Dear Serial Readers,
I am happy to turn the lead for this week's conversation over to ReaderAnn. I'll chime in at some point (overloaded right now in various ways). For next week's #3 installment, chapters 9-12. Thanks to all for contributions--a lively start!
Serial Susan
From Reader Ann:
Lucilla is a complex young woman, I'm just not sure yet quite who. She is, of course, well distinguished by her desire to be a comfort to dear papa. By the end of Chapter Five, she shows attributes of not only a conqueror and ruler, but also a "leader of mankind." So far, if she is not out and out manipulating people and situations, she is engaging in "simple reconnaissance" in route to exercising her will. Still, I am watching and warming to her, like her father as he gets to know his daughter, seemingly
for the first time. Early in Chapter six he bemoans the "blunders of Providence," and by the end is taking tea with a daughter cleaver beyond his wildest dreams. Is it Oliphant¹s gentle, ironic touch that makes Lucilla so likeable, or is it something within Lucilla¹s character that will be only gradually revealed? For my part, I'm crazy for anyone who differentiates "Evenings" from "parties," and knows how to pull off the former.
We meet so many new women, from Miss Barbara Lake, shy, injured,unappreciated, the perfect foil to Lucilla, to the zealot Mrs. Bury and the veiled Mrs. Mortimer whom we may never see again. I love watching how Lucilla responds to the varieties of women, and to the, so far, few men. For all her confidence and intention, she is fearful of something, and vulnerable. A dream about sorry Tom is all it takes for her to steer clear of him in the rudest of ways for someone as socially astute as Lucilla.
I've rarely been so eager see how a plot will thicken. Will her father remain enchanted by her? Will some uncontrollable love interest undo her? Despite Lucilla's persistent claim about the aim of her life, I end up wondering: What is it she really wants?
By the way, like Josh, I noticed the lack of sentimentality around the mother's death, but I didn't stop to be thoughtful about it. I chalked it up instead to the one line about Dr. M, "too busy a man to waste his feelings on mere sentiment."
5 comments:
Hello, Serial Readers.... I'm very excited to join this reading community and think the comments have been wonderfully stimulating. I especially love Reader Ann's point about Lucilla's focus on women rather than men (making me think of Sharon Marcus's *Between Women*), while she nonetheless makes conquests of men.
There is an element of this text that is troubling me, though. On the one hand, I, like Serial Susan and Reader Ann, am enjoying Oliphant's ironic style. On the other hand, I'm wondering whether there's something like bad faith at work here. Oliphant represents women's experience as frivolous and inconsequential when she compares it mockingly to heroic masculine ventures such as government and battle, but at the same time she makes it the whole focus of the narrative. It seems as if she's ridiculing the frivolity of the novelistic, drawing us in while also mocking us for caring about what happens. I started to look for aspects of the narrative that break through the irony: what if Lucilla does risk being an old maid, for example? Might that mean poverty and social isolation? wWat does it mean that her father is being drawn into her feminine world--is Oliphant undermining the separation of spheres that is also the target of her irony? *Is* gender politics like war or government, and is there a serious set of feminist implications in Oliphant's focus on bringing them together? (I keep thinking of "The Rape of the Lock," and wondering how and whether these two heavily ironic texts converge or differ in their image of gender politics as battle.)
p.s. Reading the new comments from the last installment, I see that Kari has already raised the question of The Rape of the Lock. Sorry not to see this sooner! Kari is not seeing much of a link to Pope. For me, the connection is mostly in the martial language and the image of Lucilla arming herself for conquest and rule. I do like the way Oliphant sustains this in the form of the text so far: the second serial installment offers one loss and one victory, as if episodes of military engagement were in fact organizing our reading experience.
I'm really impressed with Oliphant's skill at characterizing Lucilla. She's really a difficult character to pull off, I think. Chapter Five makes it clear that her confidence can be a little off-putting -- especially to Barbara Lake, at first! -- so it's easy to imagine a novelist turning her into an insufferable character. But in Oliphant's hands, she isn't. Although we're starting to see some more formidable challenges on the horizon, like Tom and the Burys, Lucilla seems to deserve the confidence she projects.
I'm also taken by Dr. Marjoribanks and his amused reactions to Lucilla and Tom. I thought I had a handle on his character when he was wishing that Tom was his child, not Lucilla. But then we learn how impressed he is by his daughter's effortless mastery over Tom -- and we notice how he really does value Lucilla after all.
Interesting that Lucilla's ability to ignore conventions (albeit in the name of being a "comfort to Papa"!) doesn't extend to impiety ...
Yes, aren't Lucilla's two pieties "the comfort of poor papa" and she always speaks of religion with respect--not exactly very spiritual or religious, is she? But definitely not a Bohemian!
What seems so unlike Rape of the Lock here is that in RL, Pope shows how intertwined marriage/parties/social life is with the business of empire. It is serious stuff, even if he does make fun of Belinda. But here, there does not seem to be that political importance to Carlingford social life. Perhaps that's because it's nowheresville--like talking about Milwaukee's glitterati. (And it's fine not to have glitterati! I mean no disrespect to Milwaukee. I make it a point of honor never to speak of Milwaukee with anything but respect.)
In the reminds-me-of theme, this reminds me a little of Lady Glencora in The Prime Minister (which I keep wanting to call The Prime Minister's Wife), wanting to make a social success to gain her own power and to support her husband. But her parties do have political consequences.
I wonder whether Oliphant will show more connections between the social and the political, or if the martial language will always be merely mocking.
At the same time that Lucilla's world is mocked, there don't seem to be potential lasting ill effects from her actions, at least not yet. I see no concern that she might become an old maid--she seems to be able to support herself in later life if she needs to.
I look forward to her future social successes and challenges!
I'm getting to this late thanks to the very Victorian dilemma of too much cooking, too much childcare and too many unexpected visitors. I need a Nancy!
I was surprised by how relieved I was that Lucilla's first "Evening" was a success. This suggests to me two things: 1) that I have decided to ignore the mock epic tone and all the very good questions that Plotaholic raises about how that tone undervalues women's experiences; and/or 2) that we are supposed to like Lucilla (or be won over by her) and be rooting for her. I'm kind of fascinated by the combination of complete self-absorption that her campaign to reform Carlingford society indicates and her lack of attention to self indicated by her unneurotic recognition that if she waits ten years to marry she will "have begun to go off a little."
On the question of how Lucilla reacts to women v. men, I'm also interested in Oliphant's representation of how other women react to Lucilla. I thought the passage about how Barbara Lake comes around to seeing the merits of a strategic alliance with Lucilla really interesting and very proto-Survivor. It does seem like Tom would be voted off the island if the novel ended with the second installment...
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