prendrelemick
07-24-2013, 11:09 AM
The Enchanted April. Elizabeth Von Arnim.
A few years later Elizabeth has left her German husband and her German garden.( see review below.) She had taken the name of her best known character Elizabeth ( her real name was Mary Annette,) and was living in London. In 1922 she published her best known work, The Enchanted April.
Four English women travel to the medieval castle of San Salvatore in Italy for a months break from their dank unhappy lives, and find themselves in “the heart of beauty”. There they find just what they need, they open up and become beautiful themselves. Their problems are resolved, their hurts kissed and soothed by the gentle glories of their surroundings. love and friendship bloom along with the flowers of the extravagant gardens.
Once again the descriptions of flowers and scenery are sublime.-
"She jumped up, pulled on her slippers, for there was nothing on the stone floor but one small rug, ran to the window and threw open the shutters.
"Oh!" cried Mrs. Wilkins.
All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.
She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it."
Her writing style is effortlessly readable. But I think the subtleties of metaphor and of character are clumsily done here. The metaphor of blooming garden/blooming women, appears again and again emphasised and under- lined as though she has no faith in the reader to “get it” and it must be explained repeatedly. The same with the characters, they are over done, the dotty one must be really dotty, the bad tempered selfish old woman must have those failings to excess, and so on, everyone we meet is a caricature of a type. The humour, however reaches just the right pitch - bitter sweet and gently farcical.
The trouble for Elizabeth and every other author of that time, writing in that style, was Virginia Woolf. Everything they might want to say, she could say with much more skill, depth and subtlety.
But she still gets a 7.5/10.
A few years later Elizabeth has left her German husband and her German garden.( see review below.) She had taken the name of her best known character Elizabeth ( her real name was Mary Annette,) and was living in London. In 1922 she published her best known work, The Enchanted April.
Four English women travel to the medieval castle of San Salvatore in Italy for a months break from their dank unhappy lives, and find themselves in “the heart of beauty”. There they find just what they need, they open up and become beautiful themselves. Their problems are resolved, their hurts kissed and soothed by the gentle glories of their surroundings. love and friendship bloom along with the flowers of the extravagant gardens.
Once again the descriptions of flowers and scenery are sublime.-
"She jumped up, pulled on her slippers, for there was nothing on the stone floor but one small rug, ran to the window and threw open the shutters.
"Oh!" cried Mrs. Wilkins.
All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.
She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it."
Her writing style is effortlessly readable. But I think the subtleties of metaphor and of character are clumsily done here. The metaphor of blooming garden/blooming women, appears again and again emphasised and under- lined as though she has no faith in the reader to “get it” and it must be explained repeatedly. The same with the characters, they are over done, the dotty one must be really dotty, the bad tempered selfish old woman must have those failings to excess, and so on, everyone we meet is a caricature of a type. The humour, however reaches just the right pitch - bitter sweet and gently farcical.
The trouble for Elizabeth and every other author of that time, writing in that style, was Virginia Woolf. Everything they might want to say, she could say with much more skill, depth and subtlety.
But she still gets a 7.5/10.