http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2006_45_mon.shtmlCentlivre's The Wonder is April's book for the Chawton House Library reading group. It is a lively, fast-paced comedy and you will be able to read a review later.
Showing posts with label Chawton House Library reading group. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chawton House Library reading group. Show all posts
Monday, 19 April 2010
Susannah Centlivre discussed on Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2006_45_mon.shtmlCentlivre's The Wonder is April's book for the Chawton House Library reading group. It is a lively, fast-paced comedy and you will be able to read a review later.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Millenium Hall by Sarah Scott
Millenium Hall is a book I have meant to read for years and when one of the Visiting Fellows at Chawton House Library likened the fellowships to having one's own 'Millenium Hall' - even down to the fruit and vegetables from the Walled Garden and the chickens (all the fellows at that point were women but it's not always so) . I knew it was time to read it and put it on the list for the reading group.
Sarah Scott creates a sanctuary for women at Millenium Hall and like Chawton House Library men are welcomed. Unlike Chawton House Library she seeks to reveal to men their abuses of women; Chawton House Library seeks to educate all equally about the neglected women writers of our literary history. The male narrator of Scott's novel provides a positive and engaging account of Millenium Hall as he and his companion, Lamont, discover it by accident on an excursion in the countryside. He describes it as an 'earthly paradise' and throughout the novel his glowing reports of the house and its inhabitants is interspersed with the stories of the women that live there.
The women at Millenium Hall have all suffered abuse by men: unhappy marriages, tyrannical husbands, attempted rape, the prejudice of fathers, illegitimacy and abandonment. Together they have created an idyllic female community and Scott's novel presents us with a utopian vision for another way of living other than the assumption that women must have their lives determined by men: husbands, or fathers and brothers if they fail to marry. Scott's women have not failed because they reject wedlock for themselves, instead they carve out fulfilling lives in a different and more independent way.
While utopian Scott's novel is not revolutionary; she does not seek to overturn the status quo - the women at Millenium Hall declare themselves in favour of marriage - which with the development of a Christian and philanthropic community, she in fact upholds conservative values. Her novel is semi-autobiographical, with her own experiences of an unhappy marriage, and a life-long deep female friendship, have been transformed into creating a vision of another way of living for those that wish to choose it.
Sarah Scott creates a sanctuary for women at Millenium Hall and like Chawton House Library men are welcomed. Unlike Chawton House Library she seeks to reveal to men their abuses of women; Chawton House Library seeks to educate all equally about the neglected women writers of our literary history. The male narrator of Scott's novel provides a positive and engaging account of Millenium Hall as he and his companion, Lamont, discover it by accident on an excursion in the countryside. He describes it as an 'earthly paradise' and throughout the novel his glowing reports of the house and its inhabitants is interspersed with the stories of the women that live there.
The women at Millenium Hall have all suffered abuse by men: unhappy marriages, tyrannical husbands, attempted rape, the prejudice of fathers, illegitimacy and abandonment. Together they have created an idyllic female community and Scott's novel presents us with a utopian vision for another way of living other than the assumption that women must have their lives determined by men: husbands, or fathers and brothers if they fail to marry. Scott's women have not failed because they reject wedlock for themselves, instead they carve out fulfilling lives in a different and more independent way.
While utopian Scott's novel is not revolutionary; she does not seek to overturn the status quo - the women at Millenium Hall declare themselves in favour of marriage - which with the development of a Christian and philanthropic community, she in fact upholds conservative values. Her novel is semi-autobiographical, with her own experiences of an unhappy marriage, and a life-long deep female friendship, have been transformed into creating a vision of another way of living for those that wish to choose it.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Chawton House Library Reading Group
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.
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.
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.
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.
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