Monday, 22 April 2019
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. Hilda, called "Fig" is mean and cold blooded, and dislikes Georgiana. She often tells her husband that they “cant afford to support his sister” – rather like John Dashwood's 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… 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….
Saturday, 13 April 2019
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 a folk rock duo.
Paul Simon wrote the majority of the songs, and Art Garfunkel had a beautiful voice. They met at school in Queens, New York. Both of them 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 from 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. They encouraged them to study further. 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.
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 Sound of Silence. They 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; 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 Garfunkel came over for the summer of 1964. They 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 with the same name. 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.
Tuesday, 9 April 2019
More on George Eliot
Eliot was sympathetic to liberal causes, 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. Although she rescues the girl from hanging, Hetty is transported to Australia where she dies. Adam Bede, the 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. 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 rich 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. 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. 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. She is a "real" success as a woman. Eliot's preference is clearly for the useful over the ornamental…but sometimes it feels as if she is hostile to pretty women…
Saturday, 6 April 2019
Du Maurier and Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier was born in London in 1907, her father was the well-known actor Gerald De Maurier. She had 2 sisters 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 rather 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. 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. 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 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 a very doting mother to her daughters.. and was cold and stiff. She did love her son Kit, but overall, she preferred to write or sail in Cornwall. She thought of herself in some ways as masculine. She certainly had relationships with other women. So in many ways she was more like the selfish and sexually adventurous Rebecca than the dutiful 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.
She wins Maxim’s love and learns that he hated Rebecca for her horrible nature… Yet, at the end of the novel, Manderley is destroyed by fire... and there has been talk that possibly he killed Rebecca. 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, avoiding spots where the British visit. 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. They have lost their country and chances of a stable life with friendships or children. In this novel, certainly there is a great complexity of character and ambiguities. The De Winters are “good” compared with Rebecca and her lover, Jack Favell. But Maxim is still guilty of murder. 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.
Saturday, 30 March 2019
short post on Russian names
Some Russian names began to be given in Britain in the early 20th century, due to increased socio – political contact with Russia, upper and middle class Britons seeing the Bolshoi Ballet etc.
The Empress of Russia from 1894 was the Princess Alix of Hesse, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter.. and her husband Nicholas was the nephew of Queen Alexandra of England. Russian names were exotic, often derived from Greek, and became better known in the UK in the Edwardian age.
One name that was occasionally used was Tatiana, the meaning of which is unclear. It has also been used in the Russian abbreviated form of Tanya… and was very popular. Another name that was liked was the Russian Sonya. Russian names often have abbreviations – and Sonya was an abbreviation of Sofia.. which is a name used in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches and which means “wisdom.” Tatiana was the name of one of the ill-fated Grand Duchesses. The others were Olga, Marie and Anastasia. Olga which means Holy was also used in England.. and so was Anastasia..The name is a Greek one which means “resurrection” and was popular in the Orthodox churches.. However it became shortened to Stacy, and more popular in that form.
Another royal and Russian name is Xenia, which comes from the Greek for “hospitable”. It has not proved so popular but a variant “Zena” is occasionally used. Alexis is a name given to boys and girls, and is from the Greek based on the word for “defend”. It was the name of the Czar’s son and was used in the UK. Another male name that came into British usage was Boris, which comes from
a word meaning fight or struggle.
Friday, 29 March 2019
Nature Names
In modern times, names based on vocabulary words have become more common. A favourite theme is names culled from Nature. Many of these are girls’ names, such as “Autumn”, the name of the season. Dawn refers to the early morning. There are some names that are used by boys and girls, such as Glen (the Scottish word for valley).
Other season names are Spring and Summer, though I don’t think Winter has ever been used. Sky is occasionally used and so is Star (though other versions such as Stella or Estelle are quite common). Sunshine was something of a “hippy” name used in the 1960s or 70’s.
Brooke is the name of the actress Brooke Shields and it is also occasionally used as a boy's name. Eartha is based on the word “earth”, and is the name of the singer Eartha Kitt.
Tempest is sometimes given to girls, and is based on the word for a severe storm…and Storm itself is used at times for boys and girls.
Sunday, 24 March 2019
More bible names
Ira, meaning watchful, is a Bible name that is mostly seen in the US. There is Ira Gershwin, the songwriter. Ira Hayes, a Native American soldier, was one of those who raised the flag on Iwo Jima... Ira Hayes sadly was traumatised by war and the deaths of his friends. He hated his fame as part of the well-known photograph. He felt used by the Government sending him on promotional tours. So he turned to alcohol and died of alcohol poisoning. He's memorialised in the Johnny Cash hit, "Ballad of Ira Hayes".
Jordan is a name that used to be given to boys, but now is mostly a girl's name. It means “flowing” and refers to the waters of the River Jordan. It used to be given to children baptised with water from the Jordan.
Samuel means Name of God, and is nowadays usually shortened to Sam.
There is an unusual name in the New Testament - “Damaris”. It's the name of an Athenian convert, known to St Paul and may mean calf or heifer which signifies gentleness. Another Greek name in the New Testament is Dorcas which means doe or Gazelle. In Aramaic, the name is Tabitha. She was a woman who did charitable deeds. St Paul raised her from the dead… In England, there were “Dorcas societies” in the eighteenth century of women doing charity work…
Martha is another Aramaic name, which means “lady” – though the Martha who was Jesus' friend, was more of a housewifely woman, busy with preparing meals and practical work. Another bible name for women which has been very popular is Naomi, which means pleasure or delight. Naomi was the
mother in law of Ruth, in the Book of Ruth and she and Ruth had a loving friendship.
Joel is not a very popular name for boys, but recently, female versions of it have become more popular, such as Joelle or Joely. It means “”Yah is God”… Yah or Yahweh being a Hebrew name for the Lord.
Joachim means “exalted by God” It’s not that popular in English speaking countries but there is a Spanish version- Joaquin... Joaquin Phoenix is a well-known actor and brother of River Phoenix. Joaquina is the feminine version. These are just a few random “bible names” that I find interesting. More may follow!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)