The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 29: Lesley A. Hall

 

Pleasures of Reading, etc 2022

by Lesley A Hall

 

The motif of this year, looking back, would appear to have been ‘rediscovery,’ as I returned to certain authors for the first time in, well, several decades.

I went, the word is perhaps not whooshing, but in a more dedicated and engrossed fashion than I had anticipated when starting on the project, through the volumes of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage sequence, 1915-1935, incomplete last ‘chapter’ published in the collected edition, 1967. I had initially read these in the Virago editions when these were issued in the late 1970s, and always intended to return to them – someday.

 

The day finally came early this year, and I was mesmerized by the combination of Richardson’s pioneering use of ‘stream of consciousness’ narrative combined with the vivid social history insights into a particular marginal way of life at the turn of the twentieth century. Life in a boarding house – the failed attempt at co-residence with another woman – her working life in a dental practice – the various lives that impinge on hers – Plus (to another Londoner) the unexpected poetry of unlikely corners of that city.

 

It was even longer since I had read most of the novels of Jane Austen – early 70s, I think – except for Mansfield Park for an online reading group sometime during the 1990s and Lady Susan, probably because of the movie (oddly and confusingly re-entitled Love and Friendship). But seeing the adverse comments about the recent movie version of Persuasion, I picked that up, and fell down the Austen rabbit-hole.

I fancy that I appreciated these works more now, though perhaps it is because I found myself reading them with more cynicism, and a recognition that they are not pretty charming fluffy romances, in fact I am not sure how the acerbic Ms Jane gets that reputation. I was murmuring to myself, ‘The horror!’ of those societies of ‘3 or 4  families in a country village’ (or kinship network in a country house) from whom one could not get away. Who might be uncongenial (if not thoroughly toxic), even when they were not constantly talking about some topic one found exquisitely personally sensitive, asking tactless questions, or going on about themselves with Too Much Information. No wonder an incoming stranger was viewed with excitement. The awful men. Even the eligible ones are the best of a bad bunch rather than dreamboats.

 

Austen is considered a precursor figure in the romance genre (!!!) – after this re-read I feel that she is an unappreciated ancestor to quietly menacing domestic horror, not to mention, murder mysteries set with some enclosed community….

(On ‘subtle delineation of tensions within community in which people cannot really get away from one another,’ has anyone done Jane Austen In Space – A Spaceship Crew of Sufficient Size would be the very thing to work with, would it not?)

And all that before the constant presence of the precariousness of women’s lives as they cling on to respectable genteel status.

 

I also read (slightly before this) Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853) in which the same precariousness manifests in the single ladies of Cranford, although they have managed to come to some accommodation with their condition through ‘elegant economy’. But how delicate the balance was even with all that careful negotiation appears when Miss Matty finds that the bank her money is in has failed.

All these things were, nevertheless, an absolute delight to read.

Another unexpected pleasure, in the realm of ‘it’s an ill wind’, has been the rise of online lectures and seminars in fields of my academic interests. While these still tend to be beset with technical issues and problems with sound quality, it helps me to feel I’m not entirely out of the loop.

 

 

Lesley Hall was born in the seaside resort and channel port of Folkestone, Kent, and now lives in north London. She recently retired from a career as an archivist of over 40 years. She has published several books and numerous articles on issues of gender and sexuality in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain, and is currently researching British interwar progressive movements and individuals. She has also published a volume in the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces series, Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of her Life and Work (2007). She has been reading science fiction and fantasy since childhood and cannot remember a time when she was not a feminist. Her reviews have appeared in Strange Horizons, Vector, and Foundation, and she has been a judge for the Tiptree and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. She has had short stories published in The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women (1996) and The Penguin Book of Erotic Stories by Women (1995) and, most recently, is the author of the series The Comfortable Courtesan: being memoirs by Clorinda Cathcart and Clorinda Cathcart's Circle: https://www.clorinda.org. Visit Lesley's website.