Alas, it didn't take long for me to feel underwhelmed. Wikipedia also states that Richardson (1873-1957), is also considered an important feminist writer, because of the way her work assumes the validity and importance of female experiences as a subject for literature. I try not to be disloyal to the Sisterhood but while I agree that any experiences can be a subject for literature, they must be rendered sufficiently interesting to maintain the attention of the reader. I could not muster the slightest interest in Miriam Henderson and the petty dramas of the German boarding-school where she becomes a governess.

Yes, I was bored by Pointed Roofs.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/01/26/pointed-roofs-pilgrimage-1-by-dorothy-richar... ( )

Another top book of 1915 by an author I’d never even heard of. Dorothy Richardson is a modernist writer, and one of the first to use interior monologues or “stream of consciousness.” Pointed Roofs is about a shy, awkward English girl whose father has lost all his money, so she goes to Germany to become a teacher in a girls’ finishing school. (All this really happened to Richardson.) Of course it reminded me a little bit of Villette, and the nice part is it reminds the main character of Villette too. The novel had such a natural, authentic-feeling flow. It is so refreshing and inspiring to read the thoughts and feelings of a girl, treated with such seriousness and depth. I feel like even in contemporary literature, men’s feelings are serious business and women’s feelings are chick lit, so for Richardson to have pulled this off in 1915 fills me with profound respect and gratitude. I really liked how the main character was able to relax and play the piano better once she got to the German school; it seems like just being British is a huge handicap to emotional and artistic development. The interplay between the girls at the school seemed very realistic. Everything that happened was realistic! Because Richardson was presenting such a slice of life, there were more things that I had no idea what the hell they were than in other books of 1915, because she was talking about products and fads of the day without explaining what they were. This may mark me as an incredibly shallow person, but one of the most interesting parts was when the main character Miriam is forced to have her hair washed when “Miriam’s hair had never been washed with anything but cantharides and rose-water on a tiny special sponge.” To her horror, hair washing involves having a raw egg cracked onto her hair. In some ways 1915 is just like today; in other ways it’s like another planet. I’m pleased there are many more books to come by Richardson. ( )

120/2020. Set in the early 1890s, the protagonist is a 17 year old unreliable narrator who has accepted a teaching scholarship at a German finishing school because she wanted to travel and get away from her middle-middle-class family, but who has persuaded herself that she's saving her family money (despite the cost of her new clothes etc, new travelling trunk, return travel, return travel for her father as escort, 25 shillings spending money, and whatever other expenses she incurred that she's not telling). Readers are probably supposed to credit her misrepresentations as "innocence" about the world rather than selfish fibs. There's also the subtext that her father likes to travel, and she takes after him, and a son would be expected to travel so why shouldn't she? Especially as she's been indoctrinated towards upper middle class snobbery by a family without the income or social network to support that worldview.

Hmm: ' "[...] all the expense of my going to Germany and coming back is less than what it would have cost to keep me at home for the five months I’ve been there — I wish you’d tell everybody that." '

The writing is beautiful in a "continuous state of being" style (aka stream of consciousness). Dorothy Richardson seems to have thought of it as a sort of women's language, a feminised version of the normative realist literary expression fashionable at the time of writing. Whatever it is, it works for me (and better than several of the author's peers who are more famous because they wrote about subjects of greater general interest to average readers).

Pedants' corner: 'Pater had always been worrying about slang and careless pronunciation. None of them ever said "cut in half" or "very unique" or "ho’sale" or "phodygraff." ' [halve, unique, wholesale, and phonograph]

The style of the text in which this is embedded demonstrates a telling juxtaposition of Pater's linguistic pedantry with the author's artistic freedom of expression.

Clothes often appear as explorations of women's expected roles in society, and I was especially struck by the instruction from Miriam's dressmaker not to take deep breaths so she could wear a tighter-fitting bodice, then the contrast between fainting from corset tight-lacing and the freedom of playing tennis in stays. All this is presented as experienced rather than observed and interpreted, which is effective at a deeper level than intellectual arguments for feminism (different approaches, of course, being complementary). It's also fascinating history of women's clothing.

On the newly fashionable mass ready-made "blouse" for middle-class women (previously a garment mostly worn by working class men): 'Her blouses came at the beginning of the week. She carried them upstairs. Her hands took them incredulously from their wrappages. The "squashed strawberry" lay at the top, soft warm clear madder-rose, covered with a black arabesque of tiny leaves and tendrils. It was compactly folded, showing only its turned-down collar, shoulders and breast. She laid it on her bed side by side with its buff companion and shook out the underlying skirt.... How sweet of them to send her the things ... she felt tears in her eyes as she stood at her small looking-glass with the skirt against her body and the blouses held in turn above it ... they both went perfectly with the light skirt.... She unfolded them and shook them out and held them up at arms’ length by the shoulder seams. Her heart sank. They were not in the least like anything she had ever worn. They had no shape. They were square and the sleeves were like bags. She turned them about and remembered the shapeliness of the stockinette jerseys smocked and small and clinging that she had worn at school. If these were blouses then she would never be able to wear blouses.... "They’re so flountery!" she said, frowning at them. She tried on the rose-coloured one. It startled her with its brightness.... "It’s no good, it’s no good," she said, as her hands fumbled for the fastenings. There was a hook at the neck; that was all. Frightful ... she fastened it, and the collar set in a soft roll but came down in front to the base of her neck. The rest of the blouse stuck out all round her ... "it’s got no cut ... they couldn’t have looked at it." ... She turned helplessly about, using her hand-glass, frowning and despairing. Presently she saw Harriett’s quizzical eyes and laughed woefully, tweaking at the outstanding margin of the material. "It’s all very well," she murmured angrily, "but it’s all I’ve got." ... She wished Sarah were there. Sarah would do something, alter it or something. She heard her encouraging voice saying, "You haven’t half got it on yet. It’ll be all right." She unfastened her black skirt, crammed the flapping margin within its band and put on the beaded black stuff belt.
The blouse bulged back and front shapelessly and seemed to be one with the shapeless sleeves which ended in hard loose bands riding untrimmed about her wrists with the movements of her hands.... "It’s like a nightdress," she said wrathfully and dragged the fulnesses down all round under her skirt. It looked better so in front; but as she turned with raised hand-glass it came riding up at the side and back with the movement of her arm.'

Alas for the aspiring gentlewoman who hasn't been taught to sew for herself because dressmaking is a trade.... ( )

Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage is made up of 13 novellas, the first example of stream of consciousness style in English. They tell the life story of Miriam Henderson, providing an intimate portrait of a woman modeled closely on the author herself.

In Pointed Roofs, the first novella, 17-year-old Miriam's family has fallen on hard times, forcing her to take a position as governess in a German girls' boarding school. She is supposed to teach them to speak English, but there is no formal curriculum so she must teach entirely through casual conversations. Miriam finds it difficult to relate to the German girls and feels inadequate most of the time. The school's stern and pious headmistress does nothing to ease her anxiety. When the summer term arrives, Miriam faces a fork in the road and her decision sets the stage for the second novella.

For some reason, I expected the stream of consciousness style to be difficult but it wasn't at all, and I loved the way it put you inside Miriam's head, experiencing all of her thoughts in "real time." ( )