Thread 31 Starmer - September Rain

[DuncinToffee]

Pull up a chair for some friendly chit chat about politics and beyond

Taxes optional but greatly appreciated.

Previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5399546-thread-30-starmer-magic-roundabouts?page=40&reply=146834602

I love Hardy, but Tess annoys me. The character rather than the book. She grew up on a farm. She knows what causes pregnancy. Plus she’s shit at reading men.

Wow. In 1978 whilst doing A levels we all recognised that Tess was raped and most certainly there was a class difference. Way to victim blame someone very young. Then Angel went for the younger sister.

Plus Hardy kept his wife in an attic and Dickens treated his wife most abominably - plus he was fascinated with public hangings.

Less keen on Americans though.

I think we were all a bit shit at reading men at the age Tess was.

I’m not blaming her for the rape - how did you read that into it? I’m blaming her for seemingly not knowing why/that she was pregnant!

True, but she doesn’t get any better as the book goes on.

fascinated in an important way though. He campaigned against capital punishment. He attended them as material for his campaigning. He was also an early anti racist and anti colonialist.

I teach that Tess rape scene differently now and , interestingly, students actually have a different response. They are pretty enraged by Hardy's emphasis of Tess' passivity. No matter how much Hardy apparently loved Tess he does suggests she wanders into her own sorrows. 20 years ago, plenty of students argued she wasn't raped.

That aside, Alec is one of the greatest literary villains.

See now I HATE Jane Austen. HATE.

Look how we all disagree!

I’ve also struggled with Dickens but do want to give a shout out to the Audible versions, some of which are free. They engaged me in a way that reading the book didn’t (and I’m very much a reader rather than a listener normally).

But I love Austen, Persuasion especially.

Well perhaps it's because I went to school in Northern Ireland and we had a different perspective, and fantastic English teachers.

Austin I fell in love with at University, Galway Ireland, and much preferred her over Dickens. The Dubliners by Joyce is amongst my favourite collections featuring short stories but I've never read Ulysses.

Maybe the most important Brontë novel is the least read (but most studied) "Tenant of Wildfell Hall."

And it's upsetting that it seems to have more (not less) resonance in 2025 than it did in 1980. Institutionalised misogyny. Violence against woman and it's effects on children. And a deeply deeply unequal society.

It's my favourite Brontë novel. Anne certainly observed and knew how to write.

the thing is being made to study it at age 14, the vibe was very much "My, look how far we've come, aren't we just the cat's whiskers" even then it grated.

It really should have been taught as "this was written 150 years ago. See how little has changed for women."

Also studying it in Eng.Lit was a little odd, as we had not done a single day of the period it was set in during history.

We lived in the same area as Rev Patrick Brontë before he left for Yorkshire, so always felt a connection.

I love that book.

Having had a moment to think about why this felt unreasonable - I wasn’t criticising or blaming Tess for anything at all actually. She’s not real. I was blaming Hardy for the way he wrote her.

I very much saw it as my responsibility as an English teacher to give historical context. If a teacher doesn't, then that is odd.

I didn't get on with Hardy any more than I did with Dickens - much preferred Jane Austen and the Brontes, to my mother's sorrow.

I read (and loved) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in English at school - bearing in mind this was at a Dutch school while my peers were learning the joys of the passive voice. I spent most of my English classes just reading, never did my homework unless it was essay writing and my teachers just let me get on with it for the most part (except my Yr9 English teacher who thought she could teach me grammar, that did not go well).

I loved all of Austen, the Brontës, George Elliot. I especially loved Middlemarch, even though we did it for A-level, which usually sucks the life out of any book!

But some years ago I went back to read Jane Eyre, and was really struck by how difficult the language is. Something I’d never noticed when I read it as a young adult. I think how we right/express ourselves has definitely changed over the years.

Anyone else a Gaskell fan?

My 2 years of O Level English was interrupted because the teacher broke her leg skating (at a weekend do the school arranged) and we had a succession of supply teachers, none of whom had done that book. One was American, and she did some contemporary US poets with us, one of whom used the word "fuck".

When the original teacher returned, everything got compressed - including not really doing any language work (because we were all pretty OK at that).

So it's possible some debate and discussion was skipped.

The play we did was John Galsworthy's "Strife".

Me!

Just typed a whole bloody essay on books & lost the lot MN is driving me nuts at the moment, keeps freezing/crashing/re-loading & draining me iPad at an alarming rate.
anyway love Tenant of Wildhall, not keen on Dickens read some his books at school never revisited, always enjoyed Jane Austen especially Persuasion do really like Elizabeth Gaskell & George Elliot have a soft spot for Georgette Heyer absolutely adore Agatha Christie “Tess” I found a really difficult read & left me throughly depressed.