What Every Woman Knows

by J.M. Barrie

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Genres: Plays, Classics, Fiction, Drama, Scotland, Theatre

85 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

James Matthew Barrie was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several successful novels and plays.

The son of a weaver, Barrie studied at the University of Edinburgh. He took up journalism for a newspaper in Nottingham and contributed to various London journals before moving there in 1885. His early Auld Licht Idylls (1889) and A Window in Thrums (1889) contain fictional sketches of Scottish life representative of the Kailyard school. The publication of The Little Minister (1891) established his reputation as a novelist. During the next decade, Barrie continued to write novels, but gradually, his interest turned towards the theatre.

In London, he met Llewelyn Davies, who inspired him about magical adventures of a baby boy in gardens of Kensington, included in The Little White Bird, then to a "fairy play" about this ageless adventures of an ordinary girl, named Wendy, in the setting of Neverland. People credited this best-known play with popularizing Wendy, the previously very unpopular name, and quickly overshadowed his previous, and he continued successfully.

Following the deaths of their parents, Barrie unofficially adopted the boys. He gave the rights to great Ormond street hospital, which continues to benefit.

Reviews

[M.A · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, I don’t know.

This was written before the women’s suffrage, it’s suppose to support the cause. I don’t think I see it?

I mean, the way women are portrayed here are so petty. We are constantly told that Maggie is not beautiful, she’s not smart nor does she have an opinion, at the very end you’d expect some character growth and there is but it’s not major and it doesn’t change a thing.

Maggie has charge of her life at the very end. However, I just think she’d thrown all her self-worth for a man who does not deserve her in the name of ‘love’, she gives John everything that she herself becomes nothing but his shadow and I don’t like it.

John is very honest, he’s a man of his word but that doesn’t forgive the way he treated Maggie. He is ashamed to know that she is the reason behind his success, at the end he still is ashamed and Maggie is okay with it as long as they are still married.

No, thank you.

Also I am absolutely aghast that the edition I had did not include the last page where the title comes to play. Like what? Why?

On another note, it was funny. If I had seen it live or got my hand on the film edition, and wasn’t being critical, it would’ve been enjoyable.

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notes: My comments on this story contain a few spoilers, I placed warnings above the particular paragraphs.
Also, I categorized this as a 'Funny Read'. It's not a split-your-sides, laugh-out-loud read, but it is rather witty, once you get into it.

So I started reading this knowing nothing about the book, except that it was written by the bloke who wrote Peter Pan... (Mind you, I wasn't expecting something like the boy who didn't want to grow up.)

SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T LIKE SPOILERS.
In short, it's about a man who, in order to be able to pay for his education to become a minister (and later has even political ambitions), promisses to wed a girl (who's a few years older than him). In return, her family pays for his education.
Years later, he's in politics, they're married and he falls in love with another woman. Also, it turns out his speeches ar not that great, without the delicate help from his wife... I won't tell whom he'll end up with.

THIS PART IS FAIRLY SPOILER FREE.
It took me forever to read these 80 pages (well, about 3 days, really. But I only managed to read a couple of pages at a time, so it felt like ages).
What kept tripping my reading flow up the first couple of pages was the 'dambrod', mainly because the Dutch word is 'dambord'. (the 2 reversed letters kept triggering my brain to scream 'typo!', even though it's correct).
But, it turned out to be a really interesting, and fairly funny read, once you get used to the form (it's written more or less like a play, with sort-of stage instructions.).
I did have a hard time figuring out Maggie. Did she just have an inferiority complex? Or was she just madly in love with John? Or was she an ambitious woman?

SPOILER ALERT, AGAIN (but, in my opinion it doesn't really influence the enjoyment of the story...)
I thought it was a shame Barrie didn't delve a bit deeper into her motives for standing by John like she does. On the other hand, it might be interpreted as part of 'the mystery that is woman', and part of the answer to the queastion the title raises...

This novella is food for thought, really, and definately worth a read!

[Mariangel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though everything is easily anticipated, this is an enjoyable play. I would like to see it performed at the theater.

[David Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading J.M. Barrie's play "What Every Woman Knows," I experienced a similar feeling I have had approaching other classics, the feeling of approaching a land teeming with life, fraught with bursting-over-the-bounds spiritedness, and of arriving there from an place where life has been depopulated and extinguished to a great degree. The inventor of Peter Pan, Barrie writes here a play for adults with great humor and insight. Even in the stage setting notes (those not meant to be spoken in the performance of the play) he is constantly making jokes.

A major theme of the play is the relations of men and women. It is decidedly a view outside today's mainstream, where Justice and Equality abolish gender and drive its observation underground. (How just is our Justice? Is it just to only focus on the pitfall of male bigotry at this point when 2/3rds of those going to college are women? Shouldn't we update our justice to ask why we are failing boys in our society and regarding it as a moral accomplishment while we are doing it?) I am not very comfortable with aspects of Maggie and John's relationship, not just John's veering towards adultery but also Maggie's stroking his male ego by helping his speech writing in such a way that he thinks he thought it all up himself. It seems to me she should not mask her contribution from him. But on the other hand, I think she is a convincingly wise character who knows how to deal with her man in her moment, in her era. More than that, I think she understands a dynamic of gender better than the flatliners of gender today who for the sake of Justice and Equality construct a definition of gender as being intrinsically unjust. They pride themselves in a presumed detachment from gender while nevertheless conforming to discernible gender patterns. If they acknowledge this, it is a way comparable to a mea culpa confession of sin. They say gender is a social construct because Freedom demands gender norms be eschewed as arbitrary, because they construe spiritual freedom to demand an active repudiation of one's nature as a constraint but there is nothing arbitrary about acknowledging and celebrating our gender-rootedness. Even lesbians and gay men exhibit gender specific tendencies, taken as a whole. Lesbian relationships tend to be characterized by greater fragility and a higher frequency of break up, and also by a cessation of sexual relations. Gay men tend to be more tolerant of and open to occasionally sharing their partners with other men, which goes along with a generally higher degree of male permissiveness. So we occult these gender differences for the sake of our democratic worldview but they are still there, just unacknowledged. Sometimes sociologists such as W. Brad Wilcox, who study such issues, run up against the ire of the liberal establishment. The Department of Sociology at the University of Virginia voted against granting tenure to this outstanding young scholar of family sociology "despite an extraordinary record of intellectual achievement and distinguished teaching because of his conservative religious and moral opinions- opinions that his politically correct opponents were foolish enough freely to mention in discussions prior to the vote on his application for tenure. Although university administrators initially upheld Wilcox's tenure denial, the university's president, John T. Casteen, reviewed the case and reversed the decision. Wilcox was granted tenure" (quoted from Robert George's Conscience and It's Enemies, pg.37.) Sociologists' tasks are ones of observation and sociology cannot prescribe anything, but observation is threatening to the worldview of many.

Another subject the play touches on is poverty and education. Sometimes poor societies have greatly valued education, more so than thankless predecessors who enjoy the opportunities their ancestors one from them.

[Julian Munds · Rating 3 out of 5]

This play is a play of its time. Out of that context the play would lose something. It was written only a few years before the suffragette movement and anticipates some of those arguments coming down the tubes. We might look back at this piece and say "oh what misogynist tripe." But in it's day, Barrie's suggestion that women might have minds, that they might leave a lasting impact on the world, these things are startling points for the popular stage. The Scottish bashing and not bashing is feature of the play that makes it less palatable but again it's a play of its time.

[Anthony Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a play I saw in 1974 at The Albery Theatre with Dorothy Tutin as Maggie - my sister was working for a theatre agent and got us tickets, I think. I enjoyed it. It was, and remains, an example of a well-made play. Reading it for the first time was - with allowances made for changes in social attitudes - a pleasurable experience.

The play (first performed in 1908) concerns a father and two brothers making a deal with an ambitious but impecunious young man that if they fund his education he should, at the end of five years, make himself available to marry their sister, Maggie, if she wishes it. The marriage duly takes place, but the young man, John Shand, has by this time become an MP and is subject to the advances of other younger and prettier women than Maggie. Because this is a comedy, there is a happy ending, but the way that is achieved I shall not reveal.

The play takes the point of view that behind every successful man there is a woman whose influence he is unaware of. This, says Maggie, is a woman's 'only joke', which in its day would, I suppose, have raised a laugh, and which today might be understood in a different way altogether. But there is a great deal also about choice, and in this respect, Maggie plays her life with brilliant pragmatism.

I think the play would be a challenge to perform today. In its day presumably it was intended to puncture masculine conceit and criticise what we would now call a lack of masculine emotional intelligence. On the other hand, not all men are the same: Maggie is, apparently without irony, grateful to her father and brothers for securing her an opportunity to marry a man with such good prospects who, it is clear, adore her and want the best for her. What's more, they are Scots, so maybe Barrie wanted to fire a salvo at the English male. Nevertheless, a modern audience might well feel that it's not John Shand who should be in Parliament, but his wife, and find themselves spluttering with indignation at a society that could have refused women the vote, and have offered them very little other than domesticity as a prospect. Thousands of Maggies were talented and unappreciated and their behind the scenes skills unacknowledged.

On the other hand, maybe a performance would be able to affirm the steps that society has made in trying to change all that?

Anyway, a play likely to divide opinion. There's some out-of-date romantic sweet talk which I think would need dealing with, either by re-writing it, or by actors who can embrace it with sincerity.

[p · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barrie does a great job here putting scenes together that will keep you edging forward. However, I feel the build-up is a little slow, and he resolves the tension too easily. The former might just be because this work is now over 100 years old, and the dialogue is at times over my head (I recommend reading Peter Hollindale's version with very helpful notations.)

The first scene sets up a plot with a very bizarre, almost surreal situation. Each scene that follows has the common comedic trope of one character (plus the audience) having extra information than the other characters; thus when the knowing character speaks, the words have double-meaning and often comedic and witty effect.

The play is also notable for being written and produced during the English women's suffrage movement, and having that theme play out both directly (via a minor plotpoint), and indirectly (via the main plot.) Another commentator summed it up as 'behind every great man is a woman' - but that is to miss the pretty blatant morale of the story. In fact, as I write this I re-read the last two pages, and the final summation of the moral of the story is quite explicit political advocacy for woman's suffrage; John representing male voters and Maggie females asking for suffrage.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Shand, a railway porter, advances himself in life, by dint of meticulous self-study, up until the time, when he succeeds in becoming a Member of Parliament.

He is a self-important person without a bone of comedy in him. He is not overtly affectionate or amorous to his wife Maggie.

If truth be told, Maggie is a plainlooking woman unsupplied with polish and charm. John considers her to be ignoramus and clod. She, nonetheless, is the real stimulation behind the fine speeches of John. He is shocked to discern that it is the petite touches put in by Maggie that comprise the efficacy of his speeches.

It is just about a brocard and adage of history that men who reach the stars, often tend to consider that they have achieved it all by themselves. They overlook the necessitous involvement of their devoted and more wide-awake wives. This is "what every woman knows."

All in all, a fantastic book to revise, on the eve of the International Women's Day

[Nicole Prescott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man’s view of Women is usually something I take with a grain of salt. A man writing a character that’s a woman, in my opinion, doesn’t come off as realistic or relatable.

I find that true with this play as well. But there is something about the character Maggie that is satisfying to read. She’s always the smartest one in the room. However, she only uses this trait to keep a man she loves who doesn’t love her back or even respect her. Maybe this was accurate for the time. Maybe not.

All in all it was still a good read and I did enjoy it!

[Leigh Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good, fast read. I don't usually read too many plays, but this was very cute. I picked it up because I was reading Peter Pan with my children and was interested in other works by Barrie.

[Sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jan. 2022: 4⭐️

[Kali · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not too bad, really. It’s a short play. I found the topic of man not being able to function without his wife to be a little tedious.

[Bre Teschendorf · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun fast read. I like reading plays very much and this one was particularly enjoyable with all of the authors novel-esk descriptions and notes. It was very humorous.
However, the subject matter was rather emotional to me (woman without love//unloved wife) and I found it hard to feel as light-hearted about it as the author treated it. Furthermore, haven't we all know a man like John (the main character) who is driven, prideful and humorless? It is hard to like that man, even in a book.

So, three stars! Not the best book I have ever read, not the worst. I read it quickly and enjoyed parts of it very much.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

The end is predictable, but the development of the play was enjoyable. The commentary adds to the air of the setting and the characters. In addition, it is a quick read. This piece of lit is worth the read.

[Michele · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the characters a lot, but they didn't develop at all. It was a fun read, but that was it.

[Kathi Sharp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Downloaded from Project Gutenberg. Witty, fun, lovely characters. I particularly liked the brothers David and James.

[Lise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Realistic, ironical play. Behind every great man is a woman.