Duckworth, Marilyn (Rose Adcock) 1935-

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DUCKWORTH, Marilyn (Rose Adcock) 1935-

PERSONAL: Born November 10, 1935, in Auckland, New Zealand; daughter of Cyril John and Irene (Robinson) Adcock; married Harry Duckworth, May 28, 1955 (divorced, 1964); married Ian Macfarlane, October 2, 1964 (divorced, 1972); married Daniel Donovan, December 9, 1974 (died, 1978); married John Batstone, June 8, 1985; children: Helen, Sarah, Anna, Amelia; stepchildren: Michael, Susan, Timothy. Ethnicity: "European." Education: Attended Victoria University of Wellington, 1953, 1956. Politics: "Labour supporter." Hobbies and other interests: Playing the violin.

ADDRESSES: Home—41 Queen St., Wellington, New Zealand. Agent—Tara Wynne, Curtis Brown (Australia) Pty. Ltd., P.O. Box 19, Paddington, New South Wales 2021, Australia.

CAREER: Writer. Worked variously in public relations, nursing, factory work, and library work. Guest on media programs.

MEMBER: New Zealand Society of Authors, PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS: Scholarship in Letters, 1961, 1972, 1993; New Zealand Award for Achievement, 1963; Katherine Mansfield fellowship, 1980; New Zealand Book Award for fiction, Queen Elizabeth Arts Council and New Zealand Literary Fund, 1985, for Disorderly Conduct; Fulbright visiting writers fellowship, 1986; decorated officer, Order of the British Empire, 1987; Australia-New Zealand Exchange fellowship, 1989; writers fellowship, Victoria University of Wellington, 1990; Hawthornden writers fellowship, Scotland, 1994; Sargeson writers fellowship, 1995; University of Auckland literary fellowship, 1996.

WRITINGS:

novels

A Gap in the Spectrum, Hutchinson (London, England), 1959.

The Matchbox House, Hutchinson (London, England), 1960, Morrow (New York, NY), 1961.

A Barbarous Tongue, Hutchinson (London, England), 1963.

Over the Fence Is Out, Hutchinson (London, England), 1969.

Disorderly Conduct, Hodder & Stoughton (Auckland, New Zealand), 1984.

Married Alive, Hodder & Stoughton (Auckland, New Zealand), 1985.

Rest for the Wicked, Hodder & Stoughton (Auckland, New Zealand), 1986.

Pulling Faces, Hodder & Stoughton (Auckland, New Zealand), 1987.

A Message from Harpo, Hodder & Stoughton (Auckland, New Zealand), 1989.

Unlawful Entry, Random Century (Auckland, New Zealand), 1992.

Seeing Red, Random House (Auckland, New Zealand), 1993.

Leather Wings, Random House (Auckland, New Zealand), 1995.

Studmuffin, Random House (Auckland, New Zealand), 1997.

Swallowing Diamonds, Random House (Auckland, New Zealand), 2003.

other

Other Lover's Children (poetry), Pegasus Press (Christchurch, New Zealand), 1975.

Explosions from the Sun (short stories), Hodder & Stoughton (Auckland, New Zealand), 1989.

Fooling (novella), Hazard Press (Auckland, New Zealand), 1994.

(Editor) Cherries on a Plate: New Zealand Writers Talk about Their Sisters, Random House (Auckland, New Zealand), 1996.

Camping on the Faultline: A Memoir, Vintage (Auckland, New Zealand), 2000.

Also author of the plays Feet First and Home to Mother. Contributor to anthologies including, New Zealand Short Stories II, edited by C. K. Stead, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1966; Best Short Stories 1989, edited by Giles Gordon and David Hughes, Heinemann (London, England), 1989; New Zealand Short Stories, edited by Russell Haley and Susan Davis, Penguin (Auckland, New Zealand), 1989; Erotic Writing, edited by Sue McCauley, Penguin (Auckland, New Zealand), 1992; My Father and Me: New Zealand Women Remember, edited by Penelope Hansen, Tandem Press (Auckland, New Zealand), 1992; and Such Devoted Sisters, edited by Shena Mackay, Virago (London, England), 1993. Contributor of short stories and articles to periodicals, including Landfall, New Zealand Listener, Critical Quarterly, Affairs, Education, Metro, Quote Unquote, Svetova Literatura (Prague, Czechoslovakia), Oceanic Literature (China), and Islands.

SIDELIGHTS: New Zealander Marilyn Duckworth is a prolific writer of feminist novels, short stories, and verse. Fascinated with the human condition, Duckworth often portrays the tension created when her predominantly female characters attempt to balance their desire for independence with their need for companionship. Duckworth's early novels focus on the interior world of her characters, often in a home setting. In the eighties she began to look outward more, at society and politics, but personal relationships remained central to her work.

Married four times, with children and stepchildren, Duckworth is familiar with the pros and cons of the domestic scene. Wrote Heather Murray of Duckworth's protagonists in Contemporary Novelists, "Distinctly unheroic, they stand revealed amid a daily round of chores, pregnancy, children, falling in and out of love, knitting, gardening, and caring for aging parents. They are flawed individuals for whom the reader feels varying amounts of sympathy and … considerable irritation." The women who people Duckworth's work reflect the evolution in women's roles and concerns since the 1950s. "As women have been engaged in redefining their status in society, so changing gender roles occupy a prominent and recurring place in Duckworth novels," wrote Murray. A Barbarous Tongue, one of Duckworth's early novels, deals with an unwed teenage mother's search for happiness, while Seeing Red deals with the potentially destructive nature of family ties. More recently, Fooling shows how independence can have a downside.

Disorderly Conduct, which won the New Zealand Book Award, depicts a variety of women on the paths of self-discovery. According to Contemporary Novelists essayist Murray, Duckworth is "skilled at creating believable families" and is "particularly good at the intimate conversation of families." While critics outside of New Zealand have had little to say about Duckworth's fiction since her first novel A Gap in the Spectrum was widely reviewed in 1959, she has been the recipient of numerous fellowships at home and abroad.

Duckworth once told CA: "I might be seen as a feminist writer but when I was first published in 1959, feminism was not a word I knew. I was concerned to write deliberately like a woman, rather than copy the style of male novelists, and to write for other women—to tell the truth. In the eighties I became very aware of the uses of humor and irony to make a point. Not wanting to solidify in a rut of social realism, I have moved with my 1997 novel to allegory, which is where I began with my first novel in 1959. Studmuffin contains a strong strain of surrealism while retaining a level of stalwart realism and sensitive, irony."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1990.

Buck, Claire, editor, The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature, Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1992.

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.