[Victoria]

Sorry in advance for the long post. We’re having a heck of a storm here and my power has been off for several hours. It’s just come back and I’m sending this off in one go, in case I lose it again.

Originally Posted by issybird

I don't know what to make of Christine's fate. Her expulsion from the technical school is troubling; otherwise I'd have pegged her to follow in her mother's path and not been all that unhappy with it.

And speaking of Christine and the mordant wit of the book, there's her broken teeth, taken out by a frozen undershirt. That's just cruel. If life's randomness will do that to you, it doesn't bode well.

Fitzgerald did stack everything against Christine. She was literally kicked in the teeth. However, I thought she’d find a way to thrive, because she was ‘local’, and the local people were survivors.

It seemed that Fitzgerald treated the land as a character, and as a symbol of endurance. Despite all the hardship, it and local people, and the Old House find a way. Christine, her mother and sisters, Raven, the scouts, and Mr. Brundish are hardy, hardworking and resourceful. They plant, make moonshine and fish to eek out a living, just like the old livestock that cope with incessant wind, floods, etc.

The newcomers, Violet, Milo, Florence, Katie, are all defeated, just like the new estate that tumbles down the cliff. Florence fails, obviously, but Milo has no purpose in life, Katie has no future in him, and Violet never gets the invitation and acceptance she craves from the authentic local upper class like Mr. Brundish and the many important guests he hosts. The outsiders don’t have what it takes to conquer East Anglia.

Originally Posted by gmw

But if realism is the objective of the story then I find it unfortunate that it should offer us Violet Gamart as the obvious scapegoat for blame. The idea that there is always someone (else) responsible for the bad things in our life is attractive, but misleading.

I agree with this generally. But in this case, I thought Violet was necessary and represented the long arm of money and power abuse that inserted itself into the locals’ lives. It was interesting when the gloves came off between Violet and Mr. Brundish because she had completely underestimated him, and thought he wouldn’t know “who to call”. He’s been pulling his own strings and defeating the new power/ new money’s attempt to erode traditional land holdings for years.

Originally Posted by gmw

That ("exterminators and exterminatees") is another one of those statements in this book that pulled me up short. Such fundamental disagreements had me trying to double-check how I viewed the character(s).

It did seem like an extreme view for Mr. Brundish to hold at the time. But when we later learn that he had been defending his traditional land holdings for years, against a wave of new laws, we can see why he characterized Violet as a exterminator, and innocent people like Florence as exterminatees. He warned her not to confuse force with power. The new powers in London took what they wanted and eliminated anyone in their way.

Originally Posted by issybird

One of the sub-themes I enjoyed was the running, rather snarky, commentary on culture, the arts, literature. I'm still trying to get my thoughts into coherent form about it. But I'm mentioning it here because I do agree that at times I thought Fitzgerald was arguing against herself, or taking both sides of a position.

Here's an example. Florence said to Mr. Keble:

Entirely true in itself, except that Florence didn't evidence a focus on profitability when running her shop, even though culture wasn't her focus, either (the widget issue). Yet, again, earlier in the same conversation Mr. Keble:

Yet, if she'd know this at sixteen, when and why did she lose that discipline? Surely it was behind her disastrous decision to move to Hardborough. But she lost her wits once she started the shop, it seems.

I thought Florence knew better too - she wasn’t just naive. She tells the bank manager she’d learned the business very thoroughly as a girl, and the fundamentals hadn’t changed. But she doesn’t total the columns in her accounts because she doesn’t want to know the answer. She resists Milo’s suggestion to carry the book if it isn’t a “good book” even though it will sell. When it sells beautifully, she doesn’t bring in more commercially successful books. She even resents the space the cards and other bread and butter items take up, though they sell.

I think she loses the discipline because she’s an avoider. At the beginning of the book she recognizes that the heron and the eel had taken on too much and were doomed by “the indecision expressed by both creatures”. She even avoids her own age. Though she’s lonely, she won’t get in touch with her old friends because she doesn’t want to admit that “the girls” have gotten older.

PS
Since Florence is anti-hero, it seems to me that Fitzgerald’s loyalties were firmly with the local folk. I wonder if that has anything to do with her background. I intend to read a bit more about her now that I have the internet back.