Library Director’s NotebookApril, 2014 Somerville and Ross were two women writers and cousins who...

Sat, 03/29/2014 - 10:12am -- KChin

Library Director’s Notebook
April, 2014

image

Somerville and Ross were two women writers and cousins who wrote rollicking stories about the Anglo-Irish and their trials and tribulations in Ireland during the late Victorian period.  Their best known work, which was dramatized by the BBC is Some Experiences of an Irish RM.  Yet Somerville and Ross considered The Real Charlotte to be their best work.

Part farce, part drama and in the end, part tragedy, The Real Charlotte might be said to be a combination of the deep seated vengeance found  in Balzac’s Cousin Bette, the sad fate of the heroine in  Hardy’s Tess of the Durbervilles,  a good dash of the broad silliness of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and the vivacious candor of Fieldings’ Tom Jones!

Pretty, inexperienced, yet ultimately manipulative Francie Fitzpatrick has lived a life of genteel poverty in her small Irish town, and so is happy to take up refuge with her older, seemingly sedate cousin Charlotte.  Within weeks of her establishment in the rustic town of Lismoyle,  Francie has conquered the male population pretty completely, including Christopher Dysart,  the son of the local squire, Gerald Hawkins, a dashing English army officer and  Roddy Lambert the estate land agent, with whom Francie was acquainted as a child.

Charlotte watches these goings on with increasing displeasure, particularly since she has herself been enamored of Lambert, the land agent for years , who is himself married to a dull, nervous, semi-invalid wife. Francie, unaware of Charlotte’s passion for Lambert, keeps him dangling with her other suitors as she sets out to have the best time possible before making any permanent choice of her own.

The  passionate rivalries, overt or unspoken continue to heat up, with Francie flaming the fire with her dazzling loveliness and headlong pursuit of amusement.   Charlotte, thwarted and bitter and neglected one time too many, begins to concoct her own schemes, with tragic results.  Meanwhile a motley crew of locals, replete with thick layers of ignorance, superstition, and age-old resentments comment on the unfolding drama like a kind of Irish chorus, discoursing on the action with censorious tongues.

The Real Charlotte is not as well known at it ought to be.  Although written more than a hundred years ago, it raises questions of morality, psychology, and social interaction that are entirely relevant today. Its humor, at times broad, at times subtle, stands the test of time. Lastly, the lovingly detailed descriptions of the Irish countryside elevate the spirit, as all carefully observed writing of the natural world inevitably does.

Blog Category: 
chat loading...