Book Review: Gone to Earth
Jul. 11th, 2013 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerCherries fell in the orchard with the same rich monotony, the same fatality, as drops of blood. They lay under the fungus-riven trees till the hens ate them, pecking gingerly and enjoyably at their lustrous beauty as the world does at a poet’s heart.
There you have Mary Webb’s Gone to Earth in a nutshell: overblown, melodramatic, but so over-the-top in its ominousness that it works a grim and despairing spell. You don’t want to go on, and yet, like Hazel, you must; a mysterious force compels you.
Hazel Woodus is our heroine, and as her name suggests, she is at one with nature; often I scoff at this sort of thing, but Hazel actually carries this characterization off well. She seems to bleed whenever she sees any hurting creature. She yearns to roam free and untrammeled and would really rather not marry anyone, thank you very much.
But Forces are conspiring against her. The first of these is Reddin, owner of Undern Hall (the home of the cherries that fall like drops of blood), an unmitigated brute who loves to hunt and wench, and tends to think of his two pastimes in the same terms. We first meet him when he picks up Hazel along the highway and takes her Undern.
Fortunately Hazel escapes. But when her father threatens to kill her pet fox, Hazel rashly promises to marry the first man who asks, just to save her pet. And who should ask for her hand...
...but Edward, the local preacher to whom Hazel in all innocence confessed her promise? Edward doesn’t know about Reddin, but he wants to save her from god-knows-who might propose to her. But he feels he can’t take advantage of her by forcing her into a position where she has to have sex with him, and therefore promises he will treat her as a sister.
Unfortunately even Hazel’s marriage is not enough to get Reddin to stop stalking her. In fact, he basically moves into the woods outside of Edward’s house, so he can harass Hazel whenever he gets the chance.
At last both Hazel (and the reader) becomes so exhausted by Reddin's persistence that she agrees to come see Reddin at Undern. Although she doesn’t want to, she goes. He casts Hazel into the bracken and rapes her. Edward comes to fetch her, she goes home with him, but despite herself she’s drawn back to Undern - there’s a certain amount of “She belonged to Reddin now” which made me want to cast the book at the wall, only you just can’t do that with a Kindle -
And then again she returns to Edward, and he threatens to rape her too, only he doesn’t go through with it, but apparently threatening it was enough that now Edward also is a master of her heart so she can stay with him, rather than traipsing back to Reddin despite the fact that she doesn't even like him.
This book has a very strange take on sex. It doesn’t seem to hold with the theory, which became awfully popular in the twenties and thirties, that women secretly yearn to be brutalized - Hazel doesn’t want to be hurt, can’t stand to see other things hurt, and she keeps going back to Reddin despite not really liking him. It’s like sexual attraction is a mystical force that overrides the will.
(But only for women. Reddin rapes Hazel because he wants to and believes it’s his right, not because the mystical force of sex forces him to it.)
Anyway, Hazel returns to Edward, and they’re planning to build a life together despite the fact that she’s pregnant with Reddin’s child...only Hazel’s pet fox gets caught up in a foxhunt. Hazel runs out to save the fox, gets in the path of the dogs, and to spare her fox the indignity of death by fox hunt Hazel flings them both into a quarry.
WHAT. WHAT. WHAT IS THIS. ANY OF THIS. I DON’T EVEN KNOW.
***
In case you were wondering, I read this book because it is on the list of books that the librarian Mrs. Phelps recommended to Matilda (of Roald Dahl’s Matilda) when Matilda was but a four-year-old.
This list also contains Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I am wondering why Mrs. Phelps felt that Matilda, however brilliant, ought to read all these chronicles of sexual dishonor and misery at the age of four, and whether this had a deleterious effect on Matilda’s future relationships with men.
There you have Mary Webb’s Gone to Earth in a nutshell: overblown, melodramatic, but so over-the-top in its ominousness that it works a grim and despairing spell. You don’t want to go on, and yet, like Hazel, you must; a mysterious force compels you.
Hazel Woodus is our heroine, and as her name suggests, she is at one with nature; often I scoff at this sort of thing, but Hazel actually carries this characterization off well. She seems to bleed whenever she sees any hurting creature. She yearns to roam free and untrammeled and would really rather not marry anyone, thank you very much.
But Forces are conspiring against her. The first of these is Reddin, owner of Undern Hall (the home of the cherries that fall like drops of blood), an unmitigated brute who loves to hunt and wench, and tends to think of his two pastimes in the same terms. We first meet him when he picks up Hazel along the highway and takes her Undern.
Fortunately Hazel escapes. But when her father threatens to kill her pet fox, Hazel rashly promises to marry the first man who asks, just to save her pet. And who should ask for her hand...
...but Edward, the local preacher to whom Hazel in all innocence confessed her promise? Edward doesn’t know about Reddin, but he wants to save her from god-knows-who might propose to her. But he feels he can’t take advantage of her by forcing her into a position where she has to have sex with him, and therefore promises he will treat her as a sister.
Unfortunately even Hazel’s marriage is not enough to get Reddin to stop stalking her. In fact, he basically moves into the woods outside of Edward’s house, so he can harass Hazel whenever he gets the chance.
At last both Hazel (and the reader) becomes so exhausted by Reddin's persistence that she agrees to come see Reddin at Undern. Although she doesn’t want to, she goes. He casts Hazel into the bracken and rapes her. Edward comes to fetch her, she goes home with him, but despite herself she’s drawn back to Undern - there’s a certain amount of “She belonged to Reddin now” which made me want to cast the book at the wall, only you just can’t do that with a Kindle -
And then again she returns to Edward, and he threatens to rape her too, only he doesn’t go through with it, but apparently threatening it was enough that now Edward also is a master of her heart so she can stay with him, rather than traipsing back to Reddin despite the fact that she doesn't even like him.
This book has a very strange take on sex. It doesn’t seem to hold with the theory, which became awfully popular in the twenties and thirties, that women secretly yearn to be brutalized - Hazel doesn’t want to be hurt, can’t stand to see other things hurt, and she keeps going back to Reddin despite not really liking him. It’s like sexual attraction is a mystical force that overrides the will.
(But only for women. Reddin rapes Hazel because he wants to and believes it’s his right, not because the mystical force of sex forces him to it.)
Anyway, Hazel returns to Edward, and they’re planning to build a life together despite the fact that she’s pregnant with Reddin’s child...only Hazel’s pet fox gets caught up in a foxhunt. Hazel runs out to save the fox, gets in the path of the dogs, and to spare her fox the indignity of death by fox hunt Hazel flings them both into a quarry.
WHAT. WHAT. WHAT IS THIS. ANY OF THIS. I DON’T EVEN KNOW.
***
In case you were wondering, I read this book because it is on the list of books that the librarian Mrs. Phelps recommended to Matilda (of Roald Dahl’s Matilda) when Matilda was but a four-year-old.
This list also contains Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I am wondering why Mrs. Phelps felt that Matilda, however brilliant, ought to read all these chronicles of sexual dishonor and misery at the age of four, and whether this had a deleterious effect on Matilda’s future relationships with men.
