Words and Pictures

If I've been a bit quiet on the blog front this week, please bear with me. I haven't exactly been lazing around. As I said 'arrivederci' to Italian with a disastrous on-line speaking exam on Monday, Tuesday dawned to my new Open University photography course.

For a long time now I've been interested in the interplay of words and pictures in blogs, and I've been keen to see how I can incorporate photography into my posts. I've been inspired in part by others who have brought their blogs to life with some fantastic pictures.
My first task was to dust down my camera and venture into the garden in my lunch break. For me one of the pleasures of photography, like writing, is to find the beauty and the interest in the most unexpected places. Given my utter neglect of all things horticultural, my garden definitely falls into this category. But no, amongst the long grass and weeds I did still find enough of interest. If you look close enough, you can find beauty in the wilderness after all.

The French lavender has attracted bees all summer and, despite the wind and rain, is putting on one last show.

The wind has brought down the last of the apples I think, or at least the ones that haven't already been pecked by two large black crows that refuse to be intimidated by my frantic window-knocking.

It's the season for picking blackberries and making crumbles. Time to hunker down with some autumn reading.

More on that in my next post.

North and South - a northern Pride and Prejudice?

This was my first book for The Classics Club Challenge.

First published in twenty weekly episodes in Dickens' Household Words in 1854, this was Gaskell's second 'industrial' novel.  Perhaps it was this connection with Dickens that led me to expect something, well, more Dickensian.  North and South appeared in the periodical directly after Dickens' Hard Times. Both novels, set in the industrial north, deal with the conditions of workers and strikers in the cotton industry.

My first mistake, I think, was to think that any other writer could be like Dickens. Who could imitate his theatrical style, grand scope and memorable characters?  I've yet to read Hard Times, but North and South surprised me by being as much a romance as it is a social commentary.

Elizabeth Gaskell

With her father's break from the church, Margaret Hale finds herself uprooted from country life and transplanted to the grim mill town of Milton in Darkshire. After the open fields of her native Helstone she finds the northern town oppressive. She is equally unimpressed by the northern merchants, particularly one Mr Thornton, a wealthy mill owner and her father's student:

"With such an expression of resolution and power, no face, however plain in feature, could be either vulgar or common. I should not like to have to bargain with him; he looks very inflexible. Altogether a man who seems made for his niche, mamma; sagacious, and strong, as becomes a great tradesman."

It is the 'tradesman' part that Margaret looks down on, for despite her own reduced circumstances, she considers herself of a higher class and better educated than he. For his part, Thornton finds Margaret haughty and proud though, as is the way with these stories, he finds herself attracted to her nonetheless.

There is more to the conflict between Margaret and Thornton than just perceived differences in class. Margaret dislikes Thornton's authoritarian attitude to his workers, whilst he considers her naive in her views on worker/master relations. It is only through the strike and Margaret's friendship with the poor Higgins family that the two begin to reconcile their views. Margaret's own family difficulties lead her into a compromising position and she discovers that she doesn't own the moral high ground after all.

Elizabeth Gaskell was in a good position to understand the hardships of the cotton workers. Having grown up, like Margaret, in the countryside, she married the minister William Gaskell and settled in Manchester where William was Minister at the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel. In addition to her writing career, she worked hard to improve the lives of the people living in the slums of Manchester.

The book considers the differences between lives of the workers in the industrial north and those living in the rural south. Margaret comes to appreciate that one is not intrinsically better than the other:

'I suppose each mode of life produces its own trials and its own temptations. The dweller in towns must find it as difficult to be patient and calm, as the country-bred man must find it to be active, and equal to unwonted emergencies. Both must find it hard to realize a future of any kind; the one because the present is so living and hurrying close around him; the other because his life tempts him to revel in the mere sense of animal existence, not knowing of, and consequently not caring for any pungency of pleasure for the attainment of which he can plan, and deny himself and look forward.'

North and South is interesting too for the way in which it explores masculine and feminine roles in Victorian society. For the most part, the female characters are limp and ineffective. There's Edith, Margaret's beautiful but spoilt cousin. She is a shallow, frivolous creature who has no sense of the world beyond her own privileged home. Margaret's mother never overcomes the shock of the move to the industrial north.  Through all the adversities heaped on the Hale family, it is Margaret that holds the family together. Guided by her own sense of right and wrong, she steps beyond the conventional boundaries of the 'feminine' sphere, first to defend Thornton against the striking workers and later in support of the cotton worker Higgins. She deals too with matters legal, working in defence of her brother who is exiled overseas. Thornton's mother is the only other strong female character, but she is fierce and judgemental. It is only Margaret who combines strength of character with real compassion for her fellow man and woman. As a modern woman reading this book, its easy to underestimate Margaret's remarkable achievements.

To be sure, despite the pride and prejudices of the two central characters, Thornton is not a romantic hero in the mould of Darcy, and nor does Gaskell's writing have the acuity and wit of Austen.  Yet the more I reflect on North and South, the more I appreciate the scope of book that has so much to say about life in Victorian England.

Clym Yeobright's face

I was passing the University bookshop in my lunch break and bought a copy of Hardy's The Return of the Native, one of my Classics Club choices.

I opened it at random, and spotted this wonderful passage:

'In Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical countenance of the future. Should there be a classic period to art hereafter, its Pheidias* may produce such faces. The view of life as a thing to be put up with, replacing that zest for existence which was so intense in early civilisations, must ultimately enter so thoroughly into the constitution of the advanced races that its facial expression will become accepted as a new artistic departure. People already feel that a man who lives without disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a mark of mental concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modern perceptiveness to be a modern type.'
 

I hope that, for today at least, life is not just a thing to be put up with, and that you've retained your 'zest for existence.'

Well, it is Friday after all.


*Phidias, Greek sculptor and architect (500-c.432 BC) who designed the Parthenon.

Sartre at The Cornerhouse

Looking at my classics list makes me think of Sartre's auto-didact in Nausea. He would have had no trouble wondering where to begin. Simply start at A and work your way through to Z.

Although I've never read Nausea, I do have a certain affection for the book.  Back in the late 1980s I was an impressionable undergraduate student at the University of Salford.

This was where I met my husband, although we were part of the same social circle, rather than an 'item' in our student days. One of his favourite haunts was The Cornerhouse on Manchester's Oxford Road. Independent cinema, gallery and bar, it was the 'arty' place to be, where the clever girls with very red lipstick used to hang out.  He liked to strike a pose there, smoking Camel cigarettes, casually displaying his copy of Nausea.

As a down-to-earth comprehensive-school-educated Northern lass, pretention didn't come easily to me. I fell asleep watching Jean de Florette, and seldom wore  any lipstick at all. This Nausea-toting young man was the only Salford student I knew with a copy of Mary Warnock's Existentialism on his bookshelf. I was mightily impressed.

Only later did he confess that the Warnock book had mystified him and he hadn't got past the first page. But by then, the damage was done.

Still, I don't hold it against him, and I've never read the Warnock book either.

Mrs Palfrey at The Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor

Mrs Palfrey is a widow, looking for a new home. She settles on The Claremont Hotel, a genteel sort of place in London where many of the guests are, like her, elderly singletons one step from the nursing home.

Life at The Claremont is not exciting. The highlight of the day is the posting of the dinner menu, and even this is the same old dishes appearing in rotation. Taylor is a wonderful observer of character, and manages to capture the essence of The Claremont's clientele quite succinctly. This is what she has to say about Mrs Palfrey herself:

'She was a tall woman with big bones and a noble face, dark eyebrows and a neatly folded jowl. She would have made a distinguished-looking man and, sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked like some famous general in drag.'

After falling in the street, Mrs Palfrey is befriended by a young man, Ludo, who spends his days writing a novel in Harrods banking hall. Embarrassed by the non-appearance of her grandson, she persuades Ludo to masquerade as her grandson and come to dinner at The Claremont.

'It was the first time since she had become a widow that she had been involved in an untruth. In fact, since early childhood, she had not lied at all except on her husband's behalf - to get Arthur out of cocktail parties which he abhorred, or to stave off importunate natives when he was tired. Now - by omission - she was trying to get away with what she thought of as a whopper, and she wondered if either she or Ludo would be equal to it.'

Elizabeth Taylor paints a wonderful picture of old age that is both sad and gently humorous. The genteel, but not always gentle, snobbery of The Claremont residents seems to belong to a bygone age, but the sense of loneliness, the aches and pains and the uncaring relatives are timeless. Taylor has a sharp eye for the comedy of their situation, which stops the book becoming maudlin, although the ending is very sad indeed.

I only heard of Elizabeth Taylor recently, but if this novel is typical of her writing I will certainly be reading more.

On Derwentwater

After a tough month work-wise, a few days in the Lake District was a welcome break. We usually stay in a little village, chosen for its walks and homely pub. This time though, we plumped for the 'metropolis' that is Keswick.  We've visited the Lake District often enough not to be put off by gloomy weather forecasts. Armed with sturdy boots, waterproofs and a bottle of suntan cream (well you never know), we were well prepared, whatever the weather.

We left the hilltops to those with a better head for heights, and set off on a walk around Derwentwater. Lake circuits are my favourite, I think, and have the advantage of making it very difficult to get lost. This is an important consideration.

With fabulous views towards Cat Bells and Borrowdale, Derwentwater didn't disappoint. The Lake District is glorious in rain or shine. A friend from Sardinia tried to convince me of this many years ago, and finally I can see her point.  

Apart from the fabulous views, Derwentwater is also noteworthy as the last remaining native habitat of the vendace fish. At one point we did come rather closer than I'd anticipated to the lake's aquatic life, wading through its chilly waters where the path was flooded.

The lake's islands are interesting too. Derwent Island was bought in 1778 by Joseph Pocklington. He built a house there, and a fort, a gothic boathouse and a mock stone circle. Every year he challenged the people of Keswick to attack the island whilst he shot at them with cannons. I can only hope that there weren't too many casualties. St Herbert's Island is said to be the inspiration for Owl Island in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. In the book Squirrel Nutkin, his brother Twinkleberry and their cousins cross the lake on rafts, using their tails as sails.

As much as I love walking, the highlight was returning to the pub for a pint of beer and a steak pie. Now that's what I call a day well spent.

The Daylight Gate - Jeanette Winterson

'The North is the dark place.

It is not safe to be buried on the north side of the church and the North Door is the way of the Dead.

The north of England is untamed. It can be subdued but it cannot be tamed. Lancashire is the wild part of the untamed.

The Forest of Pendle used to be a hunting ground, but some say that the hill is the hunter - alive in its black-and-green coat cropped like an animal pelt.

The hill itself is low and massy, flat-topped, brooding, disappeared in mists, treacherous with bogs, run through with fast-flowing streams plunging into waterfalls crashing down into unknown pools. Underfoot is the black rock that is the spine of this place.

Sheep graze. Hares stand like question marks.

There are no landmarks for the traveller. Too early or too late the mist closes in. Only a fool or one who has dark business should cross Pendle at night.

Stand on the flat top of Pendle Hill and you can see everything of the county of Lancashire, and some say you can see other things too. This is a haunted place. The living and dead come together on the hill.'

Lancaster Castle,
site of the Pendle Witch trials

Don't you think that's a wonderful opening?  I seldom pre-order books, but when I saw that Jeanette Winterson had written a novella about the Pendle Witches, I couldn't resist.

I must admit to having a particular interest in the Pendle Witches. In August 1612 the Witches were tried at Lancaster Castle and hanged just a stone's throw from my house. On a dark and stormy night I can almost imagine their cries on the wind-swept hill... You can visit the Castle and see the dungeon where the Witches were imprisoned. You can have a drink at The Golden Lion, supposed to be the final stopping point for the Witches on the way to the gallows.

The story begins on Good Friday 1612, with a mysterious gathering of thirteen people at Malkin Tower on Pendle Hill. The gathering is discovered by Roger Nowell, the local magistrate, and from here the story of the unfortunate women unfolds. Winterson does not spare the reader any of the horrors of the women's life either before or after their capture. For the most part they were superstitious, ill-treated women, victims of their own ignorance and poverty. One woman, however, does not fit this mould. She was Alice Nutter, rich widow and landowner. It is Alice's story that is at the heart of the book.

For the first few chapters I didn't know what to make of it all, but once I abandoned my own ideas and prior knowledge of the Witches I found I could properly engage with the story. Winterson combines fact with fiction, reality with witchcraft and religion. Seventeenth century England was obsessed with witchcraft and treason. The Protestant King, James I, wrote Daemonologie, supporting the practise of witch hunting. At the time, witchcraft was considered to be inextricably linked with Catholicism, or 'witchery popery popery witchery' as the lawyer Thomas Potts liked to put it. I certainly hadn't appreciated that the conspirators of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot had fled to Lancashire, making the county a prime target for accusations of witchcraft and treason.

Winterson was commissioned to write The Daylight Gate for Hammer Books. She herself says that the book was written 'as a kind of dare', to see if she could write a Hammer Horror.  There is undoubtedly horror in the book, from the Witches' macabre practices to their terrible treatment before and after their capture. Nor does Winterson spare us the horror of seventeenth-century tortures, as suffered by the Papist Christopher Southworth, Alice Nutter's lover. Strangely though, despite the horror, I will remember the book mostly as a love story. I don't want to give too much away, but if you do read the book you'll see what I mean.

I'm not sure what fans of Winterson's other writing will make of this, but as an imaginative retelling of a fascinating story, I'd certainly recommend it.