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Years of Grace
She fought the battle of the generations victoriously because she understood both the years of grace and the age of jazz. Her story reveals the beauty, the drama, and the passion that can lie unsuspected beneath a quiet exterior.
581 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1930
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5451 people want to read
About the author
Margaret Ayer Barnes
12 books14 followersMargaret Ayer Barnes (April 8, 1886, Chicago, Illinois — October 25, 1967, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American playwright, novelist, and short-story writer.
She was educated at Bryn Mawr College, where she earned an A.B. degree in 1907. She married Cecil Barnes in 1910, and had three sons, Cecil Jr., Edward Larrabee and Benjamin Ayer. In 1920, Barnes was elected alumnae director of Bryn Mawr and served three years. As director, she helped to organize the Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, which offered an alternative educational program for women workers within a traditional institution. Consisting mainly of young, single immigrant women with little to no academic background, the summer program offered courses in progressive education, liberal arts and economics. Women in the program were encouraged to develop confidence as speakers, writers and leaders in the workplace.
In 1926, at age 40, she broke her back in a traffic accident, and, with the encouragement of friend and playwright Edward Sheldon, took up writing as a way to occupy her time. Between 1926 and 1930 she wrote several short stories and three plays, including an adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Novel in 1931 for Years of Grace.
A 1936 lawsuit against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for copyright infringement claimed that the script MGM used for the motion picture Letty Lynton (1932) plagiarized material from the play Dishonored Lady by Edward Sheldon and Barnes. The film is still unavailable today because of this lawsuit.
Her son was architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Her older sister, Janet Ayer Fairbank, was also a notable writer, and her niece Janet Fairbank (1903-1947) was a well-known operatic singer.
She was educated at Bryn Mawr College, where she earned an A.B. degree in 1907. She married Cecil Barnes in 1910, and had three sons, Cecil Jr., Edward Larrabee and Benjamin Ayer. In 1920, Barnes was elected alumnae director of Bryn Mawr and served three years. As director, she helped to organize the Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, which offered an alternative educational program for women workers within a traditional institution. Consisting mainly of young, single immigrant women with little to no academic background, the summer program offered courses in progressive education, liberal arts and economics. Women in the program were encouraged to develop confidence as speakers, writers and leaders in the workplace.
In 1926, at age 40, she broke her back in a traffic accident, and, with the encouragement of friend and playwright Edward Sheldon, took up writing as a way to occupy her time. Between 1926 and 1930 she wrote several short stories and three plays, including an adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Novel in 1931 for Years of Grace.
A 1936 lawsuit against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for copyright infringement claimed that the script MGM used for the motion picture Letty Lynton (1932) plagiarized material from the play Dishonored Lady by Edward Sheldon and Barnes. The film is still unavailable today because of this lawsuit.
Her son was architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Her older sister, Janet Ayer Fairbank, was also a notable writer, and her niece Janet Fairbank (1903-1947) was a well-known operatic singer.
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February 5, 2024
Dido in The Aeneid - “I have lived and accomplished the task that Destiny gave me, and now I shall pass beneath the earth no common shade.”
My challenge to read all the Pulitzer prize winners for fiction has led me to some great books, some awful books, and some books that left no impression at all. This book is one of those that makes the whole project worthwhile. I do not think I would ever have read this without the Prize as an impetus, and I would have missed a marvelous and meaningful story.
Jane Ward is a young girl of sixteen when we first meet her, daughter of an upper class family living in 1898 Chicago. She has a best friend who attends school with her by the name of Agnes, who is disapproved of by her mother, because Agnes is not quite in the same social strata; two other friends, Muriel and Flora, who are sanctioned for the reverse reason; and a boy friend, Andre, who is definitely not considered an acceptable potential suitor.
The novel covers all of Jane’s life, and each of these early acquaintances have a major impact on the direction it takes. She struggles with all the questions and emotions each of us struggle with in life, including defining and recognizing love.
Love was no hothouse flower, forced to reluctant bud. Love was a weed that flashed unexpectedly into bloom on the roadside. Love was not fanned to flame. Love was a leaping fire, sprung from a casual spark, a fire that wouldn’t be smothered.
But is that what love is? Is it a fire? Maybe it is a shared experience or something that grows over time with familiarity and mutual interests. If it isn’t a hothouse flower, might it still be one that is planted and tended and cared for until it blooms? Are love and romance synonymous? Can you love more than one person at a time, or does one love cancel another?
She straddles the fence between what she thinks she should feel and what she does feel. Do you follow your heart or your upbringing? How much do you owe parents or society?
Your inner life–how confusing it all was! A chaos of conflicting loyalties!
There is, of course, loss to be dealt with in life, and with that loss comes some maturity and revelation. In fact, what do we really know even of those who are the closest to us?
But was death, as a matter of fact, any more lonely than life? What had Jane ever known about her father’s actual earthly experience? Parents knew little enough of the emotional lives of their children, but children knew nothing of the emotional lives of their parents. The emotional life of a parent was a fantastic thought.
And what of independence? As the novel progresses into the 1900’s, women are beginning to have more options and want more choices. Is that a good or a bad thing? What is all this freedom going to mean to the next generation and what is going to be sacrificed in order to obtain it?
During her life, Jane is forced to make some very difficult and painful decisions. One of the central themes of Years of Grace is the importance of how those hard decisions are made, what is factored in making them, and what does the final decision say about your character. Sometimes the choices that seem to be the wrong ones for us turn out to be blessings, or perhaps we lose opportunities forever because we lack the courage to seize them. Different paths would have led to different places, but not necessarily better ones. The trick in life might be to savor what you have rather than to pine for what you have not.
I had some small difficulty in obtaining a copy of this book to read, which makes me sad, because lack of availability can cause a book not to receive the attention it deserves. If you can find a copy of this one, read it. I wish Persephone Books would add this one to their offerings; it belongs there.
My challenge to read all the Pulitzer prize winners for fiction has led me to some great books, some awful books, and some books that left no impression at all. This book is one of those that makes the whole project worthwhile. I do not think I would ever have read this without the Prize as an impetus, and I would have missed a marvelous and meaningful story.
Jane Ward is a young girl of sixteen when we first meet her, daughter of an upper class family living in 1898 Chicago. She has a best friend who attends school with her by the name of Agnes, who is disapproved of by her mother, because Agnes is not quite in the same social strata; two other friends, Muriel and Flora, who are sanctioned for the reverse reason; and a boy friend, Andre, who is definitely not considered an acceptable potential suitor.
The novel covers all of Jane’s life, and each of these early acquaintances have a major impact on the direction it takes. She struggles with all the questions and emotions each of us struggle with in life, including defining and recognizing love.
Love was no hothouse flower, forced to reluctant bud. Love was a weed that flashed unexpectedly into bloom on the roadside. Love was not fanned to flame. Love was a leaping fire, sprung from a casual spark, a fire that wouldn’t be smothered.
But is that what love is? Is it a fire? Maybe it is a shared experience or something that grows over time with familiarity and mutual interests. If it isn’t a hothouse flower, might it still be one that is planted and tended and cared for until it blooms? Are love and romance synonymous? Can you love more than one person at a time, or does one love cancel another?
She straddles the fence between what she thinks she should feel and what she does feel. Do you follow your heart or your upbringing? How much do you owe parents or society?
Your inner life–how confusing it all was! A chaos of conflicting loyalties!
There is, of course, loss to be dealt with in life, and with that loss comes some maturity and revelation. In fact, what do we really know even of those who are the closest to us?
But was death, as a matter of fact, any more lonely than life? What had Jane ever known about her father’s actual earthly experience? Parents knew little enough of the emotional lives of their children, but children knew nothing of the emotional lives of their parents. The emotional life of a parent was a fantastic thought.
And what of independence? As the novel progresses into the 1900’s, women are beginning to have more options and want more choices. Is that a good or a bad thing? What is all this freedom going to mean to the next generation and what is going to be sacrificed in order to obtain it?
During her life, Jane is forced to make some very difficult and painful decisions. One of the central themes of Years of Grace is the importance of how those hard decisions are made, what is factored in making them, and what does the final decision say about your character. Sometimes the choices that seem to be the wrong ones for us turn out to be blessings, or perhaps we lose opportunities forever because we lack the courage to seize them. Different paths would have led to different places, but not necessarily better ones. The trick in life might be to savor what you have rather than to pine for what you have not.
I had some small difficulty in obtaining a copy of this book to read, which makes me sad, because lack of availability can cause a book not to receive the attention it deserves. If you can find a copy of this one, read it. I wish Persephone Books would add this one to their offerings; it belongs there.
February 10, 2017
This family saga centres on the life of Chicago native Jane Ward and her upper-class family and friends. We meet her as a young teen and watch her transformation from carefree girl to independent Bryn Mawr student to reluctant wife to worrying mother and grandmother. With so many characters involved, there are plenty of interesting and surprising events to keep the reader's interest. I found myself looking forward to my next opportunity to read a chapter or two, always wondering what would be next!
The story is well-written, but firmly set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with (some) corresponding outdated attitudes and social expectations, which may be a stumbling block for some readers. However, the issues and dilemmas which Jane faces throughout her lifetime are ageless and timeless and provide much "food for thought" for the reader.
It is unfortunate that this winner of the Pulitzer of 1931 is out of print and consequently difficult to obtain. I was lucky enough to find a copy at a local university library -- it was in storage (in the sub-basement) and had not been checked out since 1965. It was duly retrieved and dusted off for me and, upon its return, will take its proper place in the stacks reserved for Pulitzer winners. It deserves to be resurrected and widely read!
The story is well-written, but firmly set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with (some) corresponding outdated attitudes and social expectations, which may be a stumbling block for some readers. However, the issues and dilemmas which Jane faces throughout her lifetime are ageless and timeless and provide much "food for thought" for the reader.
It is unfortunate that this winner of the Pulitzer of 1931 is out of print and consequently difficult to obtain. I was lucky enough to find a copy at a local university library -- it was in storage (in the sub-basement) and had not been checked out since 1965. It was duly retrieved and dusted off for me and, upon its return, will take its proper place in the stacks reserved for Pulitzer winners. It deserves to be resurrected and widely read!
April 20, 2015
Very easy, leisurely reading. This book, which won the Pulitzer prize in 1931, was mentioned in a modern novel I had just read, and I was intrigued enough to go looking for it. I guess it's out of print. It wasn't on Kindle either and the ones for sale on Amazon were being sold at $50+. Don't know why? But I found my copy on Ebay, a leatherbound book I was able to get for $20. So needless to say, I was quite excited to get this book in the mail, and to start reading it. This novel gives a nice glimpse of life and American upper class society right before and after 1900. And while it is set in Chicago, and not New York, it reminded me a bit of Edith Wharton novels. But the best thing I got out of this novel was the way it made me think about how I would stand, personally, if faced with the question of taking happiness vs living with the choices I have already made in my life, given the effects such a decision would have on family and children. While I know which side I would be on; and the main character of the novel, Jane Ward, was clear as well about what she believed was the right way to be, she pondered the issue enough to at least recognize the merits of the other side, and to wonder if perhaps only time will tell which way works out best for the ones who make that kind of decision. I would give this book 3 1/2 stars.
March 17, 2024
This was quite the experience. Approximately 560 pages. A relatively sedate story by today’s standards, but it was written almost a century ago. However, I found myself always ready to pick it up, looking forward to continuing the story. The story is about Jane Ward from the age of fourteen to her late 50’s; she was born in the late 19th century to a wealthy family in Chicago. One theme in the novel is about new career opportunities emerging for women, although Jane chooses a more traditional path. The primary focus though is on moral standards as they apply to relationships between men and women and marriage; we watch them evolve across generations, as seen from Jane’s mother’s perspective, as experienced by Jane and as foisted upon Jane by her children
Margaret Ayer Barnes wrote some short stories and plays prior to Years of Grace, but this was her debut novel; it won the Pulitzer in 1931. Margaret Ayer Barnes began writing when her back was broken in a traffic accident; she was encouraged by a friend to begin writing as a way to adapt to her injury. I was never able to learn to what degree Mrs. Barnes recovered from her injury.
This novel is not without flaws. While the female characters are richly drawn, the male characters lack depth. We gain real insight into Jane’s inner life, as well as that of her mother, her sister, her female friends and her daughters, but not into the lives of Jane’s husband, her father, her son or other males. Also, Mrs. Barnes' word choices can be repetitive and frustrating: the only way in which she found to describe emotion, energy or humor as seen in someone’s eyes was as “twinkling”. She used “twinkling” several hundred times. Despite these negatives, I do recommend this book. There was just something about Jane Ward, and it wasn’t the twinkling.
Margaret Ayer Barnes wrote some short stories and plays prior to Years of Grace, but this was her debut novel; it won the Pulitzer in 1931. Margaret Ayer Barnes began writing when her back was broken in a traffic accident; she was encouraged by a friend to begin writing as a way to adapt to her injury. I was never able to learn to what degree Mrs. Barnes recovered from her injury.
This novel is not without flaws. While the female characters are richly drawn, the male characters lack depth. We gain real insight into Jane’s inner life, as well as that of her mother, her sister, her female friends and her daughters, but not into the lives of Jane’s husband, her father, her son or other males. Also, Mrs. Barnes' word choices can be repetitive and frustrating: the only way in which she found to describe emotion, energy or humor as seen in someone’s eyes was as “twinkling”. She used “twinkling” several hundred times. Despite these negatives, I do recommend this book. There was just something about Jane Ward, and it wasn’t the twinkling.
March 6, 2019
I had really high hopes for this book but sadly it ended up disappointing me. It started off as a sweet story, in a time period that I really enjoy reading about but once the main character grew older, got married, had an extramarital affair, the story completely turned me off. I'm not sure why this book won a Pulitzer. Needless to say, I wasn't a fan.
August 5, 2017
This book was an adequate and enjoyable read. Like the character of Jane, the protagonist, the writing itself is admirable and competent, but not exceptional nor all that very creative. Is it worthy of a Pulitzer? Hard to say, because it seems to fit a type that certainly was preferred by society and by the Pulitzer committee during the period of its publication in 1930 and its selection in 1931. But when you realize that Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" was also published in the same year, you begin to think that the Pulitzer selection committee didn't know what the hell they were doing picking this book over Faulkner. But despite its lack of literary brilliance, I confess to enjoying it and would recommend it to others.
What I most enjoyed about the book is its rather philosophically complex attempt to deal with human passion, love, happiness, and the passage of time. Although it pretends to project a kind of conservative preference for Victorian understandings of commitment, fidelity, morality, "gracefulness," etc., it does push the envelope and question the certainty of what "should" be considered proper and moral in love and marriage. The main character, Jane Ward (later Mrs. Stephen Carver), is a very complex character. And many of the other female characters in the novel were also much more on the complex side. One would not expect this of a best seller (at least not one of today's best selling novels). Props to Barnes for her success as an author in this regard.
What I didn't find all that impressive about the book was its very limited vocabulary and expressiveness. If she didn't use the word "twinkling" to describe a certain cleverly endearing look in the eyes more than 100 times, I'd be shocked. And that's just one of the more egregious examples of this limited descriptive capability. The novel is full of them. I also didn't find a lot of Jane's naivete about certain things to be really believable. A major failing of the book, though, is that Barnes just simply didn't manage to pass off the Jane/Jimmy love affair as believable. Not only did it seem forced and disingenuous; but it also seemed sordid and infantile.
But perhaps the biggest flaw in the book is Barnes's utter inability to capture anything real and complex about any of the male characters in the story. She just couldn't pull it off. All the men in the novel were either one of two types: (1) the charming, dispassionate, good guy and steady/true husband and wise father -- albeit a bit clueless about love and passion, and always cuckolded --; and (2) the sneaky, handsome, rogue lady-killer and marriage-destroying gigolo doing the cuckolding. Yet the good guys, boring though they were, endured. The bad guys, as much as Barnes tried to humanize them, came off as caricatures and all came to tragic ends, getting their karmic comeuppance. I honestly didn't really like any of the men in the novel and thought that they were all portrayed simplistically in one of the two extremes. Had some of the male characters been written as complex people like the women were, the book would maybe have risen towards a higher plane of literary greatness. But Barnes just didn't have it in her, even though she tried.
The final comment I'll make is that it is extremely difficult to find a copy of this book in the marketplace (at least for any decent price). It just hasn't captured the attention of any publishers to keep it in print. If you want to read this book, but don't want to spend $40 and up for an old, used copy from a second-hand dealer through Amazon.com or the online Barnes and Noble stores; you will be stuck searching for yellowed, dusty, and musty copies of it in College libraries. But make the effort to hunt one down, if for no other reason than to get a glimpse at another example of what passed for best-selling and critically-received (in its day) literature.
What I most enjoyed about the book is its rather philosophically complex attempt to deal with human passion, love, happiness, and the passage of time. Although it pretends to project a kind of conservative preference for Victorian understandings of commitment, fidelity, morality, "gracefulness," etc., it does push the envelope and question the certainty of what "should" be considered proper and moral in love and marriage. The main character, Jane Ward (later Mrs. Stephen Carver), is a very complex character. And many of the other female characters in the novel were also much more on the complex side. One would not expect this of a best seller (at least not one of today's best selling novels). Props to Barnes for her success as an author in this regard.
What I didn't find all that impressive about the book was its very limited vocabulary and expressiveness. If she didn't use the word "twinkling" to describe a certain cleverly endearing look in the eyes more than 100 times, I'd be shocked. And that's just one of the more egregious examples of this limited descriptive capability. The novel is full of them. I also didn't find a lot of Jane's naivete about certain things to be really believable. A major failing of the book, though, is that Barnes just simply didn't manage to pass off the Jane/Jimmy love affair as believable. Not only did it seem forced and disingenuous; but it also seemed sordid and infantile.
But perhaps the biggest flaw in the book is Barnes's utter inability to capture anything real and complex about any of the male characters in the story. She just couldn't pull it off. All the men in the novel were either one of two types: (1) the charming, dispassionate, good guy and steady/true husband and wise father -- albeit a bit clueless about love and passion, and always cuckolded --; and (2) the sneaky, handsome, rogue lady-killer and marriage-destroying gigolo doing the cuckolding. Yet the good guys, boring though they were, endured. The bad guys, as much as Barnes tried to humanize them, came off as caricatures and all came to tragic ends, getting their karmic comeuppance. I honestly didn't really like any of the men in the novel and thought that they were all portrayed simplistically in one of the two extremes. Had some of the male characters been written as complex people like the women were, the book would maybe have risen towards a higher plane of literary greatness. But Barnes just didn't have it in her, even though she tried.
The final comment I'll make is that it is extremely difficult to find a copy of this book in the marketplace (at least for any decent price). It just hasn't captured the attention of any publishers to keep it in print. If you want to read this book, but don't want to spend $40 and up for an old, used copy from a second-hand dealer through Amazon.com or the online Barnes and Noble stores; you will be stuck searching for yellowed, dusty, and musty copies of it in College libraries. But make the effort to hunt one down, if for no other reason than to get a glimpse at another example of what passed for best-selling and critically-received (in its day) literature.
September 24, 2011
At first I thought this book was going to be a nightmare to read--simple prose, all about a proper girl named Jane.
But the story caught me. The prose began to strike me as simply being old-fashioned, as are words that you just don't hear much anymore (e.g. pigtails)--not hard words, just out-of-fashion words. I only had to look up one word* in the entire 500+ pages, which means easy old-fashioned reading!
But in spite of the simple prose and vocabulary, the story does get good. Jane grows up, tries to please her family and fit in, attends 2 years of college, makes great friends, comes home, gets married, has and raises children, falls in love and makes a choice, and becomes a grandmother. Jane seems so simple, often confused, and just good. But is she really? And at what cost?
Should she have made those choices? What does she know at 50 that she didn't know at 19 and 25? What truly matters? Happiness or duty? Can there be a compromise? Should we chase dreams and risk a good thing, or should we give up on joy for security?
*smilax, which apparently was used to decorate at parties circa 1890-1930, is a plant genus. Plants in this genus include sarsaparilla and carrion flower. Which leads me to wonder if their parties smelled like root beer or carrion.
But the story caught me. The prose began to strike me as simply being old-fashioned, as are words that you just don't hear much anymore (e.g. pigtails)--not hard words, just out-of-fashion words. I only had to look up one word* in the entire 500+ pages, which means easy old-fashioned reading!
But in spite of the simple prose and vocabulary, the story does get good. Jane grows up, tries to please her family and fit in, attends 2 years of college, makes great friends, comes home, gets married, has and raises children, falls in love and makes a choice, and becomes a grandmother. Jane seems so simple, often confused, and just good. But is she really? And at what cost?
Should she have made those choices? What does she know at 50 that she didn't know at 19 and 25? What truly matters? Happiness or duty? Can there be a compromise? Should we chase dreams and risk a good thing, or should we give up on joy for security?
*smilax, which apparently was used to decorate at parties circa 1890-1930, is a plant genus. Plants in this genus include sarsaparilla and carrion flower. Which leads me to wonder if their parties smelled like root beer or carrion.
August 16, 2014
This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is one of those books that I will read several throughout my life, and get something new from it each time.
Yes, it falls into the genre of “chick-lit,” but, it is so much more sophisticated than something like Little Women (sorry, Mom!). Jane is a completely likable, relatable character, but the author doesn’t romanticize her and sees her with a certain amount of ironic detachment. She is spirited and loving, but loses her first love through her pettiness and pride. She rolls her eyes at the vulgar gossip of her mother and sister, while obsessing over a new dress or gaining attention from a new love interest a few pages later. When she is young, she loves her freedom; when she is old, she scoffs at her own children wanting the same.
It became clear within the first few chapters that Ayers Barnes was a feminist, but the book never preaches. Unlike most chick-lit, both pulpy and literary, Years of Grace doesn’t portray marriage as a finish line in the race to Happily Ever After. But neither is Jane’s marriage some kind of mid-century Lifetime melodrama, with an abusive or domineering husband. Jane is sometimes miserable, sometimes content, and often bored with her kind but often oblivious husband. And their marriage goes through many natural changes as the two characters age.
This book is rather slow-moving. But slow-moving doesn’t have to mean boring. It is a character-driven, rather than a plot-driven, story, one of the best of its kind that I have ever come across.
A much wordier version of this review is available on my blog: https://familiarcreatures.wordpress.c...
Yes, it falls into the genre of “chick-lit,” but, it is so much more sophisticated than something like Little Women (sorry, Mom!). Jane is a completely likable, relatable character, but the author doesn’t romanticize her and sees her with a certain amount of ironic detachment. She is spirited and loving, but loses her first love through her pettiness and pride. She rolls her eyes at the vulgar gossip of her mother and sister, while obsessing over a new dress or gaining attention from a new love interest a few pages later. When she is young, she loves her freedom; when she is old, she scoffs at her own children wanting the same.
It became clear within the first few chapters that Ayers Barnes was a feminist, but the book never preaches. Unlike most chick-lit, both pulpy and literary, Years of Grace doesn’t portray marriage as a finish line in the race to Happily Ever After. But neither is Jane’s marriage some kind of mid-century Lifetime melodrama, with an abusive or domineering husband. Jane is sometimes miserable, sometimes content, and often bored with her kind but often oblivious husband. And their marriage goes through many natural changes as the two characters age.
This book is rather slow-moving. But slow-moving doesn’t have to mean boring. It is a character-driven, rather than a plot-driven, story, one of the best of its kind that I have ever come across.
A much wordier version of this review is available on my blog: https://familiarcreatures.wordpress.c...
September 21, 2021
I have to say that I was underwhelmed with Years of Grace which won the 1931 Pulitzer. Honestly, The 42nd Parallel by Dos Passos and especially As I Lay Dying by Faulkner were FAR better books than this one. In Years, we follow June through her life and the major men in her life: her husband Stephen and her two almost-could-have-beens, Andre and Jimmy. It ends with her as a grandmother dealing with her daughter’s divorce and remarriage in Paris.
It was not incredibly well-written to be honest, and very annoyingly threw around stupid anti-Semitic remarks (“she looked too Semitic”, “fortunately, she didn’t look too Jewish” - I mean what does that even mean?) and one somewhat racist section (a dance which featured a group of black dancers which are referred to as “darkies” and a “quadroon” doing a “savage dance”, just so stereotypical and disappointing.)
I thought that the two unrequited loves were far more interesting than her choice of a husband. In this case, the novel was somewhat similar to Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, but that book was actually better written than this one.
Once again, it would have been far more memorable a decision to have given this Pulitzer to either Dos Passos or Faulkner as their novels are both still in print and this one has been out of print, justifiably, for years.
My votable list of Pulitzer winners which I have read (only have the 40s, 50s, and 60s to finish!):
It was not incredibly well-written to be honest, and very annoyingly threw around stupid anti-Semitic remarks (“she looked too Semitic”, “fortunately, she didn’t look too Jewish” - I mean what does that even mean?) and one somewhat racist section (a dance which featured a group of black dancers which are referred to as “darkies” and a “quadroon” doing a “savage dance”, just so stereotypical and disappointing.)
I thought that the two unrequited loves were far more interesting than her choice of a husband. In this case, the novel was somewhat similar to Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, but that book was actually better written than this one.
Once again, it would have been far more memorable a decision to have given this Pulitzer to either Dos Passos or Faulkner as their novels are both still in print and this one has been out of print, justifiably, for years.
My votable list of Pulitzer winners which I have read (only have the 40s, 50s, and 60s to finish!):
December 30, 2020
Years of Grace was such an unexpected surprise! I forget who recommended the book; my husband had bought it for me a few Christmases ago and out of guilt I started reading it. I was sold within the first few pages. Years of Grace won the Pulitzer Prize in 1931 and I figured it would be pretty dry and boring but it was endearing and kept my attention. The novel captures the life of Jane Ward from the time she is a teenager until her early 50s and how she views the changes in society. Even though it was written almost 100 years ago, the themes she writes on are still very relevant today. I don't think this book would appeal to everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
February 22, 2021
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER: 1931
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This book has apparently been out of print for years and I was seriously beginning to doubt I'd be able to find it! Hard copies online are ridiculously expensive and hard to find, it's not available in ebook form, and my library doesn't have a copy. But thankfully I was able to get access to an online library that had one available, though it was not without its downsides. I could only check out the book for an hour at a time (thankfully this wasn't much of an issue because there is so little demand for the book I was able to refresh my hold) and the digital reader is essentially a scanned copy of the book, which isn't the most enjoyable reading experience, but needs must!
I do wish I had the hardcopy of this to read, though, because something about it really reminded me of the Jane Austen novels I used to read as a girl and it all felt quite nostalgic! I honestly enjoyed this more than I was expecting as a little slice-of-life showing what it was like for a woman in the early 1900s as a member of a well-off family in Chicago. We get to see Jane from childhood up through her 50s as she experiences life and love and loss, and I found the whole thing quite engaging.
===
This book has apparently been out of print for years and I was seriously beginning to doubt I'd be able to find it! Hard copies online are ridiculously expensive and hard to find, it's not available in ebook form, and my library doesn't have a copy. But thankfully I was able to get access to an online library that had one available, though it was not without its downsides. I could only check out the book for an hour at a time (thankfully this wasn't much of an issue because there is so little demand for the book I was able to refresh my hold) and the digital reader is essentially a scanned copy of the book, which isn't the most enjoyable reading experience, but needs must!
I do wish I had the hardcopy of this to read, though, because something about it really reminded me of the Jane Austen novels I used to read as a girl and it all felt quite nostalgic! I honestly enjoyed this more than I was expecting as a little slice-of-life showing what it was like for a woman in the early 1900s as a member of a well-off family in Chicago. We get to see Jane from childhood up through her 50s as she experiences life and love and loss, and I found the whole thing quite engaging.
August 25, 2011
As I've noted in Pulitzers of this age, the writing was incredibly simple. A very simple story - but one I liked. It was about Chicago from the 1890's to around the late 1920's. As an added bonus, it took place in my actual neighborhood! So I dug that, obviously. The writing though, was almost just a list of things that happened. Like, "Agnes went to the store. She bought cake there. She put the cake in the bag. She brought the cake home. She ate the cake” If this had been one of the first Pulitzers I'd read from that time I would probably have hated it. But I'm used the simple writing style and realize they used to award the Pulitzer more on story than writing style, as they do now.
August 10, 2012
A good read to reflect on life. Not super exciting, but enough to hold my attention. It is the book that that is referred to numerous times in Violets of March. It peaked my curiosity enough to buy it on eBay since it is out of print. I enjoyed the outlook of Jane as a teenager, married with children adult and then elder and her thoughts on her life and the lives of her children and parents and how it changes from one generation to the next.
April 27, 2013
I've had this book on my list for a while after reading a book where it was repeatedly referred to as comparable to "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and that it was a story that had meant a great deal to the author in their life. I don't agree that this book bears any significant resemblance to "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" other than the small section which takes place in New York, and perhaps the era may have been close.
I really didn't find anything compelling about this book.
I really didn't find anything compelling about this book.
February 6, 2012
More boring Americana. The struggles of marriage, family obligations, and the coming generation. Best line...."you could never believe that [children] would grow up to disappoint you."
May 4, 2019
Margaret Ayer Barnes won the Pulitzer Prize for Years of Grace in 1931. The story begins in the late 1800's and follows Jane Ward, a wealthy young debutante, through marriage, children and middle age to her late 50's. The story details the joys and sadness all families go through including a new family term I learned; domestic dictator. You can guess what that means. I enjoyed this book and give it 4 stars.
March 24, 2022
Years of Grace by Margaret Ayers Barnes is a family saga that tells the stories of an upper-class family in Chicago. The main character, Jane Ward, comes into our lives while she is a teenager.
We watch as she goes to Bryn Mawr, and into marriage, motherhood, and grand-motherhood. The book is packed with characters, but I didn't find any of them or the events of their lives very interesting. Every time I set the book down I had to convince myself to pick it back up. It isn't poorly written, but I found it dull, and I didn't care about Jane or any of the people in her life.
The book is set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and attitude of that time are firmly entrenched in the pages. Also, the ideals of the upper crust are at the forefront, and often I struggle to connect with stories that surround the upper classes.
The book is difficult to find, and although I intentionally collected ever Pulitzer winner, I do not think this will be one that I keep long-term.
We watch as she goes to Bryn Mawr, and into marriage, motherhood, and grand-motherhood. The book is packed with characters, but I didn't find any of them or the events of their lives very interesting. Every time I set the book down I had to convince myself to pick it back up. It isn't poorly written, but I found it dull, and I didn't care about Jane or any of the people in her life.
The book is set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and attitude of that time are firmly entrenched in the pages. Also, the ideals of the upper crust are at the forefront, and often I struggle to connect with stories that surround the upper classes.
The book is difficult to find, and although I intentionally collected ever Pulitzer winner, I do not think this will be one that I keep long-term.
September 8, 2018
Right book at the right time for me. I checked it out last year (for book set in the place you were born on our 2017 Book Bingo). Between our 6-month check out and renewing, it sat waiting for me until now when it was exactly what I needed. I haven’t been able to read any fiction since May, but this broke that spell. It is very Edith Wharton-Henry James -ish but more midwestern and slightly a soap opera. Set in Chicago, it follows Jane Ward from teens to mid-fifties. It demonstrates the Victorian attitudes toward class, minorities, Jews and Catholics, and especially regarding gender. Still, its depiction of the conflicts around time, marriage and different generations still remain true. Her relationship with her dad was my favorite part. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1931.
June 30, 2025
“You don’t have to read books, Jane, … to know that they shouldn’t be read.” While Mrs. Ward (Jane’s mother) is talking about smut, this comment might as well apply to the endless run of multi-generational Midwest family sagas the Pulitzer committees of the 1930s apparently couldn’t resist. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with Years of Grace–it’s perfectly pleasant, and perfectly mediocre, but I can’t think of a single reason to recommend it (especially given the difficulty of tracking down a copy). In spirit, it’s a descendant of Edith Wharton novels like The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence but with only half the humour, a quarter of the insight, and essentially none of the charm—which is to say: rather than reading this, go read Edith Wharton (unless you just really like reading about Chicago). The subplot about Flora’s mother and Bert Lancaster is a prime example; it’s a dark and potentially devastating tangent in Jane’s coming-of-age story in the novel's first act, but Barnes just doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, so much of its emotional and narrative weight dissipates with minimal lasting impact, like all the other things in the novel that aren’t directly related to Jane (and even many that are). Or take this odd, introspective passage on Jane’s dislike for her in-laws, where Barnes melds irony with Freudian allusions in an attempt at humour that’s more awkward than amusing: “She was thinking wise, thirty-six-year-old thoughts about the relative-in-law complex. ‘The relative in law complex’ was the phrase that Jane herself had coined to account for the obvious injustice of her thoughts about Carvers. She was privately rather proud of it. The Freudian vocabulary was not yet a commonplace in the Western hemisphere, but Jane knew all about complexes and was vaguely comforted to feel herself in the grip of one that was undoubtedly authentic.” The fact that the novel is at least occasionally weird is a pleasant change from so many of its Pulitzer-winning kin, but it’s not enough to make it memorable.
Stylistically, Barnes is a decorous and competent writer, but her prose, with the exception of the more philosophical flights, lacks distinctiveness, and the novel is littered with pleasantly generic passages like this: “The sun sank down behind the oak trees in a saffron sky and a silver glow hung over the eastern horizon. Almost immediately the great golden disk of the moon came up out of the lake. It rose, incredibly quickly, balanced a moment on the water’s edge, then floated, free, in the clear evening air. The sky was still quite blue.” Unfortunately, this blandness extends into most of the characters and dialogue, which is generally fatal to the novel’s cynical romanticism. Jane herself is the exception; her inner life (which she aptly describes as “a chaos of conflicting loyalties”) is rich and complex, and she occupies a fascinatingly ambiguous relationship to convention, at once reviling it for being stultifying and embracing it for its robust solidity. However, everyone else in Jane’s world is unrelentingly boring, and though that’s partially by design to emphasize the lack of… well, anything remotely exciting in her life (“Perhaps people were all bored most of the time after they were thirty-six,” Jane observes), Barnes isn’t really able to break the mundanity even when introducing the people who are supposed to be mysterious, charismatic, or panach’d—in other words, the characters with whom the unhappy wives have affairs. This issue is exacerbated by the novel’s scope, since, in jumping ahead 3 or 5 or 10 years every 50 pages or so, the story is continually asking us to invest our emotional energy in characters who feel less concrete than the outlines of bodies in a child’s colouring book. After reading nearly 600 pages of this thing, I still could not for the life of me remember which children belonged to Jane, which to Isabel, and which to Muriel, so that, when the cousins inevitably grew up and started marrying and then having affairs with each other—which, conceptually, could have been quite spicy—it was about a riveting as when a person you've just met at a teaching conference starts showing you pictures of their kids. And even the one and only truly compelling part of the novel’s final two acts—the Jimmy Trent complication—is resolved so hurriedly and randomly that it might as well not have happened at all. At one point, Jane observes to the reader that “If her education had done nothing else for her, … it had provided her with an apt quotation for every romantic emotion,” and though it’s intended to be mildly ironic, it appropriately represents the spirit of the novel’s various romantic entanglements, immortalized in such sizzling lines as “Love was no hothouse flower, forced to reluctant bud. Love was a weed that flashed unexpectedly into bloom on the roadside. Love was not fanned to flame. Love was a leaping fire, sprung from a casual spark.” I know: how did the pages not combust in my hands?? While the treatment of love is far from conventional, given its candid representation of the married women’s unhappiness, it’s reminiscent of that scene on the park bench in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams’s character is calling Will on his bullshit and says, “If I asked you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet.” While Barnes would no doubt opt for “My love is as a fever longing still” rather than “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” it still feels like analysis, not passion.
All of this is a shame, because the book could have been–was almost—good. Jane herself—a case study of a person who consciously chooses to sacrifice her desires and interests to the security of a conventional life—makes for an oddly effective cypher for the novel’s often-profound philosophical ruminations on things like decorum, monogamy, desire, and tradition, and the structural parallels between Jane’s coming-of-age story and those of her children and nieces and nephews are intriguing. But without a stronger supporting cast to tie these things to, it all feels like a wasted opportunity in which I invested several months—albeit sporadic and interrupted—of my reading life. While the book’s frank consideration of divorce and adultery as plausible alternatives to having one’s capacity for desire slowly suffocated by the thick pillow of convention is intellectually compelling, and while I enjoyed its subtle jabs at heteronormativity via the multiple pairs of female characters whose only ambition is to move away to the countryside, living together and breeding dogs, I found this book a slog to get through, like so many of the Pulitzer winners. As others have pointed out, the fact that Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying was published in the same year but Years of Grace is what the critics were drooling over makes me less-than-enthused about the next 90 years of Pulitzer winners. At this point, the main thing keeping me going is to see how many of them are set in Chicago—I’m learning a weird amount about the city’s history just from making my way through this list.
August 31, 2025
I just finished this wonderful book. I am in tears, both over the story and because it’s done. Maybe it’s because of my season in life, but this is my new - top of the list - favorite book. I want to buy copies for friends, but it’s out of print and difficult to find. My copy is a beautiful Franklin Library edition, but I almost wish it were an older beaten down version in which I could dog ear pages and underline the remarkable quotations with abandon.
This is a story about the seasons of a woman’s life, along the lines of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and A Woman of Independent Means. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1931.
This year (2025) it entered the public domain and should soon be available digitally.
This is a story about the seasons of a woman’s life, along the lines of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and A Woman of Independent Means. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1931.
This year (2025) it entered the public domain and should soon be available digitally.
August 29, 2016
Check another one off the Pulitzer list. This was similar to other prize winners. Since it is out of print, I had to request it from my public library through interlibrary loan. Well worth it! It was interesting to see how people are the same now as there were 100 years ago.
April 5, 2015
A vida de Jane Ward dos seus 14 anos até os 50 e poucos anos. As alegrias e tristezas que qualquer pessoa pode experenciar. Problemas comuns mas que realmente importam são deliciosamente descritos neste livro. ADOREI. O tipo de livro que nos faz refletir sobre a mudança de nossas próprias opinões a cada década vivida. E como o pensamento de diferentes gerações mudam mas os fatos da vida são, em geral, sempre os mesmos.
:: passagens ::
Perhaps people were all bored most of the time after they were 36. perhaps being bored was just part of growing up and growing old. The excitement went out of things. Life no longer had a surprise up its sleeve. But still, after you were 36, you went on living for another 36 years or so. Living and thinking about annoying trifles. (Jane)
... (Jane) had been endeavoring to think of herself as a "middle-aged" ... Middle age is from 35 to 50. But curiously enough, in spite of that social statement, Jane had continued, incorrigibly to think of herself as 'young".
At 36 the trick was not so much to look pretty as to look young. Beauty helped, of course, but not as much as youth. (JANE)
Do beautiful rainbow - colored bubbles, all made up of watery ideas and soap vocabulary, floating airily, without foundation, in the void, mean nothing in your life.
There's a lot of nomad in me, you know. I guess the tent got into my blood. I'd like to go around the world. Round and round it in circles. Round it in every latitude. (Jimmy)
She is dancing barefoot by a bonfire in a hatter red shawl - dancing in the dark of the moon to the tinkle of a tambourine ... She had the courage of his convictions. (p. 3131, Jimmy)
THERE ARE HIGHER THINGS THAN CONVICTIONS. (Jimmy)
You do get over loving anyone. But you don't always regret that love in retrospective. (Jimmy)
Half trues have no place in conjugal confidence. They are cowardly, misleading. They are really lies. Whereas silence was - merely silence. (Jane)
... we always read everything when we're too young to know what it means. And the trouble with life is that we're always to busy to re-read it later. There's more sense in books than you'd really believe. Though, of course, they don't teach you anything vital you can't lear for yourself. (pg 352, Jimmy)
When you love people, you've got to be decent. You want to be decent. You want to be good. Just plain goos - teh way you were taught to be. Love's the greatest safeguard in life when against evil. (pg 365, Jane)
IT'S NOT SO MUCH WHAT YOU DO THAT MATTERS, AS WHAT YOU FEEL (pg 371, Jane)
Curious, she thought, the gap between the points of view of different generations. The fact of life were always the same, but people bought about them so differently. New thoughts about the same old action. Was it progress or merely change? Sex was a loaded piste thrust in the hands of humanity. Her mother's generation had carried it carefully, fearful of a sudden explosion. Her generation waved it non chalantly about, but, after all, with all their carelessness, they didn't fire it off any oftener than his parents had. What if the next generation should take to shooting? Shooting straight regardless of their target. (p303, Jane)
Your inner life - how confusing it all was! A chaos of conflicting loyalties! You would like to think, of course, that you were the sort of woman who was capable of experiencing, once and forever, a central, domination passion. But as far as the essential sense of emotional intimacy went, she might be …( anyone's) … wife. Why had things turned out as they had? Predestination was probably the answer. Cause and effect. One thing leading to another. Free will was only a delusion. Why not turn fatalist, pure and simple, and not worry any longer? Not care.
But you had to care about your children. Worry about them, too. You had to and you ought to. When you thought of them all theories of predestination where completely shattered. (p402, Jane)
She felt herself suddenly submerge in an ignoble sense of relief at the realization of domestic decencies forever maintained, of vulgar complexities forever avoided. Were worlds well lost for love? … She only knew, now, that she had acted in response to an inner instinct so strong that love itself had stood vanquished before it. The instinct was victorious, but the victory was barren. She had tried to preserve the happiness of the others. In reward she had been left only with a feeble, futile feeling that, in any event, her own happiness could never been attained. A barren victory. A victory the was essentially a defeat --- (p414, Jane)
(The father) He had worried and warned and watched and loved and sympathized over Jane for 41 years, and now he is dying. He was dying just a at the time Jane felt she could have rewarded his love and symphony as never before. There was no longer any necessity for worrying an warning and watching over her personal drama. She had grown up. Soon she would grow old. She saw life, mow, yet to eye with her father. She, too, had become a spectator. Her children had taken the stage. (p426. Jane)
Safety first was always parental slogan. Parents invariably deplored everything the threatened their children's security. Whatever their own experience had been, they desire for the younger generation only the most conventional, the most convenient, kind of happiness. (p427, Jane)
Parents knew little enough of the emotional lives of their children, but children knew nothing of the emotional lives of their parents. The emotional life of a parent was a fantastic thought.
… Jane knew how they had looked. She had always known that because of the pictures in the red plush family album… She had non sense of the continuity of their personality. They had died young - those two young people. They had grown up into Mr and Mrs Ward, who had always seen to Jane, since her earliest memory, so staid, so styled, so more middle-age. (p247/248, Jane)
ALL LIVES ARE DIFFICULT AT TIMES (Mr Ward)
It was touching to think the anyone could have the courage to believe that life could begin over again at fifty. Love at fifty. Autumn blossoming. A freak of nature, like the flowers of the witch-hazel, bursting weirdly into bloom in October when all the others bushes were bare. (p641, Jane at Muriel late wedding)
You fool the world, but you don't fool yourself. You may win the pot, but it's not worth the winning. (all pgs 465/466)
But Jimmy was a gipsy. Jimmy loved success for the fun of it and comfort for the easy of it, but they would soon be bored him. Jimnmy could never have sat on this window-seat and looked at all those boats without wanting to charter a tug for Shanghai or Singapore. Jimmy would never have locked up his money in banks or sunk it in bricks and mortar … Jyimy's happiness was always just around the corner. (p541, Agnes)
There couldn't be understanding between two generations. Love and sympathy, but never understanding. We must take our children's ideas on faith. We can never make them our own. Remember that and save yourself unhappiness.(p542, Agnes).
You had to choose in life. And perhaps you never gave up anything except what some secret self-knowledge whispered that you did not really care to posses … She had made than in simplicity and sincerity and because of that curious inner scruple that 'Matthew Arnold had defined - "the enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness.' But to what end … You did not know - you could never tell - just where the path you had not taken would have led you. p577, Jane
"L'amour fait passer le temps, le temps fait passer l'amour""
"Eveything is a source of fun,
Nobody's safe, for we care for none,
Life is a joke tha's just begun ---"
When you look at a child you could never believe that it would grow up to disappoint you.
The End
:: passagens ::
Perhaps people were all bored most of the time after they were 36. perhaps being bored was just part of growing up and growing old. The excitement went out of things. Life no longer had a surprise up its sleeve. But still, after you were 36, you went on living for another 36 years or so. Living and thinking about annoying trifles. (Jane)
... (Jane) had been endeavoring to think of herself as a "middle-aged" ... Middle age is from 35 to 50. But curiously enough, in spite of that social statement, Jane had continued, incorrigibly to think of herself as 'young".
At 36 the trick was not so much to look pretty as to look young. Beauty helped, of course, but not as much as youth. (JANE)
Do beautiful rainbow - colored bubbles, all made up of watery ideas and soap vocabulary, floating airily, without foundation, in the void, mean nothing in your life.
There's a lot of nomad in me, you know. I guess the tent got into my blood. I'd like to go around the world. Round and round it in circles. Round it in every latitude. (Jimmy)
She is dancing barefoot by a bonfire in a hatter red shawl - dancing in the dark of the moon to the tinkle of a tambourine ... She had the courage of his convictions. (p. 3131, Jimmy)
THERE ARE HIGHER THINGS THAN CONVICTIONS. (Jimmy)
You do get over loving anyone. But you don't always regret that love in retrospective. (Jimmy)
Half trues have no place in conjugal confidence. They are cowardly, misleading. They are really lies. Whereas silence was - merely silence. (Jane)
... we always read everything when we're too young to know what it means. And the trouble with life is that we're always to busy to re-read it later. There's more sense in books than you'd really believe. Though, of course, they don't teach you anything vital you can't lear for yourself. (pg 352, Jimmy)
When you love people, you've got to be decent. You want to be decent. You want to be good. Just plain goos - teh way you were taught to be. Love's the greatest safeguard in life when against evil. (pg 365, Jane)
IT'S NOT SO MUCH WHAT YOU DO THAT MATTERS, AS WHAT YOU FEEL (pg 371, Jane)
Curious, she thought, the gap between the points of view of different generations. The fact of life were always the same, but people bought about them so differently. New thoughts about the same old action. Was it progress or merely change? Sex was a loaded piste thrust in the hands of humanity. Her mother's generation had carried it carefully, fearful of a sudden explosion. Her generation waved it non chalantly about, but, after all, with all their carelessness, they didn't fire it off any oftener than his parents had. What if the next generation should take to shooting? Shooting straight regardless of their target. (p303, Jane)
Your inner life - how confusing it all was! A chaos of conflicting loyalties! You would like to think, of course, that you were the sort of woman who was capable of experiencing, once and forever, a central, domination passion. But as far as the essential sense of emotional intimacy went, she might be …( anyone's) … wife. Why had things turned out as they had? Predestination was probably the answer. Cause and effect. One thing leading to another. Free will was only a delusion. Why not turn fatalist, pure and simple, and not worry any longer? Not care.
But you had to care about your children. Worry about them, too. You had to and you ought to. When you thought of them all theories of predestination where completely shattered. (p402, Jane)
She felt herself suddenly submerge in an ignoble sense of relief at the realization of domestic decencies forever maintained, of vulgar complexities forever avoided. Were worlds well lost for love? … She only knew, now, that she had acted in response to an inner instinct so strong that love itself had stood vanquished before it. The instinct was victorious, but the victory was barren. She had tried to preserve the happiness of the others. In reward she had been left only with a feeble, futile feeling that, in any event, her own happiness could never been attained. A barren victory. A victory the was essentially a defeat --- (p414, Jane)
(The father) He had worried and warned and watched and loved and sympathized over Jane for 41 years, and now he is dying. He was dying just a at the time Jane felt she could have rewarded his love and symphony as never before. There was no longer any necessity for worrying an warning and watching over her personal drama. She had grown up. Soon she would grow old. She saw life, mow, yet to eye with her father. She, too, had become a spectator. Her children had taken the stage. (p426. Jane)
Safety first was always parental slogan. Parents invariably deplored everything the threatened their children's security. Whatever their own experience had been, they desire for the younger generation only the most conventional, the most convenient, kind of happiness. (p427, Jane)
Parents knew little enough of the emotional lives of their children, but children knew nothing of the emotional lives of their parents. The emotional life of a parent was a fantastic thought.
… Jane knew how they had looked. She had always known that because of the pictures in the red plush family album… She had non sense of the continuity of their personality. They had died young - those two young people. They had grown up into Mr and Mrs Ward, who had always seen to Jane, since her earliest memory, so staid, so styled, so more middle-age. (p247/248, Jane)
ALL LIVES ARE DIFFICULT AT TIMES (Mr Ward)
It was touching to think the anyone could have the courage to believe that life could begin over again at fifty. Love at fifty. Autumn blossoming. A freak of nature, like the flowers of the witch-hazel, bursting weirdly into bloom in October when all the others bushes were bare. (p641, Jane at Muriel late wedding)
You fool the world, but you don't fool yourself. You may win the pot, but it's not worth the winning. (all pgs 465/466)
But Jimmy was a gipsy. Jimmy loved success for the fun of it and comfort for the easy of it, but they would soon be bored him. Jimnmy could never have sat on this window-seat and looked at all those boats without wanting to charter a tug for Shanghai or Singapore. Jimmy would never have locked up his money in banks or sunk it in bricks and mortar … Jyimy's happiness was always just around the corner. (p541, Agnes)
There couldn't be understanding between two generations. Love and sympathy, but never understanding. We must take our children's ideas on faith. We can never make them our own. Remember that and save yourself unhappiness.(p542, Agnes).
You had to choose in life. And perhaps you never gave up anything except what some secret self-knowledge whispered that you did not really care to posses … She had made than in simplicity and sincerity and because of that curious inner scruple that 'Matthew Arnold had defined - "the enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness.' But to what end … You did not know - you could never tell - just where the path you had not taken would have led you. p577, Jane
"L'amour fait passer le temps, le temps fait passer l'amour""
"Eveything is a source of fun,
Nobody's safe, for we care for none,
Life is a joke tha's just begun ---"
When you look at a child you could never believe that it would grow up to disappoint you.
The End
April 13, 2019
Years of Grace is one of the more obscure Pulitzer Prize winning novels, awarded the honor in 1931 and now out of print. It recounts the life of a proper, upper-class woman from Chicago, Jane Ward. We first meet her in her teens, living at home. We then follow her through adolescence, a brief time in college, marriage, motherhood, and more. At nearly 600 pages, it's a bit long, but the pace is quick and it reads easily.
Jane's story doesn't have many large, melodramatic events in it. The tension in the novel derives from the shifting of mores and values between the Victorian era and the Jazz age. Jane struggles to come to terms with the ways in which her children and even some of her peers interpret the concepts of fidelity, duty, and happiness. However, Barnes does not portray her as a total stick in the mud; she genuinely grapples with these questions. Having found a loving but dull husband who works for a bank and provides well for the family, does propriety dictate that she simply raise their children in quiet submission, whether she is personally fulfilled or not? When offered a chance to run away and travel the world with another man whom she loves, her decision is not a foregone conclusion.
I found Jane to be a more complex character than I had anticipated. Her external world may not reflect this, but Barnes allows us access to her thoughts and feelings and we see the turmoil within her. And perhaps that disconnect is the point. In Jane, Barnes gives us a portrait of a proper society woman, who shows one face to the world but has a much more convoluted inner life than we know. If her day-to-day decisions remain conventional, that takes nothing away from the sometimes jagged cave of her thoughts, or the indecisiveness she feels. Late in the book, Jane must ask "what if" around many of the decisions she made when younger.
The novel reads quickly, in part because the prose is clear and simple. Unlike some other award winners, this one does not feature complex sentence constructions or innovative and poetic language. So if you're looking for that, you'll need to move on from here. But as a fascinating character study and as a glimpse of how our external lives and internal lives may be quite different, this book achieves a modicum of success. I found it surprisingly entertaining on those levels. Looking at in historical perspective, Jane Ward is an early harbinger of more complex female characters to come.
Jane's story doesn't have many large, melodramatic events in it. The tension in the novel derives from the shifting of mores and values between the Victorian era and the Jazz age. Jane struggles to come to terms with the ways in which her children and even some of her peers interpret the concepts of fidelity, duty, and happiness. However, Barnes does not portray her as a total stick in the mud; she genuinely grapples with these questions. Having found a loving but dull husband who works for a bank and provides well for the family, does propriety dictate that she simply raise their children in quiet submission, whether she is personally fulfilled or not? When offered a chance to run away and travel the world with another man whom she loves, her decision is not a foregone conclusion.
I found Jane to be a more complex character than I had anticipated. Her external world may not reflect this, but Barnes allows us access to her thoughts and feelings and we see the turmoil within her. And perhaps that disconnect is the point. In Jane, Barnes gives us a portrait of a proper society woman, who shows one face to the world but has a much more convoluted inner life than we know. If her day-to-day decisions remain conventional, that takes nothing away from the sometimes jagged cave of her thoughts, or the indecisiveness she feels. Late in the book, Jane must ask "what if" around many of the decisions she made when younger.
The novel reads quickly, in part because the prose is clear and simple. Unlike some other award winners, this one does not feature complex sentence constructions or innovative and poetic language. So if you're looking for that, you'll need to move on from here. But as a fascinating character study and as a glimpse of how our external lives and internal lives may be quite different, this book achieves a modicum of success. I found it surprisingly entertaining on those levels. Looking at in historical perspective, Jane Ward is an early harbinger of more complex female characters to come.
May 31, 2020
Some aspects of this novel are lovely: Jane Ward, with her rich interior life, makes an appealing central character. As the story progresses, her ruminations on life, marriage, and parenting grow ever more profound. And there is something vaguely feminist about how the book tracks 50ish years of wars, laws, and other “historical events” without leaving the dining rooms, classrooms, and other spaces aristocratic women would have had access to during Jane’s lifetime.
But the anti-semitism. Why don’t the other reviews mention the anti-semitism? It is most pronounced when one of Jane’s childhood friends, Muriel, enters a scene. Using backhanded compliments (she is so beautiful you might forget she has Jewish grandparents, her wedding turns out well because her grandfather is too sick to attend, her son has the good fortune of being easily mistaken as a Greek, etc.), the author treats having Jewish ancestry as a biological stain and social impediment. The implicit support for a eugenics that would have Jews marry Christians until all Jews are gone and all children have “dandelion” hair, as Jane’s do, is especially concerning when we remember that Hitler would become Chancellor of Germany only two years after this book won its Pulitzer.
Ultimately, I cannot really recommend this book to other readers because of its casual bigotry, and my guess is that bigotry is also the reason the book has been out of print for so long. All criticisms aside, however, I expect that Jane’s reflections on a life lived well enough will stick with me for some time.
But the anti-semitism. Why don’t the other reviews mention the anti-semitism? It is most pronounced when one of Jane’s childhood friends, Muriel, enters a scene. Using backhanded compliments (she is so beautiful you might forget she has Jewish grandparents, her wedding turns out well because her grandfather is too sick to attend, her son has the good fortune of being easily mistaken as a Greek, etc.), the author treats having Jewish ancestry as a biological stain and social impediment. The implicit support for a eugenics that would have Jews marry Christians until all Jews are gone and all children have “dandelion” hair, as Jane’s do, is especially concerning when we remember that Hitler would become Chancellor of Germany only two years after this book won its Pulitzer.
Ultimately, I cannot really recommend this book to other readers because of its casual bigotry, and my guess is that bigotry is also the reason the book has been out of print for so long. All criticisms aside, however, I expect that Jane’s reflections on a life lived well enough will stick with me for some time.
January 23, 2025
This book was published in 1930 and won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1931. It is the life of Jane Ward, a child of the Chicago upper middle classes, from 14 to 51, as she falls in love, marries, has children and grandchildren, and observes and questions astutely her culture, family, self, and morality. She is vividly real as a character, and the settings and descriptions of the time and surroundings are equally vivid. The book, of course, was written in its time and carries some of the prejudices of its day (and ours, unfortunately), but Jane finds it in herself to question them, at least, unlike her older sister and mother and others surrounding them. She walks her own walk, and still manages to live a conventional life. She and her feelings and thoughts are just so brightly depicted. I found it hard to put this book down. There's no plot, just the flow of everyday family life among the comfortable classes: shockingly comfortable--to be upper middle class back then was really to be rich. A different time. My only regret is that the book doesn't take the families portrayed into the Depression. Some of them were very attached to their inheritances, and it would be interesting to know how they handle a few bank failures and the collapse of the stock market--but not Jane, who all along thought the money was the least interesting thing about her life.
May 21, 2019
This book follows Jane from the 1890s when she is 14 through about 1930 or so when she is a grandmother. I was really expecting to dislike this book. The subject didn't interest me much. It'd already been done in previous Pulitzer Novel winners (The Magnificent Ambersons, The Age of Innocence, etc.) But though the prose was a bit flowery (I mean that literally, she describes flowers a LOT) and not to my liking the story did grab me after a bit and I ended up enjoying the book quite a bit. She really brought out what it must have been like watching Chicago grow into a big city over a lifetime. And see how society changed from Victorian ideals to the liberal ideas of the Jazz Age.
As is the case with many books of this period, depictions of minorities are one-dimensional, stereotyped, and abhorrent. There are not many minority characters in the book, of course. But the language used to describe them ("quadroon", "darkie") is jarring and very offensive to a modern reader.
As is the case with many books of this period, depictions of minorities are one-dimensional, stereotyped, and abhorrent. There are not many minority characters in the book, of course. But the language used to describe them ("quadroon", "darkie") is jarring and very offensive to a modern reader.
May 29, 2024
I stumbled across a reference to this novel in something I was reading, and was drawn to it because of my interest in the time period (late 19th/early 20th centuries) and the Chicago setting. I was pleased to find a copy at my local public library since used copies are quite expensive. On one level it's a simple read, a quiet story where not a lot happens externally, but a great deal happens internally. That's what I like about it; the observation of how a certain woman in a certain family in a certain time period, social milieu, and city lived her life, and what she thought about it all. The heroine, an upper-class Chicago girl who grows from teenager to grandmother over the course of the story, is a deep thinker, inwardly observing and critiquing the society around her even as she outwardly conforms to it. Her willingness to concede to others' demands could be exasperating at times, admirable at others, just as in life. I enjoyed seeing the changes to Chicago, and to society in general from the "gay Nineties" through the Jazz Age, through her eyes. Some anti-Semitic attitudes are jarring to a modern reader, yet typical of that time period (published in 1930). I'm not quite sure the story is Pulitzer-worthy, but I enjoyed it.
January 9, 2019
As I work my way through all the Pulitzer-prize winning novels, I often approach these near-100 year old books with some level of dread that they're going to be difficult to read or just old-fashioned in some way that makes for tough going. I'm often (though not always) wrong, and part of the reason for reading these is to get exactly that exposure to different ideas.
But this was well-written which resulted in an easy read. It covers a time and a world that it is completely foreign to me so it was fascinating from an "archaeological" perspective. But like all good literature is as applicable to the here and now as it was back in the 1920s/1930s.
There's either no drama or it's all drama, depending on how you look at it. All of the characters are well-developed and the coming and going of characters and places and things always makes sense. You never find yourself wondering, "Hey, what about..." In today's parlance, it's a nicely contained universe. Highly recommended.
But this was well-written which resulted in an easy read. It covers a time and a world that it is completely foreign to me so it was fascinating from an "archaeological" perspective. But like all good literature is as applicable to the here and now as it was back in the 1920s/1930s.
There's either no drama or it's all drama, depending on how you look at it. All of the characters are well-developed and the coming and going of characters and places and things always makes sense. You never find yourself wondering, "Hey, what about..." In today's parlance, it's a nicely contained universe. Highly recommended.
September 13, 2023
A good book, but is it really a Pulitzer-prize winning story? Jane, the main character, has a charmed life but doesn’t really appreciate it until the last two pages. Nothing much out of the ordinary happens in her life from a teenager until the end when she is 51, but she believes she is forever going through turmoil after turmoil and missed opportunities. She was born well-off and she married even better.
There are sections of great description and I enjoyed the creeping advance of the modern world on Chicago from the 1890’s to the 1920’s. I sort of wish the story could have captured the effects of the depression on her “years of grace.” That would be a conflict I’d be interested in reading.
There are sections of great description and I enjoyed the creeping advance of the modern world on Chicago from the 1890’s to the 1920’s. I sort of wish the story could have captured the effects of the depression on her “years of grace.” That would be a conflict I’d be interested in reading.
December 27, 2018
The novel follows Jane Ward's family from her youth to her life as a grandmother. Victorian values dictate her actions throughout most of her life, and when her own children grow up with little regard for the values she and her family have always held dear, she is troubled that somehow she and her husband have failed to instill morality into their children. It is a story of a changing of times, from the strict social expectations of the Victorian Age with its specific and limited expectations of both men and women to a twentieth century broadening of ideology encompassing both sexes. It is a bittersweet study of the consequence of choices and the possibilities of what might have been.
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