COMPLETE: A Superfluous Woman by Emma Brooke - jo

[beeber]

Chapter 6 is ready for PL.

Bruce

[Sunrise2020]

PL for Chapter 6 is fine.

But the chapters are so enjoyable, I wish they were longer!

[Sunrise2020]

What an opening: as pretty as an academy picture and about as real.... Do you know what academy Ms. Brooke's referred to?

[beeber]

Do you know what academy Ms. Brooke's referred to?

Without a doubt, this is the Royal Academy of Arts. It's based in London, founded in the 1700s and still in existence today. In the 1890s, the Academy dominated thinking about visual art and is mentioned in several of the novels from that time. For example, do you remember how in The Story of a Modern Woman the protagonist Mary Erle, before turning to journalism, wants to be accepted at the Academy's School, so she spends weeks working on a test assignment — a drawing of a reproduction of the classical "Laocoön" sculpture — only to finally have her application rejected?

That would be a typical experience. Tuition would be free if you could get accepted at the School. At that time, the school's educational philosophy was that you learn to be an artist by copying ancient masters, making drawings from classical sculptures and sometimes from life models.

Aside from the School, the main thing they were famous for was their big annual show of new British art, and to have a painting of yours included at the Academy show was a huge honour. Remember how, way back in A Daughter of Today, the love interest John Kendal makes an ill-fated portrait of Elfrida Bell? He was intending it for the Academy show. The show was famous for cramming a huge number of pictures onto each wall, floor-to-ceiling. To us today, it looks like a noisy crowd of paintings jostling for attention. Modern galleries — including the Royal Academy itself — carefully space out paintings more respectfully. Back then your hope was that your painting would be honoured with a position at eye level, because that was where it was most likely to be seen.

Here's a great picture depicting the 1881 show. This is a "private view" — that would be an "opening night" gala, with a bunch of celebrities invited. That's Oscar Wilde in the top hat and flower in his buttonhole.

The thing is that the art world at that time had a love/hate relationship with the Academy. On the one hand, it was seen as an important judge of standards, and lots of artists craved inclusion in the Academy's shows. A number of genuinely great painters attended that school and had their work displayed in the shows. On the other hand, the Academy was also seen as being old-fashioned and backward-looking in their role as self-appointed judges. Young avant-garde artists saw it as their task to break free of the stuffy old Academy style. So when our author says that Jessamine looks "as pretty as an Academy picture" it's a distinctly back-handed compliment. Yes, it's a pretty picture, but it is artificially fabricated, self-consciously trying to follow old-fashioned rules for visual composition — not "real", not "natural". Progressive young artists didn't really want their work to be complimented as looking like an "Academy picture".

Here's the Wikipedia article on the Royal Academy. Notice how long it has taken them to grant women full participation.

[knotyouraveragejo]

That a great picture, Bruce. Not only are the paintings crammed together on the walls, there are so many people that you can't even see the ones on the bottom!

[Sunrise2020]

I'm so glad I asked! That painting of the private viewing is brilliant and in sharp contrast in the next photo to the modern showings at the Academy.

[beeber]

Chapter 7 is ready for PL. This is a very short chapter, in which Jessamine struggles with a contradiction: she does want to start life anew, to be "reborn." But she has also always been used to walking into a room and being the centre of attention and admiration, and that doesn't seem to come automatically any more, and she's not sure she likes that.

Bruce

[beeber]

Chapter 8 is ready for PL.

Aside from the obvious little rural adventure, what's interesting here is that Jessamine's interaction with men is changing. It's not just that things are developing between herself and Colin.We are told that this is the first time she has experienced this kind of "comradeship" with a man; back in London, relationships were always tainted by other factors, and made unequal. And this new experience, interestingly, leaves her "off balance" — literally, as well as emotionally.

[Sunrise2020]

PL of Chapter 8 is okay.

[beeber]

Chapter 9 is ready for PL.

I'm noticing a couple of things. One of the undercurrents in this book is the preparation of women for life. (That's what Dr. Cornerstone had been lamenting back in Chapter 2.) In this chapter, we notice at the beginning that Colin has had a surer preparation for life. We are told in the first chapter that "Our practiced virtues marshal themselves when the tug of trial comes," and all his life Colin has had a chance to practise the virtues of solidity and "common sense," and takes a kind of nourishment from the nature around him (as he explained to Jessamine in the last chapter).

Under Aunt Arabella's tutelage, Jessamine has been practising something different. When she drifts slowly into consciousness the next morning, she seems briefly receptive to her own feelings, but as she fully wakens, her old training and upbringing takes over, and she protects herself with the "feints and evasions under which she had been taught to drive Nature into cover" — "all the defenses of society against spontaneity". At the end of the chapter, she tries one of her well-practised London attitudes against Colin — she tries to freeze him with a cold "eye" — but it bounces off him with no effect.

I'm also noticing little repeated references to people being "steady on their feet" versus "tripping" or being "off-balance". I saw it first in the previous chapter when Jessamine tumbles down the railway embankment in Colin's arms and it seems a metaphor. Now in this chapter, we're told that Colin keeps "his feet firmly gripped upon his own standpoint", while, at the end of the chapter, Jessamine is "tripped up" by the Unexpected, and her prepared attitude "stumbles". I'll keep watching for this sort of thing.

[Sunrise2020]

PL of Chapter 9 is fine.

I thought this was an exquisite chapter of a very quiet Sabbath. The hours slowly ticking away and Jessamine longing for the bustling kitchen. In her previous life she probably didn't spend any time in the kitchen.

[beeber]

Chapter 10 is ready for PL.

And we now come to what I think is a very important part of the book, in terms of its themes and its use of symbolic / mythic forms.

Jessamine, we learn, has been perversely insistent on walking out by herself up to the "deer forest". This is a recognized moment in the mythic "perilous journey" — the hero/heroine pushes into the depths of a forest, ultimately in search of himself/herself. But that journey of self-discovery can turn scary and dangerous; it enters a "heart of darkness" and she may discover things about herself that she did not expect. Often, there is an encounter with some threatening animal (the dragons of old).

Mrs. MacKenzie is worried that it's coming to the time of year when the deer are "dangerous." She means that it's mating season, when, indeed, the male deer become dangerously aggressive and it's best to stay clear. And "deer" often do appear in the forests of classic legends, often representing love and passion. Needless to say, a stag in mating season would be a very pointed symbol of sexual passion.

And Jessamine has come here because she wants to think about these new surprising feelings that have been surging up in her. She is, of course, unaccustomed to thinking about these things — we're told it's the very first time she has considered this kind of feeling. Aunt Arabella — i.e., polite Victorian society — had always told her that "passion" was something that nice girls didn't think about. Instead they were supposed to repress such feelings and only calculate the "advantages and disadvantages" of any proposed unions. But now, away from the boundaries set down by Aunt Arabella, Jessamine is open to the new feelings.

But, if we know our legends and mythology, we know that the stag still lurks in that forest.

[Sunrise2020]

PL of chapter 10 is okay.

I’m traveling without my laptop and for some reason can’t access the MW on my smartphone. I’ll change it later.

[beeber]

Chapter 11 is ready for PL.

[Sunrise2020]

PL of Chapter 11 is fine.

And rescue came and with it regret.