Deerbrook - Part I

I thought it was time for a post about fiction since all of the recent posts, for some reason have focused on American History. This is only an interim report on Harriet Martineau's novel as I am only 223 pages into what is close to a 500 page book. I made the mistake of trying to read it while I was reading "Persuasion" and found myself confusing the characters. I put down "Deerbrook" until I finished the other then found I had to go back to the beginning on "Deerbrook" just to keep everything straight.

I found this book through something that Elaine wrote on her Random Jottings blog. The name seemed familiar which was because some of Martineau's writings were an important primary source for Robert Remini's biography of Henry Clay - talk about a small world. It is always good find another writer one likes, the bad news in this case, is that "Deerbrook" is her only novel.

"Deerbrook" is the story of life in an small English village when two young women from Birmingham come to live there. At the beginning I found it very fast reading, but have experienced delays to some very in depth descriptive writing plus some very philosophical discussions. Like many 19th century English novels, the focus is on relationships. One of the things that Martineau does that I like is to present the thoughts of some of the men as well of those of the women.

I also noticed one thing that is very different from Jane Austen, a lot of Anthony Trollope, some of Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), and Charlotte Bronte (at least "Jane Eyre"). In all or most of those cases the focus in the novel is bringing a relationship or relationships to marriage where the book ends. In at least one major case in "Deerbrook" the marriage came about relatively quickly and the focus is then on the marriage itself. I am not far enough to know if this will happen with the other major female character or not.

I am enjoying this book so far and will write more about it in the future. With a lot on the schedule for the next two weeks, I am not sure when that will be, but I look forward to finishing the book, and then thinking and writing about it some more. As long as I do the latter two things in that order it should be all right.