Without my Cloak, by Kate O'Brien

I hope to write a blog about Without my Cloak, the first novel of Kate O'Brien. It won a prize and launched her on a fiction writing career. It is based loosely on her own family history. In the later Victorian era, a small minority of Catholics began to rise in the world, thanks to the removal of restrictions on Catholics. They were running successful businesses and forming a new Catholic middle class, which rivalled the Protestant landed class which was beginning to lose its status. Kate's father had been evicted from his home and it worked out well for him, as he moved to Limerick city and set up a sucessful business. By the time Kate was growing up, the family were less prosperous but they were middle class and still doing reasonably well. Without my Cloak is a history of the Considine family who sell fodder for horses... Their start in business was initiated by Antony Considine who stole a horse and escaped from his country home to Mellick (O'Briens name for Limerick) and founded a business. His son, "Honest John" Considine, became very well to do and had a large family. His sons became successful, one a priest, another a doctor.. and his son Anthony took over running the business. Honest John died and Anthony who now had a sizable family, also lost his young wife Molly. M/F

Josephine Tey II

Her most prominent detective character is Alan Grant, who appears in 6 novels. She also wrote a mystery called the Franchise Affair, which is based on an eighteenth century mystery case set in modern times. One of her best known novels is Daughter of Time which is an odd mystery where Grant is confined to a hospital bed after a bad fall. Bored, he looks at some pictures brought in by a friend, post cards of portaits in the National Gallery. He is taken with the picture of Richard III, and starts to read up about him, and to investigate the allegation that Richard killed his 2 nephews. It is a novel that puts me off, as Grant decides that the picture shows a good man and that therefore he could not have done the murders of the 2 princes. He gets friends to help him by looking up documents and finding books for him and he finally comes to the conclusion that Richard is not guilty and that the murders were done by Henry VII. I feel that Tey is refusing to read any evidence that the boys were probably murdered by Richard. Tey led a quiet life, in Scotland, mostly concentrating on her writing. She became ill and became even more private, not wanting to see her friends when she was seriously ill. She was looked after by her sister and died in 1952, aged only 55. Her last novel was published posthumously. She is an interesting person even though she's not my favourite mystery novelist.

Josephine Tey Part I

Josephine Tey's real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh, and she was born in Scotland in 1896, her father Colin Mackintosh had a fruiterer business and her mother was a housewife. She did not go to University, as it was rare for girls in those days, but she instead went to a Physical Training college to become a PT teacher. She spent some years working in different schools as PT instructor and enjoyed her work. In 1914, she also did some VAD work when on holiday to "do her bit" for the war effort. She worked in England and also in Scotland. In 1923, she returned to Scotland to care for her mother who was ill and when her mother died, she stayed on to keep house for her father. She had been injured in a gym accident before she settled to housekeeping, and decided to try her hand at writing. Her first novel was about a Scottish regiment and then she wrote a mystery novel where she created her best known detective Alan Grant who is a police officer. She didn't write many novels with Grant as the lead character but she got good reviews. However her ambition was to write a play and she wrote one called Richard of Bordeaux under the pen name Gordon Daviot. It did well in the West End and she became friends with John Gielgud. She wrote several plays but they did not do that well and she went on writing novels. M/F

Thomas Hardy V

Sue becomes very depressed after the deaths of her children, and begins to get religious scruples. She believes that the children died to punish her for her sins in getting a divorce and living with Jude. She and he separate and to punish herself further, she returns to Philottson and lives with him as his wife though she hates it. Jude returns to Arabella, and she does not care much for him. He goes to get a glimpse of Sue on a cold winter day and becomes ill and dies. Arabella plans to marry a new man. Jude's life has ended in tragedy. The novel is depressing and confusing, with characters changing their minds all the time and moving in and out of marriages. Hardy's vision of life was sad and tragic.... In most of his serious novels, the hero or heroine comes to a sad end...and the more selfish characters do well. Tess of the D'urbervilles has the same kind of chopping and changing of the attitudes of the characters - Tess comes across as very stupid- and the heroine ending on the gallows. Jude got a lot of criticism for the anti religous tone and the sexual activities of the characters... and Emma Hardy really hated it. She was afraid that the novel would damage Hardy's reputation and that it might lead to gossip about her marriage to him. By then Hardy was involved with Florence Dugdale who acted as his secretary, and they were having an affair. Emma became more angry and reclusive and her health declined and she died suddenly. Hardy planned to marry Florence, but he was feeling guilty about Emma. He gave up writing novels and concentrated on poetry, and some of his new poems were love poems to Emma, which upset Florence. They were getting married and now her new husband was writing love poems about his dead wife, whom he had neglected and disliked during their marriage.

Thomas Hardy IV

Arabella leaves Jude and goes to Australia with another man, whom she marries bigamously. Jude persuades Sue to leave her husband and come to him. Their relationship is at first sexless because Sue does not like sex, and dislikes it all the more with her husband. Arabella then comes back to England and brings her son by Jude with her. She and Jude get a divorce, but she leaves the child with him...Sue gets a divorce from Phillotson, and she and Jude begin to have a sexual life. They have 2 children but she is reluctant to marry him. She has radical ideas and is less religious than Jude. But the fact that they are not married is a problem... they lead a nomadic life moving from job to job, and not having much money, and when their unmarried status is discovered Jude usually loses his job. Sue is stressed out by this, looking after her 2 children and "Father time" as they call Jude's son by Arabella... Then after Jude has lost another job, they wake up one morning to find that Jude's son has been brooding over their problems and lack of money, and he has killed his 2 siblings and himself. Sue, who is pregnant again, is horrified and has a miscarriage.

Thomas Hardy III

Im not really a big fan of Hardy's novels, though I have read most of them. They are more like fairy stories than realistic novels. Most of his characters are simple people, and not that easy to identify with.. they seem absurdly naive. His last novel, Jude the Obscure, is about a young man who works as a mason. He is clever and would like to go to Oxford, but he is too poor to think of this. He then is seduced by a coarse and earthy girl, Arabella, who tells him she is pregnant, and he ends up marrying her. They havew a son. He is also involved with one of his cousins, Sue Fawley, who like him has ambitions to learn and get on in the world. He is fond of her, but he's tied to Arabella. Sue goes to a teacher training college..and Jude goes on working as a manual worker. Sue is an odd wilful girl who seems to repeatedly do things that turn out badly for herself. Her family believe that marriage does not suit their temperaments and that their marriages usually turn out badly. She marries a school teacher, Phillotson whom she finds repugnant sexually...though she has come to love Jude.

Thomas Hardy II

Hardy was close to his mother, who was rather domineering, and to his sisters and he courted several girls during his youth. He then married Emma Gifford, a girl of a higher class. Her father was a solicitor and she had an uncle who was an archdeacon. However her father retired early and the family were not so well off as they had been and Emma and her sister had to go out as governesses. Hardy was still working as an architect, and was doing a report on a parish church, when he met Emma, who had clerical connextions. She could see his talent, and encouraged him to write. However she was also very class conscious and soon developed the idea that he was of much lower class than her, and that she was his superior. This caused a rift in their marriage. She began to put him down in front of people and she and he grew apart. People found her odd and difficult to get on with and began to think of her as a little mad. His novels were about class differences and tension between the sexes. He began to flirt with other women, and Emma became more reclusive.