The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

This was my most memorable pandemic read, so far. 

Alma Whitaker is the central character in Elizabeth Gilbert's novel.  There is so much to say about Alma--she is a botanist, like her father, but looks so much like her mother.  In looking like her mother, her marriage prospects are slim and this is the 1800's--so that's important.  By 1830, Alma is 30 years old.  However Alma doesn't marry just to marry and also there are no eligible men for her.  Her sister, and childhood friend take the only two possible suitors. 

Prudence, her adopted sister and her friend Retty, get married and move away from White Acre, the family homestead in Philadelphia.  Alma ends up helping her father with his multi-million dollar (today's money) businesses, after her mom dies.  She does meet someone--Ambrose Pierce who ends up marrying Alma.  But alas, it's not quite the happily ever after she had hoped it would be.  Alma exonerates Ambrose to Tahiti (not a bad place to end up).  There he will cultivate a vanilla plantation that her father set up years ago. 

Alma is a self sufficient, brilliant scientific woman whom I admire, even though she is fictional.  This book had me captivated from very early on.

I turned to reading Elizabeth Gilbert at this time because of a Ted Conversation I heard her host called "It's OK to feel overwhelmed. Here's what to do next".  I highly recommend listening/watching this.   This was early into the Coronavirus stay at home orders.  When I heard her speak, I thought, she is an articulate and brilliant person.  Why haven't I read more of her books?  So I began my WFH journey with The Signature of All Things. 

Not so long ago, I read City of Girls and of course, a longer time ago I read Eat, Pray, Love and then Committed:  a love story, her follow up to EPL.   I might go back and reread Committed to relearn more about Ms. Gilbert.  Anyway Elizabeth Gilbert, like Alma, I admire and I would jump at an opportunity for her to be my mentor.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice is one of the best sociological studies about early nineteen century British loyalty and society I have ever read - where title, rank, fortune, and good looks are in many ways the requirements of an approved marriage, more so than love. In fact, this wonderful book might not be as relevant today as two hundred years ago, but there are still many traces of such societies throughout the world, today. It was not all that long ago in America, where marrying outside of your religion, or ethnicity, was looked down upon.

So much for the plot.  I think we are all familiar with it.  A classic, written in 1813.  An oldie, but goodie.