The Making of A Marchioness- Frances Hodgson-Burnett

Hands up if you thought Frances Hodgson-Burnett only wrote for children? I know I did until I came across this book recently. Growing up I loved “A Little Princess” and “The Secret Garden” only a little less than I loved the film versions! But despite that I gave little thought to their author, and certainly assumed that she just wrote for children. What I have come to realise recently, however, is that books like “The Secret Garden” were just a side-line to her real career as an adult author- in fact, in her own lifetime it was “The Making of a Marchioness” that she was most famous for. So when I saw her name amongst the usual bunch of classic authors I was curious and when I found out that the company that publishes her (Persephone Classics) specialises in ‘Forgotten Twentieth Century authors- mostly women’ I actually got a little bit excited. You’ll have to allow me this little nerd moment, you see I have a real soft spot of ‘forgotten authors- mostly women’. My main focus at University was Eighteenth Century women’s writing. I love it, it’s why I started this blog, and to find out that it wasn’t just my little class of four students who appreciated the importance of women’s contribution to writing…well let’s just say I may have made a noise more commonly associated with the fans of Harry Styles!

Anyway, to pretty much sum up the way to get me to buy a book all you have to do is tell me it’s by an underappreciated female author  and before you’ve even finished speaking I will have probably bought the book. This has sometimes proved to be a problematic mode of operation, I’ll let you into a little secret…sometimes authors, even female ones, are underappreciated for a reason!

Luckily, this is not the case with “The Making of A Marchioness”. This is a very interesting book which is nice considering I didn’t have any expectations going in, except that the concept seemed interesting. It’s split in two with Part One focusing on how the heroine, Emily Fox-Seton, gets married and Part Two dealing with what happens afterwards. Hodgson Burnett terms it beautifully I think “in the first story wildly romantic things happened to unromantic persons, in the second wildly melodramatic things will happen to undramatic persons”.

You may remember that I love books that deal with what happens after an event. It’s what I loved about “Homecoming” and it’s what I like about this book. Part One is almost Cinderella-like in its depiction of Emily’s rags to riches story with Part Two continuing her story post-marriage. Emily is a woman whose fate is, as one character puts it, to be “perfectly well-born, and who is as penniless as a charwoman, and works like one.” Despite being forced to cling to the edges of society Emily is a perennially cheerful woman who has taught herself to expect nothing from life that to be able to buy a new dress every couple of years. In fact, the book opens with her lamenting a recent change in skirt fashions which means she is now hopelessly out of date. She is well connected but does not benefit from this and what I found unusual, and interesting is that she is a 34 year old. In the traditional romance that’s practically dead! Nevertheless what unfolds is, in this instance perhaps, more intriguing than a traditional romance and without giving too much away, the proposal scene is one of my favourite parts of the book. Hodgson-Burnett was also particularly fond of it

“I have never done anything better & more subtle…than that scene on the heath. Walderhurst is complete in his moments there. He expresses quite simply an ingenuous, no unamicable brutality- or rather unadornedness of phrase & statement entirely unconscious & unintentional of offence, which just this particular kind is capable of.”

Although Part One is probably the best part of the book, in terms of brilliant dialogue and content, it is Part Two that makes it palatable with the cynic in me. I enjoyed the melodrama in it but what I loved was the undercurrent of subtle, yet realistic, commentary in late Victorian marriage. If Part One’s purpose is to show how a woman was defined only by her ability to get married then Part Two is dedicated to showing how she is further condemned by who she has married. Emily’s happiness if given the perfect foil in Hester Osborne’s misery, whose only fault appears to have been finding herself married to the wrong man. Watching Emily blossom into a confident and self-assured woman whilst Hester moves ever closer to what Hodgson-Burnett terms ‘”her precipice” is, at times, painful.  

Marghanita Laski called this Hodgson-Burnett’s best novel, it is, she says; “the level she intended it to be, that of the fairy story diluted with unromantic realism. But she could never have supposed its realism to be as harsh as we now perceive it to be.” which is uncannily accurate. Sometimes when I was reading this book I felt as though I was looking at late-Victorian society as I’ve never seen it before, thoroughly un-rose tinted and stripped of its Hollywood veneer. Surprising in a book which is, on the surface, so simply written, perhaps, but wholly appreciated. We think of our society as being looks-driven, and complain about how demeaning it is, but give me 2013 with all its career opportunities any day. If “The Making of A Marchioness” is anything to go by we don’t know anything about what it’s like to be judged on our looks, and have nothing but them to rely on. It’s like a dystopia book in reverse!

Ok, I could write about this book forever, but I’m going to restrain myself! Let me just finish by telling you I haven’t enjoyed anything as much for a very long time and I demand that you read it, now. In fact, why are you still here…you should go and buy it here! Seriously though, it’s a gem of a book -so easy to read, even a little repetitive, but thought provoking at the same time, what more could you want? And if you’ve never enjoyed Victorian literature before now, give this one a try it’s a perfect introduction.

Have you read Frances Hodgson-Burnett before?

Were you as surprised as I was to find out she wrote adult fiction?

Where’d You Go Bernadette?- Maria Semple (A Rainy Day Remedy)

Where to start with this book? It took me a while to warm to it and for a couple of days I put it down and considered not finishing it (I’m having a bit of a problem with this recently). My main reason was that it didn’t grab my attention in the first couple of pages because it seemed too disjointed. I’ve noticed a trend in fiction recently where authors have started to use various different forms of writing; letters, emails, bills, reports etc. to compose their novels instead of regular prose. This can sometimes make a novel feel slightly erratic, especially if the different mediums and styles aren’t dealt with properly. “Where’d You Go Bernadette?” (WYGB) is a perfect example of this trend. Maria Semple builds her story by pulling together many seemingly meaningless threads of information such as notes from gardeners and school reports. I found this quite frustrating initially, as I felt that I was been bombarded with a glut of information that had no relevance to what I wanted to find out, namely where did Bernadette go? Then, and I’m not sure why, I was reminded of William Faulkner…I know, right? And I thought, what if what Griffin was actually doing with this information overload was trying to build a bigger picture without glossing over the little facts. Anyone who embroiders will know what this feels like, stitching hundred of little individually insignificant stitches until suddenly you glance at what you’ve done and see something emerging. What if, I though, Griffin is using stupid notes to gardeners to expose all of the events in the lead up to Bernadette Fox’s disappearance in order to help the reader really understand what happened. *I need to take a moment here to give a shout out to my friend “M.T”, without your long chats about Faulkner I would have probably given up on this book, or certainly never read so much into it!”* 

How does Faulker relate to Semple, a comic writer who has worked on shows like “Ellen” and “Arrested Development”, I hear you say? Stay with me, on this little tangent, it has a point I promise! Wikipedia tells anyone who is interested in “Absalom! Absalom! that “By using various narrators expressing their interpretations, the novel alludes to the historical cultural zeitgeist of Faulkner’s South, where the past is always present and constantly in states of revision by the people who tell and retell the story over time; it thus also explores the process of myth-making and the questioning of truth.” In essence, this quote (out of context) could also apply to “WYGB?”. Semple uses a similar structure of different voices, interpretations and media types to expose the complicated, erratic character of Bernadette Fox. You know that bit in Mean Girls where they have the split screens of characters talking about their relationship to Regina George? It’s a bit like that. *Faulkner and Mean Girls in one paragraph, who knew we’d end up here?!* Now I’m not trying to say that “WYGB?” is a modern day “Absalom! Absalom!”, because it’s not, but once I had the idea of this search for the truth in  my head the book suddenly stopped being frustrating.  I began looking at each different entry as a potential clue and I started trying to guess each character’s motivations for saying what they say. Regarding this, what makes Semples writing so good is that in “WYGB?” is how clever  she is about what she chooses to reveal, and when. She is in no hurry to get to the conclusion and so the plot unravels slowly but surely and keeps getting more tense as more nuggets of information are revealed. Equally clever is how the motives of each voices in the novel are gradually exposed (and also how distinct they are) to the reader as the plot moves towards its crescendo. I’m glad I persevered with this book because towards the end I was totally hooked.

One of the critics on the back page of the dust jacket called “WYGB?” a black comedy, which I think fits very well. “WYGB?” deals with an awful situation which includes depression, illness and loss and at times it is very sad. Often, however, the full effect of this is dulled by Semple’s sarcastic writing and barbed jokes which turn the novel from what, in the wrong hands, would be a relentlessly depressing read into a funny social commentary. Semple’s keen sense of the ridiculous often reminded me of a good old fashioned farce. Her characters are all completely eccentric and at times the plot twists are larger than life. Saying that, using Bee, Bernadette’s daughter, as the narrative voice is what really gives this novel a heart. I think she is the perfect mix of precocious teenager and sad little girl who is dealing with, literally, loosing her mother. Bee is just the right amount of anger, frustration, ambivalence and wit to keep the novel going and at times I found myself wanting to reach inside the pages and just give her a hug. It is Audrey Griffin, however, who kind of steals the show and is by far my favourite character. She’s just the most perfect example of highly strung nutcase to really make me laugh and I loved watching her secondary plot line unravel! It’s still making me chuckle as I write this now.

Overall this a quirky little  book that I enjoyed reading. I think this would make a great holiday read, but because this review comes to you from England I’m categorising it as a “Rainy Day Remedy” because, let’s be real for a moment, unless you are going somewhere exotic this summer, we all know we’re going to need some of those come our annual summer deluge of rain. Plus it’s set in Seattle where it apparently does nothing but rain so it seemed quite fitting!

Books I Didn’t Finish: The Night Circus

Title: The Night Circus
Reason: Too Dull

There are many books that could fall into the ‘too dull to finish’ category. A guide to ornithology, for example, may prove to be too dull to finish, equally an academic journal on asphalt development may send you into a boredom induced coma. My criteria was not to record books like this, ones that you expect to find dull; when reading for pleasure isn’t it slightly masochistic to willingly inflict dullness on yourself? No, my criteria for ‘books too dull to finish’ was that I must have bought, borrowed or come by them in the full expectation of enjoying them. This, in my mind, is why it deserves to be a category- a way to document the tragedy of an unexpectedly boring book!

One of my most recent, and worst, encounters with a book that was too dull to finish was “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern. I was very reluctant to give up on this book because it looked, at first glance, like it would be really good, plus it was so beautiful. I loved the silhouette style art work and the vintage feel to the book. Imagine my dismay, then, when I discovered that a book which received so much hype, so much praise and, yes, had such a beautiful cover could be so, well, yawn-worthy. The blurb was deliberately vague and enticing, it made me conjure up images of mystery and intrigue. I fully anticipated something post-modernist in style, full of deep and meaningful passages on the gravity of man’s addiction to instant gratification. Ok, so I didn’t expect that at all! I did expect it at least to be a fully fledged fairy story though…a fully fledged anything would have been better than what “The Night Circus” turned out to be, which was dull.

Maybe I’m being hyper-critical, but I’ve come to expect something when I part with £7.99 for a new book and page after page of description just doesn’t cut it for me. Scenes set in velvet and silk, a gluttonous feast worth of excess, initially seemed to promise something really exciting. Then nothing happened. Don’t get me wrong, things did happen, but they just got buried by the weight of description in this book, so that I felt like  “The Night Circus” was simply an endless barrage of black velvet and white silk. At first I thought the over-heavy description might be an homage to Victorian literature, especially due to the fact that this is a historical novel, and so I tried to power through hoping that eventually the action would begin. Maybe I gave up too soon, and like my last review “The Night Circus” was a slow burner but I have a sneaking suspicion this is not the case and that plot was simply secondary to description in this novel.

Perhaps “The Night Circus” is one of those rare books that would actually be better as a film. Morgenstern clearly has a very vivid and detailed sense of scene and her talents could probably be excellently put to use in a props department. Additionally, were “The Night Circus” a film the description would not absorb action and dialogue in the way it does in the book. However, I think that even as a film it might still suffer from being slightly dull. At the end of the day, unfortunately “The Night Circus” ended up being all dressed up with nowhere to go. I didn’t connect with the characters and I got bored with the endless description and that sealed the deal for me. I guess this is just another warning that  sometimes even the most beautiful covers hide a book that is ‘too dull to finish’!

Have you read “The Night Circus”? Did I miss something by giving up too soon (roughly half way)? Did you love or hate this book? What would make your list of books that are “Too Dull to finish?

Homecoming- Bernhard Schlink

Homecoming is a curious puzzle of a book. Part of the reason there’s been such a silence here at The Female Scriblerian is because it’s taken me so long to read this book! The thing is- it wasn’t boring, it was very interesting, nor was it overly complicated with long drawn out passages. In fact, I don’t know what it was, I just couldn’t read it quickly, and that’s really unusual for me. I’d read a few chapters, then put it down for days…I enjoyed reading it when I was reading it but when I put it down sometimes days would go by before I picked it up again. That irresistible pull to keep reading it until I finished was a bit, well, absent. Like I said…curious.

The concept of the book was fascinating; it follows the life of Peter Debauer from his childhood in post-war Germany until, almost, the present day. For me, the aftermath of an event is very intriguing, whenever there’s an apocalyptic type film I always find myself imagining the aftermath, trying to work out how people pull themselves together again after a cataclysmic event and try to regain a sense of normality again. WWII is, in many ways,  just the story of cataclysmic event I’m talking about. I always feel like there’s a lack of literature about the German perspective on WWII, however. Understandably this is probably because it’s quite hard to know how to approach and properly deal with such a sensitive subject. There are books which deal with the obvious evils, and also books that deal with the resistance, and books like the ‘The Book thief’ that try to uncover an heroic element. There are few books in English, however, that explore the everyday German experience of the war.  It’s not a sense of denial so much as…avoidance perhaps, which ties in very neatly with this book’s themes. Schlink deals with this well by giving very little opinion about the actions of the Nazi’s, Peter is born at the end of the war and has very little engagement with it, except as an abstract concept; a shadowy figure that hangs over his country. Some of Schlink’s best passages deal with Peter’s feelings on the actions of his people. His struggles with the concept of heroism, for example:

“Bravery was a lesser virtue than fairness, the love of truth, but it was a virtue
all the same, and even a man like Hanke was, in my eyes, better brave than
cowardly…My answer to his first question should have been: ‘Yes bravery
is good, but bravery is not enough.’ It was too late for that now.”

This book is full of philosophical nuggets like this one and other golden moments, and at times when I was reading I found myself mentally debating with Schlink and having to think about the profundity of his statements. I was excited to recognise familiar philosophical outlooks and had the book contained only these moments I may not have found it so curiously hard to categorise. But I think both this book’s curse and redeemer is Peter himself.

The book is told through Peter’s voice and from the very beginning there was something about him that annoyed me. It took me almost until the last page to work out that it is because Peter avoids everything, especially confrontation. I am the world’s biggest procrastinator but even I found myself with little sympathy for Peter because he didn’t finish, or follow through, with anything. This brings me back to my point above about avoidance. Peter is almost afraid of the weight of his own opinion, he crumbles under any kind of expectation, and her certainly doesn’t want to have to find uncomfortable answers. It’s Peter’s avoidance and lack of confrontation, perhaps that allows Schlink to expose more about how the German nation has developed after WWII than if he made grand sweeping statements and transformed Peter into a ‘Hollywood Hero’.  As a result this is a very subtle, slow-burning book that made me angry because I expected to breeze through it. There are no BIG surprises and it ends as quietly as it begins, but having finished  I really think it’s the kind of  book that stays with you. It may be clichéd to say that, but it’s worth any frustration you may feel to get to the end and have that ‘I’m glad it read it’ feeling.

Have you read this book, or any of Schlink’s other novels? What did you think?

Mary Barton- Elizabeth Gaskell

This was my first foray into Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels and it was coincidentally her own first work. When I first picked this book up, I was really just looking for a follow on from Austen and at the time Women’s fiction was not heavily represented in the Classic’s section (it’s getting better these days!). I had never read any Victorian literature before and didn’t really know what to expect, other than having heard that it was usually full of long, dull sentences. Still, and I’m not sure why, I decided that she couldn’t really be that different from Austen and that I’d give her a try.

How wrong I was! First of all, Elizabeth Gaskell’s main objective, from the very beginning, seems to be to highlight the dire social and political conditions of working class at the time. Secondly, following this theme, most of the characters in “Mary Barton” are working class. Mary herself is a working class girl living with her widower, trade-unionist father…in a sense about as far from Austen as you could get! As a result of undefined expectations, the first time I read this book, about six years ago, I honestly didn’t take much away from it. My only lasting memory of the book was that Gaskell didn’t shy away from representing life in an 1840s English industrial town, in all its grim reality. Without realising it, however, “Mary Barton” had engaged with me on a much deeper level and taught me so much about a section of history that is largely skimmed over in school. It was only after re-reading it recently that I really appreciated the power of this novel, and how pioneering it was at its publication in 1848. Although “North and South”is probably the best of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels “Mary Barton” works on a similar theme, and is in many ways more directly engaged than “North and South” due to it’s heroine and her immediacy with the effects of the powerlessness of the working class in this time.

To offer a little context Elizabeth Gaskell was writing at the same time, and about the same city (Manchester), that Friedrich Engels uses as a case study in his work “The Condition of the Work Class in England” which was first published in 1844. Although it’s unlikely that Gaskell would have been directly influenced by this work, as it wasn’t translated into English until much later, it cannot be a coincidence that the conditions of this industrial city in what has come to be know as England’s ‘hungry forties’ were bad enough to inspire both authors into action.

Although I wouldn’t say “Mary Barton” was a pleasant read, or even as neatly written as “North and South” I’m definitely glad I’ve read it (twice). Elizabeth Gaskell is an excellent writer, once you get used to the Victorian style of writing and the melodrama. I’d even go as far to say that I like her better than Dickens, who was actually a friend and influence on Gaskell. There is something frank, passionate and eloquent about her style that when I later came  to read Dickens I missed. Plus it’s free from ridiculous, eccentric names…which really are my pet-hate with Dickens, so what more could you ask for?

That being said, should you read Gaskell? YES!

Should you read “Mary Barton”? Yes! I’m glad I read this book before North and South so that I could see how she built on the themes she explores in “Mary Barton” but I can equally see how it would be good to read “North and South” first. Read them both!

Evelina- Frances Burney

So, it’s been more than a week since I last posted anything, the reason: my internet was down. I have also been suffering from an ailment I’m going to term ‘reader’s block’, like writers block this can strike at any time and often results in much frustration as the reader struggles to get into any book s/he picks up! I’m back online track now though and if the adverts are anything to go by, my internet supply should now be infinite, so yay for that!

In times of great woe (i.e. when reader’s block strikes) when nothing new  will do, I like to return to an old favourite, a book that I know I have enjoyed before. I love re-reading and I think it’s the sign of a really great book that, despite the vast choice in the bookshops, you choose to come back to it again. “Evelina”is one of those books for me. I first read this  when I was about 16 and I was in a phase of reading obscure authors, I know right? Anyway, I enjoyed it and as a result it inadvertently  influenced my choice of university, and degree, as I saw that “Evelina” was one of the books to be studied in a second year module…don’t ask me why I was perusing the list of second year modules before I’d even started university, I just was! So, I ended up studying this novel in university and it was through that class that I was introduced to my favourite topic…Women’s Fiction in the 18th Century. The rest, as they say, is just a nerdy little ball of history but I owe it all to “Evelina”!  

Frances Burney  belongs to group of  women writers in the 18th century who I think should get a lot more credit than they currently do. Burney really paved the way for writers like Jane Austen and her successors. She is even supposed to have influenced Austen and “Evelina” is considered to be her best work. It’s written in the epistolary style, where the story is told through a series of letters, which was really popular in the late 18th century. It takes some getting used to if you’ve never read anything like this before because you have to make sure you know who the letter is from, as well as who they are writing to otherwise you might get confused. Personally I think it’s a really interesting way to get into the characters thoughts and feelings, which to be honest is sometimes lacking in other 18th century novels, like “Moll Flanders”, who we never really get to know, for example. This is one of the first moves toward the novel as we would recognise it today, where there is a mixture of plot and character examination. The reader knows Evelina’s worries and joys, the epistolary style invites a sort of intimacy that straightforward third person story telling doesn’t, as you become much more involved in the “present” of the plot.

In many ways the style and plot is reminiscent of Austen, although you shouldn’t go into it expecting Pride and Prejudice with a different name. Although it’s basically the story of a girl who tries to negotiate society and its prejudices, which readers of Austen will be familiar with, Burney isn’t as guarded. The novel was still a relatively new style when she was writing and her audience expected different things, and in this sense she can shock us a bit more, there’s more experimentation, there’s more innuendo, there’s more scandal and there’s definitely more outright comedy than in an Austen novel. I like “Evelina” because reading about her is a bit like being introduced to Lizzy Bennet’s saucy cousin.

I picked up my copy of “Evelina” at a Car Boot sale because it had beautiful illustrations in it but I know that Penguin has recently published it, as well as Broadview – which is a really good study version as it has lots of extra appendixes and notes to help you understand the context of the novel. However you do it, I seriously recommend you give Frances Burney a try!

 

Have you read Frances Burney before?

What’s your favourite ‘re-read?