recommended links and books
The ministry and radio program of Nancy Leigh Demoss, and catalyst for the True Woman Movement.
A great resource for dealing with gender issues biblically.
Resources for study of the doctrines of grace and Reformed Theology
http://www.desiringgod.org/
Resources from the ministry of John Piper
http://www.challies.com/
informing the Reforming
http://www.desiringgod.org/
Resources from the ministry of John Piper
http://www.challies.com/
informing the Reforming
Woman Sharpens Woman - Recommended reads that will inspire and challenge us to be "True Women".
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (1899-1960)
I read A Town Like Alice for the first time in my teen years. It has become my favorite novel about a brave and visionary woman; set during and after World War II. Nevil Shute was inspired to write this novel when he met a woman at a dinner party who told him about her similar experiences as a P.O.W.
The story begins with an elderly English solicitor, Noel Strachan, who must contact Jean Paget, the main character, to inform her of a substantial legacy left to her by his client, her great uncle. The solicitor, who narrates, is puzzled that Jean, a competent and very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, has never married and lacks in vibrancy. As a secretary/manager in a shoe factory, she performs her job with excellence and has no social life or romantic interests. As he continues meeting with her to explain her legacy and its conditions, he gains her confidence and learns her story of survival during the war.
Jean was a British civil servant in Malaya when she and other employees and their wives were taken prisoner by the Japanese. She became the leader of the women as they were marched by their Japanese captors to the women’s p.o.w. camp. A camp that did not exist.
The Japanese intended that the women and children would wear down during the “death marches” through the jungles, starve, and die off. Initially, the guards were uninformed of the nonexistence of the camp, but even their fate was a matter of indifference to the military leaders. Jean and the other women survive or perish, depending on their health and outlook, under harsh conditions and the occasional mercy, such as they received from a group of village women along the way.
There is a lot of walking in A Town Like Alice. I think this book inspired my love of walking as a way to become strong. In my life and the lives of these characters, walking is therapeutic. The women who survived were the ones who could adapt and become strong by the very means with which their enemies meant to kill them.
As Jean and the solicitor continue to meet to finalize her inheritance, he notices that she seems fairly polarized by the legacy she is receiving. As an aside, it is clear to the reader that the seventy something solicitor is smitten by Jean and wishes he were a much younger man. The two have become friendly, so she tells him of a profound encounter during the death marches.
She met an Australian prisoner, Joe Harmon, who showed an interest in her. During their brief times together Joe shared with Jean his dream of ranching in the outback of Australia. He described to Jean the lovely town of Alice Springs which served as a respite for ranchers and their families. Forced by their guards to part ways, Joe helps the women in various ways, even at the cost of his life. Knowing this man, admiring him for his courage, and inspired by his stories of Australia and work as a ranch hand, Jean still grieves. Through the solicitor’s eyes, we can empathize with Jean’s combination of strength and loss, even though she now has the world before her.
The rest of the story is about what Jean does with her legacy. She begins a journey to help those who have shown her kindness during her time as a prisoner of war. Her vision and grace find reward as she gives sacrificially to further the vision of the man who once shared his dream of building a town in the outback of Australia, a town like Alice.
There are many surprises along the way, as well as beautifully developed characters, excellent descriptions of the land, geography, and lifestyle of Australia. It is a love story, but not a sappy one. Themes of economics, hope, love, survival, and war are also a major part of Nevil Shute’s books.
Though an adult novel, the story and character of Jean were inspiring to me as a teen. I’ve read A Town Like Alice as a teen, as a young wife, and in my forties, each time seeing something that has shaped my vision of womanhood. It is unusual to discover characters of such moral fiber and depth. The character of Jean is a well-drawn example of a strong woman who is talented, humble, confident, intelligent, nurturing, and gracious; using her gifts for her man. A True Woman.
Barbara B. Gardner
The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction work about the lives of Jan and Antonina Zabinski is so beautifully written and researched that many others have lauded the author for her poignant portrayal of life during WWII in Poland. I enjoyed Ackerman’s meandering writing style and found her descriptions of flora and fauna, the paradoxes of Nazi obsession with hunting and exotic beasts, Poland’s history, which is essential to the story, and her perceptions about the war and people involved to be thought provoking. This war story is not news report or documentary or novel: it is a true story, uniquely narrated by a scientist with a feel for humanity. I was quite surprised by the negative customer reviews on Amazon. One customer reviewer said, “Antonina Zabinski was much more than a housewife….” As if being a housewife needs to be discounted yet again! I believe one of the great things about this wartime story is it challenges the assumptions many today make about housewives.
Proverbs 31:10-12 gives the essence of a virtuous wife, exemplified by the zookeeper’s wife, Antonina: “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life.”
One of those rare and devoted homemakers, Antonina inspires me to see the broader scope of the domestic arts and illustrates why today’s exceptional men like Jan should seek such multi talented women to tend their own home fronts, that is, if they can be found. Homemaking, housewifery, whatever one calls it, is essentially the art of creating an environment of life and nurture for family and friends.
Antonina Zabinski was what I would call a “True Woman” – one who fully uses her uniquely feminine role to bring life and goodness to her family, home, and all those around her. As the wife and helpmate of Jan Zabinski, zookeeper of the Warsaw Zoo, Antonina deserves much credit for her husband’s scientific successes before the war and his brave leadership in the Polish resistance.
In peace time, Antonina not only ran the household, she nursed sick animals, awaited VIP visitors to the prestigious zoo, welcomed press and government officials, continued her piano playing, she raised their young son Rys and integrated many zoo animals into their home as pets. During the German occupation she managed to hide Jewish friends and refugees in their home and zoo premises. She followed her husband’s strict and visionary tactics for keeping at bay the Nazi’s who carefully watched their house. She used her womanly wits and concert piano playing to distract/appease the German guards posted in front of their house and the defunct zoo, and to warn their Jewish friends and refugees to hide when Germans came too close for comfort. Antonina also had a miscarriage and another full term pregnancy resulting in a daughter through all of this.
Not least of all, Antonina maintained a diary on which much of Diane Ackerman’s research is based. One of her entries tells of the two lynx cubs Jan brought home for his wife to nurse in their on site villa. Upon his arrival with the lynxes in crates, she awaited with warmed bottles filled with formula. “The kittens trembled, ‘half dead with fear,’ she wrote in her diary. Gently, she grabbed the scriff of one’s neck, loose and hot, and as she lifted it from the straw, it hung limp and quiet, so she picked up the other one. ‘They liked it. Their skin remembers their mother’s jaws carrying them from one place to another.” Later in 1932 when their son was born, Antonina named him after a Polish saint, Ryszard, or Rys; the Polish word for lynx.
The zoo and their villa became her “kingdom” of animals, both exotic and conventional, healthy and those needing her healing powers. A theme that would continue and save many, including humans. The environment was stimulating for their young son, and entertaining to young children who benefitted from Antonina’s autobiographical children’s books about the animals they kept.
When Ackerman interviewed Jan Zalinski he conveyed profound respect for his wife’s abilities and contributions. Though he felt her successes nursing injured or orphaned animals could be explained by science, he “found her gift nonetheless strange and mysterious…She’s so sensitive, she’s almost able to read their minds. She becomes them…she has a precise and special gift, a way of observing and understanding animal’s that’s rare, a sixth sense…It’s been this way since she was little.”
Rather than thinking of Antonina as more than a housewife, perhaps we should say she was all that a woman at home can be: tirelessly fulfilling her abilities and talents in ways uniquely afforded to homemakers and beneficial to her family and community. And she did this in peace and wartime!
Antonina and Jan were well suited to each other and the claims WWII would make on them. Her story is not glamorous exactly, but does throb with the suspense and turmoil she must have experienced when her family was risking their lives. This young wife welcomed everyone who darkened her doors. Sometimes during the hardships and deprivations of war, Antonina endured some harshness from Jan, a hard headed scientist. His lengthy absences while working for the resistance against Nazism and his dangerous sabotages created stress that would have made a lesser or more selfish wife crack.
Jan was relentless in his determination to oppose the Nazis. It was his vision that saved hundreds of Jews, some of them dear friends, and it was Antonina’s submissive and forgiving nature that made their success possible. She held fast to her Catholic faith, and believed in God’s protection for her family. As providence would have it, Jan’s atheistic father had him educated at a Jewish school as a child to keep him away from the Catholic influence in Polish schools, causing him to forge friendships with Jews and oppose their eventual persecution.
Their story begs the question today: how many in this country would have the prescience to prepare for national tragedy and use their home and family to save others? And even more sobering is the question: How many post modern women would bravely uphold their husband’s dangerous role and provide sacrificial love and assistance through it all?
On many levels this book inspires me to see the humble role of a homemaker as influential, in a way that history makes known every so often.
