| Vol. I,
No. 1 |
Oct.
20th, 2000 |
Books & Literature
The Book Worm ...
Strength, Dignity & Laughter:
Kaye Gibbons' A Virtuous Woman
by Laura Wisniewski
Hinesburg, Vermont
A virtuous woman who can find?
Proverbs
As an act of love, Ruby Stokes works steadily in her kitchen as her death
approaches. She is stocking the freezer so her husband Jack will have her
wholesome meals and delicious pies after she has gone. "There’s not
a whole lot a woman can do from the grave, " she says. But in this
poignant story of a marriage, two people dealt heavy blows by life, do find
salvation in a gentle, caring love.
A Virtuous Woman is set in rural North Carolina in the 1950’s.
Jack and Ruby take turns narrating their stories and the story of their life
together. We learn, as this short book progresses, how both have been
disappointed, detoured again and again from the lives they had always expected
to lead. Ruby is the daughter of Carolina "gentry."
Prepared for a life of relative luxury, she runs off with an abusive migrant
worker and ends up abandoned and penniless. Jack is the son of harsh
tenant farmers, left with nothing from his father or the man responsible for his
father’s death. He says, "Land and children, they’re the only
things in this world that’ll carry on for you, and here I am, going to my
grave without either one." So it is without expectation or
romanticism that Ruby & Jack come together in their tiny sharecroppers’
shack. And it is in the most everyday acts, rather than words—the baking
of a pie, a new mule, a hard-kept silence—that Ruby & Jack show their love
and devotion.
As Jack and Ruby speak their story, we hear the music in their language and
recognize the beauty and humor they’re able to find in a world with so many
limits. And as we meet their neighbors, friends and enemies, we become
aware that this novel sets the world of false promises against a world where
action, detail and motive are what matter. Ruby says, "Oh Cecil and
all his heaven talk, he just doesn’t know. I have what I need back there
stirring now, about to call out any second and ask me if I saved him any
coffee."
A Virtuous Woman is Kaye Gibbons’ second book. She, like her
characters, was born and raised in rural farm country of North Carolina.
In 1989, when the book first was published, The San Francisco Chronicle
called it "…a perfect little gem." Now it is one of several
Gibbons novels on the Oprah Winfrey Reading List.
"An editor…told me years ago that I would always write about women’s
burdens and I have found that to be almost uniformly true. I write, in part, to
discover what those burdens are and how a character’s load can be lessened,
her pain mitigated.," explains the author.
Gibbons introduces this book with a quote from Proverbs which begins,
"A virtuous woman who can find?" It closes,
"Strength and dignity are her clothing;
And she laugheth at the time to come."
As a new century opens on our painful search to redefine marriage, this quiet
book, set half a century ago, may provide some clarity and guidance.
Laura Wisniewski is the owner of Beecher Hill Yoga, where she provides
individual yoga therapy and teaches community & workplace classes. She
also holds graduate degree from Syracuse University.
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