Fleet-Footed Hester: review
Fleet-Footed Hester: summary
George Gissing on feminism: click here
Presentation, by Argemir Gonzàlez
Biography
George
Robert Gissing was born on 22nd November 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire. He died
on 28th December 1903 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (France). He was the eldest of five
children of Thomas Waller Gissing, who ran a chemist's shop, and Margaret.
Gissing
was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield, where he was a diligent and
enthusiastic student. His serious interest in books began at the age of ten
when he read The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Gissing's father
died when he was 12 years old, and he and his brothers were sent to the Lindow
Grove School at Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where he was a solitary student who
studied hard. In 1872, after an exceptional performance in the Oxford Local
Examinations, Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College, forerunner of the
University of Manchester. There he continued his intense studies, and won many
prizes, including the Poem Prize in 1873 and the Shakespeare scholarship in
1875.
His
academic career ended in disgrace when he ran short of money and stole from his
fellow students. The college hired a detective to investigate the thefts and
Gissing was prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard
labour in Belle Vue Gaol, Manchester, in 1876.
In
Manchester, he also began a relationship with Marianne "Nell"
Harrison, a prostitute, afterwards his wife.
He
travelled to the USA with Marianne Harrison in 1876 but lived in poverty and returned
the following year then he worked as a teacher. He began to publish in 1880 but
without success until 1891 when he published New Grub Street, a novel
about literary bohemian life. That novel and The Odd Women are
considered his best works.
His
style follows the style of Dickens and Gaskell on social content. In 1898
published his study Charles Dickens: A Critical Study.
Critical
review
Fleet-Footed
Hester, by George
Gissing, is the story of a young woman, immature and capricious, and of a not
so young man, of weak character and jealous despite being physically strong.
Fleet-Footed
Hester is a story,
in my opinion, lineal, plain and not credible, halfway between Victorian morals
and a reflection about the female condition.
The
end is disappointing. The young and free Hester saves her lover John Rayner doing
what she can do best (that is, running), but only to deliver herself to a
jealous, impoverished, alcoholised man with whom she never will have what she
likes most: running races.
The
message of George Gissing is clear: the woman must sacrifice her freedom
because it is the reason for the disgrace and misery of a man.
QUESTIONS
What
is Private Eye?
What
is Grub Street?
Talk
about the characters: appearance, personality, job...
John
Hester
Albert
Mrs
Heffron
Hester’s
father. (He was “married without leave”. What does it mean?)
What
was John’s opinion about Hester’s first job? What kind of occupation did he
want for her?
What
was John’s opinion about Hester running races?
John
and Hester’s different kind of love: what are these two kinds?
Tell
us John and Hester first quarrel.
Tell
us John and Hester second quarrel.
How
did Hester change after the second quarrel?
How
did John change along the two years when didn’t see Hester?
Explain
Albert and Hester’s courtship and their breaking up.
Last
but one Hester’s race.
Mrs
Heffron and Hester’s last meeting.
What
was Hester’s proposal when she met John at the station?
What
does the last sentence (“the red rift of the eastern sky broadened into day”)
mean? What does it symbolize?
THEME TO DEBATE
I
think that Gissing’s story is useful to debate some topics about feminism,
moreover when he wrote a novel about the situation of the women in Victorian
(or puritan and traditionalist) society.
So,
what do you thing about woman and hobbies (sports, DIY, etc.). Don’t you think
that there is a vindication, from women, to do “men” hobbies, but not the other
way round?
For
the only reason of being a woman, you are discriminated? (E.g. I’m thinking
about Mrs Thatcher)
What
is your opinion about positive discrimination (that is: in equal conditions, to
give preference to a member of a minority or to a member of an unfavoured
group)?
VOCABULARY
wiry,
foreman, stay, paper-chase, woo, plight one’s troth, stinted, bearing,
ploughboy, wages, wrath, pickles, fit of temper, comely, shun, lithe, thew,
measure one’s length on the pavement, toss, copper, stich, bale, traps
As you could see on the brief introduction before the story, they mention a kind of poem called clerihew. It was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), who was a humorous English writer. It's a comical biographical poem very easy to create.The first line has to contain the name of the person you're telling something about. It has to have four lines of any meter you like, and with the rhyme structure AABB, so they are useful to learn how to pronounce some words, though sometimes the rhymes can be forced. Here you have some exemples:
Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I’m going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls,
Say I’m designing St. Paul’s.”
***
It was a weakness of Voltaire’s
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.
***
Dante Alighieri
Seldom troubled a dairy.
He wrote the Inferno
On a bottle of Pernod.
***
Daniel Defoe
Lived a long time ago.
He had nothing to do, so
He wrote Robinson Crusoe.
***
Edgar Allan Poe
Was passionately fond of roe.
He always liked to chew some,
When writing something gruesome.
***
John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote ‘Principles of Economy.’
***
The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.
G. K. Chesterton
The novels of Jane Austen
Are the ones to get lost in.
I wonder if Labby
Has read Northanger Abbey
(Labby was an English journalist.)
***
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Is now a buried one.
He was not a Goth, much less a Vandal,
As he proved by writing The School for
Scandal.
***
Solomon
You can scarcely write less than a column on.
His very song
Was long.
***
The Spanish people think Cervantes
Equal to half a dozen Dantes;
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.
W. H. Auden
Sir Henry Rider Haggard
Was completely staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced, “I am She!”
***
John Milton
Never stayed in a Hilton
Hotel,
Which was just as well.
***
When Karl Marx
Found the phrase ‘financial sharks,’
He sang a Te Deum
In the British Museum.
***
When the young Kant
Was told to kiss his aunt,
He obeyed the Categorical Must
But only just.
***
Lord Byron
Once succumbed to a Siren:
His flesh was weak,
Hers Greek.
***
Oscar Wilde
Was greatly beguiled,
When into the Café Royal walked Bosie
Wearing a tea-cosy.
***
Thomas Hardy
Was never tardy
When summoned to fulfill
The Immanent Will.
***
William Blake
Found Newton hard to take,
And was not enormously taken
With Francis Bacon.
***
Henry Taylor
Alexander Graham Bell
has shuffled off this mobile cell.
He’s not talking any more
But he has a lot to answer for.
***
John Dryden
wasn’t the sort you’d confide in;
there was no limit to the secrets he’d tell
in lyrics set to music by Henry Purcell.
***
William Wordsworth
considered four-and-twenty birds worth
a walk as far as the banks of the Wye.
There are some things money just can’t buy.
George Szirtes
e e cummings’
unpublished hummings
will shortly be published in a book –
just l(oo)k
***
Rene Magritte
liked his rum neat
and would never think of adding Cola.
He’d sooner eat his bowler.
***
Pierre-August Renoir
simply adored Film Noir
and kept nagging at Jean
“Make your old dad a Film Noir! Aw, go on!”
***
Claude Monet
resisted all forms of donné.
When someone suggested he should paint the cathedral at Rheims,
he replied, “In your dreams!”
***
George Braque
decided to pickle a shark
as a kind of tableau,
but then left it to Pablo.
***
J M W Turner
liked a nice little earner
and was untroubled by greed,
painting Rain, Steam AND Speed.
Mark Granier
Trump
was always at home on the stump,
while the White House, unfortunately,
is more of a tree.
Derek Mahon
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Is still read today;
While other Victorian novels degenerate in the attic,
Its reputation remains static.
***
“Strange Meeting”
Wilfred Owen
And Elizabeth Bowen
Never met;
And yet…
Sex Lives of Poets by Dick Davis
Did Shakespeare get more joy
From a boy as a girl or a girl as a boy?
Whatever: he liked the nice surprises
Engendered by disguises.
***
Alexander Pope
Hadn’t a hope
With Lady Mary Wortley Montague:
“When it comes to inches,” she said, “you certainly want a few.”
***
When it comes to Christina Rossetti
And a sex life . . . well, not to get petty
There wasn’t any, or at least none that was visible.
This clerihew’s sad, not risible.
Michael Curl
There’s no disputin’
that Grigori Rasputin
had more will to power
than Schopenhauer.
Dean W. Zimmerman
Jesus Christ
Was sliced and diced,
And punched with holes
To save our souls.
Paul Ingram
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hardly ever went out to dine.
Be the menu never so abundant,
He found “green leafy lettuce salad” tautological and redundant.
Paul Horgan
Luchino Visconti
Saw ‘The Full Monty’
Which he thought was vile,
Bar Robert Carlyle.
Ian Duhig
‘Ingmar’,
said his wife, ‘I wish you would sing more,
not just sit there playing chess against Death and being glum’.
But Ingmar kept shtum.
Katy Evans-Bush
Cary Grant
loved his aunt.
When he was alone,
He would try her eau de cologne.