Josephine March, Garrets, and a Room of One's Own

"I woke the next morning with three things in my head- a pair of swollen eyes, a heavy pain, and a fixed determination to write a book."

This line is from Miles Franklin's 1899 novel, My Brilliant Career (discussed previously), which goes on to describe the young 'Authoress', Sybilla Melvyn, scribbling at her book in the dark of the night; hiding it from a conservative family who little understands her need to create.

A similarly ambitious 'scribbler' is Jo March in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women series, first published in 1868, about thirty-two years before the gutsy Franklin put pen to page.

Jo March is one of the saving graces of Alcott's somewhat preachy series of novels about the March family. A deeply flawed and thus profoundly human character, Jo is strong minded and fiercely independent. She struggles with herself as much as with the restrictions of outside world.

The passage below (one of my favourite parts of this novel) gives us a portrait of Jo the writer:

Every few weeks [Jo] would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and `fall into a vortex', as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her `scribbling suit' consisted of a black woollen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow, did anyone dare address Jo.

She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living, even if they bore no other fruit. The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her `vortex', hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.

(from chapter IV of Good Wives, Part Two of Little Women)

These paragraphs clearly show the euphoria brought on by writing. I've been reading a bit of Alice Walker lately, and I'm almost tempted to use a phrase like 'ecstatic creation' to describe Jo's writing process.

Jo declares a space for herself in which she can be an artist and then assertively defends it from her family. Her unusual clothing signifies the internal changes she undergoes as she writes, letting the Marches know that, temporarily at least, she is no longer the dutiful daughter of the house.

Like a mad professor in her 'rakish' cap, she grumpily rejects the mundane realm, taking to a private space to perform mysterious acts of creation. Escaping the endless domestic clatter, she claims, in Virginia Woolf's timeless words, "a room of one's own".

Considering the era's ambivalent attitudes to literary women, Jo's family seems unusually supportive of her artistic inclinations. Perhaps, though, they see Jo's writing not as a serious pursuit, but as an extension of her eccentricity and tom-boyishness. An obsessively scribbling daughter is something of a 'cross' for the saintly Marches to bear.

This attitude is also indicated by how, earlier in the series, Jo's writing takes place in a garret. Garrets are spaces of marginality, traditionally inhabited by dusty old furniture and bric-a-brac, not to mention the odd ghost, or mad wife. Jo's literary career is therefore pushed to the outer fringe of the household, perhaps symbolic of its perceived 'oddness' by the March family.

A vague anxiety about Jo's writing also exists in Alcott's likening it to a 'fit' or 'attack'. Jo enters an almost feverish state where she declines all nourishment, provoking worry from her mother and relief once the 'attack' has passed. Victorian novels often depict heroines falling ill of 'brain fever' after excessive mental strain. I can't imagine Alcott believing such twaddle, of-course, but I do have to wonder if this idea crept in unawares.

These quibbles, are, however, small and do not stack up against evidence that, by and large, Jo's family genuinely encourages her literary career. So much so, in fact, that it makes me wish Sybilla Melvyn could have gone back in time about thirty years, emigrated to America, and moved in with the Marches. She probably would have had to undertake more bible-study than anyone should ever have to, but on the up-side, I'm sure Jo would have given her a corner of the writer's garret for her very own...

'Catalpa', by Jolie Holland

Catalpa Trees

Today, I played the album Catalpa, by Jolie Holland, and remembered just how it is that I've survived five Hobart winters, debilitating heart-lung disease, and a persistent sense of impending doom (brought on by the last two things, as well as by global warming, the Liberal party, politics in general, and most of all, the dark and troubled soul of my recalcitrant Persian cat, Mr Blush...)

Holland is an American musician, singer, and song-writer whose eerie, spell-binding, musical-fables have long acted as my 'chicken soup for the soul'. Some people pray to a deity, some people read self-help books. For emotional and spiritual solace, I listen to Jolie Holland.

Right from the beginning, Catalpa envelopes you in its dreamy warmth. Listening to this album is like slipping into a steaming bubble bath and wallowing for hours, careless of the world and the worry it brings. Harmonicas, banjos, bells, a musical saw, guitars, and the delicate pickings of a ukulele combine to build a subtle soundscape steeped in gloom, yet somehow tinged with spectral light.

Catalpa's folk genre as well as its lyrical images of country roads and lonesome whippoorwills have the potential to create a stagey, hokey, kind of nostalgia common to many such 'Americana' styled albums.

This is not the case here, or in Holland's other three albums. In Catalpa, reference to the past only serves to give glimmering depth to the present. Holland's music creates warm, carefully excavated caverns that you can climb inside: familiar, safe, dark, and dripping with centuries of meaning.

This first album of Holland's is the least polished - you can actually hear her coughing on one of the tracks - but nonetheless remains my decided favourite.

Mr Blush is also quite fond of Catalpa, and I'm sure would love to find the lonesome whippoorwill (pictured below) so that he could eat it...

Miles Franklin's Brilliant Career

The afternoon sky huddles darkly against the window, while steam from a pot of brown rice boiling on the stove rolls along my kitchen ceiling like great swathes of mist along a river. I read My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin a few weeks ago, and now, the steam gathering in the ceiling reminds me of mist and rivers, and the bush.

But this book has significance well beyond its evocative and lovingly wrought descriptions of the Australian bush. My Brilliant Career is the honest and intelligent outpourings of a young woman dismayed at the narrowness of her future, and determined to defy conventions.

Stella Miles Franklin's potential to be a brilliant singer and pianist was crushed due to her family's reduced financial circumstances. Amidst the grinding poverty and unrelenting labour of her family's drought-stricken dairy farm, she wrote both prolifically and honestly of her disappointments, frustrations, fears, and aspirations, channelling them all into the fictional character of Sybylla Melvyn, who is similarly trapped by circumstance and gender.

At the age of eighteen, she manically 'scribbled' (as she called it) at My Brilliant Career for about six months before sending it off to several publishers with no success. Finally, she sent it to Henry Lawson, who took it to an agent responsible for notables such as H.G. Wells, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad. And thus, by the time she was twenty-two years old, Stella Miles Franklin's brilliant career was launched...

Miles Franklin was one of those rare individuals able to think outside of what society perceived as 'normal'. This is most clear in her literary creation, Sybylla, who cuts a most unusual figure amongst the placid, ringletted, self-sacrificing maidens who populated much Nineteenth Century fiction. Franklin's outspoken and ambitious heroine rips away at the very fabric constructing these stereotypes.

Sybylla radically challenges even contemporary notions of gender. She is self-centred, sharply intelligent, strong-willed, and has a clear notion of what she wants out of life. Her realistic flaws, her youth, truthfulness, and courage make her one of the most endearing characters in Australian literature

Her stubborn refusal to marry stems from an all too real threat faced by women of her time. With no birth control, marriage meant endless pregnancies, possible health complications, many children, and economic dependence on a male. The negative implications of marriage are illustrated in Sybylla's unhappy, and trapped mother, who has nine other children and a feckless, alcoholic husband.

Sybylla, naturally, envisions a better future for herself. But more than that, she sees that she has the right to claim space in the world for herself, to realise fulfilment well beyond the boundaries of the domestic sphere and their small-minded rural community.

Finally, narrative tension in My Brilliant Career hinges on Sybylla's willingness to compromise; will she bow to the immense pressure on all sides and accept her 'fate' as a woman, or will she stubbornly continue: independent and free, but alone and unloved?

It is interesting then, how this key tension in the novel played out in Franklin's real life. In the novel, Sybylla essentially has to choose between her career as a writer, and her suitor, Harold Beechum. In real life, Stella Miles Franklin must choose between conforming to her family's needs, or striking out on her own.

Tellingly, after the novel was published, Franklin was effectively cut off from her family and community, most of whom were scandalised by the book as they wrongly assumed it was purely autobiographical.

Franklin never fully repaired the rift with her family, but nonetheless led a full, brave, and vibrant life, as a writer, committed feminist and social activist.

Eventually, Miles Franklin was yet again forced to make a harrowing decision; between continuing the much needed fight for women's rights, or devoting herself body and soul to writing...

Here is a link to a review to the 1979 film of My Brilliant Career:

http://alsolikelife.com/shooting/2007/12/939-my-brilliant-career-1979-gillian-armstrong/

An Appropriate Read For These Cold, Wintery, Days

It was Hobart's never-ending rainy weather that finally prompted me to drag my wet laundry down the street to the laundromat; a place I hadn't visited for over five years. Inside: the most wonderful of all things: warmth - and free warmth at that - most important in these chilly days of steadily rising Electricity bills. Also: that divine smell of laundry powder and heated fabric, reminiscent of clean sheets and freshly made beds.

While my laundry was whizzing around the insides of a rather clanging and cavernous dryer, I sat down to wait, opening my copy of Villette, by Charlotte Bronte.

Villette is a gorgeously evocative, and deeply engaging novel that also happens to be somewhat dark and depressing, continually touching on themes of loneliness and social isolation. Bronte uses images of snow, coldness, ghosts, and empty attics to portray the internal feelings of her chronically unhappy heroine, Lucy Snowe.

What I found interesting about Villette this morning, was the excerpt I read while sitting in the laundromat. Here, Lucy Snowe visits an art gallery and stands for many minutes contemplating what is easily identified as a typical Nineteenth Century Orientalist painting. I read:

It represented a woman, considerably larger, I thought, than the life. I calculated that this lady, put into a scale of magnitude, suitable for the reception of a commodity of bulk, would infallibly turn from fourteen to sixteen stone. She was, indeed, extremely well fed: very much butcher’s meat—to say nothing of bread, vegetables, and liquids —must she have consumed to attain that breadth and height, that wealth of muscle, that affluence of flesh. She lay half-reclined on a couch: why, it would be difficult to say; broad daylight blazed round her; she appeared in hearty health, strong enough to do the work of two plain cooks; she could not plead a weak spine; she ought to have been standing, or at least sitting bolt upright. She, had no business to lounge away the noon on a sofa. She ought likewise to have worn decent garments; a gown covering her properly, which was not the case: out of abundance of material—seven-and-twenty yards, I should say, of drapery—she managed to make inefficient raiment. Then, for the wretched untidiness surrounding her, there could be no excuse. Pots and pans—perhaps I ought to say vases and goblets—were rolled here and there on the foreground; a perfect rubbish of flowers was mixed amongst them, and an absurd and disorderly mass of curtain upholstery smothered the couch and cumbered the floor. On referring to the catalogue, I found that this notable production bore the name "Cleopatra." (186 - 187, Bronte, 1853)

Griselda Pollock, in her book Differencing the Cannon, wrote that Bronte's painting is not based on an actual work, but rather on a combination of images around the notion of 'Cleopatra'.

Orientalist paintings often portrayed decadent, sexualised, women idling away their lives in Harems. They were part of a Western and very racialised discourse about the exotic 'far East', one that Bronte engaged with in Villette, as well as in Jane Eyre.

The below painting, Leila, by Frank Dicksee, was painted in 1892, and is therefore obviously not the painting pondered by Lucy Snowe. It is, nonetheless, a perfect example of an Orientalist work and readily came to my mind as I read Bronte's description of the fictional 'Cleopatra'.



Describing Lucy Snowe's strong aversion to this painting, Bronte sets up a clear divide between the values represented by 'Cleopatra' and the values treasured by her heroine.

Straight-laced protestant Lucy condemns, in Pollock's words, the painting's "gross physicality, indecency, and indolency: coded signs of an unharnessed sexuality." Cleopatra signifies a sexualised, decadent, 'other',the antithesis of Lucy's characterisation.

Throughout Villette we are often told via the confiding first-person narration of Lucy, that decadence, sensuality, and frivolity are foolish and useless. These ideas seem a key message of the novel.

However, Lucy's authority as a narrator is continually undermined by her characterisation. Miserable, alone, cold, and aloof from others, she constantly watches people with a possessive, hungry, gaze.

Names are often significant in Nineteenth Century novels, and Lucy's surname is no exception, evoking a chilling sense of desolation. Snow is also blanketing and concealing, and Lucy's strong, vibrant, character is hidden from those around her who are, for the most part, too caught up in their own lives to take much notice of the eccentric school teacher.

The most telling image in Villete is the ghost of a nun said to be buried alive beneath the school. This resonates strongly with the character of Lucy, telling us that her isolation renders her symbolically buried alive.

Such images and themes make me think that perhaps the novel's key message is not a moral diatribe against decadent culture, but the very opposite: that enjoyment of and fulfilment in life are vital to emotional and mental survival.

I haven't finished this novel yet, but when I do I will certainly update about anything else that strikes a chord with me in this novel, or any changes of opinion about what I have discussed today.

I think the cold weather and the darkness of winter have made me think about Villette and the troubled Lucy Snowe with something approaching empathy.

Curious ones, you can check out the synopsis of Villette, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villette_(novel)

and even read the entire novel online here:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bronte/charlotte/b869v/

The First Ever Post

Dear (computer-owning) World,

My intentions for this blog are as follows:

• Some delightful, entertaining, and (hopefully) insightful commentary on the World At Large.

• Accompanied by (and inclusive of) observations regarding that dense, glittery, fairy-forest of popular culture haunted by the rapacious ghosts of two centuries of Literature...

Hopefully I won't make too many spelling errors in the process. In the mean time, for lack of any divine inspiration right this very second, have a poem:




The Song of Wandering Aengus
William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.


And just for fun, a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOijf_92ZFs