Sunday 11 September 2011

Review: The Dwelling Place

It had happened one day at university. I finally managed to get the tv working. Only one channel worked, and on this channel was a film "The Dwelling Place" me and my flatemate both love costume dramas so we were happy to watch. We only caught the end. A young girl standing on the moors, suddenly a weedy blonde young man arrives, he askes her if another man truly had claim on her, she smiles, in a way that I had never seen, it's a refreshing smile and says that that other man loved the mill more than her. The man asks for her hand in marriage and she agrees. I'm set here, for one: the girls smile and secondly the young man, the hero, doesn't look like an ordinary hero, he's weedy, he looks like a kind guy. The kind of heroes I like lol.

Therefore I decided to get the book. Or rather my mother bought it for me because I had no money.

It turned out to be a Catherine Cookson. When I told my mother this she burst out laughing and I was a little petrubed, she told me all the plots were the same, a poor girl managing to come out on top with lots of money. I however stood by it and she got me a copy.

At first I was rather bored, a typical set up, a young girl loses her parents, she had to look after the children. They can't live in the house so they have to live in a cave on the moor. Of course there's this farmer guy, who instantly loves her because of her beauty and because she's so self-sacrificing (this will be a trope throughout the rest of the book). He helps her to building a sort of shack thing and survive for the first few months

Now I didn't mind it so much I was happy to go along with it. Anyway it started to get interesting when the twins from the manor appear. I wrote my university thesis on gender role swapping and so I was happy when she described the boy and girl twin as having their genders switched. I love that kind of hero, a beta hero, I hate alphas. In fact I prefer the woman in be in charge usually :P hehe.

Anyway the two twins have a lot to drink and go rambling when they come upon Cissie (the girl) anyway some point early on the sister (I can't remember her name so i'll call her Jo) had caught Cissie's little brother poaching and Cissie had fought her off and humilated her. So she has a go at her again when she sees her, tries to attack her, the brother gets inbetween and in some sort of Shoujo-esq trope ends up falling on top of Cissie.

This is where the shoujo-esq stops. Because he starts groping her and his sister eggs him on, because of course he's a virgin and he's scared etc. etc. Then he apparently rapes her. It wasn't explicit in the text, it was only later on when her brother tells Matt (the farmer) that I realised that he had actually copulated. Anyway, their father comes along and stops then and sends both of them away. This is the part where I stopped liking Clive. I liked him when he was sensitive and painted all day and all night. Then he does this to Cissie and I was trying to get my head around it.

I know people are weak and I know it was different back then but... I dunno. Then to add insult to injury, he goes on a ship as punishment and comes back as a jerk ass. Yeah, he comes back and sees Cissie's child who his father has taken and is all "oh well, I probably have other bastards in all the brothels i've been in herrr durrr"

The thing I like about CC as an author is that she had realistic characters with weaknesses. It's a lot for me to ask that he wasn't whoring it up while at sea, since every sailor and his dog did it (if the historians are to be believed) but he had so much potential and then he gets "hardened". I don't know how I feel about characters being "hardened". This was a huge problem for me, with Twelve Kingdoms, because Yuko stops being a sympathetic school girl and starts being a very cold, calculated and strong individual. I liked that she became strong but there was nothing left in her that was human. Coming from our era and going into a medieval type world, she has no qualms about killing other humans which she does at the beginning. In fact she becomes very boring after she has her buddhist type purifying of the mind.

Later on even after he admits he loves Cissie he still has mistresses and in this case, this book is the complete and utter opposite of Jane Eyre. It's ok that the mr. whatsisface had mistresses before Jane because he was all messed up and stuff, but after, oh no that's a big no no. I mean yes it's realistic... but is that really what I want? realism?

The ending is not at all like the movie. She marries Matt (wtf) and they have a crappy marriage (which I liked because yeah again realism) but then he dies and she mets up with the brother and he asks her to marry him. Oh and the son never loves her, ever (her son I mean) that she had with Clive. So in that respects it's kind of like Vanity Fair, except I kind of liked Amelia, despite her naivity and Dobbin <3. The thing that horrified me was the line at the end of the book however that:
"she'd been nobodies except that man's since he'd mated her"

Throughout the book I was in two minds about the rape, on the one hand it was rape on the other hand CC states several times that Cissie sort of enjoyed it. Does the sort of count? really?? I mean as a staunch Feminist can I accept this? So although I really liked this book. I feel very... confused over it.

Also If I had been Cissie I would have a) given my son away to stop my brothers and sisters from starving b)locked matthew out and never let him in again the effing tease c)never would have given my son back d) taken clive's offer of the house but refused to be his mistress and demanded marriage even if I was of lower class and needed to be "educated".

I am therefore... concerned but I read the book in two days, so I did enjoy it. I'll watch the film now and hopefully, that will smooth out the edges and make it into my favourite films list.

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