BOOKED Solid

Sarah Aldridge book takes a feminist stand on contemporary political and social issues

Long-time admirers of Sarah Aldridge’s books will welcome her newest novel, O, Mistress Mine. For first-time readers it’s a welcome introduction to her works. Spanning three decades since her introductory novel, The Latecomer, Ms. Aldridge has penned a body of works which seeks to portray the real inner lives of women—women who, until recent times, have been traditionally expected by society to efface their own true personalities and capabilities in order to maintain the dominant status of the men in their lives.

In keeping with her established feminist tradition, O, Mistress Mine does not disappoint, yet manages to add a plethora of contemporary issues that modern women, and lesbians in particular, face. An academic setting provides the backdrop for an examination of a lesbian relationship that is a scattered minefield of emotions, exploding in a close look at issues involving not only the personal but the highly charged political.

Joan Etheridge arrives at Allington, a 150-year-old college steeped in tradition, as the new chairman of the Language Department. Joan is viewed by many as the agent of change and modernization needed in an institution that is trying to bend to modern thought without breaking long-standing values held by conservative elements on campus.

While Joan is struggling to adjust to her place in Allington, discover the extent of her teaching duties, and assess her fellow academics, Alice Winkler enters her life. Alice is a confused, restless woman emotionally adrift and searching for meaning to her life. She senses that Joan can show her the way to stability and help direct her.

Alice is tainted by the 15-year-old Pembroke murders. The Pembrokes were both members of Allington’s faculty and were brutally murdered in their Palm Beach, Florida home by members of a drug-crazed satanic cult. Alice’s association with the group led to initial suspicion that she was involved with the murders. While proven innocent of charges and later completing a drug rehabilitation program, Alice lives under a cloud of disgrace that the murders have cast across the campus. The fact that her father is chancellor of Allington has made her place there more difficult rather than easier.

Joan’s empathy for the seemingly lost and troubled Alice leads her on an unexpected and life-changing journey. Pulled against her will into a maelstrom of hot button issues concerning reproductive freedom and civil rights for homosexuals equal to those of heterosexuals, Joan faces the dilemma of whether to be more public about her sexual orientation or to continue along the path she has taken, that is to assume people know but it is not an issue publicly discussed.

Alice continues to seek answers to things that have perturbed her, primarily the "why" of artificial insemination. She posits, "Why [do] people want to have babies. Oh, I know, babies just happen mostly, don’t they? And I can see why lots of times women want to avoid having them. I think it’s wicked to make a woman have a baby when she doesn’t want it. That’s not good for the baby either, is it? But why do some people want to go to all this trouble to have babies artificially?"

Both Alice and Joan must find their way in a world where feminist views still don’t have total acceptance and where the days of discrimination that paint homosexuality as an evil have far from ended.