REVIEW: A Tangled Web
Dec. 27th, 2024 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllA Tangled Web: L.M. Montgomery. Read Books, 2017.
The title of this novel is a bit of a misnomer, because it makes you think of the saying/proverb ‘What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive’ and this isn’t a story about deception, per se. Referencing ‘Blood is thicker than water’ might have made more sense, although I think the best title might have been ‘Aunt Becky’s Jug’.
Set on Montgomery’s beloved Prince Edward Island and first published in 1931, it’s about the inter-related clan of Darks and Penhallows, probably from Cornish stock, although some of them have a touch of Spanish blood in them somewhere! I hope that Montgomery made up a family tree for her own benefit while writing this, but the overall impression I got was of a group of people who were a hairsbreadth away from incestuous inbreeding. The name Dark has an obvious allusion, while Penhallow makes me think of Georgette Heyer’s worst book. However, in the main, they are respectable Presbyterian farmers, with a high opinion of themselves, who don’t think that most people from outside the clan are quite good enough.
Anyway, the novel is divided into six sections, which are then subdivided into shorter sections, which work as short chapters. The first is titled ‘Aunt Becky’s Levee’, as the unconventional family matriarch, knowing she is dying, invites ‘the clan’ over for one last gathering. Known for her sharp tongue, Aunt Becky is quite the character, but she is also the keeper of a family heirloom, a jug that probably isn’t valuable in and of itself, but was bought as a romantic gift and has acquired an almost legendary status. Most of the family desperately wants it. As Rebecca Dark outlived her husband and her two children, it is up to her to whom she will bequeath it.
At her ‘levee’, she entertains herself by firing slings and arrows at most of her relatives, reading out an obituary she has written out for herself, then her will – leaving various relatives items of varying value, but usually not what they were coveting. She leaves the fate of the jug until last, and then, almost quixotically, decides that she will leave a letter stating to whom it is to be left with a member of the family she considers good at keeping secrets. It is to be opened at a set date, over a year away. She gives a hint about the kind of relative to whom she might be minded to leave it – someone who is married, who does not swear, who is not too much of a drinker, i.e. someone respectable. This will lead some Darks and Penhallows to try their best to follow these strictures, although Aunt Becky made it clear that she might well just order ‘Dandy’ Dark to draw lots.
In this opening section, we hear almost as much of what Uncle Pippen thinks as Aunt Becky. He is a couple of decades younger, not as central to the clan, and a little too fond of his own opinion, so I could have done with hearing less from him. At the levee, the author draws our attention to those characters who the business with the jug will most affect. Perhaps the most fascinating are Hugh and Joscelyn Dark, who were married about ten years ago, but then, to everyone’s astonishment, about an hour after Hugh had taken his beloved to the farm they’d planned to start their new married life in, she walked out, returning to her mother’s home. It was quite a scandal, and nobody really knows why, although plenty of stories have been circulating. We and Aunt Becky learn what passed before she dies.
To be honest, most of the love stories did not sweep me along with them. They mainly involve characters who are somehow related, however distantly, and with the surname Dark or Penhallow. There’s also too much of people clapping eyes on someone and falling passionately in love with them for my tastes. We have an alliterative couple who thought they hated each other in childhood, we have the very young Gay Penhallow, who starts off the book in a happy spring, but her family don’t think much of her lover. Will the cradle snatcher that the clan approve of have a chance?
More fun is the engagement that springs up as middle-aged Penny Dark (a man, the Penny is short for Pennycuik, weird names and some names that I’d have thought belong to the other gender abound) finally decides he will marry Margaret Penhallow. Like him, Margaret is in her fifties, and has had many, many years of being patronised by the clan, who believe that the only fit and proper thing for a woman to do is to get married, even though they know it doesn’t always work so well. So, on balance, she accepts, but slowly realises it will mean giving up certain dreams that she has long cherished. Penny has no idea that Margaret is anything but gratefully looking forward to being his wife, even though he is becoming more and more unenthused by the idea of marriage. It's an anti-romantic subplot!
The character that touched me the most was pathetic little Brian, until Montgomery overdid it. Nobody knows who his father was, and he never married Brian’s mother Laura Dark, who died when Brian was very young, leaving him to her brother’s mercies. Brian is worked too hard, fed too little, his physical comforts are barely tended to, and he knows little of love. His mistreatment is probably the most damning indictment of the whole clan.
Another outsider is Oswald Dark, known as the Moon Man, because of his obsession with the moon. He terrifies Brian until they talk once, and wanders around the island, disappearing then reappearing and getting fed by his relatives. He’s more of a seer than a credible portrait of someone with mental ill health. And, of course, quite a few characters share Montgomery’s love of nature.
One detail that I found particularly objectionable was one of the Sams’ habit of digging up Indians’ skulls and using them as decorative objects. It’s treated as something to be disapproved of, but then so is a former sailor’s earrings. For me, that was desecration, unlike young Gay’s romantic notions about older people knowing nothing of love or beauty.
I suppose you could describe this as a study of human nature set in a close-knit community, its passions, its vanities, its hypocrisies. The driving force is the much coveted jug. Yes, there are too many examples of married people who wanted someone else and had to settle for their spouse, although more of them learn to be grateful for their state than not. There are a few references to darker situations like Laura and Brian Dark’s, Thora Dark’s husband is abusive, although the main focus is Murray who wants her. What happens to the jug is probably not what Aunt Becky intended, and there’s probably a moral to that.
Sometimes a lesser known book by a famous author is lesser known for a reason. ‘A Tangled Web’ isn’t terrible, but I didn’t quite warm to it – it’s no ‘The Blue Castle’ – and the further racism at the end was exasperating.
The title of this novel is a bit of a misnomer, because it makes you think of the saying/proverb ‘What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive’ and this isn’t a story about deception, per se. Referencing ‘Blood is thicker than water’ might have made more sense, although I think the best title might have been ‘Aunt Becky’s Jug’.
Set on Montgomery’s beloved Prince Edward Island and first published in 1931, it’s about the inter-related clan of Darks and Penhallows, probably from Cornish stock, although some of them have a touch of Spanish blood in them somewhere! I hope that Montgomery made up a family tree for her own benefit while writing this, but the overall impression I got was of a group of people who were a hairsbreadth away from incestuous inbreeding. The name Dark has an obvious allusion, while Penhallow makes me think of Georgette Heyer’s worst book. However, in the main, they are respectable Presbyterian farmers, with a high opinion of themselves, who don’t think that most people from outside the clan are quite good enough.
Anyway, the novel is divided into six sections, which are then subdivided into shorter sections, which work as short chapters. The first is titled ‘Aunt Becky’s Levee’, as the unconventional family matriarch, knowing she is dying, invites ‘the clan’ over for one last gathering. Known for her sharp tongue, Aunt Becky is quite the character, but she is also the keeper of a family heirloom, a jug that probably isn’t valuable in and of itself, but was bought as a romantic gift and has acquired an almost legendary status. Most of the family desperately wants it. As Rebecca Dark outlived her husband and her two children, it is up to her to whom she will bequeath it.
At her ‘levee’, she entertains herself by firing slings and arrows at most of her relatives, reading out an obituary she has written out for herself, then her will – leaving various relatives items of varying value, but usually not what they were coveting. She leaves the fate of the jug until last, and then, almost quixotically, decides that she will leave a letter stating to whom it is to be left with a member of the family she considers good at keeping secrets. It is to be opened at a set date, over a year away. She gives a hint about the kind of relative to whom she might be minded to leave it – someone who is married, who does not swear, who is not too much of a drinker, i.e. someone respectable. This will lead some Darks and Penhallows to try their best to follow these strictures, although Aunt Becky made it clear that she might well just order ‘Dandy’ Dark to draw lots.
In this opening section, we hear almost as much of what Uncle Pippen thinks as Aunt Becky. He is a couple of decades younger, not as central to the clan, and a little too fond of his own opinion, so I could have done with hearing less from him. At the levee, the author draws our attention to those characters who the business with the jug will most affect. Perhaps the most fascinating are Hugh and Joscelyn Dark, who were married about ten years ago, but then, to everyone’s astonishment, about an hour after Hugh had taken his beloved to the farm they’d planned to start their new married life in, she walked out, returning to her mother’s home. It was quite a scandal, and nobody really knows why, although plenty of stories have been circulating. We and Aunt Becky learn what passed before she dies.
To be honest, most of the love stories did not sweep me along with them. They mainly involve characters who are somehow related, however distantly, and with the surname Dark or Penhallow. There’s also too much of people clapping eyes on someone and falling passionately in love with them for my tastes. We have an alliterative couple who thought they hated each other in childhood, we have the very young Gay Penhallow, who starts off the book in a happy spring, but her family don’t think much of her lover. Will the cradle snatcher that the clan approve of have a chance?
More fun is the engagement that springs up as middle-aged Penny Dark (a man, the Penny is short for Pennycuik, weird names and some names that I’d have thought belong to the other gender abound) finally decides he will marry Margaret Penhallow. Like him, Margaret is in her fifties, and has had many, many years of being patronised by the clan, who believe that the only fit and proper thing for a woman to do is to get married, even though they know it doesn’t always work so well. So, on balance, she accepts, but slowly realises it will mean giving up certain dreams that she has long cherished. Penny has no idea that Margaret is anything but gratefully looking forward to being his wife, even though he is becoming more and more unenthused by the idea of marriage. It's an anti-romantic subplot!
The character that touched me the most was pathetic little Brian, until Montgomery overdid it. Nobody knows who his father was, and he never married Brian’s mother Laura Dark, who died when Brian was very young, leaving him to her brother’s mercies. Brian is worked too hard, fed too little, his physical comforts are barely tended to, and he knows little of love. His mistreatment is probably the most damning indictment of the whole clan.
Another outsider is Oswald Dark, known as the Moon Man, because of his obsession with the moon. He terrifies Brian until they talk once, and wanders around the island, disappearing then reappearing and getting fed by his relatives. He’s more of a seer than a credible portrait of someone with mental ill health. And, of course, quite a few characters share Montgomery’s love of nature.
One detail that I found particularly objectionable was one of the Sams’ habit of digging up Indians’ skulls and using them as decorative objects. It’s treated as something to be disapproved of, but then so is a former sailor’s earrings. For me, that was desecration, unlike young Gay’s romantic notions about older people knowing nothing of love or beauty.
I suppose you could describe this as a study of human nature set in a close-knit community, its passions, its vanities, its hypocrisies. The driving force is the much coveted jug. Yes, there are too many examples of married people who wanted someone else and had to settle for their spouse, although more of them learn to be grateful for their state than not. There are a few references to darker situations like Laura and Brian Dark’s, Thora Dark’s husband is abusive, although the main focus is Murray who wants her. What happens to the jug is probably not what Aunt Becky intended, and there’s probably a moral to that.
Sometimes a lesser known book by a famous author is lesser known for a reason. ‘A Tangled Web’ isn’t terrible, but I didn’t quite warm to it – it’s no ‘The Blue Castle’ – and the further racism at the end was exasperating.
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