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The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery — Two 1926 Reviews

L.M. Montgomery (1874 – 1942), the Canadian author best known for her Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon series, wrote just two novels intended for adults — A Tangled Web (1931) and The Blue Castle (1926). Presented here are two reviews from the year of the book’s initial publication.

Now in the public domain, The Blue Castle has been published and republished in numerous editions in print and audio. While the book may not be as beloved as Montgomery’s more famous series, it did make its mark.

For the first time, the story is being adapted for film. It’s hard to say when (or ultimately if) it will be released, but here’s the news of its potential adaptation.

The story’s heroine, Valancy Stirling, is considered a hopeless old maid at age twenty-nine. Infantilized and controlled by her prim and eccentric family, she takes refuge in daydreams of her “Blue Castle” and reading nature books by an author known as John Foster.

When Valancy is diagnosed with a heart ailment that she is told will kill her within a year, she suddenly feels liberated from her family, their judgements, and low expectations. She sets out to do just as she pleases, and so, the real story of Valancy’s life begins.

Though this story was originally intended for adults, there’s no reason why readers of middle grade and up wouldn’t enjoy this story of a young woman taking matters of her life into her own hands.

While it’s best to read the book without knowing too much of the story in advance so that it can delight and surprise as it unfolds without spoilers, here’s a detailed plot summary for those who might want one. 

 

A Story Set in Ontario’s Muskoka Country

From the original review in The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec, Canada, October23, 1926): The author of the Anne of Green Gables books sets this story in Ontario, in the Muskoka country. Light is shed on the life of a small community and its individuals, with their smugness and pride and little family concerts.

Though intolerant in the matter of religion, at heart they are mostly good souls, overly fearful about what the world may think of improprieties done by one of their relatives.

The heroine of The Blue Castle is Valancy Stirling, called “Doss,” is twenty-nine regarded as an old maid. She’s thin, far from good looking, subject to colds, has a heart malady, and altogether is a poor risk.

Valancy has been repressed by her relatives all her life and her spirit has reached the point of rebellion when she reads something about fear being the worst sin. She goes to a doctor and is informed that her heart is bad and that she has but a year to live.

Strange as it may seem, Valancy is relieved and decides to hit out and have her fill of life. Her proper relatives are aghast. But in reality, she’s making a sacrifice and doing a real Christian Samaritan act.

Into her life comes an apparent rascal of a fellow, Barney Snaith, with a bad name in the community. A lonely Muskoka Island dweller, he’s not what he seems, and Valancy perceives that there’s no real evil in him.

Valancy’s path run together with Barney’s, causing a tremendous scandal. Then comes a strange romance and an even stranger denouement. The scalawag is unmasked and even Valancy is astounded. But it’s nothing to the shock of her relatives, when Barney Snaith’s true identity is revealed. It’s a skillful conclusion to a solid Canadian story.

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The Blue Castle & A Tangled Web
are available in a combined volume on Bookshop.org*
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Only a Year to Live?

From the original review in the Edmonton Journal (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, November 23, 1926): The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery is the story of Valancy Stirling, who, at the age of twenty-nine, is told that she has only a year to live.

Valancy, who is generally known as “Doss,” the nickname bestowed on her by her irrepressible Uncle Benjamin, has lived her girlhood days in mouse-like seclusion, the unhappy puppet of her dull and respectable family.

Her only release — and that a temporary one — comes from her dreams of a shimmering blue castle in Spain. The turning point comes when she is told by Dr. Trent that she has a very dangerous form of heart disease — that she can not possibly live more than a year.

The discovery shocks her into the realization of the fact that she has never enjoyed one hour of real happiness in her life, and she determines to have one fling before she dies. She astounds her relatives by insisting that they shall call her “Valancy” in the future, and by defying them on occasion.

In the end she leaves her house and goes to the cottage of the drunken carpenter, Abel Gay, to look after his daughter Cissy, who is wasting away in the last stages of consumption.

A Hardy Rebel

Of course, her relatives are scandalized, but Valancy has made up her mind to live her own life, and a little later she throws her bonnet over the mill by going with Abel to a dance at Chidley Corners.

There she suffers considerable annoyance from the persistent attentions of one or two of the male dancers and is extricated from a somewhat awkward predicament by Barney Snaith, whom she had first met at Abel’s cottage.

Snaith is a man of mystery in the village. As he does not work at a trade, he is reputed to be anything from a jail-breaker to a forger and defaulter. Consequently, when on the way home, his car runs out of gas and he stops the first motorist who passes by — it happens to be Valancy’s Uncle Wellington —the fat is in the fire.

“The next thing the Stirlings heard was that Valancy had been seen with Barney Snaith in a movie theater in Port Lawrence and after it at supper in a Chinese restaurant there.” Of course after that, any shred of reputation which she might have retained was lost to her forever.

The Northern Retreat

Of Valancy’s marriage to Barney, and the happy days she spent with him on an unnamed island in a remote northern lake; her unconscious entrance into the “secret room;” the tragic consequences that result from the visit of Barney’s uncle — these things must be left for the reader to find out.

It is all told in the author’s happiest and most sympathetic manner, and those who enjoyed Montgomery’s earlier books will doubtless be delighted with The Blue Castle.

The attitude taken by Valancy’s family appears to be a somewhat antiquated one for the times in which we live and in some ways the heroine seems to overact her part. These are small blemishes, however, which will in no way deter L.M. Montgomery’s many readers from her latest offering.

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The Blue Castle is available in several audio adaptations,
including this one on Audible*
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More about The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery Full text on Project Gutenberg Reader discussion on Goodreads Listen on Librivox

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The post The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery — Two 1926 Reviews appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Five Novels by Carson McCullers: Classic Southern Gothic Fiction

Presented here is an overview of five novels by Carson McCullers (1917 – 1967), representing her body of long form fiction. Though known primarily for these books, she also wrote two plays, a number of short stories, children’s poetry, and other works.

Carson McCullers has earned a place among classic southern writers, along with William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Tennessee Williams. Following each brief overview of these major works is a link to more in-depth reviews or analyses.

Most of McCullers’ work is set in the American South, centering on characters who struggle with loneliness and isolation. Her writing is associated with the genre known as Southern Gothic, defined by the Oxford Research Encyclopedia:

“Characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation.”

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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

Carson McCullers was just twenty-three when The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, her first novel, was published in 1940, but her insights into human nature demonstrated wisdom beyond her years. The book was acclaimed as the work of a prodigy by critics and fellow writers.

Through its characters, the story delves into their struggle to build bridges between their separate islands of loneliness. The central characters all, in some odd way or another, seek answers to their confused desires from Singer, a deaf mute. He appears to them a man of mystical understanding.

Some of the unforgettable characters include Mick, an adolescent girl who longs to express herself in music; Jake Blount, a wild, blundering reformer; and Dr. Copeland, the African-American patriarch. Their appeal to Singer is the appeal of all humanity to a silent, cryptic universe. (— from the 1940 edition, Houghton Mifflin Co.).

More about The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Quotes from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Mick Kelly: The Tomboy Author and Her Tomboy Heroine

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Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941)

Reflections in a Golden Eye  suffered a common fate of sophomore efforts that follow hugely successful first novels. When The Heart is a Lonely Hunter came out just the year before (1940), it established McCullers as a literary wunderkind.

Many reviewers objected to the intertwined plots of obsession, dark secrets, and repressed sexuality — both gay and straight — of the novel. It was, in fact, one of the few breakthrough novels that included gay themes in the first half of the twentieth century. Perhaps, though, in the hands of such a young author, these themes were simply not well executed.

The convergence of obsessive desires and clandestine affairs leads to a murder at the climax of the novel. Despite the negative reception of Reflections in a Golden Eye, it was adapted to film in 1967 with an all-star cast that included Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, and Brian Keith. Like the novel, to which it was quite faithful, it got mixed reviews.

More about Reflections in a Golden Eye

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The Member of the Wedding (1946)

The Member of the Wedding (1946), Carson McCullers’ third novel (more accurately, a novella), followed the incredibly successful The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and the far less successful Reflections in a Golden Eye. The Member of the Wedding re-established McCullers, still in her twenties, as a literary force. 

The story centers on a lonely twelve-year-old girl, Frankie Addams, who prefers to be known as F. Jasmine. Her mother has died, and her father, a jeweler, treats her with benign neglect. The story takes place during a hot summer in a small Georgia town, finding Frankie consumed with worry that she doesn’t belong anywhere or with anyone.

Her dull existence is shaken up when her older brother Jarvis, an army veteran, announces that he is to be married. The slim novel is a portrait of the interior workings of F. Jasmine’s adolescent mind as she fixates on the wedding and contends with the insular small town that she inhabits.

More about The Member of the Wedding Frankie Addams: Coming of Age in The Member of the Wedding

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The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories (1951)

When The Ballad of the Sad Café was first published in 1951, the original book included, in addition to the title novella, Carson’s other major works of fiction. In later editions, the title novella is presented with six short stories, as follows:

“The Ballad of the Sad Caf锓Wunderkind”“The Jockey”“Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland”“The Sojourner”, “A Domestic Dilemma”“A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud”

The title story, written in the genre of Southern Gothic, concerns Miss Amelia, a masculine and eccentric woman (who is also a moonshiner), her purported cousin Lymon (a hunchback), and Marvin Macy, a recently released convict two whom Miss Amelia was briefly married.

In an isolated small town in rural Georgia in the 1930s, a stranger named Lymon approaches Miss Amelia, claiming to be her cousin. Uncharacteristically, she takes him into her home, setting rumors swirling. Once Macy returns, all hell breaks loose and the story culminates in a twist that even for its bizarre plot might be surprising.

More about The Ballad of the Sad Café

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Clock Without Hands (1961)

Clock Without Hands was McCullers’ final novel. It received mostly favorable reviews, but by the time of its publication, her greatest successes were behind her. A mixed view of the novel, noting nearly a decade gap between this and her previous published work, had this to say:

“Clock Without Hands reads like a plan for a novel or a flattened first draft, not the perfected expression of a writer who possesses moral concern and aesthetic awareness.

But, I suppose, we should remember that Hemingway wrote Across the River and Into the Trees and Faulkner wrote A Fable. If Clock Without Hands leads Carson McCullers beyond the present, it will serve a worthy purpose.”

Like in other McCullers novels and stories, this one contains queer themes, which may be one reason that reviewers in the 1960s weren’t always on board with her work. There are several plot lines in Clock Without Hands, each focusing on a major character:

J.T. Malone, proprietor of an old-fashioned drugstore in a small town is informed that he is fatally ill with leukemia. The heavy-drinking Judge Clane, who has a fantastic scheme to get himself re-elected to Congress after a long absence, while also making a fortune. Judge Clane’s grandson, Jester, and the mixed-race Sherman Pew, whom the judge engages as his secretary.

Learn more about Clock without Hands.

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More about Carson McCullers and her work

Reader discussion of Carson McCuller’s books on Goodreads The Carson McCullers Project The Legacy Project Unhappy Endings: The Collected Carson McCullers The Closeting of Carson McCullers

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Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers (1941)

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) by Carson McCullers suffered a fate common to sophomore efforts that follow hugely successful first novels. Just twenty-three when her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, came out the year before (1940),  it established her as a literary wunderkind.

Reflections in a Golden Eye, conversely, received mostly poor reviews, critics unsure of what to make of the young author’s use of the literary device termed “the grotesque” in fiction — a hallmark of fellow Southern author Flannery O’Connor and others.

McCullers’ work was primarily associated with the genre of Southern Gothic, which the Oxford Research Encyclopedia defines as follows:  “Characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation.”

Many reviewers objected to the intertwined plots of obsession, dark secrets, and repressed sexuality — both gay and straight — of the novel. It was, in fact, one of the few breakthrough novels that included gay themes in the first half of the twentieth century. Perhaps, though, in the hands of such a young author, these themes were simply not well executed.

In his syndicated “Literary Guideposts” column, John Selby griped that of that season’s new books, Reflections was “one of the most vulgar. Its presence on bookshelves makes one marvel at the fuss raised over Joyce’s Ulysses by those simple folk of the twenties. Ulysses at least had the recommendation of genius.”

Despite the negative reception of Reflections in a Golden Eye, it was adapted to film in 1967 with an all-star cast that included Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, and Brian Keith. Like the novel, to which it was quite faithful, it got mixed reviews.

Perhaps audiences and reviewers were more ready in the late 1960s for the story’s themes than the previous generation had been in the early 1940s. Carson McCullers died in 1967, the year the film came out; it’s curious what she had thought of the adaptation.

 

A brief plot summary of Reflections in a Golden Eye

The story is situated in an army base in Georgia. Secretive, solitary Private Ellgee Williams does some work for Captain Penderton, happens to see the latter’s wife, Leonora, strolling around nude, and becomes obsessed with her.

Leonora’s lover (one of many she has had throughout her marriage) is Major Morris Langdon, who has a depressed wife, Alison, at home. Alison’s only comfort is her effeminate houseboy, Anacleto. Captain Penderton is a closeted homosexual who is attracted to Pvt. Ellgee Williams, unaware of the latter’s attraction to his wife.

This is a nutshell summary, but suffice it to say that the convergence of obsessive desires and clandestine affairs leads to a murder, which is the climax of the novel.

Following are two of the many reviews that appeared in 1941, when the novel was published. The first is basically a plot description that comes to a kinder conclusion than was typical of other reviews.

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See also: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
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Carson McCullers writes her second novel

From the original review by H. Bruce Price in The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY,  March 9, 1941): Last spring Carson McCullers’ first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, aroused a burst of glowing tribute. It was, you remember, a quiet, meditative, slow-moving book. Her second novel, Reflections In a Golden Eye, is a different sort of story.

Only two-thirds as long as the first, it moves swiftly with breath-taking tension. But time is still given for the study of a half-dozen characters, expertly created, and here again, many reflections in the mind’s eye of the reader are indelibly grotesque.

The locale is an army post down South. Among the enlisted men, there is Private Williams, an idiot boy from the backwoods. One night he looks through an open door of a house and sees Captain Penderton’s wife, Leonora, striding naked through the hall.

Private Williams had never seen a naked woman before, and his reaction to the sight impels a series of nightly vigils as strange and pathetic as a man ever kept. Leonora belongs not to the Captain but to his friend, Major Langdon, who is a stupid, healthy fellow, so unlike her husband.

Captain Penderton is brilliant. neurotic, and sexually perverted. He feels nothing but distaste for the Major’s wife, Alison. She is a sorrowful little creature, stricken with heart trouble and insane with grief over the loss of her only child. Her one comfort is the sensitive and aesthetic companionship of Anacleto, her Filipino servant.

We are told on the first page that all these people are participants in the tragedy of murder. However, only three of them, including the murderer and the victim, have any connection with it. Running parallel to the story of the murder is another story involving all but one of the characters. The two stories are quite independent of and superfluous to each other.

The total effect of each story is weakened by the total effect of the other. And yet they are so skillfully interwoven that the whole book seems to flow smoothly and naturally, and no reader could possibly tell them apart until reaching the end. Each story, taken separately, is constructed for suspense, surprise, drama, and curious irony. Every part of them, and the whole book, is exquisite.

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See also: The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
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The following piece isn’t so much a review as a rant. There is little description of the characters, themes, or plot. Instead, the critic devotes most of her pen to editorializing on the “depravity” of the novel. In a banal conclusion, she expresses her desire for the young author, Carson McCullers, to find more “pleasant” people and situations to write about (advice McCullers didn’t heed, fortunately).

 

Erroneous View of Army Life, Says Fort Banning Critic

From the original review by Phyllis Davis in The Columbus Enquirer (Columbus, GA), November 4, 1940): Every now and again, we find that a young writer, and perhaps a talented one, through unfortunate advice or a desire for instant recognition, is misled into confusing good literature with a type of writing that will “sell” temporarily.

It would appear that Carson McCullers has allowed such reasoning to color her early attempts at writing.

The men and women in this, her latest tale, as in the greatest part of her first book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, are unfortunate ones — pitiful misfits in what she would have us believe is a whole world of misshapen personalities.

These characters, her editor told me when I shuddered at them, are “human beings, just like everybody else.” Human beings they certainly are, but just like everyone else — no! That idea is too alarming to contemplate at length.

In this story, Mrs. McCullers has selected the army for the background, and there, she has struck many a technical snag, for her knowledge of army life, its customs, and official military etiquette is slim indeed.

One wonders if all the professions so intimately represented in modern fiction — the law, medicine, and literature — must not suffer the twinges of righteous indignation when the inexperienced and uninformed hand attempts to pain such weird and surrealistic pictures of its lives and habits.

Surely, anyone in the army reading this story must have felt irked at first, but as the plot unfolds and becomes more and more foreign to any semblance of military or post life, there can be no particular reason for feeling other than an amused irritation and genuine amazement at the whole fantastic thing.

It’s to be wondered if, in this troubled world, when things look dark indeed, the younger writers might not find real inspiration and discover a deeper talent by exploring what is normal for a change!

Surely, such words as beauty, honor, loyalty, kindliness, and humor have not become too banal or unsophisticated to be written into the modern story. We shall come to the point where Pollyanna and all five of the Little Peppers will seem a welcome escape from the fruits of this neurotic school that seems to delve into volumes of medical research of schizophrenia and the like horrors for its inspiration.

Mrs. McCullers is young, with an untold amount of perseverance. She decided to write, and write she did. She has developed a style of her own that will gain in strength and power as she progresses in her career, and it would be a pleasant thing if her next book were to concern itself with pleasant people — for these are some, somewhere.

But let the joys be understandable and the sorrows those with which we can sympathize and share, and not those which thrive in the tortured minds of near depravity.

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Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967 film)
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More about Reflections in a Golden Eye A “Hothouse” Tale of Desire and Simmering Violence Review on The Hungry Reader Reader discussion on Goodreads

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Proto-Zionist Themes in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda (1876)the last novel completed by British author George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans, 1819 – 1880), is widely regarded as a proto-Zionist work, and one of the first works of literature sympathetic to Jews in 19th-century Britain. 

Like many of George Eliot’s novels, Daniel Deronda is considered a masterpiece. The examination of the novel’s Jewish themes presented here is from George Eliot by Mathilde Blind. Eliot wasn’t Jewish, but as this essayist points out:

“When she undertook to write about the Jews, George Eliot was deeply versed in Hebrew literature, ancient and modern. She had taught herself Hebrew when translating the Leben Jesu, and this knowledge stood her in good stead.”

The novel has two intertwining plot lines. One concerns Daniel Deronda, who, as an adult, discovers his Jewish origins, and the other concerns the beautiful, willful, and complex Gwendolen Harleth. Link through for a complete plot summary.

Through its characters, the expression of desire for a Jewish homeland made it both remarkable and controversial. Even Eliot’s partner, the editor and literary critic George Henry Lewes, opined that: “The Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody.”

The following is adapted for length and clarity from Chapter 14 of George Eliot by Mathilde Blind (public domain):

 

Daniel Deronda — George Eliot’s Proto-Zionist Novel

Daniel Deronda, which appeared five years after Middlemarch, occupies a place apart among George Eliot’s novels. In the spirit which animates it, it has perhaps the closest affinity with the Spanish Gypsy.

Speaking of this work to a young friend of Jewish extraction (in whose career George Eliot felt keen interest), she expressed surprise at the amazement which her choice of a subject had created. She remarked:

“I wrote about the Jews because I consider them a fine old race who have done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them as I do for the Florentines. Only lately I have heard to my great satisfaction that an influential member of the Jewish community is going to start an emigration to Palestine.”

Mordecai’s ardent desire for a new Jewish state

These observations are valuable as affording a key to the leading motive of Daniel Deronda. The character Mordecai’s ardent desire to found a new national state in Palestine is not simply the author’s dramatic realization of the feeling of an enthusiast, but expresses her own very definite sentiments on the subject.

The Jewish apostle is, in fact, more or less the mouthpiece of George Eliot’s own opinions on Judaism. For so great a master in the art of creating character, this type of the loftiest kind of man is curiously unreal.

Mordecai delivers himself of the most eloquent and exalted views and sentiments, yet his own personality remains so vague and nebulous that it has no power of kindling the imagination. Mordecai is meant for a Jewish Mazzini. Within his consciousness he harbours the future of a people.

He feels himself destined to become the saviour of his race; yet he does not convince us of his greatness. He convinces us no more than he does the mixed company at the “Hand and Banner,”which listens with pitying incredulity to his passionate harangues.

Nevertheless the first and final test of the religious teacher or of the social reformer is the magnetic force with which his own intense beliefs become binding on the consciences of others, if only of a few.

It is true Mordecai secures one disciple—the man destined to translate his thought into action, Daniel Deronda, as shadowy, as puppet-like, as lifeless as Ezra Mordecai Cohen himself.

These two men, of whom the one is the spiritual leader and the other the hero destined to realise his aspirations, are probably the two most unsuccessful of George Eliot’s vast gallery of characters. They are the representatives of an idea, but the idea has never been made flesh. A succinct expression of it may be gathered from the following passage:

“Which among the chief of the Gentile nations has not an ignorant multitude? They scorn our people’s ignorant observance; but the most accursed ignorance is that which has no observance—sunk to the cunning greed of the fox, to which all law is no more than a trap or the cry of the worrying hound.

There is a degradation deep down below the memory that has withered into superstition. For the multitude of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession of the Divine Unity the Lord of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality.

Looking towards a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West; which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race, so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding.

Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.”

This notion that the Jews should return to Palestine in a body, and once more constitute themselves into a distinct nation, is curiously repugnant to modern feelings.

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Daniel Deronda: A splendid 2002 BBC miniseries 
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Mirah Lapidoth

As repugnant as that other doctrine, which is also implied in the book, that Jewish separateness should be still further insured by strictly adhering to their own race in marriage—at least Mirah, the most faultless of George Eliot’s heroines, whose character expresses the noblest side of Judaism, “is a Jewess who will not accept any one but a Jew.”

Mirah Lapidoth and the Princess Halm-Eberstein, Deronda’s mother, are drawn with the obvious purpose of contrasting two types of Jewish women.

Whereas the latter, strictly brought up in the belief and most minute observances of her Hebrew father, breaks away from the “bondage of having been born a Jew,” from which she wishes to relieve her son by parting from him in infancy, Mirah, brought up in disregard, “even in dislike of her Jewish origin,” clings with inviolable tenacity to the memory of that origin and to the fellowship of her people.

The author leaves one in little doubt as towards which side her own sympathies incline to. She is not so much the artist here, impartially portraying different kinds of characters, as the special pleader proclaiming that one set of motives are righteous, just, and praiseworthy, as well as that the others are mischievous and reprehensible …

Sympathies for a Jewish homeland

Considering that George Eliot was convinced of this modern tendency towards fusion, it is all the more singular that she should, in Daniel Deronda, have laid such stress on the reconstruction, after the lapse of centuries, of a Jewish state; singular, when one considers that many of the most eminent Jews, far from aspiring towards such an event, hardly seem to have contemplated it as a desirable or possible prospect.

The sympathies of Spinoza, the Mendelssohns, Heinrich Heine, and many others, are not distinctively Jewish but humanitarian. And the grandest, as well as truest thing that has been uttered about them is that saying of Heine’s: “The country of the Jews is the ideal, is God.”

Indeed, to have a true conception of Jewish nature and character, of its brilliant lights and deep shadows, of its pathos, depth, sublimity, degradation, and wit; of its infinite resource and boundless capacity for suffering—one must go to Heine and not to Daniel Deronda.

In Jehuda-ben-Halevy, Heine expresses the love and longing of a Jewish heart for Jerusalem in accents of such piercing intensity that compared with it, Mordecai’s fervid desire fades into mere abstract rhetoric.

Nature and experience were the principal sources of George Eliot’s inspiration. And though she knew a great deal about the Jews, her experience had not become sufficiently incorporated with her consciousness.

Otherwise, instead of portraying such tame models of perfection as Daniel Deronda and Mirah, she would have so mixed her colours as to give us that subtle involvement of motive and tendency—as of cross-currents in the sea—which we find in the characters of nature’s making and in her own finest creations, such as Maggie Tulliver (The Mill on the Floss), Silas Marner, Dorothea Casaubon (Middlemarch), and others.

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Gwendolen Harleth

In turning to the English portion of the story there is at once greater play of spontaneity in the people depicted. Grandcourt, Gascoigne, Rex, Mrs. Davilow, Sir Hugh Mallinger, and especially Gwendolen, show all the old cunning in the psychological rendering of human nature.

Curiously enough, this novel consists of two perfectly distinct narratives; the only point of junction being Daniel Deronda himself, who, as a Jew by birth and an English gentleman by education, stands related to both sets of circumstances.

The influence he exerts on the spiritual development of Gwendolen seems indeed the true motif of the story. Otherwise there is no intrinsic connection between the group of people clustering round Mordecai, and that of which Gwendolen is the centre.

Unless it be that the author wished to show the greater intensity of aim and higher moral worth of the Jews as contrasted with these purposeless, worldly, unideal Christians of the nineteenth century.

Compared with the immaculate Mirah, Gwendolen Harleth is a very naughty, spoiled, imperfect specimen of maidenhood. But she has life in her; and one speculates as to what she will say and do next, as if she were a person among one’s acquaintances.

On that account most readers of Daniel Deronda find their interest engrossed by the fate of Gwendolen, and the conjugal relations between her and Grandcourt.

This is so much the case, that one suspects her to have been the first idea of the story. She is at any rate its most attractive feature. In Gwendolen, George Eliot once remarked, she had wished to draw a girl of the period. Fascinating, accomplished, of siren-like beauty, she has every outward grace combined with a singular inward vacuity.

The deeper aspects of life are undreamed of in her philosophy. Her religion consists in a vague awe of the unknown and invisible, and her ambition in the acquisition of rank, wealth, and personal distinction.

Gwendolen is selfish, vain, frivolous, worldly, domineering, yet not without sudden impulses of generosity, and jets of affection. Something there is in her of Undine before she had a soul—something of a gay, vivacious, unfeeling sprite, who recks nothing of human love or of human misery, but looks down with utter indifference on the poor humdrum mortals around her, whom she inspires at once with fear and fondness: something, also, of:

“… The princess in exile, who in time of famine was to have her breakfast-roll made of the finest bolted flour from the seven thin ears of wheat, and in a general decampment was to have her silver fork kept out of the baggage.”

How this bewitching creature, whose “iridescence of character” makes her a psychological problem, is gradually brought to accept Henleigh Grandcourt, in spite of the promise she has given to Lydia Glasher (his discarded victim), and her own fleeting presentiments, is described with an analytical subtlety unsurpassed in George Eliot’s works.

So, indeed, is the whole episode of the married life of Grandcourt. This territorial magnate, who possesses every worldly advantage that Gwendolen desired, is worthy, as a study of character, to be placed beside that of Casaubon himself.

Gwendolen’s girlish type of egoism, which loves to be the centre of admiration, here meets with that far other deadlier form of an “exorbitant egoism,” conspicuous for its intense obstinacy and tenacity of rule, “in proportion as the varied susceptibilities of younger years are stripped away.”

This cold, negative nature lies with a kind of withering blight on the susceptible Gwendolen. Roused from the complacent dreams of girlhood by the realities of her married life, shrinking in helpless repulsion from the husband whom she meant to manage, and who holds her as in a vice, the unhappy woman has nothing to cling to in this terrible inward collapse of her happiness, but the man, who, from the first moment when his eye arrests hers at the gaming table at Leubronn, becomes, as it were, a conscience visibly incarnate to her …

The relation of Daniel to Gwendolen

The relation of Danial Deronda to Gwendolen is of a Christlike nature. He is her only moral hold in the fearful temptations that assail her now and again under the intolerable irritations of her married life, temptations which grow more urgent when Grandcourt leads his wife captive, after his fashion, in a yacht on the Mediterranean”

“… The intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear, which compels to silence, and drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the detested object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance, with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering into dumbness.

Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolen’s mind, but not with soothing effect—rather with the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with dread of her husband had grown the self-dread which urged her to flee from the pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse.”

The evil wish at last finds fulfillment, the murderous thought is outwardly realised. And though death is not eventually the result of the criminal desire, it yet seems to the unhappy wife as if it had a determining power in bringing about the catastrophe.

But it is precisely this remorse which is the redeeming quality of her nature, and awakens a new life within her …

Conclusion

In Daniel Deronda there is an entire absence of that rich, genial humour which seemed spontaneously to bubble up and overflow her earlier works. Whether George Eliot’s conception of the Jews as a peculiarly serious race had any share in bringing about that result, it is difficult to say …

Certainly Mordecai, Daniel, and Mirah, are preternaturally solemn: even the Cohen family are not presented with any of those comic touches one would have looked for in this great humorist: only in the boy Jacob are there gleams of drollery …

A certain subdued vein of humour is not entirely absent from the portraiture of the Meyrick family, a delightful group, who “had their little oddities, streaks of eccentricity from the mother’s blood as well as the father’s, their minds being like mediæval houses with unexpected recesses and openings from this into that, flights of steps, and sudden outlooks.”

But on the whole, instead of the old humour, we find in Daniel Deronda a polished irony and epigrammatic sarcasm …

When she undertook to write about the Jews, George Eliot was deeply versed in Hebrew literature, ancient and modern. She had taught herself Hebrew when translating the Leben Jesu, and this knowledge stood her in good stead.

She was also familiar with the splendid utterances of Jehuda-ben-Halevy; with the visionary speculations of the Cabbalists, and with the brilliant Jewish writers of the Hispano-Arabic epoch. She had read portions of the Talmud, and remarked one day in conversation that Spinoza had really got something from the Cabbala.

On her friend humbly suggesting that by ordinary accounts it appeared to be awful nonsense, she said “that it nevertheless contained fine ideas, like Plato and the Old Testament, which, however, people took in the lump, being accustomed to them.”

 

The post Proto-Zionist Themes in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

10 Iconic Poems by Amy Lowell, American Imagist Poet

It’s not easy to choose a few of best or most famous poems by Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925), the influential American imagist poet. She was quite prolific, so choosing just ten iconic poems from her vast trove to represent her large body of work is no easy task.

The poems presented here are among Lowell’s most iconic and anthologized. She defined Imagist poetry as the “concentration is of the very essence of poetry” which aimed to “produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.”

Amy Lowell was also a practitioner of “vers libre,” or free verse poetry (here’s the poet herself on vers libre). Her contemporary reconsideration reflects her rediscovery as a lesbian poet (“A Decade”), and she was also an antiwar poet (“Patterns”) of some distinction.Some of Lowell’s published collections include A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912) Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914),  Men, Women and Ghosts (1916), Can Grande’s Castle (1918), Pictures of the Floating World (1919), and others.

Her 1925 collection What’s O’ Clock, which received the Pulitzer Prize the following year. Unfortunately, the poet died before receiving this honor. She was only 51, having suffered from poor health for some time.

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Learn more about Amy Lowell
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Poems in this sampling

Where available, you’ll find a link to an analysis to the poems presented here.

The Garden by MoonlightPatternsThe Weather-Cock Points SouthA Fairy TaleA BlockheadA Coloured Print by ShokeiA Japanese Wood-CarvingA DecadeA Ballad of FootmenLilacs

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The Garden by Moonlight

A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.   
Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.

(From Pictures of the Floating World, 1921)
Analysis of “The Garden by Moonlight”

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Patterns

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down

The garden paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whale-bone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the splashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon—
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday sen’night.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” l told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

(From Men, Women, and Ghosts, 1915)
Analysis of “Patterns” — and another analyis

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The Weather-Cock Points South

I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.

White flower,
Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate;
Flower with surfaces of ice,
With shadows faintly crimson.
Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
The stars crowd through the lilac leaves
To look at you.
The low moon brightens you with silver.

The bud is more than the calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no colour, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.

(From Pictures of the Floating World, 1921)
Analysis of “The Weather-Cock Points South”

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A Fairy Tale

On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung
With pendent stalactites like frozen vines;
And all along the walls at intervals,
Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed,
And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves
Divided where there peered a laughing face.
The foliage seemed to rustle in the wind,
A silent murmur, carved in still, gray stone.
High pointed windows pierced the southern wall
Whence proud escutcheons flung prismatic fires
To stain the tessellated marble floor
With pools of red, and quivering green, and blue;
And in the shade beyond the further door,
Its sober squares of black and white were hid
Beneath a restless, shuffling, wide-eyed mob
Of lackeys and retainers come to view
The Christening.
A sudden blare of trumpets, and the throng
About the entrance parted as the guests
Filed singly in with rare and precious gifts.
Our eager fancies noted all they brought,
The glorious, unattainable delights!
But always there was one unbidden guest
Who cursed the child and left it bitterness.
The fire falls asunder, all is changed,
I am no more a child, and what I see
Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.
The gifts are there, the many pleasant things:
Health, wealth, long-settled friendships, with a name
Which honors all who bear it, and the power
Of making words obedient. This is much;
But overshadowing all is still the curse,
That never shall I be fulfilled by love!
Along the parching highroad of the world
No other soul shall bear mine company.
Always shall I be teased with semblances,
With cruel impostures, which I trust awhile
Then dash to pieces, as a careless boy
Flings a kaleidoscope, which shattering
Strews all the ground about with coloured sherds.
So I behold my visions on the ground
No longer radiant, an ignoble heap
Of broken, dusty glass. And so, unlit,
Even by hope or faith, my dragging steps
Force me forever through the passing days.

Analysis of “A Fairy Tale”

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A Blockhead

Before me lies a mass of shapeless days,
Unseparated atoms, and I must
Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust
Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays,
There are none, ever. As a monk who prays
The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust
Each tasteless particle aside, and just
Begin again the task which never stays.
And I have known a glory of great suns,
When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire!
Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire,
And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs!
Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand
Threw down the cup, and did not understand.

(From Sword Blades & Poppy Seed, 1914)
Analysis of  “A Blockhead”

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A Coloured Print by Shokei

It winds along the face of a cliff
    This path which I long to explore,
And over it dashes a waterfall,
    And the air is full of the roar
And the thunderous voice of waters which sweep
In a silver torrent over some steep.
It clears the path with a mighty bound
    And tumbles below and away,
And the trees and the bushes which grow in the rocks
    Are wet with its jewelled spray;
The air is misty and heavy with sound,
And small, wet wildflowers star the ground.
Oh! The dampness is very good to smell,
   And the path is soft to tread,
And beyond the fall it winds up and on,
   While little streamlets thread
Their own meandering way down the hill
Each singing its own little song, until
I forget that ‘t is only a pictured path,
    And I hear the water and wind,
And look through the mist, and strain my eyes
    To see what there is behind;
For it must lead to a happy land,
This little path by a waterfall spanned.

(From A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, 1912)
Analysis of “A Colored Print by Shokei”

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A Japanese Wood-Carving

High up above the open, welcoming door
It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim.
Once, long ago, it was a waving tree
And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves
Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.
The winter snows had bent its branches down,
The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers,
Summer had run like fire through its veins,
While autumn pelted it with chestnut burrs,
And strewed the leafy ground with acorn cups.
Dark midnight storms had roared and crashed among
Its branches, breaking here and there a limb;
But every now and then broad sunlit days
Lovingly lingered, caught among the leaves.
Yes, it had known all this, and yet to us
It does not speak of mossy forest ways,
Of whispering pine trees or the shimmering birch;
But of quick winds, and the salt, stinging sea!
An artist once, with patient, careful knife,
Had fashioned it like to the untamed sea.
Here waves uprear themselves, their tops blown back
By the gay, sunny wind, which whips the blue
And breaks it into gleams and sparks of light.
Among the flashing waves are two white birds
Which swoop, and soar, and scream for very joy
At the wild sport. Now diving quickly in,
Questing some glistening fish. Now flying up,
Their dripping feathers shining in the sun,
While the wet drops like little glints of light,
Fall pattering backward to the parent sea.
Gliding along the green and foam-flecked hollows,
Or skimming some white crest about to break,
The spirits of the sky deigning to stoop
And play with ocean in a summer mood.
Hanging above the high, wide open door,
It brings to us in quiet, firelit room,
The freedom of the earth’s vast solitudes,
Where heaping, sunny waves tumble and roll,
And seabirds scream in wanton happiness.

(From A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, 1912)
Analysis of “A Japanese Wood-Carving”

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A Decade

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

(From Pictures of the Floating World, 1921)
Analysis of “A Decade”

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A Ballad of Footmen

Now what in the name of the sun and the stars
Is the meaning of this most unholy of wars?

Do men find life so full of humour and joy
That for want of excitement they smash up the toy?

Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses
All bent upon killing, because their “of courses”

Are not quite the same. All these men by the ears,
And nine nations of women choking with tears.

It is folly to think that the will of a king
Can force men to make ducks and drakes of a thing

They value, and life is, at least one supposes,
Of some little interest, even if roses

Have not grown up between one foot and the other.
What a marvel bureaucracy is, which can smother

Such quite elementary feelings, and tag
A man with a number, and set him to wag

His legs and his arms at the word of command
Or the blow of a whistle! He’s certainly damned,

Fit only for mince-meat, if a little gold lace
And an upturned moustache can set him to face

Bullets, and bayonets, and death, and diseases,
Because some one he calls his Emperor, pleases.

If each man were to lay down his weapon, and say,
With a click of his heels, “I wish you Good-day,”

Now what, may I ask, could the Emperor do?
A king and his minions are really so few.

Angry? Oh, of course, a most furious Emperor!
But the men are so many they need not mind his temper, or

The dire results which could not be inflicted.
With no one to execute sentence, convicted

Is just the weak wind from an old, broken bellows.
What lackeys men are, who might be such fine fellows!

To be killing each other, unmercifully,
At an order, as though one said, “Bring up the tea.”

Or is it that tasting the blood on their jaws
They lap at it, drunk with its ferment, and laws

So patiently builded, are nothing to drinking
More blood, any blood. They don’t notice its stinking.

I don’t suppose tigers do, fighting cocks, sparrows,
And, as to men-what are men, when their marrows

Are running with blood they have gulped; it is plain
Such excellent sport does not recollect pain.

Toll the bells in the steeples left standing. Half-mast
The flags which meant order, for order is past.

Take the dust of the streets and sprinkle your head,
The civilization we’ve worked for is dead.

Squeeze into this archway, the head of the line
Has just swung round the corner to ‘Die Wacht am Rhein.’

(From Men, Women and Ghosts (1916)

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Lilacs

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.
You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,
And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.

You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,
You persuaded the housewife that her dish-pan was of silver
And her husband an image of pure gold.
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses—
You, and sandal-wood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: “Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting,”
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.
Paradoxical New England clerks,
Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the Song of Solomon at night,
So many verses before bedtime,
Because it was the Bible.
The dead fed you
Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the night time
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.
You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles,
You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home.
You cover the blind sides of greenhouses
And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass
To your friends, the grapes, inside.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled Pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

Maine knows you,
Has for years and years;
New Hampshire knows you,
And Massachusetts
And Vermont.

Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;
Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.
You are brighter than apples,
Sweeter than tulips,
You are the great flood of our souls
Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,
You are the smell of all Summers,
The love of wives and children,
The recollection of the gardens of little children,
You are State Houses and Charters
And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.
May is lilac here in New England,
May is a thrush singing “Sun up!” on a tip-top ash-tree,
May is white clouds behind pine-trees
Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.
May is a green as no other,
May is much sun through small leaves,
May is soft earth,
And apple-blossoms,
And windows open to a South wind.
May is a full light wind of lilac
From Canada to Narragansett Bay.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,

Color of lilac,
Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,
Lilac in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,
Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice
Since certainly it is mine.

(from What’s O’Clock, 1925)
Analysis of “Lilacs”
More about “Lilacs,” the poet’s own favorite

The post 10 Iconic Poems by Amy Lowell, American Imagist Poet appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Penelope Fitzgerald, author of The Blue Flower & The Bookshop

Penelope Fitzgerald (December 17, 1916 – April 28, 2000) was a novelist, essayist, and biographer  widely regarded as one of the greatest British writers of her generation.

She began her career later in life — her first successful novel (The Bookshop, 1978) was published when she was sixty-one — and went on to win the Booker Prize in 1979. It was also adapted into a 2017 feature film starring Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy.

Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels have been described as “strange and original masterpieces” by her biographer, Hermione Lee, and her final work, The Blue Flower, is widely regarded as one of the best historical novels ever written.

 

Early life and education

Penelope Fitzgerald was born Penelope Mary Knox in Lincoln, England, in 1916. Her older brother Rawle was born in 1913.

Her father, Edmund Knox, had left Oxford University without a degree but was a successful satirical journalist at the magazine Punch and later became its editor. He and his three brothers  (one a mathematical genius, one a celibate monk, and one the Catholic chaplain at Oxford University) were the subjects of a later biography by Penelope called The Knox Brothers (1977).

Penelope’s mother, Christina, the daughter of the bishop of Lincoln, was one of the first women students at Somerville College, Oxford. Her family’s religious connections had a strong influence on Penelope, who remained a dedicated churchgoer all her life.

She was sent away to Wycombe Abbey, an independent girls’ boarding school, at the age of eight. She did well academically, as her family expected of her, and was awarded a scholarship to Oxford University in the mid-1930s. She graduated with a First and was named a “Woman of the Year” in Isis, the student newspaper.

It was at Oxford that she met her husband, Desmond Fitzgerald. They married in 1942, four years after graduating. Desmond had studied law, but enlisted in the Irish Guards and was sent to North Africa, where he saw heavy fighting in Libya.

Penelope herself spent the war years working a variety of jobs — at the BBC, the Ministry of Food, and as a writer for Punch. She began to make a name for herself in journalistic and literary circles, even though she wasn’t yet writing fiction.

 

Post-war poverty

In the early 1950s, Penelope continued to be involved in the literary world. Alongside Desmond, she co-edited the cultural journal World Review, contributing articles on subjects as diverse as Alberto Moravia, Italian sculpture, and Spanish painting.

By 1953, she and Desmond had three children: Valpy, Tina, and Maria. But things began to quickly fall apart when the World Review failed, and Desmond began to drink heavily. Their finances were tight, and Penelope once found herself having to cut down her own clothes to make trousers for Valpy.

In 1957, they escaped the expense of London and their Hampstead home and moved to Southwold on the Suffolk coast, where Penelope worked in a bookshop. Despite being cheaper, this still proved unaffordable. In 1959 the auctioneers were called in, and the family’s belongings were confiscated.

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“My house sank”: Teaching and life on a houseboat

The family returned to London and rented a houseboat on the Thames. Conditions were primitive, with frequent power cuts, little food, and permanent dampness. Penelope slept in the living room (and would continue to do so for the rest of her life, even when there was a bedroom available), and for at least a year, Tina and Maria didn’t attend school.

Penelope began teaching in 1960. Her first post was at a performing arts school, and then she moved to Westminster Tutors (a “crammer” for those in their last two years of secondary school, where her students over the years included Anna Wintour, Edward St. Aubyn, and Helena Bonham Carter). She continued to teach until the mid-1980s.

By this time, however, Desmond’s drinking had reached a critical level. He was convicted in 1962 of stealing money from his law offices for alcohol. He was given two years probation and disbarred. He eventually found work in a travel agency, where he remained until he died of a terminal illness in 1976 at the age of 59.

In 1963, further disaster struck when the houseboat started to sink into the Thames and was towed away. Penelope arrived a few hours late for her classes at Westminster Tutors. With characteristic understatement said to her students, “I’m sorry I’m late, but my house sank.” It took with it what archives she possessed, including all her wartime letters to Desmond.

Instead of asking for help from her father, who was comfortably off in Hampstead, Penelope moved her family into one of the City of London’s homeless shelters in Hackney where they stayed for four months. They then received council housing near Clapham Common, where they lived for eleven years.

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Literary success later in life

Penelope only turned to writing seriously once all her children had left home. Initially, she wrote nonfiction and over the years published the biographies Edward Burne-Jones (1975), Charlotte Mew and Her Friends (1984). She also wrote a biography of her father’s family, The Knox Brothers (1977).

Her first novel, The Golden Child, (1977) was a comic murder mystery written to amuse Desmond, who was seriously ill at the time. But her breakthrough success came with The Bookshop, published in 1978 when she was sixty-one. It drew on her experiences in Southwold and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Over the next seventeen years, she published seven more novels, including Offshore, a sharp but affectionate portrait of the “houseboat people” she had met during her time living on the Thames.

They were, in Penelope’s words, drifters “who aspired towards the Chelsea shore” but were condemned by “a certain failure, distressing to themselves, to be like other people.” The novel, which focused on the rift between a husband and wife, won the Booker Prize in 1979.

While her earliest novels drew largely on her own experiences, her later historical novels often required a great deal of research, from methods of bribing the police in pre-revolutionary Moscow (The Beginning of Spring), to neurology (Innocence) to salt mining (The Blue Flower). For this latter, she “had read the records of salt mines from cover to cover in German to understand how her hero was employed.”

But like many female novelists of the time, her public recognition came with a certain amount of misogyny attached, and her literary efforts and successes were often met with dismissal.

In 1977 her nonfiction publisher Richard Garnett informed her that she was “only an amateur writer,” to which she replied, “…how many books do you have to write and how many semi-colons do you have to discard before you lose amateur status?”

She never liked to draw attention to herself and referred to The Blue Flower (which many regard as her finest) as “a novel of sorts.” It was chosen nineteen times as Book of the Year by the press, and won America’s National Book Critics Circle Award.

Penelope Fitzgerald died in London in April 2000 at the age of eighty-three.

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Penelope Fitzgerald’s legacy

Fellow novelist Julian Barnes wrote in a tribute after her death that she “comported herself as if she were a jam-making grandmother who scarcely knew her way in the world.” Appearances, however, were deceiving.

Penelope Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the greatest British novelists: in 2008, The Times listed her as one of “the 50 greatest British writers since 1945,” and in 2012, The Observer placed The Blue Flower among the “ten best historical novels.”

Her books are all still in print, and collections of her short stories (The Means of Escape) and essays (A House of Air) were published posthumously. A film adaptation of The Bookshop was released in 2017, directed by Isabel Coixet and starring Emily Mortimer.

Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is a writer and editor with a serious case of wanderlust. Her short fiction has been widely published online and is included in the Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology published by Sonder Press. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, she is also co-facilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and when not writing can usually be found planning the next trip abroad, or daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Find her online at  Elodie Rose Barnes. 

Recent articles by Elodie Barnes on this site:

Muriel Spark, author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Nan Shepherd, Scottish Writer, Poet, and Mountaineer A Strange Journey: Tove Jansson and The Moomins More about Penelope Fitzgerald

Major works: Novels

The Golden Child  (1977)The Bookshop  (1978)Offshore  (1979)Human Voices  (1980)At Freddie’s  (1982)Innocence (1986)The Beginning of Spring  (1988)The Gate of Angels  (1990)The Blue Flower (1995)

Short stories, letters, and other writings

A House of Air: Selected Writings by Penelope Fitzgerald (2003)So I Have Thought of You: The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald by Penelope Fitzgerald and Terence Dooley (2008)Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee (2014)The Means of Escape: Short Stories by Penelope Fitzgerald  (2000)

More information

How Did She Do It? (by Julian Barnes in The Guardian) Penelope Fitzgerald was Here: An Appreciation Penelope Fitzgerald’s Archive at the British Library Wikipedia

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Amy Lowell on How a Poet Learns the Craft

The American poet Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925) was best known for a form of poetry called Imagism. She dedicated her career to perfecting her craft as a poet, and was practically an evangelist for the art of poetry writing. Lowell produced poetry prolifically and spoke widely about its art and craft.

Lowell defined Imagism as the “concentration is of the very essence of poetry,” and she aspired to “produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.”

The following is from the preface of her 1914 collection, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, in which she argues that a poet is not born but made. The writer of poetry must learn what she called their “trade,” comparable to how a cabinet-maker or any other craftsperson first learns technique and then builds upon it.

And now, let’s let Amy Lowell speak for herself, as she does so eloquently, and glean her wisdom on how a poet learns her (or as is the case, his, which is often expressed as the generic default gender in this piece) craft.

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Learn more about Amy Lowell

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The poet is not born, but made

No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves.

As a matter of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker. His heart may overflow with high thoughts and sparkling fancies, but if he cannot convey them to his reader by means of the written word he has no claim to be considered a poet.

A workman may be pardoned, therefore, for spending a few moments to explain and describe the technique of his trade. A work of beauty which cannot stand an intimate examination is a poor and jerry-built thing.

Poetry should not try to teach

In the first place, I wish to state my firm belief that poetry should not try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is a created beauty, even if sometimes the beauty of a gothic grotesque.

We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar.

We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far we are from “admitting the Universe!”

The Universe, which flings down its continents and seas, and leaves them without comment. Art is as much a function of the Universe as an Equinoctial gale, or the Law of Gravitation; and we insist upon considering it merely a little scroll-work, of no great importance unless it be studded with nails from which pretty and uplifting sentiments may be hung!

For the purely technical side I must state my immense debt to the French, and perhaps above all to the, so-called, Parnassian School, although some of the writers who have influenced me most do not belong to it.

High-minded and untiring workmen, they have spared no pains to produce a poetry finer than that of any other country in our time. Poetry so full of beauty and feeling, that the study of it is at once an inspiration and a despair to the artist …

Finding new and striking images

The poet with originality and power is always seeking to give his readers the same poignant feeling which he has himself. To do this he must constantly find new and striking images, delightful and unexpected forms.

Take the word “daybreak,” for instance. What a remarkable picture it must once have conjured up! The great, round sun, like the yolk of some mighty egg, BREAKING through cracked and splintered clouds.

But we have said “daybreak” so often that we do not see the picture any more, it has become only another word for dawn. The poet must be constantly seeking new pictures to make his readers feel the vitality of his thought.

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Amy Lowell on her “Vers Libre” poetry
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Vers Libre, or unrhymed cadence

Many of the poems in this volume [here Amy Lowell is referring to Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, the book from which this essay comes] are written in what the French call “Vers Libre,”a nomenclature more suited to French use and to French versification than to ours.

I prefer to call them poems in “unrhymed cadence,” for that conveys their exact meaning to an English ear. They are built upon “organic rhythm,” or the rhythm of the speaking voice with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical system.

They differ from ordinary prose rhythms by being more curved, and containing more stress. The stress, and exceedingly marked curve, of any regular metre is easily perceived. These poems, built upon cadence, are more subtle, but the laws they follow are not less fixed.

Merely chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time. In the preface to his Poems, Henley speaks of “those unrhyming rhythms in which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do in rhyme.”

The desire to “quintessentialize,” to head-up an emotion until it burns white-hot, seems to be an integral part of the modern temper, and certainly “unrhymed cadence” is unique in its power of expressing this.

 In conclusion: poems must speak for themselves

Three of these poems are written in a form which, so far as I know, has never before been attempted in English. M. Paul Fort is its inventor, and the results it has yielded to him are most beautiful and satisfactory.

Perhaps it is more suited to the French language than to English. But I found it the only medium in which these particular poems could be written. It is a fluid and changing form, now prose, now verse, and permitting a great variety of treatment.

But the reader will see that I have not entirely abandoned the more classic English metres. I cannot see why, because certain manners suit certain emotions and subjects, it should be considered imperative for an author to employ no others. Schools are for those who can confine themselves within them. Perhaps it is a weakness in me that I cannot.

In conclusion, I would say that these remarks are in answer to many questions asked me by people who have happened to read some of these poems in periodicals.

They are not for the purpose of forestalling criticism, nor of courting it; and they deal, as I said in the beginning, solely with the question of technique. For the more important part of the book, the poems must speak for themselves.

Amy Lowell, May 19, 1914.

More by Amy Lowell on this site

The Cremona Violin A Roxbury Garden Lilacs Patterns

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Zora Neale Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee: Views from 1948 & Beyond

Seraph on the Suwanee, Zora Neale Hurston’s fourth and last published novel (1948), was an outlier  among her works, which included numerous short stories and ethnographic collections. The reason: it was her only book that was written about white people — specifically, Florida’s “white crackers.”

Exploring the cultural differences between the meek and colorless heroine, Arvay and her handsome, enterprising husband Jim, the novel received mixed-to-positive reviews by the white press.

Some reviewers bent over backwards to praise the fact that a Black writer produced a novel that wasn’t about race issues, bringing to light the lives and dialect of the turpentine people of Florida.

Kirkus Reviews’ succinct 1948 review read: “The colorful Florida ‘cracker’ language holds the mood throughout, and the total effect is one of charm and readability. Recommended.”

On the other hand, The New York Times titled their review “Freud in Turpentine” and wrote: “Arvay never heard of Freud … but she’s a textbook picture of a hysterical neurotic, right to the end of the novel.”

Black reviewers have been generally critical of the novel. I was unable to find full reviews of Seraph on the Suwanee in any Black newspapers from 1948, but commentary about the book by contemporary critics is readily available.

Professor John C. Charles, in a 2009 essay titled “Talk About the South: Unspeakable Things Unspoken in Zora Neale Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee” wrote that compared with Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora’s much lauded and studied, Serpaph:

“… has received a far chillier response and until recently often condemned or dismissed out of hand … Seraph has tended to baffle and disturb even Hurston’s most devoted readers. Critic Mary Helen Washington, for example, dismisses Seraph as ‘an awkward and contrived novel, as vacuous as a soap opera.’ And Bernard Bell expels it from his influential study on the African American novel because ‘[it] is neither comic, nor folkloric, nor about Blacks.’

Late literary critic Claudia Tate, in a 1997 essay titled “Zora Neale Hurston’s Whiteface Novel” wrote, “Despite the tremendous popularity of the works of Zora Neale Hurston over the last two decades, Seraph on the Suwanee is still a marginal work.”

Zora dedicated the book “To Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Mrs. Spessard L. Holland with loving admiration.” Find a full plot summary and character list here.

Following are three 1948 sample reviews from the perspective of white reviewers.

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In the Turpentine Country

From the original review by Virginia Oakey in the Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, October 24, 1948: Arvay Meserve, heroine of Seraph on the Suwanee, is not a woman one would choose to spend a single evening with, for she is without humor or perception and suffers from pathological timidity. Yet the story of her life is definitely worth an evening or two.

This unenviable creature was born in the turpentine country of West Florida where life, as described by Miss Hurston, is a mean and degrading mistake. A few chapters into the book, Harvey is seduced by and married to (in the space of a summer afternoon) the most sought-after young man in the county, Jim Meserve.

Arvay’s suffering from her near-psychopathic feeling of inferiority is only increased by her excellent marriage. She takes a feeling of guilt to her wedding bed, for she has lived in mental adultery with her sister’s husband for several years. Now she lives in fear of the exposure of her secret.

The first of Arvay’s children is an imbecile. She believes this to be her punishment, so she decides the boy must remain with her — a decision that results in one of the most tragic incidents in the story.

Two other children are born to Arvay and her “high-toned, independent, money-making” husband. They are handsome, intelligent children; Arvay never believes herself worth of them, nor of her husband.

This goes on for twenty years. Jim Meserve’s patience is exhausted; yours certainly will be, too. However, those years aren’t without drama, and occasionally, in spite of Arvay, considerable humor. Arvay is forced to face herself. This she does with her customary cowardice until a death and a storm intervene —and she is equal to both.

Miss Hurston writes authoritatively of the “teppentine” (turpentine) country, the citrus belt, and life aboard a shrimping boat, all of which provide a background for Arvay’s “high-Christian” humility. The author has caught the patois of those areas; it’s colorful, often crude, and frequently poetic.

She writes of “the raw-head-and-bloody-bones of lonesomeness” and of a young girl dressed in her best clothes “looking as if she had wallowed in a rainbow.” In one instance “the hours stumbled by on rusty ankles.” In another, hours were like “raw, bony, homeless dogs — whining of their emptiness.”

“Teppentine” people do not say “She has eaten humble pie.” They say, “She has been to hell’s kitchen and licked out all the pots.” Indirect action they describe as “hitting a straight blow with a crooked stick.” A person who is living beyond his means is “giving a mighty high kick for a low cow.”

Despite Arvay’s meagre spirit, Miss Hurston has written a book that is extremely pleasant company.

 

Way Down Upon the Suwanee River

From the original review of Seraph On The Suwanee by Lewis Gannett in The Mirror (Los Angeles), October 18, 1948: I wish that Zora Neale Hurston had more to say in her new novel, for I love the speech rhythm with which she can make anything she writes a delight.

This is a story about a Florida cracker girl named Arvay and her ways of loving Jim Merserve. You could say about Miss Hurston’s story what Jim says about Arvay: she “took long enough to stumble round the teacup to get to the handle.”

Sawley on the Suwanee, where courting was public

Down in Sawley on the Suwanee, courting was public. The doings were something like a well-trained hound dog tackling a bobcat, and everyone looked on.

Jim Meserve had a face full of grin, and when he was around, Arvay just couldn’t make her face look like she’d been feasting off green persimmons. For the first time in her life, her vanity put on a little flesh. While Jim was talking, she almost forgot that she had given up the world after her sister snatched the Rev. Carl Middleton away from her.

Sawley, they said, was a town that wore out the knees of its breeches sliding to the Cross and wore out the seat of its pants backsliding, but outside of Arvay, few Sawleyites got thin thinking about the Reverend Middleton.

Some of them said you couldn’t even raise a tune if you put a wagonload of good compost under him and ten sacks of commercial fertilizer.

The world seems sad and dreary

Arvay just couldn’t believe how happy she was, married to Jim. She couldn’t get over what Jim called that old missionary distemper. She was afraid of admitting she was herself. And there came a time when Jim shouted at her that he didn’t want a standstill kind of love; he wanted a knowing and doing love, and Arvay loved like a coward.

Sometimes Miss Hurston, whose father was Mayor of the all-Negro town of Eatonville, Florida, hasn’t much use for people of any color who lack get-up-and-go and spend their spare time bewailing bad luck.

Lightning bugs in daytime

Arvay tries to disapprove of Jim, but her resolutions are:

“… just like the lightning bugs holding a convention.They met at night and made scorning speeches against the sun and swore to do away with it and light up the world themselves. But the sun came up the next morning and they all went under the leaves and owned up that the sun was boss-man in the world.”

Arvay was always throwing the rabbit into the briar patch.

Unfortunately, the lightning bugs don’t hold a convention on every one of Miss Hurston’s pages her boss-man is a little too perfect, and the Rev. Carl Middleton sits a little lower in the grass than the lowest insect along tobacco road. Even with Miss Hurston’s imagery flashing all about him, one gets a little tired of Jim Meserve’s he-man loving and Arvay’s stumbling around the teacup.

One hopes that Miss Hurston will put into her next novel more solid soup stock. She has a rare talent for cooking with words — as she proved with Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Mules and Men. But in Seraph On The Suwanee, she is wasting it on wilted turnip greens.

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Books by Zora Neale Hurston: Fiction, Folklore & More

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A Novel About Poor Whites in the South, Without a Racial Issue

From the original review by Carter Brooke Jones in The Evening Star, Washington DC, October 17, 1948:  It might be pointed out, before considering other merits of this novel, that Miss Hurston has done at least one thing noteworthy in these times.

She has written about the much-chronicled poor whites of the South without condescension, pity, or sentimentality.

She has presented a group of poor Southerners as recognizable human beings. Her characters aren’t fools because they have little formal education and speak a form of English that approaches a patois.

Some of them, indeed, are exceedingly shrewd, make money, and do well enough for themselves. Others are dumb, lazy, and hopeless. But so are some college graduates.

If the successful ones are underprivileged, they haven’t heard about it. They aren’t oblivious to the advantages of schooling, and most of their sons and daughters go to college. Their problems and emotions are pretty much those of people everywhere, which may come as a surprise to readers of Caldwell, Faulkner, and their disciples.

Miss Hurston has managed to write of the contemporary, or recently past South without bringing in a lynching or touching on the race problem. In fact, the friendship of a Southern white man and a black man is an outstanding phase of this story. All this sidestepping of social and economic issues no doubt will disturb Marxist critics if they bother to examine the book.

In the citrus belt

The story starts in a little town on the West Coast of Florida when Arvay Henson, daughter of a bedraggled poor family abandons her intentions of dedicating her life as a Baptist missionary and  marries Jim Meserve. Jim is the strongest and best-looking young man in the turpentine camp. He moves Arvay and their baby south to the citrus belt.

Before long, he is the owner of a nice piece of land. He ends up owning a fleet of fishing boats, a citrus grove, and part of a swanky real estate development.

It’s essentially the story of Arvay and her struggle to understand and utilize a world strange to her. She is narrow and afraid of anything new. Jim, with little more education than she had, is daring, clever, and resourceful. He is also domineering, and Arvay sees only his obvious traits, overlooking the sacrifices he makes and the changes he takes for her and their children.

Years pass before she appreciates Jim, and her awakening comes almost too late, for his patience has worn out at last.

What about the war?

Earthy humor and the pathos of groping and misunderstanding mingle in Miss Hurston’s narrative. A novel of considerable merit should be allowed some deficiencies. In Seraph on the Suwanee, some minor episodes are overdeveloped, while others are passed over quickly.

The characters she describes might have had little interest in the outside world, but sure more than she indicates. The story starts in the early 1900s and continues for more than twenty years; yet the First World War, which must have had a measure of influence on some of the people in the story, isn’t even mentioned.

 

More about Seraph on the Suwanee  Zora Neale Hurston and the WPA in Florida On the official Zora Neale Hurston website Reader discussion on Goodreads

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Six Novels by Shirley Jackson: Psychological Thrillers by a Master

American author Shirley Jackson (1916 – 1965) was known for fiction and nonfiction works that have influenced generations of writers who came after her. Presented here are the six novels by Shirley Jackson published in her lifetime. If you’re looking for where to begin with Shirley Jackson’s books, start anywhere — they’re all engrossing reads.

Jackson remains best known for “The Lottery” (1948), her widely anthologized (and also widely banned) short story. This controversial work, published the same year as her first novel, put her on the literary map.

It’s not easy to categorize Jackson’s work. Psychological terror or thriller may come close, if one considers that Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have cited her as an influence. Her six novels and scores of short stories uncover the evil and ugliness that lurk just under the surface of propriety and social mores.

In addition to her six novels, she wrote dozens of short stories and was also known for her wryly humorous (and idealized) accounts of family life, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons.

Jackson’s two last finished novels, The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) are considered her masterworks. Following each of the brief introductions to the novels, you’ll find a link to a full review and/or analysis.

 

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The Road Through the Wall (1948)

The Road Through the Wall was Shirley Jackson’s first novel. That was also the year when her short story, “The Lottery,” was published, making her instantly famous (as well as infamous). 

Jackson claimed that the novel was loosely based on her childhood in a well-to-do neighborhood in California. Admitting that it was somewhat of a revenge novel, she asserted that a first novel’s purpose, after all, was to get back one’s parents.

As in several of Jackson’s stories and novels, we do indeed see the world – and in this case Pepper Street is its own world – largely through children and their mothers; Jackson didn’t – possibly couldn’t – ever write a sympathetic male character.

Fourteen-year-old Harriet lives in a middle-class suburb in California – not completely unlike the one where Jackson herself was born – where everyone knows everyone else’s business.

This a chamber piece where many characters have an equal part and Harriet is simply one of the actors in the drama. Nevertheless, she is drawn in great detail and the novel does show her awkwardly coming of age, at least in one sense.

An analysis of The Road Through the Wall.

 

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Hangsaman (1952)

Shirley Jackson occasionally turned to true crime news stories as jumping-off points for her novels of psychological terror and suspense. This was apparently the case for her second novel, Hangsaman (1951).

Jackson, her husband, and their four children were living in North Bennington when 18-year-old Bennington College freshman Paula Jean Weldon disappeared. She went out for a hike on December 1, 1946, and simply never returned.

There were, and have since been, theories about what might have happened to Weldon, but neither she —nor her body — were ever found.

Hangsaman is the dark and unsettling tale of a young woman named Natalie Waite as she sets off into the world of college. This brief synopsis is from the 2013 reissue edition (Penguin):

“Seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite longs to escape home for college. Her father is a domineering and egotistical writer who keeps a tight rein on Natalie and her long-suffering mother. When Natalie finally does get away, however, college life doesn’t bring the happiness she expected. Little by little, Natalie is no longer certain of anything—even where reality ends and her dark imaginings begin.”

A review of Hangsaman An analysis of Hangsaman  

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The Bird’s Nest (1954)

Elizabeth Richmond, the novel’s main character, has multiple personality disorder. As she splinters, these beings become Bess, Beth, and Betsy. You’ll find a thorough plot summary here.

In this post, we’ll see three of the reviews of the novel, which received wide coverage. Views of the novel were decidedly mixed. Some of the reviews found the subject fresh and intriguing; others found Jackson’s treatment of a complex psychological condition too simplistic, and the resolution inexplicably neat.

The multiple personality trope was pretty unique at the time, leaving some reviewers baffled by the shifting personalities. The New York Times reviewer opined that the plot of The Bird’s Nest was “too bizarre for the necessary suspension of disbelief.”

Contemporary reconsiderations have been kinder to the novel. In a 2014 review in Flavorwire, Tyler Coates wrote, “The Bird’s Nest is a monumental work, not just for spurring a renewed interest into the multiple-personality story, but because its inventive storytelling structure gives a powerful look at a young woman trapped within her own body and mind.”

Three 1954 reviews of The Bird’s Nest

 

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The Sundial (1958)

Though The Sundial was generally well received, Jackson had yet to reach her peak with her fourth novel. A 1958 Chicago Tribune review called it “entertaining, absorbing, and disturbing,” and encapsulated the plot succinctly:

“An oddly assorted group dwells in the Halloran mansion, on a vast, walled estate. It is dominated ruthlessly by Mrs. Halloran, wife of the sickly heir of the founder, who may have murdered her own son to assure her control. Assorted relatives, a governess, and a young man of vague duties are the original entourage to which some random members are added.

To spinsterish Aunt Fanny, the founder’s daughter, a revelation is vouchsafed from her deceased father. The dreadful, fiery end of the world is imminent. All those in the safety of the father’s house will survive, to emerge to a new world.

Through successive revelations, the truth of this apocalypse impresses itself on all the group. The novel follows their preparations for the majestic even as the hour draws near. The suspense becomes great, the events are surprising, but how Miss Jackson plays out her end game is classified information.”

A review of The Sundial

 

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The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

The Haunting of Hill House is a novel in the gothic horror genre, though it might be more accurately described as a literary ghost story. A finalist for the National Book Award, it’s a masterful story of psychological terror.

Hill House is a mansion built by Hugh Crain, who long ago passed away. Dr. John Montague, an investigator of the supernatural, wishes to conduct a study there to find the existence of spirits.

With him are three young companions including Luke, the young heir to the mysterious house, and two young women, Eleanor and Theordora. Eleanor is unquestionably the central character, and a close reading of the novel is an exploration of her essential loneliness and psychological breakdown.

Numerous contemporary writers have sung the praises of The Haunting of Hill House and/or cited it as an influence on their own work. Here is Neil Gaiman, in a New York Times interview (2018):

“The books that have profoundly scared me when I read them … But Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House beats them all: a maleficent house, real human protagonists, everything half-seen or happening in the dark. It scared me as a teenager and it haunts me still, as does Eleanor, the girl who comes to stay.” 

A review and analysis of The Haunting of Hill House

 

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle  (1962) was Jackson’s last published work in her lifetime.  The narrator, Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, lives with her sister and uncle on an isolated estate in rural Vermont.

The Blackwoods have been shunned by the neighbors in the nearby village due to a tragedy — murder by poisoning — that occurred some years earlier. This critically acclaimed novel has been an inspiration to authors that came after who write in the thriller and mystery genres.

The opening paragraph of We Have Always Lived in the Castle is iconic, and pure Shirley Jackson:

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantaganet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.”

A review of We Have Always Lived in the Castle An analysis of We Have Always Lived in the Castle   Shirley Jackson’s books on Bookshop.org*
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The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson — three 1954 reviews

Of Shirley Jackson’s six novels completed within her lifetime, The Bird’s Nest (1954) is less known and read than her 1948 short story, “The Lottery,” or her late novels, The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962).

Yet like all of Jackson’s works, this one is deserving of reconsideration. Though just forty-nine when she died, she left behind a large body of fiction and nonfiction works that have influenced generations of writers who came after her.

Elizabeth Richmond, the novel’s main character, has multiple personality disorder. As she splinters, these beings become Bess, Beth, and Betsy. You’ll find a thorough plot summary here.

Presented here are three reviews of this widely publicized novel, which reflect the decidedly mixed coverage. Some critics found its subject fresh and intriguing; others found the treatment of a complex psychological condition too simplistic and the resolution inexplicably neat.

 

Mixed reviews, and a contemporary reconsideration

Kirkus Reviews offered more of a brief plot summary than a substantive review in 1954, but concluded that for “a special audience, an exploratory of precarious and unpredictable variations, this has a certain fascination.”

The multiple personality trope was pretty unique at the time, leaving some reviewers baffled by the shifting personalities. The 1957 film (based on the book of the same year) The Three Faces of Eve, and later Sybil (1973) and its subsequent television movie would bring the subject to the mainstream.

The New York Times reviewer opined that the plot of The Bird’s Nest was “too bizarre for the necessary suspension of disbelief.” He and other reviewers wondered if psychiatric disorder were a worthy subject for fiction in the first place. Jackson was perturbed by reviewers’ interpretation of Elizabeth’s condition as schizophrenia, which isn’t what she had intended.

Contemporary reconsiderations have been kinder to the novel. In a 2014 review in Flavorwire, Tyler Coates wrote, “The Bird’s Nest is a monumental work, not just for spurring a renewed interest into the multiple-personality story, but because its inventive storytelling structure gives a powerful look at a young woman trapped within her own body and mind.”

 

A misbegotten film adaptation

1957 saw the release of the film adaptation of The Bird’s Nest, retitled Lizzie. Jackson was thrilled with her first sale of film rights but was unhappy with the outcome. Jackson called the movie  “Abbott and Costello meet a multiple personality.”

Ruth Franklin, in Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, wrote:

“… She found it more unnerving than she expected to have her characters come to life on the screen in a way utterly different from how she had imagined them … 

Elizabeth, transformed into ‘Lizzie’ (a character that does not exist in the novel), becomes a drunken slut; Aunt Morgen is bawdy and flirtatious; and the doctor cures his patient with an incoherent combination of Rorschach inkblots, Freudian analysis, and Jungian therapy.

The film was rushed to open ahead of The Three Faces of Eve. But while Eve went on to win an Academy Award, critics were lukewarm on Lizzie. The Newsweek reviewer offered an apt summary: ‘Major mental muddle melodramatized.’”

Following are three reviews that represent varying views of critics. As you’ll see, even these reviews are neither pans nor raves, but fall somewhere in the mixed range. In the tradition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, recognizing that a human can contain multitudes, Shirley Jackson’s mid-twentieth-century eye view is well worth exploring.

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See also: The Haunting of Hill House
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“Four Beings in One Girl’s Body” — a mixed review

From the original review by Florence Zetlin in The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, June 20, 1954: The Bird’s Nest is an extension of the horror themes in Shirley Jackson’s superb story, “The Lottery.”

The hints of black magic and psychological nightmare are here developed into a full-length novel that dwells on the ultimate terror — that the most horrifying of all experiences are those that lie deep within the human psyche and cause one to fear oneself.

Within the personality of one nice, dull young woman we read of an underground conspiracy of antagonistic elements resulting, at first, in a cold war and phony peace. And later, in horrible civil warfare.

At some time lost to conscious memory, Elizabeth R. has forsaken herself as she was meant to be because she had been so terribly frightened by her life, and had managed to contrive for herself an artificial neutrality in which she appears as a listless, amenable, stupid girl.

To stave off the ultimate terror, she invented a number of minor hells for herself: headaches, backaches, and stupidity. At twenty-four, she had no friends, no plans, and no life except her routine job at the Owenstown Museum and a dreary second-hand social life provided by her maiden aunt with whom she lived.

It was when the museum underwent repairs and a gaping hole next to Elizabeth’s desk revealed the decaying skeleton of the old structure that Elizabeth began to behave strangely.

She received a series of disconcerting anonymous letters, which she cherished in spite of their obscene nature. Her headaches grew worse, and most frightening of all, she embarrassed her aunt Morgen by insulting her and her friends with no after-memory of these lapses of decorum.

The museum, with its ill-assorted antiquities, is the metaphor for Elizabeth’s personality. And the gaping fissure that runs through the wall presages the fate of her disrupted mind.

When her alarmed Aunt Morgen got her to a doctor for treatment, Elizabeth’s eyes “held the mute appeal of an animal, hurt beyond understanding and crying for help.” But like an animal, she wouldn’t communicate except with the face of distress. Words would not come.

Dr. Wright tried hypnosis, and to his horror saw her personality spring apart into four separate, independent beings, each struggling for control. Each personality could — and did — take over, involving Elizabeth in episodes of mounting fearfulness.

The author’s equal attraction to the explanations offered by black magic and psychiatry adds to the confusion of the reader in trying to understand what is going on. “Each life,” says Elizabeth, “asks the devouring of other lives for its continuance, the radical aspect of ritual sacrifice … sharing the victim was so eminently practical.”

Shirley Jackson has chosen to write this novel in as many styles as Elizabeth had personalities. The vivid, absorbing writing of “The Lottery” alternated with almost clinical reporting, diffuse dullness, and pompous reflections in the manner of Thackeray. Sometimes the book seems serious, sometimes frivolous.

The author is frequently condescending to her pitiable heroine, contemptuous of her physician, and careless with her readers. No explanation is offered for Elizabeth’s final integration. It just happens and is not at all believable.

Although the book dribbles away at the end, the first half is excellent with one remarkable section that makes for absorbing and moving reading.

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Analysis of We Have Always Lived in the Castle
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“Four-in-One Personalities” — a reviewer is fascinated

From the original review in Wisconsin State Journal, June 20, 1954: Most men are at least two people, let’s say modified versions of Jekyll and Hyde. So, it’s quite appropriate that women, who are twice as complicated as men, should be allowed a four-part disharmony.

Shirley Jackson has written a novel about Elizabeth Richmond, who under hypnotic psychotherapy peels off like an artichoke into disturbing yet highly believable alter egos: Beth, Betsy, and Bess. As any writer who has attempted any such assignment will testify, there is probably no greater challenge to the psychological insight of a dramatist or novelist.

Jackson, it seems to me, has done superlatively in her minute vivisection of her complicated heroine. Writing of a contemporary young woman of upper New York State who seems to be nothing more than a shy and mousy orphan holding down a dull job at the local museum, she soon reveals that Elizabeth is at least as complicated and as fascinating as any multi-role actress.

Elizabeth has a dark secret buried deep in her subconscious — which will not be revealed in this review. Like so many other traumatic experiences from childhood, it’s actually far less sinful than it seems. Layer upon layer of protective substance has been secreted by her Ego to encase this excessive irritant until we have as an end product the flawed, discolored pearl that is Elizabeth Richmond.

When Elizabeth begins to act very strangely, she is taken by her Aunt Morgen (an earthy, sensible soul) to Dr. Wright, an old-fashioned psychiatrist who is dubious of the clap-trap and pompous terminology introduced by the Viennese neurotic, Dr. Freud.

Dr. Wright, whose literary style stems from the Victorian novelists, and who suffered from his own variety of pomposity, begins to unravel the intriguing and exasperating riddle. At varying depths of hypnosis, Elizabeth becomes at least three additional characters.

To quote Dr. Wright’s breakdown of his schizophrenic patient:

“… They were figures in a charade, my four girls: Elizabeth, the numb, the stupid, the inarticulate, but somehow enduring, since she had remained behind to carry on when the rest went under; Beth, the sweet and susceptible; Betsy the wanton and wild, and Bess, the arrogant and cheap.”

It was obvious to the wise old doctor that none of these could be allowed to assume the complete role of Elizabeth Richmond.

If you will think for a few moments of the problem confronting any psychiatrist, novelist, or dramatist faced with such a shattered personality, it will be evident that the two most likely solutions of any such dilemma are either the murder of the other “selves” by the temporarily dominant one (meaning suicide) or eventual understanding and integration.

The “obligatory scene,” as it is called in dramaturgy, cannot avoid being the head-on collision (and its resolution) between the strongest these opposing forces.

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A problem goes unresolved — a skeptic’s review

From the original review in The Daily Record (Long Branch, NJ), June 24, 1954: Elizabeth, Bess, Beth, and Betsy — she is the heroine, they are the heroines of this novel by the author of, among other books, The Road Through the Wall and “The Lottery.”

Twenty-year-old Elizabeth Richmond works in one of those all-purpose museums filled with assorted objetcs, mostly semi-rare, hardly ever rare. It’s a desk job, but the routine is broken by repairs made to the building, and also by the receipt of some mystifying, menacing, illiterate, and insulting letters.

In any case, however, it wouldn’t have taken much to throw her off stride, and we find her at home with her guardian and aunt, Morgen Jones, doing things about which she’s unaware, going to places she doesn’t know about, having inexplicable lapses of memory.

So Aunt Morgen calls in Dr. Wright, who proceeds to summon up the various identities battling for dominance in his patient. In his terms, they’re “Miss R,” “R1,” “R2,” “R3,” “good little girl,” “bad little girl,” and so on. One after another the Three Rs plus take over.

For the first time it seems to me, in the latest of her books, that Miss Jackson, who I would have thought could not falter, has faltered. The idea, for a fictional work, is original. But the confusion over the four-part character of Elizabeth, which remains properly confusing to Elizabeth, is too often confusing to the reader as well.

The abracadabra by which her problem is supposed to be solved does not work. An occasional phrase sounds quaint and old-hat, like something out of Wilkie Collins, and that, too, serves to muddle the author’s intent. This is bold psychological adventuring that doesn’t develop into a good novel.

More about The Bird’s Nest Reader discussion on Goodreads Maternity in Shirley Jackson’s The Bird’s Nest 746 Books

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Quotes from The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson

“Although she would sooner have given up thinking than eating, she resented being pushed into depriving herself of either.”

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“I was thinking what it must feel like to be a prisoner going to die; you stand there looking at the sun and the sky and the grass and the trees, and because it’s the last time you’re going to see them they’re wonderful, full of colors you never noticed before, and bright and beautiful and terribly hard to leave behind.”

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“Now I will be heard, and when I choose to be heard, the lowest legions of hell may turn in vain to silence me and when I choose to speak not all the winds of earth can drown my voice.”

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“No one ever remembers just a bad thing, they remember all around it, all that happened before it and after it, and of course, she told herself consolingly, one bad thing is probably enough.”

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“I reveal myself, then, at last: I am a villain, for I created wantonly, and a blackguard, for I destroyed without compassion; I have no excuse.”

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For a moment, staring, Betsy wanted frantically to rip herself apart, and give half to Lizzie and never be troubled again, saying take this, and take this and take this, and you can have this, and now get out of my sight, get away from my body, get away and leave me alone.”

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“The most important thing she had learned so far — and it was something to know, after only twelve hours – was that she need not pretend, always, to be competent or at home in a strange atmosphere. Other people, she had learned, were frequently uneasy and uncertain, lost their way or their money, were nervous at being approached by strangers or wary of officials.”

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