Introduction: Our fourth day will be spent in the Victorian Age, which was the period of legends like Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Thoreau, Twain, Hardy, Darwin and George Eliot (who was actually a woman, ha ha HA chauvanist swine!) This time was when the novel was fully appreciated and lifted to the leading form of literature... and in these novels was the first instances of a particular idea: how even in hard lives, goodness and perseverance would win out in the end and villians suitably punished. Happy endings generally prevailed, although the dwindeled out of fiction after the death of Charles Dickens... who loved happy endings. Almost everyone likes them, yet writers sometimes didn't get them in real life: as we shall explore in our locations below!
Locations: The Life and Death of Amy Levy (1861-1889) Amy Levy was famed for her themes of feminism, suicide, and what she percieved as the "materialistic values and cultural insularity" of nineteenth century Jewish life. Our first location of the morning will bypass her birthplace in Clapham, London to Newnham College of Cambridge University. In approximately 1879, she was the first Jewish woman to ever be admitted into the University. Here, she studied philosophy, translated German poetry and read Greek and Latin. Apart from her studies, she wrote short stories in the four terms she stayed, such as "Leopold Leuinger: A study," "Lallie: A Cambridge Sketch," and "Between Two Stools." But during her twenty seven years of life, she suffered from chronic depression (which was exacerbated by her loneliness, and probable lesbianism)... and as her twenty eighth birthday approached, her slight deafness grew more and more serious. Our second location will be at her home near her parent's in London: it was here, secluded and in the grip of "melancholy", she killed herself by switching on the gas stove and inhaling the lethal fumes. A few streets away from there is where we can have a picnic in the Clapham Common where she often walked, alone in the snow. The rest of the day, our company can split up to explore this fascinating period and its inhabitants individually. We can regroup at the Bleeding Pen: a resteraunt where brooding writers once met to exchange ideas in the shadows, and drown their sorrows in drink.
Above: Amy Levy six months before her death
Above: Clapham Common in winter, the season when Levy died
Hi Emma, hope you're feeling better. LOVE the post about Amy Levy. How wonderful that I have learnt something completely new: I have never heard of her before. Yet ANOTHER suicidal, manic depressive, sexually differnt English writer. I love the bit about The Bleeding Pen: so emo/Goth. Hope to see you tomorrow. This is really looking fantastic. (Just check your spelling of 'exasherbated'. Mrs W
ReplyDeleteHello again Emma, hope you don't mind, but I gave my university supervisor your blog address; he said 'what a stunner of a blog tour; loved it!'. (He's the Head of the School of Education; so well done!)
ReplyDeleteWow Mrs W, what a wonderful compliment! (From both you and your university supervisor.) I'm blown away that you found my humble blog good enough for such an honour... thank you.
ReplyDeleteI'm truly sorry that I missed your birthday... all the good stuff happens whenever I'm sick. Migraines had me bedridden the whole day: pain prevented sleep, and sleep deprivation prevented functioning. On a happier note, I'm glad you enjoyed the Amy Levy post... I found it curious that she published some pretty Anti-Semetic literature, yet was a Jew herself. Does that sort of self-hate happen a lot in literature? Anyway, will fix spelling mistake soon (I kept on typing exasperated. I think it was my subconscious trying to tell me something.) See you soon, good luck with your studies... not that you need luck.
E
P.S: Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway next, oh goody goody!