The Narator in A Bloodsmoor Romance
The beginning of this story, with the abduction of Dierdre by a black silken balloon, seemed preposterous (and is never clearly explained), and the style of writing seemed tedious at first. Then after about 50 pages, I began to enjoy the language used by the narrator and to appreciate the parady of a Victorian romance. The narrator writes in a 19th-century style, complete with moralizing sayings, and she has no problem about leaping ahead of her story and then circling back to one of the strings she left hanging. As she tells the story of the five Zinn sisters, she often condemns their behavior. She appears to hold rigid, conformist views of proper behavior and etiquette, all the while making those views seem ridiculous to our more "modern" ways of thinking. Although she tells us the subject is ''Christian marriage, that treasure so ignorantly spurned by three of our young Zinn ladies, in their frenzied quest for their own fortunes in the wide world,'' the real subject seems to be the destiny of women in the 19th century and the ways it has carried on into the present.
1 Comments:
Jane, I agree. The first time I attempted to read Bloodsmoor, I found it tedious and boring and couldn't get through it. That was quite a few years ago. The second time, I was able to get into it and actually appreciate the work.
Another work written in 19th c. prose style is Mysteries of Winterthurn which I just recently finished reading. Have you read it? It's especially frustrating read as a mystery novel because none of the mysteries are ever satisfactorily solved for the reader, but interesting read as a parody of our great detectives Dupin and Holmes.
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