The Child Manuela
Christa Winsloe
No one needs to be told that MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM was one of the outstanding film and play successes of recent years. It was important for three reasons. First, it treated for the first time the forbidden subject of adolescent homosexuality; second, its movie success was so great that it was thereafter made into a stage play; third, the movie itself was probably the most intelligent presentation of human values that we have seen upon the screen.
The point about all this — and what is not so generally known — is that both the movie and the play were adapted from a remarkable novel, which we now have the privilege of publishing completely uncensored, for the first time in an English translation.
It is a much bigger, fuller, richer tale than the part that was selected for dramatization. In essence it is the study of ‘absentee motherhood’ — the poignant and moving narrative story of a young girl torn from familiar settings and sent to a boarding school with its rules, regulations and impersonal, gradual standardization. Of course, there has to be a compensation for the loss of parental love. Its form is sometimes cruel, sometimes surprisingly noble; usually it is little understood.
THE CHILD MANUELA deals, therefore, with a subject ordinarily considered taboo but which is intensely interesting and important; the psychological and physiological development of the young mind and soul in relation to others of the same sex and to older people. We cannot emphasize enough that this is one of the great novels of our (or of any) generation; one which can be read now by any reader for enjoyment pure and simple, and one which inevitably will be read for many years to come.
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Details
| ISBN | 9780405073779 |
| Genre | Movie/Media Tie-In; Award Winner; Fiction |
| Copyright Date | 1933 |
| Publication Date | 1933 |
| Publisher | Farrar & Rinehart |
| Format | Hardcover |
| No. of Pages | 310 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | NotRated |
| Translator | Agnes Neill Scott |
| Subject | Lesbians – Fiction |
| BookID | 2010 |
