Norris, Kathleen Thompson

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NORRIS, Kathleen Thompson

Born 16 July 1880, San Francisco, California; died 18 January 1966, San Francisco, California

Wrote under: Jane Ireland, Kathleen Norris

Daughter of James A. and Josephine E. Moroney Thompson; married Charles G. Norris, 1909

The second of six children, Kathleen Thompson Norris grew up in rural Mill Valley, where her father, a San Francisco bank manager, commuted daily by ferry. In 1899 both parents died within a month, leaving the children to fend for themselves. Norris worked as clerk, bookkeeper, librarian, and newspaper reporter to help support the family. While covering a skating party, she met her future husband, a writer. She followed him to New York City when he became arts editor for American magazine.

Norris published fiction in the New York Telegram, winning $50 for the best story of the week. Her husband encouraged her to send out others, and Atlantic accepted "The Tide-Marsh" and "What Happened to Alanna" in 1910. Norris began Mother (1911) for another story contest, but it grew too long; it was enlarged to become a popular novel. For the next half century, despite crippling arthritis, Norris wrote 90 books, numerous stories and magazine serials, a newspaper column, and a radio soap opera. A pacifist, she campaigned vigorously against capital punishment and foreign involvement.

Much of Norris' writing is rooted in her own life and California background. Typical is Little Ships (1921), centering on a large nouveau riche Irish Catholic family and its less fortunate relatives, including a fine old peasant grandmother. Although the book is marred by sentimentality and prejudice, Norris creates deft characterization and effective dramatic tension in her family scenes.

Certain People of Importance (1922) is considered Norris' most ambitious work. In this impressive family chronicle spanning more than a century, descendants of Forty-niner Reuben Crabtree invent a "first family" history not in the least based on fact. Scandals and intrigues worthy of any soap opera are plentiful, yet no one lifts an eyebrow. Although Norris denies a "knowledge of those dark forces which fascinate modern writers," the novel's true subject seems to be human greed, hypocrisy, and deceit.

One of the book's strengths is its precise attention to forgotten detail—fashions, furnishings, eating habits, and amusements. Norris writes sympathetically of independent young women who chafe under the restrictions of parents or brother. She also offers a grim reminder of the risks of pregnancy, childbirth, and poverty. This, Norris' most realistic book, was not well received.

Through a Glass Darkly (1957) is noteworthy only because its first half depicts a utopia where war does not exist, the government feeds anyone who needs it, and people take care of each other. Those who die on earth "arrive" in Foxcrossing to live happily. But the protagonist, who longs to "go back" to our world to help suffering children, loses her life trying to rescue hurricane victims and is reincarnated in the book's second half. The story moves disappointingly into Norris' familiar formula of a working girl's struggle to survive. The utopian world is forgotten.

Norris also published two sometimes conflicting autobiographies, Noon (1925) and Family Gathering (1959). Many of her books remain in print, but most of these are frothy romances with pink-and-gold heroines and contrived endings. These characters seem suspended in an eternal 1910, regardless of the real year. Her best writing shows more depth: family warmth, sincerity, and pettiness; condemnation of the self-centered rich; and vivid accounts of early California. She portrays men and women of another generation, almost another world, meeting life however they can—with love, with humor, with desperation.

Other Works:

The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne (1912). Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby (1913). Saturday's Child (1914). The Treasure (1914). The Story of Julia Page (1915). The Heart of Rachael (1916). Martie, the Unconquered (1917). Undertow (1917). Josselyn's Wife (1918). Sisters (1919). Harriet and the Piper (1920). The Beloved Woman (1921). Lucretia Lombard (1922). Butterfly (1923). Uneducating Mary (1923). The Callahans and the Murphys (1924). Rose of the World (1924). The Black Flemings (also published as Gabrielle, 1926). Hildegarde (1926). The Kelly Kid (1926). Barberry Bush (1927). The Fun of Being a Mother (1927). My Best Girl (1927). The Sea Gull (1927). Beauty and the Beast (1928). The Foolish Virgin (1928). Home (1928). What Price Peace? (1928). Mother and Son (1929). Red Silence (1929). Storm House (1929). Beauty in Letters (1930). The Lucky Lawrences (1930). Margaret Yorke (1930). Passion Flower (1930). Belle-Mère (1931). Hands Full of Living: Talks with American Women (1931). The Love of Julie Borel (1931). My San Francisco (1932). Second-Hand Wife (1932). Treehaven (1932). YoungerSister (1932). The Angel in the House (1933). My California (1933). Walls of Gold (1933). Wife for Sale (1933). Maiden Voyage (1934). Manhattan Love Song (1934). Three Men and Diana (1934). Victoria: A Play (1934). Beauty's Daughter (1935). Shining Windows (1935). Woman in Love (1935). The American Flaggs (1936). Secret Marriage (1936). Bread into Roses (1937). You Can't Have Everything (1937). Baker's Dozen (1938). Heart-broken Melody (1938). Lost Sunrise (1939). Mystery House (1939). The Runaway (1939). The Secret of the Marshbanks (1940). The World Is Like That (1940). These I Like Best (1941). The Venables (1941). An Apple for Eve (1942). Come Back to Me, Beloved (1942). Dina Cashman (1942). One Nation Indivisible (1942). Star-Spangled Christmas (1942). Corner of Heaven (1943). Love Calls the Tune (1944). Burned Fingers (1945). Motionless Shadows (1945). Mink Coat (1946) Over at the Crowleys' (1946). The Secrets of Hillyard House (1947). High Holiday (1949). Morning Light (1950). Shadow Marriage (1952). The Best of Kathleen Norris (1955). Miss Harriet Townshend (1955).

Bibliography:

Kilmer, J., Literature in the Making: By Some of Its Makers (1917). Woollcott, A., While Rome Burns (1934).

Reference works:

Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches 1930-1947 (1948). Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995). TCA, TCAS.