Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270139
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY WENDY CLARK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I am by nature divided. Half of me is contemplative, values privacy, likes quiet to think and write, but the other half loves people and sociability. Reading the poetry of Matthew Arnold the other night, I saw he had the same problem, the tension in the public and the private. Finally he gave up writing poetry because it turned out to be so depressing, he thought the world would be better if he left it off. I think he was right. Imagine the state of mind of a man who wrote "Dover Beach" on his honeymoon. Imagine the effect on his wife."
- Diary entry, 1939.
Elizabeth Dunbar was supposed to be a twin.
Perhaps her twin's death at birth caused her to feel divided throughout her life. Or, perhaps it was her powerful father's conflicting expectations for her that meant she would never feel at ease with herself. In either case, the life of Dunbar was one of true Southern epic proportions.
"Lizzie," a first novel by Delta State University professor Dorothy Shawhan, is based on the real life of Elizabeth Marshall Dunbar, daughter of former Mississippi Governor Stephen A. Dunbar. Utilizing the fictionalized "discovery" of Lizzie Dunbar's diaries in an old desk found by an antiques dealer as the mechanism for exploring Lizzie's life, this "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" account chronicles the life of a woman born to wealth and power who died quite mad from a case of syphilis in the state hospital for the insane.
Dunbar's fictionalized life story is told from the point of view of many different characters to make a composite of Lizzie's life. As a young girl, she runs away from finishing school to Greenwich Village to discover all that life has to offer. She inherits her father's vast political ambitions and, at the height of the suffrage movement founds a newspaper for women. Throughout her life, Lizzie struggles to please her father while continually fighting against his stifling view of female propriety.
A true page turner, this story of a forceful personality hampered by the time and place in which she lived is a wonderful read.
Wendy Clark is librarian of the Hollins branch of the Roanoke County Libraries.
by CNB