TWO SERIOUS LADIES
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943. First Edition. Bowles's only novel, finished in 1941, centered around the theme of women and their attempts at independence. One of her protagonists, Christina Goering, "tries to earn salvation by leaving her home and her female companion to challenge the hate outside world. There she takes up with a series of increasingly menacing male strangers, the last of whom abandons her. The second serious lady is Frieda Copperfield, who leaves her husband for a prostitute named Pacifica, who ultimately forces Frieda to share her with a young man. The promiscuity, bisexuality, and sadomasochism in this novel are seldom erotic, but tend instead to illustrate the hidden horror in human relationships, most of which consist of greedy individual truth-seekers bouncing their needs off each other" (Barbour, Paula L. "Jane Auer Bowles." American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide from Colonial Times to the Present, p.64). Item #5669
First Printing. Octavo (20cm); tan cloth, with titling and decorative elements stamped in dark pink on spine and front cover; dark pink topstain; dustjacket; [x],271,[7]pp. Trivial wear to spine ends, touch of offsetting to endpapers, else very Near Fine, with the topstain bright and unfaded. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $2.50), gently spine-sunned, with light wear to spine ends; Near Fine.
Price: $1,750.00