by Rossetti

Some days I am yellow and warm-hearted, living in tune to place and people, eyes opened, soul stirring, skin pricked, attached to nothing and everything.  

Madly Jane

Moving On

"[O]ne of the chief errors of thought is to continue to think in one set of forms, categories, ideas, etc., when the object, the content, has moved on, has created or laid premises for an extension, a development of thought."

CLR James, Notes on Dialectics.

Quote for Sleeping Beauty Retelling

And I've never loved a darker blue Than the darkness I've known in you; Owned from you. You whose heart would sing of anarchy. You who’d laugh at meanings, guarantees, so beautifully When our truth is burned from history By those who’ve figured justice in fond memory. Witness me Like fire weeping from a Cedar tree. Knowing that my love would burn with me We'll live eternally

Lyrics from Better Love by Hozier



( I don't often post quotes that reveal too much about my work, but when I saw this, it reminded me of a scene between the heroine and the hero of my book. It's something "She" would say to "Him" near the end of the story.)

Quotes

http://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/148879839296/i-have-a-need-of-silence-and-of-stars-too-much

Moonlight and lanterns

http://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/151812069256/detailsofpaintings-john-singer-sargent

Wuthering Heights: Fantasy and Realism

Halloween I

http://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/150692404146/i-am-so-looking-forward-to-halloween-2016-its

A Review of Black Spring by Alison Croggon

Black Spring by Alison Croggon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Okay, here's my thoughts on Black Spring:

First as a retelling of Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is a metaphysical novel, what some call Visionary Fiction. Yes, it's Gothic and from the latter English Romantic Period, but it's the sort of novel that people read and think about in terms of exactly what it is and what it is about. Part love story, part fairy tale, part revenge tale, it's the kind of novel that one can never quite place in the natural scheme of literary things. It just doesn't fit. How Emily Bronte wrote it is still a mystery to me. I've always wanted to write a retelling, but never been brave enough and after reading Black Spring, I am even more fearful. Laughing.

Black Spring is clearly the author's love letter to Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights. In fact, the author states this. But even without that statement, I can see it. Like others, I've always considered Wuthering Heights a sort of tribute to Milton's Paradise Lost. If you have never read that, it's hard to fully grasp Bronte's story.

The idea is that the lovers fall from Hell into Heaven. (Maybe we all do) Talk about subverting Milton's trope! And it's so feminist. Well, I don't want to go on and on about that, but in Black Spring, we have the true Catherine character in the outcast and exiled Lina, who is a witch, doomed to be feared and under a death threat her entire life. As she develops into a woman, the changes she feels are like those of the characters in Wuthering Heights, for she is falling from Hell to a Heaven when she meets Damek. Together they kind of make a whole, both cruel and wild, aligned with nature. They don't belong anywhere, but to each other. Talk about a love story that is more than a love story.

Why does Lina (and Catherine) forsake their true lovers and move toward a direction of pure tragedy that can only be obliterated by their deaths??????

Well, that is the ultimate question. And Black Spring does it so well, by making sure that Lina, like Catherine, is searching for a way out of her patriarchal world. Of course, it doesn't really work.

Both Damek and Heathcliff (mirrors of Lina and Catherine) want to possess their lovers completely. The two ladies really have no choices. Lina will always be a witch. She will never be the normal, docile wife that her husband wants, she will never love anything or anyone but her mirror self. She and Damek are both imprisoned in their roles. And this imprisonment leads to madness.

In Wuthering Heights, Catherine starved herself; in Black Spring, Lina refused to heal from childbirth and accept her new role as wife and mother.

Of course Damek is not whole without his other half, and so he self destructs. All this is done so well in a new story.

Black Spring as a Fantasy Novel

SPOILERS!!!!! But it really doesn't spoil, because you have to read it to appreciate it.

Although I love all the parallels to Wuthering Heights, I absolutely loved this Gothic gem about a place ruled by a law called The Vendetta, a curse so powerful it gave me the chills when I thought about what it really meant.

Croggen invented a whole new mythology, one that I have never seen in previous YA novels. I made a note in the book that this vendetta was worse than anything Shirley Jackson wrote in her stories!

It's about a law that exists in the North lands, where if one man of a family is killed by a man from another family (all noble people are exempt), the nearest relative of the dead man must kill the murderer, and then the opposite and nearest family member must exact revenge against the latter, and the revenge goes on and on forever, until all family members of both families are dead. (Sometimes there is a truce formed by the Wizards of the North). (Note: Women don't matter! They are only property and mothers and servants.)

It's ghastly. The money these people must pay in a Blood Tax for each single death is given to the King, sometimes, all possessions, houses, and lands are used. Therefore, the entire landscape of the North is dotted with tombstones and graveyards. A single Vendetta can go on for years and years, even a century!

This was pretty brilliant in my opinion. There are metaphysical and social questions about such a system, placed upon the ordinary people by their King and nobility. It's a system built on extreme HONOR but at what price? I was completely fascinated by this whole system and it sparked a lot of creative thinking for me as a reader and writer.

The writing is awesome if sometimes difficult. The author paid a special tribute to Bronte by incorporating language of Bronte and even mimicking the power and themes of the Gondal poems, which are the basis for Wuthering Heights. But I loved all that. There are some powerful passages. I ended up marking the entire book. Laughing.

Finally....

One particular passage was so haunting. It is when the opening narrator is riding through the landscape of the North and he looks out his carriage and sees a lone young man walking down the road, a young man who escaped The Vendetta by living only in the open at night and making his home in the day in what the author called an odu. This young corpse of a man was fated never to see sunlight again, almost like a vampire. It was utterly creepy and I don't think I will ever forget that image and am bound to use some form of it in my own writing later on. It was only two paragraphs, but so powerful.

And I found myself thinking of its connection to Wuthering Heights in other ways and I am not even sure the author intended that. Those are my own secret thoughts. I am still thinking about it.


View all my reviews

What If the Storm Ends by Snow Patrol

Quote on Death

http://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/149080171911/death-walks-faster-than-the-wind-and-never-returns

French Boys

http://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/148575398426/bad-french-boy

On books

from 2012--

I've moved books, thrown away books, gave away books, stacked books, read books from my childhood that are falling apart, ran my hands over a first edition of Barrett Browning from a friend who loves books more than me. I have laughed, wept, and remembered my life, all through books, the days I bought them, the days I read them, my own marginalia (I love to write in books) the marginalia of people dead over a century ago or more. Old postcards in books. Old stamps. Drawings. I am dizzy by the feelings that these books conjured up. And I count myself fortunate to have read so many wonderful words--oh the places I have been!

Every thing is in place

Bee balm

Bee balm, any variety, is one of my favorite plants for the garden. It's whimsical and wild.

Maze

Real obstacles don't take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze. --
Barbara Sher

Shiloh

John and I drove over to Shiloh last Thursday (May 26). It's a beautiful park, so peaceful and green. Difficult to see it as probably a defining moment in the American Civil War. Shiloh, by the way, means peace.

On Fairies

http://fairytalesarenotforkids.tumblr.com/post/58742149566/maps-of-the-world-in-older-times-used-to-fill-the

House. Porch. Walk. Lawn.

The General Store in Clarksdale MS

On Dolls

I've always had an uneasy relationship with dolls, which is not rare. Dolls conjure The Uncanny, (more on this later) that allows for a kind of anxiety few of us want to discuss.

According to Kenneth Gross: “The puppet creates delight and fear. It may evoke the innocent play of childhood, or become a tool of ritual magic, able to negotiate with ghosts and gods. Puppets can be creepy things, secretive, inanimate while also full of spirit, alive with gesture and voice.”  I've always felt the same way about many dolls. Once, when a child, I tore the arms off a doll because I was afraid of it. I felt safe.  Without hands, the doll could not touch me.

Bottle Tree at Memphis Botanic Gardens

Haint Blue

Watching for Water

I think and write a lot about water. As a child, I lived out the warm days on lakes and bayous and any  watering hole. The attraction was strong and yet, I retained a great fear of such places. Water meant sink holes, snakes, and sorted old tales about someone who drown, stories punctuated with words like foolishness and risky and wild. These tales played out even while swimming. Often bridges came into play. Old bridges. My friends and I walked them, out in the middle of nowhere, across waters that would have reached up and took our lives with a cold smile. Bridges like this one where old men fish bass for their supper.

Mississippi Magnolia (Spring's Official Flower)

I have such an aversion to winter. I suppose this is because the early years of my life were spent in the bottom half of the state, and cold winters were few. Then, snow was a delight. Later in life I moved to the northwest  of the state and the winters changed. They are wet and cool, so damp they turn my bones blue. I began to look for the Saucer Magnolia, a small, pink variety of the magnolia family. I often call them Tulip Trees. Like the Dogwood, they are one the first signs of Spring in Mississippi, and I adore them. Strange, I have none in my garden. Maybe this year. Yes, this year, I'll plant a couple.

(I am always looking for signs.)

Faulkner's tree

It is true that literature absorbs folklore. You can read that phrase in many articles about The South. Faulkner's work is a clear example of this. But if we look at Faulkner closely, we can glimpse the primitive beliefs of Mississippi's people in an age when books were rare things.

I've been on a "Faulkner journey" for a few years now. He's not an easy read. I am hoping to take a college course on him this fall or next year, along with one on Mississippi History.  I took this photo today. The tree stands behind Faulkner's house. I was amazed at the roots on this tree and will post more photos this week.

Faulkner named his house Rowan Oak, because he believed it was good luck, the rowan tree legendary for protecting folks from fairies and otherworldly creatures. I believe, but am not sure that he planted several rowans and they all died, which makes me smile when I think of Faulkner.

Wink Poppy Midnight

Book Recommendation

“A dark, unpredictable mystery that . . . shimmer[s] with sumptuous descriptions and complicated psychologies. . . . Occult accoutrements, descriptions of the wild landscape, and a twisting-turning plot create an uncertain atmosphere that constantly shift readers’ perceptions of who is trustworthy.” 

 —Publishers Weekly

April Tucholke is one of the best prose masters writing in Young Adult or Adult fiction. Her stories are never simple, often defy genre, and present problems that the readers must solve. I love her work and highly recommend it.

The Ties that Bind

I'm stuck here, in this place. I know I've written about it before and will do so again. It's a path at Butler-Greenwood Plantation outside of St. Francisville, Louisiana. I have the fondest memories of it, and now the memories have taken on a life of their own. I feel as rooted as the trees, as settled as the old bricks at the bottom of these steps. Memory feeds my work. I write best if I am writing through this kind of bewildering, because there is a vagueness to memories, yes a truth, but also a fantasy. This is born out of past experiences and present dreams. Maybe future hopes?

And I am living in that haze.

And I suppose that is what writing fiction is too, capturing this haze and passing it down to some reader.

The Road

Time for a little update. Writing is going good. I am on the right road and pleased with the work I am doing. 

Speaking of roads, I love this road. The guy who took this photo is on Flicker and he has a slew of gorgeous landscapes, some of the best work I have seen lately. There is a sort of purity to his work, it's not too stylized and yet, one can see the manipulation, meaning how he works with his subject. There is a great reverence for nature, a sort of humbleness. I favored a lot of them. Incredible work.

This road is just stunning, and I'm using it as a prompt in my writing. Metaphorically, I suppose this is the road I have taken, the solitary road that pulls me closer into the woods, into uncharted territory, and I am alone. For now, that is the best place to be, alone with the story.  It's been awhile since I felt so optimistic about the book. All last year was a struggle. For now, that's over.

So green is my journey. So soft at times. So pure.

The Power of Poppets

Dolls made for cunning magic are often used in voodoo and related practices. It's a form of sympathetic magic, in which "like equals likes." The doll is made, in this case, in the image of the person for whom the magic is intended.

When I first saw this doll, I thought it was a gesture. In other words, I did not consider it a form of cunning magic, where someone was interested in performing a spell that intended a real outcome. However, as I inspected the doll and asked questions about the "doll maker" and the person it was made for, I realized there was some intent. Whether the person believed in the magic of the doll, I cannot witness to as I never did an interview, but there were some interesting facts about the doll that I had never seen in "pretend" cases, and some details I had seen in dolls once used in voodoo. One of the intriguing facts was the use and placement of safety pins. I'd seen this as a young woman in Louisiana. You don't often see safety pins used in dolls. It's very uncommon except in protection spells, say for warning off poverty and that sort of thing. But here, the safety pins are deliberately placed. The foot is the key, because it was the foot pain that urged the patient of a podiatrist to make this doll herself. She suffered from knee, shoulder, and neck pain that she felt was related to her foot pain, which is quite realistic. The doll is a clever image of her doctor, right down to his hair and glasses. Note all the attention to detail. Not only was the doll a message, it was also a statement of how the woman felt about her medical situation. I found that fascinating and have kept the doll just as it was given to me. I have not rearranged the pins or even moved them.

I really was interested in how the neck and shoulder areas on the back are stuck with a nice needle, while the area near the heart is more decorative. The red heart is pierced and there is a spot of red, representing blood on the leg. This was an act against the power of the podiatrist. It doesn't mean death. It was a cry for help and an act of frustration. However, it is the plain but sturdy needle at the back of the neck that represents "some sort of vengeance."

A lot of care went into the making of this doll. As I've said, I've only seen half a dozen dolls with safety pins in them related to voodoo. It was in Louisiana. This doll is from northeast Mississippi.  Whatever the intentions of the doll maker, this is a great poppet. 

I use the word poppet when describing dolls because the original dolls used in cunning magic came from Europe and were called poppets and similar terms. The voodoo doll is a direct descendant of the Middle Age doll used in kitchen magic. Poppets are used in sympathetic magic, where the idea is that one thing can influence another thing, or in this case, the doll can influence the person. It's one of the oldest forms of magic found in anthropology, dating back to prehistoric practice. A great example of cunning magic.

Photo (c) copyright 2016, Melinda Jane Harrison.