Rhys Bowen and the Georgie series

Rhys Bowen was born in 1941 in Bath, England.  Her real name is Janet Quin-Harkin.  She worked in the Drama Department at the BBC, and also as a drama teacher for a time.

However she became a writer in the 1980s. She started by writing teenage romances.  Then in the 1990s she began to write under the name Rhys Bowen... She had  settled in America (having married an American).  She writes mystery novels. One series is the “Royal Spyness”, which is set in the 1930s, in England.  (I’ve never read the other 2 series, one is based in turn of the century New York with Molly Murphy, an Irish immigrant as the detective and the other is the Evans series, based in contemporary Wales).

 In the Royal Spyness series, the amateur detective is Lady Georgiana Rannoch, the daughter of an impoverished upper class family from Scotland.  The family are related to Queen Victoria and hence Georgiana is distantly in line for the throne.  Her mother is a former actress who has lived a luxurious life, “bolting” from one rich husband to another. Her father killed himself after losing much of the family fortune and Georgie’s half-brother is an amiable but not very clever man, dominated by his wife, Hilda.  She is mean and cold blooded, and dislikes Georgiana, and tends to try and tell her husband that they “cant afford to support his sister” – rather like John Dashwood's cold hearted wife.  Binky, her brother is struggling to keep the estate going.   Georgie stumbles across mysteries and gets involved with them.  She starts by investigating when her brother is accused of murder.

  She also does occasional “commissions” for her distant cousin, Queen Mary…who is currently worried about her son, David, the Prince of Wales.

One of the things I like about the series is that it is humorous, though sometimes the author rather strains for jokes… but generally it’s amusing.  Also, I like the fact that Georgie has a “young man”, Darcy O’Mara, an Irish aristocrat who is rumoured to be a spy... but she and he have never become lovers.  Georgie is shy and awkward and has never had many beaux...And she wants to wait for marriage and have a happy faithful marriage.   Her mother is a lively lady who had several husbands and lovers, and her best friend Belinda is also rather promiscuous.  However I think that Georgie’s attitude is closer to the realities of life for young women in the 1930s.

Georgiana and Darcy have been planning to get married now for several books and are on the verge of it. I look forward to reading at least one “post marriage” book.  However as the 1930s go on, the series will be getting closer to World War II and it may be time to call a halt….

Simon and Garfunkel and the Sound of the 60s

Simon and Garfunkel were singer-songwriters in the 1960s, who seemed to me to symbolize the “good” side of the 1960s.  The idealism, the rebellion against conformity and materialism, and against the Vietnam War.

They were of course a folk rock duo, Paul Simon wrote the majority of the songs, and Art Garfunkel had a beautiful voice.  I love country music best, but Simon and Garfunkel though more sophisticated, had simplicity about their lyrics.

They met at school in Queens, New York.. and both were from Jewish families…

They were part of the folk music revival of the 1960s, but they started out in High school listening to rock and roll and wanting to sing as a way of attracting girls.  They began to play at school dances. When they were around 15 they got their first record deal.  They released a few singles and made a little money….When they graduated form high school, they both went to college to pursue their education as their parents were well aware that music was not a very stable career and encouraged them to continue learning. Paul studied English and Art studied architecture.   Paul Simon released a single by himself, while he was still working with Garfunkel –and his friend regarded it as something of a betrayal.  There was tension between them at times, which led to problems later on.   They had worked as “Tom and Jerry”, but they split up and began to work separately.  Simon wrote and worked for Carole King.

However in 1963, they started to work together again and were now focusing on folk music.  They produced some of their most famous songs, such as He was My Brother, Sparrow and the Sound of Silence… and were then signed by Columbia Records.  Their debut album was Wednesday Morning 3 a.m., in 1964.   They were now using their real names Simon and Garfunkel.

Simon had been studying Law; however he and Art found that the new album didn’t sell – and he decided to move to the UK.  In England, he met Kathy, a girl whom he fell in love with and wrote songs for.  She is mentioned as "Kathy" in the iconic "All Gone to look for America"... a song about travelling around the US...
Paul spent some time travelling  in Britain, writing and performing in small folk clubs and Art came over for the summer of 1964.  They both returned to America, and Simon went back to college, but the following year, he tried out England again. By 1966, Sound of Silence became extremely popular and the duo brought out an album entitled “Sound of Silence” with other folk numbers on it.  They recorded Scarborough Fair and they began to insist on creative and musical control of their records.

The film director Mike Nicholls wanted to use their songs on the soundtrack of his new film, the Graduate, and while Simon was wary of “selling out to Hollywood”, he wrote new songs for the film.

More follows:-

More on George Eliot

Eliot was sympathetic to liberal causes including women’s rights and suffrage and supported the North in the American Civil War.

However she tended to be rather harsh towards “pretty feminine “ kinds of women.  Hetty Sorrel, the naïve and silly Dairy maid in Adam Bede, who becomes pregnant by the squire Arthur Donnithorne , is the sort of girl she tended to dislike.  Hetty  lets herself be seduced, gives birth alone.  She is in a dazed fugue state and abandons her new-born baby and is then accused of infanticide.  Eliot  portrays Hetty as extremely silly and stupid and morally unaware.  And although she rescues the girl from hanging, Hetty is transported to Australia where she dies.    Adam Bede, the young and decent man who was engaged to her.. ends up married to the serious minded Dinah Morris.  

In Middlemarch, Rosamond Vincy is another rather similar “type” of silly butterfly female whom Eliot tends to portray as the unlikable woman.  Rosamond is a middle class girl, who is ambitious to marry someone upper class. She marries Tertius Lydgate, who comes from a gentry family but has gone into medicine.  Rosy tries to ignore the “vulgarity” of his doctor’s practice  and concentrates on trying to get noticed by his grand relatives.  She and Lydgate over spend.. and get into financial trouble.   Lydgate tries to ask her to be more careful with money, but she calmly ignores him… She flirts with Will Ladislaw who is in love with Dorothea.

However Rosamond does not come to a bad end, like Hetty.  In fact, she persuades and pushes Lydgate into taking a fashionable practice and giving up his wish to do medical experiments and to do good with his skills.  He makes a good living but is miserably unhappy…. having given up his ideals.  He dies young and Rosamond marries again.  Eliot seems to blame her for Lydgate’s downfall from being an idealistic and energetic doctor to a fashionable practitioner..   But she does not inflict any “punishment” on the character.

However Mary Garth who is plain and shrewd, makes a happy marriage to Fred, Rosy’s brother and rescues him from a life of idle uselessness and makes him a worthy gentleman farmer.   She is a "real" success as a woman.

  ELiots’ preference is clearly for the useful over the ornamental…but sometimes it feels as if she is hostile to pretty women…

More follows.....

Du Maurier and Rebecca

Daphne Du Maurier was born in London in 1907, her father being the well-known actor Gerald De Maurier.  She was one of three daughters and had a close relationship with her charming and successful father.  She mixed in theatrical circles as a girl, but as she grew older, she became something of a recluse.  She married Frederick “Boy” Browning, an army officer who was much more conventional than her.  She wanted them to live together, but he could not understand this shocking suggestion and an open affair with a woman like her would have been disastrous for his army career.  He was sporty though not unintelligent, and their marriage was not always smooth sailing. (In later life, he had a post in the Princess Elizabeth’s household, but had become a heavy drinker, had affairs and ended up having to give up his work because of a nervous breakdown).

 Daphne had literary connexions, which helped her to get a start as a writer.  Her novels varied in quality, but several were considered very good “adventurous romantic fiction” and were best sellers.  These included Jamaica Inn, Frenchman’s Creek, and the Scapegoat.   Her most famous and popular novel was Rebecca. Du Maurier believed that her works were serious adult fiction and she did not write light novels with happy endings.   But the fact that many of her works were so popular with the public and some were made into films, tended to obscure her more serious intentions and literary critics did not generally think of her as a "real" novelist. 

 Rebecca is perhaps the most loved of her works, but it has a complicated story and an ambivalent ending.  Some critics have noticed that Maxim De Winter’s two wives, Rebecca, his first wife and “Mrs De Winter” the shy unnamed narrator are polar opposites as women and that they may reflect different aspects of Daphne herself.  Rebecca is beautiful, sophisticated and clever, and probably bisexual, but cold and morally lacking.  The second wife is awkward, shy and reclusive, but good and decent... a “good woman” in conventional terms.  

Daphne herself struggled with a division in her nature.  She tried to be a good wife to Browning, but she hated social events, which were expected of middle class professional wives at the time.  She was not the most affectionate of mothers, being awkward and stiff with her children, and preferred to write or sail in Cornwall.   She thought of herself in some ways as masculine and there have been rumours that she had infatuations with other women.   So in many ways she was more like the selfish and sexually adventurous Rebecca than the dutiful young Mrs De Winter.   She was inspired to write Rebecca partly because of her own jealousy about an earlier girlfriend of Boy Browning’s.  The girlfriend seemed so “perfect” that it made her feel inferior and envious.   And it is not uncommon for second wives to be intimidated and upset by hearing about a predecessor who is always “more fascinating”  or more perfect than they feel themselves to be.  

The best character in the book is the young Mrs De Winter, but even so, the ending is very ambiguous as to whether she is rewarded for her good behaviour.

She wins Maxim’s love and learns that he hated Rebecca for her horrible nature… but at the end of the novel, Manderley is destroyed by fire... and there has been talk that possibly he killed Rebecca...   (which he did –but he avoids prosecution).   However because of the gossip and the loss of Manderley, the De Winters feel they have to go abroad to live for some years to let the talk die down.  They end up  living in a rather sad continental exile, longing for home and the English countryside... But they are forced to stay in Europe and wander around, avoiding spots where the British visit because it is uncomfortable. 

 While they love each other, they both desperately miss their homeland... It seems like a very ambivalent ending for the couple.  Their marriage, which got off to a shaky start has become successful, but they have lost their home, and their country and chances of a stable life with friendships or children.    In this novel, certainly there is a great deal of complexity of character and ambiguities. 

The De Winters are “good” compared with Rebecca and her lover Jack Favell… but still, although Rebecca provoked him, Maxim did kill her.  And their “happy ending” is very muted…

Rebecca was also inspired of course by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre... where Jane, the humble governess wins the love of an aristocrat, Edward Rochester – who has previously been married.  He and Jane marry, but again their marital happiness is somewhat muted by the fact that Edward has lost a hand and become blind…

 The personal elements in the novel probably explain why it has proved the most enduringly popular of Du Maurier’s works.