Reading 1001 discussion

Discussion/comments

In this installment, Miriam returns to London after her trip to Switzerland. The book focuses on two romantic relationships Miriam has, one with Hypo, the married man who is based upon H.G. Wells, and another one with a woman named Amabel. Aside from this, not much really happens.

Overall, I think Miriam is maturing and reflecting upon herself based upon her relationships with others.

I read this section with all of volume 4 in like..August, and have since had to return the books so I'm not super fresh on it anymore. But, I do remember liking all of the sections after Oberland substantially and feeling like Oberland was a good breakup to get on with the rest of it.

What I really liked about this section was how radical and modern it seemed: Miriam's affair with Hypo continues, but ultimately they part. It seemd like Miriam wanted novelty over him himself.

She also befriends Amabel who is a suffragette and politically active in a way that is different fro Miriam's individualistic sense of liberty- an interesting contrast I thought. Amabel also leaves a note with soap on Miriam's mirror that she is in love with her. What I loved about Miriam's dilemma about this is not fundamentally that Amabel is a woman, but whether Miriam is personally capable of loving her back that way, could be happy with her, or if her much sought after independence would be decreased and leave her suffocated. I mean, I've been there thinking "I'm not in love with this person, but I do love them" and thinking that would simultaneously be not enough for them, and too much for me to spend my life tethered like that.

I finished Dawn's Left Hand and felt as Amanda did, that the Oberland was both a nice break in Miriam's story but also a good set up for the end of the 4 volume set.
In Dawn's Left Hand we find Miriam going back to her beloved London streets (whose traffic suddenly includes the sound of cars in addition to horses), back to the dentist office, back to Bailey's boarding house and also back to Hypo whose mind is still an attraction even if his actual thoughts are not. She certainly does not seem to be in love with Hypo, does not find him physically attractive but finds something in the relationship that is missing from much of her interactions with the world. She also interacts with a man named Densley, who implies he would like to marry her. This makes Miriam very happy but not because she wants to marry him. Much of this section is about Amabel and Miriam reflecting on Amabel. Amabel is married to Basil but loves Miriam both for her body and her mind. Amabel is a speaker and a social socialist while Miriam sees herself as a largely silent individualist. The obsession that Miriam associates with Amabel is really the first in which we have seen Miriam think about if she could bend herself to be a person that Amabel stays with. She realizes that Amabel will leave but through this reflection, she comes to see how all the people in her life leave an imprint rather than being lost to her.

A Quote on dentistry: "It would make no difference to the truth: death attacking western civilization by the teeth"

I also very much liked the reference to how incredibly hard the work of keeping a man charmed is. "...having no idea of the difficulty, the sheer hard work of holding herself in his world and keeping him at his ease even for an hour."

I noted the same quote as Gail did, and thought it another instance of how much Richardson manages to write about things that are important to me, too, like social situations and travel and gender bias, but which I have never expressed. A lot happens in this volume. Miriam finally loses her virginity (or at least this is what I guess) with Hypo Wilson, not because she is fatally attracted to him, but more, I guess, because she is 28 and wants to experience sex for herself. Before that happens she enjoys dinner and a night at the opera with Hypo and his wife Alma. The affair seems to be over by the end of the chapter, but there are some wonderful discussions along the way. I was interested in the idea of discreet private dining rooms which allow for sexual escapades. Who knew? At the same time Miriam gets involved with a young French woman, Amabel, who has fallen in love with her, who learns about socialism to understand her and moves into the room next door so she can be with Miriam all the time. Whether this relationship has a sexual component is even more difficult than usual to work out. Oberland now becomes shorthand for individual freedom and happiness. I have done similar things, using a sojourn in Biarritz, for example, as a key word for certain states of mind. The themes of the importance of music and asking "what am I doing here" crop up again and also the role that wives of professional men play, subsuming their own personalities. Like so many of the wives of professional husbands, she seemed to be both her husband's guardian and a masked being who betrayed, by the emphasis of her statements, how little of her inward self was behind what she said. An eager, busy, well-dressed ghost, fearful of anything that seemed to threaten the ideas he represented. Wearing her husband's attainments as a personal decoration....Reminding herself of the many wives in whose eyes she had surprised private meditation going its way behind an appearance of close attention to a familiar voice . Miriam has no intention of ever being that kind of wife. She discusses as much with Hypo, while trying to convey what Amabel is like. He has stated "Men and women are incompatible. It's one of life's little difficulties and Miriam replies that Amabel Regards the colossal unawareness of a man as an amiable defect. But she agrees, although she finds it also screamingly funny, that the way all down the ages men have labelled their sexual impulses "woman" is quite monstrous" The best quote in the whole book so far!

I think everyone else has covered this well. I did find the relationship with Amabel hard to work out did anything actually happen or not? I also liked the way that Miriam's issue with pursuing a relationship was not that Amabel was a woman but because Miriam is not sure she herself can love anyone properly.

Favourite quotes:

"Why did not English teachers have a sabbatical year, go abroad and lose themselves in strangeness and come back renewed? Why not everyone?

"It was not shock or sadness that kept her silent. Immense, horrible relief in being certain that now the burden of Eleanor would never again return upon her hands. And great wonder, that Eleanor had done her dying. Somewhere, in some unknown room, she had accomplished that tremendous deed. Alone."

"But is was the visible pageant of marriage that rose before her eyes; so suitably, she felt now, a floral pageant,"

"Glad to escape from her, and her universe where women were judged by their looks and men by their incomes."

"He cherished Saxon English for its sanguine force and rich earthiness, but did not know how continuously vivid was German, with its unaltered, ancient pictoriality, every other word describing an action or an object so as to bring it before the eyes; even the terminology of philosophy being directly descriptive."

"Art, sex and religion; one and the same."

Her disapproval of English people is both Irish and French."