The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

Time for some new developments!

How is Olive’s life in her new home?

How has her life changed without Mrs. Rothesay?

What is Harold’s crisis?

This section ends with Olive acknowledging to herself that she has fallen in love with Harold. Do you believe he loves her too at this point? Why or why not?

Poor Sybilla! I was wondering how long it would be before the author decided she was surplus to requirements and polished her off. She can only have been in her 40s and didn't have any illness that had a name, but when your Creator decides your time is up ...

However, I thought Olive would then remember the letter her father left her (to be read after her mother's death) but she seems to have forgotten all about it; so the question now is - when will she remember?

I was afraid she would fall in love with Harold; I don't see any sign yet that he requites her love, but she is so convinced that it would be impossible for him to do such a thing that I feel it's probably inevitable. She will probably restore his faith and make a better person of him.

I had mixed feelings about this section. I actually rather liked the debates about religion (faith is a mystery to me so I am always interested to grapple with other people’s ideas about it), but Olive herself gave me the pip. Everything in her life should have built strength and independence in her, but when she loses one person to wait on, she is desperate to find another! Codependent much? Instead of fixating on Harold, she would be better off becoming a paid companion and governess for Mrs. Gwynne and Ailie, who would treat her better. Olive’s combined stalwartness and bent for self-abnegation irritate me.

Plus we heard so much about her love of painting, but the moment she isn’t to pressed by financial necessity, she becomes much less enthusiastic about it, thus confirming the stereotype that a woman can’t be a great artist. What it all seems to come down to in the author’s mind is that men are self-centered enough for greatness, while women think too much about others to be great at anything. (The fact that this accords with my personal experience doesn’t make me like it any better, and I believe women are equally capable of self-absorption.)

I agree with Jenny about the letter, and the author seems to be teasing us in a lumbering sort of way. When Olive reached for the packet of letters I immediately thought it was time for the great revelation about Christal—but no, it was more neurosis from Harold.

I recently finished rereading The Scarlet Letter and Harold’s self-hatred over serving as a clergyman while not believing in the doctrine reminded me of Arthur Dimmesdale’s self-hatred over posing as a man of God when he has committed a sin. In both cases they seem disproportionately affected by the dishonesty they practice, psychologically and even physically, which implies an underlying faith neither one fully acknowledges. Not a perfect analogy between the two but perhaps similar dynamics at work.

I don't know quite what to make of Olive, since she seems to focus on one thing at a time, first painting and then caring for her mother. She reacts-doesn't really plan things out-or notices things generally.

Interesting observation! Based on all the discontinuities in the plot my sense is that this is the author’s own failing, rather than her choice of how to construct Olive’s character.

That makes a lot of sense to me, Abigail. It's a poorly structured book.

The best thing about this section was the horrid Christal making fun of Harold, which I think was designed to make the reader like him more. I’m with Christal if it came to a choice between the haughty unbeliever and young Derwent.

However, I did not buy into the sympathy for Harold’s agonies because of the way he had deceived everybody from the moment he joined the church. A man of his standing could have gone into a different profession and his mother would not have been destitute. And then Olive and Harold decided to continue deceiving his mother, her mother, the parishoners and everybody else by keeping his secret. Sorry, but they were both just wrong to do that.

Of course it is so obvious what will happen next that I can’t feel any sympathy for Olive’s love agonies. It would be easier if the man she loved was in any way decent, but he is cold, arrogant and indifferent towards his child. Why am I not holding my breath in anticipation of his biblical deliberations suddenly enabling a personality transformation of ‘biblical’ proportions?

The author told us at the beginning of a chapter that Sybilla was dying slowly, but why then did she then take at least fifteen pages going on and on and on in the same repetitive way to get to the end of it. Sybilla deserved a better send off than the author boring the reader with sentimentality.

I wonder if Olive will now burn all her art materials on a ceremonial bonfire in ritual sacrifice and turn to devoting her whole life and being to the worship of Harold - Ughhhh!

I had a quick read-through when we started reading this novel, and I find I can't bring myself to re-visit it in our slower group rhythm: it's just not worth it. But, dear group, I enjoy so very much your comments with which my malicious soul can sympathize so well ;-))

Throughout the novel, I kept wondering about the exaltation of the mother-child relationship. I know that Victorian views on the subject were as good as opposite to ours, with the burden of respect and gratitude (and love) solely on the children's side, but the overarching role of filial love in Olive's mind still leaves a sour after taste. As if the exemplary 'good daughter' was not supposed to fall in love while her mother was alive. Weird ...

Sigh, Sabagrey, I was so hoping there would be a turnaround that would redeem it for me! Though I too am having fun reading the comments.

As for the filial love, remember that Sybilla has cultivated helpless dependence all her life, and once she lost her vision Olive didn’t have a prayer of escape. She couldn’t shove her in an old folks’ home and take off for Italy. But yeah, all the stroking and sleeping in the same bed takes us pretty close to Carmilla territory, with an incest chaser!

Sybilla is portrayed as old, weak and gray, plus blind. But Olive is only 26 and although I don't remember how old Sybilla was when she had her (maybe one of you has that detail), she definitely married young. So she is in her mid-40's, not that old even by standards of the day.

I agree that inconsistencies in the behavior or the characters are the fault of the author. Also the annoying comments about how now that Olive isn't so much an artist, she can be more a woman. And my prediction about how she will save Harold seems to be depressingly true. Also Harold's belief system doesn't make sense. He insists he believes in God but not the beliefs of the church - maybe a Deist like Thomas Jefferson? (who was perfectly comfortable with his own interpretation of the Bible and Christianity, not to mention slavery, no moral struggle for him.) I think it's just that the author couldn't bring herself to imagine someone who didn't even believe in God, or if there is such a person, he couldn't possibly be redeemed.

From novels I've read by Trollope, Dickens, etd. plenty of English clergymen didn't live particularly Christian lives, enjoying wealth and adulation and leaving most of the work to underlings. But I agree with Rosemarie that Harold could have gone into a different profession. At the time, there weren't specific qualifications for a lot of jobs, for instance, he could have been a teacher or professor which would have suited him better, or worked with science, which interests him. The clergy, especially in a small town, wasn't a particularly lucrative career.

Sadly, the inconsistencies and random swerves of plot are reminding me of the absolutely terrible The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley that we read a couple of years ago (it contains a pandemic.) At least the dialogue in this book, while sometimes stilted, isn't totally over the top.

Trev wrote: "Sybilla deserved a better send off than the author boring the reader with sentimentality...."

No, she didn't! The reader did, but how else do you think Sybilla would have gone? ;-)

Not to support Harold at all—I find him egregious and as much of a user as Vanbrugh—but I do see why he would feel conflicted in his job. He is responsible for teaching others not just about a deity but specifically Church of England doctrine, and people who are serious-minded often do leave a church when they can’t accept a particular doctrine. He had to recite those doctrines every day he entered the church and had to instruct orhers to follow them. He earned money from doing so, which he must have viewed as tainted money.

So he despises himself for taking the false road, for living a fraud, which he chose to do originally when very young in order to support his mother. She became his dependent right about the time he got out of university, if I recall correctly. If he had been alone in the world, he could have become a clerk or shopkeeper or gone into the military. But he had her to think about and if he had been a clerk or shopkeeper, she would have lost the status of gentlewoman; if he had gone into the military she would have been alone and defenseless for long stretches of time. In the cultural context of the time, those were heavy misfortunes indeed, and I understand a young man shying away from wishing them on his mother.

So he chose the path that allowed them to remain genteel, but it plagued his conscience. Perhaps this is why he wrote such a stiff initial letter to Olive about the debt her father had incurred; he feared losing their precarious toehold among the gentility. I think he acted correctly in taking the hit to their income and stepping back from active duty as a clergyman by hiring a curate. He is faced with conflicting moral imperatives, and it is a mark in favor of his character that he is tormented by that.

Jenny wrote: "Trev wrote: "Sybilla deserved a better send off than the author boring the reader with sentimentality...."

No, she didn't! The reader did, but how else do you think Sybilla would have gone? ;-)"

I think you are being a little hard on Sybilla or the character of Sybilla as developed by the author. She had to put up with so much in her life - a philandering, absent husband, low intelligence, varying degrees of poverty and countless illnesses culminating in blindness.

And yet at her death, I am sure most readers were just relieved that they didn’t have to trawl through any more excrutiatingly mawkish pages of Olive with her mother, rather than having any real sympathy with the deceased. Sybilla was a major character and the author should have sent her off with more dignity.

Sybilla was a product of her culture; she was what she was raised to be. If there’s one thing consistent in this book, it’s the idea that to overcome being enculturated to be ornamental and useless (or useful only as an enabler of the men’s world), you had to either have extraordinary resolution of character or suffer great challenges. Most of the female characters take the go-along-to-get-along approach. To this degree *only* the book can be seen as participating in a long line of fiction written by British women that held up a mirror to the ways inequality between the sexes distorted the lives of men and women alike.

I agree, Trev, that Sybilla didn't have an easy life-and she was never trained/educated to deal with the challenges of life.

Abigail wrote: "Not to support Harold at all—I find him egregious and as much of a user as Vanbrugh—but I do see why he would feel conflicted in his job. He is responsible for teaching others not just about a deit..."

I agree with everything you say Abigail, except I think Harold should not have remained for one more minute in the clergy once he had confessed to Olive. Every penny he took from the church ought to be repaid because, as an agent of God and/or his church, he was a fraud from the beginning of his tenure.

I am reminded of Richard Hale in North and South who (spoiler alert) (view spoiler)[ upset all his family when giving up his clerical post because of the hypocrisy of continuing with his dissenting views. (hide spoiler)]

Although the circumstances are not exactly the same, the characters of the two men can be compared, with Harold coming out very badly indeed. He may be a man with a conscience but he still wants the cash and the house that comes with it.

I thought Harold's dilemma with his lack of faith brought an interesting turn to the novel. Unfortunately, Olive seems to feel that the only answer is to convert him to belief in her version of God while also abetting his continued hypocrisy. In the earlier pages of the novel, specifically when Olive was a child, I was not aware that she was brought up with any great religious training, nor do I remember her undergoing a conversion herself. Also, once Harold has confessed his lack of faith to Olive, he comes up with solutions to his problem, one of which is to move away and pursue a scientific career (did we know about that interest earlier? Am I not reading carefully?).
I was also troubled by Olive's relationship with Sybilla. I have known women who sacrificed their own lives to take care of their parents, and it was never a healthy relationship (but at least they didn't sleep in the same bed and cuddle all the time!). Even allowing for the customs of the day, it seemed a bit over the top.
Finally, the letter. It was the first thing I thought of when Sybilla died. I would have been in that desk as soon as Sybilla took her last breath.

Nancy wrote: "Finally, the letter. It was the first thing I thought of when Sybilla died. I would have been in that desk as soon as Sybilla took her last breath.."

... which begs an unruly question: is the desk in the cottage still 'that desk'? did they move there with all their furniture?

Early on I was surprised that church and religion weren't mentioned much in Olive's childhood, maybe that is just supposed to be taken for granted. A good minister could have helped Olive feel she was worthy regardless of her appearance or abilities. Her faith is very simple and childlike.

I think Olive's faith comes more from a natural inclination toward mysticism (which we saw in her childhood and adolescence) than from formal training.
I agree with the comments about the weakness of this novel, particularly the mawkishness and the preachiness around gender norms.

sabagrey wrote: "is the desk in the cottage still 'that desk'? did they move there with all their furniture?
..."

That's what I wondered when they moved to the Fludyers', taking Christal with them - it was supposed to be just 'for the summer' at first, but what has happened about the cottage? Have the Vanbrughs sold it, or let it to someone else, or is it still waiting for the Rothesays, in which case, is anybody paying any rent? Or did Sybilla and Olive uproot completely, bringing all their goods and chattels with them?

I got the impression that since their landlords left for Rome, Olive and Sibylla no longer had a home there. We don't learn the logistics of how their furniture got to their new home(I think).

Rosemarie wrote: "I got the impression that since their landlords left for Rome, Olive and Sibylla no longer had a home there. We don't learn the logistics of how their furniture got to their new home(I think)."

But at first, it was supposed to be for the summer only, as Jenny pointed out. Now it looks as if they have come to stay. The author is unclear about this detail, as about so many other things. If the plot jumps all over the place, settings do, too.

sabagrey wrote: "Rosemarie wrote: "I got the impression that since their landlords left for Rome, Olive and Sibylla no longer had a home there. We don't learn the logistics of how their furniture got to their new h..."

The way the author writes, it seems as if Olive and her mother had been at their ‘new’ home for ever. Not sure of the time scale from when they left the Vanburghs until the death of Sybilla, but whatever, it seems such along time ago.

Rosemarie wrote: "I got the impression that since their landlords left for Rome, Olive and Sibylla no longer had a home there. We don't learn the logistics of how their furniture got to their new home(I think)."

It may not have been their furniture at the Vanbrughs' house - they were lodgers rather than tenants, so it's quite likely they moved into furnished rooms.
But then, where is the letter?

It's entirely possible that Olive brought such important documents with her, even if they left the furniture behind. Why it hasn't occurred to her to look at the letter is a mystery. Of course, the author could have just dropped it - she doesn't seem very organized in her plotting.

I suppose it will resurface, maybe Olive will have a vision from God, or come across it in some odd way. Personally, I had forgotten all about it. Also pretty much forgot about Christal who makes only cameo appearances. I think Lyle deserves better, but it seems like those 2 will end up together. Olive seems to be appreciated only by men who are younger or older than her. (Actually Lyle can't be that much younger, now that they are both adults, and I think he tries to convince her of that, but she only sees him as a little boy.)

Nancy wrote: "It's entirely possible that Olive brought such important documents with her, even if they left the furniture behind. Why it hasn't occurred to her to look at the letter is a mystery. Of course, the..."

It's probably because she is such a good girl that she never indulges in curiosity about her elders, and once she understood that she wasn't to read the letter yet, she put it out of her mind.

Jenny wrote: "It's probably because she is such a good girl that she never indulges in curiosity about her elders, and once she understood that she wasn't to read the letter yet, she put it out of her mind."

to do her justice: many years have passed since her father's death, and she's had other things on her mind.

Exactly, like keeping a roof over their heads!

Fair enough!