Dear Serial Readers,
Terrific conversation among our serial readers group this week! I too noticed that exchange between Cynthia and Molly (the one Reader Ann comments on)--yes, a rather bold but bitingly true assertion that love for one's mother is cultivated rather than natural. Cynthia's ability to speak in such a candid way seems the flipside of her waffling, untrustworthy mother. I agree with Kari that Gaskell seems to wrap her critique of Mrs G/Hyacinth/Clare with a humorous even burlesque flair that transpose such moments into domestic comedy. Does this treatment compare with, say, Austen's rendering of Mrs. Bennett? Cynthia, as Josh points out, is also morally compromised (something she pins on the inadequate mothering she receives), something we see, but Molly doesn't--yet. Finally, I agree too with Daun that even a novel like Middlemarch is threaded with sensational plot lines, large or small.
See the illustration included with this installment--the magazine provided the caption: "Roger is introduced and enslaved." Was Roger's infatuation with Cynthia predictable? We know he's an acute reader of nature outdoors, and he was a competent reader of Molly herself when she was distressed about her father's new marriage. But what of his reading of Cynthia? I find her intriguing as a sensation heroine (see my comment last week) in a realist novel: she's "put on her armour of magic that evening--involuntarily as she always did," we're told, but then: "she could not help trying her power on strangers." So her power to bewitch is both beside herself and something that amuses herself. Yet her indifference to Roger, to what he has to say (the details of the senior wrangleship which Molly longs to hear), is also striking. There's something oddly jaded about her--too old beyond her seventeen years. The revelation of her backstory should be interesting! By the way, did anyone else notice that Roger calls Cynthia "Miss Gibson" (Molly is only eavesdropping on the conversation, so it's not likely she's being addressed) and then refers to Cynthia as "Miss Kirkpatrick" to Molly, at the end of chap. 21? Gaskell has been criticized for carelessness (or lack of originality) with names. But this made me wonder about the naming of a daughter who seems to have both her dead father's and her stepfather's surnames.
Gaskell reveals more about Osborne's secret marriage and his French wife through O's private meditations about how to support himself and his wife. Gaskell places this novel in the 1820s when Catholic Emancipation was the subject of national debate, but also clarifies that Aimee's religious and national differences aren't the only difficulties in Osborne's mind in order for her to be accepted by his father. Her class background too would "shock" the squire's "old ancestral pride." I found poignant Gaskell's attention to the hopes and expectations this parent places in his son, to somehow improve upon his own life course, to have a distinguished higher education, to marry well and so "restore the ancient fortunes of the Hamley family." Perhaps Hyancinth's wishes for Cynthia to marry Osborne is the comic version of all this.
So, back to suspense again. What is brewing, do you think? The consequences of revelations--Osborne's secret marriage, Cynthia's amorous past (something about Preston), what else?
Somewhat serially suspended,
Susan
4 comments:
My but I was wrong about Osborne and Cynthia! So that made me read happily along thinking Molly was all wrong about the nature of Roger's affection for Cynthia (though I did wonder why Osborne would travel so much if Cynthia were his wife), and then poor dear Aimee entered the picture, making me sad for Molly and her affection for Roger.
(I feel, of course, that I have been a Molly in a Cynthia's shadow in the past, and I wonder if Mrs. Gaskell's readers would have all felt that kinship, too--did Cynthias just not read novels such as this? Or did they think of some yet more attractively silent and demure friend who attracted men into their orbits and whose dresses could be even more wrinkled and still look wonderful? I guess my hetero-normativity here is shaped by the novel, in part.)
I join Susan and ReaderAnn in noticing Cynthia's self-awareness yet friendliness to Molly, and wonder how that lack of goodness might cause pain to Molly in the future.
I still believe that even melodramatic plots can be part of a not very suspenseful text--some of the slowest films I've seen have sensational murders, other deaths and romances, while meandering slowly through character development. I think suspense comes much more from the tone of the novel--maybe the degree of worry created about the characters'? And I am getting more worried. I'm worried about Molly and her affections for Roger (but I still have total certitude that she will find marital bliss with an appropriate partner) and I am particularly worried about the Squire!
I was surprised by the turn to the squire's thoughts, and I found the tone of that chapter significantly more alarming than the chapters with Molly and her new mamma. I was also a bit, but not as much, concerned about Osborne. I feel the novel has dropped several hints that Osborne and Squire H. will *not* reconcile, and I wonder how the Hamley family will work out.
I'm looking forward to a ball!
I think Kari makes a really good point in distinguishing between sensational material and sensation fiction. It does seem like the tone of the novel works to counteract the provocative subject matter, doesn't it? Maybe Gaskell's own words can shed some light on this -- on p. 261 of the Oxford edition she says that the relationship between Osborne and the squire was characterized by "passive estrangement" and not "active discord." Is there something similar going on with the sensational elements of the novel? The surface seems pretty placid, but there's a lot of conflict, tension, and mystery underneath.
I was very interested in the card game in chapter 21, and I'm not really sure why. I have a recurring interest in the role games (cards, chess, horse-racing, etc.) play in fiction, but no real ideas about just what that role is. Here it seems to advance the characterization -- poor Molly is left lonely in the midst of this game, as Roger and Cynthia spend their time paying attention to one another instead.
And I was interested in Aimée -- not just because she's French, but because she's (gasp!) Catholic. Gaskell makes it clear that for the squire, Catholic emancipation is utterly beyond the pale ...
Like Kari, my feelings were with Molly during this installment and the painful development of Roger's infatuation with Cynthia. Even more painful than watching Roger "prone and abject" at Cynthia's feet, I think, is the way that Molly is forced to betray and suppress her own feelings by this new development. When asked how she enjoyed the night, she answers "very pleasant," but Gaskell tells us "Her heart a little belied her as she said this. She had not cared for the round game; and she would have cared for Roger's conversation. She had had what she was indifferent to, and not had what she would have liked" (p. 253). This is so different from the plain speaking Molly that takes on Lady Harriet! Cynthia, on the other hand, seems free to say exactly what she feels, even if that does not comport with her actions.
This kind of self-suppression is highlighted in the Squire's relationship with Osbourne, as well. The Squire, after all, is "too proud to ask any questions" although he wants to know about Osbourne's journey (p. 262). For me, there was something painful about watching the plain spoken characters deviating from their usual firmness. It seems to cloud the clear moral universe of Molly's childhood days before her father's marriage, Osbourne's failures, and Mrs. Hamley's death.
On the other hand, this does make Hollingford more interesting! I'm looking forward to seeing where things go from here. Cynthia and Roger surely won't be suitable for each other, and then there's Aimee. I'm continuing to see the parallel with George Eliot's Silas Marner--although Aimee is not an opium addict, she is a problematic spouse for a squire's heir.
And to make one more Eliot connection--one that links to Josh's observation about games--did Cynthia's high-stakes gambling style remind you of another Eliot heroine? I seemed to see a glimmer of Gwendolen Harleth here!
Everyone's comments so stimulating! Not sure what I can add.
On a light note, I enjoyed phrases such as "hearing intelligence" about Roger, and Cynthia's "armor of magic." (Oddly reminiscent of current military vernacular.) I loved viewing Cynthia in her lovely limp muslin through Molly's comparing eyes. It's the narrator's description, of course, but for that moment, in possession of Molly again caught in the comparison trap, due to the change in Roger's attentions. Very seventeen.
Like Joshua, I'm intrigued by the card game. Apart from it being a perfect scene of the commonplace of that time, isn't it ironic--Molly perfunctorily playing the card game, while Cynthia and Roger rather intensely play a game of early acquaintance?
I'm also interested in Gaskell's phrases "passive estrangement" and "active discord." Aren't some of the most destructive troubles in relationships often more the result of former than the latter?
Like Julia, I ache a little with the self-suppression that "clouds" what was Molly's clear universe, moral and otherwise, before the various complicating factors were set in motion. I don't see that her self-suppression is forced, though, but rather a choice, true to how she's developing, so far.
Can't wait to meet this Aimee.
Post a Comment