Phoebe, Junior

I thought I would publish a relatively sensible post for a change. This is the book I'm reading at the moment - as some of you know I'm working on a doctoral thesis on Mrs Oliphant, a Scottish Victorian author (novelist, journalist and biographer). I have recently started a website on her, which is still not that much to see, but will (eventually) be of some use to people wishing to know further about her. Hopefully.
I would certainly recommend her to anyone fond of Victorian domestic fiction. When I am writing a plot summary for the website I am always surprised at how trite every event in the novel sounds when summarizing, but it is hard to convey the way the author makes you relate to her compelling tale of the everyday, the commonplace: history as it is actually experienced by us as individuals. Whatever my favourite work of hers up til now might be, none I've read so far has failed to keep me entranced until the very last page. I like that typical voice of hers - the wise, keen eyed woman, no rebel maybe, but still as intelligent, hard-working and admirable as the most radical of feminists. Yes, I have just voiced the main argument yielded when it comes to neglect her - she wrote articles against the feminism of her times, she was an antifeminist, they say, "Eve's renegade" as a very fine academic text on the subject phrases it. As she died and the century turned, literary mores and values were changing, and she became the prolific, chattering old woman who wrote for money, to maintain her family. An object of pity rather than admiration. I suppose that as the (XXth) century advanced critics increasingly relied on previous critics' judgements of her output, rather than at least test the water by reading the original texts (she was very prolific - I know that feels scary to the incipient Oliphant reader!). In the end, a very talented author is constantly dismissed, discarded from your average set of Victorian literary champions just because she has been ever so frequently quoted out of context.
In the end, I have got myself carried and keep on waffling on why she should have not been neglected and why we should be wary of which contemporary prejudices we carry with us as readers and interpreters of texts belonging to our relatively immediate past (exactly, as it is the section of the past we most strongly react against, in that dangerous combination of familiarity and the disowning instinct of the younger generation). So happy this is just a blog and waffling is what I am supposed to do in here!
In any case, this book is the last of her series called Carlingford Chronicles, which portrays the social milieu of a country village in England (quite in the line of Trollope's Barchester Chronicles, dear Mrs. O. had always an eye for potential bestselling formulas!). The main character, Phoebe Beecham, is a very compelling female character, however clever and scheming she might be, because she often means well, plus she happens to be succesful in everything she undertakes. In spite of the gender limitations we are all very aware of when discussing the XIXth century, in that it is always a popular (and necessary, I should say) subject of debate, I quite like these women that did not automatically become invalids and spent the rest of their lives moaning about their meaningless, mean, narrow existence. Well, they did have reasons to complain (many of them do still exist, however hidden and disguised - we are, after all, in the times of political correctness), but how good or even accurate is it to imagine a past full of either bloodless conformists or wrathful rebels? Were all women at either pole of the spectrum? I rather doubt it, and like to see this sort of woman, commonplace, and yet wilful and resourceful, and not that selfless, as a good sample of what the average Victorian middle-class woman would have been (romantic, me?!).
I only regret Phoebe is to marry that oaf of a man Clarence Copperhead. I know he represents a fantastic chance - a Career, as she calls marriage, she will put him in Parliament and keep him there. But he is still is a very pale and irritating sort of character. Mind you, I don't think I would have liked righteous, and formidably stiff Reginald May either. I still find Clarence's duets with Phoebe (him at the violin, her at the piano) rather amusing - the poor woman struggling to get him through the piece with some success, being herself a rather proficient musician. At least Oliphant does never yield to making her men the very personification of female fantasies - say passionate Rochester-like characters or soppy, goody-goody (and suitably powerless) clergymen. They are just humans (though often clergymen - not that many genteel professions for the sensible middle class man, were there?), for better or worse, only with a fainter contact with everyday reality (the commonplace, the everyday, was part of the private sphere, that is, woman's lot in life) than many women.
Yes, I am enjoying the book. A lot. The Oliphant website, btw, is: The Margaret Oliphant site