The next meeting of the group will be on Monday 18 January and we will be reading:
The History of Mary Prince: a West Indian Slave (1831) by Mary Prince. It can be purchased from the Chawton House Library online store http://www.chawtonhouse.org/shop/index.html.
The inclement weather meant that the Reading Group did not meet on Monday 21 December (we would have been snowed in at Chawton!) and I have promised the group members that we will discuss The Sylph by Georgiana Cavendish first and then move onto Mary Prince, so that no reading, or preparation for the session, will be wasted.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft
The book in October for the reading group was Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, first published in 1796. It was Wollstonecraft’s last book published during her lifetime and the most popular. The book consists of twenty-five letters written whilst Wollstonecraft travelled round Scandinavia with her baby daughter Fanny.
The letters are primarily a travelogue of the countries Wollstonecraft visits, describing the countries, the people and the beautiful landscapes. She also comments on the political problems, she witnessed. In Norway, in letter thirteen she describes how peasants are recruited into the army, and how unfair the system is that they are not allowed to choose whether they go into service at sea of for the army: ‘And what appears more tyrannical, the inhabitants of certain districts are appointed for the land, others for the sea service.’ Compared with her other travels in France and England, the old aristocracy in Norway and Sweden seemed harsher to her. For instance she saw how criminals are enslaved in Norway, and how the people of Christiana rose to protest the cost of grain: ‘They threw stones at Mr. Anker, the owner of it, as he rode out of town to escape their fury.’
However one of the main themes throughout the book is Wollstonecraft’s questioning of commerce in the countries, and she does not hide her dislike of it. She discusses the war economy that has developed in Scandinavia, creating an unjust taxation on the people involved in the conflict. Her conclusion results in poor commerce, as well as allowing more merchants to take advantage, of more people. She believes that commerce: ‘wears out the most sacred principle of humanity and rectitude.’ She compares the systems in Norway and Sweden to those in England and France, believing that commerce helped with revolution but the people there should be careful of relying to heavily on the system, otherwise it will turn back to the old ways of governing. And by the end of her travels she is particularly scathing: ‘men, indeed seem of the species of the fungus; and the insolent vulgarity which a sudden influx of wealth usually produces in common minds.’
The book is very emotional one, as well as political. Wollstonecraft initially took the trip for her lover Gilbert Imlay, to retrieve a stolen treasure ship for him (although this is never mentioned directly in the book itself) in hope that this would mend their fading relationship. Her feelings over Imlay are reflected in many of the letters, particularly towards the end of the book, when she perceives that Imlay is no longer committed to the relationship or their daughter. The letters do not mention Imlay specifically as they are all written in the first person, but whilst discussing her ideas on commerce, it can be seen that she attacking a specific person: ‘Ah! I shall whisper to you –that you—yourself are strangely altered since you have entered deeply into commerce.’ This is from letter twenty-three when she is in Hamburg, where Imlay was supposed to meet her but failed to, so her emotional state had worsened and this can be easily felt through her writing. A result of this is she leaves for London earlier than expected and so ends the book, giving it a slightly rushed and unfinished feeling to it, reflecting the author’s troubled emotional state.
Morwenna Roche
The letters are primarily a travelogue of the countries Wollstonecraft visits, describing the countries, the people and the beautiful landscapes. She also comments on the political problems, she witnessed. In Norway, in letter thirteen she describes how peasants are recruited into the army, and how unfair the system is that they are not allowed to choose whether they go into service at sea of for the army: ‘And what appears more tyrannical, the inhabitants of certain districts are appointed for the land, others for the sea service.’ Compared with her other travels in France and England, the old aristocracy in Norway and Sweden seemed harsher to her. For instance she saw how criminals are enslaved in Norway, and how the people of Christiana rose to protest the cost of grain: ‘They threw stones at Mr. Anker, the owner of it, as he rode out of town to escape their fury.’
However one of the main themes throughout the book is Wollstonecraft’s questioning of commerce in the countries, and she does not hide her dislike of it. She discusses the war economy that has developed in Scandinavia, creating an unjust taxation on the people involved in the conflict. Her conclusion results in poor commerce, as well as allowing more merchants to take advantage, of more people. She believes that commerce: ‘wears out the most sacred principle of humanity and rectitude.’ She compares the systems in Norway and Sweden to those in England and France, believing that commerce helped with revolution but the people there should be careful of relying to heavily on the system, otherwise it will turn back to the old ways of governing. And by the end of her travels she is particularly scathing: ‘men, indeed seem of the species of the fungus; and the insolent vulgarity which a sudden influx of wealth usually produces in common minds.’
The book is very emotional one, as well as political. Wollstonecraft initially took the trip for her lover Gilbert Imlay, to retrieve a stolen treasure ship for him (although this is never mentioned directly in the book itself) in hope that this would mend their fading relationship. Her feelings over Imlay are reflected in many of the letters, particularly towards the end of the book, when she perceives that Imlay is no longer committed to the relationship or their daughter. The letters do not mention Imlay specifically as they are all written in the first person, but whilst discussing her ideas on commerce, it can be seen that she attacking a specific person: ‘Ah! I shall whisper to you –that you—yourself are strangely altered since you have entered deeply into commerce.’ This is from letter twenty-three when she is in Hamburg, where Imlay was supposed to meet her but failed to, so her emotional state had worsened and this can be easily felt through her writing. A result of this is she leaves for London earlier than expected and so ends the book, giving it a slightly rushed and unfinished feeling to it, reflecting the author’s troubled emotional state.
Morwenna Roche
Friday, 20 November 2009
A Simple Story by Elizabeth Inchbald
Inchbald's A Simple Story was the reading group's first book of of the 2009-2010 season. The title seems to deliberately provoke us into thinking what is simple about this story. The plot is far from simple, some of the characters are forced to navigate complicated social situations and we are left at the end with the unsatisfactory assertion that daughters require 'a proper education'. Who though in this story does receive a proper education?
The narrative spans two generations and Inchbald does not neatly resolve the problems of the first generation with a happy marriage promised between the second generation, as Emily Bronte does later in her two generation tale Wuthering Heights. In the first half of the novel the troubled courtship of Miss Milner and Dorriforth ends in their marriage but at this point, at the end of volume II, the reader knows it is a doomed marriage. Dorriforth, now Lord Elmwood, puts a mourning ring on his bride's finger.
Inchbald's ironic treatment of which of these two has received a proper education prompts us to question what an education is, should be and what its purpose is. Miss Milner, we are told, is a spoiled and indulged young woman who has not received a proper education. She abandons herself to frivolity and does not apply herself to the correct forms for ideal female behaviour in the opinion of other characters. She is however sensitive and responsive to the circumstances and emotions of those she cares about. While she can be impulsive, she is also more consistently compassionate towards others than any other character in the novel. Dorriforth has received the proper education for a man of his position but he is dogmatic, and unyielding, in his judgement of others. It is quite clear that he falls in love with Miss Milner despite himself and his education has taught him nothing about human understanding and compassion. The differences in temperament between the two leads irrevocably to the breakdown of their marriage.
Matilda, their daughter, grows up in rural isolation with her exiled mother. After her mother's death she lives in a house her father rarely visits under the condition that he is never to see her. She does meet her cousin, Rushbrook, and they become friends - again two characters of very different temperament. This time Rushbrook is the giddier one despite a correct education for a young man of his status. He is the heir to the Elmwood title, not Matilda, and Matilda schooled 'by adversity' is the more serious and bookish. In exile with her mother she had the run of a library and occupied herself with reading. A phenomenon amongst several women Inchbald was acquainted with who had intellectual ambition but no formal education. At the end of the novel we our left with no clear sense that Matilda will accept Rushbrook's proposal of marriage; we are also left wondering who in this novel has had a proper education. In some respects Miss Milner's open spirit with genuinely felt emotional responses seems the more attractive, even if she is finally broken.
The narrative spans two generations and Inchbald does not neatly resolve the problems of the first generation with a happy marriage promised between the second generation, as Emily Bronte does later in her two generation tale Wuthering Heights. In the first half of the novel the troubled courtship of Miss Milner and Dorriforth ends in their marriage but at this point, at the end of volume II, the reader knows it is a doomed marriage. Dorriforth, now Lord Elmwood, puts a mourning ring on his bride's finger.
Inchbald's ironic treatment of which of these two has received a proper education prompts us to question what an education is, should be and what its purpose is. Miss Milner, we are told, is a spoiled and indulged young woman who has not received a proper education. She abandons herself to frivolity and does not apply herself to the correct forms for ideal female behaviour in the opinion of other characters. She is however sensitive and responsive to the circumstances and emotions of those she cares about. While she can be impulsive, she is also more consistently compassionate towards others than any other character in the novel. Dorriforth has received the proper education for a man of his position but he is dogmatic, and unyielding, in his judgement of others. It is quite clear that he falls in love with Miss Milner despite himself and his education has taught him nothing about human understanding and compassion. The differences in temperament between the two leads irrevocably to the breakdown of their marriage.
Matilda, their daughter, grows up in rural isolation with her exiled mother. After her mother's death she lives in a house her father rarely visits under the condition that he is never to see her. She does meet her cousin, Rushbrook, and they become friends - again two characters of very different temperament. This time Rushbrook is the giddier one despite a correct education for a young man of his status. He is the heir to the Elmwood title, not Matilda, and Matilda schooled 'by adversity' is the more serious and bookish. In exile with her mother she had the run of a library and occupied herself with reading. A phenomenon amongst several women Inchbald was acquainted with who had intellectual ambition but no formal education. At the end of the novel we our left with no clear sense that Matilda will accept Rushbrook's proposal of marriage; we are also left wondering who in this novel has had a proper education. In some respects Miss Milner's open spirit with genuinely felt emotional responses seems the more attractive, even if she is finally broken.
Thursday, 8 October 2009
National Poetry Day
Aphra Behn: The Libertine, 1640-1689
A THOUSAND martyrs I have made,
All sacrificed to my desire,
A thousand beauties have betray'd
That languish in resistless fire:
The untamed heart to hand I brought,
And fix'd the wild and wand'ring thought.
I never vow'd nor sigh'd in vain,
But both, tho' false, were well received;
The fair are pleased to give us pain,
And what thay wish is soon believed:
And tho' I talked of wounds and smart,
Love's pleasures only touch'd my heart.
Alone the glory and the spoil
I always laughing bore away;
The triumphs without pain or toil,
Without the hell the heaven of joy;
And while I thus at random rove
Despise the fools that whine for love.
A THOUSAND martyrs I have made,
All sacrificed to my desire,
A thousand beauties have betray'd
That languish in resistless fire:
The untamed heart to hand I brought,
And fix'd the wild and wand'ring thought.
I never vow'd nor sigh'd in vain,
But both, tho' false, were well received;
The fair are pleased to give us pain,
And what thay wish is soon believed:
And tho' I talked of wounds and smart,
Love's pleasures only touch'd my heart.
Alone the glory and the spoil
I always laughing bore away;
The triumphs without pain or toil,
Without the hell the heaven of joy;
And while I thus at random rove
Despise the fools that whine for love.
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Next CHL Reading Group meeting
Time has passed so rapidly and our next meeting is on Monday 21 September and we are reading Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story. To purchase this book visit our page on Amazon:
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chawhouslibr-21
It will raise funds for the Library and help us to keep developing the collection.
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chawhouslibr-21
It will raise funds for the Library and help us to keep developing the collection.
Friday, 21 August 2009
The Madwoman in the Attic
This week's Times Higher Education features The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar under its series on the literary canon ('The Canon', p. 47). A text I'm glad to say we have in the collection here at Chawton House Library. Deborah D. Rogers, professor of English at the University of Maine, ends her article with a question often raised about the recovery of women writers: '... some argue that ghettoising female authors is no longer necessary to counteract their marginalisation. For them, the time has come for a more integrative history of literature. But, echoing my children's complaints on long drives, I can't help but ask: "Are we there yet?"'
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