Painted Ladies uses art as inspiration for short stories

Review by Doug Gibson

Beth Porter has a distinguished career in the entertainment industry, both on stage and in film, as an actor and in duties behind stage and screen. She is also an accomplished writer of fiction. We have reviewed her memoir and a novel on this blog. In the anthology "Painted Ladies: a kaleidoscope of stories," Porter pens stories that are inspired by famous art, often with political subtexts that include feminism, socialism, capitalism, war, health care, and more.

The stories are, most importantly, entertaining. In some of the longer ones, the reader is jolted out a relaxing comfort with the characters and plot, disrupted by historical events that cause pain and misery. I'm going to provide brief accounts of three stories I particularly enjoyed and allow readers to encounter others' unawares. The artists and the stories behind the art are worthy of much discussion but the focus is on the stories in this review. The creators of art we see are E'douard Manet, Pauline Modersohn-Becker, and Edward Hopper.

The above painting serves as inspiration for the tale "JoJo's Eyes." (I will add that Porter offers introductions to the short stories, offering pertinent information about the artists, how the world was in the time the art was created, and analysis of the its meaning.)

The story is set in the late 19th century Paris, the Folies Bergere, and moves through the lives of people who make a living from the entertainment offered. The painting is fascinating. The young lady with inscrutable expression stands in front of a large mirror. We see what she is seeing. The story provides glimpses into the lives of the artists, barkers and other workers there. A pandemic killing many, a touch of irony given today, is afflicting characters. There is an abrupt, very sad death.

"JoJo's Eyes," is both a love story and a tale of trying to survive in a perilous environment, where one's livelihood is threatened by events that can't be controlled. The woman in love represents the young woman in the painting, whose dreams extend beyond just a counter. The story reveals what the atmosphere and visual stimulation must have been at these shows 140 years ago.

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This second painting inspired my favorite story of the anthology, "The Ghost Goose." It involves a young girl, "Lottie," who lives a happy but isolated farming life with her parents. One day, while Lottie is playing in a cow shed, her parents are swept away by a tornado. Not quite realizing this, although she does see the destruction, the youngster harbors a belief that her parents, while injured, are just lost. One of the early sounds she hears after the tornado's destruction is the honking of a goose.

Lottie is taken in by a generous, loving family, who treat her like a daughter. She loves and marries their son. The family live in town, the father a successful butcher. Eventually Lottie and her husband restore the damaged farm. Life is idyllic for Lottie and her adopted family. Very abruptly, even jarring to the reader, World War I intrudes, demanding a steady supply of rural males to fight, witness horror, and -- for some -- to die, whether in battle or solitude. Porter conveys the emotional impact of the war on its conscripted, its volunteers, and their families, and communities. It destroys relationships, harms rural economies, brings late-in-life grief and shortens life spans. Lottie and her husband, named "Deet," become survivors, like so many others, adjusting to the disruption.

The mysterious honking is the "The Ghost Goose," and the fate of her parents is always in Lottie's mind through the decades of her life. What I enjoy most about this story is Porter's descriptive ability to convey what life was like on an isolated farm, and the village life, of 100 years ago. I'd love to see this adapted into the visual, as a film.

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This painting inspires a story, "The Round Table," set in New York City, some years before World War II beckoned, in a shabby diner, near a bus station. It starts as a damsel in distress tale. A man, likely unmarried, on the make, approaches the "doll" sitting alone at the table. The girl is very hesitant to speak, or even acknowledge, her nighttime suitor.

Still, the lame come-on lines are uttered. "Let me be Frank, ... because that's my name, Frank," is an example.

Slowly he gets reaction from the young lady. Not intimidated by "Frank," she tells him at first she's waiting for someone. More queries bring a tear or two. She accepts a handkerchief from "Frank," who imagines himself a protector. She invites him to sit down. He learns her name, "Wilma."

This is a brief story with a kick at the end, although a second reading made me wonder how I missed clues the first time. Maybe I'm a bit like Frank. I was single until my mid-30s, and while I never had an interaction that concludes as Frank's did, I empathize with the uncertainty of a man trying to approach, and impress, an attractive woman he has never met before. The awkwardness; the only somewhat sincere bravado; the condescending masculine outrage at offenses related by the damsel.  For heterosexual single males, it's a necessary risk.

"The Round Table" has a quirky ending that leaves you thinking. I see parallels in "Frank" with other males of the arts that don't get the girl. They include "Mr. Warburton" in Orwell's "A Clergyman's Daughter," and Charles Laughton's "Sir William Porterhouse" in the James Whale-directed pre-code classic from 1932, "The Old Dark House."  We reviewed that film here.

Beth Porter's Wikipedia page is here.