Q&A with Virginia Pye

 

Photo by Margaret Lampert

 

 

Virginia Pye is the author of the new historical novel The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann. Her other books include the story collection Shelf Life of Happiness. She lives in the Boston area.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, and how did you create your character Victoria?

 

A: I moved back to the Boston area eight years ago after many years away and noticed that people here read more than in any other place I’ve lived. It’s hard not to bump into historical markers to famous writers everywhere around this highly literate city.

 

As I sat down at my desk in Cambridge, I started to feel the shadow of the famous male authors who once lived here and make up part of the American canon—Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Frost, Du Bois, and others.

 

It made me wonder what it might have felt like to be a Boston woman writer in an earlier time. Not a Margaret Fuller, who was taken seriously by the male literary and publishing establishment, but a woman writer of what they would have called “frivolous” tales, the dime novels that women readers loved.

 

If I sensed a weight on my shoulders in this bookish town today, how must a woman author have felt back then? My protagonist, Victoria Swann, and her troubles began to take shape in my mind.

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I had a wonderful time researching this novel. I visited the Schlesinger Women’s Library at Radcliffe to learn about local women writers of an earlier time.

 

To my delight, I came upon a brief description of Mary Abigail Dodge (1833-1896), known by the pen name Gail Hamilton, author of essays and more than 25 books on religion, politics, travel, rural life, and the rights of women.

 

She also played a key role in the evolution of publishing when she sued James T. Fields of the esteemed Boston house of Ticknor and Fields for underpaying her as a woman.

 

When I read that, I instantly decided that my character of Victoria would do the same. I wanted this novel to be about a woman writer fighting to have a voice both on and off the page.

 

As I continued to research, I was surprised by how many of the issues faced by women in the 1890s are still with us today. Women writers, and all writers, are still fighting to be treated fairly by publishers (and movie companies).

 

But also, when I tracked down a treasure trove of dime novels at Brandeis University, I discovered that the advertisements at the back of them reveal an altogether different story from the ones told in the romance and adventure tales.

 

They offer thinly veiled abortion services by doctors whose addresses are P.O. boxes because abortion was illegal. Potions and strange apparatuses promise to help women with an unspecified problem, though presumably everyone knew their purpose.

And in Letters of the Lovelorn, real women sought advice about abusive relationships, harassing bosses, and also, unwanted pregnancy.

 

The real story of women’s lives of that era exists in the back pages of the popular fantasy tales and their problems are not dissimilar from those of many women today.

 

Q: The writer Kerri Maher said of the novel, “The adventures and dreams of Victoria, a brilliant and irreverent romance novelist from more than a century ago, will resonate with readers today.” What do you think of that description, and can you say more about how you’d compare Victoria's life to those of women writers today?

 

A: My hope is that readers will feel a strong connection to Victoria because her struggles aren’t very different from our own. Women are still trying to make their voices heard in so many ways, not the least as writers.

 

Sure, women writers are more published than in her day, but are our stories really the ones we want to tell? Are we holding back on what can be said? I think that could be true.

 

As we all know, abortion rights have taken a big step backward so that an illegal procedure as described in my story is close to our own reality. I was amazed that the Comstock Law is being discussed in relation to the Supreme Court’s recent rescinding of Roe v. Wade.

 

My novel also explores immigrant rights, in particular those of Chinese women who came to this country and then were deemed illegal. And finally, my novel shows a gay love story that I hope is less closeted than today, but perhaps not, depending on the state.

 

So, things have changed, and yet they haven’t in ways that leave many good people vulnerable.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I always make changes along the way, so that honestly, I don’t recall what I first envisioned as my ending. I suspect it wasn’t too different from where the book ends now.

 

I knew the feeling I wanted to leave the reader with—a sense of triumph that Victoria deserves. But it’s also a triumph for all readers and writers, for all thinking people with big hearts.

 

Also, I wanted the final moments to be a love story to the bookish cities of Boston and Cambridge. It makes perfect sense that the last scene takes place at the Boston Atheneum, an august private library a few doors over from our State House.

 

Nothing better suited Victoria than for her to go from a country farm to a lonely garret by the harbor, to Brattle Street, and finally to a place of honor on Beacon Hill.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m many drafts into my next novel, a contemporary story set in Richmond, Virginia, in the summer of 2020. It’s about two marriages that implode as the social protests take place and the Confederate monuments are falling.

 

It’s a dramatic time, both personally and politically, in a city I know and love after living there for 17 years.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Only that I hope your readers will pick up my novel and enjoy it. I’m grateful to the many respected fellow authors who read it in advance of publication and said nice things. But it’s readers who make all the difference.

 

That’s what the novel itself is about: how the relationships that readers have to the books they read is profound and how writers, like me, are deeply grateful to readers for their encouragement and love.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Virginia Pye.