I bought this book at Benn’s Books in Bentleigh. It’s my favourite new book shop and has been for decades. I wandered in there to do some research on how other non-fiction books look. After doing my research I did my normal meander around the books and then asked for a recommendation. It’s something I’ve been doing for a few years now and I’ve had some really great books, those booksellers know what they’re doing. This guy’s been there for years, he probably sold me my first Terry Pratchett book. With two seconds of my question he pulled out six books and gave me a one sentence synopsis of each one. It was a lovely thing to watch, I love watching experts at work.
This is the story of Dolly Maunder, written by her granddaughter, Kate Grenville. There is a lot of history and some leaps of faith when Grenville has to fill in some gaps in her knowledge. I say that because that is what Grenville does. She takes a real story and brings it to life in all of its historical detail. To say I loved this book and loved Dolly Maunder is an understatement.
Dolly Maunder was born near the end of the 19th Century to a poor farming family and rural NSW. She was expected to marry and move to her husband’s own farm. She wanted to be a school teacher, her father put his foot down and made her stay on the family farm. In that time women weren’t able to make decisions, have their own bank accounts or even own anything. After she finally married (at the age of 28, an old age to marry for the first time) she nagged her husband to make a better life.
The drought was a huge catalyst for Dolly and she pushed her husband to move to a better place. With her pushing they ended up owning and running businesses that worked, businesses that made money, businesses that took her far away from that farm where she grew up. She never stopped wanting more, even retirement didn’t last too long. I was so impressed with Dolly Maunder. Her indomitable spirit, the spirit that took every ‘no’ from the patriarchy and made her still make a good life for herself and her family.
With this book, the story of Dolly Maunder, we read a lot of Australian history. This includes how women were not allowed to have agency, everything had to be owned by men, if a woman wanted a bank account it had to be approved by a man – generally her father or husband. We see how the farms succeeded or failed depending on the weather, if the drought continued then they failed, if the hail came before they could harvest they failed. We learn that married women were not allowed to have a government job, they could work until they married then they had to stop. We also learned that this was because government jobs were kept for the men. My Mum went into teaching around 1955, she failed third year medicine and went to enquire about teaching, being honest she told them what she’d failed. They were desperate for people to teach science jobs so she went into teaching fairly quickly with very little training. When she got married in 1956 she was allowed to keep teaching, that rule of married women having to leave their job was dropped some time before she started teaching.
And just like in Stateless, a book I spoke about recently, Dolly also made her own yeast. One day I will unearth a recipe and try it for myself. According to Dolly it’s hard to get the temperature right, too cold or too hot and it dies. And you’d make the yeast the day before you wanted it. Take the yeast, make the bread and then make more yeast before moving onto the next job.
This book is a reminder that women didn’t have a lot of choice in life. They were given the appearance of choosing a man to marry, but he had to ask their father first, then they went down on bended knee as if the woman had a choice. And when you got married you lost your name! Miss Dolly Maunders became Mrs Bert Russell.
One thing that really hit me was the white feathers. It was something that women did during WWI in order to shame men into joining up to fight the war. They would hand out white feathers to men they deemed eligible to fight. Didn’t matter that they’d already been dismissed by the army, the women either didn’t know or ignored it and labelled them cowards. I noticed this in Loyal Creatures, a book I spoke about in 2014. It’s historical so we need to know about it, but we don’t have to like it.
Dolly had itchy feet. I wonder if it was a generational thing, my Grandma was the same. The difference is the Dolly improved her lot every time she moved, Grandma just bought another flat and moved. When Dolly sold one of her businesses she learned about goodwill. That intangible item that went with the sale of a business. She learned to be a businesswoman at a time when she still couldn’t sign any paperwork, all of the purchases and sales of any of her businesses had to be signed by her husband. She was the driving force behind every new business they undertook.
The last note I made on this book is about a pharmacy. It’s around 1927 and Dolly’s daughter is doing what she’s been told and going into pharmacy. This is seriously amazing. It’s around this same time that my grandmother was nagging her father to get her into a pharmacy, she wanted to be a chemist. My great-grandfather was told not to bother as she’d leave as soon as she was married, it wasn’t worth it. And yet Dolly was getting her daughter into a pharmacy, not only that but being a successful pharmacist with a good bank account. I was blown away when I read this bit, to find my family ancestry intersecting with this book in this way.
A really good book. I closed it with regret. Regret that I couldn’t meet Dolly and tell her what a fantastic woman she was. Regret that I couldn’t tell her that she was a real businesswoman and that she’s made such a success of her life. I will be lending this book to Mum and her friends, I feel they’ll all be interested to read it…if they haven’t already.