SPEAKER_00: This bonus episode is brought to you by NURTEC ODT Remedipant 75 mg, orally disintegrating tablets.
Hello. From Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica.
This month we're talking about women of science fiction.
These women inspire us to imagine impossible worlds, alien creatures, and fantastical inventions, revealing our deepest fears and hopes for the future.
Today we're talking about a science fiction writer who penned more than 60 books. Many of her most famous works, including A Wrinkle in Time, are considered children's literature, or, as she described it, literature too difficult for adults to understand.
Let's talk about Madeline Lengel.
Madeline was born on November 29, 1918, in Manhattan.
She had no siblings and her parents were artists with busy lives of their own. So, as a child, Madeline had a lot of time to herself.
She spent it creating and exploring her own interior dream world.
By the time she was five years old, she'd written her first story.
It was the first time, but certainly not the last, that Madeline put her dream world to paper.
Madeline had a hard time in elementary school. She felt bullied and out of place. In fifth grade, when she won a poetry contest, her teacher thought she'd stolen the poem. Her mother had to bring a pile of Madeline's stories to school to prove her innocence.
Then, when Madeline was 12, she traveled abroad to Europe with her parents.
Their journey ended in Switzerland, at the gates of a boarding school.
Her parents introduced her to the headmistress and then left her there.
Three years later, she moved to a boarding school in South Carolina, then went to Smith College, where she graduated with a degree in English.
After graduating, Madeline moved back to New York and began acting and writing plays and novels.
In 1943, she went on tour with the play The Cherry Orchard.
On that tour, she met Hugh Franklin, another up-and-coming actor.
They were married in 1946.
Madeline and Hugh moved to a farmhouse in Connecticut and bought a general store, which they also ran.
Madeline had two children with Hugh, and the couple adopted a third.
Madeline spent her mornings and evenings writing, sometimes at the expense of performing more typical housewife duties, like practicing her pie crusts.
But she had trouble getting her novels published.
By her 40th birthday, she was considering giving up writing altogether.
But she quickly realized she couldn't.
Later, she wrote, I had to write. I had no other choice in the matter.
In 1960, her novel Meet the Austins was published. The book featured a loving family in a Connecticut farmhouse whose life is abended when a spoiled orphaned girl comes to live with them. If elements of that sound familiar, it's no surprise.
Madeline's family later said that her novels were her most autobiographical works, though even then the truth was often shifted.
Shortly after Meet the Austins, Madeline wrote another book that featured a main character strikingly similar to Madeline's childhood self,
a precocious, deep-thinking outcast.
After dozens of rejections, the book was finally published. It was called A Wrinkle in Time, and it became one of Madeline's most successful novels.
In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg, the girl who was so similar to Madeline, is trying to find her missing father.
With the help of her psychic baby brother Charles, her friend Calvin, and three supernatural beings that live in the neighborhood, Meg goes on a journey across space and time. Eventually, she rescues her father and makes it home unscathed, thanks to the power of love.
The book draws on cutting-edge scientific concepts like the theory of relativity and quantum theory,
but the writing reveals reflections on themes as old as time, themes like love, connection, and reconciliation.
A year after A Wrinkle in Time was published, it won the John Newbery Medal, the highest honor in children's literature.
As it grew in popularity, it also became mired in controversy.
The book became one of the most banned books in the U.S., after Christian fundamentalists accused Madeline of portraying God inaccurately.
Madeline, a Christian herself, was bewildered by the attacks.
Regardless, she kept writing.
A Wrinkle in Time became a series of five books in total. The follow-up stories feature grown-up versions of Meg, Charles, and Calvin, and their continued adventures.
Meet the Austins became a five-book series, too.
Madeline also wrote multiple nonfiction books, memoirs, and adult novels. Even in her more realist work, Madeline's writing often centered around questions of time, and what it means to be in time.
In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg learns that a straight line isn't the shortest distance between two points.
Time can fold, allowing her to jump from planet to planet to save her father. And in Madeline's writing, the past and present are often rubbing up against each other,
whether it be through characters literally traveling through time, or an old memory resurfacing in a present-day scene.
That placelessness, that wandering feeling, it was at the core of how Madeline approached her craft.
Towards the end of her life, in an interview, she said,
Writing is like a fairy tale. It happens elsewhere.
Madeline died in 2007. She was 88 years old.
All month, we're talking about women of science fiction.
For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram, at Womanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow!
