[issybird]

Terrific post, gmw. I think I've been harshing overmuch. I still think the book is a failure technically (and a change in the narration to simple third person would have worked wonders, as Bookpossum noted), but I think the story is more successful and has more depth than I credited it (as Victoria said in regard to how it held our interest despite its flaws).

Originally Posted by gmw

That she finds a way to make her desires fit with her religious belief is not a surprise, but the struggle to get there feels realistic to me. (Even the long-windedness of it is realistic ).

This gibes with my reaction when I thought Helen was terribly gullible for far too long, but I also acknowledged how realistic that was, where the victim of abuse makes excuses and hopes against hope beyond any realistic expectation that things, or the abuser, will change, the more so in the face of the lack of alternatives. It's something people don't necessarily understand even now, "Why didn't she just leave?" they'll say, when the answer is, "It's complicated."

A very restrained vengeance it may be, but desire for vengeance it remains.

The religious constraints she is under - that she holds herself under - make her return to nurse Arthur (Snr) quite understandable. To be able to live with herself she must make amends for the sin of abandoning him in the first place; her own nature leaves her no other recourse.

I seriously doubt if this book was ever intentionally feminist - not if Anne's beliefs resemble Helen's in an way - but it does remain remarkable for what it elucidates about the situation for (upper class) women of the time, including the implicit prejudices that they hold for themselves: if there is any woman that is truly a "nonentity" (claimed for Miss Millward) in this story, it would have to be Rachel; such loyalty and devotion, but does Helen ever really notice her as a person?

I had been thinking that there was a class element in this book that I didn't really recognize. The better class men were all reprobates, reformed or pure as the driven. You had to look to what for want of a better word I'll call the middle class to find people who could handle their drink. I wonder if that was a subliminal element for Anne, that of the noble gentleman farmer (Gilbert's father's comments about their calling come to mind). Even as I read it, I found Gilbert's willingness to work with his laborers in the field to be the single most likable thing about him. No false pride there, no matter how he behaved in people's parlors.

There's also the setting of the book, in the 1820s. A time of reaction to the excesses of the Regency era as the Hanover dynasty played out, leading up to the moral and religious revival of the Victorian era, when the book was written and when Gilbert set down to write to Halford. The dissolute gentry were the last gasp of wanton world, as a new order took place, where the noble farmer and family values took sway. Arthur's death was symbolic of that.