Monthly Archives: November 2007

I enjoyed reading two posts on Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, one from Smithereens and one by Danielle, with two different reactions to the book. Both bloggers pointed out all the weeping, fainting, and quaking, all the passivity and sensitive emotionalism that the heroine Emily exhibits. It’s hard as a 21st-century reader not to get a bit annoyed by all this, but it helps, as Danielle pointed out, to know that this is simply what novelistic heroines tended to do at the time. Readers at the time expected it and ate it up. Radcliffe was writing when sensibility was all the rage — when everyone was talking about emotions, what they are, why they are important, where they lead us, and how they can possibly make us better people or can possibly distract us from more important matters. You see phrases like “exquisite sensibility” and “overflowing hearts” all over the place.

And the heroines tend to be models of perfection, which can also get annoying, since we are used to much more complexity in our characters. So often plots revolve around testing the perfection of the heroine who tends to remain static, rather than allowing the heroine to have flaws and grow and change. Not all novels are like this, by any means (see Wollstonecraft or Mary Hays or The Female Quixote), but so many heroines from 18C fiction are so irritatingly perfect, that you realize Austen’s genius in creating such well-rounded people.

Given all that, I do love the 18C novel, as you know. I find all the intense emotionalism fascinating, if strange, and I love the way the genre develops though the time period, emerging out of a rich mix of biography, autobiography, history, crime narrative, spiritual narratives, travel writing, etc. I love how weird the 18C novel can be — see The Monk or Tristram Shandy for examples. And I love how you see see political and social changes reflected in the writing — class struggles in Pamela, for example, or capitalism in Robinson Crusoe.

I must say, however, that I’m struggling a bit with my latest 18C novel — Sophia Lee’s The Recess. My initial assessment is that it’s interesting for historical reasons, but not something I’d recommend for someone interested in an absorbing read or someone just starting out on the 18C novel. The book has an odd rhythm to it. I’ve read only the first part out of six, and already I suspect I’ve been given way more historical detail than I need. I’ve come across two stories-within-the-story, both of which are pretty outlandish, filled with incest, murder, lust, and betrayal. That sounds like it might be fun, but the narrator rushes through it all, it’s too much to absorb, and I’m not sure she’s really making use of all the details she throws out there. The pace of the novel is awkward; it’s so fast, I begin to feel bored, oddly enough.

It’s interesting, though, because it’s an early example of the historical novel; it’s about two (fictional) daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester are characters. If I remember correctly, the editor of Waverly claimed that Scott is the first historical novelists, and that’s simply not true. I don’t know who the first is (if there is such a thing), but Lee certainly wrote historical novels before Scott did.

I’ll definitely finish it, so I’ll see if the remaining five parts pick up a little bit.

I recently finished listening to the latest Maisie Dobbs novel on audio, Messenger of Truth. Now I have to wait for Winspear to publish the next novel before I can read any more Maisie Dobbs! And then I have a dilemma — do I read the book when it comes out, or do I wait for the audio version to get made and delivered to my library? I’m so used to listening to these books that sitting down and actually reading one won’t feel right. And I do love to listen to the readers with their accents and inflections — hearing the book in my head in my own voice as I read quietly will be a different experience entirely. But it could be quite a while before the audio comes out. So, I have no idea what I’ll do.

You’ll probably guess from the above that I liked the latest Maisie Dobbs novel. Winspear explores a new theme in this one: art and the artist. The crime victim is a painter who painted scenes from World War I that many people found disturbing and controversial. So Maisie gets to spend some time thinking about art’s function and purpose, how people react to ground-breaking and controversial art, and what motivates artists to create what they do. She also gets to question traditional stereotypes of artists — that they aren’t practical or worldly or capable — since the artist she is investigating doesn’t quite live up to the stereotype.

She also finds herself caught up in a social scene full of artists and bohemians, and she has to think about how she does and doesn’t fit in. She feels both drawn to them and a little uncertain how to act in this new world of night clubs and parties and dancing. Experiencing this mix of emotions, she is forced to think about her longing for a little excitement and even frivolity, qualities that have been largely absent from her life.

As always, the story is absorbing and fun, and Maisie saves the day!

At the end of the audio book was an interview with Winspear, and one of the questions was about the research she does to prepare for the books. It was quite fascinating to hear what she had to say. She described being interested in the post-WW I time period for a very long time, so that she has been doing research for the books even when not working on them directly. She described reading archival letters from soldiers writing to family back home and realizing that she might be the first person reading them after the original recipient. These letters help her in her quest to get the language just right; she works very hard to make sure the characters in her novels speak as people at the time spoke. She also works hard to get the clothing and accessories right (which explains all those mentions of clothing I was complaining about in an earlier post!), and to give the novels a sense of time and place by working historical events into the narrative.

And she spoke about how Maisie is a typical woman of her day in the sense that she is one of the many “surplus” women, left without a husband or lover after the war and forced to make a new kind of life for herself. Some women never adapted to these demands, but others, like Maisie, took on new challenges like owning businesses and becoming professionals of various sorts.

Maybe what I should do is read the book and then listen to the audio afterwards … that would be fun.

Rosamund Lehmann’s A Note in Music fascinated me; not much happened in it, and yet so much happened — Lehmann is excellent at capturing inner worlds, the way moods shift and feelings come and go, and the way other people impinge upon our consciousness, often making us unhappy as they do.

The novel tells the story of Grace Fairfax, a 34-year-old woman living in a town in the north of England; she is married to kind but bungling Tom, who loves her but is also mystified by her. Grace figured out early on in their 10-year marriage that she made a mistake when she married Tom, but she has tried to make the best of it and they have muddled along, not happy, although not perfectly miserable either. Their life together feels indifferent, as though it means little or even nothing. In fact, Grace’s life is full of nothingness, which Lehmann makes clear from the very beginning; when Grace’s friend Norah tries to persuade her to see a fortune-teller, she refuses, fearing she will see only nothingness in her future:

For the truth was that she was afraid of the fortune-teller. She had a vision of the woman, scrutinizing her palm and saying finally:

‘This is a most curious case. There is nothing here: nothing in your past, nothing in your future. As for character — lazy, greedy, secretive — without will or purpose.’

The novel also tells Norah’s story; she too is unhappily married, in her case, to Gerald, an emotionally distant professor who retreats to his books to avoid any complicated human interaction.

Into this stew of discontent comes Hugh and his sister Clare; Hugh is a young, attractive man who is being groomed to inherit the company where Tom works as a clerk, and Clare is an old friend of Norah’s. Both of them bring life and energy into Grace and Norah’s small world, and Hugh quickly becomes an object of desire for both of them, with his handsome blonde hair and his charming, casual manners.

One of the most painful parts to read — in a book that is full of painful and yet at the same time pleasurable descriptions of emotional turmoil, pleasurable because of the accuracy with which they are detailed — occurs when we realize just how oblivious Hugh is to the impact he has on Grace and Norah both. For the women, encountering Hugh is a life-changing event that will give them food for thought for years and decades to come. For Hugh, his time with them is a brief interlude between much more exciting events in his life, a way of passing the time until the next episode begins. When Grace and Hugh develop a friendship that surprises them both, Grace feels that … well, that she is living up to her name, that Hugh’s presence and the love she feels for him have descended upon her as though they were gifts from heaven. Grace knows that these gifts are fleeting things, and that soon she will return to her quiet life with Tom, but they have changed her.

Lehmann uses a shifting perspective that gives us glimpses into the minds of all of the major characters at one point or another, including Tom and Gerald, so that we see just how the various characters are making sense of what occurs. This technique increases the emotional impact of the novel, as, for example, Tom’s earnest love for Grace is contrasted with Grace’s barely civil tolerance of Tom, or Norah’s good-natured attempts to please Gerald are contrasted with Gerald’s irritation at her fumbling and bumbling about. All the characters seem at odds with one another, which makes moments of emotional connection that much more meaningful.

I love this sort of book, although I can imagine people reading my description and thinking the book sounds claustrophobic and boring — but, in my opinion at least, it’s not; it’s a book that describes the type of life that many people lead, one where not much happens, and yet so much is happening, at every moment.