Haworth, and Agnes Grey
Dec. 13th, 2009 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerHaworth today. I swear the bus driver was a cannibal; that's the only explanation for why he had the heat turned up to "barbecue."
Fortunately we made it to Haworth before any permanent damage set in, and I visited the Bronte parsonage which has been turned into a museum. It overlooks the Haworth graveyard, which I'm sure had no effect on the morbid cast to the Bronte sisters' imaginations at all.
It was a sad visit. They've kept the front parlor where the sisters wrote together just as it was, the black leather couch where Emily died still sitting against the wall. It's such a small room, smaller than my dorm room; they would light the grate and the room would grow dim with coal smoke, and they would sit at the table and write and walk around and around the table in circles when the writing wasn't going well. Their books all have this yearning for hugeness: expanses of moor, enormous skies, foreign travel, pervasive restlessness.
They would have loved to have lived my life for the last few months.
And their desire, too, for grand passion and epic romance; and Emily and Anne died alone, and Charlotte married her father's curate, who loved her dearly although her feelings are more ambiguous, who moved into the parsonage so that even in marriage she didn't leave home.
This may be the first trip I'm sorry I've made. Hopefully I'll feel better about it tomorrow.
I considered searching the graveyard for Charlotte and Emily's graves, but I decided against it; it was a cold, cloudy, creepy day, not good weather for searching graveyards.
***
Incidentally, I finished Agnes Grey just before going to Haworth.
...which isn't saying too much, because I'd settled in grimly for the haul. The narrator, Agnes, becomes somewhat more likable but remains something of a nebbish; it's easy to see why she adores Mr. Weston, but not so clear why he should love her back.
Partly this is a structural problem. The book starts off slowly, with a completely irrelevant section about the first governess job Agnes takes, so we don't even meet the love interest until halfway through the book - at which point Agnes sees him very rarely, so the focus is on her unrequited adoration rather than the two of them getting to know each other or falling in love.
Her unrequited adoration is beautifully depicted, but the skimpy relationship between them makes the ending seem entirely out of the blue.
I did think Agnes's relationship with her charge, Miss Rosalie Murray, was quite well done. On the one hand Miss Murray is an obnoxious person: she gets her kicks mainly by making men fall in love with her purely so she can grind their hearts beneath her elegantly shod feet, and she treats Agnes like a cross between a slave and a toy. Agnes understandably finds that irritating, and sometimes she quite hates Miss Murray.
But other times she doesn't; she's worked for the family for years, she knows why Miss Murray is the way she is, and she grieves when Miss Murray marries a vile man (who she knows to be vile) purely for the money - and ends up predictably miserable - because while Miss Murray's misery is a result of her own foolish actions, no one deserves to be miserable for the rest of their life because they were foolish when they were eighteen.
I thought the ebb and flow of Agnes's attitude towards Miss Murray was quite interesting: the mixture of affection, hatred, sympathy, disdain, pity, present sometimes all at once and sometimes alone, and always in flux. It's too bad the romance didn't get the same subtle handling.
As it's the last week and I'm feeling lazy, I'm going to finish up with Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. Whaddaya mean Terry Pratchett isn't a British classic? Of course he's a British classic!
Fortunately we made it to Haworth before any permanent damage set in, and I visited the Bronte parsonage which has been turned into a museum. It overlooks the Haworth graveyard, which I'm sure had no effect on the morbid cast to the Bronte sisters' imaginations at all.
It was a sad visit. They've kept the front parlor where the sisters wrote together just as it was, the black leather couch where Emily died still sitting against the wall. It's such a small room, smaller than my dorm room; they would light the grate and the room would grow dim with coal smoke, and they would sit at the table and write and walk around and around the table in circles when the writing wasn't going well. Their books all have this yearning for hugeness: expanses of moor, enormous skies, foreign travel, pervasive restlessness.
They would have loved to have lived my life for the last few months.
And their desire, too, for grand passion and epic romance; and Emily and Anne died alone, and Charlotte married her father's curate, who loved her dearly although her feelings are more ambiguous, who moved into the parsonage so that even in marriage she didn't leave home.
This may be the first trip I'm sorry I've made. Hopefully I'll feel better about it tomorrow.
I considered searching the graveyard for Charlotte and Emily's graves, but I decided against it; it was a cold, cloudy, creepy day, not good weather for searching graveyards.
***
Incidentally, I finished Agnes Grey just before going to Haworth.
...which isn't saying too much, because I'd settled in grimly for the haul. The narrator, Agnes, becomes somewhat more likable but remains something of a nebbish; it's easy to see why she adores Mr. Weston, but not so clear why he should love her back.
Partly this is a structural problem. The book starts off slowly, with a completely irrelevant section about the first governess job Agnes takes, so we don't even meet the love interest until halfway through the book - at which point Agnes sees him very rarely, so the focus is on her unrequited adoration rather than the two of them getting to know each other or falling in love.
Her unrequited adoration is beautifully depicted, but the skimpy relationship between them makes the ending seem entirely out of the blue.
I did think Agnes's relationship with her charge, Miss Rosalie Murray, was quite well done. On the one hand Miss Murray is an obnoxious person: she gets her kicks mainly by making men fall in love with her purely so she can grind their hearts beneath her elegantly shod feet, and she treats Agnes like a cross between a slave and a toy. Agnes understandably finds that irritating, and sometimes she quite hates Miss Murray.
But other times she doesn't; she's worked for the family for years, she knows why Miss Murray is the way she is, and she grieves when Miss Murray marries a vile man (who she knows to be vile) purely for the money - and ends up predictably miserable - because while Miss Murray's misery is a result of her own foolish actions, no one deserves to be miserable for the rest of their life because they were foolish when they were eighteen.
I thought the ebb and flow of Agnes's attitude towards Miss Murray was quite interesting: the mixture of affection, hatred, sympathy, disdain, pity, present sometimes all at once and sometimes alone, and always in flux. It's too bad the romance didn't get the same subtle handling.
As it's the last week and I'm feeling lazy, I'm going to finish up with Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. Whaddaya mean Terry Pratchett isn't a British classic? Of course he's a British classic!
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-13 11:25 pm (UTC)ETA: this comment is a classic case of latching on to the last thing said and only responding to that. I thought what you said about the Bronte residence was really moving and sad, and I had thought *that's* what I'd say here, but then I got distracted at the end...
no subject
Date: 2009-12-14 09:14 am (UTC)I've been enjoying Going Postal so far.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-14 11:15 am (UTC)... I do all three things.
Anyway, I like your posts very much. One thing I meant to ask: why did you regret coming to Haworth? Was it just that you felt sad for the Brontes, or was it something more/else?
no subject
Date: 2009-12-14 04:10 pm (UTC)I feel better about it today, so the feeling was fairly ephemeral.