Vein of Iron. Afterword by Anne Firor Scott [Paperback]

Ellen Glasgow (Author), Anne Firor Scott (Epilogue)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1995

A novel that takes place in the Valley of Virginia, tracing the experience of a family with four generations of strong women.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (April 22 in Richmond, Virginia , 1873-November 21, 1945 in Richmond, Virginia) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist from Richmond, Virginia.

Beginning in 1897, Glasgow wrote twenty novels and many short stories, mainly about life in Virginia. Her own education had been rudimentary, a fact Glasgow compensated for by reading widely. Today, her novels are regarded as more than just depictions of life in the Southern United States.

The 1906 publication of Ellen Glasgow's novel The Wheel of Life drew critical acclaim and comparison with Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, published by George Platt Brett, Sr. of Macmillan Publishers (United States) in 1905.

Ellen maintained a close lifelong friendship with James Branch Cabell, another notable Richmond writer. She spent many summers at her family's Bumpass, Virginia estate, the historic Jerdone Castle plantation, a venue that reappears in her writings.

On her passing in 1945, Ellen Glasgow was interred at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press (August 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813916364
• ISBN-13: 978-0813916361
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,723,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rereading Vein of Iron, July 28, 2004

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vein of Iron (Hardcover)

Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945) was a successful writer during her lifetime, but, alas, her work is too little known today. It is due for a revival. Glasgow lived most of her life in Richmond, Virginia, and was critically praised as an early naturalist writer. She attempted to describe the South without the romantic accretions of "Lost Cause" mythology that arose following the Civil War.

Glasgow wrote Vein of Iron in 1935, and the book placed second on the best-seller lists that year. It is typical for her work which bridged the gap between serious and popular literature. I first read this novel three years ago and was pleased to have the opportunity to reread it as part of a book group. I was surprised at how much I had missed -- and probably got wrong -- on my first reading. If serious literature can be characterized as a book that bears reading slowly and more than once, then Vein of Iron has met this standard for me.

The book is set primarily in rural Virginia from about 1901 through 1935 (running into the first term of President Roosevelt). The story centers on the Fincastle family of Scotch-Irish descent which has lived in what has become a rundown manse in the small fictional village of Ironside since before the Revolutionary War.

Several family members get a great deal of attention in the novel. Ada Fincastle is a young woman in love with a young man named Ralph McBride. She loses Ralph, as a result of a forced marriage to a rich, selfish girl, Janet Rowan, who claims Ralph got her pregnant. She ultimately marries Ralph, but only after a two-day torrid affair in the woods before the divorce between Ralph and Janet is concluded. Ralph returns from WW I cynical and disillusioned and the couple struggle to retain their love for one another.

Ada's father, John Fincastle, is the other major character in the story. Fincastle is a Presbryterian minister who has been defrocked "after he had told the Presbytery he rejected the God of Abraham but accepted the God of Spinoza." (p.45) Fincastle has spent his life writing a multi-volume work of philosophy, heavily influenced by a combination of philosophical naturalism, German idealism, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and, I think especially, Buddhism and Eastern thought. Glasgow herself was a religous seeker of an unorthodox cast who had been fascinated with Buddhism when young. I found her portrait of John Fincastle compelling.

The main characters also include Ada's grandmother as well as Fincastle's wife, who dies early in the book, and a character named Aunt Meggie all of whom retain traditional Presbryterian religious convictions and all of whom are sympathetically portrayed.

Much of the theme of the book is stated in the title, as the characters, regardless of their differences in religious outlook maintain their fortitude and strength in the face of difficulty, adversity, and change. Besides fortitude and interior toughness, the second large theme of the book, I think, is human compassion. As the family suffers and observes the suffering of others during the Great Depression, John and ada, in particular, come to realizew and to put into practice the value of limiting one's own egocentrism and trying to work to alleviate the sufferings of others. There is a Buddhist mantra that is repeated at several important places in this novel: "May all beings be delivered from suffering" -- known as the lovingkindness (or metta) meditation that seemed to me initially and still seems to me upon rereading to be at the heart of this book.

The book has excellent descriptions of life in rural Virginia and of the growth of the urban South in a larger fictious city called Queenborough. Industrialization and the suffering resulting from the Depression are portrayed well. There are also sympathetic, non-stereotyped portrayals of African-Americans, uncommon in a work of this era.

For all the descriptions of place and the intensity of the love story, I still concluded on my reading that the main focus of this book was spiritual. Glasgow writes knowingly both of the loss of faith in traditional Western religions and also of the need for the spiritual values of wisdom, self-understanding, and compassion. Her book has a serious tone throughout and her quest remains distinctly modern.

I found, as I did when I first read Vein of Iron that much of the book is overwritten and that its tone is melodramatic in places. In spite of that, Vein of Iron works on many levels. I found it primarily a picture of a timeless spiritual quest. It encourages the reader away from the materialism of the everyday, whether found in rural Virginia or anywhere else, to search for meaning, wisdom, and compassion, regardless of whether the reader finds these values within or without the boundaries of a traditional religous faith.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A vein of iron through life's struggles and disappointments, November 11, 2001

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vein of Iron. Afterword by Anne Firor Scott (Paperback)

(...)Vein of Iron, written in 1935, is the saga of a Virginia family who live through changing times. It starts in 1901 when the central character Ada is 10 years old, and she is deeply disappointed when, even though she has saved up her money for a doll with real hair, she has to settle for a cheaper doll that she doesn't want. This sets the tone of the book, which is filled with the realities of life's struggles and disappointments. It also deeply explores religion and faith as Ada's father is a former Presbyterian minister who has lost his faith and there is constant conflict between right and wrong as well as tradition and change.

The title refers to the vein of iron within the characters, especially the women, which keeps them going throughout adversity as they struggle through their personal challenges as well as the social changes creating upheaval around them. The love of Ada's life, Ralph McBride, is stolen by the trickery of a supposed best friend. He eventually does come back to her as a soldier off to fight in the World War and their two-day illicit romance results in a pregnancy, which alienates her from her beloved Grandmother. Later, after her lover comes back from war, disillusioned by his experiences on the battlefield, their marriage is marked with more disappointment and struggle as they leave their beloved mountain home and move to a large town. When the Depression hits, and her husband loses his job, she finds work selling gloves in a shop where her wages keep getting reduced and the family struggles to put food on the table. There's always compassion though for those even less fortunate and we get to know their small community of neighbors.

There were a lot of themes going on at once in spite of the simplicity of the words. Yet the story itself was so engaging that I was reading it on the bus one day and went two stops past my usual stop. The sense of place is dominant throughout and I was transported into the author's world. It was not always a pleasant place to be, especially during those Depression years, but I totally related to it all, and admire the "vein of iron" in the author, as well as in her characters. Recommended.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful Portrayal of Early 20th Century Rural Virginia, June 13, 2000

By 

Susan S. Platt (Long Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vein of Iron. Afterword by Anne Firor Scott (Paperback)

Ellen Glasgow is definitely an underrated American female writer; how many have heard of her? She writes elegantly and truthfully. The setting for Vein of Iron is an area of rural Virginia where I spent much of my childhood. I don't think it has changed much! In this novel, there are wonderful passages about the impact of Christian beliefs on the life of the people who settled in the region (which can surely be generalized to many rural settlements throughout the U.S.). Glasgow creates a fascinating character in Ada's father, who struggles with his spirituality. Ada is strong, faithful, optimistic- just as I imagined our female predecessors to be at that time. This is a character-driven, setting-driven novel, and I loved it. My daughter surprised me with it for mother's day. Thanks, daughter!