Dorothy Richardson discussion

For discussion of Backwater, London: Duckworth, 1916.

Backwater at The Neglected Books Page ::
http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=3954

Man, am loving these - makes me want to reread the whole damn thing

Started a bit of this second volume today.

How’s it going? I found the style began to develop and grow in complexity as Miriam did, so the first couple of books were quite “young” if that makes sense

Just reminded myself of what I said to Paul on his review of this, after having read her Letters and biography: “ DR tried to have the "viewpoint" of the text be directed by Miriam's mindset at the time (which was often at odds with DR's) - the development and growth of her thinking through this book and the others and it is, as you say, this progression which provides the "movement" of the story. ”
- the fact Miriam is still a teenager in this book explains some of that “young” feeling I mentioned, and why some of her views on class and gender might be problematic, for example.

I feel the same, Jonathan, mostly in terms of it being too "early" for me to get an accurate gauge of the work. It's been a pleasurable reading experience (nicely defused the paranoia I had going in about not having read the type of material in a while), but beyond the singular prose scheme, the work is almost entirely a combination of an Anglo girl's initial bildungsroman and newish anthropological interest (I don't read much involving late 19th c. Germany as setting). It would be a different story if I cared enough to explicitly understand every reference, but that's never been my interest in reading these sorts of works. I'm content to drift along and see what I can get, and it was gratifying that the first portion went so well from me without much in the way of aggravation due to difficulty and/or dated attitudes. I am, though, looking forward to being far more invested once Miriam's put some meat on her ontological bones (the bit about differences in pedagogy relating to the patriarchy executed in different cultures was very nice, and hopefully hints to further digressions on the theme).

Oh there is certainly no need to "get" all the references, and DR was quite clear in her letters that she never intended her readers to. They are just part of the flotsam and jetsam of Miriam's consciousness. Flowing along with it and seeing how it shapes and develops throughout the books is the main thing. And, yes, as Miriam grows up and gets more politically aware, there is certainly some very impressively "modern" social critique. Of course, the mere fact DR is writing the interior life of a young woman in such detail is itself a political act (she was writing these first volumes from about 1913 onward so much earlier than Woolf, for example).

That is also, of course, one of the reasons while the male literary establishment treated her like shit and why she remains massively under-appreciated. She died alone in a nursing home where the staff thought her talk about being an author was just dementia. That still makes me furious and sad whenever I think of it.

Yes, it certainly is important to place the writing in its proper timeline so it can contrast with the assumptions of the 'correct' chronology of (Anglo) literary development, else it's easy to underestimate it. The differing fates of Richardson and Woolf in the "canon" make me wonder about what may have occurred had their respective ends been switched. For while Woolf may own my heart and soul, her eventual end feeds much more smoothly into the nastier aspects of the mythos of female creativity as established in Euro/Neo-Euro "common sense" than Richardson's does.

Yeah I agree - The “romance” (yuck) of Woolf’s end (and Plath et al) fits neatly into that narrative trope and is more easily marketed and sensationalised. And, of course, a 5000 odd page novel in multiple volumes published over a 20-30 year period is a much harder sell...

A tad under 250 pages in, or in other words a little more than a tenth of the way through the page count of the entire set, it seems the writing is starting to come into its own. Here's a section I particularly liked involving the performing of music and the unexpected appearance of the beloved(?) which is too long for a regular status update:

Someone held back the near curtain. A voice said quietly, 'Here she is.'
Ted's low, faintly-mocking voice filled the conservatory.
He was standing very near her, looking down at her with his back to the gay room. Yesterday's dream had come more than true, at once, at the beginning of the evening. He had come straight to her with his friend, not dancing, not looking for a partner. They were in the little green enclosure with her. The separating curtains had fallen back into place.
Behind the friend who stood leaning against the far end of the piano, the massed fernery gleamed now with the glow of concealed fairy lamps. She had not noticed it before. The fragrance of fronds and moist warm clumps of maidenhair and scented geraniums inundated her as she glanced across at the light falling on hard sculptured waves of hair above a white handsome face.
Her music held them all, protecting the wordless meeting. Her last night's extremity of content was reality, being lived by all three of them. It centered in herself. Ted stood within it, happy in it. The friend watched, witnessing Ted's confession. Ted had said nothing to him about her, about any of them, in his usual way. But he was disguising nothing now that he had come.

Lovely. Thanks for sharing