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Pilgrimage #8
The Trap
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.
- GenresClassics
136 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1925
2 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy M. Richardson
71 books64 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 5, 2015
This is the eighth novel in the Pilgrimage series and when I start the ninth I will move onto final volume in the virago four volume edition. Miriam by now is in her late 20s and she moves into an apartment which she shares with a Miss Holland. The title refers to the fact that this is not a successful move on Miriam’s part. She doesn’t get on with Miss Holland and the tenants downstairs are noisy. The Taylors, Michael Shatov and Dr Densley are all still around and Dr Densley appears to have hopes in relation to Miriam. Miriam also attends meetings of the Lycurgans. The Lycurgans are Richardson’s portrayal of the Fabian Society, a group which promoted socialist ideas.
The tensions within this section are really about Miriam realising that she is not really adapted to living with others; her attempt at a shared life with Miss Holland is a disaster. The end of the novel where Miriam says to herself “Away, Away” is an indicative of a change to come. The question at this point is what sort of a shift is to come. Will Miriam leave London or will it be a change of consciousness. We know at this point that Miriam is looking for a type of friendship; this is to find a female type of the male friendship outlined by Montaigne and Aristotle.
Miriam reads James’s The Ambassadors and announces that James had “achieved the first completely satisfying way of writing a novel”. She becomes obsessed with the novel for a time. Although Richardson was a fan of James, she denied any stylistic link. I felt this was very much a preparatory and intermediate novel. Miriam is testing out various things; eliminating what she doesn’t want to find what she does want.
The tensions within this section are really about Miriam realising that she is not really adapted to living with others; her attempt at a shared life with Miss Holland is a disaster. The end of the novel where Miriam says to herself “Away, Away” is an indicative of a change to come. The question at this point is what sort of a shift is to come. Will Miriam leave London or will it be a change of consciousness. We know at this point that Miriam is looking for a type of friendship; this is to find a female type of the male friendship outlined by Montaigne and Aristotle.
Miriam reads James’s The Ambassadors and announces that James had “achieved the first completely satisfying way of writing a novel”. She becomes obsessed with the novel for a time. Although Richardson was a fan of James, she denied any stylistic link. I felt this was very much a preparatory and intermediate novel. Miriam is testing out various things; eliminating what she doesn’t want to find what she does want.
March 24, 2016
I have just found (and rapidly and irresponsibly purchased) a signed (yes, if you can believe it, signed) first edition of this to complete my set of firsts of the whole of the Pilgrimage series.
My justification being that, if I think prices are high now, they are only going to get worse once the OUP editions come out and she becomes more popular...so I should get it now while I can....
At least, that is what I tell myself anyway...
My justification being that, if I think prices are high now, they are only going to get worse once the OUP editions come out and she becomes more popular...so I should get it now while I can....
At least, that is what I tell myself anyway...
August 22, 2016
When I started to read this, the eighth of the thirteen volume series of novels that Dorothy Richardson titled ‘Pilgrimage’, I found that the pattern of a new home and a new beginning at that start of each book, a pattern that had run through the earliest books of the series and then faded away, seemed to be beginning again.
Miriam was still in London, but she had moved from Mrs Bailey’s boarding house where she had been happily settled for some time to a very different home.
It wasn't clear why she had moved, it was one of the many things in Miriam's world that remained unexplained. I have learned as I read her story that was something I had to accept, and I have learned that it is important to observe passing observations as they often prove significant.
It might have been that she was uncomfortable with the relationship that had developed between Mrs Bailey and another boarder; it might be that she didn't want to be there when the Canadian doctors who had thought so little of her that they left without saying goodbye, made a promised return visit; it might be that the letter that from her friend's husband that she found when she returned home at the end of the last book caused her some embarrassment; or it might be that she simply felt it was time for a change, or that it was time she found somewhere a little less expensive ...
I'm not trying to reach a conclusion; I'm simply trying to explain that with careful reading there is much to appreciate and much that you have to think about in this series of books.
Even if the title of this book had been something other than 'The Trap' I would have known from the start of the book that Miriam would not be happy in her new home. She was sharing a room with another single lady, Miss Holland, and they had only a curtain dividing the room to allow them any degree of privacy. It wasn't right for Miriam, who valued, who needed, her own space, and though she and Miss Holland were polite and got on well enough they had very different outlooks and were fundamentally incompatible.
Life went on.
Miriam continued to attend political meetings; she continued to work in Wimpole Street; she joined a women's group; she visited friends; she war courted by Dr Densley, who she had met through Miss Dear ....
But always the story returned to that room in Flaxman's Court.
There were moments when Miriam was happy, when she found the peace she sought in a space that she had been able to make her own, but there were too many things pulling her down. Her difficult relationship with Miss Holland; an intrusive landlord; noise from tenants in the room below ....
I felt for her, but I was also infuriated by her, because she was so rigid, so unable to accept the compromises that human relationships both require and reward.
I put the book to one side for quite some time.
I prepared to write that this was the weakest book in the series.
But then I began to think that there was something that Miriam was pushing to the back of her mind that was making her unhappy. Her relationship with her friend's husband, the writer Hyppo Wilson - inspired by Dorothy Richardson's long relationship with her friend's husband H G Wells, went unmentioned, even though he had written that letter that she was so happy to receive at the end of the last book.
Was she troubled, was she feeling guilty, about that relationship?
Had something changed?
I doubt that I will ever have answers to those questions, but they made me curious to read more.
I was delighted to find that she did what single women still have to do to this day. She picked herself up, she told herself that she was responsible for her own life and her own happiness, and she set out to make a fresh start.
The writing was light and beautiful again; because Miriam was looking out into the world again.
Maybe it was the death of her sister Eve; maybe it was ending her relationship with Dr Densley; maybe it was seeing her sister Harriett emigrate with her husband and child; maybe it was taking her next steps as a writer; maybe it was seeing Wells - not Wilson this time, Wells - in the distance; maybe it was something else entirely.
Whatever it was that made Miriam decide that it was time for a change and to break with Miss Holland, it has me eager to continue reading.
I am sure that there will be times when she infuriates me; that there will be times when I find the gaps in the story and the things that remain unexplained maddening: but Miriam and her world are so very alive; Dorothy Richardson's writing is like nothing else I have ever read; and I still want to follow this series of books to the end.
Miriam was still in London, but she had moved from Mrs Bailey’s boarding house where she had been happily settled for some time to a very different home.
"An old little street. A scrap of London standing apart, between the Bloomsbury squares and the maze of streets towards the city. The light gleaming from its rain-washed flagstones gave it a provincial air and a freshness unknown to the main streets, between whose buildings lay modern roadways dulled by mud or harsh by grimy dust
Whenever during all her London years Miriam had passed the spot where it opened into the thoroughfare, the little by-way had drawn her eyes; always stating its sequestered charm. Entering it now for the first time she had a sense of arriving nowhere
Yet she was an inhabitant of Flaxman's Court. Up there on the upper floors of the house that remained so quiet before her claim, were room as quiet, her own."
It wasn't clear why she had moved, it was one of the many things in Miriam's world that remained unexplained. I have learned as I read her story that was something I had to accept, and I have learned that it is important to observe passing observations as they often prove significant.
It might have been that she was uncomfortable with the relationship that had developed between Mrs Bailey and another boarder; it might be that she didn't want to be there when the Canadian doctors who had thought so little of her that they left without saying goodbye, made a promised return visit; it might be that the letter that from her friend's husband that she found when she returned home at the end of the last book caused her some embarrassment; or it might be that she simply felt it was time for a change, or that it was time she found somewhere a little less expensive ...
I'm not trying to reach a conclusion; I'm simply trying to explain that with careful reading there is much to appreciate and much that you have to think about in this series of books.
Even if the title of this book had been something other than 'The Trap' I would have known from the start of the book that Miriam would not be happy in her new home. She was sharing a room with another single lady, Miss Holland, and they had only a curtain dividing the room to allow them any degree of privacy. It wasn't right for Miriam, who valued, who needed, her own space, and though she and Miss Holland were polite and got on well enough they had very different outlooks and were fundamentally incompatible.
Life went on.
Miriam continued to attend political meetings; she continued to work in Wimpole Street; she joined a women's group; she visited friends; she war courted by Dr Densley, who she had met through Miss Dear ....
But always the story returned to that room in Flaxman's Court.
There were moments when Miriam was happy, when she found the peace she sought in a space that she had been able to make her own, but there were too many things pulling her down. Her difficult relationship with Miss Holland; an intrusive landlord; noise from tenants in the room below ....
I felt for her, but I was also infuriated by her, because she was so rigid, so unable to accept the compromises that human relationships both require and reward.
I put the book to one side for quite some time.
I prepared to write that this was the weakest book in the series.
But then I began to think that there was something that Miriam was pushing to the back of her mind that was making her unhappy. Her relationship with her friend's husband, the writer Hyppo Wilson - inspired by Dorothy Richardson's long relationship with her friend's husband H G Wells, went unmentioned, even though he had written that letter that she was so happy to receive at the end of the last book.
Was she troubled, was she feeling guilty, about that relationship?
Had something changed?
I doubt that I will ever have answers to those questions, but they made me curious to read more.
I was delighted to find that she did what single women still have to do to this day. She picked herself up, she told herself that she was responsible for her own life and her own happiness, and she set out to make a fresh start.
The writing was light and beautiful again; because Miriam was looking out into the world again.
Maybe it was the death of her sister Eve; maybe it was ending her relationship with Dr Densley; maybe it was seeing her sister Harriett emigrate with her husband and child; maybe it was taking her next steps as a writer; maybe it was seeing Wells - not Wilson this time, Wells - in the distance; maybe it was something else entirely.
Whatever it was that made Miriam decide that it was time for a change and to break with Miss Holland, it has me eager to continue reading.
I am sure that there will be times when she infuriates me; that there will be times when I find the gaps in the story and the things that remain unexplained maddening: but Miriam and her world are so very alive; Dorothy Richardson's writing is like nothing else I have ever read; and I still want to follow this series of books to the end.
Read
September 24, 2020Miriam finds herself sharing an upper-level London flat (across the street from W.B. Yeats) with a Miss Holland. We only discover late in this, one of the shorter installments of Pilgrimage, that Miss Holland’s name is Selina and that Miriam still can’t call her by her name. All Miriam‘s usual obsessions are in place, and she continues to waver between first and third person. There is a wonderful crack early on about it being impossible to find anything interesting about Americans. There is also the usual suggestion that nothing which can be expressed in language or in books can be at all true. The title of this short novel is wholly self-explanatory.
September 8, 2010
The "novels" grow shorter, and I believe this is the last one to have been separately published. In this segment, Miriam moves to an apartment, sharing it with one Miss Holland, whose first name we do not learn until the very last pages; that is in fact a fairly clever way to convey Miriam's distant and somewhat troubled relationship with her room-mate. The other major player in this segment is a women's club where Miriam and Miss Holland are both members, and where Miriam eventually brings together a small dinner-party uniting people from various parts of her life: the socialist couple the Taylors, Michael Shatov, and Dr. Densley (who first appeared in connection with the Miss Dear, as her attending physician, and appear now to be pushing himself upon 28-year-old Miriam's attention as a candidate for marriage).
The trap is, it turns out, the new apartment, from which she is vowing to escape by the end: we do get some fairly solid reasons, including nasty bugs on the bed, noise from outside, noise and emotional upsets from the tenants downstairs, and a separation only by curtain from Miss Selina Holland with whom Miriam is unable in the end to find enough common ground to make their relationship an easy one.
There are many reflections on the Lycurgans (the socialist group) and their modes of thinking; Miriam herself now finds it easier to conduct her conversation in polite, unfelt formulas. To me, that actually seems as if she's growing up but, of course, from her point of view it's a bit of a disaster.
Onward.
The trap is, it turns out, the new apartment, from which she is vowing to escape by the end: we do get some fairly solid reasons, including nasty bugs on the bed, noise from outside, noise and emotional upsets from the tenants downstairs, and a separation only by curtain from Miss Selina Holland with whom Miriam is unable in the end to find enough common ground to make their relationship an easy one.
There are many reflections on the Lycurgans (the socialist group) and their modes of thinking; Miriam herself now finds it easier to conduct her conversation in polite, unfelt formulas. To me, that actually seems as if she's growing up but, of course, from her point of view it's a bit of a disaster.
Onward.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews