- Anna Maria Junus
Review: Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an accomplished woman. Married to the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh who was the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, she was an aviator in her own right and the first woman to earn a first-class glider's license. She was also a successful writer known for her non-fiction stories of flying, as well as her novels.
About twenty years after the heartbreak of the famous kidnapping of her first born infant son which resulted in his death, Anne had a solo vacation on one of the islands in Florida where she was inspired to write this book.
By this time she had five children and had carved out some space for herself to run away to a very rough cottage on the beach. Rough as in no electricity and no plumbing. This is a woman who had a dishwasher in the early 50's in her home in Connecticut.
She's inspired by the shells on the beach and each chapter in this short book (you could read it in one sitting - it's only 130 pages) is devoted to one specific shell which she compares to the struggles that women face.
She writes of relationships, marriage, keeping up appearances, stripping things down, and the merry-go-round that women are on as they juggle husband, kids, home, careers, feminism, and social commitments.
The really insane thing about this book, is that although it was written over 60 years ago (published in 1955), before computers and cell phones, and the internet, it reads like something a woman wrote today. She wrote then what we talk about now. There is little to make us think it was written in the early 50's other than the occasional reference to a recent world war.
This book has been steadily selling since the time it was published. There is an addition written in 1975 when she republished it, noting the changes in the world in those twenty years. There is also a new forward on the 50th anniversary of the publication of this book written by her daughter Reeve (I need to use that name in a book sometime). I just saw this book in Chapters. It has never been out of print that I know of.
Although I have just recently heard of this book, I understand it's one that women return to again and again.
Anne did not set out to write a bestseller. These essays were written for her own benefit to work out her own thoughts and feelings. In spite of the fame and fortune that came to this family, she did not live an easy life and amid talk of her own affairs, it turns out her husband Charles, had a second and a third family on the side.
She was a complicated woman with a dark side when it came to Hitler. She and Charles felt that America shouldn't enter the war and in fact she had written a short book that was pro-fascism and had positive things to say about Hitler. Now bear in mind that at the time she wrote it prior to the war, that she wasn't alone in her assessment of Hitler. Many people were fooled by him. I hope she changed her mind as many did. So it's a mixed bag here as real people often are. There's nothing in this book that would lead you to think she still holds those thoughts. Nor does she speak of her marriage intimately. She only speaks of the marriage relationship in general.
It's an interesting book and one I will likely read again. I'm also interested in her other work as well. And frankly there is a part of me that wish I could go back in time to the 50's and 60's and visit for awhile.
