Nava Atlas's Blog, page 86

Emily Brontë’s Poetry: A 19th-Century Analysis

Emily Brontë is best remembered for her haunting and passionate novel Wuthering Heights, but she has also been recognized as a brilliant poet. Among the three sisters, Emily Brontë’s poetry has been acknowledged as more skillful and moving than that of Charlotte or Anne.

In the mid-1840s, Charlotte discovered a stash of Emily’s poems and recognized the genius in them. She undertook the task of finding a home for a collaborative book of poems by herself and her two sisters. They took masculine noms de plume (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were Currer, Ellis, and Acton, respectively, and shared the faux surname Bell).

The book, dryly titled Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell’s Poems was published in 1846 to absolutely no fanfare and humiliating sales of two copies. Charlotte wrote of her efforts in the Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell, 1850. Undeterred, Charlotte led the charge to find publishers for what were to become some of the landmark works of fiction in the English language.

Emily’s poetry has been admired and reappraised for quite some time. Following is a portion of one such insightful analysis of her poetical work by Mary Robinson, from the 1883 biography, Emily Brontë. You can link to the full article at the end of this post.

No one in the house ever saw what things Emily wrote in the moments of pause from her pastry-making, in those brief sittings under the currants, in those long and lonely watches for her drunken brother. She did not write to be read, but only to relieve a burdened heart.

“One day,” writes Charlotte in 1850, recollecting the near, vanished past, “one day in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a manuscript volume of verse in my sister Emily’s handwriting. Of course I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse. I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me, — a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, not at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy and elevating.”

Very true; these poems with their surplus of imagination, their instinctive music and irregular rightness of form, their sweeping impressiveness, effects of landscape, their scant allusions to dogma or perfidious man, are, indeed, not at all like the poetry women generally write. The hand that painted this single line …

The dim moon struggling in the sky,

… should have shaken hands with Coleridge, the voice might have sung in concert with Blake that sang this single bit of a song:

Hope was but a timid friend;

She sat without the grated den,

Watching how my fate would tend,

Even as selfish-hearted men.

“She was cruel in her fear;

Through the bars, one dreary day,

I looked out to see her there,

And she turned her face away!

Had the poem ended here it would have been perfect, but it and many more of these lyrics have the uncertainty of close that usually marks early work. Often incoherent, too, the pictures of a dream rapidly succeeding each other without logical connection; yet scarcely marred by the incoherence, since the effect they seek to produce is not an emotion, not a conviction, but an impression of beauty, or horror, or ecstasy.

The uncertain outlines are bathed in a vague golden air of imagination, and are shown to us with the magic touch of a Coleridge, a Leopardi—the touch which gives a mood, a scene, with scarce an obvious detail of either mood or scene. We may not understand the purport of the song, we understand the feeling that prompted the song, as, having done with reading ‘Kubla Khan,’ there remains in our mind, not the pictured vision of palace or dancer, but a personal participation in Coleridge’s heightened fancy, a setting-on of reverie, an impression.

Read this poem, written in October, 1845 —

The Philosopher

Enough of thought, philosopher,

Too long hast thou been dreaming

Unlightened, in this chamber drear,

While summer’s sun is beaming!

Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain

Concludes thy musings once again?

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep

Without identity,

And never care how rain may steep,

Or snow may cover me!

No promised heaven, these wild desires

Could all, or half fulfil;

No threatened hell, with quenchless fires,

Subdue this quenchless will!

So said I, and still say the same;

Still, to my death, will say—

Three gods, within this little frame,

Are warring night and day;

Heaven could not hold them all, and yet

They all are held in me,

And must be mine till I forget

My present entity!

Oh, for the time, when in my breast

Their struggles will be o’er!

Oh, for the day, when I shall rest,

And never suffer more!

I saw a spirit, standing, man,

Where thou dost stand an hour ago,

And round his feet three rivers ran,

Of equal depth, and equal flow

A golden stream, and one like blood,

And one like sapphire seemed to be;

But, where they joined their triple flood

It tumbled in an inky sea.

The spirit sent his dazzling gaze

Down through that ocean’s gloomy night

Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,

The glad deep sparkled wide and bright—

White as the sun, far, far more fair,

Than its divided sources were!

And even for that spirit, seer,

I’ve watched and sought my life-time long;

Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air—

An endless search, and always wrong!

Had I but seen his glorious eye

Once light the clouds that ‘wilder me,

I ne’er had raised this coward cry

To cease to think, and cease to be;

I ne’er had called oblivion blest,

Nor, stretching eager hands to death,

Implored to change for senseless rest

This sentient soul, this living breath—

Oh, let me die — that power and will

Their cruel strife may close;

And conquered good, and conquering ill

Be lost in one repose!

You may also enjoy: No Coward Soul is Mine: 5 Poems by Emily Brontë

Some semblance of coherence may, no doubt, be given to this poem by making the three first and the last stanzas to be spoken by the questioner, and the fourth by the philosopher. Even so, the subject has little charm. What we care for is the surprising energy with which the successive images are projected, the earnest ring of the verse, the imagination which invests all its changes. The man and the philosopher are but the clumsy machinery of the magic-lantern, the more kept out of view the better.

“Conquered good and conquering ill!” A thought that must often have risen in Emily’s mind during this year and those succeeding. A gloomy thought, sufficiently strange in a country parson’s daughter; one destined to have a great result in her work.

Of these visions which make the larger half of Emily’s contribution to the tiny book, none has a more eerie grace than this day-dream of the 5th of March, 1844, sampled here by a few verses snatched out of their setting rudely enough:

On a sunny brae, alone I lay

One summer afternoon;

It was the marriage-time of May

With her young lover, June.

****

The trees did wave their plumy crests,

The glad birds carolled clear;

And I, of all the wedding guests,

Was only sullen there.

****

Now, whether it were really so,

I never could be sure,

But as in fit of peevish woe,

I stretched me on the moor,

A thousand thousand gleaming fires

Seemed kindling in the air;

A thousand thousand silvery lyres

Resounded far and near

Methought, the very breath I breathed

Was full of sparks divine,

And all my heather-couch was wreathed

By that celestial shine!

And, while the wide earth echoing rung

To their strange minstrelsy,

The little glittering spirits sung,

Or seemed to sing, to me.”

What they sang is indeed of little moment enough — a strain of the vague pantheistic sentiment common always to poets, but her manner of representing the little airy symphony is charming. It recalls the fairy-like brilliance of the moors at sunset, when the sun, slipping behind a western hill, streams in level rays on to an opposite crest, gilding with pale gold the fawn-coloured faded grass; tangled in the film of lilac seeding grasses, spread, like the bloom on a grape, over all the heath; sparkling on the crisp edges of the heather blooms, pure white, wild-rose colour, shell-tinted, purple; emphasizing every grey-green spur of the undergrowth of ground-lichen; striking every scarlet-splashed, white-budded spray of ling: an iridescent, shimmering, dancing effect of white and pink and purple flowers; of lilac bloom, of grey-green and whitish-grey buds and branches, all crisply moving and dancing together in the breeze on the hilltop. I have quoted that windy night in a line:

The dim moon struggling in the sky.

Here is another verse to show how well she watched from her bedroom’s wide window the grey far-stretching skies above the black far-stretching moors—

And oh, how slow that keen-eyed star

Has tracked the chilly grey;

What, watching yet! how very far

The morning lies away.”

Such direct, vital touches recall well-known passages in Wuthering Heights: Catharine’s pictures of the moors; that exquisite allusion to Gimmerton Chapel bells, not to be heard on the moors in summer when the trees are in leaf, but always heard at Wuthering Heights on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of steady rain.

But not, alas! in such fantasy, in such loving intimacy with nature, might much of Emily’s sorrowful days be passed. Nor was it in her nature that all her dreams should be cheerful. The finest songs, the most peculiarly her own, are all of defiance and mourning, moods so natural to her that she seems to scarcely need the intervention of words in their confession. The wild, melancholy, and elevating music of which Charlotte wisely speaks is strong enough to move our very hearts to sorrow in such verses as the following, things which would not touch us at all were they written in prose; which have no personal note. Yet listen:

Death! that struck when I was most confiding

In my certain faith of joy to be

Strike again, Time’s withered branch dividing

From the fresh root of Eternity!

Leaves, upon Time’s branch, were growing brightly,

Full of sap, and full of silver dew;

Birds beneath its shelter gathered nightly;

Daily round its flowers the wild bees flew.

Sorrow passed, and plucked the golden blossom.

Solemn, haunting with a passion infinitely beyond the mere words, the mere image; because, in some wonderful way, the very music of the verse impresses, reminds us, declares the holy inevitable losses of death.

Read the rest of this analysis on Wikisource, excerpted from Emily Brontë by Mary Robinson, 1883

 

The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë on Amazon

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Emily Brontë’s Poetry: A 19th-Century Analysis appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett (1896)

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah One Jewett (1896) is considered this New England author’s finest work. Neither a novel nor traditional short stories, this book is rather a series of linked sketches of a fictional Maine seaport town called Dunnet Landing.

A quietly evocative writing style conveyed everyday events and quiet emotions, the joys as well as the inevitable losses and hardships experienced the people living in Maine’s coastal fishing villages. Crafting a portrait of a disappearing way of life with this book and the others that she wrote, Jewett helped popularize the genre of regionalism in fiction.

In that way, her work might be seen as a predecessor to the contemporary Maine author Elizabeth Strout, who used a similar device of linked tales in Olive Kitteridge. 

Jewett was a mentor, colleague, and friend of Willa Cather, who admired her greatly. In 1925 (some 16 years after Jewett’s death), she wrote, “If I were asked to name three American books which have the possibility of a long, long, life, I should say at once: The Scarlett Letter, Huckleberry Finn, and The Country of the Pointed Firs. I think of no others that confront time and change so serenely.  The last book seems to  me fairly to shine with reflection of its long joyous future.”

More about Sarah Orne Jewett

Unfortunately, The Country of the Pointed Firs doesn’t stand among the American classics that are still read and studied. Cather modestly left out her own books that have become classics (O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia came out the decade before she made this statement; Death Comes for the Archbishop, considered one of her finest novels, would be published in 1927).

Willa Cather did recognize that The Country of the Pointed Firs was Sarah Orne Jewett’s masterpiece. It was well regarded in its time, and it’s never too late to rediscover a worthy classic. Following is a review that captured the spirit of this book, from the year in  which it was published. 

An 1896 review of The Country of the Pointed Firs

From the original review of  The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah One Jewett in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 6, 1896): Sarah One Jewett’s latest volume, The County of the Pointed Firs, is a delightful book. The title is attractive and you begin, thinking you have a story here, some romance of that quaint Maine coast and its people.

You read, turning page after page, charged with the dainty landscape pictures and with the half-humorous, half-pathetic, yet wholly human and natural sketches of the odd individualities which the author finds among them. You are waiting all the while for the story to begin and the plot to develop, when, lo, the end is reached, and there is no plot, only a series of bright and sunny sketches, flecked here and there, like the landscape, with bits of cloud shadows.

It is a tale of a summer spent in one of the nooks of the Maine coast, away from the currents of tourist travel. The author’s method is so entirely natural and unaffected that you do not suspect the art of it until the last leaf is turned and your are in a condition of pleased surprise to find how you have been beguiled.

The Country of the Pointed Firs on Amazon

Her quick sympathy and abiding regard for the sterling hearted, simple folk about her has helped her to catch impressions that are photographic for clearness and fidelity to nature, while her pictures are as full of warmth and color as a June day on the landlocked, island-studded bay which fronts the country of her sojourn.

There is no searching for queer characters, no straining for dialect effects. The author takes the people as she finds them, those that cross her path every day, and sets them in a series of miniatures that are wonderfully lifelike. You feel that you know them.

You are on a familiar footing with the strong-minded, masterful, yet wholly womanly Mrs. Almira Todd, and take a keen interest in her “her decoctions.” The visiting friend, Mrs. Fosdick, is another exquisite bit of character drawing, while the pictures of Mrs. Todd’s mother, the sweet, simple hearted, lovely old woman, whom you visit at her island farm home, are as fine as a nosegay of mignonette from her old-fashioned garden.

The descriptions of the mustering of the clans of the Bowden family at the old homestead, back among the hills, and of the people encountered there, the ride to and from the rendezvous in the high wagon from the Beggses, is a bit of exceptionally fine literary work, full of mental snapshots that are perfect in their realism. We do not think this author has ever done better work than she has given us in The Country of the Pointed Firs.

How The Country of the Pointed Firs begins …

I. THE RETURN

There was something about the coast town of Dunnet which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine. Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges by the Landing. These houses made the most of their seaward view, and there was a gayety and determined floweriness in their bits of garden ground; the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore and its background of spruces and balsam firs. When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

After a first brief visit made two or three summers before in the course of a yachting cruise, a lover of Dunnet Landing returned to find the unchanged shores of the pointed firs, the same quaintness of the village with its elaborate conventionalities; all that mixture of remoteness, and childish certainty of being the centre of civilization of which her affectionate dreams had told. One evening in June, a single passenger landed upon the steamboat wharf. The tide was high, there was a fine crowd of spectators, and the younger portion of the company followed her with subdued excitement up the narrow street of the salt-aired, white-clapboarded little town.

More about The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Full text of the Country of the Pointed Firs on Project Gutenberg
Audio recording on Librivox

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing

The post The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett (1896) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

One of Ours by Willa Cather (1922) – two reviews

One of Ours by Willa Cather is a 1922 novel telling the story of Claude Wheeler, the son of a Nebraska farmer and a religious mother. He drifts through what seems to be a predictable life, devoid of purpose, until he goes to war in Europe. Though it won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, it received mixed reviews.

Critics panned its idealized view of World War I. Acid-penned literary legend H.L. Mencken, for example, wrote that her depiction of war “drops precipitately to the level of a serial in The Lady’s Home Journal … fought out not in France, but on a Hollywood movie-lot.”

Other critics and fellow authors, including Ernest Hemingway, who had actually seen military duty, agreed. They found her view of war as a salvation of Claude’s otherwise meaningless life to be grossly sentimentalized. One of Ours was published the same year as Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos, to which it was often compared unfavorably. Three Soldiers, also a novel, offered an anti-war perspective. 

Still, with One of Ours, Willa Cather gained a greater readership, and some critics thought it was a fine piece of writing. Evidently the Pulitzer committee did as well. In a detailed essay titled Willa Cather’s One of Ours and the Iconography of War, Steven Strout noted:

“In 1987 James Woodress, Cather’s foremost biographer, claimed that the harsh response the novel provoked in several reviewers (most notably H. L. Mencken) stemmed from inattentive reading: such reviewers ‘did not read the novel carefully to see that Cather had no illusions about the war’ and ‘simply ignored the fact that the novel is told mostly from Claude’s point of view.'”

Contemporary reviews by readers on Goodreads are somewhat mixed but largely positive, so it may be interesting to revisit this lesser-known novel by one of America’s great authors. Here are two opposing views from the time the novel was published in September, 1922:

A positive review of One of Ours

From the original review in New York Herald Sun, September, 1922: Willa Cather has one of the necessary ingredients of genius––the capacity for taking infinite pains––in liberal measure. There is never anything slipshod or hasty about her work. It is several yeas since she has published a novel, and two years since her volume of short stories. Now in this she shows not only the brilliancy and power of her earlier stories but also a broader, deeper maturity.

She is dealing gravely with serious things and speaking of them out of a profound and accurate knowledge of life. If her understanding of the makeup of human creatures is not so wide in its scope as that, for example, of Mrs. Watts or Mrs. Deland, she is wise enough to keep out of unknown, or inexperienced territory.

This novel is built upon a large scale, and if there is any room for slight fault finding, it is, perhaps, a little too long. It does not drag, but is sometimes slightly overelaborated. Yet one would regret the omission of any of its incident, as it is all so good in quality even where the particular incident may be redundant. She is never prosy, but she sometimes does hold on to one note a bit longer than necessary.

The story is very definitely that of one young man. Claude Wheeler is more than a leading figure; he is overshadowingly the whole story, all the other characters being entirely subsidiary, of little importance except as they touch upon him and affect him. We are looking at life, almost all the time, through his eyes; he is done from the inside while the others are more externalized, as we see them, for the most part, also through his vision of them. It is a method that has marked advantages, especially in that it keeps the novel a unit.

The story takes Claude from his nineteenth year through his unhappy youth, his uninterrupted education, his mistaken marriage, and the war up to his gallant death in action shortly before the armistice.

He is the second son of very well to do people living on a farm near a minor town in Nebraska. His father is a man of force, but of rather course fiber; not exactly harsh or unkind, but out of sympathy with the finer things of life and capable of small cruelties which seem to him to be comic. He despises his older son, Bayliss, who is a cold, selfish, small souled and physically weak creature, but he can get on with him. He also understands his younger son, Ralph, but Claude is of a different makeup, and there is sympathy between them. Claude is not the kind to fit into any of the accepted grooves as ordained in the custom of his neighborhood. He is an idealist, but withal solid in his idealism. He aspires to something beyond the ambitions of his associates and does not feel that life is very well worth while if it means no more than earning a living.

He is sent to a small and feeble denominational college at Lincoln, and his mother is emphatically pious, a staunch believer of the old school. Not that there is anything fanatic about her, but she is incapable of understanding the mental attitude of the younger generation and fears that the State University is a godless institution, and therefore corrupting. Claude is in sullen rebellion, but at last manages to matriculate as a special student in his history at the university and begins to perk up. He also falls in with enlightening friends––of German ancestry, and some of German birth. But at that point his father decides he wants Claude at home, to run his farm.

Next comes marriage, largely due to the accident of propinquity, with the beautiful but very thin souled Enid. As the one woman who really understood something of him puts it: “If he married Enid, that would be the end. He would go about strong and heavy, like Mr. Royce (Enid’s father), a big machine with the springs broken inside.” And so it turned out. enid finally leaves him to go to China to look after a missionary sister of hers who is ill. But she has completed the wreckage of Claude’s life in most essentials.

Then comes the war, and way out for him. He finds himself, at last, in the trenches, but death is the only real release for such a spirit. Space limits forbid any detailed examination of the war chapters, but they may be recommended as one of the finest and most moving presentations of the American soldier and his reactions in France that has as yet appeared. The larger impression of America in the war is also accurate and grimly critical as well as understanding. Miss Cather knows her Nebraska and the middle Western type with its faults as well as its splendid virtues. The book is a very fine, strong piece of work.

One of Ours by Willa Cather on Amazon

A critical review of One of Ours

From the original review in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 9, 1922: Willa Cather’s One of Ours should be read in conjunction with Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos, because of the tremendous differences between the two novels, although both deal with the reactions of a soul caught in the turmoil of the great war.

Three Soldiers was criticized severely in some quarters for its raw and unpatriotic realism which laid bare the horrors and stupidities of war. That criticism was on the ground of the undesirable propaganda. On this ground no such objection can be raised to Willa Cather’s story. One of Ours shows war to be rather a beautiful thing. Its total effect is that of a recruiting pamphlet or a morale lecture by a YMCA secretary. It holds out the organized international slaughter which started in 1911 as the great event that stirred the world; that brought wider social interests to hitherto narrow souls; that gave new and interesting experiences to the dull farmer’s boy from the Middle West; that brought 2,000,000 men of Puritan America in personal contact with the great things of Europe and the Far East. It constitutes a paean of the Mad War.

As such propaganda, as a justification for the war, One of Ours must be dismissed by all but the relentless militarist or the relentless sentimentalist. There is some excuse in reason for organized war on the ground of patriotism. After all, your own country comes first and if the less-intelligent and less-civilized foreigners insist on fighting or insulting us we must be ready to fight back. We must be prepared or be annihilated. There may be a fallacy in this argument, but on the surface is has the appearance of logic.

But in One of Ours this consideration does not enter. War is found useful, however, because its “educational” value; not to the race but to the individual. Claude Wheeler has grown up on a dull farm in Iowa, has married a dull and uninspiring wife and is apparently scheduled to live the rest of his life and die in perfect dullness. He has had yearnings for better things, for a more joyous and pagan existence, but his surroundings are too much for him. The influences of a Puritan mother, of a stupid, small mid-Western community are all for property and religion and a scheme of life in which beauty and adventure are counted sinful. Internally dissatisfied, he nevertheless gives up.

And then comes the war with its larger patriotic urge. Claude enlists and becomes a lieutenant. He conducts men across the ocean and into the front line trenches. Physically miserable, he finds spiritual satisfaction in leading good men in the good fight. He lives a fuller life in 50 days than was possible in a cycle of Iowa. And he dies a glorious death.

Now, by no stretch of an elastic logic can it be argued that the case has been proven. Whatsoever may be the spiritual advantages accruing to a Claude Wheeler, these cannot ever be enough to justify a war, with its death and misery, in the lines and behind, to those for whom it was not an adventure. However much Claude Wheeler may have needed the uplifting experience, that did not justify his killing of a single stupid German for the leading to his death of a single private soldier of his own company.

Of course the truth is that war, and the army experience, has no such “educational” value as the moral lecturers would have it. The cultural levels of any army is very low and therefore could educate only those who come to it from a level of culture still lower. For that reason Willa Cather wisely picker her protagonist out of an environment of stifling stupidity. That there are many such in the country and in the world is still insufficient reason for inaugurating a general blood-letting for their entertainment and enlightenment.

As a study in the psychology of a morbid farmer’s boy who might have got more fun out of life than he did with a little more daring in his mental make-up, One of Ours makes a better showing. Willa Cather has delineated the planess, hit-or-miss progress of Claude Wheeler’s timid soul with great detail.

For this reason, the story suffers. It has little narrative compulsion about it. The tide of event drifts hither and yon and Claude Wheeler drifts with it. If he would only strike out now and again in the direction he wants to take, there would be more dramatic events, a better story. But he doesn’t. One of Ours is a well written story but of a dull life.

See also: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

More about One of Ours by Willa Cather

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Full text of One of Ours on Project Gutenberg
Listen to One of Ours on Librivox

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post One of Ours by Willa Cather (1922) – two reviews appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

11 Poems by Helene Johnson

Helene Johnson (July 7, 1906 – July 7, 1995) was an African-American poet during the Harlem Renaissance. She was born in Boston and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts.

The themes of her poems explore the gender and racial politics of the era in which she wrote, primarily in the late 1920s. Following are 11 of Helene Johnson’s poems, worth reflecting on and reconsidering.

“Bottled” and “Ah My Race” are arguably her most famous poems. “Bottled” needs an introduction and context, without which it can be misconstrued. It was first published in 1927 in the May issue of Vanity Fair. Katherine R. Lynes in Project Muse offers much insight into the story behind the poem:

“In ‘Bottled,’ Johnson puts authentic and inauthentic into dialogue when she puts an imagined African jungle into a poem set on the real streets of New York City. The speaker of the poem admires the (imagined) cultural adornments and proud dancing of a man in the streets of Harlem. The speaker reports that he dances to jazz, American music that has some of its roots in Africa but is not in and of itself wholly African; she also imagines this man as he would be if he were in Africa. He functions as a cultural object in the poem, a cultural object with contested authenticities. Johnson’s use of a mixture of cultural tropes reveals her awareness of and attentiveness to theories of cultural relativism.” 

Read the rest of her analysis at Project Muse.

Bottled

Upstairs on the third floor

Of the 135th Street library

In Harlem, I saw a little

Bottle of sand, brown sand

Just like the kids make pies

Out of down at the beach.

But the label said: “This

Sand was taken from the Sahara desert. ”

Imagine that! The Sahara desert!

Some bozo’s been all the way to Africa to get some sand.

And yesterday on Seventh Avenue

I saw a darky dressed fit to kill

In yellow gloves and swallow tail coat

And swirling a cane. And everyone

Was laughing at him. Me too,

At first, till I saw his face

When he stopped to hear a

Organ grinder grind out some jazz.

Boy! You should a seen that darky’s face!

It just shone. Gee, he was happy!

And he began to dance. No

Charleston or Black Bottom for him.

No sir. He danced just as dignified

And slow. No, not slow either.

Dignified and proud! You couldn’t

Call it slow, not with all the

Cuttin’ up he did. You would a died to see him.

The crowd kept yellin’ but he didn’t hear,

Just kept on dancin’ and twirlin’ that cane

And yellin’ out loud every once in a while.

I know the crowd thought he was coo-coo.

But say, I was where I could see his face,

And somehow, I could see him dancin’ in a jungle,

A real honest-to-cripe jungle, and he wouldn’t have on them

Trick clothes — those yaller shoes and yaller gloves

And swallow-tail coat. He wouldn’t have on nothing.

And he wouldn’t be carrying no cane.

He’d be carrying a spear with a sharp fine point

Like the bayonets we had “over there.”

And the end of it would be dipped in some kind of

Hoo-doo poison. And he’d be dancin’ black and naked and gleaming.

And he’d have rings in his ears and on his nose

And bracelets and necklaces of elephants’ teeth.

Gee, I bet he’d be beautiful then all right.

No one would laugh at him then, I bet.

Say! That man that took that sand from the Sahara desert

And put it in a little bottle on a shelf in the library,

That’s what they done to this shine, ain’t it? Bottled him.

Trick shoes, trick coat, trick cane, trick everything — all glass —

But inside —

Gee, that poor shine!

The Sandman

He catches dust o’ dreams to carry in his sack,

The dust a falling star leaves shining in its track,

He walks the milky-way, then down the dark-staired skies,

His tinkling footsteps hush the world with lullabies.

And when he reaches you, his fragrant gentle hands

Fill deep your drowsy eyes with fairy golden sands.

Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem

You are disdainful and magnificant—

Your perfect body and your pompous gait,

Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate,

Small wonder that you are incompetent

To imitate those whom you so despise—

Your shoulders towering high above the throng,

Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song,

Palm trees and mangoes stretched before your eyes.

Let others toil and sweat for labor’s sake

And wring from grasping hands their need of gold.

Why urge ahead your supercilious feet?

Scorn will efface each footprint that you make.

I love your laughter arrogant and bold.

You are too splendid for this city street.

A Missionary Brings a Young Native to America

All day she heard the mad stampede of feet

Push by her in a thick unbroken haste.

A thousand unknown terrors of the street

Caught at her timid heart, and she could taste

The city of grit upon her tongue. She felt

A steel-spiked wave of brick and light submerge

Her mind in cold immensity. A belt

Of alien tenets choked the songs that surged

Within her when alone each night she knelt

At prayer. And as the moon grew large and white

Above the roof, afraid that she would scream

Aloud her young abandon to the night,

She mumbled Latin litanies and dream

Unholy dreams while waiting for the light.

The Road

Ah, little road all whirry in the breeze,

A leaping clay hill lost among the trees,

The bleeding note of rapture streaming thrush

Caught in a drowsy hush

And stretched out in a single singing line of dusky song.

Ah little road, brown as my race is brown,

Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride,

Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you down.

Rise to one brimming golden, spilling cry!

You might also like

Renaissance Women: 12 Female Writers of the Harlem Renaissance

Metamorphism

Is this the sea?

This calm emotionless bosom,

Serene as the heart of a converted Magdalene ––

Or this?

This lisping, lulling murmur of soft waters

Kissing a white beached shore with tremulous lips;

Blue rivulets of sky gurgling deliciously

O’er pale smooth-stones ––

This too?

This sudden birth of unrestrained splendour,

Tugging with turbulent force at Neptune’s leash;

This passionate abandon,

This strange tempestuous soliloquy of Nature,

All these –– the sea?

Poem
Little brown boy,

Slim, dark, big-eyed,

Crooning love songs to your banjo

Down at the Lafayerre —

Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,

High sort of and a bit to one side,

Like a prince, a jazz prince. And I love

Your eyes flashing, and your hands,

And your patent-leathered feet,

And your shoulders jerking the jig-wa.

And I love your teeth flashing,

And the way your hair shines in the spotlight

Like it was the real stuff.

Gee, brown boy, I loves you all over.

I’m glad I’m a jig. I’m glad I can

Understand your dancin’ and your

Singin’, and feel all the happiness

And joy and don’t care in you.

Gee, boy, when you sing, I can close my ears

And hear tom-toms just as plain.

Listen to me, will you, what do I know

About tom-toms? But I like the word, sort of,

Don’t you? It belongs to us.

Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,

And the way you sing, and dance,

And everything.

Say, I think you’re wonderful. You’re

Allright with me,

You are.

A Southern Road
Yolk-colored tongue

Parched beneath a burning sky,

A lazy little tune

Hummed up the crest of some

Softs sloping hill.

One streaming line of beauty

Flowering by a forest

Pregnant with tears.

A hidden nest for beauty

Idly flung ny God

In one lonely lingering hour

Before the Sabbath.

A blue-fruited black gum,

Like a tall predella,

Bears a dangling figure,—

Sacrificial dower to the raff, Swinging alone,

A solemn, tortured shadow in the air.

Fulfillment

To climb a hill that hungers for the sky,

To dig my hands wrist deep in pregnant earth,

To watch a young bird, veering, learn to fly,

To give a still, stark poem shining birth.

Ah My Race

Ah my race,

Hungry race,

Throbbing and young —

Ah, my race,

Wonder race,

Sobbing with song,

Ah, my race,

Careless in mirth

Ah, my veiled race,

Fumbling in birth.

He’s About 22, I’m 63

He’s about 22. I’m 63

A pity! He’s so pretty!

He runs up the stairs.

I climb step by step.

We’ve never really met, and yet

If I could stop him, what would I say?

“How’s my young man today?”

Absurd! He’d give the sweet unspecial smile

You give a sweet unspecial child.

At most, some gingham word.

He’s slightly effete, completely elite,

His grace unsurpassed, a young prince at mass.

My cardiac wheezing is frantic and panting.

He’s enchanting!

Why was he born so late,

And I so soon?

A turn of chance

The nearest happenstance,

But move, if you’re that

Upset.

Then I won’t know if I fit,

Whether to sit back and

Sit, or quit altogether.

To wit.

Do I have it, or is it gone?

Do I still belong? Can I bluff?

Suppose he turns schoolboy-tough?

Oh, it’s all too much!

Look, get his name from the mailbox

And see if he’s in the book.

Well, it won’t hurt to look.

Here it is.

Then phone. If he’s divine,

He’s probably at home, a “want-to-be-alone”

My God, he is home!

6D? 6C.

I’m so sorry but my zipper’s caught,

With my hair in it.

Yes, it is ridiculous,

But would you? For just a minute?

Come in. The doors unlocked.

God! He glows! And even younger than I thought.

You knew all that before.

You’re becoming a bore.

But how can I reach him?

Teach him, then beseech him.

He seems a little scattered.

How does it really matter? At 22, at 63,

Any eccentricity?

But will it all be left to me?

Certainly.

That’s the idea.

Breathe heavily

(Asthma with rhythm)

You mean, a mini-cataclysm?

Yes. More or less.

Relax. It isn’t worth the

Sweat. Don’t forget, its luck, not skill.

He’s virile?

Puerile.

How droll.

But better droll than cold, and no reason for

distress. Last night

You had far less.

You’re right.

Last night the futile-victory

The lonely ecstasy

The peakless summit

The remote spasm

The chasm, the gap,

the hi without the hoe.

Tonight I might not touch the sky

But I’ll be on tippy-toe.

So,

Burgeoning 22,

Ripening 63,

Enjoying your buoyancy.

Whisper triumphantly,

“Merci, Merci.”

(Or less jubilantly, “Mercy!”)

The post 11 Poems by Helene Johnson appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Helene Johnson

Helen Johnson (July 7, 1906 – July 6, 1995) later nicknamed Helene, was an African-American poet during the Harlem Renaissance era, born in Boston and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts. Shortly after her birth, her father left, leaving her to be raised by her mother, Ella, and grandfather, Benjamin Benson, who was born into slavery.

Helene Johnson grew up surrounded by her mother and aunts, a group of strong women who later influenced her strong voice in poetry. She was also the cousin to novelist and short-story writer Dorothy West.

While living in Brookline, Johnson joined the Saturday Evening Quill Club and won a short story contest in the Boston Chronicle. She later continued on to attend classes at Boston University, but never graduated. The themes of Johnson’s poems are often viewed as erotic, exploring the gender and racial politics of the 1920’s Harlem Renaissance. “Bottled” is one of her most famous poems, published in 1927 in the May issue of Vanity Fair. 

Rise to recognition

Johnson began publishing poetry in African-American magazines such as the NAACP’s The Crisis, which was founded in 1910 and edited by W.E.B. Du Bois. She began to attract attention when she was published in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life in 1925 when she was 19 years-old. A year later, the journal published six of her poems.

Her work was in the first and only issue of Fire, a publication edited by Langston Hughes, a driving force himself during the Harlem Renaissance.

This photo of Helene Johnson is inscribed to “Dorothy,”

presumably Dorothy West, her cousin

Johnson and her cousin, Dorothy West, were drawn to the energy of Harlem in the 1920’s. In 1927, the two moved to New York, and enrolled in classes at Columbia University, eventually developing a friendship with writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.

Johnson became deeply engrossed in the struggles of the economic and racial divide in Harlem, and wrote passionately about these issues. She was later described as a writer who “… combines an expression of unquenchable desires with realistic description of ghetto life and a discovery of the roots of her people.” 

Although she didn’t graduate from Columbia, Johnson’s talent earned praise from her professors, and she was compared in form and style to Langston Hughes.

Motherhood and marriage a priority

In 1933 Johnson’s dreams of motherhood and family came true when she married William Hubbell. In 1935, her last published poems appeared in Challenge: A Literary Quarterly. She focused her attention and time on their daughter, Abigail. She and Hubbell later divorced.

You might also like: 12 Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance

“Ah My Race”

Readers began to take notice when Johnson’s poem “Bottled” containing innovative slang and unconventional rhythms was published in Vanity Fair, in the May edition of 1927. A similar piece is reproduced here, a short poem called “Ah My Race”:

Ah my race,

Hungry Race,

Throbbing and young–

Ah, my race,

Wonder race,

Sobbing with song,

Ah, my race,
Careless in mirth, Ah, my veiled race, Fumbling in birth

Powerful female voice

Although described as being a painfully shy child, her voice blossomed in poetry. Much of Johnson’s upbringing inspired her poetry, when she became independent at an early age. Her poetry conveys a powerful female perspective and influence. Her 1925 poem, “Ah My Race” boldly challenges the feminine themes of love and motherhood. Poet Rita Dove said of her work:

“Helene Johnson proved herself a lyricist of utmost delicacy yet steely precision; restraint attends her every meditation on love, race and loss.”

Helene Johnson was a brilliant yet under-appreciated woman poet of the Harlem Renaissance, partly in part to her disappearance  from the literary scene after she started her family. Johnson valued the working class and took pride in their accomplishments, capturing in her poetry the voice and rhythms of the streets of Harlem.

Much of her poetry was written for her own interest and pleasure, with little intention to be published. Indeed, there are no published collections of her works; they are scattered among journals and magazines.

After her last published work appeared in Challenge: A Literary Quarterly, it is believed that she continued to write at least one poem every day for the rest of her life.

Johnson died in her Manhattan home at the age of 89.

6 Classic African-American Women Authors You Should Know More About

More information

Wikipedia
My Poetic Site
Helene Johnson, Poet of Harlem, 89, Dies
Goodreads: Helene Johnson

Selected works

“Trees at Night” – Opportunity (May 1925)
“Night” – Opportunity (January 1926)
“Metamorphism” – Opportunity (March 1926)
“Fulfillment” – Opportunity (June 1926)
“Fiat Lux” – The Messenger (July 1926)
“The Little Love” – The Messenger (July 1926)
“Futility” – Opportunity (August 1926)
“Mother” – Opportunity (September 1926)
“Love in Midsummer” – The Messenger (October 1926)
“Magula” – Palms (October 1926)
“Bottled” – Vanity Fair (May 1927)
“Poem” – Caroling Dusk (1927)
”Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem” – Caroling Dusk (1927)
“What Do I Care For Morning” – Caroling Dusk (1927)
“A Missionary Brings a Young Native to America” – Harlem (November 1928)
“Cui Bono?” – Harlem (November 1928)
“I Am Not Proud” – Saturday Evening Quill (April 1929)

Biography

This Waiting for Love: Helene Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Mitchell, Verner D. ed. 2000

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Helene Johnson appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier (May 13, 1907 – April 19, 1989) was a British novelist, playwright, and short story writer. She was born in London and grew up in a creative family, inspiring her to begin her writing career at an early age. Her family’s connection to the literary and theater communities was helpful in getting her career under way.

Du Maurier wrote intriguing works with elements of romance and suspense. These ‘simple’ works were sometimes criticized because they were seen as lacking depth or intellect, a view that has since been revised.

Early work

Daphne du Maurier was one of three daughters of Sir Gerald du Maurier, a well-known actor. Educated by private tutors in Paris, she began publishing articles and short stories when she was in her late teens.

Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, when she was only 22 years old. Set in the early 1800s, it tells the story of four generations of one family. The novel captured the attention of a young British army major, Frederick A.M. “Boy” Browning. He resolved to meet the author, and traveled to Paris to find her. They met the following year in 1932 and married a few months later.

Her first novel was followed closely by I’ll Never be Young Again, which the author herself dismissed as “rather woman’s magazine-y.”

Du Maurier’s Rebecca: A Worthy “Eyre” Apparent

Rebecca and other film adaptations

Jamaica Inn, du Maurier’s 1936 novel, is a period piece set in the 1920s, in the author’s beloved Cornwall. It was her big breakthrough, becoming a bestseller. 1938’s Rebecca was an even greater instant success, and remains her best known and most influential novel. This modern gothic tale has inspired a legion of works by other writers, and is itself an homage (intended or not) to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

The story is cleverly told by the shy and awkward young bride of Maxim de Winter, who is, like the other inhabitants of Manderley castle, haunted by the shadow by her husband’s deceased first wife, Rebecca. The book sold more than a million copies in hard cover alone and was reprinted numerous times, and translated into a number of languages.

Rebecca was the basis of the classic 1940 film of the same title starring Joan Fontaine and Lawrence Olivier. In addition to Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, as well as her short story “The Birds” were also made into films. Altogether, six of her novels became movies, many by Alfred Hitchcock. Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now was adapted from her novella of the same name. 

A reconsideration of her work

While she was alive, Daphne du Maurier often resented the fact that she wasn’t being taken seriously enough as a fine writer; the commercial success of her books worked against her in that way. But modern re-evaluations of her work bestow greater appreciation for her artistry.

In an article in The Telegraph referencing the 2017 remake of the film My Cousin Rachel, Tammy Cohen encapsulated why du Maurier has been such a great influence on those who came after her. On Rebecca, she writes:

“Only on re-reading some years later did I pick up on the subtler joys of the book: the compelling, dreamlike writing, the brooding sense of place, the growing menace which creeps up on you so slowly it’s like looking up from an engrossing book to find the sky outside has darkened and the radiator long since grown cold … in many ways Daphne du Maurier was the architect of modern domestic noir.

She was the progenitor of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. Her stories involve double lives, complex characters who simultaneously embody both good and evil, and a dark seam of suppressed violence and mistrust which runs through almost every relationship.”

Read about Du Maurier’s Writing Habits and Style

Becoming Lady Browning, and family life

Her husband served as commander of British Airborne Forces in World War II, then as treasurer for Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, after which he was made a nobleman. She was, by default, made Lady Browning when he received that honor in 1946.

The Brownings had three children; two daughters and a son. They preferred to live out of the spotlight.

More accomplishments

Daphne du Maurier is best remembered for half a dozen or so books, perhaps not coincidentally, those that were adapted to film. But she was beyond prolific — her publishing credits include nearly forty novels and short story collections. She wrote nonfiction as well, including some memoirs of her own family, the talented du Mauriers.

She was deeply influenced by and inspired by the Brontë sisters, so it’s fitting that among her nonfiction titles is The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960), a portrait of the troubled brother of the literary sisters that she admired.

It’s not often noted that du Maurier was also a playwright. She wrote three plays that were produced on the British stage. The first was an adaptation of Rebecca, which opened in 1940 at the Queen’s Theatre in London. Next was The Years Between, staged first at the Manchester Opera House in 1944, and then at Wyndham’s Theatre in 1945. Finally, September Tide opened at the Aldwych Theatre in 1938. All three plays were successful, particularly The Years Between.

A private person

As she gained fame, du Maurier remained down to earth, and did her best to avoid publicity. “I can’t say I really like people,” she once said, “Perhaps that’s why I always preferred to create my own instead of mixing with real ones.” She was able to indulge her introvert tendencies at the mansion she and her husband least, Menabilly, on the Cornish coast of Britain. Cornwall, the beautiful English province, inspired the settings of many of her thrilling novels of romance and suspense.

A gardener’s hut served as her writer’s hideaway.  She said, “I’d sit for hours on end, chain-smoking, chewing mints and tapping away at my typewriter.” 

Du Maurier liked her privacy. Because she was rarely forthcoming and gave few interviews, many rumors were floated about her personality and private life, most of which proved untrue.

Daphne du Maurier page on Amazon

Later years

“Boy” Browning died in 1965. In 1969, she became Dame Daphne du Maurier in her own right for her literary accomplishments. She moved from Menabilly to nearby Par with her two Yorkshire terriers. She rented another mansion, Kilmarth. There she wrote The House on the Strand (1969) and Rule Britannia (1972), her last two novels. Curiously, despite the wealth she attained in her lifetime, she always rented, and never owned a home.

Daphne du Maurier believed in the capacity of each individual for evil as well as good, and many of her main characters struggle with that choice. Perhaps that’s one of the factors that make her books so timeless. Many believe that she didn’t get the respect due her as a dedicated and talented writer.

Up until about two weeks before her death, she took daily walks with her dog around the Cornish village near her home, where she indulged her introvert tendencies. Daphne du Maurier died quietly in her sleep in 1989 at age 81.

More about Daphne Du Maurier on this site

Du Maurier’s Rebecca: A Worthy “Eyre” Apparent by Jonathan Yardley
Words of Wisdom from Daphne Du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier: Her Writing Habits and Style by Tony Riches
Quotes from Rebecca
8 Facts about Daphne du Maurier and Her Literary Life
Dear Literary Ladies: How Can I Celebrate Literary Success?

Major works – Novels

The Loving Spirit   (1931)
Jamaica Inn   (1936)
Rebecca   (1938)
Frenchman’s Creek   (1941)
Hungry Hill (1943)
The Scapegoat  (1957)
My Cousin Rachel  (1951)
The Glass-Blowers (1963)
The Birds and Other Stories (1963)
The House on the Strand   (1969)
Rule Britannia (1972)

Major works – Plays

Rebecca  (1940 – adaptation of her own novel)
The Years Between  (1945)
September Tide  (1948)

Biographies about Daphne Du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier: A Daughter’s Memoir by Flavia Leng
Daphne du Maurier: A Haunted Heiress by Nina Auerbach
Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster

More Information

Wikipedia
Reader discussion of du Maurier’s books on Goodreads

Selected film adaptations of Daphne du Maurier’s works

Jamaica Inn (1939)
The Birds (1963)
Rebecca  (1940)
Rebecca  (2003)
Frenchman’s Creek (2006, Masterpiece Theater)

See also: Words of Wisdom from Daphne Du Maurier

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Daphne du Maurier appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald

Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald (1954) is a humorous memoir about the author’s life in Washington State with her family. Taking place in the mid-twentieth century, the events described take place from 1942 to 1954.

Betty, a divorced working mother, lives with her two preteen daughters in her mother’s home. After she meets and marries Donald MacDonald, they find it difficult to find one in Seattle or its suburbs, and finally settle on a property on nearby Vashon Island.

The tale follows the familiar trope of city folks finding themselves in way over their heads when moving to the country, and all the little disasters that follow when buying a house that turns out to be a money pit. In the hands of Betty MacDonald, who made her name with the first of her series of memoirs, The Egg and I (1945), it all becomes wryly good-natured fun. The title comes from a poem by Charles Divine:

“Some said it was Bohemia, this little haunt we knew

When hearts were high and fortunes low, and onions in the stew.”

Here’s a description of the book by John P. Marquand for Book of the Month Club News, provided when the book was released in 1955:

Red-ink budgets, balky plumbing, and noodles

Anyone who can write with genuine joy, gusto, and enthusiasm regarding the vicissitudes of home, husband, dogs, and children commands an enormous audience. This of course has been the deserved good fortune of Betty MacDonald ever since The Egg and I appeared in 1945. She is a girl who seems to enjoy every moment of living, not matter how or where.

She has coped with red-ink budgets, balky plumbing, and nothing in the kitchen but noodles. She has lived through dog fights, measles, and all the usual and unusual cataclysms of nature. But even when domestic morale has sunk to the bottom of the barrel, she and everyone around her have had a wonderful time.

Because of her ability to tell a good story, this joie de vivre is communicated to all who read her pages. Her latest book, in my opinion, her best to date. Onions in the Stew is a homely title, but then it is a homely book, brimming over with incidents of everyday life — some of which we have experienced ourselves, others which Betty MacDonald enables us to live vicariously and with unalloyed delight.

You might also like: The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald

City folks on the frontier

Onions in the Stew is a saga of domestic life on Vashon Island, which lies in Puget Sound within commuting distance of the city of Seattle, Washington. If one thinks that Vashon Island — complete with Betty MacDonald, her husband Don, her daughters Anne and Josh, and the family dog Tudor — resembles anything in New York Harbor, they are in error.

The American Northwest is still a land of rugged plenty that has not lost all its frontier quality. Its Douglas fir trees are not lumbered out yet; its shores are washed by the marrow-chilling North Pacific; its forests and farm lands are watered by almost constant winter rainfall. Mount Rainier, when you can see it through the rainclouds, broods over a world of plenty; and a perpetual conflict between nature and human encroachment  lends life there a comedy value which only Betty MacDonald so far has been able to interpret.

She knows that you can never tell exactly what nature may do in the vicinity of Seattle. Plant a sapling on your front lawn and almost overnight it becomes a giant.

If you are not careful with vines and shrubbery, they smother your house while your back is turned. Small fruits, particularly berries, grow in such lavish profusion that they threaten with nervous breakdown. Deer and raccoon wander vaguely over lawns and gardens, and on the beaches are peculiar shellfish, including a clam-like creature known as a geoduck that can move through sand with the speed of an express train.

Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald on Amazon

Ludicrous details of keeping a home

Vashon Island is inhabited by many friendly and interesting neighbors; the MacDonald House can only be reached by beach or by trail; and the whole area seems to abound in dogs, all of who appear to have incurred the intense dislike of Tudor.

Seeing these phenomena through the eyes of Mrs. MacDonald causes one to grow wiser in the ways of the Northwest — but never sadder. No one can tell a better story than she when it involves the ludicrous details that go into keeping a home together.

It is impossible to forget the MacDonald’s pursuit of the washing machine which they thought was resting safely in a rowboat near their sea wall, or Tudor’s classic fight with one of his bitterest enemies, or the family’s capture of a geoduck. The variety of the MacDonald life is as abundant as Betty MacDonald’s good nature.

Aside from being consistently entertained, readers of Onions in the Stew will also gain a strong sense of inner satisfaction … it teaches us that happiness can flourish in very unexpected quarters as long as it is nourished by comradeship and love and humor, and that for some of us, at any rate, a lot is still right in the world.

— review by John P. Marquand for Book of the Month Club News

How Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald Begins …

Chapter 1: No money and no furniture

For twelve years we MacDonalds have been living on an island in Puget Sound. There is no getting away from it, life on an island is different from life in the St. Francis Hotel but you can get used to it, can even grow to like it. “C’est la guerre,” we used to say looking wistfully toward the lights of the big comfortable warm city just across the way. Now, as November (or July) settles around the house like a wet sponge, we say placidly to each other, “I love it here. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

I cannot say that everyone should live as we do, but you might be happy on an island if you can face up to the following:

1.  Dinner guests are often still with you seven days, weeks, months later and slipping in the lawn swing is fun (I keep telling Don) if you take two sleeping pills and remember that the raccoons are just trying to be friends.

2.  Any definite appointment, such as childbirth or jury duty, acts as an automatic signal for the ferryboats to stop running.

3.  Finding island property is easy, especially up here in the Northwest where most of the time even the people are completely surrounded by water. Financing is something else again. Bankers are urban and everything not visible from a bank is “too far out.”

4.  A telephone call from a relative beginning “Hello dear, we’ve been thinking of you …” means you are going to get somebody’s children.

5.  Any dinner can be stretched by the addition of noodles to something.

6.  If you miss the last ferry — the 1:05 A.M. — you have to sit on the dock all night, but the time will come when you will be grateful for that large body of water between you and those thirteen parking tickets.

7.  Anyone contemplating island dwelling must be physically strong and it is an added advantage if you aren’t too bright.

Learn more about Betty MacDonald

More about Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald

Reader discussion on Goodreads

The post Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) is the best known poem by this Victorian-era British poet. It was published in her first volume of poetry, Goblin Market and Other Poems, in 1863. This very long narrative poem is set in an imaginary world, describing the strange adventures of sisters Laura and Lizzie and their encounters with evil goblin merchants.

One of the main themes of this poem is temptation, illustrated by Laura’s tasting of enchanted forbidden fruit. It also explores sacrifice, sexuality, and salvation. According to Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians:

“When Laura exchanges a lock of her golden hair for the chance to taste the goblins’ enchanted ‘fruit forbidden,’ she deteriorates until she is ‘knocking at Death’s door.’ Her sister Lizzie offers to pay the goblins ‘a silver penny’ for more of their wares, which she hopes will act as an antidote to Laura’s malady. The goblins violently attack Lizzie, smearing their fruits ‘against her mouth’ in a vain attempt ‘to make her eat.’ After the goblins are ‘worn out by her resistance,’ Lizzie returns home, and Laura kisses the juices from her sister’s face and is restored.”

The fruit in the poem has been interpreted in a number of ways. It has often been seen, in its most obvious sense, as symbolic of sexual temptation. Interesting Literature describes Laura:

“as the fallen woman who succumbs to masculine wiles and is ruined as a result (though she is, of course, happily married at the end of the poem). But this ‘temptation’ invites further analysis and interpretation. Some critics have drawn parallels between Laura’s addiction to the exotic fruit in the poem and the experience of drug addiction. In Victorian Britain, opium-addiction was a real social problem, opium being, like the fruits of ‘Goblin Market’, both sweet and bitter …”

For a detailed, nearly line-by-line analysis, see Goblin Market on Poem Analysis. Or, if you’d like to simply enjoy the poem and interpret it in your own way, read on …

Christina’s brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, illustrated the original edition

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry:

‘Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy:

Apples and quinces,

Lemons and oranges,

Plump unpecked cherries,

Melons and raspberries,

Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,

Swart-headed mulberries

Wild free-born cranberries,

Crab-apples, dewberries,

Pine-apples, blackberries,

Apricots, strawberries;—

All ripe together

In summer weather,—

Morns that pass by,

Fair eves that fly;

Come buy, come buy:

Our grapes fresh from the vine

Pomegranates full and fine,

Dates and sharp bullaces,

Rare pears and greengages,

Damsons and bilberries,

Taste them and try:

Currants and gooseberries,

Bright-fire-like barberries,

Figs to fill your mouth,

Citrons from the South,

Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;

Come buy, come buy.’

Evening by evening

Among the brookside rushes,

Laura bowed her head to hear,

Lizzie veiled her blushes:

Crouching close together

In the cooling weather,

With clasping arms and cautioning lips,

With tingling cheeks and finger tips.

‘Lie close,’ Laura said,

Pricking up her golden head:

‘We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?’

‘Come buy,’ call the goblins

Hobbling down the glen.

‘Oh,’ cried Lizzie, ‘Laura, Laura,

You should not peep at goblin men.’

Lizzie covered up her eyes,

Covered close lest they should look;

Laura reared her glossy head,

And whispered like the restless brook:

‘Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,

Down the glen tramp little men.

One hauls a basket,

One bears a plate,

One lugs a golden dish

Of many pounds weight.

How fair the vine must grow

Whose grapes are so luscious;

How warm the wind must blow

Through those fruit bushes.’

‘No,’ said Lizzie, ‘No, no, no;

Their offers should not charm us,

Their evil gifts would harm us.’

She thrust a dimpled finger

In each ear, shut eyes and ran:

Curious Laura chose to linger

Wondering at each merchant man.

One had a cat’s face,

One whisked a tail,

One tramped at a rat’s pace,

One crawled like a snail,

One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,

One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.

She heard a voice like voice of doves

Cooing all together:

They sounded kind and full of loves

In the pleasant weather.

Laura stretched her gleaming neck

Like a rush-imbedded swan,

Like a lily from the beck,

Like a moonlit poplar branch,

Like a vessel at the launch

When its last restraint is gone.

Backwards up the mossy glen

Turned and trooped the goblin men,

With their shrill repeated cry,

‘Come buy, come buy.’

When they reached where Laura was

They stood stock still upon the moss,

Leering at each other,

Brother with queer brother;

Signalling each other,

Brother with sly brother.

One set his basket down,

One reared his plate;

One began to weave a crown

Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown

(Men sell not such in any town);

One heaved the golden weight

Of dish and fruit to offer her:

‘Come buy, come buy,’ was still their cry.

Laura stared but did not stir,

Longed but had no money:

The whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste

In tones as smooth as honey,

The cat-faced purr’d,

The rat-faced spoke a word

Of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;

One parrot-voiced and jolly

Cried ‘Pretty Goblin’ still for ‘Pretty Polly;’—

One whistled like a bird.

But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:

‘Good folk, I have no coin;

To take were to purloin:

I have no copper in my purse,

I have no silver either,

And all my gold is on the furze

That shakes in windy weather

Above the rusty heather.’

‘You have much gold upon your head,’

They answered all together:

‘Buy from us with a golden curl.’

She clipped a precious golden lock,

She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,

Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:

Sweeter than honey from the rock,

Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,

Clearer than water flowed that juice;

She never tasted such before,

How should it cloy with length of use?

She sucked and sucked and sucked the more

Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;

She sucked until her lips were sore;

Then flung the emptied rinds away

But gathered up one kernel stone,

And knew not was it night or day

As she turned home alone.

Lizzie met her at the gate

Full of wise upbraidings:

‘Dear, you should not stay so late,

Twilight is not good for maidens;

Should not loiter in the glen

In the haunts of goblin men.

Do you not remember Jeanie,

How she met them in the moonlight,

Took their gifts both choice and many,

Ate their fruits and wore their flowers

Plucked from bowers

Where summer ripens at all hours?

But ever in the noonlight

She pined and pined away;

Sought them by night and day,

Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey;

Then fell with the first snow,

While to this day no grass will grow

Where she lies low:

I planted daisies there a year ago

That never blow.

You should not loiter so.’

‘Nay, hush,’ said Laura:

‘Nay, hush, my sister:

I ate and ate my fill,

Yet my mouth waters still;

To-morrow night I will

Buy more:’ and kissed her:

‘Have done with sorrow;

I’ll bring you plums to-morrow

Fresh on their mother twigs,

Cherries worth getting;

You cannot think what figs

My teeth have met in,

What melons icy-cold

Piled on a dish of gold

Too huge for me to hold,

What peaches with a velvet nap,

Pellucid grapes without one seed:

Odorous indeed must be the mead

Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink

With lilies at the brink,

And sugar-sweet their sap.’

Golden head by golden head,

Like two pigeons in one nest

Folded in each other’s wings,

They lay down in their curtained bed:

Like two blossoms on one stem,

Like two flakes of new-fall’n snow,

Like two wands of ivory 190

Tipped with gold for awful kings.

Moon and stars gazed in at them,

Wind sang to them lullaby,

Lumbering owls forbore to fly,

Not a bat flapped to and fro

Round their rest:

Cheek to cheek and breast to breast

Locked together in one nest.

Early in the morning

When the first cock crowed his warning,

Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,

Laura rose with Lizzie:

Fetched in honey, milked the cows,

Aired and set to rights the house,

Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,

Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,

Next churned butter, whipped up cream,

Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;

Talked as modest maidens should:

Lizzie with an open heart,

Laura in an absent dream,

One content, one sick in part;

One warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,

One longing for the night.

At length slow evening came:

They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;

Lizzie most placid in her look,

Laura most like a leaping flame.

They drew the gurgling water from its deep;

Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags,

Then turning homeward said: ‘The sunset flushes

Those furthest loftiest crags;

Come, Laura, not another maiden lags,

No wilful squirrel wags,

The beasts and birds are fast asleep.’

But Laura loitered still among the rushes

And said the bank was steep.

And said the hour was early still

The dew not fall’n, the wind not chill:

Listening ever, but not catching

The customary cry,

‘Come buy, come buy,’

With its iterated jingle

Of sugar-baited words:

Not for all her watching

Once discerning even one goblin

Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;

Let alone the herds

That used to tramp along the glen,

In groups or single,

Of brisk fruit-merchant men.

Till Lizzie urged, ‘O Laura, come;

I hear the fruit-call but I dare not look:

You should not loiter longer at this brook:

Come with me home.

The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,

Each glowworm winks her spark,

Let us get home before the night grows dark:

For clouds may gather

Though this is summer weather,

Put out the lights and drench us through;

Then if we lost our way what should we do?’

Laura turned cold as stone

To find her sister heard that cry alone,

That goblin cry,

‘Come buy our fruits, come buy.’

Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?

Must she no more such succous pasture find,

Gone deaf and blind?

Her tree of life drooped from the root:

She said not one word in her heart’s sore ache;

But peering thro’ the dimness, nought discerning,

Trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;

So crept to bed, and lay

Silent till Lizzie slept;

Then sat up in a passionate yearning,

And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept

As if her heart would break.

Day after day, night after night,

Laura kept watch in vain

In sullen silence of exceeding pain.

She never caught again the goblin cry:

‘Come buy, come buy;’—

She never spied the goblin men

Hawking their fruits along the glen:

But when the noon waxed bright

Her hair grew thin and grey;

She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn

To swift decay and burn

Her fire away.

One day remembering her kernel-stone

She set it by a wall that faced the south;

Dewed it with tears, hoped for a root,

Watched for a waxing shoot,

But there came none;

It never saw the sun,

It never felt the trickling moisture run:

While with sunk eyes and faded mouth

She dreamed of melons, as a traveller sees

False waves in desert drouth

With shade of leaf-crowned trees,

And burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.

She no more swept the house,

Tended the fowls or cows,

Fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,

Brought water from the brook:

But sat down listless in the chimney-nook

And would not eat.

Tender Lizzie could not bear

To watch her sister’s cankerous care

Yet not to share.

She night and morning

Caught the goblins’ cry:

‘Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy:’—

Beside the brook, along the glen,

She heard the tramp of goblin men,

The voice and stir

Poor Laura could not hear;

Longed to buy fruit to comfort her,

But feared to pay too dear.

She thought of Jeanie in her grave,

Who should have been a bride;

But who for joys brides hope to have

Fell sick and died

In her gay prime,

In earliest Winter time

With the first glazing rime,

With the first snow-fall of crisp Winter time.

Till Laura dwindling

Seemed knocking at Death’s door:

Then Lizzie weighed no more

Better and worse;

But put a silver penny in her purse,

Kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze

At twilight, halted by the brook:

And for the first time in her life

Began to listen and look.

Laughed every goblin

When they spied her peeping:

Came towards her hobbling,

Flying, running, leaping,

Puffing and blowing,

Chuckling, clapping, crowing,

Clucking and gobbling,

Mopping and mowing,

Full of airs and graces,

Pulling wry faces,

Demure grimaces,

Cat-like and rat-like,

Ratel- and wombat-like,

Snail-paced in a hurry,

Parrot-voiced and whistler,

Helter skelter, hurry skurry,

Chattering like magpies,

Fluttering like pigeons,

Gliding like fishes,—

Hugged her and kissed her:

Squeezed and caressed her:

Stretched up their dishes,

Panniers, and plates:

‘Look at our apples

Russet and dun,

Bob at our cherries,

Bite at our peaches,

Citrons and dates,

Grapes for the asking,

Pears red with basking

Out in the sun,

Plums on their twigs;

Pluck them and suck them,

Pomegranates, figs.’—

‘Good folk,’ said Lizzie,

Mindful of Jeanie:

‘Give me much and many:’—

Held out her apron,

Tossed them her penny.

‘Nay, take a seat with us,

Honour and eat with us,’

They answered grinning:

‘Our feast is but beginning.

Night yet is early,

Warm and dew-pearly,

Wakeful and starry:

Such fruits as these

No man can carry;

Half their bloom would fly,

Half their dew would dry,

Half their flavour would pass by.

Sit down and feast with us,

Be welcome guest with us,

Cheer you and rest with us.’—

‘Thank you,’ said Lizzie: ‘But one waits

At home alone for me:

So without further parleying,

If you will not sell me any

Of your fruits though much and many,

Give me back my silver penny

I tossed you for a fee.’—

They began to scratch their pates,;

No longer wagging, purring,

But visibly demurring,

Grunting and snarling.

One called her proud,

Cross-grained, uncivil;

Their tones waxed loud,

Their looks were evil.

Lashing their tails

They trod and hustled her,

Elbowed and jostled her,

Clawed with their nails,

Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,

Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,

Twitched her hair out by the roots,

Stamped upon her tender feet,

Held her hands and squeezed their fruits

Against her mouth to make her eat.

White and golden Lizzie stood,

Like a lily in a flood,—

Like a rock of blue-veined stone

Lashed by tides obstreperously,—

Like a beacon left alone

In a hoary roaring sea,

Sending up a golden fire,—

Like a fruit-crowned orange-tree

White with blossoms honey-sweet

Sore beset by wasp and bee,—

Like a royal virgin town

Topped with gilded dome and spire

Close beleaguered by a fleet 420

Mad to tug her standard down.

One may lead a horse to water,

Twenty cannot make him drink.

Though the goblins cuffed and caught her,

Coaxed and fought her,

Bullied and besought her,

Scratched her, pinched her black as ink,

Kicked and knocked her,

Mauled and mocked her,

Lizzie uttered not a word;

Would not open lip from lip

Lest they should cram a mouthful in:

But laughed in heart to feel the drip

Of juice that syrupped all her face,

And lodged in dimples of her chin,

And streaked her neck which quaked like curd.

At last the evil people,

Worn out by her resistance,

Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit

Along whichever road they took,

Not leaving root or stone or shoot;

Some writhed into the ground,

Some dived into the brook

With ring and ripple,

Some scudded on the gale without a sound,

Some vanished in the distance.

In a smart, ache, tingle,

Lizzie went her way;

Knew not was it night or day;

Sprang up the bank, tore thro’ the furze,

Threaded copse and dingle,

And heard her penny jingle

Bouncing in her purse,—

Its bounce was music to her ear.

She ran and ran

As if she feared some goblin man

Dogged her with gibe or curse

Or something worse:

But not one goblin skurried after,

Nor was she pricked by fear;

The kind heart made her windy-paced

That urged her home quite out of breath with haste

And inward laughter.

She cried ‘Laura,’ up the garden,

‘Did you miss me?

Come and kiss me.

Never mind my bruises,

Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices

Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,

Goblin pulp and goblin dew.

Eat me, drink me, love me;

Laura, make much of me:

For your sake I have braved the glen

And had to do with goblin merchant men.’

Laura started from her chair,

Flung her arms up in the air,

Clutched her hair:

‘Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted

For my sake the fruit forbidden?

Must your light like mine be hidden,

Your young life like mine be wasted,

Undone in mine undoing,

And ruined in my ruin,

Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?’—

She clung about her sister,

Kissed and kissed and kissed her:

Tears once again

Refreshed her shrunken eyes,

Dropping like rain

After long sultry drouth;

Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,

She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,

That juice was wormwood to her tongue,

She loathed the feast:

Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,

Rent all her robe, and wrung

Her hands in lamentable haste,

And beat her breast.

Her locks streamed like the torch

Borne by a racer at full speed,

Or like the mane of horses in their flight,

Or like an eagle when she stems the light

Straight toward the sun,

Or like a caged thing freed,

Or like a flying flag when armies run.

Swift fire spread through her veins, knocked at her heart,

Met the fire smouldering there

And overbore its lesser flame;

She gorged on bitterness without a name:

Ah! fool, to choose such part

Of soul-consuming care!

Sense failed in the mortal strife:

Like the watch-tower of a town

Which an earthquake shatters down,

Like a lightning-stricken mast,

Like a wind-uprooted tree

Spun about,

Like a foam-topped waterspout

Cast down headlong in the sea,

She fell at last;

Pleasure past and anguish past,

Is it death or is it life?

Life out of death.

That night long Lizzie watched by her,

Counted her pulse’s flagging stir,

Felt for her breath,

Held water to her lips, and cooled her face

With tears and fanning leaves:

But when the first birds chirped about their eaves,

And early reapers plodded to the place

Of golden sheaves,

And dew-wet grass

Bowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass,

And new buds with new day

Opened of cup-like lilies on the stream,

Laura awoke as from a dream,

Laughed in the innocent old way,

Hugged Lizzie but not twice or thrice;

Her gleaming locks showed not one thread of grey,

Her breath was sweet as May

And light danced in her eyes.

Days, weeks, months, years

Afterwards, when both were wives

With children of their own;

Their mother-hearts beset with fears,

Their lives bound up in tender lives;

Laura would call the little ones

And tell them of her early prime,

Those pleasant days long gone

Of not-returning time:

Would talk about the haunted glen,

The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,

Their fruits like honey to the throat

But poison in the blood;

(Men sell not such in any town:)

Would tell them how her sister stood

In deadly peril to do her good,

And win the fiery antidote:

Then joining hands to little hands

Would bid them cling together,

‘For there is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather;

To cheer one on the tedious way,

To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down,

To strengthen whilst one stands.’

The post Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Villette by Charlotte Brontë (1853)

My first impression of Villette by Charlotte Brontë (1853) was the familiarity of the writing — if I had no inclination of the author or book title, but merely “read it blind,” I think I would still know it was Charlotte Brontë. Even though I had never read it before, the style was so familiar because it was so apparently Charlotte.

Because I had read Lyndall Gordon’s amazing biography on Charlotte beforehand, I felt prepared for Villette. I read it with an eye for what it said about Charlotte — her life, her experiences, her opinions — and I think this colored my experience of it. Ultimately, it is a book in which the plot is only secondary.

Lucy Snowe: A woman of storm and shadow

Character reigns supreme over the novel — that of the narrator, Lucy Snowe, as well as those around her. The focus of the book lies primarily with the development of Lucy’s character. Lucy Snowe is a woman of storm and shadow — the first she denies and stifles within herself, the other she uses to hide and protect herself from what she does not want to face.

The metaphors of storms and shadows occur over and over throughout the narrative, reflecting Lucy’s inner world as it describes the outer setting. The stormy nights are the ones in which new discoveries are made, new secrets come to light, and when she must internally struggle with herself and her life’s path.

And the shadows? When I think of what exactly a shadow is, I see how well it fits with Lucy. A shadow is not distinct or clear, it can be altered, it is not a true representation of the real object, and (perhaps most importantly here), it can be interpreted in a myriad of ways.

Figuratively, Lucy hides herself in the shadows, content to stay hidden and keep her true, inner self from others and even partly from herself. She does not even truly open herself to us, her readers. Unlike Jane Eyre, she is more cautious and reserved, less open about details. She does not reveal everything to us, leaving parts of the story unexplained and hidden from view.

You might also like:

Jane Eyre: A Late 19th-Century Analysis

In the story itself Lucy is often invisible, her friends and acquaintances taking center stage while she quietly observes and narrates from the sidelines. She tends to disappear beneath the lives of those around her, unobserved and content to be so. In fact, whole chapters often go by where she hardly makes an entrance.

She also hides in plain sight from each of her friends and acquaintances. Each one sees her differently, interpreting her by a different light, for they see her as she wishes to be seen by them. Therefore, she is never truly seen because she is not seen as she is. She becomes insubstantial, a mere image of herself, as a shadow is only a representation of reality.

I did wonder, how much of this is true of us? Don’t we change our demeanor and personalities based on those we are interacting with; aren’t we different around different people? If that is the case, then when are we truly ourselves? Is it with those we are only the closest to or are our true selves an amalgamation of the various parts we present to others?

A struggle to balance reason and passion

Lyndall Gordon stated that Charlotte’s novels all represent Charlotte’s struggle to balance Reason and Passion, while not becoming overcome by either. After reading that, I saw how true it was in Jane Eyre and I watched for it in Villette. Sure enough, it was there.

Lucy Snowe’s story is affected and altered by the fact that she fights against her nature and her passionate inclinations. This too ties into her desire to stay hidden in shadow. Desperately she tries to stifle the part of herself that yearns for more, focusing on the necessity of “knocking on the head” her longings and desires.

When she starts to feel a passion for Dr. John, she figuratively buries those feelings and their potential by literally burying his letters beneath the earth. Lucy is content to stay in the shadows because she feels safer there- not safe from the threat of others, but safe from herself. She fears the deeper parts within herself, which I think is one of the most tragic aspects of the book, for it alters her life and the person she becomes.

Villette by Charlotte Brontë on Amazon

In Lucy, I think Charlotte is trying to demonstrate to herself, as well as to her readers, the danger of letting logic and reason possess you fully; perhaps this was also Charlotte’s way of reminding herself that it is necessary to let passion and desire in, despite the fears.

I think readers today can still identify with this struggle — of trying to understand ourselves, of wrestling with our natures, of trying to be something we are not. I know that I often fight against who I am, both the negative and the positive, and struggle with the desire to be someone else, that elusive “other” I think I should be.

Both Villette and Jane Eyre resonate with me because I am still defining myself and finding my place in the world, just as Charlotte was and just as her heroines strive to do. As Villette (and Jane Eyre) demonstrates, the process does not require one to have all of the answers or the perfect life plan. Instead, it involves using each experience — with all of its uncertainty and risk- to discover and lay bare what is hidden within me.

Timeless works by Charlotte Brontë

To not hide from who I am, but to allow it into the light. To be open to the potential of new discoveries, and embracing — not hiding from — the fear and trepidation that accompanies each revelation. To be strong enough to recognize and embrace who I am, without denying what I am and what I feel. Jane Eyre demonstrates this by doing it, by being true to herself, by following her inclinations and listening to her inner self. Lucy Snowe demonstrates this by not doing so, by hiding from any expression of her inner self, by denying her passions and desires, by choosing a safe but unfulfilling life over the promise of something more.

With Villette, Charlotte’s works continue to exert a powerful force of brilliant insight, demonstrating just how timeless her works really are. Jane Eyre will always remain my favorite, but I am more pleased than I expected with the experience I had in Villette, and am more of a Brontë fan than ever before.

— Contributed by Jillian Fuller. This post originally ran on Musings of a Bookworm; reprinted by permission.

More about Villette by Charlotte Brontë

Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Why Villette is Better than Jane Eyre
Villette on Project Gutenberg
Listen to Villette on Librivox

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Villette by Charlotte Brontë (1853) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Quotes from The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck (1892 – 1973) was an American author of fiction and nonfiction, humanitarian, and human rights advocate. She was also the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She had a prolific career, authoring some seventy books. and was also a dedicated activist in human rights, founding the East and West Association in 1941.

Pearl Buck’s second novel, The Good Earth, is her best-known work and remains the one that defined her success as an author. It received both the Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal in 1932. Following are quotes from The Good Earth, the classic novel that’s still widely read and studied:

“And roots, if they are to bear fruits, must be kept well in the soil of the land.”

“It is the end of a family — when they begin to sell their land. Out of the land we came and into we must go — and if you will hold your land you can live — no one can rob you of land.”

“Hunger makes thief of any man.”

“And out of his heaviness there stood out strangely but one clear thought and it was a pain to him, and it was this, that he wished he had not taken the two pearls from O-lan that day when she was washing his clothes at the pool, and he would never bear to see Lotus put them in her ears again.”

“But hers was a strange heart, sad in its very nature, and she could never weep and ease it as other women do, for her tears never brought her comfort.”

“When I return to that house it will be with my son in my arms. I shall have a red coat on him and red-flowered trousers and on his head a hat with a small gilded Buddha sewn on the front and on his feet tiger-faced shoes. And I will wear new shoes and a new coat of black sateen and I will go into the kitchen where I spent my days and I will go into the great hall where the Old One sits with her opium, and I will show myself and my son to all of them.”

“The first peaches of spring — the first peaches! Buy, eat, purge your bowels of the poisons of winter!”

“And to him war was a thing like earth and sky and water and why it was no one knew but only that it was.”

You might also enjoy:

1938 Nobel Award for Literature to Pearl Buck

“So Wang Lung sat, and so his age came on him day by day and year by year, and he slept fitfully in the sun as his father had done, and he said to himself that his life was done and he was satisfied with it.”

“It is but another war somewhere. Who knows what all this fighting to and fro is about? But so it has been since I was a lad and so will it be after I am dead and well I know it.”

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck on Amazon

“Yes, but there was the land. Money and food are eaten and gone, and if there is not sun and rain in proportion, there is again hunger.”

“Then the good land did again its healing work and the sun shone on him and healed him and the warm winds of summer wrapped him about with peace.”

“Wang Lung sat smoking, thinking of the silver as it had lain upon the table. It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of his earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from this earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver. Each time before this that he had taken the silver out to give to anyone, it had been like taking a piece of his life and giving it to someone carelessly. But now for the first time such giving was not pain. He saw, not the silver in the alien hand of a merchant in the town; he saw the silver transmuted into something worth even more than itself—clothes upon the body of his son.”

“They cannot take the land away from me. the labor of my body and the fruit of the fields I have put into that which cannot be taken away. If I had the silver, they would have taken it. if I had bought with the silver to store it, they would have taken it all. I have the land still, and it is mine.”

“Yet never could he grasp her wholly, and this it was which kept him fevered and thirsty, even if she gave him his will of her.”

“There in that land of mine is buried the first good half of my life and more. It is as though half of me were buried there, and now it is a different life in my house.”

“It seemed to him that now his life was rounded off, and he had done all that he said he would in his life and more than he could ever have dreamed he could.”

See also: Inspirational Quotes by Pearl S. Buck

“When people in the city become fearful, the city life becomes more and more unbearable to Wang Lung who constantly yearns for the land. He even thinks seriously about selling his daughter if only it would enable him to return to his land.”

“Wang Lung forgets the land for awhile when he is sick in love with Lotus. When Lotus comes to his house, he is plagued by various domestic problems, but when the waters in the fields recede and Wang Lung is able to work his land, he is immediately healed of his sickness. Earth is a healing agent for Wang Lung.”

“Wang Lung is so attached to his land that despite the threat his bandit uncle poses to his family, he cannot move to town for fear of living without his land close by.”

More about Pearl Buck on this site

Pearl Buck Talks of her Work
1938 Nobel Award for Literature to Pearl Buck
6 Feminist Quotes by Pearl Buck
Pearl Buck’s 1973 obituary
Inspirational Quotes by Pearl S. Buck
Three Poems from Words of Love by Pearl S. Buck

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Quotes from The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.