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Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter
Lyndall Gordon was born in 1941 in Cape Town, a place from which `a ship takes fourteen days to reach anywhere that matters'. Born to a mother whose mysterious illness confined her for years to life indoors, Lyndall was her secret sharer, a child who grew to know life through books, story-telling and her mother's own writings. It was an exciting, precious world, pure and rich in dreams and imagination - untainted by the demands of reality. But a daughter grows up. Despite her own inability to leave home for long, Lyndall's mother believed in migration, a belief that became almost a necessity once the horrors of apartheid gripped their country. Lyndall loves the rocks, the sea, the light of Cape Town, but, struggling to achieve a life approved by her mother, she tries and makes a failure of living in Israel and then, back once again in her beloved South Africa she marries and moves with her husband to New York. It's in America in 1968 when suddenly Lyndall realises she cannot be, and does not want to be, the woman, the daughter and the mother her mother wants her to be. This is a wonderfully layered memoir about the expectations of love and duty between mother and daughter. The particular time and place, the people and the situation are Lyndall's, but the division between generations, the pain and the joy of being a daughter are everywoman's.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published June 19, 2014
About the author
Lyndall Gordon
20 books120 followersLyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) is a British-based writer and academic, known for her literary biographies. She is a Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
Born in Cape Town, she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York City. She married the pathologist Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters.
Gordon is the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977), which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature; and Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publication is Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has overturned the established assumptions about the poet's life.
(from Wikipedia)
Born in Cape Town, she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York City. She married the pathologist Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters.
Gordon is the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977), which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature; and Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publication is Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has overturned the established assumptions about the poet's life.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 26, 2025
It was very poetic - maybe I would’ve enjoyed it more if I was more familiar with Rhoda’s poetry.
But expected (because the intro/ blurb promises) more on the tension of their relationship. vague and confused
But expected (because the intro/ blurb promises) more on the tension of their relationship. vague and confused
May 28, 2014
DIVIDED LIVES is a memoir about mothers and daughters. It deals with a variety of themes – art and literature, chronic illness, depression, Judaism, apartheid and South Africa. As such it makes for a very interesting read from a variety of perspectives.
Lyndall grows up in Cape Town with her mother, father and younger brother. Her mother has epilepsy, and often relies on Lyndall to look after her during Lyndall’s childhood. Lyndall traces her mother’s life through her diagnosis, and how the illness affected her, through various mental health problems and post-partum depression, her travels in Europe and her desire to study literature, and the re-emergence of her Faith and Jewish heritage. We see how Lyndall, after such a dependent childhood, becomes distant from her mother – not wanting a traditional Jewish wedding, being unwilling to stay in Israel like her mother wanted – but also how their lives are very similar, with their shared love of literature and shared history of depression after the birth of their children.
I thought thematically and structurally the story was very well put together. I loved how literature was woven throughout the story – from the Biblical parallels to the comparisons with Dickinson and Eliot, to Rhoda’s own poetry and writing. I got a real sense of why Lyndall was writing, why she felt like she had to tell her mother’s story, and I think that’s an idea that is very present throughout the book after being introduced in the first chapter.
Lyndall also writes movingly about the ups and downs of motherhood. The book is about mother-daughter relationships and it demonstrates the significance of them very effectively, but the discussion of post-partum depression is very moving and well-depicted. By bringing feminism into it, Lyndall is able to discuss the difficulties both her and her mother faced, being pulled in separate directions by their own ambitions and studies, and the needs of their families; the book is very effective at showing the damage these decisions can create on women’s minds.
My one hesitation about this book is that I didn’t fall in love with Rhoda in the way I thought I was meant to. I think Lyndall has put so much effort into presenting her relationship with her mother in all it’s ups and downs that I didn’t actually end up getting the sense of motherly love I wanted. But I think this is probably a very subjective thing and quite hard to balance. Generally I loved it, and I can see why the story might be interesting for different reasons to different people, and that Lyndall has done a good job of balancing these factors without letting any of them overpower the others.
Lyndall grows up in Cape Town with her mother, father and younger brother. Her mother has epilepsy, and often relies on Lyndall to look after her during Lyndall’s childhood. Lyndall traces her mother’s life through her diagnosis, and how the illness affected her, through various mental health problems and post-partum depression, her travels in Europe and her desire to study literature, and the re-emergence of her Faith and Jewish heritage. We see how Lyndall, after such a dependent childhood, becomes distant from her mother – not wanting a traditional Jewish wedding, being unwilling to stay in Israel like her mother wanted – but also how their lives are very similar, with their shared love of literature and shared history of depression after the birth of their children.
I thought thematically and structurally the story was very well put together. I loved how literature was woven throughout the story – from the Biblical parallels to the comparisons with Dickinson and Eliot, to Rhoda’s own poetry and writing. I got a real sense of why Lyndall was writing, why she felt like she had to tell her mother’s story, and I think that’s an idea that is very present throughout the book after being introduced in the first chapter.
Lyndall also writes movingly about the ups and downs of motherhood. The book is about mother-daughter relationships and it demonstrates the significance of them very effectively, but the discussion of post-partum depression is very moving and well-depicted. By bringing feminism into it, Lyndall is able to discuss the difficulties both her and her mother faced, being pulled in separate directions by their own ambitions and studies, and the needs of their families; the book is very effective at showing the damage these decisions can create on women’s minds.
My one hesitation about this book is that I didn’t fall in love with Rhoda in the way I thought I was meant to. I think Lyndall has put so much effort into presenting her relationship with her mother in all it’s ups and downs that I didn’t actually end up getting the sense of motherly love I wanted. But I think this is probably a very subjective thing and quite hard to balance. Generally I loved it, and I can see why the story might be interesting for different reasons to different people, and that Lyndall has done a good job of balancing these factors without letting any of them overpower the others.
June 7, 2025
Lyndall Gordon is the author of literary biographies of English and American writers, including T S Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Brontë and Mary Wollstonecraft. Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter is a thoughtful and reflective memoir of her mother, Rhoda, and their changing relationship.
Lyndall Hopkinson's mother Rhoda, born in South Africa in 1917 into a Lithuanian Jewish family was a passionate reader and writer who dreamed of travelling and studying abroad, and passed on many of her interests and ambitions to her daughter. Lyndall is named after the heroine of a South African feminist novel, Olive Schreiner's The Story of An African Farm. However, Rhoda's life is constrained by a mysterious health condition that she has learned that she must keep a secret, and by a conservative, traditional values and expectations of women to settle for marriage and motherhood. She married and had children in her 20s. Rhoda did travel to Europe, including Finland and England in the 1950s, leaving behind her husband and children in South Africa, but she is not able to enrol on a university course in London as she had hopes and she faces increasing pressure to return home to her husband and family commitments.
This is a fascinating exploration of the lives and the relationship between a mother and daughter, with many complexities and contradictions, as Lyndall grows up and tries out some of her mother's plans and dreams for her before finding her own way forward.
Much of this story is set in the apartheid era when a series of laws mandated racial segregation and discrimination to maintain existing social and economic inequalities (from the 1950s onwards). Rhoda was not a supporter of apartheid, and this was a major reason why South Africans like Lyndall Hopkinson and her husband wanted to emigrate and settle somewhere else. But there is not much about the politics of apartheid or resistance to it - the struggles portrayed are personal ones within white society.
The book is illustrated with many black and white photographs, dispersed throughout the text on ordinary paper, from 19th century family portraits of Rhoda's own mother to Rhoda in old age in the 1990s. While the reproduction may not be high quality, I am impressed by the number of photographs and the length of time they document.
This is a moving, thought provoking memoir, and writing a review made me want to reread the book already.
Lyndall Hopkinson's mother Rhoda, born in South Africa in 1917 into a Lithuanian Jewish family was a passionate reader and writer who dreamed of travelling and studying abroad, and passed on many of her interests and ambitions to her daughter. Lyndall is named after the heroine of a South African feminist novel, Olive Schreiner's The Story of An African Farm. However, Rhoda's life is constrained by a mysterious health condition that she has learned that she must keep a secret, and by a conservative, traditional values and expectations of women to settle for marriage and motherhood. She married and had children in her 20s. Rhoda did travel to Europe, including Finland and England in the 1950s, leaving behind her husband and children in South Africa, but she is not able to enrol on a university course in London as she had hopes and she faces increasing pressure to return home to her husband and family commitments.
This is a fascinating exploration of the lives and the relationship between a mother and daughter, with many complexities and contradictions, as Lyndall grows up and tries out some of her mother's plans and dreams for her before finding her own way forward.
Much of this story is set in the apartheid era when a series of laws mandated racial segregation and discrimination to maintain existing social and economic inequalities (from the 1950s onwards). Rhoda was not a supporter of apartheid, and this was a major reason why South Africans like Lyndall Hopkinson and her husband wanted to emigrate and settle somewhere else. But there is not much about the politics of apartheid or resistance to it - the struggles portrayed are personal ones within white society.
The book is illustrated with many black and white photographs, dispersed throughout the text on ordinary paper, from 19th century family portraits of Rhoda's own mother to Rhoda in old age in the 1990s. While the reproduction may not be high quality, I am impressed by the number of photographs and the length of time they document.
This is a moving, thought provoking memoir, and writing a review made me want to reread the book already.
September 10, 2018
This is a memoir of the author's mother and also an autobiography, focussing on the rather intense mother-daughter relationship. The author is an established literary biographer, so it's interesting to see how she brings the biographer's craft to her own story: some of this is speculative (the anecdotes around individual photographs), for some there are surviving letters and other people's memoirs. The defining aspects of their lives are the mother's illness, apparently known to be epilepsy from early on but the knowledge kept from her; South Africa; Judaism; post-natal depression; the competing challenges of home/family and career/literature/fulfilment as writers. Much of it is written in the present tense, which I don't always find works for me when discussing past events, although I know that the purpose is to make it more immediate. There is much food for thought and it's an interesting story, however.
I should say that I was, briefly, one of Lyndall Gordon's students at St. Hilda's, where I cycled to her home in North Oxford for tutorials on T.S. Eliot, in which she almost got me to like him. (The black-and-white photographs scattered throughout the text, which convey a real flavour of the life and times of both her and her mother, include one from this period in which she is wearing a Laura Ashley blouse identical to one I had, and there's a nice picture of her with her family by the river at the college, on the very spot where they are about to demolish a pretty building. I digress.) I had no idea at the time that Judaism was such an important part of her life, and perhaps even more that of her mother's.
One for readers of literary biography and women's lives.
I should say that I was, briefly, one of Lyndall Gordon's students at St. Hilda's, where I cycled to her home in North Oxford for tutorials on T.S. Eliot, in which she almost got me to like him. (The black-and-white photographs scattered throughout the text, which convey a real flavour of the life and times of both her and her mother, include one from this period in which she is wearing a Laura Ashley blouse identical to one I had, and there's a nice picture of her with her family by the river at the college, on the very spot where they are about to demolish a pretty building. I digress.) I had no idea at the time that Judaism was such an important part of her life, and perhaps even more that of her mother's.
One for readers of literary biography and women's lives.
October 6, 2014
This book was dreadfully self indulgent. Could not finish it...
January 6, 2022
I found this book very moving. A tale of the entwined (twinned) lives of a mother and a daughter; it goes beyond the usual bond, the normal modeling. This is a somewhat pathological relationship, yet the writer shows how, in untangling herself, she finds not only herself, but a way to be a mother to her own daughters. She grants them and supports them in their individuality. I've read all Gordon's books, and now understand her need to explore Eliot, Woolf, Wollstonencraft, Bronte. Her triumph is, however, 'Lives like Loaded Guns - Emily Dickinson and her family feuds'. It is apparent now why Gordon understood what 'the matter was' with Dickinson — it must have leapt out from the pages of her poems.
September 23, 2015
Lyndall Gordon is one of the best literary biographers I have read, and this book is a very colorful, detailed account of how she grew into her art. While enjoying her unique voice and keen observations, one is treated to a portrait of her mother and the lengths she would (and wouldn't) go to to practice her art as a poet. Their story mostly takes place in South Africa, and the sense of place is another treat (tellingly, this is not the case when Gordon talks about her life elsewhere). Last comes the 'divide,' an understandable result of the daughter's need to find her own solutions toward becoming an individual rather than the model wife most women were still supposed to be in the 1960s. Her struggle and her mother's illumine the drive behind her stellar literary biographies, at least of the ones I have read (that of Dickinson and Bronte). Memoirs can read as self-indulgent wallows, but I thoroughly disagree with anyone who would dismiss this book with that phrase. Gordon does not protect or brag on herself as self-indulgent memoir writers do. She is passionate about achieving her own individual life and identity separate from her husband's, as any woman should be.
May 31, 2015
This was a beautifully written memoir of Lyndal Gordon's relationship with her mother from her childhood in Cape Town to her adulthood and her mother's death. Coming from a literary and culturally rich Jewish family, Lyndal is exposed from an early age to literature and poetry which her mother wrote throughout her life. Her mother also suffered from epilepsy which was untreatable for many years of her life . Her mother was deeply spiritual and committed to her Judaism and a staunch Zionist which became a source of tension in her relationship with Lyndal. The book is a gentle and slow lyrical read which I enjoyed. I was a little irritated at times of Lyndal's defensiveness of her mother which seemed out of place with the rest of her style of writing.
April 6, 2015
I found this book very moving. A tale of the entwined (twinned) lives of a mother and a daughter; it goes beyond the usual bond, the normal modeling. This is a somewhat pathological relationship, yet the writer shows how, in untangling herself, she finds not only herself, but a way to be a mother to her own daughters. She grants them and supports them in their individuality. I've read all Gordon's books, and now understand her need to explore Eliot, Woolf, Wollstonencraft, Bronte. Her triumph is, however, 'Lives like Loaded Guns - Emily Dickinson and her family feuds'. It is apparent now why Gordon understood what 'the matter was' with Dickinson -- it must have leapt out from the pages of her poems.
February 2, 2015
From the oldie
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews