Το κορίτσι με τους αναρχικούς

by Isabel Meredith, Θωμάς Π. Μαστακούρης (Translator)

Λονδίνο, τέλη του 19ου αιώνα. Οι νέες εφευρέσεις και τα τεχνολογικά επιτεύγματα συνυπάρχουν με τη φτώχεια και τις άθλιες εργασιακές συνθήκες. Μια ευκατάστατη νεαρή αστή ανακαλύπτει το κίνημα του αναρχισμού, που την εποχή εκείνη, με πολλές διαφορετικές μορφές, εξαπλώνεται στην Ευρώπη, και επιζητά την ενεργή συμμετοχή της σε αυτό. Πώς θα μπορέσει να συνυπάρξει με τους ζηλωτές του κινήματος, τους υποστηρικτές της απόλυτης ελευθερίας στην πολιτική και στον έρωτα, τους επίδοξους τρομοκράτες, αλλά και τους αργόσχολους που βρίσκουν στη συμμετοχή τους έναν τρόπο να ζουν από τα χρήματα και τους κόπους των "συντρόφων"; Μέσα από τα μάτια της ηρωίδας, αλλά και την καθημερινότητα των γραφείων μιας αναρχικής εφημερίδας της εποχής, ο αναγνώστης ανακαλύπτει έναν κόσμο άγνωστο, αλλά ταυτόχρονα εντυπωσιακά γνώριμο, και τις ρίζες ενός κινήματος με βίαια και ειρηνικά παρακλάδια, που ακόμα και σήμερα παραμένει ενεργό και σχεδόν αναλλοίωτο. Ένα συναρπαστικό αυτοβιογραφικό μυθιστόρημα για κάθε ψαγμένο ιδεολογικά αναγνώστη.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1903

Reviews

[El · Rating 3 out of 5]

Isabel Meredith is the narrator of A Girl Among the Anarchists (1903) and also the author. But who was she? Isabel Meredith was actually the pseudonym of two young sisters: Helen and Olivia Rossetti. Yes, from the Rossetti family - nieces to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti. Dante and Christina's brother, William Michael Rossetti, was also an author, though nowhere near as popular as Dante and Christina. But he did have these two girls, Helen and Olivia, who wrote this one book that very few people have heard of, so yay for William!

William was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and edited a literary magazine, so it's natural that Helen and Olivia were drawn into this world as well, meeting artists, writers, philosophers, thinkers, and musicians. As a result they started their own anarchist paper, The Torch, which they produced in their home. They were young, but this world they created became a hotbed for regular and well-renowned anarchists of the time, such as Peter Kropotkin.

Their experience publishing The Torch is the basis of this book, from the girls' feelings of entrapment within their class and in their upbringing (did I mention their first cousin was Ford Madox Ford as well?) to their interactions with the political pulse of their community in London. Together, the young women (under the name Isabel Meredith) wrote about a part of the turn-of-the-century that would not normally have been seen since, y'know, anarchists are so dirty and gross and no one wants to have anything to do with them. Scandalous! Grasp them pearls!

With the death of her last surviving parent, Isabel Meredith, the novel's seventeen-year-old protagonist, embarks upon a harrowing, but necessary journey into the space of the Other - a political and sexual "heart of darkness." In this domesticated version of Joseph Conrad's story (published a year earlier), the space of the Other is not the feminized, dark continent Africa but instead the ungoverned, masculine dominion of working-class anarchist haunts in London backstreets. This space is masculine not because of any inherent symbolic signification it possesses but strictly because in reality these spaces were virtually inaccessible to a middle-class girl.
(Introduction by Jennifer Shaddock, px)

I found this fascinating. I've long been drawn into the anarchist history and am interested in the cultural changes over the years, both in how anarchists define themselves and/or portray themselves to the public as well as in how the public (the laymen) perceive anarchists. There still remains this idea that anarchists only want to run around and break shit, and that's just not the case - rather, that was not the initial case. The bombs and the breaking of storefronts are not, as normally assumed, the first resort.

Although [The Torch] did run articles advocating violence, it nonetheless considered education as the primary tool by which the masses could discover a "true understanding of their wrongs, their duties and their rights," and the journal itself functioned as part of the larger educational groundswell the editors hoped to produce in order to catalyze the revolution. Moreover, the journal pronounced that the revolution must be waged on an international front, to abolish "all petty race-hatred and race-pride." The propaganda most useful in inspiring revolutions, according to the journal, included translations of foreign books and accounts of previous attempts to effect a revolution.
(Intro, pvii)

While I don't want to give away the ending, I was disappointed in the outcome because it was so expected, implying anarchism was just a phase Isabel experienced, and it would be something she could just "get over" once she was turned down from a romantic interest. It was a disappointment because, damn, isn't that just always the damn case? Come on!

All that being said, this is a somewhat obscure novel but one worth checking out, especially if you are also interested in the anarchist movement, particularly during the fin-de-siecle.

[Marley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I have a substantial anarchist library and have no idea why I never heard of it until a friend turned me on to it recently.

I have spent decades amongst anarchists (being one myself) and I'll tell you: nothing ever changes. Same people, different names today. "Girl" reads like a genuine anarchist memoir--something Voltarine deCleyre would have written if she had a sense of humor. (Maybe she did, but I've never seen it). The characters are so vivid and real. The conspirators, the cranks, the Socialists v Communists, the religious nuts, the hangers-on, the Bo-hos, the paranoia. Poor "Isabel." The Rossettis have it all down.

This is actually a good bookend for Emma Goldman's My Life.

[Jim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

The nieces of Dante and Christina Rossetti wrote this charming, thoroughly engrossing "fictional" account of the anarchist movement in Late Victorian England. It works because they convey the conviction and beliefs behind the movement while at the same time laughing gently at it. The intro in my edition takes the heroine Isabelle Meredith to task for not sticking to her beliefs, but her choice to walk away from the movement makes total sense given what she lives through toward the end of the book. An extremely well-written and entertaining look from a woman's perspective at the politics of the period.

[Ζωή Τσούρα · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ένα πολύ καλό βιβλίο για τους αναγνώστες ιστορικών και πολιτικών μυθιστορημάτων. Ενδιαφέρουσα ματιά στον αναρχισμό στα τέλη του 19ου αιώνα και την κοινωνική εξαθλίωση, γοητευτική γραφή, ξεκούραστη ανάγνωση.

Για περισσότερα: https://www.thematofylakes.gr/to-koritsi-me-toys-anarxikoys-isabel-meredith/

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this novel consistently engaging and thought-provoking. "A Girl" was actually 2 girls, Helen and Olivia Rossetti, who started an anarchist newspaper, together with their brother Arthur, when they were still in their teens. As we learn from the helpful preface to this edition, the venture folded in 1896, when the siblings moved on with their lives. "A Girl Among the Anarchists" came out in 1903, and was very much written in hindsight, when the sisters viewed their early espousal of anarchism as a mere phase in their education. However, I don't agree with Jennifer Haddock's contention in the preface that the novel disappoints because at the end the heroine leaves the Cause, presumably to pursue a boring bourgeois life. Unlike the Rossetti children, the heroine of the book, Isabel Meredith, doesn't exactly choose to leave anarchism behind. She is forced into giving up their newspaper because all the truly high-minded and effective men who ran it with her leave her in the lurch: one of them becomes completely paranoid, leaves London and ends up in prison in Spain for attempting to kill a minister; another decides he will achieve more in Austria; and the third also loses his mind, and turns into a hobo. From the very beginning, Isabel has been aware that for one highly-principled anarchist, there were at least 9 dodgy ones: cranks, fools, layabouts, or Thénardier types naturally gravitated towards the movement, sponging on the few middle-class idealists whose bad conscience was as deep as their pockets. Isabel's cynical conclusion is that very few working-class members of the anarchist movement were genuine idealists; most of them were rather mean characters who joined out of deep resentment for anybody who had more money than they did. I have no idea whether this was true or not, and it may just reflect a class prejudice on the part of the Rossetti sisters. But this remains an unusual and interesting coming-of-age novel because I can't think of many examples where the loss of youthful illusions is told from a female point of view. Essentially Isabel doesn't renounce her political views, but having seen how little is achieved, and at what enormous cost, she takes a step back and decides there must be other ways of leading a meaningful life than to publish a rag only the converted bother to read.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Petit Bourgeois Stirnerite or rather Stirnerita snarkily describes dedicated revolutionaries coming apart at the seams in Edwardian England. FUNNY STUFF.

read the project gutenberg ebook...

[Zoë · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for my master's dissertation - I had to file at least one book from my thesis in goodreads...
ended up being really moved towards the end. Hopefully will reread one day when I want to reminisce about this year - although this was written around 1900 I cannot believe how resonant some of the issues with 'the personal is political,' the problems of organising the left, women in politics...etc. are to today.

[Karl Radl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A semi-autobiographical novel about the anarchist movement in London during the late nineteenth century which is still viewed positively by anarchists today. The author does a very good job of explaining the diversity and origins of anarchist views while also no sugar coating the 'illegal' element of the anarchist movement and its links to other groups like Irish Republicanism.

Worth reading.

[OSKR · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was another book that I stumbled upon by accident and enjoyed immensely. I find it astonishing that I didn't come across the book previously and I guess I have the internet to thank for exposing me to another great (and free) novel.

The protagonist here is Isabel Meredith, a young Londoner living in the late nineteenth century. She comes from a wealthy and talented family, but after the death of both her parents, she turns to radical politics, and discovers that anarchism is the closest thing to her heart. As soon as the possibility arises she teams up with some truly eccentric anarchists and they take over the publication of a struggling anarchist paper. The narrator spends a great deal of time describing the people around her. In fact, character descriptions take up most of the novel. Stylistically it reminded me somewhat of Charles Dickens, but perhaps that's only because I'm a bit out of touch with more comparable English writers. To put it simply - the prose is really great.

What touched me most about this was how little has apparently changed in 120 years of anarchism. Idealistic anarchists living with the poor and deranged. The talented exploited by the unscrupulous. Damaged anarchists putting their associates at risk. One thing that has changed however is that a modern european anarchist would probably not resort to eating a stewed tom cat (well probably not).

After reading the book, I was inspired to do a bit of research on the author. Isabel Meredith was apparently the pseudonym of two sisters, Helen and Olivia Agresti. Incredibly Olivia in her later years moved to Italy and became a supporter of Mussolini (according to wikipedia). Learning this was disappointing to me, but it seems wrong to judge a book by the behaviour of the author. I'm still rating this with five stars.

review first appeared at: http://bench-press.blogspot.com.au

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. Not what I expected, but then I wasn't really sure what I expected. I read it awhile ago, but I think I remember the story not being that interesting and there not being as much of a focus on gender as I remember. Perhaps an interesting glimpse at turn of the century British anarchism.

[Kathy Burrows · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like stories about anarchist in the late 1800's, theology, economics this is the book for you. I am not an anarchist and thought it would be interesting to see a women's view in a society where women were rare.

[Giddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some very wonderful parts and some really dull bits. The bits where characters arI described is very rich and full - most of these fall toward the end. I was amused that the daughters of Michael Rossetti would write a book in which there are two primary characters that hate art!