Tracy Chevalier e Falling Angels PDF

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TRACY CHEVALIER (1962 – still living) Tracy Chevalier is American, she is the daughter of a photographer of the Washington Post, so she is very involved with different kind of writings, not only novels, but also short stories, journalistic writings, freelance editing and so on. She got a Bachelor's Degree in English, worked as reference book editor while writing short stories. She then got the Master’s Degree in creative writing. She also has experience with art, in fact she curated three shows in art galleries/museums, in particular she curated the Charlotte Brontë bicentenary in Haworth in 2016. Works: they all deal with different periods of time and with different people that are someone in the background, secondary narrators. Female figure who are at a disadvataged situation are very important, they are not socially important, but they gain importance through their actions. • The Virgin Blue (1997) • Remarkable Creatures (2009) • Girl With a Pearl Earring (1999) - famous • The Last Runaway (2013) • Falling Angels (2001) • Reader, I Married Him (2016) 21 stories by • The Lady and the Unicorn (2003) other writers • Burning Bright (2007) • At the Edge of the Orchard (2016) Main features of her writing • Her writing is very interdisciplinary, bc there is always a relation between literature and a work of art or also between literature and some sort of scientific knowledge. In Falling Angels there is the presence of art, in particular architecture and landscapes as in the case of Highgate cemetery, which represents two outlooks of life in the society of that period related to two families: the Colemans, who are more modern and Edwardian, and the Waterhouses, who are Victorian and traditional. • There is New-Historicism, which consists on rewriting histories and the historical genre from secondary but superior and especially feminist point of view. In Falling Angels there are many different points of view of minor characters such as children, young people, servants. What is important is that they are mostly feminine. •In particular there is the use of multiple narrators. The same happens in FA, that for instance is divided into time periods and within these time divisions there are small chapters where there are events told by different narrators/characters from their point of view. The length is also important: some moments are focused on, whereas others are skipped, which indicates the relativity of time • Presence of “marginalised” characters (children, servants) who speak in their own indivual voices, in fact they have their own little chapter, where they speak the language they are supposed to speak. The book is divided into time periods Children speak like children and this is also a novel of development, bc we see children develop as the story goes on. • Liberation of oppressed characters (for instance women who have to follow social norms) through art, experience or knowledge. Falling Angels - Background • Inspired by a guided tour of Highgate Cemetery, which is the biggest cemetery in London. In fact she has the desire to give voice to a place of the dead in a society that celebrated death explicitly. In the Victorian age there was etiquette and strict convention also related to mourning, f.e. Queen Victoria mourned her husband for the rest of her life. On the other hand Edwardianism changed this, bc there were no strict rules. So she is interested particularly in the transition between the Victorian and Edwardian age. For example Kitty decides to go the funeral ceremony of Queen Victoria dressed in dark blue, but the convention said she should have dressed in black. In Edwardian age however dark blue becomes an acceptable colour and not a scandalous one, in fact Lavinia dresses like this at the end of the novel, during the funeral ceremony of King Edward. • She wants to focus on women’s conditions in different social classes, age groups, levels of education and roles → there are women with a prestigious background, women with middle-lower condition (Waterhouse) and also lower ones (servants, children, Fallen women). Even if they are not highly educated, sometimes they might contribute more, bc all of them have something to say.

Structure of the novel: divided into time periods, not chapters. In this way it demonstrates the relativity of time, bc some events are more focused on, whereas others are not even mentioned, which is the reason why these periods have different lenghts. • January 1901 - October 1906: Falling Angels begins in January 1901, the morning after Queen Victoria's death, the morning that her son, the dandy King Edward VII becomes monarch. So there is the celebration of Queen Victoria's death and on this occasion there is the encounter at the cemetery between two families, precisely at their family's graveyards, that are placed one next to the other. The monuments are very different and represent the two mentalities of the families: - Waterhouses → angel = Victorian and traditional - Coleman → it is not as large, romantic and old-fashioned as the one of the Waterhouses, it is more Edwardian and modern. The families do not like each other, but the daughters Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse become friends. They are also quite different: Lavinia is beautiful, the typical Victorian woman, she is weak, wanting to get married, whereas Maude is not very beautiful, but quite intelligent, she represents the New Woman. At one point they live next to each other after that the Waterhouses move in their neighbourhood, but the cemetery still remains an important place for the meetings of the girls and other characters, like Kitty, who will have an affair with Mr Jackson, the director of the cemetery. After getting pregnant she will end the relationship and get an abortion and become ill. → Kitty Coleman represents the Edwardian woman, she comes from a lower family, but she was able to marry into the Coleman family, seen as very prestigious and wealthy. She is against the Victorian conventions, which are represented by the grandmother, and she is also disillusioned by the Edwardian Age, bc she expected something else, f.e. her husband is not as romantic as she thought he would be. What gets her out of this illness is the suffrage movement. • October 1906 - May 1910: during a library ceremony she meets Caroline Black, a suffragette, so Kitty becomes involved with the suffrage movement and is obsessed with it; at one point there is a March in Hyde Park, during which Emmeline Pankhurst is present. She only appears, but she is not an important character. This march has extremes consequences: Kitty and Ivy May, Lavinia's little sister, die. • May 1910: in fact in the third part of the novel we see what happened during the march and how the characters came to terms with this situation. So there are funerals and after two years the characters grow, they girls after not talking for some time, become friends again, but in a different way, bc they are more self-conscious. The families are now distanced and at the end there is the death of King Edward and some sort of resolution comes up, that lies with the younger children, who have the potential to make things better in the future. Imagery and symbols • Mourning clothes and etiquette = they signal a change in reign and in age, bc there is the comparison between mourning in the Victorian age and mourning in the Edwardian age. • Etiquette manuals = signals the presence and importance of conventions. • Graves = status and decisional power of the families during and after life • Skull and bones at the back of the grave = inevitability and equality of death • Comet = signals death, appears with an internal death (Kitty) or a real death (King Edward) • Clothing and corsets = growth and development, modernity • Inventions, science = modernity • Banners and pamphlets = suffrage movement • Education = becomes a manner of self-improvement and critical sense. Maude wants to go to university, Lavinia also becomes more mature, although not as much as Maude.

Main themes • There are many different “histories”, bc there are many different points of view and some characters know things, others don't, others know later. • Contrast between tradition (Victorianism) and modernity (Edwardianism) → the same events seen from different points of view, some traditional and some modern, f.e. Lavinia and Maude see a comet, Colemans sees it as a scientific event, the Watherhouses as a messenger of God. • Women’s position in society, bc there are reflections on the Angel of the House, Fallen Woman, Suffragettes, New Woman and on what people think of these roles. They are all described, even though not openly, except for the suffragettes. Lavinia is the Victorian woman, Maude is the New Woman, Jenny is the Fallen woman, Kitty is the Suffragette and Edwardian woman. • Development and challenges of the new generation against the previous and its need to take control: we can see this in the relationship between Kitty and her mother-in-law, who is the opposite, bc she represents the Victorian conventions. Kitty at a certain point is able to take control of the situation even though she is young. That's why the solution at the end of the novel lies with the new generation, which is able to overcome Victorianism. • It is a sort of formation/development novel, bc there are three children: Lavinia, Maude and Simon, a poor boy who was friend of the girls. They all develop in the course of the novel. • Separation between love and marriage and the bond between love and death (Kitty falls in love, has an abortion, which leads to an interior death) • Difficulties entailed by modernity and the new age, which provokes disappointment, which can be seen for example through Kitty. •Suffrage movement: it is seen as a sort of promise to overcome Victorianism. However it is not a great solution and in the novel we see its consequences and domestic effects. • Men’s frustration and loss of control over domestic matters → there is also men's position, but they don't have control over the women or they are passive. • Importance of self-realisation as an individual and as a woman → what a woman has to do. → Extracts Maude Coleman Kitty is arrested bc of her suffrage activity and Maude and her father go to find her. Maude notices that there are little flags on the doors and she takes one while her father is not watching. Maude describes the cell: it was very small and women prisoners had to live in this condition. Women were forced to knit, forced to do something very domestic for the male prisoners, in fact they were supposed to understand that they had to serve men. Maude sees Emmeline Pankhurst, who smiles at her, but Maude is called back by her father. She meets her mother and she hears Caroline Black talking to her. She is the woman who introduced Kitty to the suffrage movement. In the jail women create a network between the prisoners, they all get to know each other. The fact that they are all dressed with the same clothes indicates that the suffragettes are all at the same level. This is a difficult situation, Maude and her father are kind of taken aback, but the suffragettes take it as a joke, they need to show that being in prison does not affect them. They start to talk about Mrs Pankhurst and in order to get her mother's attention she says that she saw her, but she doesn't get to say anything more, even though her mother made a lot of questions. The father asks Kitty if she has learned her lesson, but she answers that prison makes her stronger. Kitty says that her life had no meaning before she joined the suffrage movement. The message is that women should be emancipated, but is not by being extreme that they should do it. On the contrary they should do it with an interior development....