REREADING: Sylvia's Secret
Feb. 27th, 2010 07:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllRereading Sylvia's Secret
Sylvia's Secret A Tale of the West Indies: Bessie Marchant (Blackie)
I know I've read this book before, but I didn't remember anything about it, however everything seemed oh so familiar, because it is a generic Bessie Marchant adventure story, like the last one that I read, but didn't write about (The Unknown Island) on an exotic island, with a strand of racism that made me cringe. Halfway through, I went searching and found this article from the Dictionary of Literary Biography on Bessie Marchant. It contains some biographical details and an overview of her (numerous) books, using a few as examples.
These quotes stayed with me and influenced the rest of the reread:
Women are weak, yet capable, in these novels, and in that paradox contemporary readers can see something of the flux that women's roles were in during the first part of the twentieth century.
and
Marchant's readers could not have taken her novels seriously. They are at best escapist melodramas, filled with outrageous coincidences, offering the young women who read them safe, uplifting adventures that seemed exotic but which were, in actuality, not at all far from home.
Sylvia has left school, but has to take charge of her family and their plantation on a small island not far from Jamaica when her father is incapacitated (paralysed and muted) in an accident. This is - you will not be surprised to learn - the first in a series of catastrophes and crises Sylvia has to face. She calls herself cowardly, but manages to face them as the only (white) healthy adult/near adult - injured people are thrown upon their island, their boat needs to be fixed, the weather could always change and she realises that her father is struggling financially... In fact, it was Sylvia's competence in the day-to-day management of things, working hard as an overseer and then having to come home and be the cheerful rock for her younger siblings, the servants and the invalids - one of whom is involved in a sub-plot of typical contrivance. She always seems to turn missish after the big dramas, partly because of fear, partly because of a belief that her behaviour is inappropriate, unfeminine/unladylike - linked to what she was taught at school? What Marchant is concerned with is that she's a snob. Sylvia's dread secret is that she discovers her family, the lineage of which she was always proud, is descended from the legendary pirate Silas Breck. Of course, the island, named after him, contains his treasure and this leads to a thrilling encounter and a romantic happy ever after for Sylvia with a man who gets her to see that only snobs care about old Silas.
But oh, the heedless racism. Marchant is obviously leaning on stereotypes and books - plus she calls the black workers 'natives' of Jamaica, but the rest of the book makes it clear that they're descendants of African slaves. But Marchant assumes that being treated as slaves has led to certain traits and that servitude to Sylvia and her ilk is their natural state, while we are invited to sympathise with white, English Silas Breck who was enslaved for five years before eventually becoming a pirate. The workers are depicted as inferior, child-like (apart from two exceptions and one of them, like the disciples, sleeps, while the other is the domestic Canna) lazy and gullible.
Apart from that, it is a typical Marchant story, with one or two interesting touches in the characterisation. There was a giddy letter from a sister at school, to which Sylvia had an ambiguous reaction, not shared by this reader. Although Sylvia ends up romantically linked to Jack, for most of the book, we read about her relationship with his sister. Some of the more feminised traits of Sylvia, which I think are meant to be admirable, irritated me. She's a complex figure, but not by conscious intent.
Sylvia's Secret A Tale of the West Indies: Bessie Marchant (Blackie)
I know I've read this book before, but I didn't remember anything about it, however everything seemed oh so familiar, because it is a generic Bessie Marchant adventure story, like the last one that I read, but didn't write about (The Unknown Island) on an exotic island, with a strand of racism that made me cringe. Halfway through, I went searching and found this article from the Dictionary of Literary Biography on Bessie Marchant. It contains some biographical details and an overview of her (numerous) books, using a few as examples.
These quotes stayed with me and influenced the rest of the reread:
Women are weak, yet capable, in these novels, and in that paradox contemporary readers can see something of the flux that women's roles were in during the first part of the twentieth century.
and
Marchant's readers could not have taken her novels seriously. They are at best escapist melodramas, filled with outrageous coincidences, offering the young women who read them safe, uplifting adventures that seemed exotic but which were, in actuality, not at all far from home.
Sylvia has left school, but has to take charge of her family and their plantation on a small island not far from Jamaica when her father is incapacitated (paralysed and muted) in an accident. This is - you will not be surprised to learn - the first in a series of catastrophes and crises Sylvia has to face. She calls herself cowardly, but manages to face them as the only (white) healthy adult/near adult - injured people are thrown upon their island, their boat needs to be fixed, the weather could always change and she realises that her father is struggling financially... In fact, it was Sylvia's competence in the day-to-day management of things, working hard as an overseer and then having to come home and be the cheerful rock for her younger siblings, the servants and the invalids - one of whom is involved in a sub-plot of typical contrivance. She always seems to turn missish after the big dramas, partly because of fear, partly because of a belief that her behaviour is inappropriate, unfeminine/unladylike - linked to what she was taught at school? What Marchant is concerned with is that she's a snob. Sylvia's dread secret is that she discovers her family, the lineage of which she was always proud, is descended from the legendary pirate Silas Breck. Of course, the island, named after him, contains his treasure and this leads to a thrilling encounter and a romantic happy ever after for Sylvia with a man who gets her to see that only snobs care about old Silas.
But oh, the heedless racism. Marchant is obviously leaning on stereotypes and books - plus she calls the black workers 'natives' of Jamaica, but the rest of the book makes it clear that they're descendants of African slaves. But Marchant assumes that being treated as slaves has led to certain traits and that servitude to Sylvia and her ilk is their natural state, while we are invited to sympathise with white, English Silas Breck who was enslaved for five years before eventually becoming a pirate. The workers are depicted as inferior, child-like (apart from two exceptions and one of them, like the disciples, sleeps, while the other is the domestic Canna) lazy and gullible.
Apart from that, it is a typical Marchant story, with one or two interesting touches in the characterisation. There was a giddy letter from a sister at school, to which Sylvia had an ambiguous reaction, not shared by this reader. Although Sylvia ends up romantically linked to Jack, for most of the book, we read about her relationship with his sister. Some of the more feminised traits of Sylvia, which I think are meant to be admirable, irritated me. She's a complex figure, but not by conscious intent.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 08:01 am (UTC)A strange criticism; do novels have to be taken seriously?
Marchant certainly puts her heroines through it and they seem to have completely useless relatives. I'm thinking of Girl of the Northland, I think it was, where the mother just lies around being helpless while the girl does everything, including a long trek.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 02:23 pm (UTC)I was going to say that the comment was in the context of her depiction of all these far-off places, but I had a quick look back, and it wasn't.
In this book, all Sylvia's siblings are younger, two young boys, one girl an invalid of unspecified causes and one girl at boarding schools. I suppose it's to emphasise the heroine's self-reliance, although it's interesting that her reward for fighting for her family is to get to leave it and start a new one...