064. The Bradford School Master. J B Priestley Essay. Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

064.

The Bradford School Master. J B Priestley Essay. Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

 
First published: 20th Sep 2014

The industrial town of Bradford in England had its famous school master in the person of Mr. Jonathan Priestley, whose son John Boynton Priestley later became one of the most famous literary figures in the world, remembered for his scholarly essays, novels, plays, travel books and speeches. 35 years after his father’s passing away, he remembers his father in a radio talk, as a respected village character, teacher, educationalist, socialist and humanist. 

When we reminisce our old school days, we unknowingly become little faces sitting there, listening to our teachers.


Priestley At Work 1940 By Daily Herald Archives

Reminiscing about our teachers who taught us in our school is a pleasant experience to us all. When we remember them, we unknowingly become our former selves of school children again. The school buildings, the compound and the playground, the class, our beloved teachers standing there teaching us in class, and we, the unruly gang, facing them with our tiny little faces and listening to every word of theirs as if they are pronounced by God, all rushes towards us from past years. Wherever we are and whatever we have become after years, this nostalgic feeling is universal, reminding us that it is a sweet once-in-a lifetime dream. 

Education is the golden gateway to the enchanted countries in our own mind.


From The Days Of Innocence By ManoRanjana DeSilva

Jonathan Priestley took delight in instructing people even while travelling in railway carriages. Teaching meant to him the cultural development of a man. Education is the key to understanding life. It saves people from ignorance, prejudice and narrow-mindedness. He considered education as a golden gateway to the enchanted countries in one’s own mind. As Plato pointed out, education is not for benefit, but for delight of the soul. We have heard about the incident in Plato’s Academy when a student, after spending long years in the Academy asked his master: ‘Sir, does all this studying come to any benefit?’ Plato went inside, returned with a gold coin and gave it to the student. And said: ‘Now you have your benefit; never say that your education did not benefit you, and never again make your appearance in this compound. Education is not for benefit but for delight of the soul.’ Education is a glorious end in itself. It works miracles by removing ignorance, stupidity and greed from the mind. Jonathan was an inner-directed, brave and independent ideal socialist who did not like blood-shed. Petty tyrants could not compel him to do something he loathed to do as an ordinary citizen or as a Teachers’ Union leader. He hated others being poor but did not want himself to become a rich man. He had more of Morris and Gandhi in him than some rudimentary Marx. 

The father considered Sunday a day to be spent on debates, and reading at home. The son considered it a day devoted to all kinds of outdoor enjoyments, far away from home.
 

Going To School By Gadjo Boy

One needn’t think that the father and son did not disagree. In two things they sharply disagreed and fiercely fought each other. Jonathan too much cared, and was anxious about, how their neighbours would think about them. He cared for the public profile of a man, which according to him, had to be cultivated from childhood. Therefore he severely restricted the lives of his children. Where in this world will not children be embarrassed and irritated? The holiday on Sunday was another matter for perpetual disagreement. The teacher thought it a day to be spent on debates and reading at home, and the son took it a day to be devoted to all kinds of outdoor enjoyments, far away from home. World’s literature is full of conservative parents’ views on how a Sunday should be spent and how a family should go to church. Conservative families spent the day in pious involvements and went to church en mass, in their finest Sunday clothes, in a parade, one after the other. In old times, church-going was the only occasion for the gentry for social intercourse. Church-going even emerged as a prominent theme in paintings and literary works. How a family looked on the road when they went to church was a measure of their character, conduct and integrity at home and in society. In every country, in every age, church-going was religious for parents and tedious and un-religious for youngsters and teenagers, except for whom romances budded and bloomed on the way to and back from church. Probably, the case of young J.B.Priestley also might not have been different, for he also had a sweetheart in his village whom he married and who when died of disease, he remarried.

Due to quarrels, hatred and jealousy between nations, our rockets may reach nowhere near another planet ever.


My Country School And Dear Teacher By WinslowHomer

Twenty years before this radio talk, on one occasion of describing the mental strength and wisdom of his father, J.B.Priestley had remarked that ‘if he were to pick up a team for going to and colonizing another planet, he would certainly have chosen his father’s kind of people first.’ Technology had slipped and faltered to the darker side since then and scientific developments man achieved had come to the stage of possibly endangering man and his planet. Due to quarrels, hatred and jealousy between nations and peoples, our rockets may not reach anywhere near another planet. Therefore, colonizing another planet is not even a remote possibility but saving this planet from self-destruction by man’s wayward technology is an urgent need. So, closing this radio talk, J.B.Priestley modifies his 20 years-old remark about his father, commenting that ‘the presence of so many people like Jonathan Priestley in this world alone may save the planet from self-destruction.’ So, now, his father’s mission would be not to go and colonize another planet for man, but to stay in this planet itself to save it from man. He wishes there were more men like his father qualified to colonize and civilize this planet of ours.

The man with a miracle pen, tirelessly working behind his type writers, producing marvels for the world!


My Brother's School And Teacher By Thomas Brooks

After reading an interesting and inspiring article written by J.B.Priestley, if we leave without knowing anything about this man with a miracle pen who tirelessly worked behind his type writers creating marvels for the world to read as essays, speeches, reviews, novels, plays, and biographies, making magnificent books on travels throughout England, France, Russia and America, and humbly declining a Knighthood and a Peerage but accepting the Queen of England’s an Order of Merit with no political commitments, it would be gross injustice to him and to English literature. 

This writer considered speaking about war experiences as taboo, and even destroyed writings from that period.


Back To Home From Schools By Albert Anker

After school, J.B.Priestley worked in a wool selling company for earning money to buy books and spent time as an unpaid writer working for Bradford Pioneer, a local magazine. His writing career started in 1912. In 1914, when the First World War began, he volunteered for the army and spent five years in England and France. He was wounded in 1916 by mortar fire. He feared he would die in the trenches and to ensure survival of at least a few of his writings in case he died, he wrote and sent a few poems and letters during this time. He did not like to talk or write about those years generally and wrote about them only once in a book titled Margin Released. He even destroyed much of his writings pertaining to the war time. After war he left Bradford. War Office helped him with a university grant and he joined Trinity Hall in Cambridge. After graduation, he married his lover from Bradford village and settled in London. Non-fiction works like essays, reviews and biographies and fiction works like novels poured out of his pen these days. Novels The Good Companion and Angel Pavement belong to this period. Then he lost his beloved wife and his father, and something changed in him to incline towards the theatre. In the 1930s, the world found him as a fully-fledged dramatist, immersed deeply in writing and producing plays for the theatre.

 
The finest radio broadcaster of the 20th century! Jealousy caused cancellation of Priestley’s popular talks on the BBC.
 

Going to Church On Sunday By Wilhelm Koller

When the Second World War began in 1939, we see Priestly as a radio broadcaster, broadcasting war news with his famous comments regularly from England to America and other countries. In 1945, when the war ended, two unexpected things happened: he contested in the general election as an independent candidate, and failed; his writings against development and deployment of nuclear weapons resulted in the forming of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and he became a famous travelling speaker on nuclear disarmament. In the British Broadcasting Corporation, J.B.Preistley’s talks became such popular that they became the second best, the first best being those of Sir. Winston Churchill, the then British Prime Minister. Finally Churchill’s cabinet interfered and cancelled Priestley’s talks in BBC altogether, alleging that they were pro-left and socialist. We know, communism and socialism were much-feared things in England and in America but this did not prevent Winston Churchill of England or Theodore Roosevelt of America from signing pacts with Joseph Stalin of Russia to defeat Adolph Hitler of Germany. They did not feel guilt in joining hands with communists, to prevent England and America from going red, at the expense of countries in Europe being divided and shared by reds as part of post-war arrangements, but they took J.B.Priestley talking socialism in BBC very seriously. The reason- jealousy! 

The literary productions of John Boynton Priestley, stretching five decades.


Going To Church Or Where? By Franz Schams

Quite a number of quotations in the English language belong to J.B.Priestley, for example, ‘Plants restore the air that animals injure.’ He also was a lover of music and a supporter and promoter of the famous London Philharmonic Orchestra in its bad post-war times. The total number of books he authored is not less than sixty. In the midst of a very busy writing career, he also represented England in UNESCO. His novels include Adam in Moonshine, The Good Companions, Angel Pavement, Let the People Sing, Three Men in New Suits, The Magicians, Saturn Over The Water and Lost Empires. The famous plays are Dangerous Corner, I Have Been Here Before, They Came To A City and An Inspector Calls. His literary criticisms include The English Comic Characters and Literature And Western Man. English Journey, The Arts Under Socialism and The Edwardians are political and social writings. He has also written essays and autobiographical collections such as Midnight On The Desert, Journey Down A Rainbow and Margin Released. All these titles are arranged here in their chronological order of appearance. J.B.Priestley said farewell to this world on August 14th of 1984.

 

(Prepared as a lecture delivered to literature students in May 1990. Slight modifications made since then)

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Pictures Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
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Appreciations, British Writers, English Essayists, English Language And Literature, English Radio Talks, J B Priestley, Jonathan Priestley, P S Remesh Chandran, Re Introductions, Reviews, Sahyadri Books And Bloom Books Trivandrum, Studies, The Bradford School Master

Meet the author
PSRemeshChandra

Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of 'Swan, The Intelligent Picture Book'. Unmarried and single. Born and brought up in Nanniyode, a little village in the Sahya Mountain Valley in Kerala.

063. Tolerance. E M Forster Essay. Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

063.

Tolerance. E M Forster Essay. Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran
 
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

 
First published: 19th Sep 2014

E.M.Forster was a celebrated British literary figure who knew deep about the philosophy of the East. He made three visits to India and became familiar with the Hindu, Muslim and Anglo-Indian visions in India. His famous novel A Passage To India was made into a movie by David Lean. In a radio broadcast, he argues in favour of tolerance. His plea for tolerance is to be heeded by all countries; especially since in all continents have problems of cessation and separatism.

A sound state of mind is the only sound foundation to base a stable and lasting civilization.

Tolerance is a dull virtue. It just means, putting up with people. Forster laments that no one has ever written an Ode To Tolerance or raised a statue to her. It is the quality which is most needed in a world constantly threatened with wars. It is the only force which enables different classes and races of people to settle down together as in India. Tolerance is the sound state of mind to base a civilization upon. A sound state of mind is the only sound foundation to base a stable and lasting civilization. In Forster's opinion, God alone has a sound state of mind to base a lasting civilization. ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.' 

We say love is what is needed, and then sit back, and the world goes on as before without change. 

Tolerance is not just love. Spiritual qualities like love fails when put into practical uses such as solving the world's problems. Love is a failure in public affairs. 'Love is what is needed' we say, and then we sit back, and the world goes on as before. We do nothing to change either the world or our attitude towards the world. When love fails, people will begin to exterminate those whom they do not like, to prevent the disaster from which tolerance need be practised. We know, the Irish and the Scots were not loved much by the Englanders and the South Irish parted from United Kingdom. The Scots in their referendum chose to remain in that union, by a very narrow margin and we do not know what they will choose in future. We know Canada has problems with Quebec, Spain with Catalonia, Belgium with Flanders, and China with so many conquered states like Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and not-yet-conquered nations like Japan and Philippines, with far-reaching-plans with even the distant South Sudan in Africa. Without love for the other peoples contained in their hold and for ethnic minorities living in their provinces, where will these countries go in this world of instant communications and online referendums? 

Tolerance is to be practiced in the queue, in the street, in the railway, in the office, at the factory, at the telephone. 

Tolerance has to be practiced by peoples, classes, communities and also nations. It has to be practiced in almost all spheres of human activity- in the queue, in the street, in the railway, in the office, at the factory, at the telephone. Tolerance is not weakness or surrender. It is the strong tolerating the weak. It is a temporary arrangement till the world is put in perfect order. According to Forster, tolerance is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. The world is shockingly full of people who are equally responsible for the colour questions and racial prejudices still prevailing in our globe, still prevailing in even advanced countries such as England, E.M.Forster’s home land. These inferior qualities cloud the future of even the advanced civilizations. Rather than finding fault with others, it is better we turn to ourselves for betterment. It is very easy to find fanaticism in others, but difficult to spot it in our selves. Till The National Home is completed and Love enters it, Tolerance need be retained as a stop-gap arrangement.

All philosophers, prophets and saints from the East have been preaching tolerance through ages. Theirs is a long line.

Forster is not alone in advocating for this virtue of tolerance. All philosophers, prophets and saints from the East have been preaching tolerance through ages. From Gauthama Buddha to Mahatma Gandhi- theirs is a long line. In the West also, Saint Paul, the Apostle, Dante, the Italian poet, Erasmus, the Dutch scholar, Montaigne, the first French essayist, were all preaching tolerance in Europe. In England, there were John Locke, the philosopher and Sydney Smith, the priest. And there was also Forster's friend, the famous Lowes Dickinson. In Germany it was Goethe. We may sum up the names of these supreme lovers of mankind in a small poetical refrain which nobody wrote yet:

Buddhan, Gandhi, St.Paul, Dante,
Erasmus, Montaigne, John Locke,
Sydney Smith and Low`es Dickinson
And the poet Goethe.

 
(Prepared as a lecture delivered to literature students in May 1992. Slight modifications made since then)
 
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Appreciations, Articles, British Philosophers, British Writers, E M Forster, E M Forster Essays, English Literature, Essays, Essays On Education, Essays On Tolerance, P S Remesh Chandran, Reintroductions, Reviews, Sahyadri Books Bloom Books Trivandrum, Stories, Tolerance


Meet the author
 
PSRemeshChandra

Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of 'Swan, The Intelligent Picture Book'. Unmarried and single. Born and brought up in Nanniyode, a little village in the Sahya Mountain Valley In Kerala.

060. The Home Coming. Rabindranath Tagore Story. Reintroduced by P S Remesh Chandran

060.

The Home Coming. Rabindranath Tagore Story. Reintroduced by P S Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

First published: 14th Sep 2014
 

Rabindranath Tagore was an educator, social reformer, poet, playwright, novelist and short story writer. His poetical collection Gitanjali was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Home Coming is the tale of a 14 year old boy who was a nuisance to his mother, was sent away for studying and died there unloved and longing for his home. There has not been a single person in India who did not weep after reading this Tagore story. 

The boy grew up lazy, wild and violent and thought about doing new mischiefs every day.
 

Phatik Chakravarthi was a fourteen year old Bengali boy whose father died very early. He grew up lazy, wild and disobedient. His younger brother Makhan Chakravarthi was quiet, good and fond of reading. Phatik thought about doing new mischiefs every day. One day he and his retinue of boys pushed into the river a wooden log meant to be shaped as the mast of a boat. Makhan, objecting to this and sitting firmly on the log, was thrown to water along with the log. At home, when he was questioned about this, he beat not only his brother, but his mother also. It was then that his uncle from the far Calcutta City arrived. He agreed to take the boy along with him to Calcutta to be educated there. The boy was only glad to leave, but the mother was only half-relieved and half-sad. 

He missed the meadow, mountain and river in his native village, became a failure at school and began to always ask, when holidays would come.
 

Phatik's uncle had three sons of his own and his aunt did not like this new addition to their family. A fourteen year old boy will have his own problems too. He was fast growing up. He was neither a child nor a man, crossing the line in between. He missed the meadow, mountain and river of his native village. Therefore it was no wonder he became a failure at school. He answered no questions, was beaten badly daily at school and ridiculed by all including his cousins. He grew impatient about returning to home and began always asking, when the holidays would come.

 

In his delirium, he talked about things in his native village, asked his mother not to beat him anymore and called out fathom-marks which steamer-sailors in his native village river did.

  

One day Phatik lost his lesson book and was scolded and abused much by his aunt. It served as the last hurt to break him. On a rainy afternoon after school, feeling fever and headache, he sought shelter somewhere and did not return home. He did not want to trouble his aunt any more. Police help was sought the next day. They found him and brought him home, shivering and fallen into a delirious state. He talked about things in his native village, asked his mother not to beat him anymore and called out fathom-marks which steamer-sailors in his native village river did. He moved restlessly, his hands beating up and down. His condition seemed critical to the doctor, and his mother in the village was sent for. When his mother arrived moaning and crying, and calling his names, he was nearing his eternal home which is Heaven. His last words were: Mother, the holidays have come. 

Tagore's story Home Coming was one of the two first glances into the grief and sorrow of little minds, the other being Coventry Patmore's poem, Toys.
 

The question is how we treat our children. Children are the flowers of humanity. Yet, we do not see the grief in those tiny hearts. Up to four years, a child is said to be in the hands of the God, but since then they are this World's property. A bit of love, a soft touch of solace or a tiny word of consolation would be enough for them, but we do not spare them. Millions of children are worn out for want of care, nursing, assistance. Tagore was purposeful in writing such a story as this to open the world’s eyes towards the world of children’s deep sorrows, unheeded by the grown up world. No wonder he was dedicated to children and started that India’s World University, Saanthi Nikethan, where teachers and students sat beneath mango tree shades and learned. Tagore's this story was one of the two first glances into the grief and sorrow of little minds, the other being Coventry Patmore's poem, Toys.

 
(Prepared as a lecture to literature students in 1996)


Dear Reader,
If you cannot access all pages of P.S.Remesh Chandran, Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum, kindly access them via this link provided here: https://sites.google.com/site/timeuponmywindowsill/wiki-nut-articles


Also visit Bloom Books Channel In You Tube

Meet the author

PSRemeshChandra

Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of 'Swan, The Intelligent Picture Book'. Unmarried and single. Born and brought up in Nanniyode, a little village in the Sahya Mountain Valley in Kerala.

059. A Nincompoop. Anton Chekhov Story. Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

059
 
A Nincompoop. Anton Chekhov Story Reintroduced 

P S Remesh Chandran   
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Article Title Image By JJ Jordan. Graphics: Adobe SP.

Anton Chekhov was a Russian short story writer whose stories became famous for their surprise endings, just like Oscar Wilde’s, Maupassant’s and O.Henry’s. He found his characters from among the middle class and poor people of Russia. In his story The Nincompoop, he explains how the weak people in this world are crushed easily by the cunning rich. 

Had there been no writers in Russia such as Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Alexander Pushkin, Mayakovski, Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn, there would have been no revolution, whether there had been a Lenin or not.

From history we know about the abject poverty of the peasants and workers in Russia and how they were helpless to utter a word against the thorough exploitation by the rich and powerful in the time of the Czars. It was stories like this which prepared people for the coming peasants’ and workers’ revolutions against the ruling aristocrats in that vast sub continent of Russia. It is true, the writers of Russia soon became tired of the political killings following the revolution and writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn later condemned the suppression of people by communist party monarchs, but it was indeed the writers of Russia who tilled the ground for sowing the seeds of revolution. Had there been no writers in Russia such as Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Alexander Pushkin, Mayakovski, Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn, there would have been no revolution there, bloody or not, whether there had been a Vladimir Illyich Ullianov Lenin or not. 

Without ‘Mother’ no revolution would have been possible and without sparks of revolution leaping out here and there no ‘Mother’ would have been thought about.

That the writers and the revolutionaries in Russia shared a mutually respective relationship is undisputed which is a solace and encouragement to historians and students of literature. By reason of his extremely volatile ideas, though was considered as a nuisance by party ranks, Mayakovski made many unforgettable poems about the life in rural Russia. It is remarkable to note Lenin’s comment on Mayakovski which he made in a crowded party committee. “I never like this fellow Mayakovski for his unruly behaviour and indiscipline, which a party cadre like me can never tolerate. But we should all read his that particular poem titled ‘Those Who Hold Committees Everyday’ the hint in which is there is committee everyday, everyday and everyday and nothing is happening any day, any day, any day. That is a poem which opens our eyes to what people think about us so-called communists.” It is interesting to also note that one of the loftiest and lengthy poems about the life of Lenin came from Mayakovski. His poem ‘Let Rail Workers Awaken’ is also equally famous. When we scan the literary and revolutionary fields of Russia, we can see that they magnificently supplemented and supplied each other. Without ‘Mother’ no revolution would have been possible and without sparks of revolution leaping out here and there, no ‘Mother’ would have ever been thought about. 

A Nincompoop is a person who suffers everything without a word of protest, a common figure and national trait in many countries.

A Nincompoop is a person who suffers everything without a word of protest, a national trait in China and Russia which made communist monarchs easily subject their people to persecution and totalitarian tyranny. Such people are there in every community, society, country, age. The rich and the powerful make use of their services and exploit them successfully for long years. There will not be enough genes of rebellion in their blood to revolt. Powerful and crafty writers teach even such inert people to react, protest, unite and cause changes. Like almost all other Russian writers, Anton Chekhov indeed was against such submission and surrender. We know, Anton Chekhov’s stories have a surprising twist towards the end and we shall see what it would be in this story. 

Four days one child was sick and three days the teacher had toothache. Seven rubles gone from salary!

The Master of the House and the Governess of His Children, Julia, are the only characters in the story. One day the Master called Julia to settle their accounts till then. He will not part with a single Ruble unnecessarily. And she had no protest. They had agreed on a salary of forty rubles a month but he was now willing to pay her only thirty rubles. It is OK for her. She had worked for two months and five das but he would count only two months. Thus an amount of sixty rubles only was due to her. Again OK. Nine Sundays and three holidays were taken away and twelve rubles also were taken away. Four days one child was sick and three days the teacher had toothache. Seven rubles gone! Julia broke a cup and saucer and it was only right to deduct two rubles. One child climbed a tree and tore his jacket. The other child’s shoes were stolen by servants in the house. Fifteen rubles less. An advance of three rubles had been paid but then Julia objected. She had been paid no advance but a gift of three rubles by the wife. He won’t listen to objections. He deducted ten plus three equals thirteen rubles anyway. So, she is to be paid eleven rubles, not eighty. He readily gave eleven rubles in cash. No objections. She even said Merci, in thanks. It was then that the Master of the House exploded: Why didn’t you ever protest in spite all this cunningness and stubbornness on my part in cheating you? ‘In other houses everything was taken away through clever calculation, here I got at least eleven rubles’- was her reply. This slavish subjectivity was characteristic of all Russian women. The Master was only testing the Governess of his children and gave Julia the full eighty rubles in cash, and he scolded her for behaving like a Nincompoop. She ought to have protested in those other houses. It is very easy for the weak in this world to be crushed by the cunning, and protestation is the only way out. Julia learned her lesson anyway. Now we know how writers in Russia prepared their people for protestation, change and revolutions.
 
The life of Anton Chekhov:

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1860-1904 was a Russian doctor who not only delighted but excelled also in writing plays and short stories. They became classics and he is now considered as one of the founding figures of modern drama. In modern short story also his role was none other. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov was Russian and his mother Yevgeniya Morozova was Ukrainian. They were merchants by tradition. His father had musical qualities and his mother story-telling abilities. He benefited from both. They fell in finance, lost house and properties and lived in poverty in Moscow. By writing literary pieces for newspapers and doing menial jobs he continued his university education and reached Moscow where he took his medicine degree in 1884. By that time he had also gained footing as a writer. Celebrity publishers and printers had already noted him and his was paid handsomely for his regular pieces. He also began to write for the theatre. He also travelled extensively through Russia. Since their fall in fortune, he had also financing his family’s life. In 1892 he even bought an estate near Moscow and even became a landlord- a model landlord who helped and dispensed medicine free!

In 1898 he purchased land and built a villa in Yalta where he preferred to stay with his widowed mother and sisters, his brothers been died. In 1901 he married the actress Olga Knipper who stayed in Moscow and he in Yalta as he wished: ‘he didn’t want his moon to appear in his sky everyday’. Chekhov died of tuberculosis six years later in 1904 in Germany. Anton Chekhov’s death like ‘sleeping peacefully like a child’ would remind us of the death of Tennyson ‘lying in his bed, the full moon falling on his face, with a Shakespeare in his hand’!

For many writers, what Matthew Arnold wrote is true: their readers cannot reach the finer ones due to the thick surrounding undergrowth of too many inferior ones as in the case of Wordsworth. But not for Chekhov! His short stories already numerous in number are almost all masterpieces. Even if his plays, novellas and letters all vanish, his short stories will keep him immortal. Comedy and light humour are hallmarks of Chekhov stories. Translations of his works gained him international fame. Today many literary critics consider him second only to Shakespeare.

Four-act plays, one-act plays, novels, novellas, nonfiction and short stories:

The noted four-act plays by Chekhov are Untitled Play 1878, Ivanov 1887, The Wood Demon 1889, The Seagull 1896, Three Sisters 1901, The Cherry Orchard 1904. On The High Road 1884, Swansong 1887, A Marriage Proposal 1889, The Wedding 1889, and The Night Before The Trial 1890 are one-act plays. The Shooting Party 1884 is a novel and The Steppe 1888, The Duel 1891, Three Years 1895, and My Life 1896 are novellas. A Journey To Sakhalin 1895 is nonfiction. His short stories are numerous. 

Article Title Image By Rowan Heuvel. Graphics: Adobe SP. 

Written in: February 1991
First published on: 14 September 2014


Meet the author

PSRemeshChandra

Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of 'Swan, The Intelligent Picture Book'. Unmarried and single. Born and brought up in Nanniyode, a little village in the Sahya Mountain Valley in Trivandrum, Kerala. Mother University educated and father British Council-trained Teacher. Matriculation with Distinction and Pre Degree Studies with National Merit Scholarship. Discontinued Diploma Studies in Electronics and entered Politics. 

038. The Angel In The House. Virginia Woolf Essay. Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

038.

The Angel In The House. Virginia Woolf Essay. Reintroduced by P S Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

  
First published: 18th Nov 2011

Virginia Woolf was a British essayist, novelist and critic. The Voyage Out, Night And Day and Jacob’s Room are her famous books. Professions For Women was a lecture she gave before a women’s meeting. A woman can be a doctor, a lawyer, a civil servant or a journalist. But in all these professions, the woman has to beat two opponents- the hold of her own womanishness over her and the fear of her opinion of what men would say.

Pianos and visits to Paris, Berlin and Vienna are not at all needed to become a writer.

Virginia Woolf, the writer and feminist.

Virginia Woolf says, becoming a writer was very easy for her. Her road to literature had been laid out clear before her by many woman writers prior to her times such as Jane Austen and George Elliot. Writing had already been made a reputed and harmless occupation for women. Writing no more affected a woman’s family life. Pianos and models, or visits to Paris, Vienna and Berlin were not at all needed to provide varying experiences for writers. Paper alone was needed which was available cheap then. She says availability of cheap writing paper was reason for the success of woman writers in those times. She simply wrote a review for a book, mailed it and received the next month a cheque for more than One Pound from the editor.

She wanted a Persian cat so she wrote a review. Then she wanted a Motor Car and so wrote a novel.

Virginia Woolf with father Sir. Leslie Stephen.

With this money gained from writing a review she bought a beautiful Persian cat for a pet. She got encouraged and grew ambitious. She got thrilled at the prospect of writing things and gaining things she wished for easily. A Persian cat is all very well but a Persian cat is not enough. She decided to have a motor car. So she wrote a novel and became a novelist. It was that simple. Nothing in this world is as delightful as telling stories. In her very early days of career she learned that writing is a very lucrative career. We readers will wonder how it can be so, with the experiences of such famous writers as Dostoevsky and many others before us. But her's was a time when woman writers were very scarce and including a woman's writing in a publication was a desirable change and an attraction. In modern times many a talented writer has complained that he could not get published because he could not go to an editor in skirts and rubber projections.

Removing all womanishness from her work is the real challenge for a woman writer.

Little Virginia with mother Julia Stephen.

For decades it was thought that writing detective novels and stories are set apart for men because no woman detective story writer could excel and surpass in devising stories as those written by G.K.Chesterton and Arthur Conan Doyle. Many critics including this writer still believe that there is something significant missing in the writings of women authors. The only exception to this was that respected lady Ethel Lilian Voynich whose immortal novel 'The Gad Fly' terrorized the literary world as well as the revolutionary world and still serves as the classic motivation for world revolutionaries and guerilla warfare. Even in this novel the delicate feminine caricature of Arthur, the boyhood image of Rivarus, the relentless revolutionary of later years cries aloud that the novel was written by a lady. Conceiving intricate, finished plots somehow eludes the intellectual and imaginative genius of a woman's mind. Not that there is universal consensus that Agatha Christies' novels satisfy us as Arthur Conan Doyle's novels do, but through her a woman for the first time successfully established herself as a detective novel writer, at least. A professional woman has to remove all womanishness from her work. A good work of literature shall not proclaim that it was written by a woman. All women writers are hindered by the goodness of the womanishness in them. Virginia Woolf calls this phantom idea ‘The Angel in the House’, borrowing from the title of a poem by Coventry Patmore. In those last days of Queen Victoria’s Era, every house in England had its angel in it so far as the prosperity brought to that island nation from her far out colonies remained undisturbed. In the midst of this immense confiscated prosperity the women did not have to work and could afford servants. Their hands remained uncalloused. This expression, The Angel In The House, denotes the sympathetic, charming, unselfish goodness of womanhood present in all women of those times and in all times. But for a woman writer, it is an obstacle to as freely and openly dealing with a subject as men do in their writings. She cannot write something original if this phantom presence of ‘the Angel in the House’ is not killed. Though it is only an imagination of the mind, it was a great problem to the Victorian era women writers.

It is harder to kill a phantom presence in one's mind than killing a reality.

Virginia Woolf's father Sir. Leslie Stephen in 1860.

Killing the ‘Angel in the House’ was part of the occupation of a woman writer in the old English times. It still is. It is far harder to kill a phantom image that is existing in one's own mind than killing something which is real and substantial. It has to be done mentally. Virginia Woolf strove hard and got rid of this imaginary presence on her mind finally. Woolf says: ‘It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and who so tormented me that at last I was forced to kill her. Had I not killed her, she would have killed me and destroyed my career as a writer.’ Without getting rid of this imaginary presence, she would never have become a good writer.

Most women writers fear that men would be shocked to see what they have written.
 

Virginia Woolf with Noel Oliver, Maitland Radford and Rupert Brooke.

Men and women have similar structure in their minds. A novelist has a peculiar state of mind. He wants to be as unconscious as possible in his inner self and in his inter relations. He is always in a trance. Any change in his immediate environment is unbearable to him. Things should be quiet and regular for him. He is really always in an illusion. Most woman writers find it hard to write freely of their feelings. They fear men would be shocked at what they have written. However, women have entered almost all professions human skill can enter. Woolf tells women: ‘You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men. Now they have to be furnished, decorated and shared.” It is said that men in the house will have their favourite seats, and the women in the house have their favourite rooms. It is interesting to note that Woolf's advice to women also illustrates how womanish an advice can be.

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Pictures Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
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Angel In The House, Appreciations, Articles, British Authors, British Writers, English Literature, Essays, P S Remesh Chandran, Professions For Women, Reintroductions, Reviews, Sahyadri Books Bloom Books Trivandrum, Virginia Woolf

Meet the author
PSRemeshChandra

 
Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of Swan : The Intelligent Picture Book.