In 1904, when she was six, Polly Flint went to live with her two holy aunts at the yellow house by the marsh -- so close to the sea that it seemed to toss like a ship, so isolated that she might have been marooned on an island. And there she stayed for eighty-one years while the century raged around her, while lamplight and Victorian order became chaos and nuclear dread. Crusoe's Daughter, ambitious, moving and wholly original, is her story.
MY THOUGHTS:
This was a core syllabus book from my first year of English at Uni. I didn't remember much about it, except that we were set to read it alongside the famous classic it was drawn from; Robinson Crusoe. When I saw it at a second hand bookshop, I really wanted to remember what it was all about, and whether or not I enjoyed it.
In 1904, a compliant six-year-old named Polly Flint is taken to a lonely yellow house near the sea to live with her two spinster aunts, bleak Aunt Mary and gentle Aunt Frances. Also under the roof is their maid Charlotte, whose smile always appears false, and Mrs Woods, a dour widow whose presence Polly can never quite figure out.
As she grows older, it dawns on Polly that she's being brought up in the shadow of an extinct time period. Mary and Frances live as if hazy Victorian mores have made a massive stamp on them. While the world is evolving into the 20th century, vague values of a different era are still trying to be cranked to life beneath their roof, although nobody seems to realise that's the case. It gradually dawns on Polly that if she'd been a boy, money might have been forked out for an education and profession. As it is, the aunts raise her in a vacuum where nothing happens, but seem to think they've done perfectly right by her.
Polly has access to her dead grandfather's library, and bonds with Daniel Defoe's character Robinson Crusoe as her ultimate hero of all time, even though others including Dickens (and me!) find him dry and dull. Crusoe's appeal to Polly is not his sexless, white masculine status, but his existence on an island of his own, knowing that his only way to survive is to declare it's God's will. She adopts him as her spiritual counterpart and derives a lot of comfort from their mutual isolation; Crusoe's being his location and Polly's being her life in general. She invests so much into Crusoe that in her later years, she invents literary projects of her own just to feel as if she's doing something to fill her days.
At one stage, Polly visits the Thwaites (sort of extended family) who run a commune for arty, intellectual people. Lady Celia Thwaite believes her mission in life is to help geniuses, which she does by providing this turf for them to veg out, doing Polly knows not what. Nearly live the wealthy Zeit family who laughs at aestheticism and find the commune amusing. Polly observes them all, and rather than making judgments one way or another, she makes quiet, dry observations which the reader can assess if we want to take the trouble. Or we may choose to simply accept what we see, as Polly does. Her most common statement is, 'Yes, I see.' All through the story, although people either put each other on pedestals or cut each other down, Polly just observes.
The commentary on the nature of different relationships and the proper pecking order happens through this sort of observation. For example, the stately aunts decide to make their maid, Charlotte, a cup of tea after a grievous loss, but need her to rouse herself to set a fire before they can do so!
Polly has a few brushes with romance. There's Paul Treece, a promising young literary talent from a modest farming background, and his Uni chum, the pleasant but inscrutable Theo Zeit. Polly unrestrainedly gives her heart to one of them, but realises she had no idea what he was thinking, if he ever did himself. (Yeah, what was he thinking?!)
Jane Gardam's skill with the pen kept wanting to make me read more. The aspects of a person's appearance or character she chooses to highlight through Polly's eyes are so fresh and unique. Her evocation of the First World War and its effect on the poor soldiers is stunning. And she's able to make characters who appear for just a few pages seem super interesting and revealing.
My 1988 read didn't make me want to go straight off to hunt for more Jane Gardam titles, but my 2020 read has. Still, I don't envy my teenage self, for having to write something academic about such elusive, sensual writing. It's a will-o'-the-wisp of a book, if ever one was, and I'll bet I didn't get very far. But I really enjoyed it.
🌟🌟🌟🌟½
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