Dear Serial Readers,
With this #11 of 18 installments (the last one is very short), we're now well beyond the halfway mark. So, time to start thinking about the next serial novel. Please feel free to suggest possibilities, and I'll construct a poll, as I did last time when we chose between this novel, Trollope's Orley Farm, and Dickens's Little Dorrit. I'm also interested in reading early Dickens, his transatlantic novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. But perhaps a Wilkie Collins novel or Mary E. Braddon, or something else, possibly another Gaskell--her linked Cranford stories?
Because of reading serially in this weekly fashion, I'm finding the divulgence of a secret backstory of Preston and Cynthia increasingly suspenseful. The novel moves along in its full ordinariness, and yet I feel hungry for the revelation. The mounting tension between Preston and the squire is intriguing too, especially the attention to different practices of land use, limited resources, and the impoverished who live on the land, highlighted by the illustration (see sidebar) in the magazine, titled "The Burning of the Gorse" (with reference to the encounter between Squire Hamley and Preston, who is wearing the top hat, presumably).
I continue to marvel over Gaskell's handling of fine gradations of social class, whether it's Mrs. G (with her excess of names--as Daun has pointed out for us) telling Lady Harriet that they now follow the fashionably late dinner hour or the narrator mentioning that poor people are more candid about death "the leveller" than "is customary among more educated folk." It does seem to me that Gaskell supports fuller candour and straightforwardness, for all her characters, and in this way applauds some of the habits of the poorer classes whose behaviors might be labeled "vulgar" otherwise.
On the historical dating of the novel: I want to correct my earlier assertion (in response to Josh's comment) that the interest in the Cumnors in getting votes must place the novel post-1832 Reform Act. As Kari noted, Gaskell is a little loose with her temporalities. But still, I think it makes sense that the novel is set in the 1820s, and that the votes that Lady Harriet and her brother Lord Hollingford must be after (during the charity ball) belong to the fallen landed gentry like Squire Hamley. Gaskell punctuates these chapters with "in those days" to accentuate temporal changes, like the use of envelopes!
Molly once again comes off as the most astute reader in the group of women in the Gibson household. Cynthia, "a passive coquette," poses a reading engima whose "brilliancy" the narrator qualifies as "the glitter of the pieces of a broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders." Ah, the slow turn of the screw of suspense again! Molly is most vexed and angered in this segment by Cynthia's puzzling submission to her mother's marriage plotting directed at Roger now, instead of the ailing Osborne. Does Molly's irritation over Cynthia as "the conscious if passive bait" forecast her own refusal of prescribed roles later in the novel? We'll see!
Finally, it looks as if Roger is to have a manly adventure on a scientific expedition, much like the young Darwin (whose Cambridge professor recommended him as naturalist aboard the Beagle, which set sail in 1831). Enjoying greater mobility than their female counterparts, Roger and Osborne leave and return, while Molly's furthest ventures are to the Towers. It seems too that Roger's talents as a "careful observer" of nature are drawing some recognition (as the review of his article mentions), while we readers are left to notice Molly's qualities as a struggling reader of human natures, her own and others around her.
Next time, chapters 33-36 (the next installments include more than three chapters)--and, a rousing cheer for SLOW READING!
Yours in the fullness of serial time,
Susan
2 comments:
I too am ready to find out what's the history of Preston and Cynthia and Mrs. G! Susan has quoted some of my favorite parts--the envelopes, and the difference in how the poor and the more educated talk about death--I was struck by the contrast of no money vs. education rather than poor vs. wealthy, or poor vs. getting by.
I was thinking again about Josh's comments that Molly becomes an observer. I'm interested in how she both is and is not the heroine of this novel of everyday life--it is called "Wives and Daughters," but it does focus most on her, and secondarily on other wives and daughters who interact with her. But surprisingly, some of the characters the novel goes most inward with are the Hamley men, with no wives or daughters in town. It seems we see the thoughts and feelings of Molly, of Squire H., and of Osborne. Are there others? I feel I know some of Harriet's thoughts, but only because she expresses them so well, and occasionally there's a brief reference to Mr. G's, though he usually tries to suppress his! There are moments, I guess, when a number of characters' thoughts are expressed, but very few who get a chapter dedicated to them. I think we should make up a new title. I will ponder.
I'm about to go out of town for 12 days, and I can't decide whether to carry the novel for a mere 3 chapters of reading (since I'm heading up to read the next installment right now!). Hmmm. I'll see. I hate to wait, but I limit how many books I can take on vacation (5), and still my suitcase is already too heavy. For me, this is the dilemma of slow reading!
Just briefly, since I’m behind in reading, about Chapter 30, “Old Ways and New.” After listening for, it seems, several chapters to the squire’s grumblings, I found Gatskell’s build-up to his loss of temper effective, and the actual loss of it cathartic. First he hears the “sound of tools,…the clink of iron,…the cry and shout of labourers. But not on his land.” It's the Cumnors', and they having “gone up in the world" as the squire "went down.” (I felt for him.) The squire's enraged encounter with the Cumnor's contemptible Preston is framed by the squire's tender visit "to say good-by" to the sleeping/dying servant, Silas. All in all, by the end of the chapter, I am no longer impatient with the squire, and my hatred for Preston is cemented.
Plus, what’s not to love about Gatskell's writing, this, in the heat of battle: “Mr Preston turned to Roger, as if appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober, …”
What IS up with Cynthia and Preston? Let’s get on with it.
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