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The Rector's Daughter (Virago Modern Classics)

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Flora M Mayor, like the woman she created in this novel was the daughter of a clergyman. However according to Janet Morgan in her introduction to this edition, Flora was nothing like her heroine Mary Jocelyn. I was rather delighted to learn that Flora seemed to have had quite a bit of spirit about her. It is all beautifully written and the characterisation is superb. None of the characters are one-dimensional. It would have been easy to make Robert Herbert unsympathetic, but he isn’t. It would also have been easy to make Kathy empty headed and entirely frivolous, but she is not. The minor characters are also strong. Mary herself is a tremendously complex and interesting character; there is a lot of repressed feelings and emotions between her and her father, which are barely spoken of. But Mary is so very believable and one does feel great sympathy for her; this is what makes the novel so devastating. Susan Hill is a strong advocate of this book, calling it one of the best of the neglected classics. She is right; it is a masterpiece. At the heart of the novel lie the fortunes of Mary Jocelyn, a dutiful and devoted daughter content to live out her destiny under the leaden East Anglian skies she loves, to find solace in a robin's song and in the rare moments of warmth from her aged and formidable father. But on losing the one soul who really loved and needed her, Mary finds herself unbearably lonely, and for the first time open to new horizons. A masterpiece of style, insight and tact. Mary Jocelyn is the daughter of a Canon who stands head and shoulders intellectually above the village, not two miles from London, where he has his church. A man of great acuity and probity, he chills her early literary efforts. After her mother's early death, she spends an outwardly loveless existence tending to a remaining invalid sister. She has the love of her life when the son of a Cambridge classmate of her father's--at university handsome and supercilious, now neither--comes as parson to a neighbouring parish. Mr Herbert comes first to see her father, to consult him on Tertullian and discuss Vergil, but increasingly opens his heart to Mary. He confides his religious doubts, his fear of wanting human and holy warmth. It seems inevitable he will propose, but she reads in a letter over breakfast that--in an outflow of spirits prompted by Mary's friendship, no more--he has offered himself to a much younger woman, a hard and slangy orphan, beautiful, and brought up more by groundspeople than governesses.

In October 2009 ‘The Rector’s Daughter’ was described in the BBC's 'Open Book' program as one of the best 'neglected classics'. I liked this sentence. It came at the end of a paragraph where the author is describing how Mary has to take care of an old Aunt and the daily grind that that entails (a lot of mundane tasks done over and over again day after day): The Rector’s Daughter (1924) concerns the life and ill-fated love of Mary Jocelyn, the rector’s daughter in question. She is motherless, and lives a life of obedient graciousness towards her father – who is deeply intellectual, but not able to show his love for his daughter. I think Mary was supposed to be in the mold of silently passionate women, having to be content with their lot. A bit like Jane Eyre, perhaps… but then I have always thought Jane Eyre a little overrated. Here she is: Afterwards she became an actress. She later turned to writing. Her first book was a collection of short stories, Mrs Hammond's Children, published in 1901 under the pseudonym Mary Strafford.

How many of these 100 Novels have you read?

Ostensibly, this is not a candidate for the read of the summer, never mind a competitor for the Classics status, seeing as the protagonist is announced in the title, Mary Jocelyn is the daughter of the Rector, and we learn about her ‘Adventures’ when she is about thirty six (there are episodes that happen when she is both older and younger, but I would put the Golden Mean there) and when we say Adventures, we must mean very little in modern terms, she is not eloping with men or women, that is nearly what Kathy does… It was such a poignant read that it is taking me a few days to mentally recover from reading about poor Mary’s life. Recover from reading about the depths and constancy of her love, devotion and emotions. Her deep-rooted devotion to her Father and the man that she loved with her heart and soul. Juliet Stevenson reads FM Mayor's unfairly Neglected Classic, the story of a plain, reliable parson's daughter whose life of duty and service is thrown into confusion by an unexpected and unsought love affair. Today we are introduced to Mary and her country home. Thanks to another Goodreads reviewer, I've just remembered that I bought the book after it was praised by Susan Hill in Howards End Is On the Landing. I have a fairly good idea of what caffeine does to a person...it is a stimulant, and certainly not a sedative. I wonder if Florence M. Mayor ever ingested coffee. I doubt it. This is what she has one of the characters say in the novel: “Let’s have some more coffee before we go to bed. There’s nothing like coffee for making one sleep.” 😯 😬

Perhaps my ennui can be attributed to spinster novel fatigue? I have read quite a few recently, and have to say that May Sinclair’s Life and Death of Harriett Frean attempts a similar type of novel rather more (for me) successfully. The public debate about unmarried women between the world wars (covered fascinatingly in a chapter of Nicola Beauman’s A Very Great Profession, and less fascinatingly in Virginia Nicholson’s Singled Out) was loud and often angry; the 1920s novels dealing with this issue were written at a time when the issue was contentious, as well as potentially tragic. Maybe I’ve just read too many, now? Canon Jocelyn is the most erudite man in Dedmayne and has one of the best minds anywhere and at any time (it is hard to think of people not just knowing Latin nowadays, but being very intimate with ancient classics) and it is only natural for someone like that to be less inclined to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi, only this has the effect that since they do not invite people for dances, they do not want to send cards for Mary, who seems destined to remain unmarried, until she meets Mr. Robert Herbert, a handsome, very well educated clergyman. Flora Macdonald Mayor was an English novelist and short story writer who published under the name F. M. Mayor. She falls in love with him and in return, he loves her, which, although it seems to be the recipe for bliss, does not come to fruition, because a short time after the man sees that he has deep feelings for Mary, he happens to fall in love with Kathy, a woman of almost absolute beauty, who reciprocates, in spite of the immense differences between them…indeed, she will warn him from the beginning that it is a high risk they are taking, and especially the vicar, given that she does not even understand much of what he is saying… Her best-known novel is The Rector's Daughter (1924). (In October 2009 this was described in the BBC's 'Open Book' programme as one of the best 'neglected classics'.)Juliet Stevenson reads F M Mayor's unfairly Neglected Classic, the story of a plain, reliable parson's daughter whose life of duty and service is thrown into confusion by an unexpected and unsought love affair. Today Mary's quiet life in the rectory is disturbed by a new visitor, Mr Herbert. This is a novel about how hard it is to understand other people, and how many misunderstandings and even tragedies arise from it.”– Harriet, Harriet Devine’s Blog Take a bare bones look at the plot and not much happens but read The Rector's Daughter and you experience a lifetime of small lives. There is a community of richly drawn characters circling Mary. Mayor used these characters not just to believably populate Dedmayne but also to highlight Mary's Victorian life verses her desires. Her journey outward isn't dramatic or life changing by today's standards but Mary's Victorian upbringing had not prepared her for personal growth let alone what the world would expect of her in the Jazz Age. There are fleeting glimpses of opportunities, but people, circumstances and Mary's own inhibitions conspire to prevent anything coming of them. She meets a man, but is "too humble to be repelled by his dullness". Love comes from another quarter, but it's a perilous path and she feels so guilty for such an incredibly minor transgression that she feels outcast from her religion. "She was exalted in ecstasy, but... with duty paramount her ecstasy took the form of good resolutions." I normally hate earnestness in all forms – but I didn't find this earnest. I just found it very honest, and deeply sad. Aside from the whole issue of romance and spinsterhood etc it's also about general life disappointment in the sense of not achieving your dreams and having to deal with the consequences of that.

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