeed change from an observer to an integral part of the story.  She has become obsessed with the story of the people that she sees while she is traveling on the train.  Frankie is upset that she cannot follow at least one of these people to a conclusion that is acceptable to her. The little boy who is lost and his mother.  Thomas who gets shot. 

Frankie becomes frustrated because she is not able to create a complete story from her observations about the people.  She has found the beginning, but keeps looking for the middle and the end of her stories about them  Perhaps, she will find the rest of her story by broadcasting the stories that these people have told her.

[mpx]

I feel like Frankie has evolved into more than just a background character.  Her first hand account with all of the refugees has definitely changed her outlook from reporter of facts to a person with with compassion.  Her contact with Will probably made her realize that the people she wrote about had backgrounds and families and friends that would be affected by their deaths.

I didn't really understand the reason for Iris' visit to the doctor. I don't really see a strong connection with Iris and Harry at this point.

I really don't like Will at this point.  I thought it was very selfish of him to leave his wife for a reason that he couldn't explain.  I think he was hoping for death, his guilt over losing Maggie.  It seems like being a doctor, you would expect to lose a patient every now and then.  He should have been stronger and stayed home. I think he was a coward. 

I'm getting worried about Emma at this point.  It seems like the only thing keeping her going at Will's daily letters.  She should be taking better care of herself and her baby.  I also feel like she should have told Will sooner that she was expecting and maybe he would have snapped out of it and come home to be with his family.

[jabrkeKB]

Frankie has witnessed the human side to war and it has changed her relationship to her job. She has seen war happen to one person at a time. She realizes what Harriet was saying about the Jews was correct and she wants to document the human cost. Frankie is very tough minded and courageous in her mission to bring a voice to the people. I feel her encounter with Will was a turning point for her.

[Choisya]

My mother was not a war widow, but she did, for a while, knit new garments from old ones while my grandmother sewed old clothing into new dresses for food.

In the UK during the war there was a 'Make Do and Mend' campaign because clothing and the material for clothing was rationed. My mother was very skilful and regularly unravelled old jumpers to knit new ones and made skirts and coats for me out of my father's suits. Darning socks became an art form!  The government introduced a 'utility' range of clothing which was a quite Spartan and I well remember the first Paris Fashions of Christian Dior after the war (1947) when my mother obtained proper wool suiting material and made me a suit with nipped in waist and flared skirt. She also made me a gorgeous turqoise taffeta evening dress with several layers of white net underneath for my 16th birthday (rather like this one!),  Nottingham was the centre of the lace and textile trade and I was a very fashionable young lady! 

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Sunltcloud wrote:

 Literature, I don't think you have gone too far; I love the idea. I will refrain from giving all the characters their chores (I think I went too far with the last book - UTUS - by speculating on everybody's future.) But I do think your idea of selling cakes (or muffins or zucchini bread) would work well for Emma. Frequently war widows walked into a type of support system by doing something publicly that they had been good at privately. Sewing, cooking, catering, gardening, organizing.

My mother was not a war widow, but she did, for a while, knit new garments from old ones while my grandmother sewed old clothing into new dresses for food. In the country the farmers had what everybody needed, what everybody wanted - milk, eggs, flour, meat, and they were paid with services or goods.

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Not that this is integral to the story, but you started me thinking.  Would Emma be considered a war widow by the townspeople?  The war had not really started for the United States and Will was hit by a taxi, not killed in a bombing. 

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[CatholicKittie]

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Carmenere_lady wrote:

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                             To me, Emma is pathetic.  She is very self centered and she seems to believe nobody has it as bad as she.  She doesn't want to be alone yet pushes everyone away. Jim Tom tries to chat with her and when he mentions that  it's not easy "being left behind" and she snaps at him that Will's not dead.  Doesn't she realize you can be left behind by the living too. 

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I disagress I like Emma, she is a good change from all these hard women.  Frankie and Iris weren't the norm during this time.  They seem so head strong and well, hard.  But Emma is willing to just admit that she needs and wants a man or anyone because she is not use to that.  I figure she pushes people away out of fear? maybe?  Will I liked that he loved or feels for his wife but I think it was more of him proving something to someone when he married her.  He should have realized he is a doctor he has to get use to that and know things don't go smooth sailing right?  So why run from life's problems, your wife is there to help you and the other way around.  I wanted to like him, I actually sort of do, but he is weak and that always kicks in and I just can't like that.

Now Iris I find odd.  I think she maybe my favorite character.  I can't really figure her out though.  She is consistent but then sometimes she isn't so much, in a odd way.  Harry seems like a perfect match for Iris, both odd balls but straight forward. No pretenses. 

Frankie I just can't get myself to like her.  She is like the cliche, 1940's writer/journalist.  In a man's world so act as hard as a man?  She is hard and just man-ish.  I even WANT to like her, Blake tries to soften her up after the bombing but still it didn't work for me.  I needed her to show that woman's side of her.  But I never really felt that. 

And I like the accuracy of this book.  People smoked, it wasn't the faux pas it is now.  And the little things like that lets me know that Blake did research and a lot of it to make the little bitty details accurate.  And the little bitty facts that most people would never know otherwise if they were true or not, she still did took the time and did the research.  But the recorder?  It kinda made me raise a brow???  Not sure why.  Kudos so far for to Sarah Blake for the research.

Casse

[Choisya]

Frankie I just can't get myself to like her.  She is like the cliche, 1940's writer/journalist.  In a man's world so act as hard as a man?  She is hard and just man-ish.  I even WANT to like her, Blake tries to soften her up after the bombing but still it didn't work for me.  I needed her to show that woman's side of her.  But I never really felt that.

Women have to be hard to get through wars!  Emma and Iris are living very easy lives compared with Frankie.  Living on rations with a shortage of water, nightly threats of bombing, buildings collapsing around you, friends being killed etc etc  is likely to make you hard. Travelling around occupied Europe on your own was dangerous, you had to be tough.  Being 'mannish' could help you to survive. American women without all these privations might have been able to stay 'womanly' but women in the UK were intent on survival, not glamour.  Being hard is part of what got us through the Blitz!  Churchill thought we would all become wimps and emergency measures were put into place in case people panicked and tried to run away from bombed areas but he was proved wrong. Women with their menfolk away at war became 'tough cookies' and a journalist like Frankie would become one of them.  

Frankie is based on Martha Gellhorn and she was a tough cookie. Here is an excerpt from Martha Gelllhorn's notebook during the Spanish Civil War, where she is describing how difficult war conditions were then.    She travelled across Europe with the 82nd Airborne Division during WWII and The Daily Telegraph subsequently hailed her as 'one of the great war correspondents of the century: brave fierce and wholly committed to the truth of a situation.' She was was of the first women to be acknowledged by male journalists and also one of the first to reach Dachau which, she said, changed her life.  There are a couple of BBC audio interviews with her here.  IMO Gellhorn was a Great American so for me, Frankie, living the same sort of life, is the Great American of the book.  

There were Dictaphone recorders with wax cylinders at this time although they would be a bit cumbersome to carry about. I used one after the war and for a long time I called all recording machines 'Dictaphones', just like we called all vacuum cleaners 'Hoovers'.     

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CatholicKittie wrote:

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Carmenere_lady wrote:

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                             To me, Emma is pathetic.  She is very self centered and she seems to believe nobody has it as bad as she.  She doesn't want to be alone yet pushes everyone away. Jim Tom tries to chat with her and when he mentions that  it's not easy "being left behind" and she snaps at him that Will's not dead.  Doesn't she realize you can be left behind by the living too. 

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I disagress I like Emma, she is a good change from all these hard women.  Frankie and Iris weren't the norm during this time.  They seem so head strong and well, hard.  But Emma is willing to just admit that she needs and wants a man or anyone because she is not use to that.  I figure she pushes people away out of fear? maybe?  Will I liked that he loved or feels for his wife but I think it was more of him proving something to someone when he married her.  He should have realized he is a doctor he has to get use to that and know things don't go smooth sailing right?  So why run from life's problems, your wife is there to help you and the other way around.  I wanted to like him, I actually sort of do, but he is weak and that always kicks in and I just can't like that.

Now Iris I find odd.  I think she maybe my favorite character.  I can't really figure her out though.  She is consistent but then sometimes she isn't so much, in a odd way.  Harry seems like a perfect match for Iris, both odd balls but straight forward. No pretenses. 

Frankie I just can't get myself to like her.  She is like the cliche, 1940's writer/journalist.  In a man's world so act as hard as a man?  She is hard and just man-ish.  I even WANT to like her, Blake tries to soften her up after the bombing but still it didn't work for me.  I needed her to show that woman's side of her.  But I never really felt that. 

And I like the accuracy of this book.  People smoked, it wasn't the faux pas it is now.  And the little things like that lets me know that Blake did research and a lot of it to make the little bitty details accurate.  And the little bitty facts that most people would never know otherwise if they were true or not, she still did took the time and did the research.  But the recorder?  It kinda made me raise a brow???  Not sure why.  Kudos so far for to Sarah Blake for the research.

Casse

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[AIRKNITTER]

This is the first war story I've ever read that has a woman's voice. Very well written from that perspective.

[nicole21WA]

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Sunltcloud wrote:

Here is my adivce to Emma: "What kind of attitude is that? Do something with yourself. Go bake a cake and invite some neighbors. Learn to knit. That's what women do who aren't out there reporting the war or entertaining the soldiers. Knit some socks. Support your husband. We don't always understand why a man does what he does, but shouldn't you give him a chance? You should be glad that he is happy. Have some faith in him. Write him a long letter, more than two words long anyway. 

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I could not disagree with you more.  I actually find some of this offensive.  I certainly do not want Emma going around baking cakes for neighbors.  Think about it.  Emma was the one to move to town; they should welcome her.  Instead she learns how xenophobic they are, especially when it comes to Otto.  I wouldn't put myself out for these people either, especially when one considers what Emma knows about the townspeople from Will.  Her husband's family was disgraced; she has every reason to believe that she has become associated with that since the townspeople do nothing to dispel the notion.  Also, did anyone tell her they'd be there to help after Will went to England?  When it becomes obvious that she's pregnant, does anyone come to help then?  I hope Emma moves far from Franklin when she finds out Will's dead.

[maude40]

I loved this image of war on page 149,

"And tonight walking home from the hospital in the dark, not paying attention to where he was going, he had suddenly realized he was guiding his way forward by the single small lights of cigarettes, the sign of other people moving, disembodied, through the dark toward him: people whose faces he couldn't see, but whose voices he heard, whose footsteps passed by."

It's this type of passage that makes the war so real, the way everyone's life is affected in the towns and cities. Yvonne

[Carmenere_lady]

It's funny, on her trip to Franklin, Emma imagines, aggrandizes her place in the community as the doctors wife.  "She had prided herself on how quickly she would get the names of all the townspeople, showing off her knowledge to Will, whom she imagined would return every night as if to a theater of her making, delighting to find himself in ths familiar town, revealed and illumined now by his Emma's perceptions."  Yet as soon as she steps foot off the bus she seems to be intimidated by the life that is going on in town even before her arrival.  Perhaps that is why she sheds tears when her suitcase opens, it is not because of embarrassment but because it was not the grand entrance she had anticipated.  Also, Iris had to urge Emma to introduce herself, not a good beginning for someone who had large expectations of being someone of influence in the community. 

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nicole21WA wrote:

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Sunltcloud wrote:

Here is my adivce to Emma: "What kind of attitude is that? Do something with yourself. Go bake a cake and invite some neighbors. Learn to knit. That's what women do who aren't out there reporting the war or entertaining the soldiers. Knit some socks. Support your husband. We don't always understand why a man does what he does, but shouldn't you give him a chance? You should be glad that he is happy. Have some faith in him. Write him a long letter, more than two words long anyway. 

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I could not disagree with you more.  I actually find some of this offensive.  I certainly do not want Emma going around baking cakes for neighbors.  Think about it.  Emma was the one to move to town; they should welcome her.  Instead she learns how xenophobic they are, especially when it comes to Otto.  I wouldn't put myself out for these people either, especially when one considers what Emma knows about the townspeople from Will.  Her husband's family was disgraced; she has every reason to believe that she has become associated with that since the townspeople do nothing to dispel the notion.  Also, did anyone tell her they'd be there to help after Will went to England?  When it becomes obvious that she's pregnant, does anyone come to help then?  I hope Emma moves far from Franklin when she finds out Will's dead.

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[gl]

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Rachel-K wrote:

Please use any of the following questions to start conversation about the Winter and Spring sections of The Postmistress.

How has Frankie's relationship to her job changed in these chapters? Is she as tough minded and directed as she was when we first met her in London? How does she treat the story of the Jewish refugees moving across Europe? What effect did her brief contact with Will have on her?

How have your feelings for Iris changed during these chapters? Compare your initial impression of her in a doctor's office to the woman we observe efficiently managing this small town the post office. How well do Harry and Iris understand each other? Are they similar at all?

Will said to Frankie that his experience of London during was was that everything "adds up."  What does he mean by this? Why does Will seem happy? What effect did it have on you that Will's death is a traffic accident, rather than a war death?

How does Emma hold up? At the end of our current section, Emma is still getting daily letters from Will from before his death--how do you expect her to handle the news? Has your impression of Emma changed as the story progresses?

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I have come to like Iris more and more.  I found her doctor's appointment sad - it was helpful to see the doctor's point of view as he watched her walk towards the Boston Commons.  Her first encounter with Emma showed her sense of humor and her strong sense of sympathy.  Her dedication to her job and her focus on problemsolving and efficiency made me respect her even more.  Her relationship with Harry showed a softer side to Iris that made me feel protective towards her.  She's one of my favorite characters in the book.

Frankie first struck me as as similar to a reporter that you might find in one of the "Turner Classic Movies" - you know the type, a tough reporter with the mission to educate Americans at home about the war.  But as she began travelling on the Continent and capturing people's stories, she finally ganed some depth.  I'm not sure whether Sarah had intended to make Frankie this unsympathetic or if this was just my own personal reaction to the character.

I'm loving the book so far!!