Bibliography
Nov. 29th, 2006 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyThe Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell
This is another one of the HM Project books, so a quick note. Lady Ottoline seems to have been a fascinating character, apparently much maligned in the various autobiogs of her contemporaries that came out after her death, and definitely satirised in both D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow, both of which events caused her much personal grief and effectively ended both friendships. Her memoirs break off in 1918, which is dead irritating from my point of view, but still quite interesting in terms of the period that it covers.
I just want to pick up a couple of strands. The first is Ottoline's relationship with Bertrand Russell, or as I should say affair. She is amazingly obsessive about her relationship with him, his effect upon her (ranging from the deeply uplifting and inspiring to the emotionally depressing and demoralising), and their 'connection'. Even when he claims he wants a complete break with her, he keeps on corresponding and meeting with her. It's an amazingly complex-looking relationship, although I've not read Russell's own account which might go into somewhat deeper detail.
The second is Ottoline's continual ill-health, which eventually leads to a necrosis of the jaw and major operations in the 1930s. I am amazed how people appear to be in ill-health as frequently as they are, following my comments on T. S. Eliot and Vivienne Eliot earlier, but perhaps this is to make me grateful for modern medicine.
The third is Ottoline's amazing self-deprecation and self-doubt. Her diary entries that she quotes do, quite simply, scream 'ANGST!'. I do think in some ways I grew out of most of that at teenage years, but then I'm still not quite sure what 'adult' angst looks like. Certainly there's a need for a role for her life, something important she can do, and a lot of her angst appears to be not being able to work out what it is - perhaps not surprising for an unconventional woman living in a society that's not quite made the gap to the revolution of gender roles. One suspects had she been a little younger and a little closer to the Stephens sisters (Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf), she might have felt more free to grab a role.
Anyway. Before this gets too long - she's certainly an interesting figure, but her prose is woefully longwinded, particularly in the second volume of the memoirs, which feels as if it has been much less strenuously edited than the first. Hey ho the holly - not a read I'd recommend for anyone without an ulterior motive.
This is another one of the HM Project books, so a quick note. Lady Ottoline seems to have been a fascinating character, apparently much maligned in the various autobiogs of her contemporaries that came out after her death, and definitely satirised in both D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow, both of which events caused her much personal grief and effectively ended both friendships. Her memoirs break off in 1918, which is dead irritating from my point of view, but still quite interesting in terms of the period that it covers.
I just want to pick up a couple of strands. The first is Ottoline's relationship with Bertrand Russell, or as I should say affair. She is amazingly obsessive about her relationship with him, his effect upon her (ranging from the deeply uplifting and inspiring to the emotionally depressing and demoralising), and their 'connection'. Even when he claims he wants a complete break with her, he keeps on corresponding and meeting with her. It's an amazingly complex-looking relationship, although I've not read Russell's own account which might go into somewhat deeper detail.
The second is Ottoline's continual ill-health, which eventually leads to a necrosis of the jaw and major operations in the 1930s. I am amazed how people appear to be in ill-health as frequently as they are, following my comments on T. S. Eliot and Vivienne Eliot earlier, but perhaps this is to make me grateful for modern medicine.
The third is Ottoline's amazing self-deprecation and self-doubt. Her diary entries that she quotes do, quite simply, scream 'ANGST!'. I do think in some ways I grew out of most of that at teenage years, but then I'm still not quite sure what 'adult' angst looks like. Certainly there's a need for a role for her life, something important she can do, and a lot of her angst appears to be not being able to work out what it is - perhaps not surprising for an unconventional woman living in a society that's not quite made the gap to the revolution of gender roles. One suspects had she been a little younger and a little closer to the Stephens sisters (Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf), she might have felt more free to grab a role.
Anyway. Before this gets too long - she's certainly an interesting figure, but her prose is woefully longwinded, particularly in the second volume of the memoirs, which feels as if it has been much less strenuously edited than the first. Hey ho the holly - not a read I'd recommend for anyone without an ulterior motive.
