Woman alive

by Susan Ertz

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction

230 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

British fiction writer and novelist known for her "sentimental tales of genteel life in the country." She was born in England to American parents and moved back and forth between both countries during her childhood. At 18, she chose to live in the UK. In 1932 she married British Army officer Major John Ronald McCrindle, British barrister.

One of her most highly praised books was The Porcelain, the story of a London woman who marries a Mormon missionary and moves with him to Utah.
One of her later works, "In the Cool of the Day" was made into a movie in 1963 starring Jane Fonda, Peter Finch, and Angela Lansbury.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25. Always interesting to read early 20th century speculative fiction. This was written in 1936 and mostly takes the form of a vision of the future (1985), where a plague released by a warmongering country kills all the world's women, leading men to despair about the end of humanity, until one surviving woman is found in England.

The vision of 1985 sounds a lot like Disney's Tomorrowland — airy, beautiful architecture; flying cars; a society perfected aside from the little detail of war. Though written by a woman, the views on women are very much of its time: a belief in women's inherent superior goodness and peaceableness compared to men combined with an equally strong belief in men's superior scientific skills and adventuring spirits.

The book's intended message seems to be that men's instinctive first response to any insult being aggression will be the ruin of us all, and only woman's influence can save humanity. An interesting message considering it was written mere years before the outbreak of WWII. Perhaps it's just 2026, but I found myself wishing Stella had stuck to her original plan of not marrying and just letting the self-sabotaging species of homo sapiens die out.

[Maisie Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woman Alive follows a man presently living in 1930’s London, who is given the opportunity to experience his future life. He visits the year 1985 and comes to discover that women all over the world are dying from an unknown cause, with no known cure. After the last woman in the world is pronounced dead, and all hope is lost, he happens to meet a boy who is certain his auntie is still a life. This is where we meet Stella, the last woman alive. My favourite character was Stella, and I recommend this book because it’s an interesting take on feminism, capitalism, and nationalism. When I started reading this book, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between it and George Orwell’s 1984. But once Stella was introduced, everything changed. Both books were written to challenge, but Woman Alive was written to challenge something different; sex and gender. And that seems like an extremely brave thing to do as a woman in the 1930’s. ‘Life would perhaps become a more valued thing, would perhaps be known for the mystery and the wonder that it is.’

[Christopher Walthorne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some books are forgotten for a reason. This piece of speculative fiction gets things more wrong than right, imagining a 1985 where people still act and talk like they did in the 1930’s, and whilst Ertz does accurately predict chemical warfare and the divisions of allegiances between countries, the tone is too old fashioned to work as a futuristic novel. Heavy on exposition, and suffering from an unnecessary bookending structure that culminates in a very clunky ending, this is less a rediscovered classic than an unearthed curiosity.

[Dawn Tyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a piece of science fiction from the thirties this is, and would have seemed at the time I’m sure, highly imaginative. It is more a work of pacifism and feminism though, heavy on the idea of women as peacemakers and men as warmongers. The language is naturally of its time, the idea of men still wearing hats in the mid-eighties amusing. It is gentle in tone, and it makes me wonder how much SF from the C21 will survive critical consideration fifty years hence.

[Lesley]

Rather weird - a bit of an outlier as far as women's dystopian fiction of the 1930s goes. Somewhat inconclusive....