The Sheila Variations

I could just be forgetting, but I don't think I've ever read Kilmeny. I've heard quite a lot about how not-amazing it is, though, so I'm not too dismayed. Still, if I ever should happen to come across a copy I'll read it, because it's LMM.

Yeah, 2 pages into the description of Kilmeny and I'm like: I get it, I get it, she's gorgeous. Let's move ON.

I have to check her journals to see what was going on with LM at the point that she wrote this - I think it was her first book after Anne ... that might be wrong. I have to check.

Also:

//"If that woman had told me I was ugly I should have believed her," he thought. "Ay, even though I had a mirror to contradict her."//

Oh, get OVER yourself you vain popinjay!

I've been thinking about flaws and trajectories for a while now, trying to put into words why I despise the victim mentality in politics and literary criticism. This post somes close to elucidating it - you like LMM, despite her flaws. You don't put down the rest of her work becuase of this one. You don't expect her to see things in a modern light. And, to be honest, the southern European immigrants of her day brought a lot of crime and social upheaval - that's a fact. She didn't see beyond that, but how many people did, in her generation and social circle? If it weren't for the disapproval expressed by the establishment, the criminal elements might have ahad a much freer reign in the immigrant communities, too.

But the key is that society was progressive: LMM's morality helped shape the people of the next generation who eventually integrated the immigrants into Candian and American society, because LMM's generation had some good in them too, and they were moving in the right direction.

The people who throw out the baby with the bathwater in lit crit tend to see the world as a series of snapshots, and looking at one picture they scream about how horrible white men/America/Western civilization are / is. What they miss is that life is a movie, not a still. Things change, people change, and we would not be the people we are today if it were not for the flawed people who came before us. Flawed yes, but also on the right path. The seeds of 1964 are right there in the Constitution and Declaration. "All men are created equal." All it took is for some people to get up and say "black people are people too", and the descnedents of the people that created the Declaration, but accepted slavery in the Constitution, suddenly broke through the blinders, applied the ethos of the Declaration to everyone, and embraced civil liberties for all. It was a continuation, not a revolution.

Trajectories do matter - in fact they may be the only things that do matter. When I look at China and Taiwan in the 1970s, I see 2 countries both under martial law. But the trajectories were very different. Today Taiwan has freedoms and prosperity given only to a few in the coastal cities of China, and even then given with the threat that they can be withdrawn at any time. But in the 60s and 70s, commie stooges could and did point out the repressions of the GMD to say "they're no worse than us". But yes, the GMD was better than the CCP - time has shown us how their paths diverged.

Sorry for the long comment, I was sort of thinking out loud on the keyboard, as it were.

Great comment, John!! !

Oh, I don't blame her for not seeing beyond her circle at all. In many ways, she was quite aHEAD of her time - especially in the way she wrote her female characters. Of course I respond to that, because I'm a woman, and I hate reading books from that time which assume all kinds of things about what women SHOULD be, and how they SHOULD act. Lucy Maud just didn't do any of that - and it's very freeing for me to read right now, and it certainly was when I was a teenager. Oh - and she gives the same freedom to her male characters as well - there isn't just one way they HAVE to be - there's a whole world of men out there, with different aspirations, personalities ... She covers most of it. Her characters are not cardboard cutouts - male or female - and it's so refreshing to read.

But I cringe when I read her descriptions of Irish characters, for example and fuggedabout the French Canadians - the way she writes about them is almost like a minstrel show. But yeah - she was a woman of her time.

And perhaps immigrants did bring bad things - but to assume (like she does - in this book, anyway) that because someone is Italian that there is something sneaky and murderous about him - merely because his skin is swarthy - I think: Oh, LM, you're better than that. Come on now. :)

Kilmeny of the Orchard is interesting because out of all of her books (and she wrote, what, 50 books??) - this is the the only one where I feel her limitations. Well, that's not true -there are a couple other books - but those are just boring, and she wrote them under great personal stress in her real life - so she did the best she could ... but Kilmeny is, uhm, bad. That's all there is to it. heh heh

I couldn't care less about any of those people - and THAT'S what is interesting to me about this particular book - because Lucy Maud's gift was like Dickens' gift - she could whip up 3 dimensional character sketches left and right. These people all come to life.

But in this book, all they are are their surfaces. It's really odd.

But it's a great comment you made - you should write a post on it, John.

Oh and this is COMPLETELY off-topic but I saw a weird caption to a photo yesterday, John - and almost posted on it but then whatever - I got busy.

It was a picture of the Shanghai skyline. And there were all these people standing on some kind of overlook staring at the skyline.

But the caption read: "The tendency of everyone to wear their pyjamas in public in Shanghai is an irritant to many of the residents."

I thought: WTF???

Do you have any idea what that might be about? Let me try to track down the photo.

Here it is.

But there's no article attached to it.

People wear pajamas in public all the time? That may be weird - but why is it such a big issue?? It's not like the tendency is to shoot your gun off in crowded shopping malls - you're just wearing your pajamas in public.

Anyway. Weird???

Here is an article on the PJs. I did not notice this in Hong Kong or Beijing. Must be a Zhejiang / Jiangsu thing.

HTML didn't take:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,1346552,00.html

//This is changing, in part because of a government campaign against "backwardness", in part because of the spread of global values, but largely because the residential environment is being transformed by one of the most spectacular building sprees the world has seen. //

Wow.

Thanks, John!

Well, traditions may hang on even after evryone is moverd to high rises. It's still wise to walk well clear of Chinese busses because of the expectoration.

My FIL has a great story about the GMD's original anti-spitting campaign in the 30s (well pre-dating all those CCP ones) - started by Mme. Chiang herself. He said that people used to cross the street just to spit on the "No Spitting" signs.

hahahahaha

I actually kinda wish I could wear my pajamas out and about. Most comfortable garments in the world. I'd love to sit in a pub with friends, wearing the ol' flannels.

It was interesting actually visiting PEI--I learned a lot about the history of the island. I had no idea just how much antagonism there was between the Scottish settlers and the French Canadians. The levels of vitriol that are still there today are astonishing, and it was worse by several orders of magnitude in LMM's time. So after learning about that, in reading her books I'm surprised that the French Canadian hired help and their Scottish employers didn't try to kill each other--although I suppose that might be a little disrupting to the narrative!

Kilmeny is described as literally the most beautiful girl in the world.

I seem to remember several tween books in which this description was applied. It does make the mind bend.

And btw, Italians are evil.