Violet Clay was published by Knopf in 1978 and is Godwin’s artist-novel — a kunstlerroman following a woman who has the talent to be a serious painter but has spent years producing commercial illustrations for Gothic romance novels because it pays the bills and because she is afraid of failure. When her uncle — a failed novelist who has spent decades on a book he cannot finish — commits suicide, Violet is forced to confront the possibility that she too is wasting her gift.
The novel explores a subject Godwin returns to throughout her career: the difference between having talent and having the courage to use it. Violet has genuine ability — everyone tells her so — but ability without will produces nothing. Her commercial work is competent and lucrative but spiritually deadening; her “real” painting exists only as a postponed intention, something she will get to someday when conditions are right. Her uncle’s suicide — the ultimate acknowledgment that someday never comes — is the shock that forces her to choose.
Godwin is particularly acute on the obstacles facing women artists: the expectation that art is a hobby rather than a vocation, the pressure to be financially self-supporting (men can be struggling artists; women are expected to be practical), the difficulty of claiming creative ambition without seeming selfish or unfeminine. Violet’s struggle is both personal (can she find the courage?) and structural (will the world allow her to be what she wants to be?).
Collecting Violet Clay
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1978): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Without jacket: $5–$10