Circle of Friends Part IV.

Benny can't stand Sean and worries that her parents seem to be pushing them into a relationship. In the new Year, she goes to Dublin one Saturday, to meet Jack and her friends, pleading that she has an extra lecture. Eddie, her father, dies suddenly of a heart attack during the afternoon. Benny, badly shaken, comes back to Knockglen as soon as she hears the news and she finds that her mother is completely devastated by her husband's death. She is very upset but she can see that she is tied to her home even more than before. Then Annabel, her mother and Benny get a nasty shock learning from Sean that Mr Hogan had recently offered him a partnership. The business was not doing well, and he had worked there for 10 years with no prospect of promotion so Mr Hogan agreed to make him a partner. Benny is worried at the idea of Sean being master of the business and she begins to wonder why the business was doing so badly. This additional worry means she has even less time to spend with Jack, and she worries about losing him to a girl who is in Dublin.

Circle of Friends Part III

Benny enjoys college but she is depressed by the fact that her parents expect her back at home every evening and she doesn't get much chance to socialise. She manages to get to a party being held at Jack's house and he realises that she is very attractive in an unusual way. He asks her out, and she is so thrilled. Nan however has higher ambitions than meeting a student. She has found out that Eve is a cousin to a well to do Protestant family, and decides to pursue Simon. Eve is grateful to Simon for helping her out but her pride won't let her have much to do with the family, in case they think she is trying to get on socially or be helped financially by them. Nan thinks Eve is a fool not to make use of her connexions, although she is not fully aware that the Westwards are not that well off any more, and that Simon himself hopes to marry someone with money to help out with the farm's problems. Benny starts to go out with Jack but she can't meet him that often, as she is still expected home every night. Eve is going out with Aidan now and Nan still has her eye on Simon. She persuades one of her admirers to go with her, to gatecrash a society wedding.. where the Protestant landowner will be a guest. Jack's parents know that he is going out with Benny and his mother is not too keen on the romance. Meanwhile Benny has an uneasy feeling about her parents. They wanted her to go to college but nowadays the shop isnt doing very well and she begins to wonder if they are hoping that she would marry Sean and go into the business.

Circle of Friends II

Benny meets Eve in Dublin on the first day of college, and Eve tells her she is going to find some way of getting to University. Then, both of them are involved in a traffic accident. Benny is not hurt but Eve is. When waiting in hospital for treatment they meet some of their fellow students who were also there when the car crashed. One is a very beautiful girl of 18 called Nan Mahon; she is a Dubliner, and her father is a small builder. However he is also given to drinking and hits her downtrodden mother Emily quite often. They also meet Jack and Aidan. Jack is the son of a well to do doctor and is studying law. He is very handsome and charming and Benny is attracted to him. Aidan fancies himself as a bit of a wit, and he takes a liking to Eve who laughs at him. Eve goes back home to the convent where the nuns make a fuss of her and she tells Mother Francis who has looked after her, that she could not stand the convent in Dublin. She decides to approach the Westward family to ask if they would pay for her to go to college. She approaches her cousin, Simon, who is managing the estate, his father is now an elderly invalid... and he feels a bit guilty that the family has neglected her and he agrees to pay for her university fees. She gets a job in Dublin helping out a lady who rents rooms to students...and prepares to start her new life. The 2 girls like Nan, but dont realise that she is very ambitious. She is not academic and is mainly going to college in hopes that she will meet someone well to do and marry him.

Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy I

This is one of Binchy's mid life novels which was very successful and which was made into a film in the 1990s. It was not a very good film. The novel is set in the late 50s, and the heroine is a rather plain girl called Benny (Bernadette) Hogan. She is the only child of doting parents, who live in a village called Knockglen, not too far from Dublin. Benny becomes friendly with a girl from her school Eve Malone, who is an orphan; her parents were of different faiths and eloped. Her mother died when she was born and her father who had a drink problem died soon after. Her maternal family, the Westwards were the Protestant landlords of the area and were not keen to take in an infant who would have to be reared as a Catholic, so she was finally taken care of by the local nuns who ran the school. Eve was happy in her unusual home, but she was pleased when she and Benny became friends. Benny's father was a bit disappointed to have no son to take on his family business, a mens tailors, so he takes on an apprentice Sean who moves into rooms over the shop. Sean is a bit of an Uriah Heep and the 2 girls dont like him. When they are 18 Benny is expected to go to University but there is no money to send Eve. She is instead sent to a convent in Dublin, where she will learn typing.. and she hates the idea.

Lyn Reid Banks Part VI

Patrick was worried by Charlotte's pregnancy and she soon became ill. She had severe vomiting, a condition that affects some women in pregnancy and it was clear that she was seriously ill. Arthur nursed her devotedly but she grew weaker. It seemed her short period of married happiness was coming to an end. She was exhausted and felt too ill to be glad that she was having a baby. Arthur had promised her that he would take care of Patrick if anything happened to her, and now, she was clearly not going to recover, so he braced himself to agree to stay with the old man till he died. She told him that they had been so happy, and she could not quite believe she was going to die, but she was fading away. Tabby, her old nurse, died of old age just before Charlotte also passed away. The story ends there, with Arthur taking up the burden of looking after Patrick which he did for 6 years. He then gave up his orders and returned to Ireland, and he later married a cousin of his, Mary Ann Bell who was a fond wife to him for many years. But his great love was always Charlotte. The two novels are very good albeit Banks used the historical works that were available at the time. She seems to have rather put in every good story about the Brontes that she came across, rather than selecting and checking things out, but it was still an entertaining work. The First novel was weaker than the second, I think, because in their early years the Brontes did have a narrow and difficult life. Branwell's alcoholism and weak nature caused problems and the girls were forced to go out as teachers and governesses, a job that was ill suited to their retiring natures. Particularly Charlotte was touchy and did not like being treated as a social inferior, and Emily hated being away from Haworth. Anne stuck out her jobs better but she was shocked at the immorality, as she saw it, of the families she worked for. Their trip to Brussels did not end well. Emily hated it and while it did give her more education, she was glad to go home and never left her village again. Charlotte went back after her aunt's death, and regretted it because she ended up falling in love with M Heger and suffering acutely when he made it clear that he did not return her feelings and that he felt she must not keep on writing to him. Madame Heger pushed her out of her job and Charlotte suffered for some time after she went back home. Their plan for a school of their own never got off the ground. Then within a couple of months, the 3 siblings, Emily Branwell and Anne all died of consumption, leaving Charlote alone. The next novel covered her years as a famous writer and is more entertaining, even if her prickly nature always made her difficult to socialise with. Its very sad that her period of marital happiness was so short. I've enjoyed the 2 works very much.

Lyn Reid Banks and the Brontes Part V

Patrick finally gave in, and agreed to Charlotte marrying Nicholls. SHe arranged a small empty room as a study for her new husband and they planned their wedding. They kept things quiet but on the day Patrick had another upset and told her that he could not give her away at the ceremony. Charlotte was hurt but she and her friends checked out the prayer book and found that there was no mention of the giver away having to be male, so it was decided that Miss Wooler, her old teacher, could do the giving away. Charlotte and Mr Nicholls went to Ireland for their honeymoon and she was pleased when she found that he had not been boasting about being from a genteel family. He had been brought up by an uncle who kept a school and the family welcomed her. Their home was comfortable and they were reasonably well off... and she seemed to grow fonder of Nicholls as she settled into married life. When she and Nicholls came back to Haworth she was quite happy and Patrick was relieved to have his curate back to take the work off his hands. Mr Nicholls was kept very busy, but Charlotte found that he wanted her to help him in his work and she accepted this as part of married life. She enjoyed the little get togethers in Haworth society much more as a wife than she had done when she was the daughter of the clergyman. She told Ellen that Mr Nicholls wanted a lot of her time now and she was pleased by this. She didn't see Mrs Gaskell partly because Mr Nicholls was a rather bigoted High Churchman and not too keen on dissenters, and partly because she was so busy, but her friend was delighted that Charlotte was now busy and happy. However she did have less time for writing and she told Arthur that she had started a new story but had not had a chance to do much. SHe showed it to him and he suggested that as it was about a school the critics might say she was repeating herself. She told him that she usually changed things around a lot before she completed a story. Arthur did not stop her writing but he did not see her as Currer Bell the writer, but as his wife, Charlotte... and she was rather pleased and flattered that he did not care about her wealth and fame. She and Ellen had their small problems, as Ellen was rather jealous of her friend being married and devoted to another person, and Arthur felt that the two women were too free spoken in their letters to each other, chattering about other people. He told Charlotte that Ellen must promise to destroy her letters when she read them, in case they fell into the wrong hands. Charlotte was amused by this but Ellen was rather annoyed, and while she did promise, in fact she kept Charlotte's letters and they still chatted freely. Then after a few months of happiness, she and Arthur went out for a walk and got wet and she caught a cold. She was not well and then symptoms of pregnancy surfaced.

Lyn Reid Banks and the Brontes IV

The novel is more fun to read as Charlotte was having a livelier life, but she was still lonely and she was pleased when she met Elizabeth Gaskell, who was a well known novelist but a Unitarian. Charlotte took a liking to her; she felt very sorry for Charlotte, especially as she herself was happily married with 4 daughters and a busy life as a minister's wife. She and Charlotte met and talked a lot and then she discovered that Arthur Nicholls had finally proposed to her. Patrick however had taken such a fit of anger at the bare idea that Charlotte hastily dismissed him. She was still not very fond of him... He resigned his curacy and talked of going abroad as a missionary. However he stayed in England and tried to get to see Charlotte again. The villagers when they heard of the proposal, were hostile to Nicholls, feeling that he was not good enough to marry "their Miss Bronte". Although she was in her 30s she felt that she had to obey her father, which was easier as she had no attraction towards Nicholls. She still thought he was narrow minded, not very intellectual and stiff. But she was lonely and began to reconsider, as she could see that he genuinely loved her and that meant a lot to her as none of her previous loves had had more than a liking for her. Patrick still insisted that he did not believe that Nicholls was a suitable husband and that Charlotte was not strong enough for marriage. Mrs Gaskell encouraged Charlotte to consider him as a husband, she wanted her friend to have the married happiness that she had. Patrick had had to take on a new curate a Mr De Renzie to help him and as luck would have it he took a dislike to the man. De Renzie did not endear himself to the villagers and Patrick found him hard to work with. Mr Nicholls began to look a bit better by comparison. Charlotte began to write to Nicholls and met him and then she told Patrick that she wanted to marry him.. and that if she did, he would live with them, and look after the church and be a help to his father in law. Patrick was still stubborn but he could see that having his curate living in his house and taking on most of the parish work, would be an advantage. Tabby, the family housekeeper, now an old lady, told Patrick that he was doing wrong by Charlotte in not wanting her to get married.