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.

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.

The Massacre featured on BBC R4's Today programme

You can listen to the feature about Inchbald's suppressed play The Massacre on Radio 4's Today programme:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8112000/8112223.stm

and you'll find a biography of Inchbald, with a bibliography, on the Chawton House Library website:

http://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/biographies/inchbald.html

Elizabeth Inchbald in production

Last year the Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds toured productions of Elizabeth Inchbald's Wives as they were and Animal magnetism, and the Reading Group had an enjoyable evening watching them in the audience at the Haymarket, Basingstoke. These two productions were laugh-out-loud comedies and the success of this revival has led to the Theatre Royal reviving Inchbald's tragedy The Massacre:

http://secure.theatreroyal.org/PEO/site/theatre_info/index.php?nav=usp

The performances are from June 23 - 27 2009. Hopefully, it will go on tour and reach as wide as possible an audience.

Reading Group schedule 2009 - 2010

The reading group has continued busily since September 2008 reading a range of books including The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth and The Wanderer by Frances Burney. As a slight departure, the final book of the 2009-2010 season will be Elizabeth’s Gaskell’s Ruth because 2010 is the bicentennial anniversary of Elizabeth Gaskell’s birth and she had local connections, owning a house, The Lawns, in Holybourne, Alton.

18 May 2009 The Last Man by Mary Shelley

Summer break from June 2009 – August 2009

21 September 2009 A Simple Story (1791) by Elizabeth Inchbald

19 October 2009 Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) by Mary Wollstonecraft

16 November 2009 Millenium Hall (1762) by Sarah Scott

21 December 2009 The Sylph (1779) by Georgiana Cavendish Devonshire

18 January 2010 The History of Mary Prince: a West Indian Slave (1831) by Mary Prince

15 February 2010 Oroonoko: or the history of the royal slave (1688) by Aphra Behn

15 March 2010 Coelebs in search of a wife: comprehending observations on domestic habits and manners, religion and morals (1809) by Hannah More

19 April 2010 The Wonder (1714) by Susannah Centlivre

17 May 2010 Ruth (1853) by Elizabeth Gaskell.

For more information please contact the Library on 01420 541010 or info@chawton.net