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Pilgrimage #1
Pointed Roofs
Dorothy Miller Richardson (1873-1957) was the first writer to publish an English-language novel using what was to become known as the stream-of-consciousness technique. In London, she began moving among Avant-garde Socialist and artistic circles, including the Bloomsbury group. She started to publish translations and freelance journalism and eventually gave up her secretarial job. Throughout her career, she published large numbers of essays, poems, short stories, sketches and other pieces of journalism. However, her reputation as a writer rests firmly on the Pilgrimage sequence. The first of the Pilgrimage novels, Pointed Roofs (1915) was the first complete stream of consciousness novel in English, although Richardson herself disliked the term, preferring to call her way of writing interior monologues. The failure to recognise Richardson's role is partly due to the critical neglect of Richardson's writing during her lifetime. The fact that Pointed Roofs displayed the writer's admiration for German culture at a time when Britain and Germany were at war may also have contributed to the general lack of recognition of the book's radical importance.
318 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2009
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 71 reviews
February 27, 2020
4.5 stars rounded up
My first dilemma is how to review this. Richardson’s classic has 13 novels. I have the four volume virago edition. Richardson did call the novels chapters. It seems to be a choice between reviewing the whole lot as one novel, reviewing each of the virago volumes or reviewing each novel separately. I have gone for the latter option mainly because it gives me a chance to meander a little and go off on tangents, which I am prone to do.
Dorothy Richardson is not as well-known as she should be, even reading the first of this series has shown me that. Pointed Roofs was written in the same year that Proust published Swann’s Way and just before Joyce published Dubliners. That is pertinent because the work of the three has been increasingly compared. One of the reviewers of Pointed Roofs used the term “stream of consciousness”; it was coined to describe Richardson’s work, although it appears that she preferred the term “interior monologue”.
The protagonist for all 13 novels is Miriam Henderson; the novels starting in March 1893 and continuing to late 1912. This first one covers a mere 4 months in 1893. Miriam is moving to Germany to take up a position as an English teacher in a small German girl’s school. Interestingly this was partly written and published during the First World War, which may have been the reason for the lack of attention, because it is certainly not anti-German.
I think my first thoughts about the book focussed on the overall title. Why pilgrimage? We are familiar with the idea of pilgrimage as a spiritually significant journey to a place a special significance. This is the journey of a life, not a religious pilgrimage, so I suspect it may be all about the journey; time will tell. It is interesting to compare with Joyce and Proust. Proust is looking back over a life and looking at the passage of time. Joyce’s Ulysses, set in one day mirrors the Odyssey. There is a sense of journey in Pointed Roofs as Miriam at 17 fresh from school leaves her home and country at a time when more conventional possibilities would have been available.
Even though this is the beginning of a journey, there is also a strong sense of the end of something as well. Richardson perfectly captures something that I recognise from when I first left home. Miriam is thinking about how life will continue without her when she has gone;
“That summer, which still seemed near to her, was going to fade and desert her, leaving nothing behind. Tomorrow it would belong to a world which would go on without her, taking no heed. There would still be blissful days. But she would not be in them. There would be no more silent sunny mornings with all the day ahead and nothing to do and no end anywhere to anything; no more sitting at the open window in the dining room, reading.”
I remember that feeling that nothing would ever be the same again for me as I prepared to go to university; Richardson captures the feeling very well.
This is not an all action novel, it is about everyday life and interrelationships. Miriam is not a particularly sociable protagonist, but she is a sharp observer of those around her and the subtleties of human feelings and jealousies.
Although Richardson is not as well-known as she should be, there is a whole industry around her and a journal devoted to studying her. There is no doubt that Richardson was breaking new ground in trying outline and construct a female consciousness. A good start to what, I think, will be a fascinating series of novels.
I am also reading The Waves at the moment and it will make an interesting comparison.
My first dilemma is how to review this. Richardson’s classic has 13 novels. I have the four volume virago edition. Richardson did call the novels chapters. It seems to be a choice between reviewing the whole lot as one novel, reviewing each of the virago volumes or reviewing each novel separately. I have gone for the latter option mainly because it gives me a chance to meander a little and go off on tangents, which I am prone to do.
Dorothy Richardson is not as well-known as she should be, even reading the first of this series has shown me that. Pointed Roofs was written in the same year that Proust published Swann’s Way and just before Joyce published Dubliners. That is pertinent because the work of the three has been increasingly compared. One of the reviewers of Pointed Roofs used the term “stream of consciousness”; it was coined to describe Richardson’s work, although it appears that she preferred the term “interior monologue”.
The protagonist for all 13 novels is Miriam Henderson; the novels starting in March 1893 and continuing to late 1912. This first one covers a mere 4 months in 1893. Miriam is moving to Germany to take up a position as an English teacher in a small German girl’s school. Interestingly this was partly written and published during the First World War, which may have been the reason for the lack of attention, because it is certainly not anti-German.
I think my first thoughts about the book focussed on the overall title. Why pilgrimage? We are familiar with the idea of pilgrimage as a spiritually significant journey to a place a special significance. This is the journey of a life, not a religious pilgrimage, so I suspect it may be all about the journey; time will tell. It is interesting to compare with Joyce and Proust. Proust is looking back over a life and looking at the passage of time. Joyce’s Ulysses, set in one day mirrors the Odyssey. There is a sense of journey in Pointed Roofs as Miriam at 17 fresh from school leaves her home and country at a time when more conventional possibilities would have been available.
Even though this is the beginning of a journey, there is also a strong sense of the end of something as well. Richardson perfectly captures something that I recognise from when I first left home. Miriam is thinking about how life will continue without her when she has gone;
“That summer, which still seemed near to her, was going to fade and desert her, leaving nothing behind. Tomorrow it would belong to a world which would go on without her, taking no heed. There would still be blissful days. But she would not be in them. There would be no more silent sunny mornings with all the day ahead and nothing to do and no end anywhere to anything; no more sitting at the open window in the dining room, reading.”
I remember that feeling that nothing would ever be the same again for me as I prepared to go to university; Richardson captures the feeling very well.
This is not an all action novel, it is about everyday life and interrelationships. Miriam is not a particularly sociable protagonist, but she is a sharp observer of those around her and the subtleties of human feelings and jealousies.
Although Richardson is not as well-known as she should be, there is a whole industry around her and a journal devoted to studying her. There is no doubt that Richardson was breaking new ground in trying outline and construct a female consciousness. A good start to what, I think, will be a fascinating series of novels.
I am also reading The Waves at the moment and it will make an interesting comparison.
December 9, 2015
So...a quick comment based on skimming the lackluster reviews for this on GR. Most people seem to have problems with what is described as "lack of plot" or "nothing happening" or that the narrative is "disjointed". To critique the work thus is to completely misunderstand it and the intent of its author.
If we demand that our writers do violence to the disjointed nature of experience by forcing it into a "plot" we will deprive ourselves of a great deal. DR has attempted to record the consciousness and the experiences of a young woman, not write a soap opera. By doing so she gives us a much more interesting window on the reality of our Being.
Personally this reader found the whole thing sped along at a lovely pace and was fascinated to spend time in the mind that had its brief, youthful existence over a hundred years ago.
And, finally, my god there are some wonderful sentences in this...she really can write very beautifully indeed.
On to Blackwater for me...
For those of you interested - I have set up a group for DR here on GR which is slowing growing as a location to store resources about her - feel free to join if you are interested: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
If we demand that our writers do violence to the disjointed nature of experience by forcing it into a "plot" we will deprive ourselves of a great deal. DR has attempted to record the consciousness and the experiences of a young woman, not write a soap opera. By doing so she gives us a much more interesting window on the reality of our Being.
Personally this reader found the whole thing sped along at a lovely pace and was fascinated to spend time in the mind that had its brief, youthful existence over a hundred years ago.
And, finally, my god there are some wonderful sentences in this...she really can write very beautifully indeed.
On to Blackwater for me...
For those of you interested - I have set up a group for DR here on GR which is slowing growing as a location to store resources about her - feel free to join if you are interested: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
January 27, 2015
"'It will make me simply ill--I could never describe to you,' said Miriam, with her face aglow, 'what it is to me to hear some silly man drone away with an undistributed middle term.'"
Dorothy Richardson was a modernist. Virginia Woolf was a modernist. Therefore Virginia Woolf was Dorothy Richardson. This would be plain before everyone's eyes, but not everyone has the same eyes.
"They had dreadful eyes--eyes like the eyes of hostesses..."
By using those eyes to absorb this text you will gain access to forgotten areas of your past, such as when you had to leave the warmth and familiarity of your home to take a job overseas as a governness at a girls' school. On the eve of your departure, your sadness suffused every sense with a delicate attunement to everything around you, especially your sister's tears.
It's time for a makeover, Miriam Henderson.
"They performed an uproarious toilet."
So begins a long sojourn of self-discovery, self-creation, and a multi-volume literary selfie.
Literally hundreds of billions of books have been written about protagonists who are special, who are aware they are not like everyone else, whose disdain for false notions and fake people forms an idiosyncratic worldview. The writer of such a book then has a mighty task: to convince you, the reader, that you are also such a person and that is why you identify with the protagonist. The writer must also shield from your mind the idea that, statistically, you likely are not actually this special, that the book has crowds of readers who feel the same empathetic identification you do, perhaps even with better reason. While the feeling each of us cherishes regarding our individual uniqueness is easy enough to access for a competent writer, it's a harder trick to create a character who boasts the oxymoron of being equally unique without alienating all the other readers but you, or alienating you while engaging others. And there's such a fine line between engaging and ingratiating, isn't there?
So it seems to me that the writer of this sort of protagonist is better off neglecting attractive particulars of character and betting on the power of a true portrait. I don't mean true in the sense of factual; I mean an immersion of the character in a completeness of experience, a consistent relationship with the day-to-day of the sensual, the psychological, and the social. This book sacrifices many of the conventions we expect of novels toward this end.
So what happens? Given the set-up, there is a handful of plots to anticipate: Miriam goes off to teach at a foreign school where secrets are held and there is something sinister to discover; Miriam leaves home for a strange land where she is seduced and abandoned and she must struggle to avoid ruin; she arrives in a new place to meet a handsome but unavailable man and they must overcome obstacles to fulfill their romance (there may even be an alternate man who is unappealing but more "correct" for reasons like class, nationality, family wishes, etc.).
Spoiler: none of these things happen. Not a spoiler: really, these things usually do not happen. Spoiler: the ideology of modernism is actually sometimes realism, despite what Wikipedia says:
"Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism."
I believe one should always go with a James Joyce quote over Wikipedia:
"One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead prose."
It seems to me that this is not a rejection of realism but a more ambitious version of it, going for portrayal of that "great part of every human existence" which has been unrealistically excluded from supposed realistic novels.
So rather than unrealistically hinging on a mysterious secret, a pitiable downfall, or a forbidden romance, this novel's realistic crux is the simple smile.
Miriam does not smile enough.
"They would be so affable at first. She had been through it a million times—all her life—all eternity. They would smile those hateful women's smiles—smirks—self-satisfied smiles as if everybody were agreed about everything. She loathed women. They always smiled."
Ok, so it's not just smiles, but what they signal for Miriam about shallowness of personality and social niceties.
"Then as she watched their faces as they sang she felt that she knew all these women, the way, with little personal differences, they would talk, the way they would smile and take things for granted."
And it isn't just about social superficialities, but larger things (oh, and men, too):
"those men's sermons were worse than women's smiles... just as insincere at any rate... and you could get away from the smiles, make it plain you did not agree and that things were not simple and settled... but you could not stop a sermon. It was so unfair."
As she adjusts to life at this new school, Miram is torn between the human desire for belonging, fitting in, and her disdain for superficial unserious people. She resents the pressure to become one or at least act like one. To be ingratiating and pleasant is distinctly unpleasant for Miriam. From clothing (lots of clothing details) to daily habits to accents to (especially) attitude, Miriam is constantly reminded of her difference, so while the book delivers a comprehensive fullness of day-to-day detail, it is by way of this that we inhabit Miriam's mind in her every reaction. But this does lead her to ponder whether her unusual quality is due to her upbringing, her schooling, or something deeper, more essential:
"If she had been brought up differently, it could not, she felt sure, have made her very different—for long—nor taught her to be affable—to smile that smile she hated so."
So it seems: it's just her.
And, quite realistically, being immersed in our own self-perception allows in only a few trickles of clues as to how others perceive us. Miriam is slow to gauge these and--when it becomes important--is left underequipped at apprehending how she is seen.
It's a sensitively and subtley written novel that can make such an exchange a spoiler, a surprise that is dishearteningly confirmed later:
"Presently Fraulein laid her gloved hand on Miriam's gloved one. "You and I have, I think, much in common."
Believe it or not, this shocks, and it does so more realistically than any adventure, morality tale, or romance, no matter how transparently rendered.
Now whether or not this is as fun depends upon your tastes. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I would not want all books to be like this.
Dorothy Richardson was a modernist. Virginia Woolf was a modernist. Therefore Virginia Woolf was Dorothy Richardson. This would be plain before everyone's eyes, but not everyone has the same eyes.
"They had dreadful eyes--eyes like the eyes of hostesses..."
By using those eyes to absorb this text you will gain access to forgotten areas of your past, such as when you had to leave the warmth and familiarity of your home to take a job overseas as a governness at a girls' school. On the eve of your departure, your sadness suffused every sense with a delicate attunement to everything around you, especially your sister's tears.
It's time for a makeover, Miriam Henderson.
"They performed an uproarious toilet."
So begins a long sojourn of self-discovery, self-creation, and a multi-volume literary selfie.
Literally hundreds of billions of books have been written about protagonists who are special, who are aware they are not like everyone else, whose disdain for false notions and fake people forms an idiosyncratic worldview. The writer of such a book then has a mighty task: to convince you, the reader, that you are also such a person and that is why you identify with the protagonist. The writer must also shield from your mind the idea that, statistically, you likely are not actually this special, that the book has crowds of readers who feel the same empathetic identification you do, perhaps even with better reason. While the feeling each of us cherishes regarding our individual uniqueness is easy enough to access for a competent writer, it's a harder trick to create a character who boasts the oxymoron of being equally unique without alienating all the other readers but you, or alienating you while engaging others. And there's such a fine line between engaging and ingratiating, isn't there?
So it seems to me that the writer of this sort of protagonist is better off neglecting attractive particulars of character and betting on the power of a true portrait. I don't mean true in the sense of factual; I mean an immersion of the character in a completeness of experience, a consistent relationship with the day-to-day of the sensual, the psychological, and the social. This book sacrifices many of the conventions we expect of novels toward this end.
So what happens? Given the set-up, there is a handful of plots to anticipate: Miriam goes off to teach at a foreign school where secrets are held and there is something sinister to discover; Miriam leaves home for a strange land where she is seduced and abandoned and she must struggle to avoid ruin; she arrives in a new place to meet a handsome but unavailable man and they must overcome obstacles to fulfill their romance (there may even be an alternate man who is unappealing but more "correct" for reasons like class, nationality, family wishes, etc.).
Spoiler: none of these things happen. Not a spoiler: really, these things usually do not happen. Spoiler: the ideology of modernism is actually sometimes realism, despite what Wikipedia says:
"Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism."
I believe one should always go with a James Joyce quote over Wikipedia:
"One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead prose."
It seems to me that this is not a rejection of realism but a more ambitious version of it, going for portrayal of that "great part of every human existence" which has been unrealistically excluded from supposed realistic novels.
So rather than unrealistically hinging on a mysterious secret, a pitiable downfall, or a forbidden romance, this novel's realistic crux is the simple smile.
Miriam does not smile enough.
"They would be so affable at first. She had been through it a million times—all her life—all eternity. They would smile those hateful women's smiles—smirks—self-satisfied smiles as if everybody were agreed about everything. She loathed women. They always smiled."
Ok, so it's not just smiles, but what they signal for Miriam about shallowness of personality and social niceties.
"Then as she watched their faces as they sang she felt that she knew all these women, the way, with little personal differences, they would talk, the way they would smile and take things for granted."
And it isn't just about social superficialities, but larger things (oh, and men, too):
"those men's sermons were worse than women's smiles... just as insincere at any rate... and you could get away from the smiles, make it plain you did not agree and that things were not simple and settled... but you could not stop a sermon. It was so unfair."
As she adjusts to life at this new school, Miram is torn between the human desire for belonging, fitting in, and her disdain for superficial unserious people. She resents the pressure to become one or at least act like one. To be ingratiating and pleasant is distinctly unpleasant for Miriam. From clothing (lots of clothing details) to daily habits to accents to (especially) attitude, Miriam is constantly reminded of her difference, so while the book delivers a comprehensive fullness of day-to-day detail, it is by way of this that we inhabit Miriam's mind in her every reaction. But this does lead her to ponder whether her unusual quality is due to her upbringing, her schooling, or something deeper, more essential:
"If she had been brought up differently, it could not, she felt sure, have made her very different—for long—nor taught her to be affable—to smile that smile she hated so."
So it seems: it's just her.
And, quite realistically, being immersed in our own self-perception allows in only a few trickles of clues as to how others perceive us. Miriam is slow to gauge these and--when it becomes important--is left underequipped at apprehending how she is seen.
It's a sensitively and subtley written novel that can make such an exchange a spoiler, a surprise that is dishearteningly confirmed later:
"Presently Fraulein laid her gloved hand on Miriam's gloved one. "You and I have, I think, much in common."
Believe it or not, this shocks, and it does so more realistically than any adventure, morality tale, or romance, no matter how transparently rendered.
Now whether or not this is as fun depends upon your tastes. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I would not want all books to be like this.
July 10, 2026
This came out in 1915, the same year as Maugham's Of Human Bondage, Lawrence's The Rainbow, Ford's The Good Soldier, Woolf's The Voyage Out and PG Wodehouse's first Blandings novel. It was a very interesting time in fiction, with a new focus on interiority and subjective experience, and Pointed Roofs is the most dramatic illustration of that.
Its use of what came to be called ‘stream-of-consciousness’ (a term that Richardson disliked and rejected) is pioneering – a year before Joyce's Portrait of the Artist and around the same time as Proust was experimenting with similar effects in France. Someone on the back of this book in fact calls Richardson ‘England's answer to James Joyce’ – which is not really true unless stream-of-consciousness is the only thing you're interested in, but it's still incredible that Pilgrimage isn't better known and that this first volume is the only one still in print.
If you compare her to Joyce and Proust (which is apparently what everyone wants you to do), you can see that she doesn't have anything like Proust's deep reflections on life, nor Joyce's humour or dazzling wordplay. But her focus on inhabiting the individual subjective moment is even more pronounced, as when we see the protagonist drifting off to sleep thinking about ‘Luther's Germany’:
And so it goes on, her thoughts meandering from Luther to Darwin to Milton to her father, for several pages until she finally drifts off. If you compare the book Virginia Woolf published this year with the books she'd go on to write in the 20s, you can see how influential Richardson must have been.
The problem perhaps for some readers, especially those interested in plot, is that there may not be much beyond the historical interest. Certainly not a lot happens in Pointed Roofs. Still, I personally found the whole thing quite compelling – the experience of thinking the thoughts of a seventeen-year-old girl in the 1890s is one I really value, and which seems almost miraculous. And it gives the occasional incidents in here an added power to have to excavate them from beneath Miriam's naïveté or misunderstanding. It's clear at the end of the novel that Miriam has attracted undue attention from the school pastor and that ‘Fräulein’ (the schoolmistress) is jealous, but Miriam herself has no conception of these cross-currents of emotion.
As with many Broadview editions, the supporting materials are excellent but the notes can be a bit overbearing – surely even younger students don't need to be told that a vicar is ‘an Anglican priest’, that Romeo is a famous lover from a Shakespeare play, or that fungi are ‘mushrooms and related plants’? Seriously!? Butt out for a second and let me read in peace, Jesus!
Still, at least they're keeping this fascinating and important work in print. I would like to go on and read the whole series, but it's not a trivial thing to track the rest of it down.
Its use of what came to be called ‘stream-of-consciousness’ (a term that Richardson disliked and rejected) is pioneering – a year before Joyce's Portrait of the Artist and around the same time as Proust was experimenting with similar effects in France. Someone on the back of this book in fact calls Richardson ‘England's answer to James Joyce’ – which is not really true unless stream-of-consciousness is the only thing you're interested in, but it's still incredible that Pilgrimage isn't better known and that this first volume is the only one still in print.
If you compare her to Joyce and Proust (which is apparently what everyone wants you to do), you can see that she doesn't have anything like Proust's deep reflections on life, nor Joyce's humour or dazzling wordplay. But her focus on inhabiting the individual subjective moment is even more pronounced, as when we see the protagonist drifting off to sleep thinking about ‘Luther's Germany’:
The moonlight was sad and hesitating. Miriam closed her eyes again. Luther…pinning up that notice on a church door…(Why is Luther like a dyspeptic blackbird? Because the Diet of Worms did not agree with him.)…and then leaving the notice on the church door and going home to tea…coffee…some evening meal…Käthe…Käthe…happy Käthe…They pinned up that notice on a Roman Catholic church…and all the priests looked at them…and behind the priests were torture and dark places…Luther looking up to God…saying you couldn't get away from your sins by paying money…standing out in the world and Käthe making the meal at home…Luther was fat and German. Perhaps his face perspired…Eine feste Burg; a firm fortress…a round tower made of old brown bricks and no windows…No need for Käthe to smile…
And so it goes on, her thoughts meandering from Luther to Darwin to Milton to her father, for several pages until she finally drifts off. If you compare the book Virginia Woolf published this year with the books she'd go on to write in the 20s, you can see how influential Richardson must have been.
The problem perhaps for some readers, especially those interested in plot, is that there may not be much beyond the historical interest. Certainly not a lot happens in Pointed Roofs. Still, I personally found the whole thing quite compelling – the experience of thinking the thoughts of a seventeen-year-old girl in the 1890s is one I really value, and which seems almost miraculous. And it gives the occasional incidents in here an added power to have to excavate them from beneath Miriam's naïveté or misunderstanding. It's clear at the end of the novel that Miriam has attracted undue attention from the school pastor and that ‘Fräulein’ (the schoolmistress) is jealous, but Miriam herself has no conception of these cross-currents of emotion.
As with many Broadview editions, the supporting materials are excellent but the notes can be a bit overbearing – surely even younger students don't need to be told that a vicar is ‘an Anglican priest’, that Romeo is a famous lover from a Shakespeare play, or that fungi are ‘mushrooms and related plants’? Seriously!? Butt out for a second and let me read in peace, Jesus!
Still, at least they're keeping this fascinating and important work in print. I would like to go on and read the whole series, but it's not a trivial thing to track the rest of it down.
March 9, 2025
It made companionship a perpetual question.
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, 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.
January 7, 2016
I was aware of Dorothy Richardson for a long, long time without ever reading her work.
When I was very young and Virago Modern Classics were very new, I remember seeing ‘Pilgrimage’, her thirteen novel series, collected in four thick volumes that had covers that were similar but not quite the same. They looked like important works; the kind of books that I ought to read one day but maybe not quite yet.
Years later, I looked at those four big books again and I learned how very significant Dorothy Richardson had been. That she published the first complete work of stream-of-consciousness fiction, and from that first novel a whole series of autobiographical novels grew, speaking profoundly of the female experience.
It was May Sinclair, who had experimented with writing in a similar form, who described Dorothy Richardson’s style as ‘stream-of-consciousness’, and while I can’t say that it’s wrong I have to believe that there are better words.
To me the word ‘stream’ suggests a rush; and this isn’t a rush, it’s a life being lived. What Dorothy Richardson did in this book is place her readers in her principal character’s position, conveying exactly what she perceived and exactly what she felt. No more and no less
Virginia Woolf, who published her own first novel in the same year as Dorothy Richardson, explained that much more elegantly, praising Richardson for inventing “the psychological sentence of the feminine gender ….. is used to describe a woman’s mind ….”
I collected the four Virago volumes, and the first volume of Pilgrimage was sitting on my bedside table a year or two ago, when I went to hear Louisa Treger speak about Dorothy Richardson and about ‘The Lodger’, her first novel, inspired by the author’s life and writing. She spoke with such erudition and such love that I was inspired. And she reminded me that Dorothy Richardson wrote thirteen novels, not four volumes, and that I could – and maybe should -read them one novel at a time.
A single novel felt so much more approachable that a think omnibus edition; and now that I have read that first novel I have to say that I do hope that some day Pilgrimage will be published as it was written, in thirteen small volumes. Because, though I thought it would be difficult, it wasn’t; it was fascinating to be drawn in, to identify completely, with one woman.
“Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs. The March twilight lay upon the landings, but the staircase was 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 Fraulein.
Her new Saratoga trunk stood solid and gleaming in the firelight. To-morrow it would be taken away and she would be gone. The room would be altogether Harriett’s. It would never have its old look again. She evaded the thought and moved clumsily to the nearest window. The outline of the round bed and the shapes of the may-trees on either side of the bend of the drive were just visible. There was no escape for her thoughts in this direction. The sense of all she was leaving stirred uncontrollably as she stood looking down into the well-known garden.”
‘Pointed Roofs’, the first of these thirteen novels, opens as Miriam Henderson is leaving home for the first time. She is sensitive to the fact that she is the first to leave, that home life will carry on without her, but she knows that it is time for her to take her first steps out into the world. Because her family’s finances are strained – her mother is in poor health and her father’s business is struggling – she has accepted a job as an English teacher in Fräulein Pfaff’s finishing school in Hanover for German and English girls.
Because she has barely finished her own education, Miriam is concerned about how she will be able to teach, and how she will cope with the questions her students may ask. She finds though that she barely has to teach at all; she is simply expected to read and converse English with the German pupils, and accompanying them on outings and errands. That seems simple, but of course settling into a first job and learning to live with others is never straightforward. There is much in Miriam’s experiences that will strike a chord with anyone who has done those things. Her relief is tempered with disappointment, because she appreciate the very good education that she had received.
Miriam steps out into the world at a time when it was changing rapidly. Fräulein Pfaff, and many of her staff, have traditional views, and see decorum and the making of a good marriage as all important. Her students are a little more modern in their outlook, a little freer in their behaviour, but they still see marriage and motherhood as their future roles. Miriam is a little different. She is uncomfortable in their world; her interests and concerns are quite different from theirs, and so she frequently misunderstands who it going on and fails to pick up on many things that are unsaid; she does know that she is looking for something more from life.
The narrative style highlights all of this. It’s a little like the third person, but it isn’t quite that because it is composed entirely of Miriam’s perceptions. The prose moves quite naturally between her perceptions, her thoughts and her emotions. Her observations are clear and precise, but her thoughts are often more complex, and ellipsis are used to very good effect as she moves between different trains of thought and works through ideas and emotions. There are times when she finds resolutions, but there are also times when she can’t – or maybe won’t.
The story is a little episodic. There is time spent in the classroom, a musical evening, writing letters home on a Saturday, trips out, the school hair-wash, an unexpected chance to play the piano, a trip to the country, a thunderstorm in the night. That well works well with the prose style; each episode feels like a point in a life that might be remembered.
Because I only had Miriam’s perceptions to guide me it sometimes took time to understand what was happening, who all of the characters were, and there were some things that I never come to understand as well as I might have with a more traditional narrative. But coming to understand Miriam – a complex, sensitive, intelligent young woman, just a little ahead of her time – and sharing her world and her life was completely captivating.
I thought reading might be difficult but it wasn’t; and the prose was so lovely and so right that I feel clumsy as I try to write about it.
I was tempted to pick up the next book straight away, to find out where life takes her and how it changes her, but I resisted. I wanted to read ‘Pointed Roofs’ in its centenary year and I did, and now I want to read a book a month this year, to move steadily through Miriam’s life and to appreciate everything that her life and times have to offer.
When I was very young and Virago Modern Classics were very new, I remember seeing ‘Pilgrimage’, her thirteen novel series, collected in four thick volumes that had covers that were similar but not quite the same. They looked like important works; the kind of books that I ought to read one day but maybe not quite yet.
Years later, I looked at those four big books again and I learned how very significant Dorothy Richardson had been. That she published the first complete work of stream-of-consciousness fiction, and from that first novel a whole series of autobiographical novels grew, speaking profoundly of the female experience.
It was May Sinclair, who had experimented with writing in a similar form, who described Dorothy Richardson’s style as ‘stream-of-consciousness’, and while I can’t say that it’s wrong I have to believe that there are better words.
To me the word ‘stream’ suggests a rush; and this isn’t a rush, it’s a life being lived. What Dorothy Richardson did in this book is place her readers in her principal character’s position, conveying exactly what she perceived and exactly what she felt. No more and no less
Virginia Woolf, who published her own first novel in the same year as Dorothy Richardson, explained that much more elegantly, praising Richardson for inventing “the psychological sentence of the feminine gender ….. is used to describe a woman’s mind ….”
I collected the four Virago volumes, and the first volume of Pilgrimage was sitting on my bedside table a year or two ago, when I went to hear Louisa Treger speak about Dorothy Richardson and about ‘The Lodger’, her first novel, inspired by the author’s life and writing. She spoke with such erudition and such love that I was inspired. And she reminded me that Dorothy Richardson wrote thirteen novels, not four volumes, and that I could – and maybe should -read them one novel at a time.
A single novel felt so much more approachable that a think omnibus edition; and now that I have read that first novel I have to say that I do hope that some day Pilgrimage will be published as it was written, in thirteen small volumes. Because, though I thought it would be difficult, it wasn’t; it was fascinating to be drawn in, to identify completely, with one woman.
“Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs. The March twilight lay upon the landings, but the staircase was 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 Fraulein.
Her new Saratoga trunk stood solid and gleaming in the firelight. To-morrow it would be taken away and she would be gone. The room would be altogether Harriett’s. It would never have its old look again. She evaded the thought and moved clumsily to the nearest window. The outline of the round bed and the shapes of the may-trees on either side of the bend of the drive were just visible. There was no escape for her thoughts in this direction. The sense of all she was leaving stirred uncontrollably as she stood looking down into the well-known garden.”
‘Pointed Roofs’, the first of these thirteen novels, opens as Miriam Henderson is leaving home for the first time. She is sensitive to the fact that she is the first to leave, that home life will carry on without her, but she knows that it is time for her to take her first steps out into the world. Because her family’s finances are strained – her mother is in poor health and her father’s business is struggling – she has accepted a job as an English teacher in Fräulein Pfaff’s finishing school in Hanover for German and English girls.
Because she has barely finished her own education, Miriam is concerned about how she will be able to teach, and how she will cope with the questions her students may ask. She finds though that she barely has to teach at all; she is simply expected to read and converse English with the German pupils, and accompanying them on outings and errands. That seems simple, but of course settling into a first job and learning to live with others is never straightforward. There is much in Miriam’s experiences that will strike a chord with anyone who has done those things. Her relief is tempered with disappointment, because she appreciate the very good education that she had received.
Miriam steps out into the world at a time when it was changing rapidly. Fräulein Pfaff, and many of her staff, have traditional views, and see decorum and the making of a good marriage as all important. Her students are a little more modern in their outlook, a little freer in their behaviour, but they still see marriage and motherhood as their future roles. Miriam is a little different. She is uncomfortable in their world; her interests and concerns are quite different from theirs, and so she frequently misunderstands who it going on and fails to pick up on many things that are unsaid; she does know that she is looking for something more from life.
The narrative style highlights all of this. It’s a little like the third person, but it isn’t quite that because it is composed entirely of Miriam’s perceptions. The prose moves quite naturally between her perceptions, her thoughts and her emotions. Her observations are clear and precise, but her thoughts are often more complex, and ellipsis are used to very good effect as she moves between different trains of thought and works through ideas and emotions. There are times when she finds resolutions, but there are also times when she can’t – or maybe won’t.
The story is a little episodic. There is time spent in the classroom, a musical evening, writing letters home on a Saturday, trips out, the school hair-wash, an unexpected chance to play the piano, a trip to the country, a thunderstorm in the night. That well works well with the prose style; each episode feels like a point in a life that might be remembered.
Because I only had Miriam’s perceptions to guide me it sometimes took time to understand what was happening, who all of the characters were, and there were some things that I never come to understand as well as I might have with a more traditional narrative. But coming to understand Miriam – a complex, sensitive, intelligent young woman, just a little ahead of her time – and sharing her world and her life was completely captivating.
I thought reading might be difficult but it wasn’t; and the prose was so lovely and so right that I feel clumsy as I try to write about it.
I was tempted to pick up the next book straight away, to find out where life takes her and how it changes her, but I resisted. I wanted to read ‘Pointed Roofs’ in its centenary year and I did, and now I want to read a book a month this year, to move steadily through Miriam’s life and to appreciate everything that her life and times have to offer.
February 8, 2025
4.5
More interesting than Proust. Looking forward to the next 12 volumes.
They are often compared and (for a while) wrote and published around the same time. But it's striking how Richardson and her protagonist are, unlike Proust and his protagonist, not at all focussed on or even much interested in the past. Richardson's novel lives almost completely in the present, it's almost all observations and reflections on what's right before the narrator's eyes. It's very, very visual. The few recollections are tokens of acute homesickness and not part of an overarching nostalgia. Reading Proust can feel like wading through stagnant molasses, here everything moves forward.
They're interested in similar things though, mainly the fabric and the hierarchies of social connections and societal spheres. It's striking though how Proust needs or allows himself 400 pages of a single soirée at the Guermantes to analyze these themes, complete with genealogical treatises on each person, whereas Richardson only needs a few sitting room vignettes from a school for governesses, with no background given for the other characters, just vibes and impressions, to achieve the same effect.
I'm not saying it's better, that would be a ludicrous claim, just that it's more interesting to me.
More interesting than Proust. Looking forward to the next 12 volumes.
They are often compared and (for a while) wrote and published around the same time. But it's striking how Richardson and her protagonist are, unlike Proust and his protagonist, not at all focussed on or even much interested in the past. Richardson's novel lives almost completely in the present, it's almost all observations and reflections on what's right before the narrator's eyes. It's very, very visual. The few recollections are tokens of acute homesickness and not part of an overarching nostalgia. Reading Proust can feel like wading through stagnant molasses, here everything moves forward.
They're interested in similar things though, mainly the fabric and the hierarchies of social connections and societal spheres. It's striking though how Proust needs or allows himself 400 pages of a single soirée at the Guermantes to analyze these themes, complete with genealogical treatises on each person, whereas Richardson only needs a few sitting room vignettes from a school for governesses, with no background given for the other characters, just vibes and impressions, to achieve the same effect.
I'm not saying it's better, that would be a ludicrous claim, just that it's more interesting to me.
January 16, 2015
I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t blown away. I recognize her trailblazing use of stream of consciousness, but there wasn’t enough there there for me. Richardson is quite adept at portraying the gyrating opinions in a state of consternation, or even contemplation, but in retrospect I’m not totally at ease with her approach to switching back and forth between stream of consciousness and straight narration. Keeping in mind that Miriam is just 17 or 18 years old here, and Richardson is experimenting with a new way of writing, I will probably persevere for at least one more volume to see where she goes.
January 4, 2015
This first volume from Richardson's 13-volume 'Pilgrimage' introduces us to Miriam. Told mostly through Miriam's inner monologue and subjective observations, we follow her transition from daughter in England to governess at a girl's school in Germany. Self-conscious and unsure, Miriam's emotions ebb and flow from moment to moment, at times in the present, others spent briefly in the past, we "know" her only as well as she tries to know herself. An interesting expedition into the thoughts and feelings of a young woman beginning her adult life.
February 26, 2020
A snow day gifted the time to complete this, reading steadily in my bright, quiet family room, or saal, as Richardson had me imagining it.
November 12, 2025
Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson
10 out of 10
This splendid magnum opus has been included on The Guardian’s 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... - in the Family and Friends Section, considered ‘the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English, and it is based on the brilliant author’s own experience, as she has left her home in 1891, at seventeen and because of her father’s financial problems, just like the main character in the book that you can find at https://librivox.org/, where this and multiple other masterpieces are available for free, once they have passed the seventy years copyright limit and they are not entangled in other limitations…Pointed Roofs was published in 1915…
Miriam Henderson is the enchanting main character, an alter ego of the fabulous Dorothy Richardson, the teenager that we meet in the first few pages, as she is contemplating her imminent departure from her home, though she is only seventeen, she would travel to Hanover in Germany, where she would be teaching in a finishing school – learn at the same time, though we might think of one of the frequently used expressions of Harvard Professor Tal Ben- Shahar, who says in his lectures, available online, ‘Learn to Fail, or Fail to learn, which is precisely what the heroine might have to go through, seeing that there are challenges, adversities and even traumas ahead and almost immediately after we see that she is preparing for a transformative, long journey, we are also aware of her fears and the anxiety that is overwhelming her…
She thinks about the future, terrified that she may have to face girls that would be hostile, she may prove inadequate – how do they teach English – she thinks of grammar lessons and then contemplates the alternative of working in a shop – but given her ignorance of the language, how would she be able to communicate, to give change – then there is the idea of being a servant – though the family had been, before the more recent serious financial troubles, if not well off, at least better than average, with elevated preoccupation, a knowledge of music, artistic inclinations and belonging to a ‘better, higher class’…indeed, this aspect would appear throughout, at one point there is the question of sharing a room with a ‘servant’ and that looks like a terrible insult and a humiliation…
When she helps with the soup at one meal, Miriam is embarrassed because she is obviously awkward and unable to maneuver and has to confess that she had never been allowed in the kitchen – expect when they were making the jam – and it is clear for the others and this evidence is expressed that she had lived a rather privileged life…the Fraulein who controls the Hanover finishing school with authority and severity might come to envy her, at least in some stages and this is one the other hand quite a traumatic experience for the progress, accession to higher levels of society comes easy, the descent from a better position to one of approximate poverty is quite painful and the girl preparing to travel to Germany and while there has many moments of gloomy exhortation, declaring herself ‘governessy’ and destined for a hard life…
A dramatic aspect for the main character is her dislike- actually loathing is the word - of women and men – though we could range this in the category of exaggerations and it is surely filtered by a ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, as in the Ingmar Bergman chef d’oeuvre, and once the girl will have passed through this period of adversity, she will have become a strong woman…’what does not kill one, makes her stronger’ to paraphrase – and especially German men might be contemptible, or at the very least undesirable for the protagonist who would be told by one of the girls that ‘she would marry her brother, who is wealthy’
When Miriam Henderson looks at the photos of those relatives, she is almost aghast and this is what happens with those she has seen on the street, in the shops, came in contact with, most seem to have a very different attitude from the English, and when it comes to the teachers, the ones she had had in Britain had been much more accommodating, polite, respectful than the Teutons that appear to despise, disconsider women with a macho, sexist, misogynist attitude towards what they see as their inferiors…
One of the characters that the heroine would meet in Hanover is ‘Mademoiselle, who is seventeen, rather uneducated for the standards of Miriam and Protestant – religion would be an issue and there is a moment when Miriam enters a Catholic Church for the first time and the impact is considerable, she says something about not wanting to leave – comparisons are made between the towns of England and those of Germany…civilization is older in England.
The main character is terrified at times – perhaps to the end – by what the future would bring, if she would return home with ‘nothing or being nothing’, the threat of failure being excruciatingly present for the girl that is not familiar with the concept that we might learn from experiencing adversity – in the lectures of the aforementioned marvelous Professor Tal Ben-Shahar, the example of a man who has had successes throughout all his life, reaching a high office at the White Office is given – no, this is not the Orange Idiot now haunting that place – and then committing suicide when the first crisis in his life finds him totally unprepared, for it had all been smooth sailing and he collapsed when tested…
Evaluating the English teenager, Fraulein is very rough, though maybe somewhat accurate, in saying that Henderson is too stiff and her good English influence had not quite managed to prevent her from being too serious – during the incident with the soup, the Fraulein noticed that Miriam is not ‘too domesticated and had been raised as countesses with her sisters – adding that the ‘teacher is sunshine, human sunshine’ which is such a beautiful thing to say, ‘motivational’ as we would probably say today, making the head of the finishing school quite a complex character, in that her grave, severe, almost cruel side has some other surfaces that make her empathize with Henderson and say that ‘they have so much in common’
Now that the terrible Corona virus is keeping so many hundreds of millions of people in homes, trying to avoid that ghastly possible contamination, this might be the perfect read, with its invitation to travel to another age and get acquitted with this vulnerable teenager, who has to confront her own anxieties, the malign approach of others, the downfall of her father and finds the grit, courage, strength, hope, purpose to fight on…
In balance, this pandemonium looks so weak, considering the advantages we have in this époque, when we are so much better prepared – even when led by calamities like Trump – to face the future than Miriam Henderson and by implication Dorothy Richardson ever were…
10 out of 10
This splendid magnum opus has been included on The Guardian’s 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... - in the Family and Friends Section, considered ‘the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English, and it is based on the brilliant author’s own experience, as she has left her home in 1891, at seventeen and because of her father’s financial problems, just like the main character in the book that you can find at https://librivox.org/, where this and multiple other masterpieces are available for free, once they have passed the seventy years copyright limit and they are not entangled in other limitations…Pointed Roofs was published in 1915…
Miriam Henderson is the enchanting main character, an alter ego of the fabulous Dorothy Richardson, the teenager that we meet in the first few pages, as she is contemplating her imminent departure from her home, though she is only seventeen, she would travel to Hanover in Germany, where she would be teaching in a finishing school – learn at the same time, though we might think of one of the frequently used expressions of Harvard Professor Tal Ben- Shahar, who says in his lectures, available online, ‘Learn to Fail, or Fail to learn, which is precisely what the heroine might have to go through, seeing that there are challenges, adversities and even traumas ahead and almost immediately after we see that she is preparing for a transformative, long journey, we are also aware of her fears and the anxiety that is overwhelming her…
She thinks about the future, terrified that she may have to face girls that would be hostile, she may prove inadequate – how do they teach English – she thinks of grammar lessons and then contemplates the alternative of working in a shop – but given her ignorance of the language, how would she be able to communicate, to give change – then there is the idea of being a servant – though the family had been, before the more recent serious financial troubles, if not well off, at least better than average, with elevated preoccupation, a knowledge of music, artistic inclinations and belonging to a ‘better, higher class’…indeed, this aspect would appear throughout, at one point there is the question of sharing a room with a ‘servant’ and that looks like a terrible insult and a humiliation…
When she helps with the soup at one meal, Miriam is embarrassed because she is obviously awkward and unable to maneuver and has to confess that she had never been allowed in the kitchen – expect when they were making the jam – and it is clear for the others and this evidence is expressed that she had lived a rather privileged life…the Fraulein who controls the Hanover finishing school with authority and severity might come to envy her, at least in some stages and this is one the other hand quite a traumatic experience for the progress, accession to higher levels of society comes easy, the descent from a better position to one of approximate poverty is quite painful and the girl preparing to travel to Germany and while there has many moments of gloomy exhortation, declaring herself ‘governessy’ and destined for a hard life…
A dramatic aspect for the main character is her dislike- actually loathing is the word - of women and men – though we could range this in the category of exaggerations and it is surely filtered by a ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, as in the Ingmar Bergman chef d’oeuvre, and once the girl will have passed through this period of adversity, she will have become a strong woman…’what does not kill one, makes her stronger’ to paraphrase – and especially German men might be contemptible, or at the very least undesirable for the protagonist who would be told by one of the girls that ‘she would marry her brother, who is wealthy’
When Miriam Henderson looks at the photos of those relatives, she is almost aghast and this is what happens with those she has seen on the street, in the shops, came in contact with, most seem to have a very different attitude from the English, and when it comes to the teachers, the ones she had had in Britain had been much more accommodating, polite, respectful than the Teutons that appear to despise, disconsider women with a macho, sexist, misogynist attitude towards what they see as their inferiors…
One of the characters that the heroine would meet in Hanover is ‘Mademoiselle, who is seventeen, rather uneducated for the standards of Miriam and Protestant – religion would be an issue and there is a moment when Miriam enters a Catholic Church for the first time and the impact is considerable, she says something about not wanting to leave – comparisons are made between the towns of England and those of Germany…civilization is older in England.
The main character is terrified at times – perhaps to the end – by what the future would bring, if she would return home with ‘nothing or being nothing’, the threat of failure being excruciatingly present for the girl that is not familiar with the concept that we might learn from experiencing adversity – in the lectures of the aforementioned marvelous Professor Tal Ben-Shahar, the example of a man who has had successes throughout all his life, reaching a high office at the White Office is given – no, this is not the Orange Idiot now haunting that place – and then committing suicide when the first crisis in his life finds him totally unprepared, for it had all been smooth sailing and he collapsed when tested…
Evaluating the English teenager, Fraulein is very rough, though maybe somewhat accurate, in saying that Henderson is too stiff and her good English influence had not quite managed to prevent her from being too serious – during the incident with the soup, the Fraulein noticed that Miriam is not ‘too domesticated and had been raised as countesses with her sisters – adding that the ‘teacher is sunshine, human sunshine’ which is such a beautiful thing to say, ‘motivational’ as we would probably say today, making the head of the finishing school quite a complex character, in that her grave, severe, almost cruel side has some other surfaces that make her empathize with Henderson and say that ‘they have so much in common’
Now that the terrible Corona virus is keeping so many hundreds of millions of people in homes, trying to avoid that ghastly possible contamination, this might be the perfect read, with its invitation to travel to another age and get acquitted with this vulnerable teenager, who has to confront her own anxieties, the malign approach of others, the downfall of her father and finds the grit, courage, strength, hope, purpose to fight on…
In balance, this pandemonium looks so weak, considering the advantages we have in this époque, when we are so much better prepared – even when led by calamities like Trump – to face the future than Miriam Henderson and by implication Dorothy Richardson ever were…
wish-list
January 11, 2015Should be 'rooves'.
July 11, 2016
Ever heard of Virginia Woolf? No doubt you have. But have you ever heard of Dorothy M. Richardson? Maybe not.
I for one hadn't heard of her until just recently, yet Woolf undoubtedly owed her a debt of style, for Richardson it was who first introduced the "stream of consciousness" narrative technique to the Bloomsbury set in her ongoing series of semi-autobiographical novels entitled Pilgrimage.
Pointed Roofs is the first book of that series, in which Richardson's literary surrogate, Miriam Henderson, decides to leave her faltering middle-class home in London and undertake to teach english to a small group of German girls just outside Hanover.
Not yet eighteen herself, reserved yet rebellious by nature, Miriam can hardly speak a word of German and has no idea how to plan a lesson. Understandably she's a bundle of nerves and insecurities.
Her insights into the comparisons between her own schooling and upbringing to those of her German pupils are fascinating, both favourable and unfavourable. Either way she noticed the differences:
'They did not seem to be in the least afraid of the future. Their eyes and their hands were serene.'
Miriam's thoughts laid bare are often far from generous, particularly towards religion, her roommate Mademoiselle the the French teacher, or indeed to her sex in general:
'people ought to refuse to be preached at by these men. Trying to listen to them made her more furious than anything she could think of, more base in submitting ... those men's sermons were worse than women's smiles ... just as insincere at any rate ...'
Furthermore, when she ponders her very reasons for leaving home in the first place she grows homesick and admits that 'she had run away, proud of herself, despising them all, and had turned herself into Miss Henderson.'
There is no question that this was a very new kind of novel for its time, not just in a narrative sense but also with regards the brutal honesty of the narrator. I can well imagine the bemusement, even dislike with which a lot of women readers may have had for it, while a few others - such as Woolf - would have identified both a kindred spirit and a literary inspiration.
Tentative at first, within the final fifty pages or so are contained a veritable mini-orgy of nascent interior monologuing on all manor of things, great and small, from such as this example:
'No God. No Creation. The struggle for existence. Fighting ... Fighting ...Fighting. Everybody groping and fighting ... Fraulein ... Some said it was true ... some not. They could not both be right. It was probably true ... only old-fashioned people thought it was not. It was true. Just that - monkeys fighting. But who began it? Who made Fraulein? Tough leathery monkey.'
Not just a seminal modernist novel, an interesting read too.
I for one hadn't heard of her until just recently, yet Woolf undoubtedly owed her a debt of style, for Richardson it was who first introduced the "stream of consciousness" narrative technique to the Bloomsbury set in her ongoing series of semi-autobiographical novels entitled Pilgrimage.
Pointed Roofs is the first book of that series, in which Richardson's literary surrogate, Miriam Henderson, decides to leave her faltering middle-class home in London and undertake to teach english to a small group of German girls just outside Hanover.
Not yet eighteen herself, reserved yet rebellious by nature, Miriam can hardly speak a word of German and has no idea how to plan a lesson. Understandably she's a bundle of nerves and insecurities.
Her insights into the comparisons between her own schooling and upbringing to those of her German pupils are fascinating, both favourable and unfavourable. Either way she noticed the differences:
'They did not seem to be in the least afraid of the future. Their eyes and their hands were serene.'
Miriam's thoughts laid bare are often far from generous, particularly towards religion, her roommate Mademoiselle the the French teacher, or indeed to her sex in general:
'people ought to refuse to be preached at by these men. Trying to listen to them made her more furious than anything she could think of, more base in submitting ... those men's sermons were worse than women's smiles ... just as insincere at any rate ...'
Furthermore, when she ponders her very reasons for leaving home in the first place she grows homesick and admits that 'she had run away, proud of herself, despising them all, and had turned herself into Miss Henderson.'
There is no question that this was a very new kind of novel for its time, not just in a narrative sense but also with regards the brutal honesty of the narrator. I can well imagine the bemusement, even dislike with which a lot of women readers may have had for it, while a few others - such as Woolf - would have identified both a kindred spirit and a literary inspiration.
Tentative at first, within the final fifty pages or so are contained a veritable mini-orgy of nascent interior monologuing on all manor of things, great and small, from such as this example:
'No God. No Creation. The struggle for existence. Fighting ... Fighting ...Fighting. Everybody groping and fighting ... Fraulein ... Some said it was true ... some not. They could not both be right. It was probably true ... only old-fashioned people thought it was not. It was true. Just that - monkeys fighting. But who began it? Who made Fraulein? Tough leathery monkey.'
Not just a seminal modernist novel, an interesting read too.
May 21, 2023
4.5 stars. Virginia Woolf gets all the press, but lemme tell ya, Dorothy Richardson is stellar. I just burned through Pointed Roofs in two days (would have been one if not for my damned work) and am moving forward to her next two novels, which she calls “chapters,” in her 13-novel Pilgrimage cycle. This is known as the first English novel written in stream-of-consciousness style, and it doesn’t disappoint. I am reminded why I always return to the modernists. They transformed prose in ways that even the most experimental novelists didn’t do in previous eras. It blows my mind to think Richardson was a contemporary of H.G. Wells. I love the guy, but he’s not even in the same league. It’s like comparing a Cessna to an Atlas rocket.
In this case, we get inside the mind of protagonist Miriam Henderson (a lightly fictionalized Richardson) as she is sent to be an English instructor at a finishing school due to her family’s financial problems, as was the case with Richardson herself. The family tells others that she is actually going to the finishing school as a student, so as not to reveal the embarrassment of their poor income. While there, Miriam struggles with her future – does she want to stay in Germany or return to England? become a teacher or a writer? is her agnosticism truly atheism? – while dealing with her gossipy fellow instructors and students, as well as the prudish, religious matron.
There are moments of quiet, intense beauty, including descriptions of listening to/playing music that are some of the most visceral and fluid I can remember reading – a kind of ekphrastic interpretation of sound into language, but also thought itself, as we encounter the aural through Miriam's perceptions as they relate to her memories and subconscious longings.
Although the middle section did slow down slightly, I wasn’t able to put this book down over the weekend. Looking forward to diving into the second novel soon.
In this case, we get inside the mind of protagonist Miriam Henderson (a lightly fictionalized Richardson) as she is sent to be an English instructor at a finishing school due to her family’s financial problems, as was the case with Richardson herself. The family tells others that she is actually going to the finishing school as a student, so as not to reveal the embarrassment of their poor income. While there, Miriam struggles with her future – does she want to stay in Germany or return to England? become a teacher or a writer? is her agnosticism truly atheism? – while dealing with her gossipy fellow instructors and students, as well as the prudish, religious matron.
There are moments of quiet, intense beauty, including descriptions of listening to/playing music that are some of the most visceral and fluid I can remember reading – a kind of ekphrastic interpretation of sound into language, but also thought itself, as we encounter the aural through Miriam's perceptions as they relate to her memories and subconscious longings.
Although the middle section did slow down slightly, I wasn’t able to put this book down over the weekend. Looking forward to diving into the second novel soon.
Read
October 6, 2021My first encounter with Dorothy Richardson was in a Senior English majors' seminar at a liberal arts college in Middle America (read: group therapy session for the miserable and blotchy-skinned, of both the booze- and theory-laden variety and the Warhammer figurine-painting variety), where my thesis advisor, a delightful old bat with a patchouli-reeking office (natch) introduced us all to the by that point completely out of print D.R. I recall being at the very least interested in The Tunnel, if not totally wowed. With Pointed Roofs as well, it feels like the puzzle piece of something much bigger, something Proustian in scope. So it's hard to evaluate as an individual set piece, and I don't know how up to the task of reading the entirety of Pilgrimage I am. But I'll say this at least: "intriguing."
January 26, 2022
Alas, it didn't take long for me to feel underwhelmed. Wikipedia also states that Richardson (1873-1957), is also considered an important feminist writer, because of the way her work assumes the validity and importance of female experiences as a subject for literature. I try not to be disloyal to the Sisterhood but while I agree that any experiences can be a subject for literature, they must be rendered sufficiently interesting to maintain the attention of the reader. I could not muster the slightest interest in Miriam Henderson and the petty dramas of the German boarding-school where she becomes a governess.
Yes, I was bored by Pointed Roofs.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/01/26/p...
Yes, I was bored by Pointed Roofs.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/01/26/p...
September 24, 2016
This isn't the kind of novel I would have picked up if I hadn't of had to read it for uni. I really don't like modernist novels that use stream of consciousness, so if that isn't your thing either, then I wouldn't recommend it. Even besides those stylistic choices, I didn't think there was anything of any substance to this novel. I enjoyed some of it, purely because I thought the descriptions were good in some parts and I could sympathise somewhat with the main character Miriam. But most of the time I was bored, confused, and desperate for it to end.
May 23, 2023
According to J. D. BERESFORD, I have read “Pointed Roofs” three times.
This is my second time and I really liked it.
Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
This is the first book of a series of 13 books. To be followed.
This is my second time and I really liked it.
Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
This is the first book of a series of 13 books. To be followed.
May 29, 2016
I bought the first volume of Virago's four-volume edition of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage years ago, after reading an article (almost certainly in the Guardian; probably, in fact, this one) mentioning Richardson along with other authors I already enjoyed, such as Rosamund Lehmann. Though I might have bought it anyway, as I've always been predisposed to acquire Virago Modern Classics. In any case, I bought it years ago and didn't get round to reading it, and then last week I found myself sitting in on interviews for a research assistant to work on a new edition of Richardson's fiction and thought that I really should read her.
Pointed Roofs, the first of the 13 novels in the Pilgrimage sequence, was first published in 1915 and was the first English novel to use the stream-of-consciousness technique. The sequence tells the life story of Miriam Henderson, and is based on Richardson's own life; in this first episode, the seventeen-year-old Miriam leaves her home in London suburbia to go and work as a kind of governess-teacher at a school in Hanover, where her role is to help the German girls improve their English. Miriam is shy and introverted, uncomfortable living in such close quarters with a dozen strangers and predictably struggles to assert any authority over girls who are very little younger than her, while her relationship with the mercurial Fräulein Pfaff, who runs the school, is somewhat troubled. It's not a book about things happening, but about how Miriam experiences them, and I was very impressed by Richardson's skill in conveying her insecurity, her introversion and lack of interest in other people, and her lack of self-knowledge.
It's a short book, but dense somehow; the experience of being projected exclusively into someone else's head via the medium of text is surprisingly intense. Although I was pleasantly surprised by how easy I found it to read (memories of struggling terribly with To The Lighthouse at university, and I don't think I ever did finish it) I felt the need of something more straightforward, and will save the second and third books, which are also included in the first collected volume, for another time. And also look out for the other collections...
Pointed Roofs, the first of the 13 novels in the Pilgrimage sequence, was first published in 1915 and was the first English novel to use the stream-of-consciousness technique. The sequence tells the life story of Miriam Henderson, and is based on Richardson's own life; in this first episode, the seventeen-year-old Miriam leaves her home in London suburbia to go and work as a kind of governess-teacher at a school in Hanover, where her role is to help the German girls improve their English. Miriam is shy and introverted, uncomfortable living in such close quarters with a dozen strangers and predictably struggles to assert any authority over girls who are very little younger than her, while her relationship with the mercurial Fräulein Pfaff, who runs the school, is somewhat troubled. It's not a book about things happening, but about how Miriam experiences them, and I was very impressed by Richardson's skill in conveying her insecurity, her introversion and lack of interest in other people, and her lack of self-knowledge.
It's a short book, but dense somehow; the experience of being projected exclusively into someone else's head via the medium of text is surprisingly intense. Although I was pleasantly surprised by how easy I found it to read (memories of struggling terribly with To The Lighthouse at university, and I don't think I ever did finish it) I felt the need of something more straightforward, and will save the second and third books, which are also included in the first collected volume, for another time. And also look out for the other collections...
September 28, 2022
A reputation for exhibiting early stream-of-consciousness is only shown in brief sections, leading one to understand why Richardson was apparently unenthused by the usage of the term to describe her work. What she seems to be doing (at least in this first installment) is something adjacent, creating distinctively subjective views of moments, untethered to narrative through-lines. There is a broader sense of time's linear progress, but section to section the novel is literary snapshots like free-floating reminiscences of a life lived, nearly all unfettered by any sense of objective meaning, pragmatic narrative purpose, or conventional "novelistic" intent.
This first section of Pilgrimage has a strong psychological insight regarding familiar youthful feelings of inadequacy as they arise from being plopped into unfamiliar environments populated by unfamiliar individuals. But Richardson also displays an artfully observant eye and an admirably anti-authoritarian sensibility, particularly in relation to religion. I would be lying if I said I was as taken by all of this as I expected to be from Richardon's reputation -- as such I will continue onward, eventually but not immediately.
This first section of Pilgrimage has a strong psychological insight regarding familiar youthful feelings of inadequacy as they arise from being plopped into unfamiliar environments populated by unfamiliar individuals. But Richardson also displays an artfully observant eye and an admirably anti-authoritarian sensibility, particularly in relation to religion. I would be lying if I said I was as taken by all of this as I expected to be from Richardon's reputation -- as such I will continue onward, eventually but not immediately.
September 9, 2024
A very well written, interesting stream of consciousness (internal monologues) writing style about Miriam, a young English girl who travels to Germany to teach English at a German girls school. Miriam is unsure of herself, lacking in confidence and it is provided with little feedback on how she is progressing as an English teacher. It is a character based novel that effectively portrays a young woman’s feelings and self doubts. The author vividly describes the new environment Miriam enters and her perceptions of the various characters she meets and the differences in the German culture when compared to her English upbringing.
This book was first published in 1915 and was the first novel published in the ‘stream of consciousness’ style. This novel is the first in Richardson’s 13 book series titled ‘Pilgrimage’.
This book was first published in 1915 and was the first novel published in the ‘stream of consciousness’ style. This novel is the first in Richardson’s 13 book series titled ‘Pilgrimage’.
December 30, 2024
It is necessary for Miriam to get a job!
This is a big issue because Miriam is 17 years old, her family cannot afford to support her at home, yet she is not prepared for the working world. What jobs are even available to genteel young ladies in England and Europe? By the way this book was published prior to 1915.
As I read, am I to assume we’re pretending the Great War isn’t happening? Maybe the novel actions are taking place during 1900-1910?
The boarding school is in Hanover, Germany. Miriam is hired to be an English teacher, even though she is the same age as her students. (Like 5 or 10 students. All girls. And they are not all German. Some are English. One might be French. One is Australian).
Much applause going out, from me, to the late author. She wrote a stream-of-consciousness style about a girls’ boarding school! While there is (but we’re ignoring it) a war going on.
This is a big issue because Miriam is 17 years old, her family cannot afford to support her at home, yet she is not prepared for the working world. What jobs are even available to genteel young ladies in England and Europe? By the way this book was published prior to 1915.
As I read, am I to assume we’re pretending the Great War isn’t happening? Maybe the novel actions are taking place during 1900-1910?
The boarding school is in Hanover, Germany. Miriam is hired to be an English teacher, even though she is the same age as her students. (Like 5 or 10 students. All girls. And they are not all German. Some are English. One might be French. One is Australian).
Much applause going out, from me, to the late author. She wrote a stream-of-consciousness style about a girls’ boarding school! While there is (but we’re ignoring it) a war going on.
Read
March 28, 2020As a pioneering text in stream-of-consciousness narration, it is interesting. I don’t find Miriam Henderson, the principal consciousness, as interesting as the method used to portray her. However, on this second reading, nearly 30 years after the first, I find myself more engaged than on the initial reading. I can, at least, understand more of why so much of the chaos of her experience is important to this young woman, even if it still doesn’t seem so important to me and I still want to tell her to “smarten up” more than once.
July 30, 2014
I forgot that stream-of-consciousness was not my thing and nearly lost consciousness altogether whilst enduring this tedium. It may well be great literature, but I am not an objective reader.
November 29, 2016
guess who got all 13novels for their birthday aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
February 8, 2018
Mary Olivier, a Life was such an extraordinary experience, I had to find out more about the 'stream of consciousness' method, first by actually reading through May Sinclair's essay that made the use of the term famous in 1918, in the journal The Egoist, all issues of which are available online. Sinclair says Richardson plunges deep into reality, in the tradition of French writing by the de Goncourts brothers and Marie Claire, and of course Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The main thing was to hold her voice to the expression only of main character Miriam's fragmentary views, eschewing the role of the all-knowing Author; part of this game, it seems, was to let go, too, of drama and scene and character as such. "It is just life going on and on. It is Miram Henderson's stream of consciousness going on and on."
Not that the writing is formless; Richardson is a master of the image, showing us intense joy in the use of the senses, as when depicting human figures, landscapes, or interiors:
These extended sentences of description are worth pulling out and examining, endlessly, to writers who care to cultivate their craft.
And there is, after all, conflict and drama; it's just that it has to be deduced -- Fraulein Pfaff is more sensual than she lets on, and Pastor Lahmann does evidently enjoy Miriam's company, and he, hers.
Sinclair makes the point that Richardson enables us readers to capture Miriam's joy in the experience of life, despite its evident meaninglessness. There is a substantial, a thing...life and its force? The very love of it all? that dwells alongside Miriam, even as she chews her bread, and that will not allow sorrow to blot it out.
There is, in such hyperrealism, a mystical answer to the dilemma of absurdism, existentialism, and nihilism that so dominates the work of Beckett and Pinter and so forth. It is the hard-nosed attention to reason and feeling within, the generating motor of the sentences and brushstrokes of art. Some of this centeredness is the result of opposing things; intelligent women, opposing patriarchy automatically, have perhaps an early channel into the center. My favorite part of Pointed Roofs is a bit of writing against religion, reminiscent of very similar passages in Mary Olivier: A Life, and of course hinting at the proto-feminist pantheism of Emily Dickinson, captured so artfully throughout the film A Quiet Passion.
Not that the writing is formless; Richardson is a master of the image, showing us intense joy in the use of the senses, as when depicting human figures, landscapes, or interiors:
Mademoiselle, preceding her up through the quiet house carrying the jugs of hot water, had been her first impression on her arrival the previous night. She had turned when they reached the candle-lit attic with its high uncurtained windows and red-covered box beds, and standing on the one strip of matting in her full-skirted grey wincey dress with its neat triple row of black ribbon velvet near the hem, had shown Miriam steel-blue eyes smiling from a little triangular sprite-like face under a high-standing pouf of soft dark hair, and said, “Voila!” Miriam had never imagined anything in the least like her. She had said, “Oh, thank you,” and taken the jug and had hurriedly and silently got to bed, weighed down by wonders. They had begun to talk in the dark. Miriam had reaped sweet comfort in learning that this seemingly unreal creature who was, she soon perceived, not educated—as she understood education—was the resident French governess, was seventeen years old and a Protestant. Such close quarters with a French girl was bewildering enough—had she been a Roman Catholic, Miriam felt she could not have endured her proximity. She was evidently a special kind of French girl—a Protestant from East France—Besanon—Besanon—Miriam had tried the pretty word over until unexpectedly she had fallen asleep.
These extended sentences of description are worth pulling out and examining, endlessly, to writers who care to cultivate their craft.
And there is, after all, conflict and drama; it's just that it has to be deduced -- Fraulein Pfaff is more sensual than she lets on, and Pastor Lahmann does evidently enjoy Miriam's company, and he, hers.
Sinclair makes the point that Richardson enables us readers to capture Miriam's joy in the experience of life, despite its evident meaninglessness. There is a substantial, a thing...life and its force? The very love of it all? that dwells alongside Miriam, even as she chews her bread, and that will not allow sorrow to blot it out.
There is, in such hyperrealism, a mystical answer to the dilemma of absurdism, existentialism, and nihilism that so dominates the work of Beckett and Pinter and so forth. It is the hard-nosed attention to reason and feeling within, the generating motor of the sentences and brushstrokes of art. Some of this centeredness is the result of opposing things; intelligent women, opposing patriarchy automatically, have perhaps an early channel into the center. My favorite part of Pointed Roofs is a bit of writing against religion, reminiscent of very similar passages in Mary Olivier: A Life, and of course hinting at the proto-feminist pantheism of Emily Dickinson, captured so artfully throughout the film A Quiet Passion.
She felt safe for a while and derived solace from the reflection that there would always be church. If she were a governess all her life there would be church. There was a little sting of guilt in the thought. It would be practising deception.... To despise it all, to hate the minister and the choir and the congregation and yet to come—running—she could imagine herself all her life running, at least in her mind, weekly to some church—working her fingers into their gloves and pretending to take everything for granted and to be just like everybody else and really thinking only of getting into a quiet pew and ceasing to pretend. It was wrong to use church like that. She was wrong—all wrong. It couldn’t be helped. Who was there who could help her? She imagined herself going to a clergyman and saying she was bad and wanted to be good—even crying. He would be kind and would pray and smile—and she would be told to listen to sermons in the right spirit. She could never do that.... There she felt she was on solid ground. Listening to sermons was wrong... people ought to refuse to be preached at by these men. Trying to listen to them made her more furious than anything she could think of, more base in submitting... those men’s sermons were worse than women’s smiles... just as insincere at any rate... and you could get away from the smiles, make it plain you did not agree and that things were not simple and settled... but you could not stop a sermon. It was so unfair. The service might be lovely, if you did not listen to the words; and then the man got up and went on and on from unsound premises until your brain was sick... droning on and on and getting more and more pleased with himself and emphatic... and nothing behind it. As often as not you could pick out the logical fallacy if you took the trouble.... Preachers knew no more than anyone else... you could see by their faces... sheeps’ faces.... What a terrible life... and wives and children in the homes taking them for granted....
October 22, 2017
Pilgrimage - Pointed Roofs
How I came to Dorothy M. Richardson was funny…. The title of her for volume set on Pilgrimage pointed this was an author who wanted to share her life story. But that was not the point, having read John Bunyan allegorical “The Pilgrims Progress” I hoped that the two were somehow connected……
I had seen Dorothy highly recommended for her art and form in the subtle way she wrote her life story. No doubt, there is so much that can be said about the work she did in her writing. I will just gloss over a few highlights in “Pointed roofs” that are worth mentioning. There is so much to say about form and art but I will restrict myself to what I think necessary.
In a very short span of time different cultures had been exemplified in how they are and or perceived. The book written in third person exemplifies this great act without necessarily showing any bias. At the time of writing, Britain was at war with Germany and it is sort of a paradox ow Dorothy warms up to the German culture. That also explains why such a seminal work on stream of consciousness stays unrecognized.
Different cultures…English being superior….. but the Germans are so full of themselves…they only speak German when you go to Germany… For English, “The are no rules for English pronunciation but what is usual at the University of Oxford is decisive for cultured people.” I know I have learnt that German men despise women, also Germans have polite attentiveness. In comparison the English are more refined than the Germans, however it is silly to make comparisons as “comparisons are odious”. The Swiss are democratic, with ambition.
Music…and classical music for that matter….plus playing different instruments…..the technique…. Require that you have an ear for quality. You also learnt in German not to be ashamed of “playing with expression”
Religion – We see Miriam at pains having a conversation with God through a Clergyman. I thought this was a direct attack on Catholic.. the sarcasm employed when describing the Clergy “He would be kind an would pray and smile – and she would be told to listen to sermons in the right spirit” I also notice the approach to attending service and listening to the sermon giving a caveat “The service might be lovely, if you did not listen to the words….” The preacher man was described as “went on and on from unsound premises until you brain was sick..droning on and on…as often as not you could pick out the logical fallacy if you took the trouble” Now at this juncture I want to point out another form taken by the author; the problem is not the preaching, seeing as Bible reading was a regular activity at the house. The problem here being the preacher being on “unsound premises” meaning they did not know their stuff…
It seems preachers who are preferred are the ones who would give intellectual lectures like Mr Brough quoting Milton here and there... and ultimately preferring a quiet homily as rather nice.
Another aspect of form emerges, and that is silence. It is as if silence is king when approaching God and also at home and with yourself. For some strange reason when reading you could almost feel as if Miriam subscribed to the Quakers. Silence is a major theme in her writing preferring to always be in solitude to think clearer. Silence is not the absence of noise, it is the absence of language.
Lots of stream of consciousness going on in this Pilgrimage. The descriptions of things like onions at a doctor’s house being "savory and pungent"
Classic Bible Analogy “We are in the hollow of his hand”
Did I notice they were big on tea, writing letters, reading books (poems), reading the Bible, music and no one liked “The wet blanket”
There are some philosophical discussions that go on in the book and one particular one is that of Apollyon(I remembered that analogy of winning while defeated)...., second one is that of Darwin “There were people of distinguished minds who thought Darwin was true...”
Nowadays people do not read books. It is definite that people in the past were keen about books. What happened to us in the 21st Century? Tv happened.
A classic to me!
How I came to Dorothy M. Richardson was funny…. The title of her for volume set on Pilgrimage pointed this was an author who wanted to share her life story. But that was not the point, having read John Bunyan allegorical “The Pilgrims Progress” I hoped that the two were somehow connected……
I had seen Dorothy highly recommended for her art and form in the subtle way she wrote her life story. No doubt, there is so much that can be said about the work she did in her writing. I will just gloss over a few highlights in “Pointed roofs” that are worth mentioning. There is so much to say about form and art but I will restrict myself to what I think necessary.
In a very short span of time different cultures had been exemplified in how they are and or perceived. The book written in third person exemplifies this great act without necessarily showing any bias. At the time of writing, Britain was at war with Germany and it is sort of a paradox ow Dorothy warms up to the German culture. That also explains why such a seminal work on stream of consciousness stays unrecognized.
Different cultures…English being superior….. but the Germans are so full of themselves…they only speak German when you go to Germany… For English, “The are no rules for English pronunciation but what is usual at the University of Oxford is decisive for cultured people.” I know I have learnt that German men despise women, also Germans have polite attentiveness. In comparison the English are more refined than the Germans, however it is silly to make comparisons as “comparisons are odious”. The Swiss are democratic, with ambition.
Music…and classical music for that matter….plus playing different instruments…..the technique…. Require that you have an ear for quality. You also learnt in German not to be ashamed of “playing with expression”
Religion – We see Miriam at pains having a conversation with God through a Clergyman. I thought this was a direct attack on Catholic.. the sarcasm employed when describing the Clergy “He would be kind an would pray and smile – and she would be told to listen to sermons in the right spirit” I also notice the approach to attending service and listening to the sermon giving a caveat “The service might be lovely, if you did not listen to the words….” The preacher man was described as “went on and on from unsound premises until you brain was sick..droning on and on…as often as not you could pick out the logical fallacy if you took the trouble” Now at this juncture I want to point out another form taken by the author; the problem is not the preaching, seeing as Bible reading was a regular activity at the house. The problem here being the preacher being on “unsound premises” meaning they did not know their stuff…
It seems preachers who are preferred are the ones who would give intellectual lectures like Mr Brough quoting Milton here and there... and ultimately preferring a quiet homily as rather nice.
Another aspect of form emerges, and that is silence. It is as if silence is king when approaching God and also at home and with yourself. For some strange reason when reading you could almost feel as if Miriam subscribed to the Quakers. Silence is a major theme in her writing preferring to always be in solitude to think clearer. Silence is not the absence of noise, it is the absence of language.
Lots of stream of consciousness going on in this Pilgrimage. The descriptions of things like onions at a doctor’s house being "savory and pungent"
Classic Bible Analogy “We are in the hollow of his hand”
Did I notice they were big on tea, writing letters, reading books (poems), reading the Bible, music and no one liked “The wet blanket”
There are some philosophical discussions that go on in the book and one particular one is that of Apollyon(I remembered that analogy of winning while defeated)...., second one is that of Darwin “There were people of distinguished minds who thought Darwin was true...”
Nowadays people do not read books. It is definite that people in the past were keen about books. What happened to us in the 21st Century? Tv happened.
A classic to me!
May 25, 2010
[These notes were made in 1992:]. First published 1915. Though she disliked the term, Richardson is accurately described as a stream of consciousness writer. A heavy value is placed on immediate and accurate response to the stimuli of the outside world, and to the realistic, associational movement of thought and conversation. Under the influence of all this detail - "meaningless" detail, in that it is not patterned to serve a plot as in more conventional fiction - it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking nothing is happening at all. I fell into that trap when I first read this novel at 20 - much too young to have the sophistication to read between the lines and pick up what is 'really' happening, as opposed to what is striking Miriam's own intelligent but fuzzy, naive 17 1/2-year-old consciousness. In Pointed Roofs we are introduced to this very autobiographical character, of a poor genteel family, with lively sisters and an independent mind, particularly on the subject of religion (which she dislikes) and confining women's roles (which she resents ferociously). There is also a certain amount of not-terribly-focussed musing on the differences between England & Germany (where Miriam goes to be a governess). On the subject of German men she is quite clear, though - they are autocrats. So is the Fraulein who runs the school, an unpredictable tyrant who cools sharply towards Miriam when the local pastor, her gentleman-caller, shows himself to be friendly to Miriam. (Miriam is perplexed by this). There is also, to the modern suspicious mind, more than an undertone of suppressed lesbianism in this small school - lots of goofy schoolgirlish affection, of course, but there is one particularly beautiful girl to whom Miriam herself is not unsusceptible, and for whom we see the Fraulein entertaining special affection. However, physical demonstrativeness of even the most innocent kind (during a thunderstorm, for instance) is sharply reproved, and Fraulein reproaches the English girls for corrupting the others by speaking of men. She is a first-class prude, and this is a large part of why Miriam leaves Germany at the end of this novel.
February 21, 2021
Another top book of 1915 by an author I’d never even heard of. Dorothy Richardson is a modernist writer, and one of the first to use interior monologues or “stream of consciousness.” Pointed Roofs is about a shy, awkward English girl whose father has lost all his money, so she goes to Germany to become a teacher in a girls’ finishing school. (All this really happened to Richardson.) Of course it reminded me a little bit of Villette, and the nice part is it reminds the main character of Villette too. The novel had such a natural, authentic-feeling flow. It is so refreshing and inspiring to read the thoughts and feelings of a girl, treated with such seriousness and depth. I feel like even in contemporary literature, men’s feelings are serious business and women’s feelings are chick lit, so for Richardson to have pulled this off in 1915 fills me with profound respect and gratitude. I really liked how the main character was able to relax and play the piano better once she got to the German school; it seems like just being British is a huge handicap to emotional and artistic development. The interplay between the girls at the school seemed very realistic. Everything that happened was realistic! Because Richardson was presenting such a slice of life, there were more things that I had no idea what the hell they were than in other books of 1915, because she was talking about products and fads of the day without explaining what they were. This may mark me as an incredibly shallow person, but one of the most interesting parts was when the main character Miriam is forced to have her hair washed when “Miriam’s hair had never been washed with anything but cantharides and rose-water on a tiny special sponge.” To her horror, hair washing involves having a raw egg cracked onto her hair. In some ways 1915 is just like today; in other ways it’s like another planet. I’m pleased there are many more books to come by Richardson.
October 6, 2014
Pointed Roofs Pilgrimage is a fairly beautiful book, in terms of prose and sentiment and lyricism... unfortunately, it didn't move me as it might have if it was a more cohesive, more motivated experience. I read it as a curiosity, and until I get a chance to re-read it and reconsider my assessment, I will always see it as a mere curiosity.
Richardson creates a vivid sense of place, and she establishes the POV character's state of mind admirably. One of the defining features of the POV character is that her views of the world are labile and inconsistent... there's very little rhyme or reason to the shifts in tone and attitude. This is fairly realistic, I expect... in real life, moods and attitudes and perceptions seem to form out of nowhere, and PRP is a worthy examination of that subjective process.
On the other hand, the novel lacks the landmarks to create any sort of momentum. I had a vague sense of the personalities of Madamoiselle and Fraulein Pfaff, but I never got a strong sense of the other girls' respective contrasts and personalities. In a similar vein, the events of the plot seemed to flow past without any rise or fall, without any suspense or shifting development to orient them.
I wouldn't entirely discount this book. In fact, in a way, I'd consider the two-star rating to be provisional. I think I would benefit greatly from a second reading, and knowing what kind of experience to expect, I would probably rate it much higher after a more patient perusal.
Richardson creates a vivid sense of place, and she establishes the POV character's state of mind admirably. One of the defining features of the POV character is that her views of the world are labile and inconsistent... there's very little rhyme or reason to the shifts in tone and attitude. This is fairly realistic, I expect... in real life, moods and attitudes and perceptions seem to form out of nowhere, and PRP is a worthy examination of that subjective process.
On the other hand, the novel lacks the landmarks to create any sort of momentum. I had a vague sense of the personalities of Madamoiselle and Fraulein Pfaff, but I never got a strong sense of the other girls' respective contrasts and personalities. In a similar vein, the events of the plot seemed to flow past without any rise or fall, without any suspense or shifting development to orient them.
I wouldn't entirely discount this book. In fact, in a way, I'd consider the two-star rating to be provisional. I think I would benefit greatly from a second reading, and knowing what kind of experience to expect, I would probably rate it much higher after a more patient perusal.
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