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Aurora: Week 4: Books 6 & 7
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I found some of this section hard to read due to the way Marian’s fate was so cold-heartedly calculated by Lady Waldemar. Nevertheless the poetry was so powerful, mainly in the way it described the treatment of women. For me the most powerful of all were the words from Marian which altered Aurora’s understanding of her situation.‘ Do wolves seduce a wandering fawn in France?
Do eagles, who have pinched a lamb with claws,
Seduce it into carrion? So with me.
I was not ever as you say, seduced,
But simply murdered.’
Almost as powerful was the condemnation of the type of women like the one who threw out Marian because she was pregnant.
’ Their chastity so darned with perfidy,
That, though a rag itself, it looks as well
Across a street, in balcony or coach,
As any stronger stuff might. For my part,
I’d rather take the wind-side of the stews
Than touch such women with my finger-end
They top the poor street-walker by their lie,
And look the better for being so much worse
The devil’s most devilish when respectable.
Aurora’s arrival in Italy does not seem to have given her the relief she had hoped for. Rather than being absorbed into its atmosphere she feels more like a stranger looking in from the outside. Even her beloved Italian countryside seems more a collection of objects to look at rather than glory in. Her thoughts are still with Romney and seem to be turning more and more into regrets.
The plot really moves forward in book 6 after a bit of a lull in book 5. Aurora meets Marian by accident in Paris and discovers that Marian has had a child. In spite of the fact that Aurora ultimately takes Marian under her wing, I'm not sure she comes across very well at first, when her first impulse is to be so judgemental towards Marian before she hears the full story of how she was deceived and raped in a brothel. From a brief glimpse of Marian in the crowd carrying a child, Aurora for some reason jumps to the conclusion that Marian must have stolen the baby, which seems like a bit of a leap! Marian could have got married, or have been married and widowed, or (as indeed turns out to be the case) assaulted and left in a situation which was not of her own making. It's a bit rich when in book 7 Aurora then laments how judgemental people can be after she hears about Marian's employer giving her the sack. Marian's story of the visits she had from Lady Waldemar are chilling. Lady W's purpose is so clear to the reader but Marian does not seem to acknowledge any evil intent on Lady W's part - I suppose we would today call this "gaslighting"! In the guise of a friend, Lady W slowly drips into Marian's ear that she is not worthy of marrying Romney. She forces Marian into an emotional scene where Lady W can then play the role of a supportive maternal figure and gently tell Marian that two people of such different classes can never successfully marry, and Romney will come to regret it when his own class turns against him or makes fun of him. I really liked the image:
Who buys a staff
To fit the hand, that reaches to the knee?
A man should be able to lean on his wife for support, like a walking stick, but cannot if it is too low.
Marian admits that she doesn't really like Lady W:
And every time she came, my veins ran cold
As somebody were walking on my grave
and briefly questions whether to trust her, but is so grief-stricken by having to give Romney up that she is a bit dazed and agrees when Lady W even offers to pay for Marian to go and start a new life in Australia. Talk about getting your rival out of the way! Although, to be fair, I don't think her intention was that Marian should be sold to a brothel...
I completely agree with Trev that Marian's report of what happened to her is very powerful and she makes it clear that she was just treated as prey. I made a note of the same lines, about the wolves and the carrion.
It is also powerful when she makes the point that nobody cares enough to stop such things happening but everybody cares that the victims of such treatment shouldn't speak of it:
I know that we must scrupulously hint
With half-words, delicate reserves, the thing
Which no one scrupled we should feel in full.
The ending of book 6 was a wonderful image, as Marian, having been turned out of the brothel and left homeless, sits looking at an ominous sunset:
I, Marian Erle, myself, alone, undone,
Facing a sunset low upon the flats
As if it were the finish of all time,
The great red stone upon my sepulchre,
Which angels were too weak to roll away.
Aurora didn't endear herself to me much in book 7 either, in spite of her kindness to Marian. She wallows in self-pity and considers that if she had married Romney, none of this would ever have happened, whereas Marian, in spite of having suffered so much at the hands of others, avoids self-pity and has recovered her calm faith in God through the existence of her child. Aurora then sticks her oar in even further by writing to Romney's friend Lord Howe, and also a furious letter to Lady Waldemar, blaming her for Marian's downfall. I love the phrase "that poisonous porridge called your soul"!
Lorna wrote: "The plot really moves forward in book 6 after a bit of a lull in book 5. Aurora meets Marian by accident in Paris and discovers that Marian has had a child. In spite of the fact that Aurora ultimat..."Great comments Lorna and some excellent quotes. I hoped Aurora would somehow rise again from her ashes of depression in London but finding Marian only seems to have sent her into a deeper sense of despair.
Regarding Lady Waldemar, her wickedness was so terrible that I can’t give her the benefit of the doubt about Marian’s fate.
I thought that she probably intended to send Marian to that French brothel all along, assuming that once Marian had been debauched, Romney wouldn’t want to know her. Otherwise why didn’t Marian just board a ship from Britain bound directly for Australia?
You both make some good points, Aurora did seem strangely cold in this section, and I think it's as you say Lorna because she immediately judges Marian harshly. I wondered if she was jealous of Marian because she herself loved Romney, but am not sure? It seems an awful world where a woman has to be sold to a brothel and raped to be accepted, rather than if she had loved and lost a man she liked.I was surprised at Lady Waldemar being such a one dimensional villain when the little I'd seen about this poem critically before reading it was that it was about woman's rights. Having females destroy other females to get a man perhaps jars thematically with the long sections about Aurora's struggle to be respected as a woman poet in a patriarchy.
I agree that I'm not sure how to respond at times to Aurora-she does seem to have somewhat less than poetic responses to Marian's circumstances and to what she finds in Italy, although clearly much of this has been overshadowed for her by her (very late) dawning realization of her own true feelings for Romney. I was surprised by her underwhelming reaction to the information about Romney-is he dying? I had thought she would be flying back to London (or did I misunderstand that section?).
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Lorna wrote: " In spite of the fact that Aurora ultimately takes Marian under her wing, I'm not sure she comes across very well at first, when her first impulse is to be so judgemental towards Marian."Just reading through the notes in my edition, it says Aurora's attitude mirrors Elizabeth Barrett Browning's disapproval of Margaret Fuller having a child before she was married, her dislike of George Eliot for living out of wedlock and that she dismissed and never forgave Elizabeth Wilson for having two children while she was in her service even though Elizabeth Wilson was actually married.
I don't know how much the views of the author effect how much you can enjoy and appreciate the text. Is it possible to just view them whenever their time, or does it date their work a lot when it has clear judgements that don't sit well in modern times?
That's very interesting, Clarissa, especially considering what we might think of as EBB's unconventional behaviour in secretly marrying and going abroad with Browning. I do think it's possible to enjoy a text regardless of what the author's views were, and it is good to remember that people don't fit neatly into boxes, and those who we might assume to have been "liberal" on all counts may actually have held seemingly contradictory views e.g. various educated and independent women who nevertheless were opposed to women's suffrage.
The prevailing morality of the time regarding women who were made pregnant against their will was undoubtedly very judgemental, even among people who were also sympathetic to their plight. It is noticeable that in a number of major examples of such women in novels, even where an author acknowledges that the woman is not at fault, the central character nevertheless cannot be permitted to have a happy ending. Will Marian prove to be an exception to this...?
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Piyangie wrote: "I too agree with Lorna that it's possible to enjoy a work irrespective of the author's views. Having contradictory views I find to be a characteristic feature in most human beings. As Lorna said no..."This is an excerpt from Anne Lister’s diaries, recording the death of Lord Byron.
’ Isabella sent me, from Croft, The Globe & Traveller of last Friday, containing the account of the death of Lord Byron ‘at Missolonghi, on 19 April, after an illness of ten days. A cold, attended with inflammation, was the cause of the fatal result’. The Greek account says his lordship died ‘about 11 o’clock in the evening, in a consequence of a rheumatic, inflammatory fever, which had lasted for ten days’. 37 min. guns (he was in the 37th year of his age) were ordered to be fired, by sunrise, on 20 April, from the batteries of Missolonghi. All places of amusement, courts of justice, & shops (except provision & medicine shops) ordered to be shut for three days. A general mourning ordered for twenty-one days & funeral ceremonies to be performed in all the churches. The body will be brought to England. ‘The Greeks have requested & obtained the heart of Lord Byron, which will be placed in a mausoleum in the country, the liberation of which was his last wish.’ Came upstairs at 11.05. Who admired him as a man?Yet ‘he is gone & forever!’ The greatest poet of the age! And I am sorry.’
Trev wrote: "Who admired him as a man?Yet ‘he is gone & forever!’ The greatest poet of the age! And I am sorry.."Am I bad that I do like Byron as a person :D We probably would not have been friends if we lived at the same time, but he had passion and belief and I think he'd be exciting to be around!
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Idealized cultural norms don't allow for the messiness of life. The higher you are in the social strata, the more power you have to make messy things go away. A daughter unexpectedly pregnant? Hide her away some place, have her give up the child, and then she returns to make her match. Everyone obviously knows what happened, but officially that's never acknowledged. Marian has no such options.
Clarissa wrote: "Trev wrote: "Who admired him as a man?Yet ‘he is gone & forever!’ The greatest poet of the age! And I am sorry.."Am I bad that I do like Byron as a person :D We probably would not have been frien..."
A lot has been written about Byron and I suppose it comes down to what you believe to be true. This extract from Byron's Women by Alexander Larman (2016) would certainly question his suitability as a gentleman in any walk of life.
https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2016/0...
Trev wrote: "A lot has been written about Byron and I suppose it comes down to what you believe to be true. This extract from Byron's Women by Alexander Larman (2016) would certainly question his suitability as a gentleman in any walk of life.."
I think it is often the case that genius accompanies exceedingly bad behaviour, particularly to family and partners.
Aurora is in Paris and per chance happens to spot Marian Erle carrying a child, but loses her in the crowd. A few days later she sees her again, without child, and strikes up a conversation. Curious to find out about this circumstance, she accompanies Marian to her room in a downtrodden part of town. Here it is revealed that the child is Marian's. Marian recounts how it was Lady Waldemar who was behind Marian’s disappearance on her wedding day with Romney. Lady Waldemar’s lady’s maid took her to France and left her at a brothel where she was raped and later able to escape.
Book 7
Marian continues her tale, how she got employment as a lady’s maid, but lost her position due to the fact that she was pregnant. She took up sewing again and gave birth do a baby boy. Appalled and contrite for having entertained disparaging thoughts about Marian, Aurora asks Marian if she and her son would like to live with her. Marian accepts and they travel to Florence. Before they leave Paris Aurora pens a scathing letter to Lady Waldemar informing her she knows the fate of Marian. Arriving in Italy is a bittersweet experience for Aurora. There are reminders of her father, and the house they used to live in has been altered by the new occupants.