Marcella Mrs Humphry Ward 9781495324697 Books
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Marcella Mrs Humphry Ward 9781495324697 Books
Interesting but it was not easy plodding through the discussions of the societal problems of the poor and the various solutions tbat were proposed. Marcella moves slowly to the understanding that no solution whether proposed by the rich landowners or by Parliament would help all the poor. Her radical views place her in opposition to the man who wants to marry her and another man who seems to be an ardent supporter. I admired her for sticking to her beliefs but in the end she has to take the middle road for her own future happiness.Product details
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Marcella Mrs Humphry Ward 9781495324697 Books Reviews
Almost from the outset, Marilyn Coffey's MARCELLA put me in mind of Carson McCullers's MEMBER OF THE WEDDING. In that novel, McCullers's principal character, Frankie Addams, is roughly the same age as Marcella and wrestles with many of the same demons. And although both stories are sadly revelatory of the inner contortions a girl must pass through on her way out of childhood and into adolescence, this is where the similarities end.
Coffey's character (the eponymous Marcella) is more explicitly drawn--perhaps indicative of the age in which we live and of what a writer can now permit herself to express in print. I should perhaps mention, however, that what I've just read is the 40th Anniversary Edition. Given that Marcella first appeared in 1973, I'd venture to say that Coffey was way ahead of her time.
The backdrop of Marcella Colby's story--her younger sister, Lucille, her parents, her home life in general--suggests a sterile field in which anguish and obsession would inevitably take root and flourish. While a sympathetic reader might wish for a mother (the father almost doesn't bear mention--and so, Coffey gives him short shrift) whose same gender, at least, would render her a willing partner in Marcella's awkward passage through early adolescence, all we get is a wooden prop, a virtual cipher. Marcella's mother is, in short, deadwood -- and Marcella is consequently set adrift to find her own emotional moorings.
At the prompting of a school acquaintance, Marcella happens to wander into a church. Not just any church, mind you, but an Evangelical church. Her epiphany -- this day and this place in which she is "saved" by a certain Brother Morgan and his retinue -- only serves to contort her mind further and to make her entirely beholden to an all-seeing, all-knowing God. It is, moreover, Marcella's now fervent belief in this omniscient and omnipresent Being that drives her, by degrees, deeper and deeper down into a cauldron of shame for what she feels is a blasphemy of the most heinous and despicable sort the discovery, through masturbation, that she is a sentient being. Unfortunately, however, and in the absence of someone to tell her differently, she can conceive of her masturbation only as a "filthy, perverted habit" (p. 192).
Enter Brother Morgan (aka "Big Jim") once again--but now as what Marcella perceives to be an almost heaven-sent guide, protector and trustworthy confidant. Their communication opens in letters that Marcella is only too happy to write--frequently, imploringly, keeping almost lockstep pace with her autoerotic sessions--and leads to an invitation to spend a couple of weeks far from home at a camp for young Christians. Brother Morgan indeed delivers. But what he delivers in the form of temporary relief and happiness is something those more world-weary readers among us will likely find suspect from the get-go. I, for one, wasn't in the least surprised when, on the occasion of a one-night sleep-away at the conclusion of Marcella's two-week stay at "Big Jim's" camp in Colorado, the absence of his wife, May, and the absence of a sleeping bag for Marcella quite predictably led to Brother Morgan's laying on of hands (please excuse the obvious double entendre).
Marcella returns home the next day--not precisely deflowered, but spiritually and emotionally debauched.
Is MARCELLA in any sense a didactic story? Is this novel a Bildungsroman of the sort that was once so popular in German literature? Only in the sense that we, as readers, can feel the anguish of Marcella and wish -- as she does at one point late in the story -- that it might somehow be possible to turn the clock backwards. Turn it backwards--or force it to jump ahead to a point where Marcella will no longer be demonized by her own fingers and tormented by the knowledge that she may be less than "a perfect Christian" (p. 191).
I'll now resist the temptation to describe the final chapters of Marilyn Coffey's novel. Better you should read it for yourself to discover Marcella's fate. What I will say by way of conclusion, however, is that the forty years of social progress we've enjoyed since this novel's first appearance made much of it feel almost medieval in its depiction of character and event. Let's hope that by the time the 80th Anniversary Edition appears, some of those same characters and events will feel positively pre-historical.
The revival of a 40-year-old book that should have been a classic in its time (but was well before its time) and never received the recognition it deserves. Now the world is ready for Marcella's juvenile insights, and Marilyn Coffey strips her soul bare in a literary gem.
Truly Victorian novel.
Too much detail on the social and political conflicts of that period but the characters and their sentiments will keep you engaged.
Marcella is an emerging teen who -- guess what -- has problems with her mother. Mom is a master at inflicting guilt on this shy girl who gradually learns what it is to mature. She also learns about pleasure, and she for sure goes through guilt trips about that. You can't help liking this kid and being sympathetic. We have all confronted some of the issues that she faces. This is a very enjoyable read in a quirky way, and it deals with growing up in her mind as well as her body. I enjoyed this book and recommend it.
MARCELLA, BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD Mrs Ward in all her novels dramatized the plight of the poor and the failures of the English ruling class. In Marcella, she creates an unusually independent woman, somewhat estranged from a weak father and a cold mother, who takes up the cause of defending a poor tenant poacher who killed a game keeper. This was a hot topic -- the game laws -- critics accused landowners of caring more about their rabbits and pheasants than about their poorly housed, hungry tenants. Two men want to marry Marcella -- the liberal politician and lawyer who defends the poacher, the aristocrat who prosecutes the poacher. Estranged from her fiance, the rich fellow, Marcella moves to a poor district of London and becomes a nurse. This gives Ward a setting for deploring the conditions of the urban poor. After a sufficient period of self-sacrifice, Marcella, as any respectable woman should, marries the best man. Mrs Ward was a popular writer, who drove herself to produce novels, because her family needed the money. This is one of her better novels.
Interesting but it was not easy plodding through the discussions of the societal problems of the poor and the various solutions tbat were proposed. Marcella moves slowly to the understanding that no solution whether proposed by the rich landowners or by Parliament would help all the poor. Her radical views place her in opposition to the man who wants to marry her and another man who seems to be an ardent supporter. I admired her for sticking to her beliefs but in the end she has to take the middle road for her own future happiness.
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