not native fruit

the museum of extraordinary things + jane eyre

I enjoyed this book!  Love Alice Hoffman's writing style: so vivid and sensate.  Enjoyed the way she wove in the history of Coney Island - many layers - and studded her work with gems of wisdom.  And of course, the basic story of two people who find themselves and each other in a setting of both visual beauty (nature photography) and visual anomaly.

She wove in a sub-theme around Jane Eyre, a favorite book of the Wolfman at the Museum, who after reading of the incarceration of the first Mrs. Rochester, decided to free himself from his own incarceration by his family in Virginia.  He finds out that the world will not be kind to a 'wolfman' and that his family's hiding him away while caring for him with attention, books, nice food, providing a private domain of enjoyments for him was an act of love of their part.  He was not unloved.

Mr. Rochester had the same motivation in hiding away his first wife, an untreated, undiagnosed schizophrenic before there was such a diagnosis.  To read about the treatment of schizophrenics in his era, read Sebastian Faulks' novel "Human Traces" - it is an absolutely amazing book!  Hoffman seems critical of Mr. Rochester's incarceration of his wife, which he claims he did out of love for her.  As Faulks' book tells us, most schizophrenics were chained in outbuildings or kept in basements, dungeons, and yes, attics, completely ignored and barely fed.  But Mrs. R. had a constant attendant, and Rochester contrasts his wife's situation to what it might have been in an asylum of the day.  Read "Human Traces" if you want to form a more realistic idea of what that was like.  (Happily, the book is about more than that, so I promise you it won't be a steady diet of misery.)

Also, Charlotte Bronte's sister Anne wrote a novel about the plight of a woman married to a debauched wealthy land-owning man.  Apparently, as is often the case where there are great riches involved, there was a lot of debauchery among the upper classes of England during their imperial heyday.  Families were impoverished by debauched males who gambled away the family fortune or spent it on entertainments and courtesans.  There's quite a bit of good literature on that topic out there.  So, Charlotte turns the tables here and asks the question, what about a debauched woman, who is also schizophrenic - what is the effect of such a person on a young unformed male just starting out on his adventure of life.  Rochester expresses regrets over his 'lost innocence' that Jane resonates with.  They are two good people who find each other and who must reach across a cultural and social abyss to meet.  They meet as 'souls' - as 'soul mates.'  Yes, there is a Deus ex Machina but it was the first, not a typical Gothic Romance - no, actually, the very first one that all the others imitated. 

I'd like to write more about what Jane Eyre meant to me.  Will try to get back to this soon.

 

"in search of nella larsen" by george hutchinson

Here is the review of this book I wrote for Amazon: "This book answered all my questions about Nella Larsen, and I appreciated the author's very readable style coupled with meticulous historiography.  I did try to read Thadious Davis' book first, but it felt like reading a legal brief and I just couldn't take it :-)  However, it did make me realize that in some ways Nella Larsen has been brought to trial - people felt she had done wrong and needed to exonerate herself (so to speak) but that task turned out to be more daunting than might be supposed.  My own reading of her, as a woman who was neither white nor black, and was perhaps more white than black culturally, although she had a dark complexion, was accessible through Hutchinson's book. I read "Passing" first and became completely fascinated by Larsen, perhaps not least because my mother and her parents were dealing with color-line issues in the 1920's as well. I followed up "Passing" with "Quicksand" - and having Danish relatives myself, having visited Denmark too - I found her depiction of Danish culture to be quite true to form.  Sprinkled through the book's pages were also anecdotes of many leading lights and important events and incidents of the various eras covered by Larsen's life.  I especially enjoyed the recounting of her nursing work during the Spanish Influenza epidemic in New York City.  So, I have to say, I found the book very entertaining and informative on a much wider scale than just one person's life.    Nevertheless, I found her particular life - a woman far ahead of her time - very fascinating, and the whole treatment of the dynamics and politics of the color-line as it played out in her particular life nuanced and extremely thought-provoking."

What I didn't say in this review is that just considering Larsen as a novelist ought to be material enough for a nice portably slim volume.  She really only wrote two novels "Quicksand" and "Passing."  Sadly, we've lost other novels which she wrote, and I especially would like to have seen the 'white' novel that was turned down even though its ending was supposed to have been spectacular!

The fact that in her later years she returned to nursing and that 'nursing and reading' were her life make me feel close to Larsen.  There's nothing wrong with a life of reading and reflection, especially when coupled with the hard work she seems to have maintained as the night supervisor for the old Gouvernor's Hospital in New York City. 

If you want to know more about Nella Larsen, after reading her two novels, this is the next book to read!  

Ps - Thank you George Hutchinson!  



 

the homesman

Gary and I watched this film starring and produced and directed by Tommy Lee Jones.  It was an excellent film, but not an easy one, about a homesteading woman who agrees to take three mentally ill pioneer women by wagon back to Iowa.  She realizes she can't manage the three of them alone and hires a low-life former soldier to assist her.  He is played by TLJ.  For me, the upshot of this film - in fact, nearly every scene fairly shouted to me the message - settling the west was madness!  Every one in this film is mad in their own way, even the most sane in appearance - and I found this ultimately to be rather sad.  And scary, especially the final scene.  Watch it at your own risk!  But if you want a good dose of 'reality,' this is the film for you!