Ashton-Warner was born on 17 December 1908, in Stratford, New Zealand. She spent many years teaching Māori children, using stimulating and often pioneering techniques which she wrote about in her 1963 treatise Teacher and in the various volumes of her autobiography. Her success derived from a commitment to "releasing the native imagery and using it for working material" and her belief that communication must produce a mutual response in order to effect a lasting change. As a novelist, she produced several works mostly centred on strong female characters. Her novel Spinster (1958) was made into the 1961 film Two Loves (also known as The Spinster) starring Shirley MacLaine. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to education and literature in the 1982 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Ashton-Warner died on 28 April 1984, in Tauranga. Her life story was adapted for the 1985 biographical film Sylvia, based on her work and writings.
The Faculty of Education library at The University of Auckland—the institution at which Ashton-Warner trained between 1928 and 1929— was named the Sylvia Ashton-Warner Library in 1987 and includes the Sylvia Ashton-Warner Collection.
There is a certain breed of reader who tries to spot the glorious forest green spines of Virago Modern Classics each time they enter a bookshop. Reader, I am one of them. I therefore quickly located a copy of Sylvia Ashton-Warner's Spinster, a book which I had wanted to read for years, on a pre-Christmas trip to an Oxfam Bookshop, and picked it up immediately.
In Spinster, Ashton-Warner tells the story of Anna Vorontosov, 'spinster and genius', who works as a teacher for Maori children in a remote New Zealand town, in the North Island area of Hawke's Bay. Anna is described as a 'passionate woman, uncertain and gauche in her relations with men'; rather racy, it seems, for a novel first published in 1958. Anna is able to find peace 'only in her schoolroom, her garden and the little back room where she struggles to create the works which will set her beloved children free.'
The Virago Modern Classics edition features an introduction written by the poet Fleur Adcock. She writes that Spinster is 'a remarkable book: one could almost say a better book than it deserves to be... Somehow the country school-teacher who wanted an audience for her ideas about the teaching of reading had almost accidentally created not just a bestseller but a work of art.' She goes on to comment on the 'fresh, lively writing', as well as the 'suspense of a kind which does not seem artificial, and... a warm, half-exasperated, half-amused love for the children on whom the whole depends.' Adcock also points out that in Spinster, 'Ashton-Warner continues to use a first-person narrator who is both herself and not herself.' She calls her 'a convincing fictional character' who is 'certainly rooted in her creator's experience.'
I got a feel for Anna and her peculiarities quite quickly. In just the second paragraph, Ashton-Warner creates a motif which is repeated at several points throughout the book: 'But here is the spring again with its new life, and as I walked down my back steps ready for school in the morning I notice the delphiniums. They make me think of men. The way they bloom so hotly in the summer, then die right out of sight in the winter, only to push up mercilessly again when the growth starts, is like my memory of love.' Anna lives frugally, and relies heavily upon a tumbler of brandy, which she drinks each morning before school. Our narrator comments: 'Yet I teach well enough on brandy. Once it has lined my stomach and arteries I don't feel Guilt. It supplies me with a top layer to my mind so that I meet fifty Maori infants as people rather than as the origin of the Inspector's displeasure...'.
Anna is rather cynical about her profession. She comments: 'No other job in the world could possibly dispossess one as completely as this job of teaching. You could stand all day in a laundry, for instance, still in possession of your mind. But this teaching utterly obliterates you.' She is overwhelming proud, however, to be the custodian of her pupils, whom she calls 'Little Ones'. She says: 'I am made of their thoughts and their feelings. I am composed of sixty-odd different pieces of personality. I don't know what I have been saying or what I will say next, and little of what I am saying at the time.'
So many shouts and demands from her pupils have been included, in long and quite disorientating conversational exchanges. There is always a real awareness of '... dozens of infants talking and working and playing and laughing and crying and embracing and quarrelling and singing and making.' I found this quite jarring, if I am honest. Ashton-Warner successfully conveys the clamour and chaos of a large group of small children, but I cannot say that I enjoyed reading this. So many characters are introduced at once that it feels like a real assault on the senses.
Spinster is very much of its time, and a lot of the language used within it to denote different groups of people was thankfully outlawed long ago. Anna is quite a complex character, and this becomes more apparent as the novel moves from one season to the next. Anna's complexity, to me, had the effect of confusing the narrative somewhat. She oscillates back and forth between past and present relationships, and her feelings for a colleague.
Spinster was a novel which brought Ashton-Warner immediate fame; it was later turned into a feature film. Time Magazine calls it a 'major literary masterpiece', and fellow Virago-published author Penelope Mortimer admired the 'explosive passion of Ashton-Warner's prose, and the 'eruption of innocent sensuality which is quite remarkable.'
Spinster is readable and written well enough, but I did not personally find it a compelling novel. The stream-of-consciousness style which Ashton-Warner adopts is something which I ordinarily love, but here, I found it difficult to connect with. I feel, too, that an opportunity was missed; much of the action takes place inside, or in the confined space of Anna's garden, so there is very little description included about the New Zealand setting.
Little happens in Spinster; it is a character study, and not an entirely scintillating or convincing one at that. Like a lot of readers, I preferred the second half of the novel to the first, but I am doubtful as to whether I will remember much about it in years to come. Parts of Spinster were interesting, but others felt overdone, or a touch repetitive. The novel was not quite what I was expecting, and I do not feel compelled to read any of Ashton-Warner's other books in future.
This is such an unusual, original and addictive work of fiction . And Sylvia Ashton-Warner has a really distinct and extraordinary ,and still now, fresh voice. It's erratic ,chaotic and neurotic. It is crashing and noisy and really reflects the noisiness of a busy classroom. We are held very closely from start to finish in the thoughts and heart of Anna ,a teacher of infants, the first person protagonist in this novel,and it's a very fascinating place to reside. She talks to the flowers in her garden ,who provide her with interesting conversation and thematically the book takes us through the seasons and it's very much like being in the midst of an extremely wild garden with flowers that have a lot of personality ,opinion and chatter. They reflect Anna's inner world projected out into her physical world. She is at times funny , very warm with her pupils and sometimes extremely cutting . She struggles with authority figures and shys away from them. In the first half of the book ,she relies on a glass of alcohol , daily, to give her courage to face the day. And there are repetitions of lines that make us feel like we're in the topsy turvy world of someone a little inebriated. Her spinster existence has her feeling very insular and fantasising about some of the male characters she comes across. She seems brilliant ,in the way that when someone is so brilliant of mind that it is difficult for them to articulate the barrage of thoughts they are having. Some of the book is based on Ashton-Warner's own experience as a teacher and her discovery of an innovative new method of teaching. Anna takes us into her world and it is constantly tumbling ,only to be built back up again by her surprisingly relentless optimism, in spite of her also relentless pessimism. We are swept with the highs and lows she experiences both in her personal life ,and as a teacher. It's whimsical and wondersome and by the time you reach the close you will want to go right back to the beginning and start again.
I stumbled upon this on Goodreads where I had classified it as "want to read." I just read a review and realized I had read it! This is one of a number of 200 paperback books the Peace Corps gave to volunteers just setting out for parts unknown in 1965-66. What I remember most was the how the narrator could not interest her Maori pupils in reading until she brilliantly came up with a solution. The solution was commonsense in nature, but would never catch on in our approach to reading now. I'm certain it would be considered condescending and culturally insensitive. It was electrifying and I have never forgotten it. I do not recall the rest of the book very well.
Anna Vorontosov is 'a woman of forty-four' p.46 or 'a woman of thiry-four' p.46 or very old as in the 'vague fifties' p.49. The book's style reflects her frame of mind. In the beginning the thoughts are chaotic. She is likely to think, I will do A, and then immediately we find that instead she has done B. She is an unreliable narrator throughout so sometimes we are not even sure what she did; we only know the confusion of thoughts and reasoning that flood her consciousness. The narrative clears and she gives up her half glass of brandy before school, so I advice readers to stick with it in the most difficult early part.
She is torn three ways. (1) by a strong desire and fear to be a great teacher for her mixed white, yellow, and brown 'infant' pupils. The whites are the dregs as most parents have pulled their children from this mostly Maori school where 'infants' begin classes at the age of five. The yellow, those of mixed parentage are accepted by neither side of adults. (2) by a love of the arts and culture. She plays classical piano, watercolors, reads poetry, and writes. "Where is the austerity, the simplicity, the purity and the sanctity of the engaged artist?" p.144 (3) by her struggle with the passionate woman within who does not want to be a spinster.
This book is about a lady who teaches a group of mainly Maori children in New Zealand but tries to teach them to read in the conventional English way until she hits upon a new style of teaching where she gets them to relate to words that they are really passionate about. This only really starts to happen in the last quarter of the book unfortunately and for most of it I found it fairly average. Probably worth reading just for the new teaching style she brings in near the end of the school.
⚠️ Warning! Spoilers! My first book choice for #spinsterseptember didn't exactly start with a bang. I really struggled to get into the style of the writing and the main character, Anne, drove me nearly to despair. It wasn't until I reached near the halfway point that I started to tune into her world a little better, filtering out some of the background noise from the pupils in her school room, and starting to understand that this book is really a character study, that I actually began reading rather than wrestling with it.
Anne is not a content spinster. She's in pain from a failed relationship with a married man and finds opportunities to weep all over the place. She props herself up with a large brandy each morning before setting off for work in a nursery, and finds solace in the trees and the flowers in her garden, even if they make her cry, too. There is lots to be sad about at the school: pupils come from poor backgrounds, they witness domestic violence, and a thirteen year old falls pregnant only to lose her twin babies. The implication of who fathered the children is also pretty appalling.
Despite this, there are several points in favour of this book. Firstly, the children. The aforementioned background noise that clutters and blocks out the story, is extremely well described. If you've ever stepped into a busy crowded classroom you'll definitely recognise that mind-bending level of activity and noise! The children's personal stories are partly written in their own voices through brief poems, some of which are very moving. There are some gorgeous characters in the class, even little Seven who seems intent on causing physical damage to everyone around him.
I enjoyed the dynamic between Anne and her much younger male colleague, Paul, a fellow drinker. The developing friendship, and the generous age gap was realistically portrayed, along with its inappropriately lusty overtones. I also thought the use of the seasons as section headings worked beautifully as we walk with Anne on her emotional journey to some kind of stability.
I suspect it's supposed to be mildly amusing, but the humour mostly just didn't quite hit the mark for me, apart from the bits about the inspector with the very long legs, and the section on lice...
Obviously this is a period piece, so has all the usual warnings about casual racism.
'I kneel to the level of a delphinium bud and tip its chin. "Why do I try so hard to look beautiful when my life has been so sad?" Her voice is confused with the others and I lean a bit nearer to catch it. Life is in bloom, she is saying, and you're only trying to match it.'
What a curious little novel. Anna Vorontosov is a middle-aged teacher in a rural New Zealand school in the 1950s. She talks to the flowers in her garden, needs a glass of brandy in the morning to face the day, and is passionate about developing the creativity and independence of her young pupils, in stark opposition to the education system that has deemed her a failure due to her lack of lesson plans and discipline in her chaotic classroom.
I've given it 3 stars but it's more of a 3.5, and that is due to personal taste - I didn't love Anna's stream-of-consciousness voice, although I appreciated it as different from so many bland narratives that I've read. I'm also not hugely interested in infant education, which is the main focus of the book, although the voices of the children in Anna's classroom were some of the best parts. Anna herself is vividly drawn but a bit of a frustrating character, self-sabotaging and often distracted by the men around her. Again, my feelings about this are subjective and I think it would appeal to readers who love messy, flawed Sad Girl novels more than it did to me.
This book is one I have often heard of as a classic NZ novel but never really thought to read. It turned up in the book swap at the end of my driveway and I am so glad I read it. I feel like it must have been quite controversial when it was published. On the surface it's the story of a teacher of middle age teaching 5 year olds in a mostly Māori school. Why is it mostly Māori? Who knew that white flight is a thing as old as the history of public schooling, probably. The book includes very disturbing incidents but also these observations that about the clash of culture in NZ that reminded me of things I had read about regarding first encounters between Māori and Pākeha such as the difference in the cultures' respective expressions (or lack of) emotion, private ownership versus communal and the different attitudes to childhood.
Also the writing style is this fascinatingly stream of consciousness style that includes little excerpts of the tamariki's writing which I loved.
This novel is the story of Anna Vorontosov, a teacher of Maori children in New Zealand. She is full of passions, sorrows, doubts, and dreams. The author captures her unique inner voice and vision, drawing readers into a world of flowers, music, painting, and the storms of children's emotions, racial-social prejudice, and New Zealand itself. A truly singular book.
[These notes were made in 1984; I read the Penguin, 1961 ed.:] Moira Whalon gave me this for my 25th birthday - one spinster to another! I found it difficult to get into, as I do most stream-of-consciousness narratives, the messy flow of apparently undifferentiated detail irritating my would-be-orderly soul. Nonetheless, this turns out to be quite a crafted book. An unconventional infant-school teacher in Maori New Zealand is recovering from a breakup with a fellow named Eugene, attracted by a young but clinging fellow-teacher named Paul, and haunted by the shadow of an inspector. She is also vaguely but continuously unhappy about the state of the education in her classroom of mostly Maori children - she is searching for a "key." Well, Paul turns into an alcoholic and eventually kills himself, having first made a local girl pregnant, a fact our narrator - Anna Vorontosov is her name - never consciously admits to herself. The inspector (Abercrombie), when he finally arrives, prove to be supportive, not intimidating, and encourages Anna in her unconventional teaching methods, especially when she discovers her "key." It seems that Matawhero and Wiki and Hinewaka, and all the other children we have come to know, have certain 'key' words which carry a great emotional punch: are "captions" for an inner landscape of love or fear. So Anna sets out to find these key words for each child, and finds that they are much more easily read and written, and often clear the emotional channels. Inevitably, the crash comes: Anna still does not get a good grading as a teacher, and her mental romance with the inspector crashes in ruins. A letter from Eugene arrives opportunely, and she flees back to him. I found this last half of the book -dealing with education - very much the best.
As a new teacher this book was comforting. Sylvia Ashton-Warner is modest and vulnerable. She is a keen observer of her young Maori students- her teaching is inspired by their natural curiosity and individuality. Her writing was a little sticky at times- she would sometimes lose my attention. However, I felt I could relate to her need for a glass of brandy at time before going heading to school.
Spinster is the first person story of a middle-aged single woman who is a grade school teacher in a primarily Maori school in New Zealand. She often starts the day with a glass of brandy and has very non-standard teaching methods.
The book didn't draw me in like I had hoped it would, but it was definitely told from a unique narrator's perspective.
Not a fan of this one, sad teacher has a kind of romance with another sad teacher, frets about administrators, and acts as a mouthpiece for the authors ideas about educating Maori Children. Dour, dull.