Restless Dolly Maunder

Later in her life Dolly realised that she had just wanted to be a woman with the same freedom as men who normally controlled their own lifestyle and the lifestyle of their families.

Dolly Maunder had been restless from the time she took her first steps. Attending the local school, Dolly decided that she would like to be a teacher however her father had other plans. She was to stay on the family farm helping her mother with the cooking and household tasks. Dolly definitely wanted more from life than this.

When Dolly was born in 1880, some women were beginning to take control of their own lives. However Dolly was born into a family in rural New South Wales where her father made the decisions and children who rebelled felt the wrath of his leather belt.

Dolly met two young men who may have been marriage prospects but these men were deterred because of Dolly's family's low social standing or by religion. Eventually her family insisted that she should marry Bert, a worker on their farm. Dolly and Bert then moved to another property.

Bert and Dolly made improvements to the property and then Dolly became restless and they set out to develop another project. As well as farming, the pair managed hotels and boarding houses. With each project their financial position improved but Dolly was still restless. She always wanted more, to try something new. Dolly and Bert had three children but later in life Dolly realised that she didn't really have the knack of being a mother and the relationship with her children was strained. 

Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville, as well as telling Dolly's story, provides a social history reflecting on the lives of women from the later years of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Gradually there were changes in expectations as some women began to object to the domination of men in their lives, particularly when women wanted to own property in their name. The effects of the 1930s Depression, followed by the Second World War, on the lives of women and their families, also shapes the latter years of Dolly's life.

Dolly Maunder (Sarah Catherine Maunder) was Kate Grenville's grandmother.  Kate did not know her grandmother well but she did know that there were tensions between members of her family and her grandmother. The author collected together the small number of facts that she knew about the life of her grandmother to form the basis of this novel in the hope of better understanding the life of Dolly Maunder.

Women like Dolly helped open the doors for the next generations of women to enjoy more freedom in how they lived their lives. After reading this novel I plan to look more carefully at the lives of my family members who were of the same generation as Dolly in order to better understand their lives and their sometimes strained relationships with younger generations.

Thank you to Better Reading for a preview copy of this novel which is due for publication in July. (#BRPreview)

Shortlisted for 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction (Previously Orange Prize for Fiction) - honours the best novel published in Britain in English by a woman.