Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
By Florence King
Reviewed by Mary Fitzgerald
“The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners”
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Florence King
Florence’s early years in 1950s Virginia were dominated by her mother, Granny and Jensy: three women who, according to her, “all behaved like freewheeling, slightly mad Popes”. Her mother had successfully “shrugged off every tenet of Southern womanhood” and so Granny - a “frustrated ladysmith” - saw Florence as her last chance to create the perfect Southern woman. Accordingly, she set to work on Florence the day she was born.
 Granny, we are told, lived according to an unshakeable set of bizarre, antiquated values, where “slovenliness” was a mark of “aristocracy”; doctors were “not to be trusted”, and the Virgin Birth happened because “girls in occupied countries always get in trouble with soldiers”. To all questions about sex, her response was “Your Grandfather was a perfect gentleman”, and she attributed all maladies to “female trouble”, insisting she came from a long line of women afflicted by “descending wombs”. To anyone who challenged her views, Granny serenely responded: “Be that as it may”.
But in spite of childhood exposure to paens such as “When God Made the Southern Woman”, Florence seemed fated to stray from the path her Grandmother had chosen. As she puts it: “Whether (Granny) succeeded in making a lady out of me is for you to decide, but I will say one thing in my own favour… No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street”.
Florence’s rebellion kicked off at an early age. In school, she acquired an instant and lifelong dislike of children (“watery moles”), and “malkins” (girls whose only ambition in life is to marry and have children). In college, she tried everything to avoid being feminine, including wearing men’s suits and a brief stint in the Marines.
King’s writing is full of delicious puns, metaphors and priceless one-liners (“Like charity, schizophrenia begins at home”, she warns us). And she delights in grandiose overstatement: we are told that Granny was such an anglophile “she would have accepted a ride from Jack the Ripper”.
Nonetheless, Granny is remembered with warmth, love and compassion. She might have been an unreconstructed Old Virginian living in a deeply segregated society, but her best friend was Jensy, a coloured lady who was always treated as part of the family. Granny, it seems, “fought for civil rights differently, but she fought”. Florence notes she was never more “ladylike” than at these moments.
Although somewhat dated – (Florence quaintly refers to “Lesbianism” with a capital “L”) – this story has not lost any of its feminist spike. King undoubtedly has an axe to grind, but she knows that a message is most forcefully conveyed through humour. Accordingly, her memoir is wise, thought-provoking, and outrageously funny. It is a timeless classic: “coming-of-age” at its most entertaining, powerful and subversive.
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See Also:
Bach And Bush Flowers
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The Elixir Of Life
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