The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

This section focuses almost entirely on Hester, her brother and sister-in-law, and later Rachel. There are some cameos by other characters we have met. It is clear that the author's sympathies are with Hester against her dull, sanctimonious, egotistical brother and his wife. Also perhaps the author identified with Hester's struggles as a writer. We see some scenes with the children, which I think are well done. There is a lot of humor, often in a sentence here or there, but also in the scene where Dick hijacks the temperance meeting.

There are pronouncements by several people about qualities of men and women. What do you think of these?

What is happening in the cryptic passage at the end of Chapter XV. when Lord Newhaven mails a letter and his wife unsuccessfully tries to get it back?

Did your view of Hester or Rachel change in this section?

Chapter XV

A.D.C.-ships
that Dick traveled on, I plugged into Google
Could be

Auxiliary Dry Cargo ships
or
ADC -history
https://www.nationalhistoricships.org...

Bonnie wrote: "Chapter XV

A.D.C.-ships
that Dick traveled on, I plugged into Google
Could be

Auxiliary Dry Cargo ships
or
ADC -history
https://www.nationalhistoricships.org..."

Funny, for some reason I assumed it was a job title=Aide de Camp-and that he'd worked for some bigwig.

Robin P wrote: "What is happening in the cryptic passage at the end of Chapter XV. when Lord Newhaven mails a letter and his wife unsuccessfully tries to get it back"

Cleverly written. Newhaven does not want to criticize his wife, even to a friend.
But Dick realizes what must have happened--that Newhaven was suspicious of his wife, and so put a letter in a mailbox himself... Lady NH so desperate to see it she had followed them and lied to the shopkeeper. Dick's reverend, idealized view of Womenkind takes a hit!

This section made me think of Woolf's A Room of One’s Own-poor Hester can't find any privacy and so ends up writing before anyone wakes in the household, and is therefore tired herself most of the time. The family's complete lack of respect or her work is I assume typical of the time, despite the fact she has already published one successful novel.

I assumed the cryptic passage in question was Lord Newhaven suspects his wife has been peeking at his outgoing mail (which presumably would normally be left for someone else to deliver to the post-office) and so he decides to walk into town to post it himself, likely knowing full well that even the Postmaster or mistress cannot open the box once something is mailed.

I hope that Hester will take up Rachel's offer and go for a long and extended visit away from her brother and SIL-on top of everything else it appears her current living arrangement is a step down in the social world and she is now surrounded by dull people from whom she can rarely escape.

I like the bishop's character, he's more human than the intransigent vicar.

The best scene for me so far was the abstinence meeting - and the guest speaker being a vineyard owner!!!! What writing!

LOV-ELY-CHUM-ELY at her best!

Now I digress (but well intentioned):

Yes, Hester defiantly needs a room of her own! Virginia Woolf would have been about 18 when Red Pottage was published, She must have read it. She refers to Mary in a letter to Violet Dickinson (1907). Then about 30 years after the publication of Red Pottage Virginia published that brilliant essay - A Room of One's Own. Ironically, George Eliot, being in a taboo (for the time) relationship was encouraged by her partner and had her own space. That was streets ahead of its time.

"Mr. Gresley liked Hester immensely when she had freshly ironed herself flat under one of these resolutions."

indeed: LOV-ELY-CHUM-ELY at her best!

sabagrey wrote: ""Mr. Gresley liked Hester immensely when she had freshly ironed herself flat under one of these resolutions."

indeed: LOV-ELY-CHUM-ELY at her best!"

Totally agree!!!

Although the greater part of this section focused on Hester’s problems living with her brother and his sycophantic wife, my focus fell on Rachel, who, at this point in the novel, seemed to be enveloped by two huge shadows.

Rachel’s attitude towards Lady Newhaven and even more so towards Hugh Scarlett was at first surprising but then entirely understandable. Rachel’s own experiences, both as someone who scraped a living amongst the desperate and someone who loved entirely and was spurned, seems to have softened her instinct to condemn outright. Her feelings for Hugh now seem bittersweet but still with lingering hope mixed in.

Regarding her not so distant devastating relationship, how much of herself did she actually give away in her fervent love of that unworthy man? It must have been a great deal to leave her feeling so ruined.

’ Rachel had not yet wholly recovered from the overwhelming passion of love which, admitted without fear a few years ago, had devastated the little city of her heart, as by fire and sword, involving its hospitable dwellings, its temples, and its palaces in one common ruin. Out of that desolation she was unconsciously rebuilding her city, but it was still rather gaunt and bare, the trees had not had time to grow in the streets, and there was an ugly fortification round it of defaced, fire-seared stones, which had once stood aloft in minaret and tower, and which now served only as a defence against all corners.’

That shadow from her past looms large wherever she goes, whatever she does, but what about that other shadow, that equally large shadow of the future in the form of Dick?

Dick reminds me of my friend’s Irish Wolfhound who will, without a thought, bound through a crowd of people, put its paws on my shoulders and lick the whole of my face. Many people love the Dicks of this world. Genial, honest, forthright and larger than life. But I believe Rachel deserves more than that. He would be great at fetching and carrying, supporting and relieving physical stress. But there is only so much comfort and stimulation to be got from a warm blanket, however muscular.

Intellects apart, and Rachel’s and Dick’s are very far apart, Rachel is already yearning to use her abilities in recognising and supporting the emotionally distressed. No wonder she is inwardly trembling somewhat, now that Dick has got the bit between his teeth in his quest to marry her. His shadow looms large and his presence will probably still linger like a fog around her even though he has been advised to tactically disappear for a while.

I seem to be always making mistakes about women, and perhaps that is the reason. They show themselves capable of some deep affection or some great self-sacrifice, and I respect and admire them, and think they are like that all through. And the day comes when they are not quite straightforward, or are guilty of some petty meanness

Is it only me to think that Cholmondeley packed her own disappointment with women into this conversation, that this whole scene between the bishop, Rachel and Hester is there to allow her to express her personal experiences?

I think that both Rachel and Hester are carriers for a lot of Ch.'s own personality. It is very interesting that she chose two characters, not one, for this purpose. I find it telling that neither of them really has an answer to this particular problem of "treacherous" women. The scene is disrupted by the entry of the children: I get the impression that Ch. chose this end because there was no "solution" for all three of them. (... the privilege of the fiction writer ...)

I stumbled over the name "Burke" here:

Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose names are written in the book, not of life, but of Burke—the little world which is called "Society."

At first I thought it was a reference to the influential political philosopher Edmund Burke, but it is simpler than that: it refers to "Burke's Peerage", first published in 1826 - and it still exists. The Burke who first published it had nothing to do with Edmund Burke (except for both having Irish roots), but it seems the often fictitious genealogies of the British aristocracy served the similar purpose of upholding the "natural" class order.

Nice one.

That immediately brought to mind some shallow guy who loved reading about himself in one of those books... After contemplating this I realized it is Anne Elliot's father in Persuasion:

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt, as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century—and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed—this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH-HALL.

My two cents on Rachel.

If Dick had been in trouble, or rather if she had known the troubles he had been through, and which had made his crooked mouth shut so firmly, Rachel might possibly have been able to give him something more valuable than the paper money of her friendship.

A few decades later, the Rachel character would have been a psychotherapist, or at least an amateur psychologist with a helper syndrome. Her teachings would no more be spiritual and moral, but the drive to understand and uplift her fellow human beings would be just the same. Women like her have a rare talent to get entangled in the worst kinds of relationships - complicated, abusive, destructive, what have you - and for reasons beyond my grasp they seem to thrive perversely on their tragedies. So I can see a lot of drama ahead for Rachel and Hugh.

I admit freely that this type of character is totally alien to me, and so I have problems to empathise with Rachel. Regarding Hester, on the other hand, whom I can understand a little better in some respects, I find it hard for us today to grasp her submissiveness to the toxic environment of the vicarage. She was thrown into it "by the advice of her few remaining relatives", and there was no hint at anything like resistance on her part, no thought of independence and living on her own (which was not *that* unusual anymore at the time).

Bonnie wrote: "That immediately brought to mind some shallow guy who loved reading about himself in one of those books... After contemplating this I realized it is Anne Elliot's father in Persuasion."

Ha, you are right! Jane Austen's subtle irony regarding titles and rank is just picture perfect. All the more so as the baronetcies such as that of the Elliots were a relatively recent invention by a king (don't ask me which one) who sold the titles because he was in need of money - This is a detail I learned from one of Dr. Octavia Cox's videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQpVq...

Trev wrote: "But I believe Rachel deserves more than that. He would be great at fetching and carrying, supporting and relieving physical stress. But there is only so much comfort and stimulation to be got from a warm blanket, however muscular."

I'm not so sure Dick is the simpleton as that he appears - or chooses to appear. His performance at the temperance meeting is spot on to achieve what he wants: he earns the respect of the young men in the audience, so that they listen when he talks to them seriously outside the church. He has more influence on them than a dozen of bigot teetotalers taken together.

sabagrey wrote: "Trev wrote: "But I believe Rachel deserves more than that. He would be great at fetching and carrying, supporting and relieving physical stress. But there is only so much comfort and stimulation to..."

It's also brilliant how he doesn't give away too soon his real views, but gradually turns the subject of the meeting on his head. If he had started out by revealing his career and opinions, he would have been yanked from the stage.

Robin P wrote: "sabagrey wrote: "Trev wrote: "But I believe Rachel deserves more than that. He would be great at fetching and carrying, supporting and relieving physical stress. But there is only so much comfort a..."

Dick wasn’t such a brilliant tactician with the ‘flying halfpenny,’ almost choking a child because of his enthusiasm to entertain, and having lost sight of the inherent dangers of whipping up too much hysteria.

In the temperance meeting he was successful simply because he operated on the level of most of the audience. For him, those press ganged farm hands and/or others workers, the type he would have dealt with every day in Australia, were an easy audience to impress.

Seems ironic that Dick is being advised in his love life by Lord Newhaven, the man who really wanted to marry Hester but instead chose an unfaithful woman who really only loved herself.

Not to be outdone, Lady Newhaven has taken it on herself to be Rachel’s marriage advisor….

’ But one marriage is as good as another. I was married for love myself; I had not a farthing. And yet you see my marriage has turned out a tragedy—a bitter, bitter tragedy." Tableau.—A beautiful, sad-faced young married woman in white, reclining among pale-green cushions near a bowl of pink carnations, endeavoring to rouse the higher feelings of an inexperienced though not youthful spinster in a short bicycling skirt. Decidedly, the picture was not flattering to Rachel.’

Dick's speech at the temperance meeting was a comic masterpiece, especially as Mr. Gresley and others try to stop him. I really like his character and have a suspicion that either Rachel or Hester will fall in love with him. As for the Gresley family, all I can say is Poor Hester! The children are okay, but Hester's brother is a pompous bully and her sister-in-law is narrow-minded and always ready to find fault.

I wondered what Rachel might have looked like bicycling to and fro with Dick.

Here is a sample costume from the 1890s. No doubt he would have been impressed.



More about bicycle costumes here…….

https://vintagedancer.com/1900s/victo...

Here is an American version of the same period….



The photo came from a short but very interesting article entitled…

‘ Wheels of Change: How the Bicycle Empowered Women’

https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...

Not long ago I read the very short book How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle: Reflections of an Influential 19th Century Woman by Frances E. Willard - American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Cycling is a type of independence.

I for one would like to bring back elegant cycling gear in lieu of lycra and cleats!

I digress ...

The bicycle as a symbol - what a fascinating history. And it reminds me that the bicycle became a symbol once again nearly 100 years later, at least here in Europe. We organised bicycle demos in the 70s which became forerunners of the environmentalist movement in the urban sphere, with the goal of stopping the (American-style) surrender of city space to the automobile. And now, 50 years later, the bicycle is again a symbol of climate activism. ... maybe because it's simply one of the most ingenuous and efficient machines humans have ever built?