Letty Fox: Her Luck
Encyclopedia
The Australian-born author Christina Stead
’s sixth novel
, Letty Fox: Her Luck, is an energetic tribute to the drama of the urban environment and its role in socializing its occupants. Published in 1946, Stead wrote the lengthy Letty Fox after living in New York City
for seven years. The cosmopolitan setting serves well as the theater in which Stead develops her characters through their adventures with numerous careers, love affairs, familial obligations, and sensitivities to reputation. To this end, Letty Fox has been described as “a modern picaresque novel and psychological novel at the same time.”
In a break from her typical style of story-telling, Christina Stead wrote Letty Fox from the first person
perspective. The novel’s protagonist narrator, Letty Fox, reveals herself as a bundle of contradictions. While Letty is a shrewd observer of human behavior, her perceptions and reactions are in various instances romantic, conservative, and feminist. Stead introduces the reader to Letty at the restless age of 24 with the following mise en scène
:
This beginning hints at Letty’s capacity to be sexually frank, along with her steadfast desire to act with commonsense.
While major political events, such as the economic depression and World War II
, provide setting
for Letty Fox: Her Luck, the reader finds that the story devotes itself to the psychological development of its main character. In what Rudolf Bader has referred to as a “one long bildungsroman
,” Stead wrote Letty Fox as a colossally comic coming-of-age, wherein readers are introduced to the colorful personalities that shaped the heroine’s young life. Letty gains wisdom through lessons bestowed by her unusual family and her numerous unsuccessful relationships with unsuitable men, including her passionate mania for Luke Adams (“a tease, a hound of love”). Stead ends the novel when Letty rejects a life of scattered sexual aggression, in favor of the stability of marriage.
Letty’s decision to marry her friend, Bill van Week, has been interpreted by literary critics as an acceptance of the sexual economics that dominate middle-class male/female relationships at the time. However, that is not to suggest that Stead’s reputation as a writer lacks a feminist perspective. On the contrary, through the character of Letty, Stead portrays a complex woman struggling inside of the patriarchal structures that confine her to a particular world. Letty’s choice to marry and have a child - because she is “tired of steering” in a sea of men - may be viewed as Stead's criticism of a society that strictly limits female experience. Like many of Stead’s female characters, the fictionalized women of Letty Fox: Her Luck are conscious of the ways in which the male capitalist culture dominates them. At least one critic has judged Letty as “a heartless betrayer,” who borrows from and champions the suppressive ideology of power, exploiting others to achieve her goals. Or, maybe Letty just gets lucky.
Christina Stead
Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations.-Biography:...
’s sixth novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, Letty Fox: Her Luck, is an energetic tribute to the drama of the urban environment and its role in socializing its occupants. Published in 1946, Stead wrote the lengthy Letty Fox after living in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
for seven years. The cosmopolitan setting serves well as the theater in which Stead develops her characters through their adventures with numerous careers, love affairs, familial obligations, and sensitivities to reputation. To this end, Letty Fox has been described as “a modern picaresque novel and psychological novel at the same time.”
In a break from her typical style of story-telling, Christina Stead wrote Letty Fox from the first person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
perspective. The novel’s protagonist narrator, Letty Fox, reveals herself as a bundle of contradictions. While Letty is a shrewd observer of human behavior, her perceptions and reactions are in various instances romantic, conservative, and feminist. Stead introduces the reader to Letty at the restless age of 24 with the following mise en scène
Mise en scène
Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...
:
One hot night last spring, after waiting fruitlessly for a call from my then lover, with whom I had quarreled the same afternoon, and finding one of my black moods on me, I flung out of my lonely room on the ninth floor (unlucky number) in a hotel in lower Fifth Avenue and rushed into the streets of the Village, feeling bad. My first thought was, at any cost, to get company for the evening.
This beginning hints at Letty’s capacity to be sexually frank, along with her steadfast desire to act with commonsense.
While major political events, such as the economic depression and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, provide setting
Setting
Setting may refer to:* A location where something is set* Set construction in theatrical scenery* Setting in fiction* Setting up to fail a manipulative technique to engineer failure...
for Letty Fox: Her Luck, the reader finds that the story devotes itself to the psychological development of its main character. In what Rudolf Bader has referred to as a “one long bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
,” Stead wrote Letty Fox as a colossally comic coming-of-age, wherein readers are introduced to the colorful personalities that shaped the heroine’s young life. Letty gains wisdom through lessons bestowed by her unusual family and her numerous unsuccessful relationships with unsuitable men, including her passionate mania for Luke Adams (“a tease, a hound of love”). Stead ends the novel when Letty rejects a life of scattered sexual aggression, in favor of the stability of marriage.
Letty’s decision to marry her friend, Bill van Week, has been interpreted by literary critics as an acceptance of the sexual economics that dominate middle-class male/female relationships at the time. However, that is not to suggest that Stead’s reputation as a writer lacks a feminist perspective. On the contrary, through the character of Letty, Stead portrays a complex woman struggling inside of the patriarchal structures that confine her to a particular world. Letty’s choice to marry and have a child - because she is “tired of steering” in a sea of men - may be viewed as Stead's criticism of a society that strictly limits female experience. Like many of Stead’s female characters, the fictionalized women of Letty Fox: Her Luck are conscious of the ways in which the male capitalist culture dominates them. At least one critic has judged Letty as “a heartless betrayer,” who borrows from and champions the suppressive ideology of power, exploiting others to achieve her goals. Or, maybe Letty just gets lucky.
External links
- The Enigmatic Christina Stead by Anne Pender
- Reader Review of Letty Fox: Her Luck by Jessa Crispin at Bookslut.
- A real inferno, the Life of Christina Stead by Brooke Allen at The New CriterionThe New CriterionThe New Criterion is a New York-based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books...
. - Biographical sketch at Books and Writers
- Annotated bibliography and biographical sketch by Perry Middlemiss