Yes, I thought of that while I was reading! (I must get back to John Halifax, Gentleman at some point. I left off while they're still young teenagers.)
Yes, this one is FASCINATING from the perspective of "society in ye olden days was WAY more elastic than you might expect in some respects," but it's definitely a peculiar book and the ending is a lot. (It's quite an unusual ending for Howells; normally he doesn't end with characters dying.) And the characters are def. less shippable than in Mrs. Farrell, largely because we never see them alone together: the whole book is told at a sort of remove through the perspective of the Marches.
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Date: 2021-10-26 08:28 pm (UTC)Yes, this one is FASCINATING from the perspective of "society in ye olden days was WAY more elastic than you might expect in some respects," but it's definitely a peculiar book and the ending is a lot. (It's quite an unusual ending for Howells; normally he doesn't end with characters dying.) And the characters are def. less shippable than in Mrs. Farrell, largely because we never see them alone together: the whole book is told at a sort of remove through the perspective of the Marches.