- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: A Delta Trade Paperbacks (1 Mar 1998)
- ISBN-10: 0385333447
- ISBN-13: 978-0385333443
- Product Dimensions: 17.5 x 10.2 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,650,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A haunting novel of innocence and guilt, which tells the story of Emmeline, still a young girl when she was forced to leave her home to work in a cotton mill. The author also wrote "The Life of an Old Man", "To the Precipice", "Attachments" and "His Little Women".
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In ``Emmeline.'' Rossner serves up a big hunk of the history of the Industrial Revolution in our country. We learn about the "mill girls," recruited throughout New England to work in the textile mills, and feed the nation's growing appetite for factory-made fabric.
Emmeline is a bright and adept 13-year-old, who must leave rural Maineand take a job in one of the mills in Lowellk Massachusetts in order to "save" her starving family to difficult times. The several dollars she earns per month means difference between starvation and survival for family.
Emmeline is a soldier in the Industrial Revolution. Rossner uses Emmeline's life to take us through a water-powered textile mill, to learn the social and technological conditions under which what are now our revered "vintage" textiles were made.
Along the way we learned a lot of other social history: living conditions for early Irish immigrants to Massachusetts; the westward expansion that lured the fittest sons and daughters from New England farms and pulled them toward the West; the heavy-handed paternalism that governed every aspect of those early factory-workers' lives.
The failure of the book lies in the surprise ending. It's too contrived, and just entirely too tragic. Rossner claims that she spoke to someone who once knew the real Emmeline, so perhaps the conclusion is drawn from tragic facts surrounding an actual human life.
This book was written during the 1970s flowering of feminist literature. It would be interesting to see what a contemporary author would do with a similar social history today.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I loved this book, but thought that the ending should have been much more developed or even totally different. I loved the different parts, but the ending was totally unexpected for me and I think it should have been much different.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
19 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Emmeline by Judith Rossner
9 Sep 2000
Format:Paperback
Emmeline is one of the best novels of fiction I have ever read. I read it because I knew Judith Rossner was a good author, but was astounded at how this book kept my interest. If a book is not exceptionally good, I usually do not finish it. Emmeline was so good that I convinced my sister to read it (she usually only reads heavy reading like James Mitchner). She read it in one day. She loved it too. The ending is so very shocking, and really caught me off guard. I would read it again if I had the time, but want to read another Rossner.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Glad to have found this book again
11 Aug 2008
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I read this book at least 10 years ago, and had forgotten about it. Then recently there was someone with the name of Emmeline on television - no relation in any way, but it made me think of the book. I remembered the storyline and thought it unique, so I check Amazon, and of course, it was available. (And BTW, the book was advertised as "used", and I paid less than a dollar for it, but it was brand new.) :-)
All the other reviewers have done a great job of reviewing it, and I can't add to it, and only have one other observation. The first time I read it, I was so incredibly sad for Emmeline and felt depressed for days. Books do that to me sometimes. But now, years later, after reading it, altho' I'm still sympathetic, I was a bit annoyed at Emmeline. Both as a 13/14 year old, and as an adult. I know the attitudes of the times were outrageous.....like "confining" a pregnant woman when she started to show -- things like that. But I just wanted to shake Emmeline. I got a bit too tired of her intense "devotion" to Mr. Maguire, and then later to Matthew. Once she made up her mind, that was IT. I just found her a bit tiring now that I'm older and have grandchildren of my own. Still a good read, though.
All the other reviewers have done a great job of reviewing it, and I can't add to it, and only have one other observation. The first time I read it, I was so incredibly sad for Emmeline and felt depressed for days. Books do that to me sometimes. But now, years later, after reading it, altho' I'm still sympathetic, I was a bit annoyed at Emmeline. Both as a 13/14 year old, and as an adult. I know the attitudes of the times were outrageous.....like "confining" a pregnant woman when she started to show -- things like that. But I just wanted to shake Emmeline. I got a bit too tired of her intense "devotion" to Mr. Maguire, and then later to Matthew. Once she made up her mind, that was IT. I just found her a bit tiring now that I'm older and have grandchildren of my own. Still a good read, though.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Brrr
17 Mar 2006
Format:Hardcover
This is one cold book. Probably says more about Rossner than "Looking for Mr. Goodbar". Everything is laid out very matter of fact, very dispassionate, stand back and away, look but don't touch, it might hurt. A must read, if just to wake one up to the cruelty of life.
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