A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor (June 2023)

[Roman Clodia]

I think I may have a slightly different concept of Beth given some of the comments above. I see her as a woman who is confronted with that very Woolfian issue of how to be an artist or creative given the burden of motherhood, wifehood and domesticity.

There's the bit where she feels guilty:

'She would have liked to have achieved such a room as this for her family, and felt the old guilt about her writing coming over her, and the indignant answer trying to smother it - 'Men look upon writing as work.'

And the way her writing is an artistic compulsion:

'Even if she wished to be released from it... she knew that she could not. The imaginary people would go on knocking at her forehead until she died. 'Haunted!' she thought. 'I'm haunted. Inside me I'm full of ghosts.'

And interesting that when Geoffrey comes to tea he describes her book as 'witty and observant and...' whereas 'Prudence felt no curiosity about her mother's books.'

So yes, Beth can be disconcertingly cold especially to Stevie, but it's not all one-sided.

[Roman Clodia]

'She's putting on her drawers in the washhouse,' she explained to Mr Lidiard.' Heeheehee!

[Nigeyb]

🤠

[Roman Clodia]

I'm up to ch.7 and don't know what to make of Bertram. My instinct is to see him as creepy especially when we hear his inner dialogue that he doesn't speak out loud when he's with one of the women.

But there are the vulnerabilities like when he recognizes but won't fully acknowledge that he's not a good painter. Is he kind? Does he have a capacity for cruelty? What's he doing here?

I love the brittle atmosphere, a little like Elizabeth Bowen where there's always something ominous just out of sight.

[Nigeyb]

He is indeed a curious character


I’ll be interested in your opinion once you reach the end - please keep us posted

[Roman Clodia]

I've just realized that the beam from the lighthouse is like the eye of the omniscient narrator - both move around the town, looking into the houses, across the rooms, into the minds of the characters in the case of the book, then away again, circling around.

[Alwynne]

Roman Clodia wrote: "I'm up to ch.7 and don't know what to make of Bertram. My instinct is to see him as creepy especially when we hear his inner dialogue that he doesn't speak out loud when he's with one of the women...."

I'm a little further ahead but not much, I find him quite unlikeable, he's not explicitly evil but he seems very manipulative when it comes to women, and his ideas about them are very rigid and unforgiving. II know he admits to weakness but at the same time he likes to maintain the illusion of himself as creative. I suppose he acts a bit like a catalyst, and exposes fault-lines in the community? So many narratives operate by introducing a new figure into an established group setting, and this seems very similar.

[Roman Clodia]

Yes, I agree about Bertram being a catalyst, especially after the war years when presumably there weren't many men in the town.

His name reminds me of Bertie from Mapp & Lucia! Doesn't he pretend he has naval connections? And, of course, he understands women intimately.

Lots of literary allusions in this book as we've already spotted.

[Alwynne]

Roman Clodia wrote: "Yes, I agree about Bertram being a catalyst, especially after the war years when presumably there weren't many men in the town.

His name reminds me of Bertie from Mapp & Lucia! Doesn't he pretend..."

That's interesting, I was thinking of Bertram in Mansfield Park, there's an Austenesque feel to the enclosed community and seem to remember Bertram not great with women. I suppose too there's the contrast between the different types of artists, both Beth and Bertram see everything around them as potential material but Beth is closed off in her writing whereas Bertram uses his painting as an excuse for snooping on everyone's lives/homes.

[Roman Clodia]

Lots of parallels and contrasts for sure - some to add to the ones mentioned:

Mrs Bracely talks of life and the view of the harbour from her window as *her* book, and there are comments on how she uses her imagination to fill in what she can't see.

Beth sees Stevie as living partly in her own fictional world, following in Beth's footsteps.

Bertram knows he's not a skilled painter but says what he produces will do anyway - unlike Woolf's Lily Briscoe who is striving to achieve her artistic vision.

What do you think about Beth's writing? Geoffrey knows her books, she's reviewed in the papers, we see her writing down unusual similes to be used later - my impression is that she's at least trying to be a literary writer and her own anxiety shows she takes it seriously.

[Nigeyb]

I had the sense that Beth knew she was not a particularly gifted writer but loved the process of writing.


Bertram, by contrast, is not even committed to his art

I've returned the book to the library now so can't try to work out how I arrived at these conclusions

[Roman Clodia]

Yes, Bertram's a fraud artistically and emotionally. But with that paragraph at the end when Beth finishes her novel, I think she's the real thing, and Taylor might have given her some of her own feelings.

I've finished and really loved this, definitely my favourite Taylor to date - 5 stars!

Going back to the earlier conversation where Brian mentioned the elegance of Taylor's writing, I definitely agree here. I haven't always felt that in the other books but this one is gorgeous.

[Nigeyb]

Hurrah


So glad you found so much in this one

[Roman Clodia]

Alwynne wrote: "Roman Clodia wrote: "Yes, I agree about Bertram being a catalyst, especially after the war years when presumably there weren't many men in the town.

His name reminds me of Bertie from Mapp & Luci..."

Aargh, it's*Georgie* I'm thinking of in Mapp & Lucia - don't know where Bertie came from!

But is it Bertie in Barchester Towers, the painter and brother of Contessa Negroni (probably have that wrong!) the wonderful woman on the sofa at Mrs Proudie's tea party?

[Roman Clodia]

On Beth, I see one of the blurbs describes her as a writer of melodramatic books so maybe that fed into your take, Nigeyb? But the same blurb makes more of Bertram than I would so...

One of Taylor's great skills is that she makes me ponder what happens after the end of the book: we feel her characters go on living - what will that marriage be like? What happens to Prudence? Lily Wilson?

[Roman Clodia]

Once Alwynne has finished we can talk spoilers ...

[Alwynne]

Great, just a couple of chapters to go!

[David]

I am woefully behind but still eagerly following the discussion.

One thought I keep returning to is how different the experience of war was for the UK vs. the US (where I'm from). All of the characters in this book would have been processing a traumatic experience. Even if the book isn't about that directly, it's helped me keep a generous view of the characters.

[Nigeyb]

Keep at it David. I should imagine for most Americans (participants aside) the war was quite a remote experience by comparison with most Brits

[Roman Clodia]

Gosh, even after Pearl Harbour? I get the distance and that the US wasn't under attack in the same way as Europe but I always thought that there was a big social impact in terms of military call up (12 million in the US military? no idea where I got that figure from), wasn't there rationing? The internment camps for Japanese-Americans. Women taking over men's jobs.

I do remember being horrified at how few Jewish refugees the US officially accepted with their visa quotas: something like around 200,000 only during WW2. Not that the UK was generous in this sense, putting German-Jewish and Austrian-Jewish refugees into internment camps ...

Great reminder to us, David!

[Nigeyb]

Good points RC


I will be interested to read the US perpective. There were certainly a lot of war films post-WW2 so perhaps it was very much in the national consciousness whilst it was happening

[Roman Clodia]

I wonder if later wars like Korea and, of course, Vietnam served to put memories of WW2 in the shade? Certainly the latter seems to loom large in American culture - David?

[Nigeyb]

On reflection I’d guess most families would know people drafted so must have been significant.

[David]

I meant only that civilians experienced the war differently. The UK was under direct attack. The US largely was not. Pearl Harbor was a military target attacked by Japan before the war started, located in Hawaii (which at that time was a territory, not a state, like the Marshall Islands are today).

I'm not minimizing the impact on US civilians, just pointing out that Brits living through the war, like the characters here, would have just gone through an incredibly traumatic event.

[Roman Clodia]

Ah, yes. Perhaps living in a harbour town exacerbated the fears of invasion.

I didn't know Hawaii wasn't a state then 😯

[Alwynne]

I agree David, the US didn't experience regular bouts of heavy bombing, doodle-bugs or the constant threat of both of those things, rationing wasn't as widespread in terms of goods affected, hence the popularity of American GIs arriving with chocolate, cigarettes etc Also the US wasn't just across a small stretch of water from enemy forces.

Early on in the novel they mention removing the barbed wire etc from the beaches, and most likely there would also have been landmines and/or sea mines. From reading about the book, the setting is deliberately ambiguous, and shows signs of Taylor taking features of different seaside towns and amalgamating them. But the fact that there were fortifications suggests this would have been an area considered a likely invasion target, the areas that weren't were treated differently. Also I assume that the area would have lost a lot of trade which would add to its general decline, as people tended to travel to the areas not on likely invasion lists instead.

[Alwynne]

Now I'm wondering about wartime seaside communities, I know some were considered safe and evacuees were sent to them, but presumably with general petrol rationing, travel restrictions even those would have been fairly deserted. Did the money from the people being called up, including women sent to do land, factory work etc compensate from general loss of income from tourism? Did these areas receive any grants? Seems a similar situation to restaurants, theatres during the height of the pandemic.

[Roman Clodia]

Good questions, especially in relation to the pub and Lily's waxworks which have survived the war but seem run down and neglected.

In the book it seems like money has been invested in the new town: that's where the cinema is and shops.

I always love books where fish is a cheap dinner!

[Jan C]

Not reading the book.

There was rationing, especially gas unless you were in a select group that required a car for your job - ministers and doctors, don't know who else, but they had to have a special stamp in their car window. Sugar was restricted - i only know this because this was why my father switched to black coffee. It was a choice of sugar in his coffee or sugar that might be needed by the baby (a/k/a my sister born in early '41). I remember my mother showing me her ration card/book. She may have taken a war-time job in a factory, I'm not sure. My memory on that is hazy. She only showed me this stuff once - possibly when I was 12. She may have junked it after that.

[David]

I have to say, I'm quite enjoying this. I'm not sure what the point of it is yet, other than a slice of life during a certain place and time, but the prose is excellent in a way that doesn't call attention to itself.

[Roman Clodia]

Glad you're enjoying this, David. Taylor has quite a few fans here - she's another of those under-rated female authors. There's not a driving plot here but I didn't feel it was shapeless either. And some of the writing about the sea is lovely with a kind of Woolfian delicacy and significance.

[Alwynne]

Prepared to be shot down but felt this was as much a critique of Woolf as anything else. In Woolf's world art/the artist have a transcendent quality and an iconic status, which Taylor appears to be debunking here.

Also is it me or is Taylor suggesting that Bertram is and/or may be queer, albeit in a rather stereotypical way?

Also did anyone else think that along with Woolf, Austen etc Taylor was also referencing aspects of 'Brief Encounter'? Another sneakily subversive, so-called "middlebrow" narrative aimed at women. And possibly a dash of Edith Wharton here too? Lily and Tory seemed like updated versions of the kind of women who frequently surface in her novels.

[Roman Clodia]

No shooting down from me, Alwynne! It's hard to imagine an engagement with Lighthouse in 1947 that wouldn't also critique that book at the same time as springing from it. We all know that VW didn't have to worry about the daily drudgery of e.g. putting meals in the table for a family every day and can compare Mrs Ramsay's dinner party at the start with Beth's dinners. As much as I love VW, there is a rarefied air at times!

I hadn't thought of Wharton but should have! Don't know Brief Encounter well enough - just have a memory of stiff but quivering upper lips 🤭

[Nigeyb]

No shooting down from me either, alas borne out of ignorance. I really appreciate learning about these connections.

[Alwynne]

I want to say more about Bertram but realise David hasn't finished yet so I'll reserve my comments for later. (view spoiler)[But am thinking of Benson's Georgie and Lucia's later union, and the sexless, marriage of convenience. (hide spoiler)]

R. C. think Wharton et al link back to the librarian's comment when he first appears, and he remarks that there's no need to be prejudiced about lady novelists, I think part of what Taylor's doing is reworking aspects of past women writers' themes and storylines - there's even a hint of Cranford here - as a way of refuting the idea that women's writing is inconsequential. So locating herself within a particular tradition of women's fiction.

[Alwynne]

I found this a surprisingly fertile piece, it set off various chains of associations. There were some unexpected scenes/elements that reminded me of Comyns's blend of the domestic and the surreal - the naked Prudence and the cats for example - which I don't recall in later work I've tried of Taylor's, although I think this is considered the last of the books in her so-called early phase.

I also started thinking about views, there's a repetition particularly of women looking out of windows onto the town, and that made me think of Lucy in A Room with a View and the more positive use of similar imagery there. And that led me to thinking about the idea of 'only connect' and Forster's state-of-the-nation Howards End and the ways in which Taylor's novel seems to suggest the impossibility of meaningful or lasting connections - even the friendship between Beth and Tory which seems the most authentic of the relationships here is deeply flawed.

So that also made me wonder how far Taylor was also writing a miniature state-of-the-nation novel? And why her perspective is so damning when this was written during Atlee's time and at a supposed highpoint for British socialists like her.

[Alwynne]

Roman Clodia wrote: "No shooting down from me, Alwynne! It's hard to imagine an engagement with Lighthouse in 1947 that wouldn't also critique that book at the same time as springing from it. We all know that VW didn't..."

On 'Brief Encounter' you might find it more interesting if you look at it from a queer perspective, and imagine the two leads are both men, there's been a suggestion that the screenwriter Noel Coward was actually intending to signal to gay audiences but whether that's the case or not, the film is very productive in terms of queer readings. There've also been a number of articles in recent years discussing the queer undercurrents in a number of David Lean's films.

It's also an interesting text in terms of the romance genre and it's been adapted and replayed at various points - Meryl Streep's "Falling in Love" and Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" are two examples.

[David]

Please don't wait for me. I'm juggling a lot of things this week, so I'm a bit behind.

Your review is great, Alwynne. I like the point about Taylor writing against the myth of post-WW2 camaraderie and hope. This is a town and people adrift, living their lives without the war effort to give them collective meaning.

I'll defer to you and others on the Woolf and Wharton. I'm missing some of the other associations - I'm just not as well read as I'd like to be.

I agree on the queer layers to David Lean films. Everyone spots it with Lawrence, but it's in almost every film. The Bridge on the River Kwai seems obviously coded.

[Roman Clodia]

Just catching up with the discussion here...

Alwynne, I completely agree about the way Taylor is thinking about that women's 'tradition' in writing and that domestic reputation they have (i.e. just not as 'significant' as men's writing). How did you understand Beth as a writer? There are not many clues in the text but I felt she was a 'real' writer not just turning out melodramatic tat as some of the blurbs imply.

Also completely agree with the significance of the title and that 'view' and the importance of looking and perceiving. As well as so many women looking out of windows we have the lighthouse beam looking in to their bedrooms, their private space. And the importance of that 'A view', not 'The view' to establish perception and subjectivity.

Love your idea of a miniature state-of-the-nation novel so another allusion in the network of connections might be Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (you've already mentioned Cranford).

It was all this richness and density which made it so rewarding for me.

[Roman Clodia]

Love your and David's comments about queer readings of Brief Encounter and Lean more generally. I'm badly 'read' in films, as everyone probably knows so would have missed this completely. Now I can see how its issues of subterfuge, secrecy and covert hidden understandings can be read differently. It's a dynamic so prevalent in Patricia Highsmith where murder often becomes a kind of secret intimacy between men that has to be concealed but I hadn't made the connection.

[WndyJW]

I wish I had such a discerning eye, Alwynne. It’s a benefit to readers like me who don’t usually pick up on symbolism or references to other novels and writers.

I really appreciate the input of all the very smart readers in this group, the observations here enrich my reading.