tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-303951672024-03-14T08:49:09.095-05:00Slaves of Golconda<center>Mining Literature For Pure Gems</center>Quillhillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07601080339912553168noreply@blogger.comBlogger267125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-32417965655666931682015-04-11T01:56:00.002-05:002015-04-11T01:56:59.952-05:00Eugénie Grandet--Honoré de Balzac<div class="MsoNormal">
Sorry this is so late. Life just kept getting in the way.</div>
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It will tell you something about me that the Balzac I know best
is his story “Sarrasine,” a text mostly ignored by readers for a century until,
so the story goes, Roland Barthes came across an offhand reference to it by Georges
Bataille that intrigued him enough to devote an entire seminar to the little
story, the result of which was his extraordinary narratological study <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">S/Z.</i> </div>
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“Sarrasine” is amazing and holds up to many readings. But one
story out of the thousands of pages Balzac wrote, well, it’s not much to base a
judgment on, is it? (Technically I read Père Goriot a long time ago, too, but I
can’t tell you anything about it except that it’s about a boarding house. It’s
about a boarding house, right?) But now as part of the Slave of Golconda group
I’ve read Eugénie Grandet and I’m planning to immerse myself in Balzac as soon
as reasonably possible. The guy was clearly a genius.</div>
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To come to Balzac through Barthes and post-structuralism is
now so old-fashioned as to be almost quaint. The news that Princeton has bought
the library of Jacques Derrida, though it warms my heart, makes me certain that
the theory that was meat and drink to me is rapidly becoming antiquated. As
Alexander Trocchi once said of the canonization of Dada, even “the turds of
anti-art were framed and hung alongside “The School of Athens.”</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although
Barthes offered his reading of Balzac as a critique of the ideological
dominance of literary realism—specifically, its way of pretending that what it
is doing is merely transforming things into words when in fact every thing, in
this case every referent, is already produced through the combination of a
number of interpretive codes—Barthes would be the first to acknowledge what
time has made increasingly clear: <i>S/Z</i> is a paean to that realism, and
especially to Balzac. Barthes described the realist writer as a painter whose
main tool was not his canvas but the frame he placed around it, which Barthes
employs as a figure for the condition of representability itself. To show
anything it must first be selected, chosen, <i>made</i>. The trick played by
realism—the ideological sleight of hand that bothered Barthes in the early
70s—was to pretend that the frame didn’t exist and that the canvas was simply a
swathe of the real. But that didn’t mean, as critics of post-structuralism
liked to say, that the art of the canvas was second-rate or disingenuous or
bad. After all, <i>S/Z</i> is as much love letter as critique. </div>
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It’s entirely possible, though, that what Barthes said about
literary realism might really only be about Balzac. Maybe the circulation of
codes—by which Barthes meant both pre-established conventions for depicting and
thinking about the world, and the way texts are in fact citing other texts when
they claim to be showing life—isn’t the way realism works. Maybe it’s just how
Balzac works. That’s the thought that came to me when I read, in <i>Eugénie Grandet</i>’s
stilted and awkward opening pages, this description of Monsieur Grandet, the
heroine’s father, a miserly cooper whose speculations first in the wine trade
and later in the financial markets make him rich: “Financially speaking,
Monsieur Grandet had the qualities both of a tiger and a boa-constrictor.” A
tingle ran down my spine. Hadn’t I read about tigers and boa constrictors
before? I pulled my copy of “Sarrasine” off the shelf where I duly found this
description of a woman entranced by an old man she does not yet know is a
castrato: “She was under the spell of that timorous curiosity which leads women
to seek out dangerous emotions, to go to see chained tigers, to look at boa
constructors.” </div>
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No doubt someone has written a book on the history of
circuses and the Paris zoo (which, a quick Wikipedia search tells me, was
founded in 1793) or any of the other ways in which such exotic animals might
have made their way to 19<sup>th</sup> century France. If anyone knows about
that stuff, please let me know, but honestly I’m only halfheartedly interested
in that sort of background. What I’m genuinely interested in is how this
repeated imagery tells us something about Balzac’s method and the
preoccupations of this book. It’s not that Balzac copies himself—Barthes says
copies are at the heart of Balzac’s work: what they are about and how they are
made—but that in citing himself, in returning even to tropes that aren’t at all
central to the subject matter of his writing, Balzac incorporates a process of
circulation that <i>is</i> central to that subject matter. </div>
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Balzac delights in expressing and examining received wisdom;
Barthes called this doxa and Franco Moretti called it Balzac’s “loquacious
wisdom.” One of Balzac’s favourite formulations (present dozens of times in
“Sarrasine,” admittedly less frequently in <i>Eugenie</i>) is “one of those”:
“Prompted by one of those ideas which arise in a young girl’s heart…”; “It was
one of those looks in which there is almost as much coquetry as deep feeling.”
The implication is that readers will know what the narrator is talking about
(ah, one of <i>those</i> ideas, one of <i>those</i> looks). The narrator
becomes a kind of cataloguer of the world, able to show us what we might have
missed but what, prompted by his description, we recognize as present in the
world. But again the point isn’t that literature simply reflects the world beyond
it but that it summons that world into being. The circulation of tropes,
whether the “repetition” of known truths (“one of those”) or the self-citation
of metaphors and images (tigers and boa constrictors) contributes to the way
Balzac’s texts elide their own construction. How otherwise could such fanciful
and melodramatic tales have come to seem so natural? The seemingly haphazard
quality of the prose and the structure—this isn’t Flaubert—similarly contribute
to the “natural” or “found” quality of the work: here is a slice of life.</div>
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As I said above, circulation isn’t just present in the form
of the text. It’s also important in its content. The circulation of tropes that
realist representation depends on is like the circulation of capital. And <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eugénie Grandet</i> is, at least superficially,
about a miser (though the fact the miser is Eugénie’s father and that the book
is not named for him suggests we might need to rethink that assertion). Grandet
amasses his fortune first through trade (often by deviously undercutting his
fellow vintners) but later through investment and speculation, where money is
made from money. Rohan wrote about how unconcerned the novel seems to detail
the source of Grandet’s money, how uninterested in detailing the labour that
goes into making it. But from the perspective of capitalism, the more alienated
capital is from labour the more powerful its ideological purchase. </div>
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That said, there are important counterweights in the novel to
the idea of effortless speculation. Grandet loves gold, even picking gold
threads out of a dress. He hoards copper coins in his study, so many that when
he takes them out of the house, under cover of night, he needs a servant to
help him carry the cauldron on a yoke around his neck. (The scene where Eugénie,
half asleep and in the fever of new love, chances upon her father in this act
is a masterful phantasmagoria.) In this sense wealth is highly material—and so
too are the vividly evoked deprivations Grandet’s household endures as a result
of the father’s miserliness, like the sugar cubes Grandet finds time in his
busy schedule to cut up. Indeed, the miser challenges the idea of capitalist
circulation, because he wants to hoard his money rather than keep it moving
about. So although the novel depicts the increase of the Grandet fortune as
implacable and inevitable, it also positions the miser as not just the
capitalist par excellence, but also, more challengingly, as the limit of that
economic system. </div>
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I struggled with how to understand the relation between
money and heredity in this book. For heredity—by which I mean the passing on of
emotional traits and values rather than of physical characteristics—seems to be
something that also persists implacably. The novel tells the story of a family,
but mostly it focuses on just the father and his daughter. What the daughter
takes from the father is important to understanding the book’s remarkable
ending. (Balzac might not be too great with beginnings, at least as evidenced
by this book, but he sure knows what to do with an ending.)</div>
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The back cover of the Oxford edition I read—which comes with
a really excellent, smart but not pedantic introduction by Christopher
Prendergast, you should check it out if you’re at all interested in this book—asks
“Who is going to marry Eugénie Grandet?” “This is the question,” the copy adds,
“that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur,” the town in the Loire
where the book is set. Amateur Reader has pointed out that this is not really
the question of the book. I submit that if there were something like a guiding
question for the book it would be something like: “How should we understand Eugénie’s
fate?”</div>
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I love the book’s way of wrong-footing us, of presenting
scenarios we’ve seen before and then upending them. When Eugénie’s glamorous
and spoiled Parisian cousin Charles comes to visit, and when the girl is
instantly smitten with him to the point of giving him her heart, and, just as
importantly in this novel, paying off his debts, we think we know what to
expect. Surely this rakish dandy will do her wrong; surely he will be her ruin.
When Charles learns, shortly after his arrival in Saumur, of his father’s
suicide after the shame of becoming a bankrupt and accepts that his only hope
of recovering any position in Parisian society is to seek his fortune in the
Indies, we are sure he will abandon to Eugénie. And in this case we are right,
just as we are also right that Eugénie will hold fast to his memory. Charles,
who whatever his flaws was always rather sweet, becomes hardened in his seven
years overseas—not least because he soon realizes that the real money is in
selling people not goods. Embroiled in the slave trade—in “unremitting contact
with selfish interests”—he becomes hardened and cynical: “his feeling for
others contracted and withered away.” Balzac immediately adds that after all
Charles is a Grandet: “The blood of the Grandets fulfilled its destiny. Charles
became hard and ruthless in the pursuit of gain.” That ruthlessness extends to
his personal life. On the ship home, Charles meets a titled, well-positioned
family that has been much reduced materially. Although he doesn’t much care for
Mademoiselle d’Aubrion—and Balzac does his best to make sure we don’t either,
describing her as “thin and spare, with a supercilious mouth, dominated by a
blunt, over-long nose, which was normally yellowish but became quite red after meals,
a kind of vegetable phenomenon that is more unpleasant in a pale, bored face
than in any other”: nothing by halves for our Balzac—Charles marries her
anyway, because her family’s connections will open Parisian society to him. So
important to him is this idea of securing a brilliant position that even when
he learns that Eugénie has repaid his father’s creditors, with interest, he
only pauses momentarily to lament the loss of a fortune the size of which he
hadn’t suspected—what he really cares about, Eugénie can’t give him.</div>
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I suspect Charles isn’t the only Charles in Balzac’s works,
and I bet some of them get their own novels. But in this novel his trajectory
must remain only a sketch because its main interest is in Eugénie. Her honour
has not been besmirched; she hasn’t become a fallen woman. She and Charles
share only two kisses before his departure; he does not force himself upon her
or leave her ruined. Nor does she simply renounce the world after her
disappointment. She doesn’t become a nun, exactly—this isn’t <i>The Princesse
de Cleves</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. It’s true that her
first reaction to the news of Charles’s dismissal of her after seven years is to
calmly state that now she can only “suffer and die.” She even tells her priest
that she wishes to leave the world and live in seclusion. But she doesn’t. She
learns Charles’s marriage will not come off until his father’s creditors are
appeased and arranges to pay all the outstanding bills. We don’t know why she
does this. From self-abnegation? From a desire for revenge? To make Charles
dependent on her? None of these are right. What we do know is that when she
decides to take this action, a friend of the family tells her, “ ‘As you said
that, your voice was just like your late father’s.’” This a moment after the
text has told us: “she decided that, in future, she would assume an impassive expression
as her father had always done.” </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">So the heredity that
concerns the book pertains as much to Eugénie as to her Charles. For she too is
a Grandet. And she becomes increasingly like her father. She is immured neither
in a convent nor in the walled garden where she once sat with Charles, but she
is imprisoned in a life of emotional nullity. Although enormously rich, she
doesn’t hoard her wealth; indeed, she gives generously to charity and the
Church. But the hardness that attached itself to Charles also begins to
manifest itself in her. She isn’t cynical, but she does, the narrator tells us,
respond to others “ironically,” a word it would never have used to describe her
earlier. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">It is in this
spirit of emotional asperity that she agrees to marry a lawyer from Saumur, the
now middle-aged son of one of two families that had been vying for Eugénie’s
hand—and her fortune—since even before the arrival of Charles. But she marries
Monsieur de Bonfons only on the condition that he expect nothing more than
friendship from her. (And that friendship seems quite icy.) She doesn’t pine
for Charles, she doesn’t preserve the memory of their courtship in Havishamian
aspic. She simply turns that part of herself off. When Bonfons dies only a few
years later, she becomes even richer, even more isolated, even more forbidding.
The irony of the Grandet family is complete: the one who cares nothing for gold
is showered with it. She uses it to do good in secret. But despite this charity,
and despite her beauty, which, the narrator tells us, persists even as she
approaches forty, despite her poise, she isn’t the same as she was as a girl:</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">She has all the
nobility of grief, the saintliness of one whose soul is unsullied by contact
with the outside world. But she has also the rigid outlook of an old maid and
the narrow vision that comes from the restricted life of a provincial town. In
spite of her income of eight hundred thousand livres, she lives as poor Eugénie
Grandet used to live. She lights her fire only on the days when her father used
to allow the fire to be lit in the living-room, and puts it out according to
the rules in force when she was young. She always dresses as her mother did.
The house at Saumur, sunless, devoid of warmth, gloomy, and always in the
shade, reflects her life.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">I’m interested in
the way the book here reverses its understanding of the distinction between
Paris and the provinces (Paris = flashy, vain, superficial; provinces = solid, demure,
profound). There’s enough criticism of Eugénie in this passage to complicate
the saintly resignation that would otherwise have reduced her to caricature. To
be sure, if the book really believes in the ideas of emotional inheritance it
so often references, then she couldn’t have ended up any other way, and so it
would be meaningless to speak of criticism. And on the book’s final page, the
narrator both backpedals on some of the things it says here—claiming that “the
greatness of her soul lessens the effect of the narrowness of her
upbringing”—and finds fault with the situation itself. Whether the tragedy is
really that “a woman who, made to be a magnificent wife and mother, has neither
husband nor children nor family” (a surprising thing to say, given the book’s
interest in heredity, which would seems to make nonsense of the possibility
raised here that Eugenie was made to be something her family could not have
given her), the book does leave us feeling the hopelessness of her situation.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">But <i>Eugénie Grandet</i>
is melancholic not tragic. From the first sentence, in which the houses in certain
provincial towns arouse melancholy as much in the stranger who comes across
them as in the people who live in them, melancholy is referenced throughout the
book, the best way to describe the strange uncertainty of the narrator’s
description of the widowed Madame de Bonfons. Melancholy is the way the book
gives its protagonist a fate more complicated, if not necessarily more pleasant
to experience, than those typically granted to heroines of the period. I find
myself thinking about her a lot, and, as Barthes once did, look forward to
delving further into the vast and surprising work of her creator.</span></div>
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(cross-posted from <a href="https://eigermonchjungfrau.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Eigermonchjungfrau</a>)dorian stuberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10069923023770087626noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-40384846306471722872015-04-06T10:07:00.003-05:002015-04-06T10:07:32.398-05:00Eugenie Grandet General Discussion Now that the holidays are behind us, let's have a general discussion thread for Eugenie Grandet.SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-15340963195955256362015-04-01T22:36:00.001-05:002015-04-01T22:36:08.829-05:00Religious Surprise<P>
Many years ago, during my French decadent period, I read <i>The Girl With the Golden Eyes</i>, <i>The Unknown Masterpiece</i>, and <i>Père Goriot</i>. I generally prefer other writers like Louÿs and Proust to Balzac. For <i>Eugénie Grandet</i>, I read the digital edition translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Since we all know the plot, I will eschew a plot summary, first to note items which stood out to me while reading, and second to assess my reaction to the story.
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<U>Cruchotines and Grassinists</U>
I adore the use of such terms for the followers of certain factions that I have found often in French writing. The idea behind these terms for a group of supporters is no different from those today who identify themselves as belonging to Team Edward or Team Jacob. Balzac and others simply make the more literary and expressive word choice.
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<U>Eugénie and her mother silently exchanged a glance of intelligence.</U>
The sentence comes before Charles is introduced, in reference to the prospects of marriage for Eugénie. This took me off guard, because it suggested a hidden plot or secret which I did not find in the text. Even rereading the passages surrounding it later, I am still puzzled.
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<U>"Well, I shall be glad to have anything to eat,—anything, it doesn't matter what, a chicken, a partridge."</U>
The hour is 11:00AM, and the subject of discussion is breakfast. I laughed at the idea that Charles would eat a chicken or a partridge for breakfast. He says it so matter-of-factly, I don't know if this reflects his normal breakfast fare, or if, like the finery he wore, he is putting on for show.
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<U>"See here, monsieur," said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, "here are your chickens,—in the shell."</U>
Nanon, the loyal servant, provides this appropriate retort several paragraphs later.
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When Eugénie, aged twenty-three, first sees her cousin Charles, his Parisian elegance makes a strong impression upon the ignorant provincial girl, who considers her other suitors to be unsuitable matches. For Eugénie, "roused in her soul an emotion of delicate desire", there is nothing wrong with love at first sight.
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Eugénie is plain and "a girl without the least freshness" who all believe could not hope to capture the heart of Charles. Even Charles is seen to ogle Madame des Grassins. Eugénie's features are a little vulgar, but "the lines of her figure were ennobled by the softer Christian sentiment which purifies womanhood and gives it a distinction"--by all her actions she proves herself to possess the greatest inner beauty.
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"Are there not thoughts and actions in the life of love which to certain souls bear the full meaning of the holiest espousals?" For Charles, his love strikes me at best as a matter of the moment, and at worst as mere expedience. He falls in and out of love several times. For Eugénie, her love is proven eternal. Charles had been brought up and taught "to calculate everything". What Eugénie saw in him was the reflected rays of celestial light from her own soul. She was attracted only by her own noble sentiments, for "Charles was too much a man of the world ... to be possessed of noble sentiments."
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Eugénie reads a letter Charles has written to a woman called Annette whom he loves in Paris. Even in the face of such evidence that he loves another, Eugénie feels only love for his poverty. And she resolves to remedy his poverty by giving him money he requires to travel. Charles releases Annette from their love, because of his poverty, prefiguring his later release of Eugénie from their promise of love because he believes her impoverished.
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Annette has ingrained in Charles what they had been taught by one Madame Campan (who brings to the mind of this reader the Marquise de Merteuil): "'My dears, as long as a man is a minister, adore him; when he falls, help to drag him in the gutter. Powerful, he is a sort of god; fallen, he is lower than Marat in the sewer, because he is living, and Marat is dead. Life is a series of combinations, and you must study them and understand them if you want to keep yourselves always in good position.'" In the way of this lesson Charles proceeds to treat the good-hearted Eugénie, taking all he can from her in emotion and money in exchange for mere words and artifice.
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There are passing moments when it seems and is suggested that Charles falls genuinely under the influence of love for Eugénie. When they are alone together, sitting in the garden, Charles leaves his "worldly passion" and turns to "true, pure love". But as soon as his affairs in Paris are settled, he announces that he will leave and that Eugénie ought to consider other offers of marriage. She rejects the idea, and they both pledge themselves to each other. "No promise made upon this earth was ever purer. The innocent sincerity of Eugénie had sanctified for a moment the young man's love." Soon, though, apart from Eugénie, he falls back under the influence of worldly passion. I believe all along he was merely using Eugénie, treating her well just for what he might get from her, as he had been taught--though his heart and mind have been sufficiently warped for him to believe in the moment that his feelings are genuine.
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I took note of an interesting sidebar to the subject of marriage and theme of love. At the end of Chapter Nine, Nanon declares: "If I had a man for myself I'd—I'd follow him to hell, yes, I'd exterminate myself for him; but I've none. I shall die and never know what life is. Would you believe, mamz'elle, that old Cornoiller (a good fellow all the same) is always round my petticoats for the sake of my money,—just for all the world like the rats who come smelling after the master's cheese and paying court to you? I see it all; I've got a shrewd eye, though I am as big as a steeple. Well, mamz'elle, it pleases me, but it isn't love." Three chapters later, she marries the same Cornoiller.
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When Charles returns to France with wealth, he is offered a marriage. He writes to Eugénie to inform her, to release her from their "childish love", so that he may marry a woman whom he does not love, but through whom he will gain a title. Eugénie is encouraged to marry another, but only after she receives word that Charles refused to make good on his father's debts does she agree to marry one of her original suitors, President Cruchot, on the condition she may pay the outstanding debts and might remain a virgin while wedded. In addressing Eugénie's decision to marry without love at the end, the literary historian and critic George Saintsbury wrote: "It is perhaps necessary to be French to comprehend entirely why she could not heap that magnificent pile of coals of fire on her unworthy cousin's head without flinging herself and her seventeen millions into the arms of somebody else".
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Eugénie's love for Charles is "the love of angels". Even so, she writes to Charles a letter that barely conceals her bitterness, and states the truth she has come to recognize: "I have, it is true, no part in the world; I understand neither its calculations nor its customs; and I could not give you the pleasures that you seek in it. Be happy, according to the social conventions to which you have sacrificed our love." Eugénie is faithful with small things in God's way, and so God continues to increase her more and more. She spends the rest of her days far wealthier than her father or her suitors or Charles could ever have imagined, and longing only for heaven.
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Her father, Monsieur Grandet, fights against her throughout the novel, yet even during his harshest treatment she always honors him, and is never corrupted by him. Eugénie's faith clearly comes from her mother; her father remains hard-hearted, parsimonious at best, a lover of money at worst. Saintsbury called the character of Monsieur Grandet a bold depiction of "perhaps the worst and the commonest vice of the French character, the vice which is more common, and certainly worse than either the frivolity or the license with which the nation is usually charged--the pushing, to wit, of thrift to the loathsome excess of an inhuman avarice." He went on to claim that the money-grubbing of Grandet "almost escapes greediness by its diabolical extravagance and success."
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In 1839, only six years after the first publication of <i>Eugénie Grandet</i>, the New York <i>Times Review</i> wrote about Balzac in reference to this book: "...the subjects of his sketches are neither suited to our tastes, nor likely to be understood by those who are unaquainted with the character of that society from which they are taken." Though the novel is titled after and follows the concerns of Eugénie, the <i>Review</i> noted it is her father, Monsieur Grandet, who towers over all the other characters, through whom Balzac exposes vice "in all its naked deformities."
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Charles--the object of all Eugénie's affections, and perhaps a father-substitute in her quest to be loved--proves the worse character in the end, earning his ill-gotten wages through "traffic in human flesh"--the buying and selling of people as slaves. Though such trade was not outlawed in French colonies until twenty-eight years after events in the book take place, the text makes clear that Charles had become more merciless than Grandet: "He ceased to have fixed principles of right and wrong, for he saw what was called a crime in one country lauded as a virtue in another. In the perpetual struggle of selfish interests his heart grew cold, then contracted, and then dried up."
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In the preface to <i>La Comédie Humaine</i>, Balzac wrote: "Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being ... a complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful element of social order." <i>Eugénie Grandet</i> ends, to my surprise, as a highly religious story, with the man who goes out and experiences the world becoming corrupted by it, and the woman continually refined and elevated by her heart closer to God.
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In the 1901 Dana Estes edition, Saintsbury wrote: "As a matter of fact, no book can be, or can be asked to be, better than perfect on its own scheme, and with its own conditions. And on its own scheme and with its own conditions <i>Eugénie Grandet</i> is very nearly perfect." I liked it, too.
Quillhillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07601080339912553168noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-16820456765746504032015-04-01T19:15:00.005-05:002015-04-01T19:15:56.643-05:00Eugénie GrandetHonoré de Balzac begins this 1833 novel with a detailed description of a melancholy street in the town of Saumur:
<br />
<blockquote>
There is, perhaps, in these houses, a combination of the
silence of the cloister, the desolation of the moorlands, and the
sepulchral gloom of ruins. In them life is so still and uneventful that a
stranger would think them uninhabited, if his eye did not suddenly meet
the pale, cold look of a motionless figure whose almost monk-like face
appears above the window-ledge at the sound of an unknown step.</blockquote>
What little buzzing there is in this quiet town concerns the future
of the novel’s title character, Eugénie Grandet, a young woman just
reaching marriageable age. Who, the town wonders, will Eugénie marry?
Her father, Felix, is extremely wealthy (and extremely miserly), and so
quiet, sheltered Eugénie is much sought after. But she expresses no
preference—or much of anything at all—until her cousin Charles
unexpectedly arrives from Paris. She becomes immediately fascinated with
this flashy young men, and as she learns of his sudden misfortunes, she
is overcome with pity and love.<br />
<br />
In meeting Charles, Eugénie, who, despite being a wealthy heiress,
has had to make do with very little, begins to find her own voice. She
sees possibilities outside her immediate environs. Her heart has left
the cloister that her father has kept her in by withholding money and
cultivating his family’s dependence. And so Eugénie acts on her newfound
desires, eventually causing her father to clamp down even harder,
stowing her away as he does his wealth. For Felix Grandet is not merely
miserly his money; he is miserly with all things—food, attention,
affection, and plans. Even his stammer is doled out only when it serves
to his advantage. All things exist to serve his greedy ends.<br />
<br />
Throughout the book, Felix takes note of the household spending, even
when the spending comes from his family’s own allowances. He expects
them to live a certain way, storing up money just as he does. Extra
lumps of sugar or pancakes for a guest are serious indulgences, not to
be taken lightly. Eugénie’s great crime is not that she wanted
something, but that her desires caused her to treat her possessions as
her own possessions.<br />
<br />
In meeting Charles and releasing herself from her father’s influence,
Eugénie finds her own power. But is this ultimately a good thing for
her? The book’s treatment of the world outside is ambiguous. Charles
seems to become his best self in the cloistered world of Saumur. On the
outside, he is shallow and selfish. Poverty and quiet teach him to be
different. Can he leave and remain that same man?<br />
Eugénie certainly hopes for Charles to find success and remain her
loving cousin when he steps outside. She has no choice but to remain
with her father, always remaining faithful. Somehow, though, she manages
to hold on to the independence she found when she met Charles. When
she’s free of her father, she’s able to make choices to further her own
self-interest in the way she sees fit. Her money gives her much of her
freedom, but her purity of character gets some of the credit as well.
She uses her money to defy convention, but her defiance is in devoting
herself to goodness, choosing a sort of cloistered life for herself. In
that life, “the greatness of her soul lessens the effect of the
narrowness of her upbringing and the ways of her early life.”<br />
<br />
The final lines of the short novel leave Eugénie in this cloister of
her own making, and I wonder if she’s happy there. Balzac leaves the
question open, I think. She does not seem angry or bitter, but we’re
left with the idea that she feels a lack. Her money is no comfort.
Instead, “money was destined to impart its cold glitter to her angelic
life and to inspire a mistrust of feeling in a woman who was all
feeling.”<br />
<br />
Eugénie is the kind of character who could easily be written off as
too pure, too obliging, too angelic, but I have a hard time seeing her
that way. She is good, but her goodness is not weakness. In her, Balzac
offers a character whose purity is her strength, and she is strong.<br />
<br />
Also posted at <a href="https://shelflove.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/eugenie-grandet/">Shelf Love</a> Teresahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09896331683344872038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-77417617164545839082015-04-01T18:45:00.002-05:002015-04-01T18:46:14.203-05:00Eugenie GrandetI should admit before writing about Honoré de Balzac’s <i>Eugénie Grandet</i> that this is my second Balzac novel, and I didn’t get along with my first, <i>Cousin Bette</i>. Fortunately, I liked <i>Eugénie Grandet </i>much better. Those of you in the know, is <i>Eugénie Grandet</i> simply a better book than <i>Cousin Bette</i>? Or have I changed somehow, or am I simply in a different mood this time? I found <i>Cousin Bette</i>
unsatisfying because I missed the depth of character I love in
19th-century novels. The characters were either perfectly good or
completely awful and without some complex, interesting character to
latch onto, I lose interest. I should confess, also, that I don’t
remember a thing about <i>Cousin Bette</i> and am basing these remarks on a paragraph I wrote in an old blog post. The book just didn’t stick with me.<br />
<br />
I’m not sure how much longer <i>Eugénie Grandet </i>will stick with me, but I did enjoy the reading experience much more [lots of spoilers ahead!]. Like <i>Cousin Bette</i>,
it’s a critique of society’s obsession with money and the way the
hunger for money corrupts and ruins lives. But perhaps Eugénie as a
character is more memorable than anybody in <i>Cousin Bette</i>. Yes,
she is drawn in broad strokes and the very large changes she makes
throughout the course of her life are described quickly, but I think the
shortness of the book and the relative brevity with which many of the
events are described work well. We can see the larger point Balzac is
making about greed, enjoy the satirical way he portrays many of his
characters, feel pity and horror at Monsieur Grandet’s miserliness, and
even suffer a little at Eugénie’s fate, all in a book that’s only about
200 pages. I like long novels very much, but perhaps I don’t like long
novels by Balzac.<br />
<br />
I seem to be confessing a lot in this post, so let me keep going: I
had a hard time with the novel’s opening pages, the description of the
town of Saumur and the Grandet home. I read and reread those pages, and I
couldn’t pin down the details in my mind. I also couldn’t keep many of
the minor characters straight, those Cruchots and des Grassins. It
didn’t seem to matter much as I read along that I couldn’t remember who
was who and what their relationships were. Those characters are there to
make a point collectively, to illustrate the greediness of the town
generally and the atmosphere in which Eugénie lives — one in which
everyone is after the Grandet money but everyone generally loses their
money to the Grandets instead. These characters spend their whole lives
trying to ingratiate themselves into the Grandet family, hoping Eugénie
will marry one of them, or her parents will marry her to one of them,
and it doesn’t seem to matter to them that they are spending decades in
this one pursuit.<br />
<br />
The heart of this book seems to be the relationship between Eugénie
and her father Grandet, and then the ways that Grandet haunts her even
when he is gone. Through the influence of her mother, most likely, or
just through strength of character, Eugénie passively resists her
father’s greed and miserliness, keeping a freshness and innocence
throughout her young life. When her cousin Charles appears on the scene,
she finds a reason to actively resist her father: romantic love. She
wants to provide for Charles, to give him the comforts she has grown
accustomed to living without herself, and she doesn’t care about the
money involved. And then she commits the act that her father finds it
nearly impossible to forgive, giving away money itself.<br />
<br />
But what does she get in return for her generosity and love? She gets
to do the thing so many women get to do in novels: wait. And she is
waiting for a man who fell in love with her, yes, but who is not worthy
of her. He was a young dandy when they first met, vain and foolish, but
after his father’s bankruptcy and his desperate need to make money, he
becomes truly corrupt, making that money through slavery and wanting
only to reappear in Paris a fabulously wealthy man. Poor Eugénie keeps
believing in him as long as she can, but her faithfulness gains her
nothing. Or perhaps it does gain her something — it seems to insulate
her from corruption herself. She stays true to idea of love, even though
she doesn’t ever experience it again herself.<br />
<br />
Ultimately, the book seems to be exploring what greed does to the
emotions, the way it shrivels them up and kills them. Or if it doesn’t
kill them, it turns them against the one feeling them, becoming a
burden:<br />
<blockquote>
and yet that noble heart, beating only with tenderest
emotions, has been, from first to last, subjected to the calculations of
human selfishness; money has cast its frigid influence upon that
hallowed life and taught distrust of feelings to a woman who is all
feeling.</blockquote>
This is a melancholy tale, but it is kept lively by Balzac’s wonderful descriptions, like this one of Grandet:<br />
<blockquote>
Financially speaking, Monsieur Grandet was something
between a tiger and a boa-constrictor. He could crouch and lie low,
watch his prey a long while, spring upon it, open his jaws, swallow a
mass of louis, and then rest tranquilly like a snake in process of
digestion, impassible, methodical, and cold.</blockquote>
Or this one of the Cruchots and des Grassins:<br />
<blockquote>
All three took snuff, and had long ceased to repress the
habit of snivelling or to remove the brown blotches which strewed the
frills of their dingy shirts and the yellowing creases of their crumpled
collars. Their flabby cravats were twisted into ropes as soon as they
wound them about their throats. The enormous quantity of linen which
allowed these people to have their clothing washed only once in six
months, and to keep it during that time in the depths of their closets,
also enabled time to lay its grimy and decaying stains upon it. There
was perfect unison of ill-grace and senility about them; their faces, as
faded as their threadbare coats, as creased as their trousers, were
worn-out, shrivelled-up, and puckered … A horror of fashion was the only
point on which the Grassinists and the Cruchotines agreed.</blockquote>
These people are just horrible. Balzac is wonderful as describing
horrible people! This seems to be where much of the book’s energy lies:
in capturing just how truly terrible people can be.Rebecca H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10825532162727473112noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-2946038512483381862015-04-01T07:04:00.002-05:002015-04-01T13:37:54.477-05:00"A bourgeois tragedy": Balzac, Eugénie Grandet<br />
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Using the hashtag #<a data-mce-href="https://storify.com/PenguinUKBooks/ihaveneverread" href="https://storify.com/PenguinUKBooks/ihaveneverread" target="_blank">IHaveNeverRead</a>, Penguin UK recently urged people on Twitter to "confess" their "shocking literary shortcomings" -- an exercise in weirdly inverted snobbery that inevitably recalls David Lodge's game '<a data-mce-href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/13/david.lodge" href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/13/david.lodge" target="_blank">Humiliation</a>'. I'm actually less and less humiliated by the vast array of titles (classic or otherwise) that I haven't read: there are just <em>so</em> many books, after all, and it only <a data-mce-href="http://www.tbrtime.com/" href="http://www.tbrtime.com/" target="_blank">takes a moment</a> to figure out for sure that I'll only ever read a tiny fraction of them. And what counts as a "shortcoming" in someone's reading depends so much on what purpose we think that reading is supposed to serve. Since I'm supposed to be something of an expert in a particular subcategory of literature, it's easy enough to point to books that in some sense I <em>should</em> have read by now (<i>Dombey and Son</i>, say, or <em>Pendennis)</em>. But even within those parameters, is it "shocking" that I haven't read, say, <i>Impressions of Theophrastus Such</i>, or anything by Disraeli? What about Charlotte Yonge? And in the larger context, while I regret not having read <em>Moby-Dick</em> (yet) or <em>Crime and Punishment</em> (again, yet!), I hardly see this as something I need to be ashamed of.</div>
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<a href="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/balzac-195x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="balzac" border="0" src="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/balzac-195x300.jpg" height="200" width="130" /></a>You can probably guess where I'm going with this. Until now, I hadn't read anything by Balzac: <em>Eugénie Grandet </em>is my first. I have read <em>about</em> Balzac, here and there and especially at <em>Wuthering Expectations, </em>where, I realize, exploring the archives, Tom called <a data-mce-href="http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.ca/2008/11/springtime-of-love-for-eugnie-some.html" href="http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.ca/2008/11/springtime-of-love-for-eugnie-some.html" target="_blank"><em>Eugénie Grandet</em></a> "Balzac's best book" and his own favorite. I'm actually glad I hadn't remembered that as I read through the novel myself. It might have discouraged me, as I found <em>Eugenie Grandet</em> pretty hard going. On the other hand, knowing <em>why</em> Tom rated it so high might have helped me appreciate it more as I plugged along. If <em>Eugénie Grandet</em> is indeed the best of Balzac, then perhaps I am not (yet) very good at Balzac. That's OK: you have to start somewhere!</div>
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Because it's what the library had, the edition of <em>Eugénie Grandet</em> that I actually read is the 1950 Modern Library College Edition, translated by E. K. Brown, Dorothea Walker, and John Watkins. It doesn't have any notes: when I read more Balzac, I think I would benefit from them. It does have a brief introduction, which I looked over before reading the novel (I skipped any parts that looked like they'd spoil the plot). The most helpful bit for me was its explanation of the unprecedented importance Balzac placed on characters' "material circumstances" -- and the passing editorial remark that this is what accounts for his "characteristic openings," which are "such fatiguing obstacles to most modern readers who prefer a more insinuating exposition." Knowing that this info-dumping was a Balzac <em>thing</em>, I persevered through the opening of <em>Eugénie Grandet</em>, which is indeed dense with details which (to my newcomer's eye) never really took on a great deal more than descriptive significance: did we really need to know that much about the streets, houses, trade, and residents of Saumur to appreciate the moral and personal implications of Monsieur Grandet's miserly ways?</div>
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This is thin ice for a lover of George Eliot, obviously; more than once I have made the case to bored students (following Eliot herself) that the action of <em>Middlemarch</em> can't be rightly understood without her long sections of exposition, and my favorite chapter of <em>The Mill on the Floss</em> is "A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet." I'm a fan of telling! Showing can't do everything. But I couldn't discern any way in which the crux of <em>Eugénie Grandet </em>depended on the contexts so meticulously established: the tyrannical Monsieur Grandet didn't seem in any particular way a creature of his time and place, any more than did his daughter, the almost-insufferably patient and virtuous Eugénie. She does, however, exemplify a specific ideal of femininity: "Women have this in common with the angels," intones our narrator; "-- suffering humanity belongs to them." "To feel, to love, to suffer, to sacrifice will always be woman's fate," we're told; "Eugénie was to be in all things a woman." So on the one hand we have painstaking specificity, while on the other we have transcendent, platitudinous universals.</div>
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<a data-mce-href="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/eugenie-grandet-honore-de-balzac-001.jpg" href="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/eugenie-grandet-honore-de-balzac-001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="eugenie-grandet-honore-de-balzac-001" class="alignleft wp-image-8918" data-mce-src="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/eugenie-grandet-honore-de-balzac-001-197x300.jpg" src="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/eugenie-grandet-honore-de-balzac-001-197x300.jpg" height="190" style="float: left;" width="125" /></a>That's not quite fair, though. Grandet isn't altogether a caricature, and Eugénie has some surprises in store for us, as does Balzac, as he throws a elegant but tragically impoverished cousin into the plot to help Eugénie find her spine and then cheats us of either obvious ending: we get neither the tragic "daughter sacrificed on the altar of forbidden love" nor the comic "true love triumphs over bad dad." Instead, things go in weird directions in this "bourgeois tragedy": the cousin is morally degraded by making his fortune in the slave trade; disappointed in the lover whose memory (and "dressing case") she has cherished against all odds, Eugénie nonetheless enables his marriage to someone else and then marries herself -- after insisting her husband-to-be accept her terms, which include preserving her virginity. Left a rich widow, she continues the penny-pinching ways learned from her father in her own life but puts her wealth to good use otherwise: "pious and charitable institutions, a home for the aged, and Christian schools for children, a richly endowed public library."</div>
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I enjoyed being surprised by the story in this way. I wonder if rereading the novel would help me see what it means: is it singular, for instance, a simple slice of imagined life, or is there a larger idea at work here, about money or marriage or virtue or love? There are definitely ideas floating around in the book: the other aspect of it that I especially liked, in fact, was the intrusive narration, which seemed a bit haphazard but provided many quotable bits: "Isn't this the only god in which we believe today," he asks, "money, in all its power, symbolized in a single human image?" "How terrible is man's estate!" he continues; "there is not one of his joys which does not spring out of some form of ignorance." "Misers do not believe an a life hereafter," he tells us later on, in the passage that I thought probably came closest to telling us the moral of the story:</div>
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the present is everything for them. This thought throws a horrible light on the present day, when, more than at any other time, money controls the law, politics, and morals. Institutions, books, men, and doctrine, all conspire to undermine belief in a future life -- a belief on which the social edifice has rested for eighteen hundred years. . . . To attain <em>per fas et nefas</em> to a terrestrial paradise of luxury and empty pleasures, to harden the heart and macerate the body for the sake of fleeting possessions, as people once suffered the martyrdom of life in return for eternal joys, is now the universal thought -- moreover a thought inscribed everywhere, even in the laws which ask the legislater: What do you pay? instead of asking him: What do you think? When this doctrine has passed down from the middle class to the populace, what will become of the country?</div>
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Against that dystopian vision, he puts the angelic figure of Eugénie -- except that her sacrifice is made for love, not God (and an unworthy love, at that), while her "noble heart," tender as it is, has been irrevocably tainted by her father's example, "always to be subject to the calculations of human selfishness." So where does that leave her -- or us? Maybe when I read more Balzac, I will know better.</div>
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(cross-posted at <a href="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/a-bourgeois-tragedy-honore-de-balzac-eugenie-grandet/" target="_blank">Novel Readings</a>)</div>
Rohan Maitzenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12111722115617352412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-17082238003178271602015-02-15T10:57:00.000-06:002015-02-15T10:57:25.317-06:00Balzac by a Hair!Our next book will be Honoré de Balzac's <i>Eugénie Grandet</i>. Let's plan to begin the discussion April 1st, before everyone gets busy with Passover or Easter or taxes or the cruelest month or whatever.<br />
<br />
I look forward to the book--I've hardly read any Balzac--and to hearing what you have to say. Thanks to all who voted. Don't forget, anyone can participate.dorian stuberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10069923023770087626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-59646122566854895882015-02-03T09:37:00.000-06:002015-02-03T09:37:01.159-06:00Let's discuss discussionsHere's something else to consider. We seem to have fallen out of the habit of discussing the books in the <a href="http://slavesofgolconda.forumotion.net/" target="_blank">forum</a>. Do we want to revive that practice with the next book? Should we start taking our talks over to a, say, private group at Facebook?<br />
<br />
Any other suggestions?SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-33408305172707506022015-02-02T22:14:00.003-06:002015-02-02T22:14:56.143-06:00Our Next Book
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Susan asked me to propose some titles for the next Slaves
read-a-long, and I’m happy to oblige. </div>
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I chose books I haven’t read in a genre I don’t know well
but want to know better: short 19<sup>th</sup> Century novels. (Here’s hoping
Rohan hasn’t read them all…) These books are all about 200 pages and represent
five different European languages. Like almost all novels of the period, it
seems, they are primarily about the predicament of women at the time. </div>
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Vote for your choice in the comments, let’s say by Valentine’s
Day. We’ll aim to discuss the book starting April 1<sup>st</sup>, no foolin’.</div>
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Honoré de Balzac—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eugénie
Grandet</i> (1833)</div>
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“Who is going to marry Eugénie Grandet?” That’s the question
at the heart of this novel, one of the first in the sprawling canvas of
Balzac’s <i>Comédie humaine</i>. Eugénie’s father, a wealthy miser, has his own
answer to the question. But when Eugénie’s orphaned and penniless cousin
arrives, she counters with a different one, such that the father’s cunning is
matched against the daughter’s determination. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anne Bronte—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Agnes Grey</i>
(1847)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Agnes Grey eagerly takes up her post as governess, only to
be disabused of that confidence by her unmanageable charges. The novel promises
to be about work, though romance is present too, when Agnes meets the local
curate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Theodor Fontane—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Irretrievable</i>
(1892) (Also translated into English as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No
Way Back</i>)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Set in Holstein about thirty years before its date of
publication when the area still belonged to Denmark, <i>Irretrievable</i> tells
the story of a mismatched couple who have been married for 23 years—Count
Helmuth Holk is fun loving; his wife Christine is solemn. The two slowly drift
apart, a movement exacerbated when the Count is called away to the court. As
the copy of one of two recent editions into English puts it, the couple “find
themselves in a situation which is nothing they ever wished for but from which
they cannot go back.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Benito Pérez Galdós—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tristana</i>
(1892)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don Lope pays off a friend’s debts, at the same time
assuming responsibility for the friend’s orphaned daughter, Tristana. He takes
her into his home—and into his bed. Tristana accepts the arrangement willingly
enough, at least until she meets a handsome young painter. Soon she surpasses
the Don in defiance of convention.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ivan Turgenev—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Home of
the Gentry</i> (1859)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Another’s heart is like a dark forest,” we learn in this
novel about a man named Lavretsky who returns to his native Russia after his
marriage falls to pieces in Europe. Unsure what to do with himself, Lavretsky
visits the estate of his widowed cousin and her two small children. Regret,
indecision, and, as the passage about the wilderness of the heart suggests,
heartbreak ensue. </div>
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--></style>dorian stuberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10069923023770087626noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-48883085320544565182015-01-16T16:44:00.002-06:002015-01-16T16:44:11.286-06:00The Vet's DaughterWell, that was quite a journey. This 1959 novel by Barbara Comyns
starts off seeming like one kind of book, but as it goes on the story
gets more and more odd until the oddness is the center of the story. A
far-too-realistic novel about a neglected and abused young woman becomes
a story of magic, a fairy tale gone awry when her escape route becomes
her prison. Maybe, in the end, it’s all one story after all.
<br />
<br />
Seventeen-year-old Alice lives in a poor South London neighborhood
with her father and mother and a menagerie of animals that come and go,
sometimes going home and sometimes to the vivisectionist. At his best,
her father is cold, but he can also be openly cruel and demanding. Both
Alice and her mother seem terrified of displeasing him. When her mother
is ill, she pleads with Alice not to tell him that she’d been lying down
to rest.<br />
<br />
When Alice’s mother dies, Alice’s situation becomes more desperate.
She reaches out to one of his colleagues, a man who appear to be in love
with her but whom she does not love in return, and he gives her a way
out as a companion to his mother, a woman engulfed in grief and living
in a partially burned home under the care of terrible couple who take
pleasure in treating her poorly.<br />
<br />
Alice, meanwhile, discovers an unexpected source of freedom. She
realizes that she can float in the air. But just as she’s starting to
learn to control and enjoy this ability, it becomes its own prison, with
disastrous results.<br />
<br />
In trying to work out what this book is actually about, I keep coming
back to the fact that her father is a veterinarian, and the women in
his home are treated no better than the animals in his care. The fate of
the animals in his care seems completely subject to human will, and
Alice’s fate is completely subject to the will of others.<br />
<br />
At one point in the book, a parrot who lives in Alice’s house because
the owners pay the vet to keep it is consigned to a downstairs lavatory
because its chatter annoys Rosa, Alice’s father’s new girlfriend.
Banished by its real owners, it is then banished again by its
caretakers. Alice and the parrot are alike, right down to having their
most notable skill become their biggest source of trouble.<br />
<br />
Every bit of Alice’s life, even the good parts, is governed by
someone else. She has to follow her father’s rules to the letter. The
few bits of freedom she has are those he allows or those she sneaks. Her
only way to get help is through another man. One man she meets attempts
to rape her, and another woos her only to abandon her without a word.
She never gets to make a proper choice for herself. She doesn’t have
much more freedom than a pet, but she has a human mind.<br />
<br />
All of the woman are pets, to some degree. Some are treated well, but
hardly any of them get to make their own choices. All are at the mercy
of the men who care for them. They may attempt to intercede for one
another, but the success of those attempts are still subject to the
choices of men.<br />
<br />
But how does the turn toward the supernatural fit in with this idea?
Maybe Alice’s ability is a way of showing that freedom cannot come
through ordinary means. Women’s earthly talents are no good in this
universe, so perhaps they need an unearthly talent. Yet, for Alice, that
talent is also a prison, turning her into an organ grinder’s monkey.
Literally breaking the law of gravity isn’t enough to free her.<br />
<br />
Review also posted at <a href="https://shelflove.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/the-vets-daughter/">Shelf Love</a>.Teresahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09896331683344872038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-9370019991118023522015-01-16T12:22:00.002-06:002015-01-16T12:22:11.901-06:00Thoughts on The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns"She can't do that, can she?" I asked myself when I reached the last page of Barbara Comyns' 1959 novel <b><i>The Vet's Daughter</i></b>. "She can't have a first person past tense narration and then kill off the narrator on the last page! I mean, obviously, she <i>can</i>, but isn't it stooping kind of low?"<br />
<br />
Then I looked back a few pages, spotted a one-sentence flashforward whose significance I'd failed to note previously, and all was forgiven. I love dead narrators. Alice Rowland has been playing this card--that she's talking to us from beyond the grave--close to the vest.<br />
<br />
Many things are played close to the vest in <b><i>The Vet's Daughter</i></b>, leaving the reader at the end not quite sure how we're supposed to interpret certain events, or even certain characters. For example, the novel opens with a description of a "man with small eyes and a ginger moustache" who walks along the street with Alice while she "was thinking of something else. . . . He told me his wife belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, and I said I was sorry because that is what he seemed to need me to say and I saw he was a poor broken-down sort of creature. If he had been a horse, he would have most likely worn knee-caps." This man is not seen or mentioned again until the final pages of the book. Clearly Comyns intends the ginger man to serve more purpose than arouse Alice's pity--but what? I can't worry it out.<br />
<br />
But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is the story of Alice Rowland, 17-year-old daughter of an abusive London veterinarian who is more apt to send an unwanted puppy to the vivisectionist for a pound than to put it down humanely as he is supposed to. He's broken Alice's mother's front teeth with a kick in the face, and even worse, her spirit. He mostly ignores Alice since she disappointed him by being born a girl, but she's still frightened of him. Their house is grotesque--dark, smelly, decorated with the rug of a Great Dane's skin and a monkey's jaw, filled with animals in cages that Alice is required to take care of.<br />
<br />
One night shortly before Alice's mother, who is dying of cancer, is euthanized against her will by Alice's father, Alice listens to her mother reminisce once again of growing up on a farm in the mountains of Wales: "Dark brown moss grew in the mere by the farm; and once I saw a little child floating on the surface. She was dead, but I wasn't afraid because she looked so pure floating there, with her eyes open and her blue pinafore gently moving. It was Flora, a little girl who had been missing for three days. . . "<br />
<br />
The morning that Alice is told her mother has died, she sees a Jacob's ladder that the sun has made across the floor of her mother's bedroom.<br />
<br />
After the funeral, Alice's father goes missing for three weeks. He returns with a barmaid --the strumpet from the Trumpet-- Rosa Fisher (a fisher of men?), who he euphemistically tells Alice will be their housekeeper. Rosa quickly assumes an evil stepmother-like role in Alice's life. One afternoon while fixing their lunch in a steamy hot kitchen Alice imagines--or so she thinks at first--that she is floating above water in the mountains. "This wonderful water world didn't last long because a mist came, and gradually it wasn't there, and something was hurting my head. Somehow I'd managed to fall on the kitchen floor, and knocked my head on a coal scuttle. Coal had got in my hair, but otherwise everything was as it had been before I'd seen the water garden--just boiling beef and steam, and heard Rosa's and Father's voices coming through the wall."<br />
<br />
Alice hasn't realized it, but her mother's reflections and death have inspired her to begin levitating. For most of the book, I was prone to read these instances metaphorically, as they happen after times of great psychological distress for Alice. Yet Comyns has Alice read ghost stories and Alice mentions how happy her mother's ghost must be when she leaves home to be a companion on an island for Henry Peebles' mother (Peebles is a kind man who cares for Alice, although she does not particularly want to marry him). There's no denying that there's something supernatural going on here, especially once you accept the story's being told from beyond the grave.<br />
<br />
And after Alice's father decides to exploit her talent, once she has returned home following Mrs. Peebles' suicide, to have her "rise up before all the people on the Common" it becomes clear that Comyns is turning Alice into a Christ figure, parodying the Christ story, since, as a character explains, the beauty in Alice's case is she isn't religious: Alice is given wine to drink and thinks it must be blood; she smells sour bread and cockroaches; she is kept prisoner; she exclaims, "Please God, don't let that happen to me. Father don't make me do this thing. I don't want to be peculiar and different. I want to be an ordinary person. I'll marry Henry Peebles and go away and you needn't see me any more--but don't make me do this terrible thing."<br />
<br />
Alice's ordeal is not removed. Alice, in despair and humiliation, is brought in a bride's white dress, in a hearse-like carriage, to rise up and then come "down amongst the people." Trampled by a frightened crowd milling about in circles, she dies. Unlike the man with the ginger mustache, who dies with a terrified expression on his face, at the moment Alice's life is finished, she states, "[F]or the first time in my life I was not afraid."<br />
<br />
And now I'm left with the thought: is the man with the small eyes and the ginger mustache a stand-in for the reader? A small-eyed someone Comyns and her characters briefly walk beside while thinking of something else?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-35782071870580945122015-01-16T09:19:00.001-06:002015-01-16T09:19:42.930-06:00The Vet's Daughter--Barbara Comyns
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<br />
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Barbara Comyns’s strange little book <i>The Vet’s Daughter</i>
(1959) is narrated by Alice Rowlands, a seventeen-year-old girl who temporarily
escapes the desperate circumstances of her home life when she takes a position
as companion to an old woman, the mother of one her father’s colleagues. This
woman, a Mrs. Peebles, is so sunk into depression or anxiety or ennui or
something that she earns Alice’s description of her as “so sadly vague and
harmless.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Mrs. Peebles has survived a house fire, the death of her
husband, and even a suicide attempt. A man delivering bread to the house discovered
her “limply hanging in the green barn among the apples, and he had the presence
of mind to cut her down with a pair of sheers and untie the dreadful rope
around her neck.” This passage puts me in mind of the suicide Mr. Valpy, whose
death in Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical fragment “A Sketch of the Past” gets
fused in the mind of the young Virginia with the image of an apple tree in the
garden. More pertinently, it offers a fine sense of Comyns’s calm way with
horrible things. Some of that measured quality attaches to the narrator too,
though equally characteristic is the gallows sprightliness evident in the
sentence that comes right after the description of that macabre discovery: “Sometimes,
when I looked at her there appeared to be a sinister brown stain round her
neck, and I couldn’t help wondering if her eyes had always been so prominent.”
This is funny, but not arch or knowing; mostly it’s discomfiting. Alice’s
sentiments here seem almost naïve, but she is neither guileless nor foolish,
even though she is almost always at the mercy of others. </div>
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Of all the unsettling, even startling things that happen to
Alice in <i>The Vet’s Daughter</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, </span>why
is it that the detail I remember most is so benign? Alice’s time with Mrs.
Peebles comes to an abrupt end when the old woman—distraught that the couple
who have kept house for her, a nasty pair straight out of a Roald Dahl story, have
absconded with the silverware—is found drowned, presumably having finally succeeded
in killing herself. </div>
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<br /></div>
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A kind policeman questions Alice and, as she has nowhere
else to go, takes her in for the night. His house—unlike all the other filthy,
dilapidated houses in the book—is “red-bricked and very clean.” (I picture it
like the policeman’s house in Wes Anderson’s <i>Moonrise Kingdom</i>, all
bachelor ship-shape.) And there’s an unexpected grace note: “Homing pigeons
that had failed to return were in a box beside the fire, waiting to be
claimed.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Maybe the reason this image stays with me so strongly is
that it’s one of the few homey, domestic, and even hopeful moments in the book.
True, these birds are failures, homing pigeons that never made it home. In
their dispossession they are rather like Alice. But they seem to have ended up
well. Imprisoned, perhaps, or packaged at least, yes, but well looked after,
all cozy beside the fire. And surely someone will want them: they are waiting
to be claimed, after all. It’s unclear anyone wants Alice, for anything other than
abusive or mercenary reasons, except perhaps Mrs. Peebles’s son Henry, Alice’s
father’s colleague, the man who arranged for her to look after his mother and who
cares a great deal for her even though she can’t bring herself to return the
feeling. (In the end, he proves unable or unwilling to save Alice.) The pigeons
in their box remind us of so many unhappy animals in the book, especially those
in Alice’s father’s care—a term we can only use ironically, since he sells the
ones he doesn’t like to a vivisectionist. That’s to say nothing of the ones he
has used to furnish his house: a rug from a Great Dane’s skin, a monkey’s skull
that sits on the mantelpiece, “a horse’s hoof without a horse joined to it” to
prop open the door to his study. The house is full of piteous and frantic mewling
and screeching and barking—as well as, before long, the tortured cries of
Alice’s mother, who dies from a painful, undiagnosed illness.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Whatever their fate, then, the pigeons don’t suffer as these
other animals do. Maybe I held on to the image’s intimation of a happier
future—the moment someone finally claims the birds—as a corrective to my uneasy
suspicion that Alice has had something to do with Mrs. Peeples’s death. And I
don’t just mean that in the childish sense of the omnipotence of thoughts: Mrs.
Peeples disappears on an afternoon when Alice has fled the house, unable to
take the woman’s presence any more (“She became repulsive to me, like some old
brown flower”) and the girl feels guilty for having felt that way. I mean it
more literally: in the possibility that Alice has done her companion in.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That suspicion might be a way to understand the strange
paragraphs—suddenly and unusually narrated in present tense—that describe
Alice’s search for Mrs. Peeples. Here’s the first one:</div>
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<br /></div>
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Clank, clank my feet on the stairs; clank, clank on the
landing. All the doors are open. One of Mrs. Peeples’s black shoes is caught in
the ironwork and abandoned. Through the open doors are rooms with open windows,
and it is like a zoo with the animals let loose and escaped. No one is there.
“Mrs. Peeples, where are you?” Where are you? Not upstairs or below, or in the
garden where you never went. Where are you? For a long time I look for her,
even in the green shed, but she isn’t there hanging from the roof with the rope
cutting into her brown neck.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>The garden where you never went</i>. It’s as if Alice
knows she is already dead. The odd syntax of the final sentence, which paints
the picture of the death it claims to disavow, doesn’t make the scene any less
creepy. And why is Alice saying to herself (“Where are you?”) what she has
already said out loud? In the end, I don’t think Alice has really killed Mrs.
Peeples. Instead it’s as though she’s in a fugue state here, which is a pretty
good description of the whole atmosphere of this strange little novel.</div>
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*</div>
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<br /></div>
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So who is this Barbara Comyns and where did she come from?
The US edition includes a short introduction by Comyns, reprinted from a
British reprint from the 1980s. (It is the fate of writers like Comyns always to
be reprinted, always to be rediscovered.) Comyns gives us a rather
helter-skelter autobiography. We learn of a violent father who went through the
family fortune, an invalid mother who suddenly, unaccountably went deaf, a
series of unlikely governesses. Her childhood seems to have been both
privileged and hardscrabble. Later came art school and two marriages and a
whole series of odd jobs, in advertising and in real estate, as an artist’s
model and a refurbisher of cars. Throughout she kept writing, though with only
middling success, it seems. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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It’s heartening anyone published her at all, so odd is her
prose (at least based on this book). I remember once in graduate school, having
recently discovered Henry Green, another unusual English writer of the mid
twentieth century, telling one of my advisors that I wanted to include him in
my dissertation. She was generally speaking encouraging of my project (as well
as unusually well read for an academic). But talking with her made me nervous
and prone to prattle on. I remember saying to her, rather grandiosely, that
Green wasn’t like anyone else, it was as if he’d dropped to earth from the
moon, to which she tartly responded that <i>no one</i> dropped from the moon,
that he wasn’t so unusual as all that, that he had his context like anyone
else. I think now that this is true. And reading Comyns I was reminded of a
number of other wonderful, more or less minor British writers from about the
same time. There’s something of Jean Rhys in Comyns’s portrayal of the
hopelessness felt by young women (though Alice, and perhaps even her deaf
friend Lucy, who flits intriguingly along the margins of the novel, is more
resourceful than Rhys’s protagonists). I caught echoes of Richard Hughes’s
hallucinatory portrayal of childhood in <i>A High Wind in Jamaica</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> (1929)</span> and of Rebecca West’s
matter-of-fact inclusion of supernatural elements in her amazing <i>The
Fountain Overflows</i> (1957). (It’s probably no accident that these last two
titles, like <i>The Vet’s Daughter</i>, are published by NYRB Classics.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes Comyns reminded me of
Penelope Fitzgerald, in the obliquity of both her narrative structure and her
own biography. (Fitzgerald kept herself and her family afloat by taking all
sorts of odd jobs, too.) I even caught an anticipatory hint of early Ian McEwan—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Vet’s Daughter</i> is like a less
macabre <i>Cement Garden</i> (1978). And those are just the writers I know:
I’ve a hunch, that Comyns might be like Ivy Compton-Burnett and Muriel Spark,
though I haven’t actually read them yet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So Comyns might not be <i>sui generis</i>. But I don’t think
I was entirely wrong in thinking (wishing?) that Henry Green, or Barbara Comyns,
or any similar writer, the ones that slink through the supposedly dull and
genteel world of twentieth century British fiction like feral cats, is an
alien, <i>weird</i> figure. However romantic or idealized, that way of thinking
might keep us alive to the wonder of such writers. And in literary historical
terms it can help us see that realism only ostensibly triumphed in the fiction
of the period. In reality, a perverse, fantastic, Gothic strain runs throughout
it. I’m thinking, in addition to those I’ve already mentioned, of writers as
seemingly different as Elizabeth Bowen, Doris Lessing, and Daphne du Maurier.
(Importantly, I suspect, the weirdness that disrupts these novels almost always
manifests itself in depictions of children.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <i>The Vet’s Daughter</i> the clearest example of this
strangeness—the oddest, most unsettling thing in this odd, unsettling book—is Alice’s
sudden ability to levitate, or, as she prefers to call it, to float. One night
Alice finds herself rising out of her bed and she knows she isn’t dreaming
because she hits her head on a sconce that is still cracked in the morning. She
is as surprised by this turn of events as we are. But the novel takes it in
stride. It quickly becomes clear that we aren’t to take the floating as a
hallucination on her part or a metaphor on the novel’s (her way of rising above
the unhappy events of her life, say). Alice’s ability is both ordinary (when
she cautiously asks Mrs. Peeples if she has ever heard of anything like it the
woman says she believes it used to be quite common) and extraordinary (it fills
everyone who sees it with horror, even disgust). I like that the novel doesn’t
try to explain it away, or use it as a way to redeem or transform Alice’s
mostly grim and unhappy life. Indeed, it’s not long before someone—her father,
the very man who hatefully said he hoped he would never see her again—tries to
profit from Alice’s ability. He arranges a public demonstration, doubtless the
first step on a tour that, Alice sees all too clearly, will make her into a
freak show exhibit. </div>
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In a marvelously ambivalent ending, though, these plans are
foiled. Alice’s appearance in the air above Clapham Common causes a riot in
which three people, including Alice herself, are killed. The first person
narration comes abruptly to an end, her fate given to us through a newspaper
report. The bitter irony of the book’s end fits with its way of ruthlessly
undermining anything nice or good that happens to Alice: a boy she falls for,
who teaches her to skate, throws her over; Henry, Mrs. Peebles’s kind son,
doesn’t come when she calls him in her hour of greatest need. </div>
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Perhaps surprisingly, given what I’ve said, <i>The Vet’s
Daughter</i> isn’t unrelievedly bleak, but it’s hardly easy going. You can see
why I needed to hold on to those pigeons, and to think of them as rescued. But
the book whetted my interest in Comyns’s other books, even though I’ll need to
take a deep breath first.</div>
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dorian stuberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10069923023770087626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-84494203430265120132015-01-15T06:23:00.003-06:002015-01-15T06:23:52.890-06:00"Definitely Floating": Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter<br />
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And then in the night it happened again and I was floating, definitely floating. The moonlight was streaming whitely through the window, and I could see the curtains gently flapping in the night wind. I'd left my bed, and except for a sheet, the clothes lay scattered on the floor. I gently floated about the room. Sometimes I went very close to the ceiling, but I wouldn't touch it in case it made me fall to the ground.</blockquote>
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What a strange, and strangely compelling, novel <em>The Vet's Daughter</em> is! It seems like a grimly realistic story at first, with its details about the sordid life of eponymous Alice, her coarse, brutal father, and her sad mother, doubled up with a pain that only makes her husband despise her the more: "For Christ's sake, woman, send for a doctor; and, if he can't put you right, keep out of my sight!" It continues in what seems like a straightforward enough way, with her mother's decline and death, and then the arrival of Rosa, the wicked would-be stepmother. It's an unrelentingly dark story with a gothic atmosphere only rendered stranger by the constant presence of the vet's patients:</div>
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At night I was all alone in the house. Although I slept with my head under the bedclothes, I could hear awful creakings on the stairs, and sometimes I thought I could hear whisperings by my bed. I asked Mrs. Churchill if she would stay and keep me company; but she said her husband didn't like her to be out at night, and she had 'our Vera's' boy staying with her while his mother was in hospital. One night the dogs started barking and yelping and I thought something terrible really had happened. I lay in bed shivering, too afraid to go and see if the house were on fire, or if burglars were creeping through the pantry window. In the morning I found the cage that contained the old cock with the diseased eye had fallen to the ground, and the bird was dead and heavy.</div>
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Things only get stranger, and grimmer, as the novel goes on -- and then just when you wonder whether Alice has hit rock bottom, she rises -- quite literally -- to the top:</div>
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In the night I was awake and floating. As I went up, the blankets fell to the floor. I could feel nothing below me -- and nothing above until I came near the ceiling and it was hard to breathe there. I thought, 'I mustn't break the glass globe.' I felt it carefully with my hands, and something very light fell in them, and it was the broken mantle. I kept very still up there because I was afraid of breaking other things in that small crowded room; but quite soon, it seemed, I was gently coming down again. I folded my hands over my chest and kept very straight, and floated down to the couch where I'd been lying. I was not afraid, but very calm and peaceful. In the morning I knew it wasn't a dream because the blankets were still on the floor and I saw the gas mantle was broken and the chalky powder was still on my hands.</div>
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It's possible to move past this moment and assume that, Alice's own conviction (and the physical evidence) notwithstanding, it <em>was</em> a dream . . . except that it keeps happening: she keeps "floating" above the dreary circumstances that she seems so powerless to change, above the disappointments that follow so bitterly one after another, above the people who fail her or leave her or just don't love her. Her levitation brings no levity to the novel, though it is darkly comical. For instance, when she asks her one ally, her admirer Henry Peebles, "if it was unusual for people to sometimes rise into the air when they were resting in their beds -- particularly in strange beds" he is understandably "very slow in understanding what I meant"; when she decides to show her false lover Nicholas that she "can do things others can't do" he watches her rise, horrified, and then "in a scared and awful whisper" tells her to "Stop it, stop it, I say!"</div>
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Alice can rise above her life but not leave it behind; it seems only fitting that the last indignity she suffers is having her gift used against her, and poetic justice that her final fall should precipitate destruction. The novel has the tautness of a fairy tale and the patness of an allegory. Though it ends up not being a realist novel, though, it's very specific about Alice's oppression and her psychic suffering: its critique is perhaps <em>more</em> resonant and devastating because it resorts to fantasy rather than offering restitution or resolution.</div>
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<em>The Vet's Daughter</em> is the first Comyns novel I've read and it definitely makes me want to read more (I've got <em>Our Spoons Came from Woolworths</em> and <em>Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead</em> in my Virago collection). Her prose is not elaborate or florid but her turns of phrase are remarkably satisfying and often surprising. The very first line of <em>The Vet's Daughter</em> is actually a good example: "A man with small eyes and a ginger moustache came and spoke to me when I was thinking of something else." Aren't you immediately curious, both about the man's business with her and about what she was thinking when he interrupted? I see that the other two novels also have brilliant, irresistible starts: "The ducks swam through the drawing-room window," begins <em>Who Was Changed</em>, while <em>Our Spoons</em> opens "I told Helen my story and she went home and cried." <i>The Vet's Daughter</i> also shows that Comyns can do vivid, tactile description, full of the kinds of little details that make a scene particular, and also scenes full of dramatic action, fear, and pathos -- such as the terrible attempted rape, after which Alice -- bruised and bleeding, stands in the street and thinks "There is no hope for me -- no hope at all."</div>
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<em>The Vet's Daughter</em> is at once compact and suggestive: it is dense with details that feel meaningful, and meaningfully connected, but whose meaning is not immediately transparent. Why, for instance, is Alice's father a vet? I don't mean literally, in terms of the plot, of course: is there something about his meticulous care for animals (his skill as a vet is often mentioned) that helps us understand Alice's place in the world? Why does Alice call Henry "Blinkers"? What doesn't he see? How does his mother's life or death reflect Alice's situation? What exactly is Nicholas's role -- if he even exists? Does <em>any</em> of it happen the way Alice says it does, in fact? I found myself thinking that it would teach very well: it's eerie and fast-paced enough to catch students' attention and puzzling enough to keep it.</div>
Rohan Maitzenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12111722115617352412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-60946737184262851822015-01-14T18:42:00.001-06:002015-01-14T18:42:29.113-06:00Barbara Comyns's The Vet's DaughterBarbara Comyns’s <em>The Vet’s Daughter</em> was not what I expected, but then, this is my third Comyns novel and none of them have been what I expected. <em>Our Spoons Came From Woolworths</em> was my first one, and it was an unsettling mix of a light, breezy tone and dark subject matter. <em>Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead</em>
remains my favorite Comyns so far; it’s very strange, opening with
ducks swimming in and out of drawing room windows and staying on a
similar off-beat note. The world of the book seems familiar, but it’s
not, quite. <em>The Vet’s Daughter</em> is perhaps more like <em>Our Spoons </em>than <em>Who Was Changed</em>, but it’s darker in tone throughout. But it also veers off in some odd directions, especially in the second half.<br />
It tells the story of Alice, the daughter of the title, who lives in
London with her bitter, nasty father and her ailing mother. She’s trying
to give her mother as much help as she can, but her mother is on her
way out of this world, and now the daughter is going to be left to
manage her father on her own as best as she can. She has a friend Lucy,
but she can only see her occasionally, and Lucy is deaf, which makes
communication difficult. The vet’s practice has sinister aspects to it; a
vivisectionist stops by to pick up unwanted animals and many of the
animals they keep suffer. There are few bright spots in Alice’s life.
One is Mrs. Churchill, who is a companion to the family during and after
Alice’s mother’s illness. She provides some needed stability.<br />
Mr. Peebles is not exactly a bright spot in Alice’s life, but he’s a
friend and one with some power to provide Alice with much-needed
diversions. He is another veterinarian who has helped with the family
vet practice, and it becomes clear early on that he is attracted to
Alice. It seems as though he might provide an escape, but Alice does not
return his feelings. She spends time with him but considers him only a
friend, although marriage is always there as a possibility should she
get desperate enough. She walks a line between honesty and deception,
trying to get what pleasure she can out of his company without leading
him on.<br />
All this takes place in the gloomy setting of poverty-stricken
London, but this is only the first half of the novel. In the second half
Alice heads out toward the English coast to live with Mr. Peebles’s
mother. She is a depressed woman living in a house that’s halfway burned
to the ground, being cared for by a truly strange, scarily sinister
couple, the Gowleys. Alice’s job is to be a companion. She is still
isolated here, this time geographically isolated as well as emotionally
so, but this job brings some new opportunities with it. Alice learns
about the countryside and its ways, and she also learns about sexual
desire, as she meets Nicholas, a young, attractive soldier who teaches
her how to ice skate and seems to be attracted to her as well. This
relationship puts her feelings toward Mr. Peebles in a new light; she
knows now what real attraction can be and marriage Mr. Peebles takes on
an even duller, bleaker aspect.<br />
I think I’ll stop there with a discussion of the plot, except to say
that levitation becomes an important plot point, and I’m trying to
figure out what to make of this. Alice had a couple experiences with
levitation during her sleep while in London, and it happens again out on
the coast. She experiments a bit and discovers she can levitate at
will, although it takes a lot of energy and focus. When her father finds
out about her ability, it becomes another way he can exploit her, and
her life closes in on her again. But what are we supposed to make of
this? I first thought she was merely dreaming that she could levitate
and that it was a metaphor for her desire for freedom or something like
that. But then what I thought was a metaphor becomes real and she
actually does have the ability to float up into the air. Of course, it
is still a metaphor even though it’s “real” — her ability to levitate
only sets her apart and leads to more suffering and despair. The thing
that makes her special makes her miserable, and there is no chance for
escape, ever.<br />
I’m still not sure what I think of the book as a whole, and I’m
looking forward to reading other people’s thoughts. I liked the first
person narration; the story is told through Alice’s eyes in her
forthright, no-nonsense tone. Alice is so young — only seventeen — and
she hasn’t had the chance to do much in her life, but she has seen a lot
of suffering. One of the first things she tells us is that “if [my
mother] had been a dog, my father would have destroyed her.” She
describes her father’s cruelties matter-of-factly and without dwelling
on the darkness of it all, but there’s a sadness to the tone as well, as
though she knows life isn’t ever going to offer much, in spite of her
hopes. When Nicholas betrays her, she is not really surprised. But I’m
not sure how to integrate the two parts of the book, particularly the
very ending. The note the book ends on seems appropriate, but to get
there by way of levitation? I’m curious what other people think of the
value of bringing in this fantastical? supernatural? element.<br />
But I definitely can conclude that Comyns is a writer I want to read
in full. I love how she’s full of surprises and that her novels have so
much variety. I love the darkness and twistedness of her worlds, and the
way she look at that darkness straight on.Rebecca H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10825532162727473112noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-53969696675343249842014-11-29T18:52:00.001-06:002014-11-29T18:52:14.453-06:00It's Unanimous! Our next pick: The Vet's DaughterThe voting is finished, and the choice is in: we'll be reading Barbara Comyns's novel <i>The Vet's Daughter</i> as our next pick. The discussion will begin on January 15th. Everyone is welcome to join in!Rebecca H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10825532162727473112noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-20348902286249174062014-11-20T20:02:00.000-06:002014-11-20T20:02:50.491-06:00At long last, time for another book!Rohan got the ball rolling on choosing another book, and I volunteered to come up with a list for us to vote on, so here goes! But first, an explanation: this group is open to absolutely anybody who wants to participate. You don't need to do anything to join us except to read the book and participate in the discussion in whatever way you want to. That could include something as simple as reading along and commenting on the posts here, or perhaps publishing a post on your own blog, or possibly publishing a post on this site. Leave a comment here if you'd like to publish a post on this blog, and we'll figure out how to get that done.<br />
<br />
For this round, I thought about what books I'd like to discuss with you all the most, and for some reason books from the 1950s were coming to mind. So, here's a list of titles I think we might enjoy. Let's vote by next Wednesday, November 26th. Perhaps we could discuss the book on or around January 15th? I thought that date was far enough away to give us plenty of time to read and also enough after the holidays that they won't interfere. If anyone thinks another date would be better, though, just let me know.<br />
<br />
So, vote for your choice in the comments!<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Mary McCarthy's <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/146071" target="_blank"><i>Memories of a Catholic Girlhood</i></a> (1957): "Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned
at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of
grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. One
of four children, she suffered abuse at the hands of her great-aunt and
uncle until she moved to Seattle to be raised by her maternal
grandparents. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The
chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been
distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance."</li>
<li> Barbara Comyns, <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/402584" target="_blank"><i>The Vet's Daughter</i></a> (1959): "<i>The Vet's Daughter</i> combines shocking realism with a visionary
edge. The vet lives with his bedridden wife and shy daughter Alice in a
sinister London suburb. He works constantly, captive to a strange
private fury, and treats his family with brutality and contempt. After
his wife's death, the vet takes up with a crass, needling woman who
tries to refashion Alice in her own image. And yet as Alice retreats
ever deeper into a dream world, she discovers an extraordinary secret
power of her own."</li>
<li>James Baldwin, <i><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/8090" target="_blank">Go Tell It on the Mountain</a> </i>(1953): "First published in 1953 when James Baldwin was nearly 30, <i>Go Tell It on the Mountain</i>
is a young man's novel, as tightly coiled as a new spring, yet
tempered by a maturing man's confidence and empathy. It's not a long
book, and its action spans but a single day--yet the author packs in
enough emotion, detail, and intimate revelation to make his story feel
like a mid-20th-century epic. Using as a frame the spiritual and moral
awakening of 14-year-old John Grimes during a Saturday night service in
a Harlem storefront church, Baldwin lays bare the secrets of a
tormented black family during the depression."</li>
<li>Yukio Mishima, <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/18325" target="_blank"><i>Temple of the Golden Pavilion</i></a> (1956): "Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another
man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless
stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone until he
becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto. He quickly becomes
obsessed with the beauty of the temple. Even when tempted by a friend
into exploring the geisha district, he cannot escape its image. In the
novel's soaring climax, he tries desperately to free himself from his
fixation."</li>
<li>Ira Levin, <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/166041" target="_blank"><i>A Kiss Before Dying</i></a> (1953): "<i>A Kiss Before Dying</i> not only debuted the talent of best-selling
novelist Ira Levin to rave reviews and an Edgar Award, it also set a new
standard in the art of psychological suspense. It tells the shocking
tale of a young man who will stop at nothing—not even murder—to get
where he wants to go. For he has dreams, plans. He also has charm, good
looks, intelligence. And he has a problem. Her name is Dorothy; she
loves him, and she’s pregnant. The solution may demand desperate
measures. But, then, he looks like the kind of guy who could get away
with murder." </li>
</ul>
Rebecca H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10825532162727473112noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-8499511135465481812014-11-18T20:40:00.001-06:002014-11-18T20:40:11.934-06:00Hello? Is Anybody Out There?What happened? One minute we were all enthusiastically discussing <i>Jamaica Inn</i>, and the next minute it was complete radio silence! It hardly seems possible, but almost a year has gone by since our last read.<br />
<br />
I don't think any one of us made a conscious decision to let this group lapse. Probably we were all just caught up in other things and other conversations. But tonight I was thinking that, much as I enjoy following the diverse book discussions we're all still having on our own sites or on Twitter, I rather miss meeting up here once in a while to talk all together about a book we have in common.<br />
<br />
I put out a tweet to that effect and <a href="http://ofbooksandbikes.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Rebecca</a> said she felt the same way, so we started wondering how the rest of the group feels. A quick post here seemed like the best way to find out. Is there interest in picking up again? If people had lost interest, or it had stopped being fun, are there factors we could address and improve on -- book choices, pacing, anything else? Or do people already feel pulled in too many directions, so that this group has become that one thing too many? Energy ebbs and flows for this kind of thing, and that's only natural. It just seemed worth checking whether we were done or just paused.Rohan Maitzenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12111722115617352412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-73789397589243623572014-01-30T17:22:00.001-06:002014-01-30T17:22:42.012-06:00Jamaica Inn: A Guest Post<i>[I'm happy to share these thoughts from Dorian Stuber, a regular reader who wanted to join in our discussion of Jamaica Inn. I'm sure he'd welcome comments. </i><i>-- Rohan]</i><br />
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<span lang="EN-US">I’ve never posted here before, but feel
obligated since I voted for <i>Jamaica Inn</i> and the margin of victory was so
narrow. I’ve enjoyed reading these posts; they’ve helped me pinpoint some of
the things I like about the novel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I like Teresa’s idea that the novel revises
our ideas about the heroines of the Gothic literature from the period in which
it is set. Certainly, I enjoyed the text’s deployment of elements I’m familiar
with from certain 19th century texts (the Brontes, Hardy), if not from Romance
literature, of which I have no real knowledge. As someone interested in 20<sup>th-</sup>century British literature, I spent some time trying to figure out how to place
Du Maurier amongst other literature from her own time. Is there anything modernist
about this work, for example? Would it be useful to think of it as a Modernist
take on the Gothic?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In the end, I think <i>Jamaica Inn</i> is too solidly
aligned to the conventions of its genre (and I don’t say that as a criticism!)
for that to be the case. But the ending <i>is</i> quite intriguingly open. In
my edition (the Virago), at least, the penultimate page ends with Jem asking,
“'Do you love me, Mary?’” To which she responds, rather ambiguously, “'I
believe so, Jem.” I thought the book ended here, and was immediately reminded
of the famously irresolute ending of Lawrence’s <i>Women in Love</i> (or <i>The
Fox</i> or indeed any number of other Modernist works). But then I realized
there were another few lines to go on the real last page, and the ending became
a little less irresolute. But I think
the gender ambiguities that the text repeatedly offers us remain even with the
ending we do get. Besides, Mary’s professed dream of farming by herself didn’t
seem to me in any way conventionally gendered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">And yet it was just this professed dream of
Mary’s that most puzzled me about the book. The thing that didn’t quite work
for me was the disjunction between Mary’s repeatedly expressed longing for her lost
home in Helston and the reality of the place as presented by the text. Helston
may be more temperate than the moors, but it’s hardly gentle: think about the
sickness that kills the county’s livestock, which Du Maurier describes so
resonantly, at such length: “It was a sickness that came over everything and
destroyed, much as a late frost will out of season, coming with the new moon
and then departing, leaving no trace of its passage save the little trail of
dead things in its path.” (This could be a description of the novel, except
that sharp “little” couldn’t be said to apply to the things that happen at and
around the inn.) The death of the livestock prefigures the death of Mary’s
mother, which is itself presaged by the “eager” pleasure Mary’s neighbour takes
in explaining to Mary and the doctor that the patient’s condition has worsened.
The man who buys the farm after the mother’s death (admittedly a stranger from
a nearby town) makes plans to change all the things he doesn’t like about the
place; Mary, “an interloper in her own home,” can only watch “in dumb
loathing.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I’m unconvinced, in other words, that
Helston is quite so wonderful. And yet I also didn’t get the sense that the
text was criticizing or making even gentle fun at Mary here. Mostly, the text
presents Helston and Mary’s life before coming to the inn as a real lost
paradise rather than, like all paradises, as one already lost. (And necessarily
so, if there is to be a novel, that is, if Mary is to be catapulted into the
events of the plot.) I rather hoped that the novel would more overtly suggest
its, at least, if not its protagonist’s, awareness of the difference between
memory and reality. One effect of that awareness would have been to give us a
Mary who is naïve, blinded or misguided, at least in this regard, but I think
that would only have made her more interesting, not less. Still, if the novel
doesn’t overtly tell us that Helston is no more a place for Mary than Jamaica
Inn, it <i>is</i> explicit that the
era of the wreckers is fast coming to an end, with the advent of lighthouses,
beacons, and the like. In that regard, there is a striking belief in
progress, even modernity at the heart of this Gothic text.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">-- Dorian Stuber</span></div>
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Rohan Maitzenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12111722115617352412noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-60163624712404393162014-01-15T16:33:00.001-06:002014-01-15T16:33:19.882-06:00Jamaica InnIt was a dark and rainy day when I settled down to read <em>Jamaica Inn</em>
by Daphne du Maurier, perfect weather for this romantic thriller about
an orphan, a drunken innkeeper, a horse thief, and an attentive albino
vicar.<br />
<br />
When her mother died, the orphan, a young woman named Mary Yellan,
moved north to Jamaica Inn to live with her aunt Patience. Before even
arriving at the lonesome inn on the moors, Mary began to hear rumors
about the inn’s evil reputation. It turns out that Mary’s uncle, Joss
Merlyn, is both a drunk and a criminal. At first, Mary assumes that his
only crime is smuggling, but soon she learns of the murderous nature of
his crimes and wonders how she might convince her aunt to escape with
her. Can the vicar she keeps meeting on the moors help her? And what
about Joss’s brother, Jem, a confessed horse thief? What is Mary to do
about her growing attraction to him? Is he more involved in Joss’s
activities than he will admit?<br />
<br />
This book is a great example of how a book can be entirely
predictable, yet extremely suspenseful. It’s a pretty neat trick. So how
does she manage it? The predictability of the book lies in its
employment of a lot of tropes we’ve all become used to seeing in
literature and film, some perhaps influenced by du Maurier. Jem the
horse thief, for example, is presented as a rogue with a heart of gold,
ready to give Mary gifts and attention but never forcing himself. It’s
clear to the experienced reader that he’s a romantic lead long before
Mary realizes it. But du Maurier holds back just enough information to
keep readers in doubt as to the real nature of his relationship with his
brother. He may be a romantic lead, but is he a good man? And how good
must one be to be considered good, anyway? And how evil to be considered
evil? Mary ponders this question when she learns of Joss’s smuggling:<br />
<blockquote>
Smuggling was dangerous; it was fraught with dishonesty;
it was forbidden strictly by the law of the land; but was it evil? Mary
could not decide.</blockquote>
This question underpins many of Mary’s decision-making processes.
When is a dishonest action evil? Just about every character in this book
is morally compromised in some way, but at what point do they cross the
line?<br />
<br />
When Joss eventually crosses the line for Mary, her way becomes clear:<br />
<blockquote>
Mary did not consider her uncle any more. She had lost
her fear of him. There was only loathing left in heart, loathing and
disgust. He had lost all hold on humanity. He was a beast that walked by
night. Now that she had seen him drunk, and she knew him for what he
was, he could not frighten her. Neither he nor the rest of his company.
They were things of evil, rotting the countryside, and she would never
rest until they were trodden underfoot, and cleared, and blotted out.
Sentiment would not save them again.</blockquote>
Evil turns a human into something other than itself, into a thing
that can and must be fought. And Mary, as a good person, has the
strength of will to fight.<br />
<br />
Mary herself is a sort of commentary on the prototypical Gothic
heroine. du Maurier sets her novel in the early 1800s, the time of Ann
Radcliffe and her many fainting heroines. Mary faints once, early in the
book, and she despises herself for it. For the rest of the book, she’s
the type to swear to give herself courage, jump off a porch roof, walk
for miles in the cold, and offer to confront a dangerous man at gun
point. She is fearless, we are told, and much like a boy.<br />
<br />
This point, that Mary in all her boldness, is being boyish for
standing up her herself fascinates me, though I disagree with it on
principle. Mary is, in most respects, the kind of heroine many woman
want to see in novels. She’s plucky and fierce and smart, and she claims
to prefer farming to romance. She’s certain that, given the chance,
she’d be able to run her own farm. But she’s sometimes doubtful of her
own strength, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. When she
kisses the rakish Jem, she’s not sorry to have done it, but she’s
determined to be the master of her emotions and not let her heart drive
her into dangerous ground. At one point, this dilemma about Jem is
treated as a battle between her boyishness and her girlishness. What a
woman would do, and what a man would do is a minor obsession of the
narrative. But I think du Maurier is being slyly subversive here
because, in the end, Mary makes the choice of both a man and a woman.
She refuses, right up to the end, to be tied down by these categories.<br />
<br />
<em>Jamaica Inn</em> reads like a good old-fashioned potboiler, but
there’s a lot going on inside, once you scratch the surface. This is the
fourth book by du Maurier that I’ve read, and with each book that I
read, I love her more.<br />
<br />
Cross-posted to <a href="http://shelflove.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/jamaica-inn/">Shelf Love </a>Teresahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09896331683344872038noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-13548160287885721952014-01-15T07:38:00.002-06:002014-01-15T07:39:33.555-06:00Jamaica InnWhat a wonderful thing that Daphne du Maurier’s <i>Jamaica Inn </i>was the most recent pick for the <a href="http://slavesofgolconda.blogspot.com/">Slaves of Golconda</a> reading group (in which everyone is welcome to participate!). I’d read du Maurier’s most famous novel, <i>Rebecca, </i>and liked it very much, but somehow I never got around to reading further in her work. But I loved <i>Jamaica Inn</i> and am inspired to read more du Maurier now. The novel surprised me. After reading <i>Rebecca</i>
the plot twists and turns and the moodiness and sensationalism of it
weren’t a surprise, but I expected it to be another novel that takes
place in a big house amongst people with wealth. However, <i>Jamaica Inn</i>
is very much a novel of the lower classes; it takes place among farms
and tiny villages and its characters are smugglers and horse thieves.<br />
<br />
The novel tells the story of Mary Yellan, a 23-year-old who has just
lost her mother and now, to fulfill a promise, has gone to live with her
Aunt Patience. The last time Mary met Patience, she was happy and full
of life, but things have changed: Patience has married Joss Merlyn, a
surly, violent man who now runs Jamaica Inn, a place strangely devoid of
customers — and a place that, mysteriously, no one wants to talk about.
As Mary settles in to Jamaica Inn, she becomes determined to get her
aunt away from her husband and into a better situation, but she gets
unwillingly caught up in her uncle’s doings — which she realizes are
worse and worse the longer she lives there — and becomes more and more
miserable.<br />
<br />
There are two sources of hope for Mary, although neither is
particularly hopeful. The first is Joss Merlyn’s brother, Jem, who
cheerfully admits he is a horse thief but whose involvement in his
brother’s darker doings is uncertain. He is a mysterious figure whom
Mary doesn’t trust, but something continually draws her back to him. The
other figure of hope, a more substantial one, is a local vicar, Francis
Davey, who treats Mary kindly, but who is distant and almost
otherworldly. Something about him doesn’t sit right with Mary. But she
is on her own and needs to take help wherever she can find it.<br />
<br />
The novel started off just a tad slowly for me, but once it gets
going, the plotting is very well done — the novel is suspenseful and
exciting. Okay, I could figure out roughly where things were going, but
there were plenty of surprises and du Maurier kept me glued to the book.
In addition to the plot, though, there is much to appreciate. The novel
is set in Cornwall, which du Maurier evokes beautifully. The sea, the
moors, the marshes, the country roads are all integral parts of the
book. Mary is a champion walker, and I could feel the rain and the wind
as I read about her exploratory rambles around Jamaica Inn.<br />
<br />
Mary is a fascinating character, spirited and independent, as I
imagine her Aunt Patience once was. She is often doing things that other
characters think women shouldn’t do: taking those long walks
unaccompanied, for example, often in circumstances that would frighten
just about anyone. She frequently thinks that all she wants to do is
live a man’s life, which is to say, she wants to work a farm
independently, as a man would. She has no aspirations to marry, as she
knows marriage can often lead to subjection and misery, as it did for
her aunt. She knows how the world works and what she needs to do to keep
herself safe.<br />
<br />
She is not a complete loner (although, appealingly, she prefers
people who know how to keep quiet when they should to those who will
talk nervously through any situation); she has fond memories of living
in her small village with her mother, knowing all the people who live
around her and being able to count on them for help. She wants a
community and to know her place within it, and she is not interested in
social climbing; when offered the opportunity to live with a family from
a higher class than hers, she rejects it, knowing it’s not her place.<br />
<br />
On the one hand, Mary knows who she is and what she wants out of
life, but, on the other, there is something appealing about excitement
and newness, an appeal that is reflected in the wild landscape
surrounding her. At times the rough winds of Cornwall are frightening
and lonesome, but at others, they are exhilarating. Perhaps Mary isn’t
so sure what she wants out of life after all.<br />
<br />
<i>Jamaica Inn</i> is so different from <i>Rebecca</i> that I wonder what du Maurier’s other novels are like. I’m looking forward to finding out.Rebecca H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10825532162727473112noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-79762339973623898922014-01-15T07:30:00.003-06:002014-01-15T07:30:47.576-06:00"Defying Man and Storm": Jamaica Inn<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">I’m no connoisseur of romantic suspense, but it’s hard to imagine it being done better than <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jamaica Inn</em>. Really, this book has it all: a grim, windswept, yet beautiful landscape; a grim, brooding, yet charismatic villain; a grim, twisted, yet convincing plot; Jamaica Inn itself, “a house that reeked of evil . . . a solitary landmark defying man and storm”; and, in Mary Yellan, a heroine bold and determined enough to survive them all. There’s also a deceptively colorless vicar, a dubiously trustworthy horse thief, and a whole supporting cast of rogues; there’s treachery, murder, and, of course, true love. If it sounds like the stuff of clichés, it is — and yet, amazingly, it really isn’t, because du Maurier is just that good.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The most terrifying part of the novel, for instance, is not a scene of rapidly unfolding action or immanent violence (though there are such scenes, and they are plenty suspenseful). Instead, it’s a story told over the kitchen table. “Did you never hear of wreckers before?” is the speaker’s chilling question, and the pictures his words paint haunt us as they will Mary, his unwilling audience:</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">‘When I’m drunk I see them in my dreams; I see their white-green faces staring at me, with their eyes eaten by fish; and some of them are torn, with the flesh hanging on their bones in ribbons, and some of them have seaweed in their hair. . . . Have you ever seen flies caught in a jar of treacle? I’ve seen men like that; stuck in the rigging like a swarm of flies. . . . Just like flies they are, spread out on the yards, little black dots of men. I’ve seen the ship break up beneath them, and the masts and the yards snap like thread, and there they’ll be flung into the sea, to swim for their lives. But when they reach the shore they’re dead men, Mary.’</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and stared at her. ‘Dead men tell no tales, Mary,’ he said.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Mary can only hope that when she reaches the safety of her own bed, she can hide from what he has told her in the stark cold of the kitchen:</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Here she could see the pale faces of drowned men, their arms above their heads; she could hear the scream of terror, and the cries; she could hear the mournful clamour of the bell-buoy as it swayed backwards and forwards in the sea.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">It’s not just crime Mary comes face to face with that night, but evil. It’s embodied in Joss Merlyn, the landlord of Jamaica Inn, who is Mary’s uncle through his marriage to her Aunt Patience. Patience was a bright, happy young woman when she married Joss, but she is now a “poor, broken thing,” cowering and apologetic and fearful, but loyal, too, and loving, in her pathetic way. Joss is a wonderfully terrible figure of a man: huge, almost monstrous, but capable of an unexpected delicate grace that Mary finds more sinister than his overt cruelty. In her introduction, Sarah Dunant calls him “a Mr. Rochester without a Jane to redeem him,” which fits well enough, except that for all his faults, Mr. Rochester was never as bad as this! Patience must have married him “for his bright eyes,” Mary mockingly speculates, and it turns out that the power of sexual attraction to lure people off course is one of the novel’s central interests. Mary herself feels its pull (and understands Patience’s bad choice better) when she meets his younger brother Jem, who (to Mary’s dismay) almost charms away her suspicions:</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">He was too like his brother. His eyes, and his mouth, and his smile. That was the danger of it. She could see her uncle in his walk, in the turn of his head; and she knew why Aunt Patience had made a fool of herself ten years ago. It would be easy enough to fall in love with Jem Merlyn.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">But Mary’s not looking for love. A farm girl, “bred to the soil,” she has no romantic ideas. At the same time, she understands the demands of the flesh:</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Jem Merlyn was a man, and she was a woman, and whether it was his hands or his skin or his smile she did not know, but something inside her responded to him, and the very thought of him was an irritant and a stimulant at the same time. It nagged at her and would not let her be. She knew she would have to see him again.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">I was fascinated by Mary’s frankness about her own desires: “Falling in love was a pretty name for it, that was all.” Her aunt’s abjection should be cautionary tale enough, you’d think, but even as Jem jokes “Beware of the dark stranger,” they kiss in the shadows.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Mary worries about giving “too much away,” about losing her independence and finding that her weakness for him makes “the four walls of Jamaica Inn more hateful than they were already.” The mixture of heady excitement and mistrust she feels for Jem adds, also, to the mysteries of the novel: how far is he involved in the murky activities of his brother? how much does he know about what happens at Jamaica Inn under cover of darkness? why does he ask Mary so many questions? Will her love for him save or destroy her? Du Maurier keeps her, and us, guessing as Mary struggles to figure out the answers and find her own way through the moral and physical dangers of her situation.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">There are both predictable and implausible elements of the plot, but I forgave them both because they come with the territory and because du Maurier writes so well. When I wrote about <a href="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/daphne-du-maurier-frenchmans-creek/" style="border: 0px; color: #2361a1; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Frenchman’s Creek</em></a> I described her prose as “purple” (“royal purple, richest velvet,” to be precise). I expected more of the same here, despite having recently read <a href="http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings/he-was-my-shadow-or-i-was-his-daphne-du-maurier-the-scapegoat/" style="border: 0px; color: #2361a1; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Scapegoat</em></a> — which surprised me by being restrained and shadowy, not purple at all. I’m now adding du Maurier to my list of writers who impress by their versatility: she can clearly “do” the novel in different voices to suit her purposes. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jamaica Inn</em> could easily have been full of cheap thrills, but for all its melodrama it never struck me as silly (whereas I called <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Frenchman’s Creek</em> “ridiculous” — mind you, that was in 2010, so I may have been reading / judging differently). It’s not really a novel of character, and Joss especially borders on caricature, but (partly through Jem) he is humanized enough to be monstrous, but not a monster. I’m not so sure about the other chief villain, but at any rate he’s not a stock figure but has his own unique <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">style</em> of nastiness. For me, though, it was the scenery that made the novel truly memorable. The descriptions are vividly sensual without being florid, as here:</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The drive was silent then, for the most part, with no other sound but the steady clopping of the horse’s hoofs upon the road, and now and again an own hooted from the still trees. The rustle of hedgerow and the creeping country whispers were left behind when the trap came out upon the Bodmin road, and once again the dark moor stretched out on either side, lapping the road like a desert. The ribbon of the highway shone white under the moon. It wound and was lost in the fold of the further hill, bare and untrodden. There were no travellers but themselves upon the road tonight. On Christmas Eve, when Mary had ridden here, the wind had lashed venomously at the carriage wheels, and the rain hammered the windows: now the air was still cold and strangely still, and the moor itself lay placid and silver in the moonlight. The dark tors held their sleeping face to the sky, the granite features softened and smoothed by the light that bathed them. Theirs was a peaceful mood, and the old gods slept undisturbed.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">As you can tell, I enjoyed the novel thoroughly. I'm eager to see what the rest of you have to say about it!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(cross-posted to <a href="http://openlettersmonthly.com/novelreadings" target="_blank">Novel Readings</a>)</span>Rohan Maitzenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12111722115617352412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-55395887947769746262013-11-14T19:25:00.002-06:002013-11-14T19:25:25.069-06:00Our Next Book: Jamaica InnWhat a close vote! It was nearly a three-way tie between <i>Jamaica Inn, Picnic at Hanging Rock,</i> and <i>The Murderess,</i> but <i>Jamaica Inn</i> by Daphne du Maurier just edged out the others with one more vote.<br />
<br />
Discussion will commence around January 15.Teresahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09896331683344872038noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-35806627616684499682013-11-03T08:24:00.003-06:002013-11-03T08:25:22.878-06:00Voting Time!It's been a while since our last discussion, so what shall we read next? I've been invited to offer up some choices. The weather's getting colder here in the DC area, and cold weather always puts me in the mood for a good crime or suspense story. So I've put together a selection of different types of novels that involve some sort of mystery or crime. I hope something here appeals to you all!<br />
<br />
Let's vote by November 11, and have our discussion after the holidays, around January 15.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/9376296"><b><i>Ilustrado</i> by Miguel Syjuco</b></a><br />
It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of
Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River—taken from the world is
the controversial lion of Philippine literature. Gone, too, is the only
manuscript of his final book, a work meant to rescue him from obscurity
by exposing the crimes of the Filipino ruling families. Miguel, his
student and only remaining friend, sets out for Manila to investigate. Winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize.<b> </b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/4221914"><b><i>Jamaica Inn</i> by Daphne du Maurier</b></a><br />
After the death of her mother,
Mary Yellan travels to Jamaica Inn on the wild British moors to live
with her Aunt Patience. The coachman warns her of the strange
happenings there, but Mary is committed to remain at Jamaica Inn.
Suddenly, her life is in the hands of strangers: her uncle, Joss Merlyn,
whose crude ways repel her; Aunt Patience, who seems mentally unstable
and perpetually frightened; and the enigmatic Francis Davey. But most
importantly, Mary meets Jem Merlyn, Joss's younger brother, whose
kisses make her heart race. Caught up in the danger at this inn of evil
repute, Mary must survive murder, mystery, storms, and smugglers
before she can build a life with Jem.<b> </b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/187576"><i><b>The Murderess</b></i><b> by Alexandros Papadiamantis</b></a><br />
<i>The Murderess</i> is a bone-chilling tale of crime and punishment with the
dark beauty of a backwoods ballad. Set on the dirt-poor Aegean island of
Skiathos, it is the story of Hadoula, an old woman living on the
margins of society and at the outer <span class="showmore_hide">limits of respectability. She knows women's
secrets and she knows the misery of their lives, and as the book
begins, she is trying to stop her new-born granddaughter from crying so
that her daughter can at last get a little sleep. She rocks the baby and
rocks her and then the terrible truth hits her: there's nothing worse than being born a woman, and there's something that she, Hadoula, can do about that.</span><b> </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/69475"><b><i>Picnic at Hanging Rock</i> by Joan Lindsay</b></a><br />
‘Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging
Rock - a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas
shrilling...’ St Valentine’s Day, in the midst of the hot summer of
1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some
were never to return... An Australian classic, the disappearance of
three girls and a schoolteacher at Hanging Rock has captivated and
intrigued audiences for generations.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7221"><i><b>The Secret History </b></i><b>by Donna Tartt</b></a><br />
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of
clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way
of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence
of their contemporaries. <span class="showmore_hide">But when they go
beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed
profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly
live and how easy it is to kill.</span><b> </b><br />
<b> </b> Teresahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09896331683344872038noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-10569655186884534102013-09-01T17:26:00.003-05:002013-09-01T17:48:50.862-05:00Excellent Women (reposted from 2007)I would have loved to reread <i>Excellent Women</i> with the rest of the group, but I wasn't able to in time. I did, however, read the novel back in 2007, and <a href="http://ofbooksandbikes.wordpress.com/2007/10/07/barbara-pyms-excellent-women/" target="_blank">I posted on it then</a>. So I thought I'd repost my thoughts here. Here's what I wrote back then:<br />
<br />
I thoroughly enjoyed Barbara Pym’s 1952 novel <i>Excellent Women</i>.
It tells the story of Mildred Lathbury, a woman in her 30s whose life
is taken up with part-time work helping “impoverished gentlewomen,”
attending services and volunteering at the church, and maintaining
friendships with the vicar and his sister. She also finds herself
endlessly caught up in other people’s business:
<br />
<blockquote>
I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives
alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or
interested in other people’s business, and if she is also a clergyman’s
daughter then one might really say that there is no hope for her.</blockquote>
She is one of the “excellent women” of the novel’s title, women who
aren’t wrapped up in families of their own and so have time to — and are
expected to — devote themselves to taking care of others.<br />
As the novel opens, a new couple is moving into the flat above
Mildred’s; they are Helena and Rocky, and Mildred does not know what to
make of them. Helena is an anthropologist and not terribly interested
in her marriage; she spends her time with fellow-anthropologist Everard,
working on writing up their field notes. She is a terrible housekeeper,
a fact that disturbs and intrigues Mildred. Rocky is utterly charming
and perhaps a trifle fake; Mildred quickly falls for him, but also
wonders, as she does, whether Rocky really means to charm her, or
whether he simply can’t help but make women fall in love with him.<br />
<br />
Helena and Rocky disrupt Mildred’s quiet life. She is quickly doing
things she has never done before, such as attending lectures in
anthropology and mediating marital squabbles. Her life is further
disrupted when the vicar — her close friend and up to now a confirmed
bachelor — begins a flirtation and gets engaged.<br />
The novel is told in the first person, which Pym uses very cleverly
to capture Mildred’s thoughtful, intelligent voice, but also to make
clear to the reader her naivete and lack of experience; Helena, for
example, hints that the vicar might be gay, but this passes right over
Mildred’s head. And yet Mildred knows she hasn’t experienced much —
she’s very aware of her limitations, painfully aware at times. She does
her best, wading into the deeper waters recent experience has led her
to, but she also longs for things to be the way they once were, quiet
and comfortable.<br />
<br />
As much as she is aware of her lack of experience, however, Mildred
has a strong sense of identity; she knows who she is, what her social
role is, and how she wants to live. As an “excellent woman,” she
accepts that many people expect her to help them out — why shouldn’t
she, after all? What else does she have to do? She tries to be useful,
but also to keep from being used — and here she fails now and then, as
each of the main characters takes advantage of her at one point or
another. It’s frustrating at times to watch Mildred trying and
frequently failing to maintain the balance between taking care of others
and taking care of herself.<br />
<br />
For me, the pleasure of reading this novel lies in Mildred’s astute
understanding of her small world; she knows it’s a small world, but
what’s important is that it’s hers and she wants to enjoy it. She’s
capable of viewing it with a critical, satirical eye, but also of loving
it. She strikes me as courageous — both in accepting her life as it is
and in remaining open to the ways it can possibly change.Rebecca H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10825532162727473112noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30395167.post-64278028643407543952013-09-01T13:20:00.000-05:002013-09-01T13:20:00.551-05:00Excellent WomenMildred Lathbury fills her days working at a part-time job at an
agency that assists older unmarried women, helping out at the church,
and, almost despite herself, getting wrapped up in other people’s
personal crises. She is both connected and disconnected to her neighbors
in 1950s London. She knows all about their lives, but what do they know
of hers? Mildred tells her own story in Barbara Pym’s lively and
intelligent novel <em>Excellent Women. </em><br />
<em> </em>
<br />
Early in the novel, Mildred says that “an unmarried woman over
thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find
herself involved or interested in other people’s business.” Lacking
troubles of her own to attend to, Mildred becomes a sounding board for
everyone else. Her new neighbors, the Napiers, take advantage of
Mildred’s sympathetic demeanor, coming to her at every step of the way
as they deal with their own discontentments and worries about their
marriage. Mildred, being an “excellent woman,” is willing to help, but
her presence in the relationship is merely that, a presence—someone to
transmit messages or to keep an eye on things when the movers come. Her
own feelings about it aren’t part of the conversation, and although she
is wise enough to know that her feelings might be unwise, she does have
feelings.<br />
<br />
People count on Mildred, but are they building strong connections to
her as a person? When Mildred helps her friend Winifred sort donations
for the church jumble sale, the two of them discuss the old framed
photos being donated to the sale. Winifred is appalled that anyone would
donate of photo of a relation, but Mildred is more matter-of-fact,
noting that they had probably been stored away for years and the donors
probably didn’t even knew who the people in the photos were. Yet,
matter-of-fact as she is about it, she sees her own future in those
photographs:<br />
<blockquote>
I could see very well what [Winifred] meant, for
unmarried women with no ties could very well become unwanted. I should
feel it even more than Winifred, for who was there to really grieve for
me when I was gone? Dora, the Malorys, one or two people in my old
village might be sorry, but I was not really first in anybody’s life. I
could so very easily be replaced.</blockquote>
As an unmarried woman of a certain age myself, this sentiment is
quite familiar to me, and I appreciated that Pym could have Mildred
express this feeling about her state without making her seem
self-pitying or hysterical or unbalanced. Mildred is realistic about her
position. She’s not unhappy exactly, but she sees and understands the
downsides about her life, even as she’s not entirely sure she wants to
change it. One of the characters observes that some people have a knack
for finding a mate, which means that widows are likely to marry again.
The unspoken converse of this is that others, like Mildred, don’t have
the knack. Flip the idea around even further, and you can see that the
Mildreds of the world have the knack for being alone.<br />
<br />
I think Mildred’s knack for singlehood turns up in her friendship
with the anthropologist Everard Bone. She meets Everard through her
neighbors with the emotional fraught marriage. (As it happens, Mrs
Napier’s interest in Everard is one of the reasons for the conflict.)
She runs into him at midday Lenten services at church, and he lingers on
the street near her office, waiting for an opportunity to ask her to
lunch or to have dinner at his house. To many, Everard’s purpose might
seem obvious, but Mildred assumes he’s looking for something other than
her company. Intervention with Mrs Napier, help cooking a cut of meat,
something other than her companionship for itself. Anything else would
involve signals she cannot, or will not (which is it?), pick up on. Or
perhaps she knows her own experience well enough to know exactly what it
is that Everard doesn’t want.<br />
<br />
As the book drew to a close, I kept wondering where this ambiguous
courtship was leading. And at the risk of spoiling the ending, I’ll say
that I was impressed with how well Pym maintained the ambiguous nature
of the relationship, right up to the ending and beyond. You can turn
that final conversation around and upside down and still not be sure
what Everard was after or what Mildred herself wanted.<br />
<br />
Representations of single women in media often give me trouble, not
because they all get everything wrong or because they’re all
mean-spirited but often because they focus on one aspect of the
experience: the freedom or the loneliness. Or they dwell on the desire
for a mate and make finding one a goal. This book captures so much more.
It gets at how singleness (like any life situation) can be happy and
miserable. It doesn’t revel in the joy or make simple pleasures bigger
than they are, and it doesn’t wallow in the misery or turn sadness into
grand tragedy. In some ways, it’s a hard book for me to talk about,
because parts of it hit close to the bone. But it’s not a heavy or
depressing book at all. It’s wise and funny and real in ways that few
books are. It was also my first experience reading Barbara Pym, and I
loved it as much as I thought I would. I’m glad the <a href="http://slavesofgolconda.blogspot.ca/">Slaves of Golconda </a>reading group finally pushed me to read it.<br />
<br />
<br />
Cross-posted at <a href="http://shelflove.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/excellent-women-2/">Shelf Love</a>Teresahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09896331683344872038noreply@blogger.com3