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Chargement... The Moorland Cottage and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)par Elizabeth Gaskell
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  Herenya | Jul 6, 2017 |  aucune critique | ajouter une critique
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'I believe the art of telling a story is born with some people, and these have it to perfection.'Elizabeth Gaskell was a consummate storyteller, and in this selection of one short novel and eight stories she encompasses an extraordinary range of narrative voices, settings, and genres. She herself acknowledged, 'you know I can tell stories better than any other way of expressing myself'. Herwork shows her compulsion to express herself on the many subjects relevant to her experience as a Victorian, and Mancunian, a Unitarian, a social observer, and a woman. Above all, however, she writes about love.Love is the common thread which runs through the stories collected here. Gaskell recognizes that it can give rise to selfishness as well as self-sacrifice, unhappiness as well as joy. Writing with passion and shrewdness, irony and sympathy, she explores these paradoxes through humour, pathos,tragedy, the extraordinary, and the everyday. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.8Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Victorian period 1837-1900Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.44)
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The Moorland Cottage (1850) is a quiet story which dives somewhat abruptly into melodrama in the final chapters. Maggie grows up in the moorland cottage with her mother, her older brother (when he’s home from school) and the family servant. The only people she mixes with are a neighbouring family, the Buxtons.
Maggie is reserved and prone to reverie; she deals with her mother’s favouritism of her brother, and her brother’s self-centredness, by quietly conceding to their wishes. But she discovers a limit to how self-sacrificing she will be.
The Moorland Cottage insightfully explores the pressures and expectations Maggie is burdened with. The introduction of my edition notes that “Gaskell always resists the easy commonplace fate of the traditional Victorian heroine, for a stronger, more powerful recognition of the value of women’s lives”. I think that’s notable, and I liked Maggie’s strength of character, her faith and her love for nature. Nevertheless, I can see how she might not be an accessible heroine by modern standards, like Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, and combined with the odd pacing, it’s understandable why there isn’t a BBC adaptation of this one.
Maggie, in all her time of yearning to become a Joan of Arc, or some great heroine, was unconscious that she herself showed no little heroism, in bearing meekly what she did every day from her mother.
The short stories were interesting to read, particularly as Gaskell’s characters are not immune from death and so her stories are less predictable. Most of these end with someone dying. Most of the time, this felt like a realistic depiction of the times rather than being unnecessarily morbid - and “Christmas Storms and Sunshine” is notably lighthearted - but the overall impression is a bit bleak.
They are also little sentimental and heavy-handed in their messages - I suspect Gaskell did better when she could explore issues and themes over the space of a novel, and thus could present them with greater complexity. And a Gaskell-level death toll is not quite so depressing when not crammed into the space of ten pages...
Nevertheless, I don’t regret reading them, and I'm glad to own The Moorland Cottage. (