Recent reading

[regshoe]

The Pillars of the House by Charlotte M. Yonge (1873). I enjoyed The Heir of Redclyffe and I'd seen this one recommended too, so I now decided to launch into it without appreciating at first just how long it is. Well, it's about five-sixths of a Les Misérables long and took me a good couple of weeks plus a break between volumes, but a) it fully justifies the length and b) it is very good. The book takes place over nearly twenty years and follows the lives of the thirteen siblings of the Underwood family, some of whom are more main characters than others but all of whom get at least some focus, and there's a large and colourful cast of side characters, friends, neighbours, extended family, love interests, clergy (lots of clergy)—hence the size. Near the beginning the Underwoods' saintly clergyman father dies; their mother becomes an invalid and shortly afterwards also dies; and the children are left to make their own way in the world. The 'pillars' are the eldest siblings: Felix (sixteen at the start of the book), who gives up his academic and professional opportunities to support the family by working for a provincial newspaper, and fifteen-year-old Wilmet, who teaches at the local girls' school as well as keeping house. (Yes, Wilmet is an amusing contrast to her namesake in A Glass of Blessings.) Yonge was a major literary force in the Oxford Movement, and this is much more specifically evident here than in The Heir of Redclyffe. The Underwoods are committed Anglo-Catholics and there's a lot of discussion of why that's the best and most sensible thing to be, and while Yonge is sometimes surprisingly well able to be clear-sighted about taking things too far in the way of rigidity and snobbery (especially through Clement, the brother who goes to be educated at a very High church in London and eventually becomes a priest himself), she is also utterly awful about Dissenters, Low Church Anglicans, Latitudinarians, anyone who disagrees with her objectively correct and highly important opinions about church aesthetics, etc. etc. Two of the siblings are disabled—Geraldine, one of the older girls, has a bad ankle very much like Charles in The Heir of Redclyffe, and Theodore, the youngest boy, is intellectually disabled—and there's a lot of interesting period attitudes to disability, some good and some bad. I've barely touched the surface of this book, which is really very long and has an awful lot going on in it. It's always an enjoyable read—Yonge's writing has a lovely liveliness, and she is especially good at developing the varied relationships between the siblings—and for the rest, she writes about people, relationships, society and life in general with a mixture of kindness and bigotry, contempt and compassion, which is kind of bewildering if also somewhat sadly familiar.

Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers (1941). Well, after weeks of that I wanted something a bit different, and I chose this on the basis that Carson McCullers was probably about as far from lengthy, sentimental Victorian piety as I could get while still being firmly within the sphere of things I like. It worked! This book is about a group of people on an army base in the US South—two officers and their wives (where one officer and the other wife are having an affair), a private soldier who becomes obsessed with one of the wives, and the other wife's servant—and the events leading up to the murder of one of these people by another (McCullers tells you this near the start; it's not a book of great surprises). It's weird and miserable in exactly the way I like from McCullers's writing, and I liked it very much. It's also quite openly and matter-of-factly queer, albeit in the way where queerness doesn't get any more happiness or fulfilment than anything else in a Carson McCullers book.

By Honour Bound by Bessie Marchant (1925). I had high hopes of this school story, which is about Honour and terrible dilemmas thereof. The book opens with the main character, Dorothy, going clothes shopping on the way to her new school; she sees another girl shoplift a jumper and is so frozen with horror she says nothing, and then of course it turns out that the shoplifter goes to Dorothy's school and is her main opponent in competing for the terribly important scholarship to Cambridge that Dorothy has set her heart on. Should she say anything?? But then Dorothy finds out something about her own family's past that means—by its strictly honourable rules—that SHE might not be eligible for the scholarship! Should she say anything??? So, great premise; but unfortunately a) Dorothy wavers and worries, but never has the Windhamesque strength of principle or depth of agony that would make her dilemmas really compelling, b) the writing and characterisation are so flimsy and dull that it all has very little effect. Eventually the plot is resolved by, to put it politely, a massive cop-out of a twist which I'm afraid I was uncharitable enough to guess in advance. The girls' school of the setting forms half of a pair with an associated boys' school, which Dorothy's brother attends; while I'm sure this is an interesting window into the history of education and gender, it did mean more male characters and implied potential het than I like in my girls' school stories.

Re-read The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula le Guin (1972). So, in search of some beautiful prose and solid thought, I decided to continue the Earthsea re-read, and I really enjoyed revisiting this one! I liked how it was a sort of outsider-POV with respect to A Wizard of Earthsea, I really liked the setting and worldbuilding in the early chapters* and I thought the main story sustained the essential kindness of Le Guin's writing much better, really, than the first book. Especially in being less sexist, which is kind of surprising for a book whose basic plot could so easily have been conveyed in a very sexist way indeed, but it's not, really. (I was only slightly distracted by wondering whether you could grow all those apples in a desert climate, and by the way the lovely intricate drawing of the Labyrinth at the front of the book didn't quite match the descriptions in the text.)

*Now there's an idea: school story with totally ordinary low-stakes school-story plot and drama, but set among the novices in an extremely messed-up fantasy priestess-hood serving the great powers of evil. Hmmm.

Comments

[cyphomandra]

I really enjoyed The Daisy Chain, I should read more Yonge.

Re your school story idea - have you read Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci series? Milly is a Living Aspect of the Goddess Asheth who decides to escape after a young Chrestomanci smuggles her a collection of girls’ boarding school stories in exchange for one of the magical temple cats.

[regshoe]

The Daisy Chain is another that I've heard of as being especially good! I'll try it sometime.

I bounced off the first Chrestomanci book many years ago, I'm afraid—but that does sound like a fun plot element :D

[wychwood]

I'm so delighted to see someone else reading Yonge! For what it's worth, Redclyffe is significantly more melodrama-ish than most of her contemporaries (I try to avoid her historicals, which I have found uniformly dreadful!) - Pillars of the House is her usual mode. Let me know if you'd be interested in recs (The Daisy Chain! You should read The Daisy Chain!).

Also, wait until you hear Yonge talk about Catholics (as a Catholic myself, it's mostly kind of funny because it's just so outrageous).

[oursin]

Yes! avoid the historicals! read more Yonge! especially The Daisy Chain!

I did a massive binge while I was writing up my PhD. Am a bit annoyed that after spending a fair amount of £££ on some of the more obscure titles in pre-ebook days they are pretty much all now on Project Gutenberg.

[regshoe]

I am definitely getting the impression from these comments that The Daisy Chain is a good one :D (and that is annoying—I am very grateful to have Gutenberg now!)

[regshoe]

I'm glad to have discovered her books :D I like both melodrama and domestic stories, so that suits me (and I didn't know she also wrote historicals—thank you for the warning there, it's a shame they're not so good!). I have heard of The Daisy Chain as another good one—it's about the May family from Pillars of the House, right? I'm curious to see how that works—and it's on my list to read at some point.

Oh dear... The bit in PotH where Sibby converts to Anglicanism, and Clement worries that maybe it's an act of schism and she should stay RC even though it's not the Objective Best, was pretty funny.

[wychwood]

it's about the May family from Pillars of the House, right?

Yes! She likes to throw in occasional crossovers like that :) I hope you enjoy.

The bit in PotH where Sibby converts to Anglicanism, and Clement worries that maybe it's an act of schism and she should stay RC even though it's not the Objective Best, was pretty funny.

Conversion the other way is always particularly Horrifying for all the good characters, and usually a sign of, like, unstable personality etc. Clement, though. Is he ever not worrying about something, that boy.

[phantomtomato]

Pillars of the House sounds interesting! I don’t have another Victorian doorstopper in me right now (thank you for the length warning), but I like the sound of following a large family of siblings. The employment choices of the eldest two are particularly appealing—I don’t feel like I’ve sseen many different types of jobs from that era, probably just down to who was doing work and being written about. Does the novel show us much about their jobs?

Also a hearty “boo!” to a school story which pairs up gender segregated schools. That is not the appeal of the format, I agree. What was the cop-out solution that you guessed?

[regshoe]

'Large family of siblings' is clearly something Yonge does very well, and the employment stuff is fascinating—I especially liked the exploration of how working in trade is a massive drop in social status for the son of a family who were historically clergy and landowners, and all the varied reactions and consequences to that. There is a fair bit about Felix's work, though not loads of detail—one of the younger brothers eventually gets involved too, and Geraldine contributes some editing, and the newspaper becomes a sort of affectionately-regarded pet of the whole family—and not so much about Wilmet's teaching.

What was the cop-out solution that you guessed?

So the thing Dorothy discovers about her family is that her father once went to prison, for a youthful escapade in company with his no-good cousin that went too far (girls whose parents have been in prison are barred from the scholarship, for reasons of Respectability.) She hears this from an old friend of her father's, and is too ashamed to ask her father about it; eventually it turns out that the friend misremembered, and it was actually the cousin who went to prison, not Dorothy's father. (I guessed it from the combination of multiple clearly-significant mentions of the cousin with his otherwise entire irrelevance until the reveal.)

[phantomtomato]

Oh that is indeed a cop-out! At least have the guts to stick to the child-of-felon narrative and do a reform arc for the parent; those are fun, if terribly dated.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

It's weird and miserable in exactly the way I like from McCullers's writing

I absolutely agree!

It's also quite openly and matter-of-factly queer, albeit in the way where queerness doesn't get any more happiness or fulfilment than anything else in a Carson McCullers book.

I might have mentioned it before, but I absolutely recommend "The member of the wedding"--it's got all of her usual themes,but with a less depressing ending, and the main character is wonderful!

[regshoe]

I read this one first because it was more readily available at the library, but I am really looking forward to reading The Member of the Wedding eventually! I'm intrigued to see what the less depressing ending will be like :)

[osprey_archer]

I love you idea for an ordinary school-story plot set among the novices of a messed-up fantasy priestess-hood of the powers of evil. It sounds like amazing fun! Although I suspect a bunch of readers wouldn't get it and would keep wondering "When are we going to start overthrowing the evil priestesshood?" NO overthrowing the evil priestesshood. Midnight feasts and jolly hockeysticks romps ONLY.

[regshoe]

Exactly! No veering off into a proper fantasy novel, it's just a boarding school story! Midnight feasts, jolly romps, sentimental friendships, wholesome moral lessons about Honour and Doing the Right Thing except instead of early-twentieth-century British ideas about what's right and honourable it's evil fantasy culture ideas, which are horrifying in totally different ways...

[luzula]

anyone who disagrees with her objectively correct and highly important opinions about church aesthetics
I don't know whether I would find this funny or just bewildering, given that I probably wouldn't understand the context for her Correct Opinions! However, I have heard of Yonge before and might give her a go at some point if I feel like something Victorian.

I'm sorry about the disappointing honour copout in the girls' school story! But glad you enjoyed the Le Guin. : )

[regshoe]

Unfortunately I know enough about the context to find it both funny and awful! That aside, however, I can definitely recommend her writing as enjoyable Victorian-ness.

[sovay]

Now there's an idea: school story with totally ordinary low-stakes school-story plot and drama, but set among the novices in an extremely messed-up fantasy priestess-hood serving the great powers of evil. Hmmm.

I absolutely think there's an audience for it.

[regshoe]

Oh, good—I would certainly read it :D