Customer Reviews

Love and Power in the Nineteenth Century: The Marriage of Violet Blair

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The depth of scholarship displayed by this book is inspiring. The author conducted archival research in leading 19th century historical collections, including the Library of Congress, the Huntington, and the Harvey Firestone Library at Princeton. Moreover, the extensive endnotes included in the book make it an extremely useful work for other scholars interested in this time period or the extended Blair-Janin families.

Such scholarship might produce a stuffy volume, but Laas has wrought a captivating narrative of an unusual 19th century marriage that sheds new light on the position of women in society and the lives of the social elite. Bottom line... this book is a good read as well as a valuable addition to American history.

I note that 45 pages of the 169 pages of "Love and Power" are comprised of notes and a bibliography, although there is no index. The information on Miss Blair's life is obviously well-researched and well-documented. However, the merit of the time spent by Biographer/Historian Laas and the merit of the time and money spent by the tax-funded University of Arkansas press to edit and publish such a book is questionable. The book is about the life of a very egocentric, shallow-minded and superficial woman, Violet Blair, whose alleged "independence" was derived from having inherited enough wealth from her parents to enable her to maintain her "independence," therefore keeping her husband at a distance. This perhaps served the interests of both Miss Blair and her husband Mr. Janus, who apparently didn't enjoy the company of each other for very long periods of time, for obvious reasons, as I myself would have been bored and annoyed to have had to spend any amount of time with either one of these two individuals.

Once again, I fail to see that Miss Blair's life merits the time and money spent to record it, as I fail to see any real contribution this individual has made to society or to history. Her primary goal in life seems to have been maintaining the superficial facade so typical of the dilettante "class" of people that she aligned herself with. The DAR and similar groups, which the Blair family aligned themselves with, are based solely on "family lineage," and have no real value in society other than to perpetuate a barbaric code of "snob appeal" based on "whose ancestors got here first." The native-Ameicans, of course, got here first, and the other Americans who arrived before, during, and after the Blair family did most of the work that made America the nation that it is, and did most of the work that enabled Violet Blair and others like her to enjoy those comforts and privileges that she enjoyed and to maintain an aire of exclusiveness and snobbery.