Dear Serial Readers,
To begin by responding to last week's conversation--I admit I'm stymied by this novel so far, like Plotaholic's "bad faith" suspicion. I agree with Kari that Lucilla's ambitions to enter "social politics" through her community organizing of the Thursday Evening affairs resemble Glencora's social hostess work in Trollope's Palliser novels (a model or companion series for Oliphant's). But I'm less convinced that the tone of the novel prompts amusing affection for Lucilla with her domestic campaign, her warfare in a teacup. So tiresome becomes the repetition of Lucilla's professed mission to give comfort to dear papa who seems not to need or desire it. Is this refrain meant to convey something like gentle ridicule? I cannot say that I admire or even feel terribly interested in Lucilla's machinations, although I find the attention to decorative renovations (the use of green that suits Lucilla's appearance) in concert with the reshaping of Grange Lane society intriguing. But for all these strategems, including her deft handling of Tom's proposal, it's inevitable that she will marry someone by the end, and that someone is likely to be cousin Tom. This is rank speculation, dear Plotaholic and like-minded readers! I have never read this novel!
The characters I'm most drawn to are the Lake sisters. Here is where Oliphant best sketches the finer points of class distinction in Carlingford. I loved the detail that Barbara's six-times washed muslin comes off as a very different shade of white than Lucilla's pristine frock. More compelling than Lucilla's so-called devotion to papa is Barbara's confused feelings of resentment and cautious ambition, her mixture of "fright" and "spite" or "shyness" and "temper." And I also liked the fancy that the aspiring young MP Mr Cavendish could become her own private hero--that this dream springs from the novels Barbara reads. Lucilla does deserve credit here for the "heterogeneous elements" that she draws together for these Thursday Evenings.
A few other favorite details from this segment seem directed in different ways to the question of women as agents and objects of looking: the Brown sisters' photographic glass-house next door facilitates Lucilla's camera-ready poses and Rose Lake as "the little Mistress of the Design School" who teaches drawing (like her father). Visual appearances, from the Marjoribanks drawing room to the dress and manner and even body (Rose's life classes at the Design School) all warrant self-conscious notice.
But my jury is still out on the title character, whether her frequently remarked "genius" is deserved, whether her energetic social engineering is only frustrated and misdirected energy after all. I just can't quite parse the tone.
Next week: chapters 13-16.
Serially slipping,
Susan
4 comments:
The scene in Chapter 9, when Tom stops Lucilla mid-furniture matters to declare his bursting heart, caught my attention. She’s belittling, merciless, almost sardonic, and her response is a typical though exaggerated one of women of a certain nature, who attract unwanted affection. For a moment I wondered if Tom’s delusion that, should she love him there would be nothing he couldn’t do, was a kind of foreshadowing.
Whatever Oliphant is up to (unclear to me so far), I find too much playfulness in her storytelling to believe that she is mocking me, her reader, for enjoying it. I’m still cuious. How will Lucilla develop? I might be even more interested in Barbara, whose love of novels, romance or otherwise, reminds me of, yes, Emma Bovary and the escapades she took us on. How will Barbara navigate Lucilla’s directive—“You must always leave yourself in my hands.”
Will the THIRD Thursday be “the test”? Or is it a ploy, serially speaking?
My apologies for not posting sooner; grading, traveling, and holiday plans have kept me busy these past few weeks. Thanks for including me in this wonderful serial reading experience!
I'm finding Lucilla--and the narrative's tone towards her--an intriguing puzzle. I agree that her steadfast consistency can be infuriating and sometimes rather monotonous. I question the narrator's continued emphasis on (mockery of?) her domestic duties, her "almost Utopian" benevolence, and the "reasonable and steady faith" with which she believes in herself and her power.
Is Lucilla a less compelling character precisely because of this steady absence of self-doubt? Are we somehow rooting for her to be humiliated (again recalling Austen's Emma--or perhaps Mrs Elton)? Or is this desire for her to be shamed or stymied really a desire for her to experience some sort of self-division--of tension between public and private selves?
I wonder, too, about Lucilla's proud claims about her own lacking sense of humor. She is such a triumphantly material and literal-minded character--so intently and un-ironically focused on the great importance of "furniture and things." It is an odd blend of the "narrow" provincialism of Eliot's Dodsons and (as so many of you have already mentioned) of the aesthetic discrimination of Ruskin's domestic Angels. Will this sensibility continue to develop in other more moral and sympathetic ways (continuing to follow Ruskin and Eliot)--or will it instead support a domestic parody of political economy and "social politics"? And, for that matter, what do we make of the difference guises assumed by political economy in this narrative? Will it stick (like politics) as a convincing metaphor for social cohesion and community?
Like the rest of you, I can't wait to see what will come of Barbara Lake's Bronteian passions and novelistic expectations...
It's fascinating to read all the different responses to this novel so far! At twelve chapters in, I'm still enjoying it. I think what I find interesting is how the novel is presenting, in Lucilla and Barbara, two very different models of what life in Carlingford society can be. I admire Lucilla for her ability to adopt a seemingly dutiful role -- the daughter who is devoted to comforting her widowed "papa" -- and completely reshape it to her own ends. (I love that this installment closes with Dr. Marjoribanks, supposedly the target of all this hard work, quietly slipping off into his library, unnoticed by "his" guests.) And I'm drawn in by Barbara Lake, who -- not having the advantages Lucilla has -- discovers that these parties are far more serious than Lucilla makes them seem. She also seems to be developing as the first real trouble to Lucilla's reign, with her ability to catch Cavendish's eye. I think that Oliphant's attention to social manners, class, and the flexibility of social roles has kept my attention so far. We see a world where the domestic affairs of Carlingford can be trivial or desperately important, stifling or liberating, all depending on what position you have in that world.
But I think what I'm enjoying most about this novel so far is much simpler: Oliphant's ironic narrative voice makes me laugh, and I'm willing to cut a lot of slack for things I find funny.
Like TK, I have been tied up the last few weeks and smiled when Oliphant wrote in Ch. X that "the holidays are the hardest work a poor woman can have." And when the laborious holidays are followed by needing to turn to an Inbox full of complaints from students about fall semester grades, it is an albeit belated joy to turn to Carlingford's social politics.
Joyful, but not less laborious as everyone has pointed out: parsing the tone of this novel IS challenging. But I felt like this installment offered some other ways to think about if not resolve it. The curious not-entirely-mock-epic tone of the narrator towards Lucilla and her campaign is joined by more voices (though they are still, of course, the narrator's voice -- maybe an interesting conversation about the slipperiness of omnisicient narration is really happening here?): other characters' perspectives and even the reader's perspective are more directly invoked in this installment. For example, the humorous line that "it was nearly as important to make an end of Tom as to see that the pictures were hung rightly" would fit right in with mock epic. But Lucilla's subsequent earnest if self-serving comment to Tom that "it is very lucky for you that you said this to me and not to one of the girls that think it great fun to be married" is actually true and quite sensible, given the so-so marriages (not only the Marjoribanks's but also of Mrs Chiley's niece "who, if her trousseau had been subtracted from the joys of marriage, would not, poor soul! have found very much left") featured in these first chapters.
We also see Lucilla being mocked-- by town satirist Mrs Woodburn -- and not getting it: "the possibility of such a lese-majeste did not even occur to Miss Marjoribanks" (Ch. XI). Indeed, when I read this I felt like if there was any judgment in the narrator's tone, it was toward Mrs Woodburn, whose small town criticism seems increasingly petty compared to Lucilla's focus on the social collective.
The narrator writes of Lucilla that her "good nature and liberality were undoubted" and that struck me as, again, actually true. Are there any examples of this not being true? Or is her good nature and liberality always already compromised by the self-absorbed project of being a comfort to her dear papa? (Responding to Susan's comment that this is becoming an irritating refrain, I'm finding it rather like a "Saturday Night Live" punchline which seems stupid at first, tiresome after it goes on and on, and then increasingly funny in its absurd repetition. More cowbell!)
Perhaps an answer to the tone dilemma is in this sentence from Chapter XII after Lucilla pronounces that it is best to flirt in the middle of company. It could seem that such a claim is a bon mot. But the narrator says this would only be believed by "ignorant" people: "it is needless to inform the more intelligent persons who understand Miss Marjoribanks that it was by no means a bon mot." I'm thinking the readers are being told here that to read this text only through the lens of satire (to laugh at Miss Marjoribanks) is not as wise a way of proceeding as "understanding" Lucilla's true character (or, more accurately, her character as true).
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