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Pilgrimage #1-3
Pilgrimage 1
The thirteen magnificent novels that comprise Pilgrimage are the first expression in English of what it is to be called 'stream of consciousness' technique, predating the work of both Joyce and Woolf, echoing that of Proust with whom Dorothy Richardson stands as one of the great innovatory figures of our time. These four volumes record in detail the life of Miriam Henderson. Through her experience - personal, spiritual, intellectual - Dorothy Richardson explores intensely what it means to be a woman, presenting feminine consciousness with a new voice, a new identity.
490 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1915
About the author
Dorothy M. Richardson
42 books66 followersDorothy Miller Richardson
Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883. At seventeen, because of her father's financial difficulties she went to work as a governess and teacher, first in 1891 for six months at a finishing school in Germany. In 1895 Richardson gave up work as a governess to take care of her severely depressed mother, but her mother committed suicide the same year. Richardson's father had become bankrupt at the end of 1893.
Richardson subsequently moved in 1896 to Bloomsbury, London, where she worked as a receptionist/secretary/assistant in a Harley Street dental surgery. While in Bloomsbury in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Richardson associated with writers and radicals, including the Bloomsbury Group. H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was a friend and they had a brief affair which led to a pregnancy and then miscarriage, in 1907. While she had first published an article in 1902, Richardson's writing career, as a freelance journalist really began around 1906, with periodical articles on various topics, book reviews, short stories, and poems, as well as translation from German and French. During this period she became interested in the Quakers and published two books relating to them in 1914.
In 1915 Richardson published her first novel Pointed Roofs, the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. She married the artist Alan Odle (1888-1948) in 1917 – a distinctly bohemian figure, who was fifteen years younger than she. From 1917 until 1939 the couple spent their winters in Cornwall and their summers in London, and then stayed permanently in Cornwall until Odle’s death in 1948. She supported herself and her husband with freelance writing for periodicals for many years. In 1954, she had to move into a nursing home in the London suburb of Beckenham, Kent, where she died, forgotten, alone and ignored, in 1957.
Richardson was one of a select group of writers who changed the rules of prose fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century. With James Joyce in Ireland, Marcel Proust in France, William Faulkner in the United States and, in England, Virginia Woolf, Richardson invented a new form of writing. She can claim, with Proust and Joyce, to have been at the forefront of a revolution in literature. The first ‘chapter’ of her long work, Pilgrimage, was begun in 1912 - a year before the publication of the first volume of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, two years before the first appearance of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and seven years before Woolf’s first experimental novel Jacob’s Room.
Richardson also published short stories in a variety of periodicals (a collection was published by Virago in 1989) and a handful of poems. She was the author of numerous articles in periodicals such as Adelphi and Vanity Fair. She began her literary career reviewing for the vegetarian journal, Crank. Between 1912 and 1921, she wrote a regular column, ‘Comments by a Layman’, for the Dental Record. She translated eight books into English from French and German. Between 1927 and 1933 she published 23 articles on film in the avant-garde little magazine, Close Up.
Richardson’s aesthetic was influenced by diverse currents of thought. She was part of the alternative, bohemian culture at the turn of the century that embraced vegetarianism, feminism and socialism. Olive Schreiner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman made an early impact on her work and one of her first reviews was of a book by the advocate for homosexual rights, utopian socialist, and Whitmanite poet, Edward Carpenter.
If you are interested, please join the Goodreads group on her that can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883. At seventeen, because of her father's financial difficulties she went to work as a governess and teacher, first in 1891 for six months at a finishing school in Germany. In 1895 Richardson gave up work as a governess to take care of her severely depressed mother, but her mother committed suicide the same year. Richardson's father had become bankrupt at the end of 1893.
Richardson subsequently moved in 1896 to Bloomsbury, London, where she worked as a receptionist/secretary/assistant in a Harley Street dental surgery. While in Bloomsbury in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Richardson associated with writers and radicals, including the Bloomsbury Group. H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was a friend and they had a brief affair which led to a pregnancy and then miscarriage, in 1907. While she had first published an article in 1902, Richardson's writing career, as a freelance journalist really began around 1906, with periodical articles on various topics, book reviews, short stories, and poems, as well as translation from German and French. During this period she became interested in the Quakers and published two books relating to them in 1914.
In 1915 Richardson published her first novel Pointed Roofs, the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. She married the artist Alan Odle (1888-1948) in 1917 – a distinctly bohemian figure, who was fifteen years younger than she. From 1917 until 1939 the couple spent their winters in Cornwall and their summers in London, and then stayed permanently in Cornwall until Odle’s death in 1948. She supported herself and her husband with freelance writing for periodicals for many years. In 1954, she had to move into a nursing home in the London suburb of Beckenham, Kent, where she died, forgotten, alone and ignored, in 1957.
Richardson was one of a select group of writers who changed the rules of prose fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century. With James Joyce in Ireland, Marcel Proust in France, William Faulkner in the United States and, in England, Virginia Woolf, Richardson invented a new form of writing. She can claim, with Proust and Joyce, to have been at the forefront of a revolution in literature. The first ‘chapter’ of her long work, Pilgrimage, was begun in 1912 - a year before the publication of the first volume of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, two years before the first appearance of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and seven years before Woolf’s first experimental novel Jacob’s Room.
Richardson also published short stories in a variety of periodicals (a collection was published by Virago in 1989) and a handful of poems. She was the author of numerous articles in periodicals such as Adelphi and Vanity Fair. She began her literary career reviewing for the vegetarian journal, Crank. Between 1912 and 1921, she wrote a regular column, ‘Comments by a Layman’, for the Dental Record. She translated eight books into English from French and German. Between 1927 and 1933 she published 23 articles on film in the avant-garde little magazine, Close Up.
Richardson’s aesthetic was influenced by diverse currents of thought. She was part of the alternative, bohemian culture at the turn of the century that embraced vegetarianism, feminism and socialism. Olive Schreiner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman made an early impact on her work and one of her first reviews was of a book by the advocate for homosexual rights, utopian socialist, and Whitmanite poet, Edward Carpenter.
If you are interested, please join the Goodreads group on her that can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
September 17, 2023
‘Isn’t life the plot?’ - Dorothy M. Richardson
Although, for me, it’s more likely to conjure up authors like Virginia Woolf or even James Joyce, the notion of stream of consciousness initially surfaced in May Sinclair’s 1918 review of British writer Dorothy Richardson, Sinclair was trying to convey Richardson’s approach in the early stages of, what became, her Pilgrimage cycle, 13 novels that Richardson considered more as chapters in one ongoing story:
“…there is no drama, no situation, no set scene. Nothing happens. It is just life going on and on. It is …Miriam Henderson's stream of consciousness going on and on”
Miriam Henderson is Pilgrimage’s central character, the events of her life closely resemble Richardson’s own, although how far Miriam actually mirrors Richardson is hard to tell – Richardson apparently hated interviews about her personal life or beliefs. Miriam first appears in 1915’s Pointed Roofs. Its opening suggests the beginning of a familiar, conventional story about a young woman whose once-settled, middle-class existence has been shattered by her father’s financial difficulties, forcing her to think about finding a way to earn some money of her own. It’s early 1893, Miriam’s 17, like a character in one of the Brontës’ earlier stories, her best - possibly only - option’s teaching. Miriam finds a job at a small, private girls’ school in Germany – which contemporary reviewers compared to the one featured in Villette.
Richardson’s account of Miriam’s time in Germany is incredibly detailed but weirdly vague too, Richardson’s impressionistic style often borders on opaque. Miriam’s transition’s clearly traumatic, after a comfortable, sheltered upbringing, she’s overwhelmed by homesickness and the demands of her exacting first boss. Surrounded by women, Miriam is also struggling with her sense of self - at home her father treated her like the son he never had. So, although Miriam presents like a typical Victorian lady, it’s not how she actually feels – Richardson’s far more interested in representing an interior self than she is in standard plots or characters. Miriam’s coming of age in a time of transition, so-called ‘new women’ were either inspiring or scandalising society, and Miriam is caught somewhere in between. Richardson represents Miriam’s inner conflict through reactions that might seem unremarkable, for example Miriam’s awkwardness about her inexpensive, old clothes and her discomfort about wearing a new blouse she receives as a gift – the design’s similar to the kind adopted as a uniform by cohorts of so-called ‘new women.’ Awkwardness and uncertainty about where she fits, and conflict around gender and identity, preoccupy Miriam throughout her time in Germany, contributing to her sense of isolation and distance from the other women there.
In Backwater it’s now August 1893, Miriam is still teaching but back in England at a school in London’s Finsbury Park. This Miriam is less diffident, angrier and more curious, burying herself in books in order to escape her suffocating surroundings – but she’s ditched classic fiction in favour of controversial/scandalous contemporary writers like Ouida. The school’s full of tradesmen’s daughters setting off reflections on class and culture, meanwhile her sisters are thinking about marriage and motherhood, things Miriam finds hard to imagine wanting for herself.
It's 1895, Oscar Wilde’s on trial and Miriam leaves Finsbury Park to work as a governess to two children on a large estate close to London, events covered in Richardson’s third book Honeycomb. Class and internal conflicts are again central, with Miriam now the low-status character in an enclosed society of wealthy families. Miriam loves the luxury of her employers' house, its beautifully-tended gardens and expensive flowers but she hates being the poor outsider. She despises the wives who visit the house but she envies their money and their security. But in other ways she’s more self-assured, defiantly smoking in public which marks her out as finally a ‘new woman’ challenging the conventions of middle-class England. In her spare time Miriam wanders the London streets, wondering what her future might be like. Domesticity terrifies her as does the idea of catering for men like her sisters, she wants a new existence that's entirely her own but she’s stuck paying off her father’s debts. Her parents are in turmoil, especially her mother and the novel ends with her death by suicide. Just like the author, Miriam discovers her mother’s body although the way Richardson writes this is so oblique it’s hard to work out what’s actually happened. Richardson’s style’s more and more elliptical as she attempts to capture sensations, sights, colours, and sound. Overall, a fascinating, unique insight into a woman’s life in the 1890s, equal parts gripping and frustrating.
Although, for me, it’s more likely to conjure up authors like Virginia Woolf or even James Joyce, the notion of stream of consciousness initially surfaced in May Sinclair’s 1918 review of British writer Dorothy Richardson, Sinclair was trying to convey Richardson’s approach in the early stages of, what became, her Pilgrimage cycle, 13 novels that Richardson considered more as chapters in one ongoing story:
“…there is no drama, no situation, no set scene. Nothing happens. It is just life going on and on. It is …Miriam Henderson's stream of consciousness going on and on”
Miriam Henderson is Pilgrimage’s central character, the events of her life closely resemble Richardson’s own, although how far Miriam actually mirrors Richardson is hard to tell – Richardson apparently hated interviews about her personal life or beliefs. Miriam first appears in 1915’s Pointed Roofs. Its opening suggests the beginning of a familiar, conventional story about a young woman whose once-settled, middle-class existence has been shattered by her father’s financial difficulties, forcing her to think about finding a way to earn some money of her own. It’s early 1893, Miriam’s 17, like a character in one of the Brontës’ earlier stories, her best - possibly only - option’s teaching. Miriam finds a job at a small, private girls’ school in Germany – which contemporary reviewers compared to the one featured in Villette.
Richardson’s account of Miriam’s time in Germany is incredibly detailed but weirdly vague too, Richardson’s impressionistic style often borders on opaque. Miriam’s transition’s clearly traumatic, after a comfortable, sheltered upbringing, she’s overwhelmed by homesickness and the demands of her exacting first boss. Surrounded by women, Miriam is also struggling with her sense of self - at home her father treated her like the son he never had. So, although Miriam presents like a typical Victorian lady, it’s not how she actually feels – Richardson’s far more interested in representing an interior self than she is in standard plots or characters. Miriam’s coming of age in a time of transition, so-called ‘new women’ were either inspiring or scandalising society, and Miriam is caught somewhere in between. Richardson represents Miriam’s inner conflict through reactions that might seem unremarkable, for example Miriam’s awkwardness about her inexpensive, old clothes and her discomfort about wearing a new blouse she receives as a gift – the design’s similar to the kind adopted as a uniform by cohorts of so-called ‘new women.’ Awkwardness and uncertainty about where she fits, and conflict around gender and identity, preoccupy Miriam throughout her time in Germany, contributing to her sense of isolation and distance from the other women there.
In Backwater it’s now August 1893, Miriam is still teaching but back in England at a school in London’s Finsbury Park. This Miriam is less diffident, angrier and more curious, burying herself in books in order to escape her suffocating surroundings – but she’s ditched classic fiction in favour of controversial/scandalous contemporary writers like Ouida. The school’s full of tradesmen’s daughters setting off reflections on class and culture, meanwhile her sisters are thinking about marriage and motherhood, things Miriam finds hard to imagine wanting for herself.
It's 1895, Oscar Wilde’s on trial and Miriam leaves Finsbury Park to work as a governess to two children on a large estate close to London, events covered in Richardson’s third book Honeycomb. Class and internal conflicts are again central, with Miriam now the low-status character in an enclosed society of wealthy families. Miriam loves the luxury of her employers' house, its beautifully-tended gardens and expensive flowers but she hates being the poor outsider. She despises the wives who visit the house but she envies their money and their security. But in other ways she’s more self-assured, defiantly smoking in public which marks her out as finally a ‘new woman’ challenging the conventions of middle-class England. In her spare time Miriam wanders the London streets, wondering what her future might be like. Domesticity terrifies her as does the idea of catering for men like her sisters, she wants a new existence that's entirely her own but she’s stuck paying off her father’s debts. Her parents are in turmoil, especially her mother and the novel ends with her death by suicide. Just like the author, Miriam discovers her mother’s body although the way Richardson writes this is so oblique it’s hard to work out what’s actually happened. Richardson’s style’s more and more elliptical as she attempts to capture sensations, sights, colours, and sound. Overall, a fascinating, unique insight into a woman’s life in the 1890s, equal parts gripping and frustrating.
March 15, 2025
Re-reading 2025
Vol. 3: Honeycomb
This third volume really picks up pace in terms of both subject matter and in Richardson's stylistics - we're moving towards stream-of-consciousness in parts, though some is still more conventional internal monologue. Importantly, we're continuously inside Miriam's head and body, experiencing the world via her sensations and thoughts.
Having moved on from the Finsbury Park school, Miriam is now a live-in personal tutor at a nouveau riche household, giving plenty of scope for her skeptical and increasingly vicious inner commentary. She grows to love the trappings of wealth: big, clean, sunny rooms filled with out-of-season flowers, for instance, and resents that she can't afford these for herself despite her hard work. Her political consciousness is growing here following the revelation in an earlier book of newspapers that gave her access to the doings of the government. At the same time, she can't help but dislike her employers and their friends for their ignorance, their bourgeois conventionality, their emptiness, their time spent buying and trying on hats in the absence of anything more meaningful to occupy their time.
But things are changing in the family too: two of Miriam's sisters get married and their mother is ill: even when they find possible medical regimes, they can't afford them. And the ending combines great emotionalism with a matching dissolution in the writing, to create a coherence in subject and form.
I'm hooked on this now and am looking forward to continuing on Miriam's pilgrimage.
Vol. 2: Backwater
Backwater, the second volume in Pilgrimages, continues Miriam's radically modernist journey through the last decade of the nineteenth century. Having returned from Germany, she's now employed at a private school in Finsbury Park, a doomy London suburb. Little happens on the surface but we see the gradually emerging consciousness of this 18 year old: she is an atheist in a world than can barely envisage this position; she is torn between fantasies of love and a determination that marriage is not her fate; and we see the beginnings of a social consciousness as she reads a newspaper for the first time and has the intimation that what the government is doing is not outside her sphere of interests or solely the provenance of men. Even Miriam's reading - at night until 3 am - is positioned as transgressive: Ouida.
Richardson's own technique is similarly emerging. There are instances of recognisable stream of consciousness, intercut with interior monologues, some still using conventional speech marks. But with more ellipses alongside the more normal punctuation, the style is evolving.
I'm hooked on this re-read of 'pilgrimage' of both Miriam and Richardson!
Vol. 1: Pointed Roofs
Coincidentally finished on International Women's Day, this is the opening 'chapter' of Richardson's 13-book Pilgrimage which charts the life of Miriam via her subjectivity and interiority. This opening volume itself shifts between a conventional mode of narrative and Miriam's inner thoughts: not stream of consciousness, as is often claimed, but certainly a fragmented and sometimes jumpy portrait of Miriam's experience.
First published in 1915 though set about twenty years earlier in c.1895, this is playing in the same space as Woolf, Proust and Joyce. We see Miriam at 17 leaving home to become a governess-pupil in a school in Germany so definite shades of nineteenth-century novels: Jane Eyre and, especially Villette which gets name-checked via Madame Beck. Miriam is the only prism through which we access this experience so we have no objective markers to assess her views and responses: we see and hear the other pupils, have a sense of this world via Miriam's impressions, physical, emotional and intellectual. We share her disorientation and gradual accommodation; we feel her awkward clumsiness when her new blouses are too billowy for her body; we share her indignation and gradually evolving consciousness as she starts to map her place in the political and ideological world of the early twentieth century; and we see the instabilities of her personality, at times almost misanthropic, at others warmed by her inclusion in the group of girls.
All action is, accordingly, internal: little happens on the surface in terms of plot. But that's part of what Richardson is challenging, as well as shifting the bildungsroman to a female consciousness.
The first time I started Pilgrimage, I stalled on the 3rd chapter. Re-reading this, I realised that to read Richardson, I need to calm my mind of external attention-seekers and find a kind of inner equilibrium to match the focus of the narrative. Here's hoping that this time I'll make it to the end - I'm now invested in Miriam and her journey through life and text.
-----------------Original Review----------------
Although this is volume 1 in the Virago edition, it actually comprises the first three novels (novellas?) in Richardson's Pilgrimage series. I'm pausing at the end of the first novella and so will add to this review as I finish the other two.
Pointed Roofs
In this first book, Miriam takes her first post as a governess in a school in Germany. There are definite shades of Villette both in the situation and in Miriam's personality which has some of the uncompromising aspects of Lucy Snowe, though Miriam feels like a subjectivity in the process of being formed.
I'm somewhat confused at seeing this described as stream of consciousness - it's not (though perhaps the later volumes are). It is, though, very interior with everything filtered through Miriam's experience.
In this early book we see her slight awkwardness, her refusal to act like a 'nice' girl as prescribed by society, and her questioning of other cultural norms. Little happens but Miriam's striking independence of thought and action makes this an intriguing journey to watch.
Backwater and Honeycomb
Disappointingly, I found these novels more interesting than enjoyable: they're striking for the independence of their young protagonist, Miriam, who, despite her solid middle-class upbringing and family, takes herself off to work in Germany, then back in England as a governess, when she is just 18. We experience her impressions of the settings she finds herself in, the people and students amongst whom she lives, the young men she meets and the changes in her family home.
Oddly, though, Miriam rarely seems to engage emotionally and while the technical articulation of her stream of experiences (not yet really stream of consciousness) may push the development of the novel forward, I too often found myself a slightly bored bystander to the book rather than experiencing it via Miriam's perceptions.
She's an interesting mix of quiet questioning: she doesn't subscribe to conventional religious feeling, she's rather nicely scathing about men's privileged positions, she's socially awkward and insecure, thinking, for example, that her pupils don't like her and then being stunned as they sob at her leaving. She wants something that isn't just marriage or a filler, amateur, governess job but she doesn't yet know what that is.
There's a marked step-up in writing technique at the end of Honeycomb which moves closer to stream of consciousness, focusing on Miriam's feelings rather than the event, which we have to intuit, which causes them. Which is slightly frustrating as I was ready to pause on the Pilgrimage sequence but now wonder if I should push on...
Based on this volume alone, it's clear why Woolf was both intrigued by Richardson's work and yet also found Pointed Roofs (I don't know about the other books) an interesting failure. Their innovation stems from their minute detailing of a female consciousness taking its first steps into a wider world and thinking deliberately about how to use language to capture and articulate that experience. In that sense, we can place Richardson in a female writing tradition somewhere between Charlotte Bronte (I'm thinking especially of Villette) and Woolf herself. But that very relationship also foregrounds Richardson's inadequacies: the subjective self she is creating is, for me frustratingly boring, something which Woolf never is.
3 stars for pushing forward the development of the novel away from Victorian stylistics and towards literary modernism... but I'm unsure whether I'll push on with Miriam's journey.
Vol. 3: Honeycomb
Men are all hard angry bones; always thinking something, only one thing at a time and unless that is agreed to, they murder. My husband shan't kill me... I'll shatter his conceited brow - make him see... two sides to every question... a million sides... no questions, only sides... always changing.
This third volume really picks up pace in terms of both subject matter and in Richardson's stylistics - we're moving towards stream-of-consciousness in parts, though some is still more conventional internal monologue. Importantly, we're continuously inside Miriam's head and body, experiencing the world via her sensations and thoughts.
Having moved on from the Finsbury Park school, Miriam is now a live-in personal tutor at a nouveau riche household, giving plenty of scope for her skeptical and increasingly vicious inner commentary. She grows to love the trappings of wealth: big, clean, sunny rooms filled with out-of-season flowers, for instance, and resents that she can't afford these for herself despite her hard work. Her political consciousness is growing here following the revelation in an earlier book of newspapers that gave her access to the doings of the government. At the same time, she can't help but dislike her employers and their friends for their ignorance, their bourgeois conventionality, their emptiness, their time spent buying and trying on hats in the absence of anything more meaningful to occupy their time.
But things are changing in the family too: two of Miriam's sisters get married and their mother is ill: even when they find possible medical regimes, they can't afford them. And the ending combines great emotionalism with a matching dissolution in the writing, to create a coherence in subject and form.
I'm hooked on this now and am looking forward to continuing on Miriam's pilgrimage.
Vol. 2: Backwater
"God, what a filthy world! God, what a filthy world!" she muttered. "Everyone hemmed and hemmed and hemmed into it."
Backwater, the second volume in Pilgrimages, continues Miriam's radically modernist journey through the last decade of the nineteenth century. Having returned from Germany, she's now employed at a private school in Finsbury Park, a doomy London suburb. Little happens on the surface but we see the gradually emerging consciousness of this 18 year old: she is an atheist in a world than can barely envisage this position; she is torn between fantasies of love and a determination that marriage is not her fate; and we see the beginnings of a social consciousness as she reads a newspaper for the first time and has the intimation that what the government is doing is not outside her sphere of interests or solely the provenance of men. Even Miriam's reading - at night until 3 am - is positioned as transgressive: Ouida.
Richardson's own technique is similarly emerging. There are instances of recognisable stream of consciousness, intercut with interior monologues, some still using conventional speech marks. But with more ellipses alongside the more normal punctuation, the style is evolving.
I'm hooked on this re-read of 'pilgrimage' of both Miriam and Richardson!
Vol. 1: Pointed Roofs
Coincidentally finished on International Women's Day, this is the opening 'chapter' of Richardson's 13-book Pilgrimage which charts the life of Miriam via her subjectivity and interiority. This opening volume itself shifts between a conventional mode of narrative and Miriam's inner thoughts: not stream of consciousness, as is often claimed, but certainly a fragmented and sometimes jumpy portrait of Miriam's experience.
First published in 1915 though set about twenty years earlier in c.1895, this is playing in the same space as Woolf, Proust and Joyce. We see Miriam at 17 leaving home to become a governess-pupil in a school in Germany so definite shades of nineteenth-century novels: Jane Eyre and, especially Villette which gets name-checked via Madame Beck. Miriam is the only prism through which we access this experience so we have no objective markers to assess her views and responses: we see and hear the other pupils, have a sense of this world via Miriam's impressions, physical, emotional and intellectual. We share her disorientation and gradual accommodation; we feel her awkward clumsiness when her new blouses are too billowy for her body; we share her indignation and gradually evolving consciousness as she starts to map her place in the political and ideological world of the early twentieth century; and we see the instabilities of her personality, at times almost misanthropic, at others warmed by her inclusion in the group of girls.
All action is, accordingly, internal: little happens on the surface in terms of plot. But that's part of what Richardson is challenging, as well as shifting the bildungsroman to a female consciousness.
The first time I started Pilgrimage, I stalled on the 3rd chapter. Re-reading this, I realised that to read Richardson, I need to calm my mind of external attention-seekers and find a kind of inner equilibrium to match the focus of the narrative. Here's hoping that this time I'll make it to the end - I'm now invested in Miriam and her journey through life and text.
-----------------Original Review----------------
Although this is volume 1 in the Virago edition, it actually comprises the first three novels (novellas?) in Richardson's Pilgrimage series. I'm pausing at the end of the first novella and so will add to this review as I finish the other two.
Pointed Roofs
In this first book, Miriam takes her first post as a governess in a school in Germany. There are definite shades of Villette both in the situation and in Miriam's personality which has some of the uncompromising aspects of Lucy Snowe, though Miriam feels like a subjectivity in the process of being formed.
I'm somewhat confused at seeing this described as stream of consciousness - it's not (though perhaps the later volumes are). It is, though, very interior with everything filtered through Miriam's experience.
In this early book we see her slight awkwardness, her refusal to act like a 'nice' girl as prescribed by society, and her questioning of other cultural norms. Little happens but Miriam's striking independence of thought and action makes this an intriguing journey to watch.
Backwater and Honeycomb
Disappointingly, I found these novels more interesting than enjoyable: they're striking for the independence of their young protagonist, Miriam, who, despite her solid middle-class upbringing and family, takes herself off to work in Germany, then back in England as a governess, when she is just 18. We experience her impressions of the settings she finds herself in, the people and students amongst whom she lives, the young men she meets and the changes in her family home.
Oddly, though, Miriam rarely seems to engage emotionally and while the technical articulation of her stream of experiences (not yet really stream of consciousness) may push the development of the novel forward, I too often found myself a slightly bored bystander to the book rather than experiencing it via Miriam's perceptions.
She's an interesting mix of quiet questioning: she doesn't subscribe to conventional religious feeling, she's rather nicely scathing about men's privileged positions, she's socially awkward and insecure, thinking, for example, that her pupils don't like her and then being stunned as they sob at her leaving. She wants something that isn't just marriage or a filler, amateur, governess job but she doesn't yet know what that is.
There's a marked step-up in writing technique at the end of Honeycomb which moves closer to stream of consciousness, focusing on Miriam's feelings rather than the event, which we have to intuit, which causes them. Which is slightly frustrating as I was ready to pause on the Pilgrimage sequence but now wonder if I should push on...
Based on this volume alone, it's clear why Woolf was both intrigued by Richardson's work and yet also found Pointed Roofs (I don't know about the other books) an interesting failure. Their innovation stems from their minute detailing of a female consciousness taking its first steps into a wider world and thinking deliberately about how to use language to capture and articulate that experience. In that sense, we can place Richardson in a female writing tradition somewhere between Charlotte Bronte (I'm thinking especially of Villette) and Woolf herself. But that very relationship also foregrounds Richardson's inadequacies: the subjective self she is creating is, for me frustratingly boring, something which Woolf never is.
3 stars for pushing forward the development of the novel away from Victorian stylistics and towards literary modernism... but I'm unsure whether I'll push on with Miriam's journey.
January 8, 2015
A work of genius from an unjustly buried and shamefully neglected modernist. Fans of Woolf or Proust will love it, and should get hold of a copy as soon as they can. Her writing is unique, and the extraordinary window it provides into the development, the growth, of a young proto-feminist mind is simply unparalleled. The drama and the "plot" here is that of growing slowly older, experiencing the world - whilst there are some "dramatic" events, one should not read this text expecting fireworks (though there are some real fireworks - which Miriam hates because they are too damn noisy)
A group collating resources about her and her work, and providing a place for discussion, can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
From Honeycomb
"She knew at once that she did not want to read the book through; that it was what people called a tragedy, that the author had deliberately made it a tragedy; something black and twisted and painful, painful came to her out of every page; but seriously to read it right through and be excited about the tragic story seemed silly and pitiful. The thought of Mrs. Corrie and Joey doing this annoyed her and impatiently she wanted to tell them that there was nothing in it, nothing in the things the author wanted to make them believe; that was fraud, humbug. .. they missed everything. They could not see through it, they read through to the happy ending or the sad ending and took it all seriously. She struggled in thought to discover why it was she felt that these people did not read books and that she herself did. She felt that she could look at the end, and read here and there a little and know; know something, something they did not know. People thought it was silly, almost wrong to look at the end of a book. But if it spoilt a book, there was something wrong about the book. If it was finished and the interest gone when you know who married who, what was the good of reading at all? It was a sort of trick, a sell. Like a puzzle that was no more fun when you had found it out. There was something more in books than that. . even Rosa Nouchette Carey and Mrs. Hungerford, something that came to you out of the book, any bit of it, a page, even a sentence - and the "stronger" the author was the more came. That was why Ouida put those others in the shade, not, not, not because her books were improper. It was her, herself somehow. Then you read books to find the author! That was it. That was the difference. . that was how one was different from most people.. . Dear Eve; I have just discovered that I don't read books for the story, but as a psychological study of the author. . she must write that to Eve at once; to-morrow. It was rather awful and strange. It meant never being able to agree with people about books, never liking them for the same reasons as other people…But it was true and exciting. It meant…things coming to you out of books, people, not the people in the books, but knowing, absolutely, everything about the author. She clung to the volume in her hand with a sense of wealth. Its very binding, the feeling of it, the sight of the slender serried edges of the closed leaves came to her as having a sacredness. . and the world was full of books. ..
It did not matter that people went about talking about nice books, interesting books, sad books, " stories " - they would never be that to her. They were people. More real than actual people. They came nearer. In life everything was so scrappy and mixed up. In a book the author was there in every word.
Why did this strange book come so near, nearer than any others, so that you felt the writing, felt the sentences as if you were writing them yourself? He was a sad pained man, all wrong; bothered and tragic about things, believing in sad black horror. Then why did he come so near? Perhaps because life was sad. Perhaps life was really sad. No; it was somehow the writing, the clearness. That was the thing. He himself must be all right, if he was so clear. Then it was dangerous, dangerous to people like Mrs. Corrie and Joey who would attend only to what he said, and not to him…sadness or gladness, saying things were sad or glad did not matter; there was something behind all the time, something inside people. That was why it was impossible to pretend to sympathise with people. You don't have to sympathise with authors; you just get at them, neither happy nor sad; like talking, more than talking. Then that was why the people who wrote moral stories were so awful. They were standing behind the pages preaching at you with smarmy voices…Bunyan?...No…He preached to himself too…crying out his sins…He did not get between you and himself and point at a moral. An author must show himself. Anyhow, he can't help showing himself. A moral writer only sees the mote in his brother's eye. And you see him seeing it. "
A group collating resources about her and her work, and providing a place for discussion, can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
From Honeycomb
"She knew at once that she did not want to read the book through; that it was what people called a tragedy, that the author had deliberately made it a tragedy; something black and twisted and painful, painful came to her out of every page; but seriously to read it right through and be excited about the tragic story seemed silly and pitiful. The thought of Mrs. Corrie and Joey doing this annoyed her and impatiently she wanted to tell them that there was nothing in it, nothing in the things the author wanted to make them believe; that was fraud, humbug. .. they missed everything. They could not see through it, they read through to the happy ending or the sad ending and took it all seriously. She struggled in thought to discover why it was she felt that these people did not read books and that she herself did. She felt that she could look at the end, and read here and there a little and know; know something, something they did not know. People thought it was silly, almost wrong to look at the end of a book. But if it spoilt a book, there was something wrong about the book. If it was finished and the interest gone when you know who married who, what was the good of reading at all? It was a sort of trick, a sell. Like a puzzle that was no more fun when you had found it out. There was something more in books than that. . even Rosa Nouchette Carey and Mrs. Hungerford, something that came to you out of the book, any bit of it, a page, even a sentence - and the "stronger" the author was the more came. That was why Ouida put those others in the shade, not, not, not because her books were improper. It was her, herself somehow. Then you read books to find the author! That was it. That was the difference. . that was how one was different from most people.. . Dear Eve; I have just discovered that I don't read books for the story, but as a psychological study of the author. . she must write that to Eve at once; to-morrow. It was rather awful and strange. It meant never being able to agree with people about books, never liking them for the same reasons as other people…But it was true and exciting. It meant…things coming to you out of books, people, not the people in the books, but knowing, absolutely, everything about the author. She clung to the volume in her hand with a sense of wealth. Its very binding, the feeling of it, the sight of the slender serried edges of the closed leaves came to her as having a sacredness. . and the world was full of books. ..
It did not matter that people went about talking about nice books, interesting books, sad books, " stories " - they would never be that to her. They were people. More real than actual people. They came nearer. In life everything was so scrappy and mixed up. In a book the author was there in every word.
Why did this strange book come so near, nearer than any others, so that you felt the writing, felt the sentences as if you were writing them yourself? He was a sad pained man, all wrong; bothered and tragic about things, believing in sad black horror. Then why did he come so near? Perhaps because life was sad. Perhaps life was really sad. No; it was somehow the writing, the clearness. That was the thing. He himself must be all right, if he was so clear. Then it was dangerous, dangerous to people like Mrs. Corrie and Joey who would attend only to what he said, and not to him…sadness or gladness, saying things were sad or glad did not matter; there was something behind all the time, something inside people. That was why it was impossible to pretend to sympathise with people. You don't have to sympathise with authors; you just get at them, neither happy nor sad; like talking, more than talking. Then that was why the people who wrote moral stories were so awful. They were standing behind the pages preaching at you with smarmy voices…Bunyan?...No…He preached to himself too…crying out his sins…He did not get between you and himself and point at a moral. An author must show himself. Anyhow, he can't help showing himself. A moral writer only sees the mote in his brother's eye. And you see him seeing it. "
March 7, 2012
I can't believe I deserted this the first time I attempted it.
I can't believe it sat on my shelf for so long when it has everything I love: reverie, poignant simplicity, rustling leaves and hearthside warmth. This is a book like moonlight.
From now on, I only want to read books just like this one. *nods*
I did have some trouble with all the untranslated French and German. But, again, that's really more a criticism of me...
I can't believe it sat on my shelf for so long when it has everything I love: reverie, poignant simplicity, rustling leaves and hearthside warmth. This is a book like moonlight.
From now on, I only want to read books just like this one. *nods*
I did have some trouble with all the untranslated French and German. But, again, that's really more a criticism of me...
March 19, 2023
Giving all these books five stars is a bit of an eccentricity, perhaps; few if any would regard all of them as being anything remotely like perfectly realized. The author herself probably would have conceded that the first novel has executed its intention more successfully than any of its successors. But Richardson is unfairly neglected, and reading her was one of the most enjoyable literary experiences I have had, so for that I am giving them all fives.
UPDATE: Revisiting this review, I'm surprised at the hesitancy that I expressed here. These are classics of high modernism, and should be recognized as such, without reservation. The issue of "realization" is not truly relevant, because these novels are processual in their formal concept. They are about extending an event of insight, tracing its tendrils into the succeeding period of time. As such, they are perfectly realized.
UPDATE: Revisiting this review, I'm surprised at the hesitancy that I expressed here. These are classics of high modernism, and should be recognized as such, without reservation. The issue of "realization" is not truly relevant, because these novels are processual in their formal concept. They are about extending an event of insight, tracing its tendrils into the succeeding period of time. As such, they are perfectly realized.
March 20, 2016
(I had taken some notes while reading this first volume, and layered in some retroactive thoughts while reading the second. I had planned on reading and reviewing all volumes together, but 2000 pages is a lot, especially when I was out of town bar hopping a lot. I'll need to come back to the series later. I doubt I'll re-read this first volume though, so I'm going to post what I've got here, even though it's incomplete)
These opening three books serve as a sort of prologue for Pilgrimage - they are more simplistic and orderly than the books about her move to London. This is not to take away from the novels here - they are all excellent in their own right, but these first three novels, with their focuses on the three governess jobs with which Miriam was employed all serve as lead up to her move to London (in book 4) and the independence that it offered. Much as her opportunities and horizons opened with that move, the narration and open streams of thought expand greatly after these books.
Even that said, Miriam is a singular character, with a district, focused, point of view; from the first novel she brings a distinctly feminist viewpoint to the education of young women - especially when education is primarily focused less on the acquisition of knowledge and more on the making of a wife - as well as an atheistic viewpoint of religious practices in late 19th century Germany and England.
An exceptional beginning to a (so far) rewarding "novel".
Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs. The March twilight lay upon the landings, but the staircase wasThat's the paragraph that opens the entire Pilgrimage cycle. I point it out up front, as it - possibly unintentionally (it's difficult to ascribe intent to a series of books that would span decades) - hits some major themes of the novel (Richardson considered Pilgrimage to be one novel, and the thirteen books which compose it to be merely chapters). There are three points of repetition in this opening paragraph: darkness, silence/quiet; and internal thought. For a novel cycle that would focus so heavily on the internal monologue, on the singular focus of only one psyche, these opening repetitions would frame the focus of the following novel. Again, this could be intentional, or it could just be a byproduct of the internality of the single point of view as presented throughout the novels.
almost dark. The top landing was quite dark and silent. There was no one about. It would be quiet in her room. She could sit by the fire and be quiet and think things over until Eve and Harriett came back with the parcels. She would have time to think about the journey and decide what she was going to say to the Fräulein.
These opening three books serve as a sort of prologue for Pilgrimage - they are more simplistic and orderly than the books about her move to London. This is not to take away from the novels here - they are all excellent in their own right, but these first three novels, with their focuses on the three governess jobs with which Miriam was employed all serve as lead up to her move to London (in book 4) and the independence that it offered. Much as her opportunities and horizons opened with that move, the narration and open streams of thought expand greatly after these books.
Even that said, Miriam is a singular character, with a district, focused, point of view; from the first novel she brings a distinctly feminist viewpoint to the education of young women - especially when education is primarily focused less on the acquisition of knowledge and more on the making of a wife - as well as an atheistic viewpoint of religious practices in late 19th century Germany and England.
An exceptional beginning to a (so far) rewarding "novel".
Miriam seemed to gaze long at a pallid, rounded man with smiling eyes. She saw a garden and fields, a firelit interior, a little woman smiling and busy and agreeable moving quickly about .... and Pastor Lahmann--presiding. It filled her with fury to be regarded as one of a world of little tame things to be summoned by little man to be well-willed wives. She must make him see that she did not even recognize such a thing as ‘ a well-willed wife.’
January 21, 2021
4.5/5
That was feminine worldliness, pretending to be interested so that pleasant things might go on. Masculine worldliness was refusing to be interested so that it might go on doing things. Feminine worldliness then meant perpetual hard work and cheating and pretence at the door of a hidden garden, a lovely hidden garden. Masculine worldliness meant never really being there; always talking about things that had happened or making plans for things that might happen. There was nothing that could happen that was not in some way the same as anything else. Nobody was ever quite there, realizing.This work is the first of four to thirteen volumes, depending on your edition, encompassing a total of more than 2000 pages detailing a bookish, largely reserved English white girl/woman doing bookish, largely reserved English white girl/woman things in a manner of writing that, a century later, doesn't seem all that impressive to folks who complacently take their literature history as dictated by the Powers That Be for granted. This means that, for all its purported difficulties and (rightful) place in (Anglo) writing history, a reader's appreciation of it boils down as much to their personal engagement with the story as it does to their appreciation of the more dry cut mores of of prose, characterization, vernacular, narrative structure, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's true that, if Austen came out with free indirect discourse, Richardson came out with stream of consciousness around a century later, but that latter writer lacks the sacrosanct buffer composed of both actual readers and those who are satisfied that they have the one (1) woman writer they can include and thus escape that niggling feeling of personal shame for the most part. As a result, in this corner of the reading landscape, we get certain kinds of folks: believers that Dickens and Shakespeare is all one needs of the world, drawn by the promise of 1001 BBYD and other hoity toity lists of esteemed clout, and ultimately disappointed when it's not war, or politics, or difficult reading for difficult readings sake. Now, I personally didn't truly start getting into this until the first section/chapter/something was there and gone with its German (a rare occasion when my learned language of choice was the one going untranslated), and there are a portion of pages where the n-word is dropped in some of the most jarring ways imaginable that you understand why there were 'dear looking grannies' among the rioters at the US White House a few weeks back. Still, there is something there that is continually building upon itself in riotously glorious ways at times, and I can't remember the last book where I was able to sit back and just enjoy the borderline hedonism of a spring-field day, a lovely turn of dress, an interior decoration or a spot of human connection with another human soul. I may have started this work as much for reading cred, but now I'm hellbent on finishing it for the sake of seeing its potentials fulfilled.
Perhaps that self, leaving others to do the practical things, erecting a little wall of unapproachability between herself and her family that she might be free to dream alone in corners, had always been wrong. But it was herself, the nearest most intimate self she had known. And the discovery that it was not dead [...] brought her warm moments of reassurance. It was not perhaps a 'good' self, but it was herself, her own familiar secretly happy and rejoicing self—not dead.The complete set of 'Pilgrimage' in my possession is most likely the cheapest and ill put together edition on the market. Supplemental material is limited to less than twenty pages of introduction + foreword at the beginning, there's nary a footnote or endnote in sight, and the very last page contains an advertisement for a collection of self-help books on such vaunted topics as better vocabulary, better writing, and speed reading. If it were in translation, I would probably never bother with it, as my penchant for not worrying about fluency and original language and all that (if you have a problem with that, come talk to me once you've achieved mastery over the 120+ languages logged thus far in my library) doesn't mean I disregard adequate preparation. As it stands, I more than likely still missed bevies upon bevies of references suited to late 19th chunks of England and to a lesser extent Germany as viewed through the eyes of seventeen going on twenty(? time is a mystery in this work) Anglo white woman taking on the role of teacher/governess with no romanticism plot waiting in the wings to sweep her away. So, what do you get instead? Mediations on music and religion, increasingly burgeoning awareness of gender roles and the associated patriarchy, delights in the everyday when the light is clear and the colors shine through, moroseness when one is no more than a cog in the machine that is the lot of those whose assured place in high society has been irretrievably lost, bookishness, flirtations, pedagogy, deep seated anxiety, siblings, mother, father, and an insight into the singular facades that people present to each other to gain marriage, to gain power, to gain money, fame, and the kind of independence that Miriam, the main character, still cannot imagine outside of the constraints of being tied to some uninterested, unfeeling, unmitigated force of casual cruelty that will be totally responsible for one's finances and, thus, has a high chance of being totally responsible for one's doom. A certain joy in certain kind of aesthetics that is still classed as 'feminine' that certain folks see a single word of and throw up their hands in 'boredom.' Nothing new in this section of the world in the long run, then, especially if one's read anything of the Brontës and co. of 'Silly novels by Lady Novelists' of a particularly English repute, and yet...there's a great deal to relate to that is written in a prose that flows soft or hard when it needs to, as well as a certain hard won joy that strikes the narrative every so often, as well as certain conclusions drawn in a manner that one recognizes from having done the same in the process of building up the bedrock of their raison d'être. It won't be that way for all, and since this is no white boy work that inspires self-incrimination Catholic doublethink guilt in many a soul who tells itself it likes something because it's 'universal', readers of it will be more honest about such. Whether they're equally honest about everything else they take upon themselves cause whatever peer reading group does the same is the question.
Their husbands grew to hate them because they had no thoughts. But if a woman had thoughts a man would not be 'silly' about her for five years.All in all, while this isn't an absolute favorite of mine, the writing melds so well with my brain in terms of prose, themes, and overall holisms that I'm more than willing to stick with it till the very end. It's not a work that I would recommend to anyone who hasn't already previously cut their teeth on reads running into the thousands of pages, or anyone who isn't likely to find themselves committing to a read such as Beauvoir's four volume autobiography, each tome of substantial weight in terms of both physical heft and ideological content. What certain folks who are likely to find themselves in this area of literature forget is that reading is a practice in and of itself, so to take something on that is past the 2000+ page mark and then blame it for its long term goals is petty at best and dishonest otherwise. Yeah, this work isn't concerned with a lot of the exciting stuff that readers are trained to appreciate one way or another, and if you're looking for a self-adulating treasure hunt that many a white boy of mo/pomo and co. have hurled across the pages (with various degrees of actual writing skill and serious literary intent), the most interesting thing to you will be the namedrop of 'The Anatomy of Melancholy'. However, if you're five to ten novels into the bibliography of Woolf and are wondering why the most popular quote on this site from this supposed 'novel of the female revolution' concerns a namedrop of some particular longwinded work by some long dead white dude, you're probably in the right place. It's not perfect, even in the politically correct sense of the word, but the burgeoning critical awareness that is as fully capable of being appreciative as it is deriding is a breath of fresh air for one such as me, and the fact that its 'stream of consciousness' (Richardson thought that term highly inadequate) really hits its stride at times makes me eager to discover how much more fully it develops when the author brings the main character to fuller fruition in terms of her grasp on both life and her self. Two millennia and counting worth of pages may seem a bit much to get just that, but I'll take that over the tens, even hundreds, of thousands of pages comprising the same old adulated 'classics' that many a critic uncritically swallows down and thinks themselves superhuman for it any day.
There was some awful meaning in the way English people missed the right sound; all the names in India, all the Eastern words. How could an English traveller hear hahreem, and speak it hairum, Aswan and say Ass-ou-ann? It made them miss other things and think wrongly about them.
What's the use of feeling like that if it doesn't stay? It doesn't change anything. Next time I'll make it stay. It might whisk me right away. There's something in me that can't be touched or altered. Me. If it comes again. If it's stronger every time...Perhaps it goes on getting stronger till you die.P.S. This edition has a few blurbs written in the front that are so off the mark that I doubt they went more than ten or twenty pages in at any given section. Guess that's what happens when marketers are looking for love and war while Richardson just wants to figure out how to fulfillingly live with herself to the full extent of her capabilities. In any case, I'll be returning to this in the form of the second volume at the beginning of the next month: one must take their time with works such as these if one expects to get anything out of it.
March 3, 2026
First three novels from the Pilgrimage sequence. Mesmeric, evocative, stylistically dense and involving.
November 15, 2012
Finished Pointed Roofs, which details Miriam's time in a german school. The attitude of the staff and the various groups of students is interesting, though at times things seemed to be hinted at, ie Mademoiselle and the letters.
Backwater, Miriam now teaches in a school in London, but you get the idea that she sees herself as above the other teachers and pupils socially. Part of her dreads returning there, the other part looks forward to seeing the girls and teachers.
Honeycomb, moves on Miriam's life to a new situation as a governess, though her position within the house seems to hint that she's caught between the upstairs and downstairs. Miriam also keeps the reader informed as to her family position and the effect this has on her.
Backwater, Miriam now teaches in a school in London, but you get the idea that she sees herself as above the other teachers and pupils socially. Part of her dreads returning there, the other part looks forward to seeing the girls and teachers.
Honeycomb, moves on Miriam's life to a new situation as a governess, though her position within the house seems to hint that she's caught between the upstairs and downstairs. Miriam also keeps the reader informed as to her family position and the effect this has on her.
September 4, 2021
Beautiful writing style, some gorgeous passages of free indirect speech, lesbian subtext, but I COULD NOT STOP FALLING ASLEEP
October 8, 2023
This is such a wonderful volume. It reminds me a bit of a combination of those boarding school books by Enid Blyton mixed with Charlotte Brontë's Villette, and stylistically, it's very much a predecessor to authors like Virginia Woolf. All good things! Miriam is a lovely, spirited protagonist and I found it really interesting to follow her thoughts. Some of the other characters aren't quite fully fleshed out, but I honestly thought that worked really well as it helps immerse you in Miriam's perspective: all you know is what she knows. I found it fascinating to see Miriam grow over the course of these three books (or chapters, as Richardson herself referred to them) and become more settled into her own skin. And the prose... I know stream-of-consciousness as a term was first applied to Richardson's work, and though Richardson apparently was not a fan of that description, I can't help but find it the only one that fits. We meander through Miriam's thoughts, moving from detailed descriptions to her worries to conversations with others. There's just something so lovely about it all! I cannot wait to pick up the next volume.
April 15, 2020
Pilgrimage 1 contains three “chapters” as Richardson called the separate volumes of her epic multi-volume novel Pilgrimage: Pointed Roofs, Backwater & Honeycomb. It tracks, at times minutely, the thoughts, sensations, ideas, feelings that pass through the mind of Miriam Henderson or rather is a protocol / portrait of her consciousness and its development over three years, starting with 17-year Miriam leaving her family in England to work a an English teacher in a girl school in Hannover. Richardson tracks how Miriam is working her way out of the constraints of her family (always living in fear that their financial difficulties ruin their ‘respectability’) And larger societal constraints regarding women of her class and women in general. Highly lyrical passages reflecting her perception of natural and musical phenomena and art alternate with often very caustic or aggressive musings about societal norms, class and especially gender issues - and her interactions with her sisters, friends, pupils, parents (especially her mother), her employers, servants etc. Being enclosed in the mind of a very intelligent and perceptive girl / young woman of around 1900 is not always an entertaining experience, at least for me, and you have to get used to it, but Richardson’s mastery of voice and coherent point of experience (so to speak) is absolutely marvellous - this really is the mother of all modernist stream of consciousness novels, even of the idea of trying to recreate this stream as a narrative form and a style of writing. Richardson should be up there with Woolf and Joyce in the modern canon. (If your History of Modern Literature Text books doesn’t contain Pilgrimage it’s crap, pure & simple.) The last 10 pages of Honeycomb tracking Miriam’s experience of her mother’s decent into madness and suicide are one of the marvels of modern prose - and very, very touching .
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 22, 2026
Wonderful insight into the life of young Miriam, as she goes to Germany to teach in a school, and we encounter many other real-seeming characters (pupils, other teachers etc). Nicely involving style, and although not much happens and Miriam is a bit dithery, that's because she is just setting out on a life of her own, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things go for her in the (many!) subsequent instalments in this series. 3.5 Stars and very nearly rounded up... but not quite!
April 30, 2024
finding out this was the original stream of consciousness but she hated the concept will never not be funny to me
February 19, 2022
Reading these novels in the early 20th century must have felt like a breath of fresh air. Dorothy Richardson says, "No thanks" to the realism and naturalism popular among late 19th century writers. She discards conventional plotting, drama, and moralizing.
Instead, she attempts to take the perspective of a young woman living an average life and transpose it to the page. Richardson doesn't allow the constraints of the novel to define Miriam Henderson's life; she dutifully records the mundane. Like most Modernist novelists, she is concerned with what is going on in Miriam's mind, so the novels do not revolve around external events. The novels are all the better for it, eschewing the silly contrivances of Victorian novels for a pristine portrait of life in this period.
Pilgrimage is not perfect. It shows some signs of growing pains as a transitional work from one style of writing to the next. Richardson is still experimenting with technique, and sometimes the book feels like a hybrid: a 19th century narration style alternated with Modernist techniques like stream-of-consciousness.
There is quite a bit of movement within these first three novels, as Miriam travels around Europe and England, working in three different professions and, later, caring for her ill mother. Naturally all these transitions require exposition, which is where Richardson struggles a bit. The narration, when covering these external events, often feels merely functional, reverting back to an older style of writing. They can be tedious.
A lot of the Modernist books from this era have similar issues, including A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Given the choice between the two, I'd say this is the superior work (provided, I've only read these first three volumes). I know that's controversial. To me this is a much more compelling "portrait of an artist" than Joyce's disjointed bildungsroman, which is more a mess of references and ping-pong dialogue than anything resembling an artist's internal world.
Miriam has yet to become a bona fide artist, as of these first three books, but some of the most beautiful passages record the transcendental experiences she has when listening to music or reading. She also grapples with gender roles and religion, and her takes are shockingly modern, casting into relief our 21st century assumptions about 19th century women. Miriam doesn't have much patience for religion, sulking through a sermon and then having to pretend she "had a headache" when someone asks her about the sour look on her face. She also has a whiff of misanthropy to her, often going off on tangents about how much she hates men and women. (I wonder if Richardson inspired Jean Rhys? Some of her rants certainly bring to mind Rhys' protagonists.) Cynical as she may be at times, Miriam also has close relationships with her sisters which enrich the landscapes of her outer and inner worlds.
In the end, while I can't say Richardson's writing is quite on par with the work of Proust (the gold standard for this era), it's still beautiful and effective, and as a document of life in this period, it's indispensable. Personally, I prefer Richardson's work overall, because it is less romantic and precious, and because I prefer to read about average working people, not the idle wealthy.
P.S. I read the Project Gutenberg ebooks of these first three books. I would recommend it, particularly for Pointed Roofs, because if you don't read French and German, you can easily use a translation app. The Gutenberg books were painstakingly transcribed and edited, if the notes at the end are any indication.
Instead, she attempts to take the perspective of a young woman living an average life and transpose it to the page. Richardson doesn't allow the constraints of the novel to define Miriam Henderson's life; she dutifully records the mundane. Like most Modernist novelists, she is concerned with what is going on in Miriam's mind, so the novels do not revolve around external events. The novels are all the better for it, eschewing the silly contrivances of Victorian novels for a pristine portrait of life in this period.
Pilgrimage is not perfect. It shows some signs of growing pains as a transitional work from one style of writing to the next. Richardson is still experimenting with technique, and sometimes the book feels like a hybrid: a 19th century narration style alternated with Modernist techniques like stream-of-consciousness.
There is quite a bit of movement within these first three novels, as Miriam travels around Europe and England, working in three different professions and, later, caring for her ill mother. Naturally all these transitions require exposition, which is where Richardson struggles a bit. The narration, when covering these external events, often feels merely functional, reverting back to an older style of writing. They can be tedious.
A lot of the Modernist books from this era have similar issues, including A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Given the choice between the two, I'd say this is the superior work (provided, I've only read these first three volumes). I know that's controversial. To me this is a much more compelling "portrait of an artist" than Joyce's disjointed bildungsroman, which is more a mess of references and ping-pong dialogue than anything resembling an artist's internal world.
Miriam has yet to become a bona fide artist, as of these first three books, but some of the most beautiful passages record the transcendental experiences she has when listening to music or reading. She also grapples with gender roles and religion, and her takes are shockingly modern, casting into relief our 21st century assumptions about 19th century women. Miriam doesn't have much patience for religion, sulking through a sermon and then having to pretend she "had a headache" when someone asks her about the sour look on her face. She also has a whiff of misanthropy to her, often going off on tangents about how much she hates men and women. (I wonder if Richardson inspired Jean Rhys? Some of her rants certainly bring to mind Rhys' protagonists.) Cynical as she may be at times, Miriam also has close relationships with her sisters which enrich the landscapes of her outer and inner worlds.
In the end, while I can't say Richardson's writing is quite on par with the work of Proust (the gold standard for this era), it's still beautiful and effective, and as a document of life in this period, it's indispensable. Personally, I prefer Richardson's work overall, because it is less romantic and precious, and because I prefer to read about average working people, not the idle wealthy.
P.S. I read the Project Gutenberg ebooks of these first three books. I would recommend it, particularly for Pointed Roofs, because if you don't read French and German, you can easily use a translation app. The Gutenberg books were painstakingly transcribed and edited, if the notes at the end are any indication.
December 5, 2013
Pointed Roofs is the first entry of Richardson's multi-volume work, Pilgrimage, and the only one available for download to my Kindle.
Called, "...a prime example of modernism at its finest and most maddening," Painted Roofs reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where NBC offers Jerry a show and the idea that George comes up with is a show about "nothing." That's what Painted Roofs is about--nothing.
What we get is a peek into the consciousness of Miriam Henderson, her thoughts and musings.
Richardson is thought of as being the originator of the "stream of consciousness" technique in fiction writing. Painted Roofs is also groundbreaking in that the mind of a young, working class governess could be the subject of a novel.
I had a hard time with this book, keeping track of all the other girls, following Miriam's thoughts. But I kept plugging along because this book is supposed to have launched the modernist movement.
Called, "...a prime example of modernism at its finest and most maddening," Painted Roofs reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where NBC offers Jerry a show and the idea that George comes up with is a show about "nothing." That's what Painted Roofs is about--nothing.
What we get is a peek into the consciousness of Miriam Henderson, her thoughts and musings.
Richardson is thought of as being the originator of the "stream of consciousness" technique in fiction writing. Painted Roofs is also groundbreaking in that the mind of a young, working class governess could be the subject of a novel.
I had a hard time with this book, keeping track of all the other girls, following Miriam's thoughts. But I kept plugging along because this book is supposed to have launched the modernist movement.
January 3, 2008
I loved the first section of this stream-of-consciousness novel, where the heroine is in Germany, but then started to get bored in the later sections where she is back in England and found it hard to follow. Although I can see that Dorothy Richardson is a great writer and I loved many passages, I found myself wanting more of a story.
February 28, 2014
among the many lost women in literary history I've been discovering lately - I do not count D.R.
this book is tedious, time-wasting junk (to/for me)
this book is tedious, time-wasting junk (to/for me)
March 26, 2021
Volume One of Pilgrimage is actually three stand-alone novels: Pointed Roofs, Backwater, and Honeycomb. Richardson’s use of interior monologue is groundbreaking, although it would take a much greater writer – James Joyce – to bring this technique to its full apogee of perfection. Stylistically, you regularly come across fussy descriptions like the following: “The wooden mantelpiece was draped at the sides like the high french windows with soft straight hanging green silk curtains.”
The heroine, Miriam Henderson, is the teenage daughter of a financially embarrassed middle class family. Her mother is ill (no NHS in those days to provide a safety net) and is prescribed bromide by her doctor together with beef tea; her father, meanwhile, is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Miriam is by turns a teacher (in Germany and England) and a governess for a rich family. The head of the household in her last post is a QC.
As I read these three novels a line from the Pink Floyd song “Time” kept running through my mind: “hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” Although we are at the very end of the Victorian era, this is still a world of hansom cabs, broughams, and dark furniture. It’s a period when girls are liable to be reprimanded for not wearing a hat outdoors. However, despite the crushing weight of conformity, there’s an oblique reference to the Oscar Wilde court case in the third volume (Honeycomb) and I should point out that the “N” word is used quite often in that same volume.
The heroine, Miriam Henderson, is the teenage daughter of a financially embarrassed middle class family. Her mother is ill (no NHS in those days to provide a safety net) and is prescribed bromide by her doctor together with beef tea; her father, meanwhile, is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Miriam is by turns a teacher (in Germany and England) and a governess for a rich family. The head of the household in her last post is a QC.
As I read these three novels a line from the Pink Floyd song “Time” kept running through my mind: “hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” Although we are at the very end of the Victorian era, this is still a world of hansom cabs, broughams, and dark furniture. It’s a period when girls are liable to be reprimanded for not wearing a hat outdoors. However, despite the crushing weight of conformity, there’s an oblique reference to the Oscar Wilde court case in the third volume (Honeycomb) and I should point out that the “N” word is used quite often in that same volume.
April 13, 2025
A pioneering work of stream-of-consciousness literature, this novel is exceptionally beautiful and delicate. It was the first time I truly experienced the beauty of the English language. The author’s use of words and sentence structure feels both spontaneous and masterful, full of imagination and creativity with English vocabulary and expression. Although Miriam’s constant inner monologue can sometimes feel overwhelming, I was often struck by the brilliance of a particular word or sentence. The scene where Miriam chooses to return to her homeland, England, and bids farewell at the station is also breathtakingly beautiful.
February 19, 2023
As is not known well enough these books, which comprise the first three chapters of Pilgrimage, are indeed the earliest 'Stream of Consciousness' entries in modern 20th century literature...full of colour, scent, dress...all the trappings of late Victorian age...the pace of life moves throug these words. As always, when reading through the past and its cultures it is best to have references to help you on the journey. For Dorothy Miller Richardson may i suggest the works done by George H. Thomson.
Go on this Pilgrimage. You will glad you do, this is an amply rewarding time.
Go on this Pilgrimage. You will glad you do, this is an amply rewarding time.
February 21, 2024
I'll reserve serious judgement until I've covered a bit more ground, having completed "Pointed Roofs", the first book in this first volume of Richardson's Magnum Opus. We see the life of Miriam Henderson from her point of view, with her thoughts and feelings as she takes her first employment away from her family at a small girls' school in Germany. Her embarrassment and feelings of uncertainty and inadequacy are beautifully rendered.
February 25, 2019
En modernistisk klassiker som tyvärr ofta hamnat i skymundan (pga kvinnlig författare). Precis som många andra radikala och nytänkande litterära verk från den här tiden är den relativt svårläst. Även om den temporala aspekten och den (icke-existerande) handlingen kan kännas övermäktiga ibland, så är karaktären Miriam väl värd allt jobb. Sättet Richardson skriver ur Miriams perspektiv skapar en av de mest realistiska karaktärer jag stött på.
April 22, 2019
Based on 3 reviews, the group rating is 3.66.
Kristel
Book
Pip
Kristel
Book
Pip
September 21, 2022
Loved it - a brilliant and accessible early modernist writer. Why has she been forgotten? Entertaining, true to life, I couldn't put it down. Took me right back to what it was like to be 18, to leave home, and go to work for the first time.
December 27, 2019
I have thoroughly enjoyed the first three volumes, or chapters, as Richardson herself called them, of this saga of an independent woman. Her observations and innermost thoughts are conveyed with uncanny detail and the reader is placed right in the milieu so it is easy to picture the young governess in Hannover, the tutor in barren North London and the au pair/teacher in a wealthy home in precise word pictures.
Pointed Roofs
I started listening to this on Libravox, way back when it was
first announced last year, then wondered if I were breaking the rules and put it aside until I had the hard copy. The similarities between Dorothy and Miriam start with her being the third of four sisters, having a bankrupt father, having had an exceptionally good education for the time and the circumstances, both influenced by John Ruskin. They both taught at a finishing school in Hanover when they were still very young. Both were independent for their time.
I absolutely loved this story. I identified with the young Miriam so much: the impatience with the silliness of other girls; the self doubt; the horror of chapel or Roman Catholicism; the incident with the collecting of dishes at the table; the horror of contemplating the future as a housewife and the realisation that most men were patronising.
I also really enjoyed the details of what life would have been like in 1891 - the restrictive clothing, the compulsory gloves and hats, the restrictions on talking to or even about young men and the comparisons between England and Germany. I am familiar with modern Hanover, so it was delicious to imagine what it would have been like then. I thought that Richardson captured the female inner dialogue beautifully, in particular the dichotomy between being interested in appearances and despising their frivolity. From making this the last challenge of each month, I am sure I am going to make it the first!
Backwater
I can see why Miriam is hard to like. I think that most people would be difficult to befriend if we really knew what was going on in their heads. I love the way that Richardson points out small details, particularly in appearances and movements. "Flora's hands were small and pale and serenely despairing like her face". Or "In the cab Julia's face shone chalky white, and Miriam found that her eyes looked like Weymouth Bay - the sea in general, on days when clouds keep sweeping across the sun". This continues in a long paragraph which conjures up a vivid picture of what Julia was like.
Miriam compares North London unfavourably to Hanover (who wouldn't?) and really is not very sympathetic to her charges, so much so that she is surprised at the grief when she leaves. She develops a lot while here: she starts reading independently, finding enlightenment in the newspaper, although she only read it once! and in romance novels. She smokes her first cigarette and dallies with a young man although she has no feelings for him. Two of her sisters become engaged to be married, including her younger sister who has not been mentioned except in passing until this point.
I still identify with Miriam. She does things like leave her companions abruptly to walk on her own, which I have been guilty of doing more than once. She does not try to ingratiate herself with others, particularly authority figures like the sisters who run the private school. She criticises sermons, doubts whether God exists and realises that the teaching she is doing is mostly irrelevant. And she is still only about nineteen!
Honeycomb
I continue to enjoy Richardson immensely. I love her description of interior decor and flowers in particular, but also her musings about how dreadfully shallow and self-obsessed men are and how frivolous and unhappy women live their lives and her appreciation of the luxuries of the Corrie's household while wondering why the education of the children seems less important than in Banbury Park. The last quarter when she is with her family is first poignant then excruciating. I can't wait to start The Tunnel.
Pointed Roofs
I started listening to this on Libravox, way back when it was
first announced last year, then wondered if I were breaking the rules and put it aside until I had the hard copy. The similarities between Dorothy and Miriam start with her being the third of four sisters, having a bankrupt father, having had an exceptionally good education for the time and the circumstances, both influenced by John Ruskin. They both taught at a finishing school in Hanover when they were still very young. Both were independent for their time.
I absolutely loved this story. I identified with the young Miriam so much: the impatience with the silliness of other girls; the self doubt; the horror of chapel or Roman Catholicism; the incident with the collecting of dishes at the table; the horror of contemplating the future as a housewife and the realisation that most men were patronising.
I also really enjoyed the details of what life would have been like in 1891 - the restrictive clothing, the compulsory gloves and hats, the restrictions on talking to or even about young men and the comparisons between England and Germany. I am familiar with modern Hanover, so it was delicious to imagine what it would have been like then. I thought that Richardson captured the female inner dialogue beautifully, in particular the dichotomy between being interested in appearances and despising their frivolity. From making this the last challenge of each month, I am sure I am going to make it the first!
Backwater
I can see why Miriam is hard to like. I think that most people would be difficult to befriend if we really knew what was going on in their heads. I love the way that Richardson points out small details, particularly in appearances and movements. "Flora's hands were small and pale and serenely despairing like her face". Or "In the cab Julia's face shone chalky white, and Miriam found that her eyes looked like Weymouth Bay - the sea in general, on days when clouds keep sweeping across the sun". This continues in a long paragraph which conjures up a vivid picture of what Julia was like.
Miriam compares North London unfavourably to Hanover (who wouldn't?) and really is not very sympathetic to her charges, so much so that she is surprised at the grief when she leaves. She develops a lot while here: she starts reading independently, finding enlightenment in the newspaper, although she only read it once! and in romance novels. She smokes her first cigarette and dallies with a young man although she has no feelings for him. Two of her sisters become engaged to be married, including her younger sister who has not been mentioned except in passing until this point.
I still identify with Miriam. She does things like leave her companions abruptly to walk on her own, which I have been guilty of doing more than once. She does not try to ingratiate herself with others, particularly authority figures like the sisters who run the private school. She criticises sermons, doubts whether God exists and realises that the teaching she is doing is mostly irrelevant. And she is still only about nineteen!
Honeycomb
I continue to enjoy Richardson immensely. I love her description of interior decor and flowers in particular, but also her musings about how dreadfully shallow and self-obsessed men are and how frivolous and unhappy women live their lives and her appreciation of the luxuries of the Corrie's household while wondering why the education of the children seems less important than in Banbury Park. The last quarter when she is with her family is first poignant then excruciating. I can't wait to start The Tunnel.
March 17, 2019
This volume contains the first 3 novels of Richardson's Pilgrimage series of 13. This series is considered the first of stream-of consciousness novels, but it is nothing like Virginia Woolf. It is much more readable. It is also semi-autobiographical, which explains how well Richardson can describe the inner thoughts, feelings, and worries of Miriam.
Pointed Roofs: 4 stars. Miriam, about age 17, learns of her father's financial difficulties and decides to help. She takes a job as a governess in Germany. Much of the novel consists of her internal thoughts and doubts, and happiness when she is happy. She is somewhat homesick and constantly questions her German and French skills. She really just wants to play piano. Richardson does a very good job of showing the anxiety and doubts of a young woman raised upper middle class but now working.
Backwater: 3 stars. Miriam has left Germany and is now at a semi-boarding school in north London. She is much less happy here, though just as in doubt of her abilities. She finds, upon leaving, that her students love her. She really misses the school in Germany. Meanwhile, two of her sisters are engaged and the whole dating scene (such as it is among the upper middle class) stresses her out. She desperately wants to be married herself, but is also terrified of being married. She is about age 18-19, being there for 15-18 months.
Honeycomb: 3 stars. Miriam has left the north London school and has found a position as governess to 2 children in an upper class household. One of her future brothers-in-law has helped her find this place. She loves the house, but goes back and forth over how much she likes the family and their friends. She realizes she is more a glorified babysitter than a teacher, as children of this class don't really need to know anything, or so she thinks. Meanwhile her sisters are getting married, she has some prospects but again, is also terrified of them. She is a bit of a rebel, and has begun smoking and visits one of her prospects at his bachelor apartment. Her mother is also sick, and the book ends with her caring for her mother at the seaside.
Pointed Roofs: 4 stars. Miriam, about age 17, learns of her father's financial difficulties and decides to help. She takes a job as a governess in Germany. Much of the novel consists of her internal thoughts and doubts, and happiness when she is happy. She is somewhat homesick and constantly questions her German and French skills. She really just wants to play piano. Richardson does a very good job of showing the anxiety and doubts of a young woman raised upper middle class but now working.
Backwater: 3 stars. Miriam has left Germany and is now at a semi-boarding school in north London. She is much less happy here, though just as in doubt of her abilities. She finds, upon leaving, that her students love her. She really misses the school in Germany. Meanwhile, two of her sisters are engaged and the whole dating scene (such as it is among the upper middle class) stresses her out. She desperately wants to be married herself, but is also terrified of being married. She is about age 18-19, being there for 15-18 months.
Honeycomb: 3 stars. Miriam has left the north London school and has found a position as governess to 2 children in an upper class household. One of her future brothers-in-law has helped her find this place. She loves the house, but goes back and forth over how much she likes the family and their friends. She realizes she is more a glorified babysitter than a teacher, as children of this class don't really need to know anything, or so she thinks. Meanwhile her sisters are getting married, she has some prospects but again, is also terrified of them. She is a bit of a rebel, and has begun smoking and visits one of her prospects at his bachelor apartment. Her mother is also sick, and the book ends with her caring for her mother at the seaside.
July 1, 2024
The first 3 chapters of the book Pilgrimage written by Dorothy Richardson in the early 1900's. It tells the inner thoughts of a young woman coming to age in a family that has lived as 'rich gentry' suddenly finds itself bankrupt. Miriam is the protagonist and it is through her thoughts and experiences that the reader catches the experience of questioning her future; shall she work, what work will she do, will she marry, does she want to marry, does she want to take care of her father's debt and her mother's illness. Many questions, Miriam is still finding her way. An interesting look at feminism from this young ladies perspective. She seems a bit arrogant at times and other times she is self loathing.
Want to Read
March 2, 2013Giving this one a shot -- though, taking it a bit slower than some of the other multi-novel, multi-volume works.
Book 1: 'Pointed Roofs'
3/5
A nice start to the series. A few rough patches here and there -- even though the novel is important for being the first "stream-of-consciousness" work in English, I thought the more straight-forward parts worked much better -- but overall, it was an engaging read.
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Book 1: 'Pointed Roofs'
3/5
A nice start to the series. A few rough patches here and there -- even though the novel is important for being the first "stream-of-consciousness" work in English, I thought the more straight-forward parts worked much better -- but overall, it was an engaging read.
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