A Drama in Muslin
Jun. 20th, 2021 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI came across this 1886 novel by George Moore by chance and really enjoyed it overall. It's Austenesque in theme (scheming mother trying to get her daughters married) and also in its sometimes scathing presentation of society and its foibles. But the prose is a lot clunkier and there's a bleakness and harsh cynicism that you don't really find in Austen.
There's some really interesting stuff about the societal hierarchy in Ireland at the time, and a lot of the machinations of the various characters are well observed. But the one disabled character, Cecilia, is disparaged by both other characters and the authorial voice, and the suggestion that she is actually in love with her best friend, Alice, is presented as making her deranged and unstable.
There's a very in-depth and realistically harsh portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth out of wedlock, which I didn't expect to find in a book of this era, but the story tips over into melodrama in places, which undermined its credibility a bit.
Generally, though, I enjoyed this portrait of a very specific part of society at a particular time in history, and may well look out for more works by Moore in the future.
There's some really interesting stuff about the societal hierarchy in Ireland at the time, and a lot of the machinations of the various characters are well observed. But the one disabled character, Cecilia, is disparaged by both other characters and the authorial voice, and the suggestion that she is actually in love with her best friend, Alice, is presented as making her deranged and unstable.
There's a very in-depth and realistically harsh portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth out of wedlock, which I didn't expect to find in a book of this era, but the story tips over into melodrama in places, which undermined its credibility a bit.
Generally, though, I enjoyed this portrait of a very specific part of society at a particular time in history, and may well look out for more works by Moore in the future.
