The return of the weekly portrait: Christina Stead

I am enjoying Cotter's England so much, there is simply nothing else for it. Here is a picture of its author, Christina Stead. More of it and her later ...

Pottering with Pym: Excellency amongst women and novelists

I have just finished Barbara Pym’s novel Excellent Women over a cup of tea, in somebody else’s home whilst marooned in London due to snow, and just for a moment, albeit a short one, I identified with its heroine, the inestimable Mildred Lathbury. I am happy, but not quite settled. I take the view that a cup of tea solves most problems but I know that it doesn’t solve them all. I am looking around at the snow caked city and thinking – well – let’s just wait and see.

Mildred is a bit like that. She is the narrator of this excellent novel in which she reveals her character and her place in the world by gentle turns and subtle humour. Mildred is a clergyman’s daughter who has found herself over 30 and unmarried in an age when that usually meant that you could forget your chances in the marriage market. She is not at all rich but she is firmly middle class. She lives in a flat which shares its bathroom with others. She is extremely churchy – her closest friends being the local vicar and his spinster sister. Mildred volunteers and helps and sorts and mucks in and is generally a self contained, self sufficient woman upon whom everyone seems to depend.

Enter stage right a considerable amount of disturbance in the form of Mildred’s new neighbours, Rockingham “Rocky” and Helena Napier. Helena is a spirited anthropologist who is more interested in the origins of civilisation than in being a “proper” wife 1950s style. This state of affairs has poor Mildred completely flummoxed, not least because Mrs Napier’s husband Rocky is rather lovely. He has spent the war in Italy – Mildred imagines charming Wrens.

This book is largely about the distinction – now very little but then a vast chasm – between married and unmarried women. At the beginning of the book, Mildred comments disarmingly “Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women, who tell their stories in the first person”. That is to say - reader don’t expect an “I married him” moment.

The distinctions which Pym illustrates have mostly to do with status and position. One that really fascinates is the dividing of the married and the unmarried between the passive observers and the active non-observers. According to one of her fellow unmarrieds: “We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier”. He lifted the bottle, judged the amount left in it and refilled his own glass but not mine. “Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn’t your talent for observation”.

Other excellent opinions are to be found at Dovegreyreader, the Red Room library and the wonderful My Porch. I have included a picture of the front cover of the latest Virago edition, and the lady herself, together with a slightly grumpy looking cat.

More Du Maurier: this time My Cousin Rachel

My Cousin Rachel commences with the mouldering corpse of a murderer swinging from a gibbet and although, I don’t think I would call it cheerful, I would certainly call it brilliant. I am weighing up whether it may even be better than Du Maurier’s acknowledged masterpiece Rebecca. Who can say? I certainly reckon that it is as good, and you don’t need a PhD to see that they are of the same pen.

The novel is narrated by Philip Ashley, a young old man, a reclusive Cornish landowner with a past, and a distruster of women and society. His tale is retrospectively told, and of course, the story of his life explains his rather sour demeanour at the beginning of the book. He is an orphan who has been brought up by his wealthy cousin Ambrose. There are no women in their world and they seem quite pleased about it. Philip is a capable man and I took away the impression that he is good looking in a beefy English sort of way. For all of this, he is not really interested in the world beyond his gates. As he grows older, his cousin-father-friend Ambrose becomes unable to cope with the bitter Cornish winter and like so many people in literature begins “wintering” in warmer climes. One such winter takes him to Florence and there he does the unthinkable – meets his cousin Rachel for the first time, and marries her.

Poor Ambrose goes from Bridegroom to dead man with staggering speed and before the distraught Philip knows where he is, his cousin Rachel is knocking on the door of his remote Cornish home. It is the strange clash of loyalties and the nature of the bond between Philip and Rachel that invigorates this book: they are what it is about. I suspect that I have stated this too confidently, because, My Cousin Rachel is mysterious in every way. It is dark and atmospheric and what it is really about seems to shift and change shape throughout. It is love story, feminist fable and morality tale, all in one and Du Maurier manages all of this through the ingenious voice of Philip Ashley.

Some people find Philip annoying. I have to say that I rather loved him and wanted him to be happy, although I suspected that that was not possible. Maybe I am drawn to cranks, or even worse, misogynists. He is a hopelessly flawed narrator of his own story. He fears Rachel and hates her, he loves her unreservedly, he lusts for her and is utterly beguiled. He ricochets between being uncritical and being paranoid. Is she an angel who has had a hard life? Is she a loyal widow or a scheming money grabbing manipulator? Is she an ordinary woman with a little charm and a weakness for wealth? Is she worse than any of these things and even if she is, does she deserve the fate that awaits her?

Thinking about it long and hard, I have decided that the two main things I love about Daphne Du Maurier are her treatment of names and sex.

Firstly, I have always been fascinated by names. I look up what they mean, I ask people what their middle initials stand for when they give me cheques; I will be a nightmare if I ever have a child. There is something of the same going on in the novels of Daphne Du Maurier. Her most famous book takes a woman’s name as its title, but of course that woman is an off stage character, whilst the narrator herself is left nameless. Here the opposite is almost true. The eponymous Rachel is named but never explained. Her character is shrouded in mystery and we can only see her through Philip’s eyes. Readers may well put down the finished book and think that they never really knew Rachel at all.

And then of course there is the thorny issue of sex. Du Maurier writes about sex with power and subtlety and considerable beauty. By way of contrast, I almost died of embarrassment reading the sex scenes in The Children’s Book recently. The problem with bad sex is that it seems to capture so little of what it describes and I can’t be doing with that. Of course, I would not wish to bring back the censorship laws and cultural mores which meant that in 1951 authors like Du Maurier had to be “subtle” if they did not want their books to be banned. As my mother would say, I guess that it is a case of swings and roundabouts

There are other lovely reviews of this book at Coffee Stained Pages, She Reads Novels and the wonderful Harriet Devine’s Blog. I cannot recommend them or it enough. Here you see a picture of the Virago edition that I read, a photograph of the author and the poster of the 1952 film.

Now for a bit of a dabble

"The Dabbler" is a great name and a great blog and one of its features which is close to my heart is the "1 penny book review" in which various contributors review the many obscure and half forgotten books which can be bought on Amazon for 1p or 1c.

I was most flattered to be asked for a review and did not hesitate in singing the praises of forgotten novel Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns. To read the review click here. To buy one of the 1p copies on Amazon click here.

If the promise of a penny book is not enough, I have attached a picture of Comyns to tempt you. May the rediscovery begin!

Storms and tempests be gone! The several perceptions of Angela Carter

Last weekend I decided that the best way to take my mind off the worst gales that France has seen in a while was to settle down to a bit of Angela Carter. This seemed fitting as I discovered Carter a few years ago in equally inclement circumstances. I was in Ukraine of all places with my husband and a few friends for a skiing holiday. Now, I am not one of life’s skiers – not by a long chalk. So I spent most of the holiday – deep in the Carpathian winter, curled up with a hot chocolate and Angela Carter’s wonderful final novel Wise Children.

This weekend’s bad weather choice was the Virago Modern Classic – Several Perceptions. Several Perceptions was Carter’s third novel and in 1968 won the Somerset Maugham prize. It is the short and highly intense tale of Joseph – a confused and disorientated rebel without a cause whose disorderly life has been turned on its belly by the desertion of his adored girlfriend, Charlotte. In many respects the novel can be read as an allegory of the freedoms and adversities of the “swinging sixties”. Our characters wander around in a mad hatter world where they can do anything and yet seem to do nothing. Finally a resolution of sorts is reached via a bewildering carnal escapade and a drunken party – neither of which are communicated without irony.

Like many of Carter’s other novels – it deals wonderfully with a community of misfits – depicting with a sharp eye the kindness and the cruelty that can lurk just beyond the word “eccentric”. Carter presents her characters as the flotsam and jetsam of the sixties revolution – people who have been slightly lost in a cultural idea. What is more – the popular bohemia of that era is shown without gloss and sentimentality. Carter manages to celebrate the era without revering it.

There are few writers who are able to describe with the power and humour of Angela Carter. Sometimes the writing is so good that I read it again – savouring each word. For example these words are used to describe the slightly adorable, desperately unhappy prostitute Mrs Boulder:

“Viv’s mother had a bright white steeple of curls on top of her head; this fragile construction slid sideways as she drank during the course of an evening while the bright peach false face she assumed upon her natural features began to run with moisture until she looked like a pink stucco Venetian palazzo about to subside into a cascade of mud and rubble into a canal”.

Carter’s description of Maggie, the tin whistle playing sidekick to an Irish band, is equally striking:

“It was a tilted, brazen face, a carefree slut’s face; she was a raw boned country girl, young and very rackety, the spirit of Saturday night in small country towns at the back of beyond, a neighbourhood bad girl, meaning no harm”.

Carter surveys humanity thus – with breathless and powerful irreverence.

The only sadness of my time with Several Perceptions is that I did find Joseph unsympathetic – and although I realise that this is intended – still it is a barrier to my loving the book in the way that I loved Wise Children. For me Wise Children was the height of Carter’s achievement as a novelist – but all of the ingredients – the humour, the strange optimism and that little bit of magic – are here in Several Perceptions.

I probably ought to stop associating Angela Carter with rotten weather though – I don’t want to have to wait for another storm before reading more of her work.

I have included a photograph of Carter and of the shutter - smashing havoc wreaked outside during my reading.

Daffodils in February and putting the cart before the horse with Antonia White

I have photographed my copy of Jane Dunn’s “Antonia White: A Life” with a vase of daffodils not because they reflected my mood whilst reading the book, but because I needed cheering up. A dear friend has been bullying me for years to read White’s classic novel of convent school life Frost in May. I finally acceded and thought it deserving it of its reputation. I can understand why this book was chosen as the very first Virago Modern Classic. Aware that Frost in May is heavily autobiographical, I then jumped feet first and with much speed into its author’s biography.

As a cursory glance at this blog will show – I do love a good biography. But sometimes, just sometimes, reading a biography of a writer before one has read most of their work can be a shame. I suppose that the reason for this is that knowledge of the life and demons of a writer can taint the way we see their work. Jane Dunn’s biography of Antonia White is excellent, but I wonder if I should have waited.

Antonia White – the first Virago lady was a remarkable talent. Born in the last year of the 19th century, Antonia’s life changed when her father converted to Catholicism when she was seven years old. Her father’s conversion was the defining spiritual event of Antonia’s life and she would turn it and its implications over in my her mind for many years and in the midst of doubts, rebellions and reconversions. Her father took to his new faith with gusto and Antonia was sent to be educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton. Her account of the cruelties and bigotries of convent school life – where children were encouraged to fall asleep with their hands clasped in prayer lest they should die in the night still has the power to shock us today.

It was not simply Antonia’s spiritual landscape that was laid out at Roehampton. So too, her identity as a writer was formed. The dramatic events at the end of Frost in May (which I will not spoil for readers who have not read it) left Antonia with a profound, tormenting sense of personal victimhood and an inability to write fiction. Although her writing was outstanding, she would never, even as a grown up woman be able to write purely fictional work. Like another Virago writer of the same period – Barbara Comyns – her writing was cathartic and based on her own life. For Antonia – writing was associated with the greatest injustice of her life and this changed the way she worked forever. She suffered from extended periods of appalling writer’s block. She destroyed huge amounts of her work. This account of her life as a writer has left me wondering what she would have produced if she had been able to tackle fiction. Was it her early experiences at the convent that put the fire into her writing? Or did the convent partly stymie a talent that was always there?

This tussle between pain and creativity speaks of the dominating factor in Antonia White’s life. As was evident from her very early adulthood, Antonia White was severely and brutally bi-polar. She suffered from extended periods of crushing mental illness which sapped years from her life and poisoned most of her relationships with others – even, or rather especially – those closest to her. For me, the most striking part of Jane Dunn’s biography was where she compares the medical reports from Antonia’s most dramatic breakdown, with her own fictionalised rendering of the same event. The clarity of vision and vivid language that White used to describe her darkest moments are staggering and the reader will watch anxiously for the strange interlacing of her depression and her startling creativity throughout this splendid record of her life.

The other pictures that I have used here are a publicicty shot of the adult Antonia White - and also a school photograph of one of the Scared Heart's other famous old girls - Vivien Leigh.

The George Eliot you didn't know...

A small second hand bookshop, stuffed with battered Stephen King novels in the middle of the Trinibagonian capital, Port of Spain, was the last place that I expected to find a stash of Virago Modern Classics. But there they were, at the back of the store, so far from where they originated and such a salvation for me in my dilemma. My problem was that I was facing a 10 hour flight accross the atlantic, out of the burning caribbean and into snowy Europe, and I could not face it without a book or two. I chose three and read one that very afternoon. With the powerful heat of the day on my face and the city heaving into action around me, I read The Lifted Veil by George Eliot.

It was a shock to find a George Eliot title that I have not heard of, and even more of a shock to find it dealing with themes and exploring concerns which that brilliant novelist is not known for. Where Eliot is usually realistic, stark and concerned with the everyday, The Lifted Veil is a novella of horror, suspense and the supernatural. The tale is told by the central character, the sensitive Latimer whom we see progressing falteringly from adolecence to manhood. Latimer is burdened by a condition which plagues his relationships with others and ability to make his own destiny and that condition is that Latimer is both a clairvoyant and a mind reader. These abilities make latimer profoundly miserable, he fears the life that he is able to forsee and is at the same time drawn, inexorably to it. He is a figure of passive aggression whose ability to see the petty and vain thoughts of others renders him misanthropic himself.

Narration by an intelligent but flawed Latimer calls to mind the anxious ramblings of Victor Frankenstein and the hazy, gilded evocation of nineteenth century Europe as well as the final, hideous setpiece in which Latimer discovers that which he did not forsee, all recall Mary Shelley’s classic. In this novella, George Eliot is dipping her toe into the waters of the supernatural and the so-called pseudoscienes that so preoccupied the Victorians. The “veil” is a reference to the lack of knowledge about fate and about others which is the usual human condition. Latimer, by contrast, inhabits a world, or thinks that he inhabits a world, in which that veil is lifted, in which his knowledge of the world around him exposes him morally and emotionally. This premise is a vehicle for a rather wonderful exploration of the self and a treatment of alienation and the tawdry thoughts that can motivate human behaviour. George Eliot interuppted writing Mill on the Floss to pen this dark yarn, and in its candid potrayal of charcter, it is typical of its author’s work. A fine discovery and one for the recommendations list.