Pilgrimage (novel sequence)

Last updated

Pilgrimage is a novel sequence by the British author Dorothy Richardson, from the first half of the 20th century. It comprises 13 volumes, including a final posthumous volume. [1] It is now considered a significant work of literary modernism. Richardson's own term for the volumes was "chapters". [2]

Contents

Overview

Miriam Henderson, the central character in the Pilgrimage novel sequence, is based on the author's own life between 1891 and 1915. [3] Pilgrimage was read as a work of fiction and "its critics did not suspect that its content was a reshaping of DMR's own experience", nor that it was a roman à clef . [4]

Miriam, like Richardson, "is the third of four daughters [whose] parents had longed for a boy and had treated her as if she fulfilled that expectation". [5] This upbringing is reflected in Miriam's "strong ambivalence toward her role as a woman". [6] Dorothy Richardson had the same ambivalence. [7]

Content

The first novel Pointed Roofs (1915), is set in 1893. [8] At 17 years old Miriam Henderson, as Richardson herself did, teaches English at a finishing school in Hanover, Germany. Both author and character have to do this because of their father's financial problems. [9] The following year, 1916, Richardson published Backwater, where Miriam "works as resident governess in a school frequented by the daughters of the North London middle class". [10]

Honeycomb was published in 1917. Saturday Review commented, "Miss Richardson is not without talent but it is the talent of neurasthenia." And that the "only living thing in the book" is "the morbid and self-conscious mind [of the heroine]." [11] In this novel Miriam works as a governess to the two children of the Corrie family during 1895. Mr. Corrie is a successful lawyer. Honeycomb ends with the suicide of Miriam's mother. Events in this novel again parallel Dorothy Richardson's own life: her mother committed suicide in 1895.

The fourth part, The Tunnel, appeared in 1919. In it Miriam starts on a more independent life when she takes a room in Bloomsbury in central London at 21, and works as a receptionist at a dental surgery. These are events again parallel Dorothy Richardson's life. Olive Heseltine described the novel to be "simply life. Shapeless, trivial, pointless, boring, beautiful, curious, profound. And above all, absorbing." [12] On the other hand, an "elderly male reviewer," for The Spectator found it disturbing that "Miss Richardson is not concerned with the satisfaction of the average reader". [13]

Interim, published 1920, is Richardson's fifth novel and was serialized in Little Review , along with James Joyce's Ulysses in 1919. [14] While New York Times Book Review admits that Richardson has "talent," her heroine "is not particularly interesting" and this novel would be "probably ... almost unintelligible" to those who have not a "close acquaintance" her previous novels in the sequence. [15] Much of the action in this chapter of Pilgrimage takes place in Miriam's lodgings.

The sixth section of Pilgrimage, Deadlock, appeared 1921. Una Hunt, in a review for The New Republic , referred to her "intense excitement in reading this novel," and calls Deadlock "an experience rather than a book." [16] Richardson's interest in philosophical theories and ideas is central to Deadlock, though "metaphysical questions about the nature of being and of reality pervade Pilgrimage as a whole", In Deadlock, however, "Richardson first shows philosophical ideas and inquiry taking persistent and organized shape in Miriam’s maturing thought", when she "attends a course of introductory lectures by the British Idealist philosopher John Ellis McTaggart", with her fellow lodger Michael Shatov, She discusses with him "the ideas of Herbert Spencer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benedict de Spinoza and Friedrich Nietzsche" amongst other things. [17] Shatov is based on Benjamin Grad, the son of a Jewish lawyer in Russia, who lived in 1896 in the same lodging as Richardson on Endesleigh Street, Bloomsbury, London. Grad asked Richardson to marry him but she turned him down. [18]

Revolving Lights was published in 1923, and in it Miriam's friendship continues with Michael Shatov, though she has rejected marriage. Miriam also has a long holiday at the seaside home of Hypo and Alma Wilson, who are based on H. G. Wells and his wife Amy. In 1925 the eighth volume appeared, The Trap. Miriam moves into a flat, which she shares with a Miss Holland. The title reflects that this is not a successful venture.

Oberland was published in 1928 and depicts a fortnight spent by Miriam in the Bernese Oberland, in the Swiss Alps, based on Richardson's 1904 holiday there. It "focuses on the experience and influence of travel and new surroundings, celebrating a state of intense wonder—'the strange happiness of being abroad.'" [19] The tenth part of Pilgrimage, Dawn's Left Hand, was published in 1931. In this novel Miriam has an affair with Hypo Wilson that leads to a pregnancy and miscarriage, based on Richardson's affair with H. G. Wells around 1907. Sex is a dominant concern of this work. Miriam's women friend Amabel writes “I love you” with a piece of soap on Miriam's mirror, which leaves Miriam wondering if she can reciprocate. Amabel was based on Veronica Leslie-Jones, an activist and suffragette who married Benjamin Grad.

Another four years passed before part 11 of Pilgrimage, Clear Horizon, was published in 1935. In it Miriam's relationship with Amabel continues. Dimple Hill was published in 1938 as part of a four volume Collected Edition, It was the last volume of Pilgrimage published during Dorothy Richardson's life. The edition was publicized as a complete work in twelve parts by the publisher. [20]

In 1946 Richardson published, in Life and Letters, three chapters from "A Work in Progress", and when she died left an incomplete manuscript of the 13th "chapter" of Pilgrimage, March Moonlight, published with a new Complete Edition, in 1967. There is brief description of Miriam meeting a Mr Noble, which is based on Dorothy Richardson's meeting in 1915 with Alan Odle, the artist son of a bank manager, who became her husband in 1917. They both lived in the same lodging house in St John's Wood, London in 1915.

Style

In a 1918 review, May Sinclair pointed to Richardson's characteristic use of free indirect speech in narrative. [21] From early in the Pilgrimage sequence, she applied it in a stream of consciousness. [22] It has been argued that Richardson's style is more appropriately compared with that of Henry James, rather than the more usual parallels made with James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. [23]

Notes

  1. ↑ Windows on Modernism, p. xxxiii.
  2. ↑ Rabaté, Jean-Michel (2013-02-26). A Handbook of Modernism Studies. John Wiley & Sons. p. 68. ISBN   9781118488676 . Retrieved 1 June 2017.
  3. ↑ Doris B Wallace, Howard E Gruber //.Creative People at Work. Oxford University Press, 1992, 162
  4. ↑ Jane Fouli, "Introduction". The Letters of John Cowper Powys and Dorothy Richardson, ed. Jane Fouli, London: Cecil Woolf, p. 11.
  5. ↑ Sydney Janet Kaplan, Feminine Consciousness in the Modern British Novel. University of Chicago Press, 1975, p. 17.
  6. ↑ Sydney Janet Kaplan, Feminine Consciousness in the Modern British Novel, p. 16.
  7. ↑ Doris B Wallace, & Howard E Gruber. Creative People at Work, pp. 149-50.
  8. ↑ Janik, Vicki K.; Janik, Del Ivan; Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath (2002). Modern British Women Writers: An A-to-Z Guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 275. ISBN   9780313310300 . Retrieved 1 June 2017.
  9. ↑ Rebecca Bowler, "Dorothy M Richardson deserves the recognition she is finally receiving", The Guardian, 15 May 2015
  10. ↑ "Notes on New Fiction," Dial, [N.Y.] 62, 31 May 1917, 483.
  11. ↑ 124, 24 Nov. 1917, p. 422.
  12. ↑ "Life. The Tunnel." Everyman [London], 22 Mar. 1919: 562, 565.
  13. ↑ "Fiction." Spectator, 15 Mar. 1919, pp. 330-331.
  14. ↑ "Interim". 1919.
  15. ↑ "Latest Works of Fiction." New York Times Book Review, (20 June 1920): 320.
  16. ↑ "Deadlock", New Republic, 29 (8 Feb. 1922): 313-314
  17. ↑ Deborah Longworth, "Subject, Object and the Nature of Reality: Metaphysics in Dorothy Richardson's Deadlock. The Journal of Dorothy Richardson Studies, no. 2 (2009), p. 8.
  18. ↑ M. C. Rintoul, Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction, London: Routledge, 2014. p. 454.
  19. ↑ Mhairi Pooler, "'The Strange Happiness of Being Abroad': Dorothy Richardson's Oberland". Journeys; New York16.1 (Summer 2015): 75-97.
  20. ↑ Kristin Bluemel, Experimenting on the Borders of Modernism: Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1997, p. 15.
  21. ↑ Parsons, Deborah (2014-08-07). Theorists of the Modernist Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf. Routledge. p. 31. ISBN   9781134451333 . Retrieved 1 June 2017.
  22. ↑ Herman, David; Jahn, Manfred; Ryan, Marie-Laure (2010-06-10). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Routledge. p. 317. ISBN   9781134458400 . Retrieved 1 June 2017.
  23. ↑ Bluemel, Kristin (1997). Experimenting on the Borders of Modernism: Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage. University of Georgia Press. p. 180. ISBN   9780820318721 . Retrieved 1 June 2017.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia Woolf</span> English modernist writer (1882–1941)

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bloomsbury Group</span> Influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists

The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. This loose collective of friends and relatives was closely associated with the University of Cambridge for the men and King's College London for the women, and they lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury, London. According to Ian Ousby, "although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts." Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. A well-known quote, attributed to Dorothy Parker, is "they lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles".

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in First Lines of Physiology: Designed for the Use of Students of Medicine, when he wrote,

If we separate from this mingled and moving stream of consciousness, our sensations and volitions, which are constantly giving it a new direction, and suffer it to pursue its own spontaneous course, it will appear, upon examination, that this, instead of being wholly fortuitous and uncertain, is determined by certain fixed laws of thought, which are collectively termed the association of ideas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English novel</span> Novel as a concept in English-language literature

The English novel is an important part of English literature. This article mainly concerns novels, written in English, by novelists who were born or have spent a significant part of their lives in England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to novels in other languages or novelists who are not primarily British, where appropriate.

<i>Mrs Dalloway</i> 1925 novel by Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf, published on 14 May 1925, that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Richardson</span> British author and journalist

Dorothy Miller Richardson was a British author and journalist. Author of Pilgrimage, a sequence of 13 semi-autobiographical novels published between 1915 and 1967—though Richardson saw them as chapters of one work—she was one of the earliest modernist novelists to use stream of consciousness as a narrative technique. Richardson also emphasises in Pilgrimage the importance and distinct nature of female experiences. The title Pilgrimage alludes not only to "the journey of the artist ... to self-realisation but, more practically, to the discovery of a unique creative form and expression".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brigid Brophy</span> British writer

Brigid Antonia Brophy, Lady Levey was a British writer and campaigner for social reforms, including the rights of authors, and animal rights. The first of her seven novels was Hackenfeller's Ape (1953), a story concerning the ethics of sending a captive ape, Percy, into space. Brophy's The Snow Ball (1964), is considered her masterpiece: set at a costume ball on New Year's Eve, it is a glittering piece which weaves together sex, death and Mozart. In Transit (1969), is her most radical fiction in form and handling, and was in the vanguard of gender-fluid literary conceptualisations. The novel is considered to be a pioneering work of post-modernism and an iconic feminist surrealist fantasia.

A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">May Sinclair</span> British writer

May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair, a popular British writer who wrote about two dozen novels, short stories and poetry. She was an active suffragist, and member of the Woman Writers' Suffrage League. She once dressed up as a demure, rebel Jane Austen for a suffrage fundraising event. Sinclair was also a significant critic in the area of modernist poetry and prose, and she is attributed with first using the term 'stream of consciousness' in a literary context, when reviewing the first volumes of Dorothy Richardson's novel sequence Pilgrimage (1915–1967), in The Egoist, April 1918.

Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented with literary form and expression, as exemplified by Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new." This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time. The horrors of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society reassessed, and much modernist writing engages with the technological advances and societal changes of modernity moving into the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie</span> English writer and literary custodian, 1837–1919

Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie, eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, was an English writer, whose several novels were appreciated in their time and made her a central figure on the late Victorian literary scene. She is noted especially as the custodian of her father's literary legacy, and for short fiction that places fairy tale narratives in a Victorian milieu. Her 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond introduced into English the proverb, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Odle</span> English illustrator

Alan Elsden Odle (1888–1948) was an English illustrator, remembered today as the husband of the English novelist Dorothy Richardson, whom he married in 1917. His grotesque and subversive style was a precursor of surrealism. He illustrated an English edition of Voltaire's Candide, Mark Twain's 1601: A Tudor Fireside Conversation, a salute to scatology and Elizabethan manners, and The Mimiambs of Herondas. He also designed the dust jacket for James Hanley's Ebb and Flow, other Hanley novels for Lane, and Dorothy Richardson's Backwater (1916). He contributed to a number of periodicals such as The Gypsy, The Golden Hind (1922–25), the US Vanity Fair, The Studio, and the UK Argosy.

<i>Monday or Tuesday</i>

Monday or Tuesday is a 1921 short story collection by Virginia Woolf published by The Hogarth Press. 1000 copies were printed with four full-page woodcuts by Vanessa Bell. Leonard Woolf called it one of the worst printed books ever published because of the typographical mistakes in it. Most mistakes were corrected for the US edition published by Harcourt Brace. It contained eight stories:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie S. Swan</span> Scottish journalist and fiction writer, 1859–1943

Annie Shepherd Swan, CBE was a Scottish journalist and fiction writer. She wrote mainly in her maiden name, but also as David Lyall and later Mrs Burnett Smith. A writer of romantic fiction for women, she had over 200 novels, serials, stories and other fiction published between 1878 and her death. She has been called "one of the most commercially successful popular novelists of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries". Swan was politically active in the First World War, and as a suffragist, a Liberal activist and founder-member and vice-president of the Scottish National Party.

Ellen G. Friedman is an American author, editor, and Professor of English and Women's & Gender Studies at The College of New Jersey where she serves as Coordinator of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program. Friedman is on the Undergraduate, Graduate, and Honors Faculties. She is the advisor to The Women's Center. Her current research is in cultural and gender studies.

This article is focused on English-language literature rather than the literature of England, so that it includes writers from Scotland, Wales, and the whole of Ireland, as well as literature in English from former British colonies. It also includes, to some extent, the United States, though the main article for that is American literature.

<i>Pointed Roofs</i>

Pointed Roofs, published in 1915, is the first work in Dorothy Richardson's (1873–1957) series of 13 semi-autobiographical novels titled Pilgrimage, and the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. The novelist May Sinclair (1863–1946) first applied the term "stream of consciousness" In a review of Pointed Roofs.

<i>Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown</i>

Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown is an essay by Virginia Woolf published in 1924 which explores modernity.

Heather Elizabeth Ingman is a British academic, noted for her work on Irish and British women's writing, the Irish short story, gender studies and modernism. Also a novelist and journalist, Ingman has worked in Ireland and the UK, especially at Trinity College Dublin, where she is an Adjunct Professor of English and Research Fellow in Gender Studies.

Ariela Freedman is a Professor at Concordia University, and author of several books.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.