Woman Alive

by Susan Ertz

Woman Alive is an important work in the canon of speculative fiction, until now largely forgotten among the works of her contemporaries such as George Orwell, H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley.

Woman Alive is set in 1985 and is at once a satire and a commentary on the rising threat of nationalism in 1930s Britain. The novel is cinematic in structure, conjuring a world in which feminisim and pacifism are woven together to tell the story of Stella - an accidental survivor who became queen of England and the hope of humankind.

The relevance of this novel to 21st-century society is of course heightened post-Covid-19. But at its heart it is a love story, a romance of sorts and a page-turner extraordinaire.

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Susan Ertz was a popular novelist of the interwar years, best known for her novel Madame Claire, which was chosen as one of the first ten Penguin Books paperbacks in 1935; she also wrote In the Cool of the Day - later adapted into a film of the same name in 1963 - starring Jane Fonda and Angela Lansbury.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction

230 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1936

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

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well this was fascinating. It was written in the 1930's about a man who gets to live in the future, 1985 in fact. Unfortunately, all the women in the world are dead or dying of a plague caused by war. After the last woman is supposed to have died, our hero is approached by a young boy who wants help for his aunt. She really is the last woman alive. Humankind's salvation, if she agrees, but she thinks that it would be better for this warmongering species to die out. (She makes sense).

Interesting to see the comparisons with 1984: this one being a female take, and written before WW2, whereas Orwell's book was written after. I might have to re-read that one soon, it has been too long for me to really remember the details. The authors views of the sexes are rather dated, and simplistic; (it was Thatcher's decision to send troops to the Faulklands, so anyone reading this in 1985 would have cause to question the message).

[Elina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book! I read it after I read ‘I who never knew men’ and was looking for something similar but not exactly and this was excellent advice from someone. It’s not as dark like the IWNKM, but it has same feeling of longing , we don’t find out a lot about the future and how it ended up , but writer gave a nice glimpse of how it could be. Was it true, was it fantasy, was it a dream… and the story behind the woman who wrote it … simply fascinating. I highly advise to read it if you like the genre of realistic dystopian science fiction. If you get your hand in this little book especially recommend the edition with Graham Norton’s introduction. And remember, it was written by a woman in 1936…

[Susan Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating, thought-provoking, and yet little-known dystopian novel! I am so glad I discovered the Manderley Press on one of my London trips, and can’t wait to add more of them to my collection.

[Megan · Rating 3.25 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.’

[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This SF novel from 1935 postulates a future -1985 - that is quite sophisticated and rife with fun details, some of them prescient or just off-center from prescient. There's a framing narrative as the novel starts in the 1930s, with Dr. Selwyn getting help from a medium to mentally transport himself forward in time (just past Orwell's big year, as it turns out!) to a dystopia on the verge of apocalypse. If this is a 4 star novel, or 4.5 stars, I give it 5 for Ertz having Selwyn wonder if his 88-year-old self up in 1985 will know he's coming to piggy-back his own brain, because of course the older version of Selywn should have memories of the 'time travel'. This wonderful little side-bar pondering shows Ertz is really working the trickier angles of all that she has tackled here.

There has been war between 1935 and 1985 - the '20 Day War', the '8 Hour War'. There are neat pieces of future technology - Ertz seems to be bordering on the effort put into the film Minority Report, where Spielberg brought in futurists to try and get the weapons and tech of the future in accord with things we'd believe - and designer drugs to help get through the day. There are also special cars that prowl around to pick up the poor women as they die. A gas weapon has been used during the last war, and it is lethal to all women.

Only Stella will remain, it seems. Obviously, Ertz is prepared with a believable if convenient personal back-story for Stella to explain why she may be last woman standing. Once they find her, they want Stella as queen, Queen of England - Queen of the world, really, though plans get formulated by other countries to just, y'know, take her - and marry someone so she can be legally and spiritually suitable for producing a shitload of daughters (gender can be chosen) to re-repopulate the species. My gosh, does she get bowed to, fawned over, and put on a pedestal as all that is womanhood. The beautiful and refreshingly feminine saviour of the world, the future.

Well, she hates men, that's the problem. I can't say I blame her. The patriarchy had a spotty record before wiping out her gender, and she calls shocked penises out on this. Why not let some new animal replace humanity - men had their shot, and look what happens?! - as Stella sees it. Add to that the fact that she's STILL in danger, and nothing has changed, she can barely believe no attitudes about power and violence have shifted.

The great male effort to get Stella to chill out and smile begins...

It's an interesting novel. I wondered how dark this scenario was going to get, let's put it that way. Is this another Angel Island, waiting to happen? But, in the end, this is not the darkest story I've read, of this type. In fact, it's kind of funny, sometimes...though a part of me does not want to call it a satire. It's got a lot of serious brain-froth churning. I'm glad it made its hidden presence known. It needs a wider audience.

[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.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this little novel, recently reissued in a gorgeous edition from Manderley Press with a sweet and funny introduction by THE Graham Norton. it's a nifty little piece of speculative fiction from 1934 in which a gentleman time travels to 1985 where a mysterious plagues has killed all the women. When one woman is found to still be living and immune to the plague, how will the government handle it? Feminist, pacifist, thought-provoking. You can read it in an afternoon and be better for it.

[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....