Rector's Daughter IV

Mary finds that her friendship with Kathy cools a bit. She has an operation to fix her mouth, which works, restoring her good looks and her confidence. Kathy is well meaning, but she finds her other friends more fun than Mary and now that she is looking well again, she starts to see her other friends again and sees less of Mary. Mary's father dies, and she is deeply upset. She goes to live with an aunt, in a suburban part of London and has a more fulfilling life, seeing some writers, and getting involved in a local church. She rarely sees Herbert and Kathy, who now have another son. He loves his wife, but accepts that she is silly at times and can't live up to his intellectual level.. but she is devoted to him and tolerates his seeing old college friends for more interesting conversations. Some time passes and Mary becomes ill. She dies only in her 50s. Her life has been lived for others, and she is worn out. After the funeral, Mr Herbert confesses to Kathy that he kissed Mary once and that he loved her, but that he loves Kathy as his wife. She is upset but decides not to be resentful of her memory.

Rector's daughter III

Kathy decides to go for a holiday in France with her sister in law, (amusingly named Lesbia) and she meets a young man there who flirts with her. She is getting more and more fed up with her husband and she toys with the idea of running off with her admirer. Herbert is not sorry to have a break from his wife. Kathy goes on with her flirtation, and then finds that she has an abscess on her mouth. She is told she will need an operation. In England, Mr Herbert spends more time with Mary, and one day kisses her. She feels guilty for loving a married man but she still can't help herself. Kathy has her operation. To her horror, it goes wrong. Her mouth's nerves are damaged and it leaves her with a distorted face, which mars her looks. She is desperately upset as she knows that her beauty is the only thing that makes her interesting. She wants to die, and finds that her friends on the Riviera are embarrassed and avoid her. Mary does not know what to expect when she hears that Kathy is coming home. When she gets home Herbert pities her, because she is being very brave about her disfigured face. He tells her that they can try another doctor and try to put it right. Then she finds she is pregnant. She feels a bit better. She hopes that even if she has disappointed Herbert by her lack of brains, she can give him a son. Mary feels pity for Kathy and since Kathy begs her to visit, she comes to see her often. The two women become more friendly and Kathy gets through her pregnancy and has twin boys.

Rector's Daughter Part II

Mary has a passionate nature, in spite of her being dismissed as dull and churchy by many people and she is falling deeply in love with Mr Herbert. Then he writes to her to tell her that he has become engaged to a young upper class girl called Kathy Hollings, who is beautiful and charming. However, she is not very clever, and she dimisses people who are below her in class. Mary can't believe that Herbert has fallen in love with Kathy and abandoned her. She had been hoping he would propose. She does not exactly dislike Kathy but she thinks that she is silly and vulgar and not up to Herbert's intellectual level. He marries quickly and for a year, he is infatuated with his wife. She tries to adjust to life as a clergyman's wife, but she loves hunting and social events and horses. She likes to hang around with her society friends, including her sister in law. She does not care that they are spoiled and selfish. They all dimiss country clergy as nobodies. Soon Herbert finds himself getting very dissatisfied with his bride. She irritates him by her vulgar silliness, her slangy conversation and her habit of singing saucy songs at village concerts and sniggering in church. Herbert and Kathy begin to quarrel. She feels irritated at his condescending ways and he feels foolish for having fallen in love with her.

Rector's Daughter

This novel tells the story of Mary Jocelyn, a clergyman's daughter who lives in a dull fading little village called Deadmayne. Her mother is dead, her older sister, who had mental difficulties, dies young. Her older brothers all fall out with their father and go to live abroad, so she is very lonely. She has one or 2 friends of her own class but she is painfully shy. Her father, the Canon, who is elderly and a very clever man, puts her down all the time. Her best friends are the village people and the servants at the vicarage who are very fond of her. Mary loves to read and does some writing, but her father criticises her work. He thinks she is stupid, and he only wants her to do the traditional work of the Vicar's wife or daughter, teaching Sunday school etc. When she is in her 30s, a clergyman, William Herbert, comes to work in the parish and as his father was a friend of her father's, the Vicar takes a liking to him. So Mary gets to know him and he also seems to like her. She begins to believe that she has found a man who might love her.

FM Mayor

Flora Mayor was a not very prolific writer who lived in the UK. She was born in Surrey in 1872 - her father was a professor of classics and an Anglican clergyman. She had a twin sister Alice who was very dear to her. She was intelligent and her father gave her a good education, sending her to college which was unusual at the time. However she did not do very well at college - spending much of her time enjoying herself. Her family were not too well off, and she tried to earn her own living. She was interested in the stage and tried to get into acting. However she did not have any success though she took classes and joined shaky touring companies. She found the actors were rough and not very refined. They were not really her class or type of person and she did not fit in very well with them. She lost hope of succeeding on the stage. She started to write stories and began to have some small success. She had an admirer, Ernest Shepherd, who wanted to marry her. However he did not have a job at the time. He managed to get a job in India, which meant that he could support her. Alice was rather jealous of losing her sister. Then in 1903, Ernest, having settled in India, died of typhoid while they were planning their wedding. Flora did not have any more chances of marriage. She lived with Alice for the rest of her life. Her health was not very good and while she wrote a couple of successful novels, she did not write a lot. She could not really earn a living as a novelist as she produced so little. She died in 1932 and Alice survived her for many years. Her best known novel is the Rector's Daughter which is about a very shy Victorian girl who lives with her elderly and difficult father in a village in the country. He is a scholar and a clergyman and he seems indifferent or hyper critical to all his children. Her other important novel is about a middle aged spinster. It's called "The Third Miss Symons". The heroine is also a shy spinster. She is not a social success and becomes miserable and bad tempered. She grows older and more cranky and irritates her nieces and nephews - and dies rather young. I'll blog about her novels soon.

North and South Part II

Margaret does her best to like Milton Northern... but she finds it difficult. She meets some of the mill owners at a dinner and finds the women are very boastful. She tries to like John Thorton her father's pupil, but she does not like his arrogance and hard hearted demeanour. He claims that he made his way up from poverty, so the workers should be able to do the same. She is cool with him but he finds her attractive. She meets some of the mill workers, and finds it hard to understand them. She is shocked by their organising themselves to strike, and she finds she is snubbed by Higgins, one of the more intelligent workmen. She offers to visit his 2 daughters but he does not like the idea. She does not seem to have a role as the vicar's daughter, visiting and helping the poor. The Northern folk are too independent for that. However, Higgins' daughters get to like Margaret. They become friendly, and she begins to understand why the workers feel the need to organise a union and strike... When a strike happens, Margaret protects Thornton from the milling crowd, and he thinks that that means she is in love with him. Then he sees her at the railway station one night with a young man. He thinks she is in love with someone else and seeing him secretly. The truth is that Margaret's brother, Frederick who was in the Navy, led a mutiny because of ill treatment on his ship. He is now forced to live abroad and she has to keep his visit to England secret. He comes back to see his mother who is increasingly ill and then goes back to his new home. During his brief visit, he knocks down a man who has gone to the police about him, and Margaret tells lies to cover this up. John knows she is lying but he backs her up.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

This is one of Gaskell's earlier social problem novels. It is set in Manchester though the name is not used. Margaret Hale, the pretty cultivated daughter of a vicar, finds that her father has begun to have doubts about his religious beliefs, and feels he cannot go on as a Church of England priest. (Mrs Gaskell's father, a Unitarian minister resigned from his position because of religious doubts). He has to give up his living and find another job. Mrs Hale is a nervous sensitive woman who is upset by this development. Margaret is also distressed at her father giving up his work. She is more upset to learn that the family are going to have to move from their pretty parish in Southern England, to move up North. When she sees Milton Northern, she is depressed at how ugly it is, and worries that it will be difficult to live there. Mr Hale finds that some manufacturers who have worked their way up from poverty to wealth, are keen to get the education they missed out on as boys. He finds a pupil, John Thornton, who has a mill and who wants to study the classics.