After producing some articles about May Sinclair's novella The Flaw in the Crystal, I decided to investigate her background in the hope of finding some more material of interest.
I found some very familiar biographical elements and other connections when reading about her life. I mentioned a blueprint for writers in an article in the Context and the Total Picture series; if I created a template for writers of interest, May Sinclair would tick many of the boxes.
I have seen, for example, the Celtic Connection in the biographies of many novelists, so it was no surprise to learn that May Sinclair had an Irish mother and a Scottish father.
It also came as no surprise when I found that she had some other things in common with Jean Rhys and L. M. Montgomery. May Sinclair too was interested in and inspired by the Brontës, whose works she may have first encountered in her father's private library rather than the local public library.
May Sinclair was a very different person from Jean Rhys, but they had a few things in common:
They both wrote under assumed names.
Both novelists lived for a while in Devon.
They both read voraciously as girls, partly for escape, and both later wrote Brontë-inspired books.
They both had unsympathetic mothers who tried to force them to conform to the norm. They had some things to say about their childhood experiences that sound uncannily similar.
Just as Jean Rhys's work is mostly autobiographical, so are some of May Sinclair's novels, Mary Olivier in particular. Mary Olivier's mother wants her to behave like a 'normal' girl:
“...you should try and behave a little more like other people.”
"You were different," she said. "You weren’t like any of the others. I was afraid of you.”
As previously mentioned, Jean Rhys's mother said this to her:
“I've done my best, it's no use. You'll never learn to be like other people.”
May Sinclair's fictional mother says something very similar:
"Goodness knows I've done everything I could to break you of it."
Jean Rhys also said this about her mother:
“She must have seen something alien in me which would devour me and make me unhappy, and she was trying to root it out at all costs.”
Mary Olivier says this about her mother's attempts to destroy her:
“It's your real self she hates—the thing she can't see and touch and get at—the thing that makes you different. Even when I was little she hated it and tried to crush it. I remember things—"
Unlike Jean Rhys, May Sinclair was very intellectual. She was not encouraged to read and study. Her mother wanted her to sit by her side and sew for hours. Her mother wanted her to behave like a little girl, not like a tomboy or scholar:
“I suppose I—I didn't like your being clever. It was the boys I wanted to do things. Not you.”
This is nothing new for the time. This is from May Sinclair's Three Sisters:
“She sewed as she read. For the Vicar considered that sewing was an occupation and that reading was not. He was silent as long as his daughter sewed and when she read he talked.”
May Sinclair eventually managed to get something of an education for herself:
“...in the autumn of 1881, when Sinclair was 18, she was sent to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She was here for just one year, but she studied scripture, history, literature, English language, geography, arithmetic, geometry, algebra, natural science, physics, physiology, chemistry, French, German Latin and Greek. She also studied philosophy.”
https://maysinclairsociety.com/biography/
This is a very heavy workload for just one year. It is also very similar to something I read about L. M. Montgomery, who was also a very good scholar. Her biographer Mary Henley Rubio is quoted here:
“Montgomery attended PWC for one year between 1893 and 1894. Like Anne, she completed two years of college during this time, taking a double course load of English, French, Greek, Latin, Agriculture, Mathematics, Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry, Chemistry, Horticulture, Roman History, Hygiene, and School Management.”
Sidelined because they were girls, both May Sincair and L. M. Montgomery made the most of their hard-won educational opportunities.
Just like Charlotte Bronte, May Sinclair was the sole survivor of six children; her siblings all died young.
She was strongly influenced by the Brontë sisters' lives and works; she wrote a biography of them, a novel based on their lives and a short story with Brontë references and undertones. She also wrote introductions for a new edition of Jane Eyre and other Brontë novels.
She had strong, sometimes controversial, views about many aspects of the Brontës' lives and works. She said this about Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights for example:
“Jane Eyre is milk and water to Catherine Earnshaw, and Rochester a stage puppet beside Heathcliff.“
There is more to come about May Sinclair's life and works.
