My (trendy?) taste for authenticity recoils at the thought of 'living a lie,' and I found myself fantasizing that I might personally expose Mrs. Edmund for her persistent maintenance of the sham - "... every paltriness and meanness had always been concealed with the utmost care..." coupled with the human costs of the "perpetual effort to conceal the squalid background of what was meant for the eyes of her friends and neighbors." Gissing again deserves credit for his ability to intensify a point - topping it off with Jack's undeserved pomposity and disdain. I wish I could have scoffed in his presence as he contemplated talking to Edwin "in a fatherly way."
Lastly, and mostly - Amy’s response to Edwin taking the clerkship is more easily understood now that we’ve met her mother - she clearly didn't suck it out of her thumb!
That said, while my empathy for Amy may be constrained (at this point), I remain moved by the tormenting vision of a woman’s coming of age: “Her life was perhaps wrecked, but … for the present she must enjoy her freedom … a recovery of girlhood … accept with joy the offer of some months of a maidenly liberty.”
“[Amy] undressed at leisure, and stretched her limbs in the cold, soft, fragrant bed. A sigh of profound relief escaped her. How good it was to be alone!”
Amy seems so tormented by the "need" (apple/tree) to fit within the constraints of societal expectations regarding: "wife"/"respectability"/"class status"/"woman" that I wonder if she even has any idea/vision of what authentic "liberty" (for her) could entail. Aloneness can be grand (I love it!), but Amy''s "alone" seems less like embracing "liberty" and more like an escape from the self.
There’s a kind of thrill in listening in on people living under other roofs -- yet will anyone be brave enough to confront the fact that the truth is much more unwieldy than any one person can lay claim to...the line about how wives have duties as well as claims feels like it’s from another era. Thinking recently about truth and about the obligation to tell the truth when the truth is so dependent on understanding. A boy at the Hi! Desk answered “no” when a librarian asked him if he had a library card, when his mother stepped in and said, yes, you do have a card, just not with you. The boy’s next answer to whether he wanted a receipt was “yes”. Who needs the savior robots on Mars when we have humans to observe?
“‘You mean,’ asked Mrs. Yule, ‘that he really thinks its possible for all of you to be supported on those wages?’
The last word was chosen to express the utmost scorn.”
“Utmost scorn” encapsulated in a single word might be a relief in today’s world of abundant verbal scorn. An oddly astute – and prescient – reflection of the consequences of “liv[ing] only in the opinions of other people” (then, and now!).
I liked that quote too. That the scorn is specifically directed at the word 'wages' changes the meaning of the sentence. I would have put it on 'all of you' instead. But it's 'wages' that she despises. Here she seems to offer a mirror on Amy, for Amy feels the same scorn for 'wages' as her mother does!
Yet they are both poor and scraping by!
(Like a lot of things these days, I feel like true scorn applied to the truly worthy of it is rare. The sham scorn we are routinely subjected to in the political sphere is an empty pose. Give me some true scorn appropriately applied to the deserving target! I feel the lack of it sorely.)
Amy, at respite from ongoing ordeal, enjoys her solitude and guiltless sleep. Yet upon rising she retains a slender hope that Edwin will rally and they will be reunited.
Another series of comments on the invasive nature of poverty - impacting things that we think of as "free" (cleanliness and privacy). These are as true today as they were then.
Cleanliness: "How clean and sweet everything was! It is often said, by people who are exquisitely ignorant of the matter, that cleanliness is a luxury within reach even of the poorest. Very far from that; only with the utmost difficulty, with wearisome exertion, with harassing sacrifice, can people who are pinched for money preserve a moderate purity in their persons and their surroundings. By painful degrees Amy had accustomed herself to compromises in this particular which in the early days of her married life would have seemed intensely disagreeable, if not revolting. …
Privacy "The difference between the life of well-to-do educated people and that of the uneducated poor is not greater in visible details than in the minutiæ of privacy, and Amy must have submitted to an extraordinary change before it would have been possible for her to live at ease in the circumstances which satisfy a decent working-class woman."
The invasive nature of poverty is certainly elevated in this chapter. The reference to “domestic slaves” is chilling, made visceral by Mrs. Yule’s vocal address to her servant: “You should have heard the change that came in that sweetly plaintive voice when it addressed the luckless housemaid. It was not brutal; not at all. But so sharp, hard, unrelenting – the voice of the goddess Poverty herself perhaps sounds like that.”
Hmmm, might one of those oft-referenced "well-to-do" writerly folks commission an artistic representation of "the goddess Poverty herself"? A potential literary icon?
So many clear observations from Gissing on this subject. And he manages to keep humor under it all, which makes the cattiness/desperation that emerges, so human.
"'But it's confounded hard lines that you should have to keep her and the kid. You know *I* can't afford to contribute." I'd like to know what John Yule does for a living!
John Yule made my blood boil. Excuse my aggressive response but I want to slap (not literally, of course!) him and awake him from his complete self-centered ignorance. The man who has “board and lodging beneath [his mother’s roof] on nominal terms” and has never been “called upon … to make the slightest sacrifice on her behalf” despite any “stress of pecuniary trouble” has the gall to question Amy’s return to home:
“But what I want to know is, how long are we to be at the expense of supporting Amy and her youngster.” / I’ve no doubt it’s uncommonly pleasant for Reardon to shift his responsibilities on to our shoulders.” / “We are not called upon to find a way out of the difficulty.” / “To tell the truth, it seems to me Amy has put herself in the wrong. It’s deuced unpleasant to go and live in back streets, and to go without dinner now and then, but girls mustn’t marry if they’re afraid to face these things.”
The hubris of “we” says it all!
Indeed, what does he do for a living? Very little, it seems.
I had the same response, which Gissing does everything to elicit. After all that we hear and see of him, he is neatly summed up in the exchange: "You know I can't afford to contribute." And his mother: "My dear, I haven't asked you to."
What a nest of vipers Amy has sprung from and returned to. The apple didn’t fall that far from the tree. Everyone here has commented wisely on Gissing’s astute understanding of poverty, cleanliness, privacy, and the implicit sense of well-being that can come from having enough.
Yes, a nest of vipers Amy has sprung from. I do sympathize with her in one respect. Gissing clearly understood poverty. I wish he'd given more details. Her eighth floor (tenement?) walk-up probably didn't have running water. If that was the case, she or the (destitute) maid would have had to lug buckets of water up the stairs. She'd have to use a chamber pot, a portable tub for bathing, and how about all those diapers? I don't imagine it was easy or cheap to heat a lot of water in your dinky kitchen. Then what to do with the waste? And her long skirts would get dirty every time she went out. She scrimped for a laundress, and couldn't bear to live under worse conditions than that.
This, on NPR, was an eye-opener for me: 'Dirty Old London': a History of the Victorians' Infamous Filth.
Gissing is unsparing in his characterization of Mrs. Yule, but I agree with Yiyun that he doesn't caricature her. He gives that incident with her dressmaker (forcing her to buy the material, then postponing both reimbursement and payment), and tells us, "the woman not only knew her behavior was shameful, she was in truth ashamed of it and sorry for her victims...She would shed tears over a pitiful story of want, and without shadow of hypocrisy...The next day she would argue with her charwoman about halfpence, and end by paying the poor creature what she knew was inadequate and unjust." Ahh. I don't have dressmakers and charwomen, but I know I've fallen short of the values I purport to hold. The consciousness of gracelessness does make for misery. The fact that she protects her children from her meanness is even more telling. "John Yule naturally suspected what went on behind the scenes; on one occasion...he had involuntarily overheard a dialogue between his mother and a servant on the point of departing which made even him feel ashamed." That exchange must have been harsh indeed. If only their shame changed something. They seem to think only a change in circumstances can alter their relations with the world. A trap so many of us fall into.
"But whilst she could be a positive hyena to strangers, to those who were akin to her, and those of whom she was fond, her affectionate kindness was remarkable."
And then there's this: "Her whole existence was based on bold denial of actualities. And, as is natural in such persons, she had the ostrich instinct strongly developed..." LOL
Gissing writes maddening if socially trapped women so well; the "ostrich instinct” is used so perfectly here:
"Now, confession of the truth was the last thing that would occur to Mrs. Yule when social relations were concerned. Her whole existence was based on bold denial of actualities. And, as is natural in such persons, she had the ostrich instinct strongly developed; though very acute in the discovery of her friends’ shams and lies, she deceived herself ludicrously in the matter of concealing her own embarrassments."
A perfect (and still relevant) entry for The Devil's Dictionary (by Ambrose Bierce):
Ostrich Instinct: a pairing of "bold denial of actualities" with the "conceal[ment] [of one's] own embarrassments" in order to "deceive [ones]self ludicrously."
Perhaps....or was it one way for women to survive? I’m torn.
My (trendy?) taste for authenticity recoils at the thought of 'living a lie,' and I found myself fantasizing that I might personally expose Mrs. Edmund for her persistent maintenance of the sham - "... every paltriness and meanness had always been concealed with the utmost care..." coupled with the human costs of the "perpetual effort to conceal the squalid background of what was meant for the eyes of her friends and neighbors." Gissing again deserves credit for his ability to intensify a point - topping it off with Jack's undeserved pomposity and disdain. I wish I could have scoffed in his presence as he contemplated talking to Edwin "in a fatherly way."
Lastly, and mostly - Amy’s response to Edwin taking the clerkship is more easily understood now that we’ve met her mother - she clearly didn't suck it out of her thumb!
That was exactly my thought: Amy comes by it honestly!
Apple/tree (Amy/Mrs. Yule), to be sure!
That said, while my empathy for Amy may be constrained (at this point), I remain moved by the tormenting vision of a woman’s coming of age: “Her life was perhaps wrecked, but … for the present she must enjoy her freedom … a recovery of girlhood … accept with joy the offer of some months of a maidenly liberty.”
“[Amy] undressed at leisure, and stretched her limbs in the cold, soft, fragrant bed. A sigh of profound relief escaped her. How good it was to be alone!”
Amy seems so tormented by the "need" (apple/tree) to fit within the constraints of societal expectations regarding: "wife"/"respectability"/"class status"/"woman" that I wonder if she even has any idea/vision of what authentic "liberty" (for her) could entail. Aloneness can be grand (I love it!), but Amy''s "alone" seems less like embracing "liberty" and more like an escape from the self.
Pitifully poignant!
There’s a kind of thrill in listening in on people living under other roofs -- yet will anyone be brave enough to confront the fact that the truth is much more unwieldy than any one person can lay claim to...the line about how wives have duties as well as claims feels like it’s from another era. Thinking recently about truth and about the obligation to tell the truth when the truth is so dependent on understanding. A boy at the Hi! Desk answered “no” when a librarian asked him if he had a library card, when his mother stepped in and said, yes, you do have a card, just not with you. The boy’s next answer to whether he wanted a receipt was “yes”. Who needs the savior robots on Mars when we have humans to observe?
This pithy nugget caused me to pause and ponder:
“‘You mean,’ asked Mrs. Yule, ‘that he really thinks its possible for all of you to be supported on those wages?’
The last word was chosen to express the utmost scorn.”
“Utmost scorn” encapsulated in a single word might be a relief in today’s world of abundant verbal scorn. An oddly astute – and prescient – reflection of the consequences of “liv[ing] only in the opinions of other people” (then, and now!).
I liked that quote too. That the scorn is specifically directed at the word 'wages' changes the meaning of the sentence. I would have put it on 'all of you' instead. But it's 'wages' that she despises. Here she seems to offer a mirror on Amy, for Amy feels the same scorn for 'wages' as her mother does!
Yet they are both poor and scraping by!
(Like a lot of things these days, I feel like true scorn applied to the truly worthy of it is rare. The sham scorn we are routinely subjected to in the political sphere is an empty pose. Give me some true scorn appropriately applied to the deserving target! I feel the lack of it sorely.)
Amy, at respite from ongoing ordeal, enjoys her solitude and guiltless sleep. Yet upon rising she retains a slender hope that Edwin will rally and they will be reunited.
“No, I’m afraid we shan’t have another of his novels for some time. I think he writes anonymously a good deal”. Mrs. Yule is the ultimate spin doctor.
Another series of comments on the invasive nature of poverty - impacting things that we think of as "free" (cleanliness and privacy). These are as true today as they were then.
Cleanliness: "How clean and sweet everything was! It is often said, by people who are exquisitely ignorant of the matter, that cleanliness is a luxury within reach even of the poorest. Very far from that; only with the utmost difficulty, with wearisome exertion, with harassing sacrifice, can people who are pinched for money preserve a moderate purity in their persons and their surroundings. By painful degrees Amy had accustomed herself to compromises in this particular which in the early days of her married life would have seemed intensely disagreeable, if not revolting. …
Privacy "The difference between the life of well-to-do educated people and that of the uneducated poor is not greater in visible details than in the minutiæ of privacy, and Amy must have submitted to an extraordinary change before it would have been possible for her to live at ease in the circumstances which satisfy a decent working-class woman."
The invasive nature of poverty is certainly elevated in this chapter. The reference to “domestic slaves” is chilling, made visceral by Mrs. Yule’s vocal address to her servant: “You should have heard the change that came in that sweetly plaintive voice when it addressed the luckless housemaid. It was not brutal; not at all. But so sharp, hard, unrelenting – the voice of the goddess Poverty herself perhaps sounds like that.”
Hmmm, might one of those oft-referenced "well-to-do" writerly folks commission an artistic representation of "the goddess Poverty herself"? A potential literary icon?
So many clear observations from Gissing on this subject. And he manages to keep humor under it all, which makes the cattiness/desperation that emerges, so human.
"'But it's confounded hard lines that you should have to keep her and the kid. You know *I* can't afford to contribute." I'd like to know what John Yule does for a living!
John Yule made my blood boil. Excuse my aggressive response but I want to slap (not literally, of course!) him and awake him from his complete self-centered ignorance. The man who has “board and lodging beneath [his mother’s roof] on nominal terms” and has never been “called upon … to make the slightest sacrifice on her behalf” despite any “stress of pecuniary trouble” has the gall to question Amy’s return to home:
“But what I want to know is, how long are we to be at the expense of supporting Amy and her youngster.” / I’ve no doubt it’s uncommonly pleasant for Reardon to shift his responsibilities on to our shoulders.” / “We are not called upon to find a way out of the difficulty.” / “To tell the truth, it seems to me Amy has put herself in the wrong. It’s deuced unpleasant to go and live in back streets, and to go without dinner now and then, but girls mustn’t marry if they’re afraid to face these things.”
The hubris of “we” says it all!
Indeed, what does he do for a living? Very little, it seems.
I had the same response, which Gissing does everything to elicit. After all that we hear and see of him, he is neatly summed up in the exchange: "You know I can't afford to contribute." And his mother: "My dear, I haven't asked you to."
What a nest of vipers Amy has sprung from and returned to. The apple didn’t fall that far from the tree. Everyone here has commented wisely on Gissing’s astute understanding of poverty, cleanliness, privacy, and the implicit sense of well-being that can come from having enough.
Yes, a nest of vipers Amy has sprung from. I do sympathize with her in one respect. Gissing clearly understood poverty. I wish he'd given more details. Her eighth floor (tenement?) walk-up probably didn't have running water. If that was the case, she or the (destitute) maid would have had to lug buckets of water up the stairs. She'd have to use a chamber pot, a portable tub for bathing, and how about all those diapers? I don't imagine it was easy or cheap to heat a lot of water in your dinky kitchen. Then what to do with the waste? And her long skirts would get dirty every time she went out. She scrimped for a laundress, and couldn't bear to live under worse conditions than that.
This, on NPR, was an eye-opener for me: 'Dirty Old London': a History of the Victorians' Infamous Filth.
Interesting NPR link. Thank you...
Gissing is unsparing in his characterization of Mrs. Yule, but I agree with Yiyun that he doesn't caricature her. He gives that incident with her dressmaker (forcing her to buy the material, then postponing both reimbursement and payment), and tells us, "the woman not only knew her behavior was shameful, she was in truth ashamed of it and sorry for her victims...She would shed tears over a pitiful story of want, and without shadow of hypocrisy...The next day she would argue with her charwoman about halfpence, and end by paying the poor creature what she knew was inadequate and unjust." Ahh. I don't have dressmakers and charwomen, but I know I've fallen short of the values I purport to hold. The consciousness of gracelessness does make for misery. The fact that she protects her children from her meanness is even more telling. "John Yule naturally suspected what went on behind the scenes; on one occasion...he had involuntarily overheard a dialogue between his mother and a servant on the point of departing which made even him feel ashamed." That exchange must have been harsh indeed. If only their shame changed something. They seem to think only a change in circumstances can alter their relations with the world. A trap so many of us fall into.
This also sums up her nature well:
"But whilst she could be a positive hyena to strangers, to those who were akin to her, and those of whom she was fond, her affectionate kindness was remarkable."
Yes, loved the image: "a positive hyena to strangers," and of course, remarkable "affectionate kindness" is always welcome (and needed!).
And then there's this: "Her whole existence was based on bold denial of actualities. And, as is natural in such persons, she had the ostrich instinct strongly developed..." LOL
Gissing writes maddening if socially trapped women so well; the "ostrich instinct” is used so perfectly here:
"Now, confession of the truth was the last thing that would occur to Mrs. Yule when social relations were concerned. Her whole existence was based on bold denial of actualities. And, as is natural in such persons, she had the ostrich instinct strongly developed; though very acute in the discovery of her friends’ shams and lies, she deceived herself ludicrously in the matter of concealing her own embarrassments."
A perfect (and still relevant) entry for The Devil's Dictionary (by Ambrose Bierce):
Ostrich Instinct: a pairing of "bold denial of actualities" with the "conceal[ment] [of one's] own embarrassments" in order to "deceive [ones]self ludicrously."