Every Day Above Ground (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mallorys_camera) wrote2025-05-01 08:59 am
mallorys_camera) wrote2025-05-01 08:59 am
Entry tags:
The Real Milkmaids of the Vale of Blackmore
In the morning, I picked up a battered copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and then I spent the day reading it—which I hadn't intended to do.
I do love me some Thomas Hardy.
Part of that is because I'd read so many of his novels by the time I was 16.
But part of that is because Hardy was a Victorian neorealist: Despite sometimes ungainly language & syntax choices, he really knew how to create vivid characters & settings, and he has a rare ability to shift between exterior landscapes & geographies of the heart, seemingly effortlessly.
Tess lives on Hardy's pages—and she could so easily have become a caricature of the Maiden Despoiled (as so many girls in similar circumstances do on Dickens' pages.) The rape scene is almost painful to read, laid out as it is with a kind of Victorian Me Too specificity. And the death of Sorrow: So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman’s shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God’s allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.
"Conjecturally damned"!
Be still, my beating heart.
###
At this point in the novel, I noticed the light had shifted, and it was now—ulp!—two o'clock, and I l had yet to do a single Useful Thing.
So, I scurried off to the Walkway and tromped.
My tromping stamina is wayyyyyyy down. The gym sessions have certainly toned my body, and you'd think that since I do spinning for half an hour at the end of them, my cardiovascular endurance would be up, too, but that hasn't been the case. Five miles is hard for me to tromp. Three miles is really what I feel comfortable with.
Lazy! my mind scolds my body. Undisciplined!
But then I remind myself: Girl, you're old now! Three miles is not bad for a septuagenarian.
###
The evening was the evening.
I can never do Useful Work in the evenings, so I made dinner, explained the Romantic tradition in English literature to the kiskas, and watched more White Lotus.
White Lotus is not a show that binges very well.
One gets bored with the cliches.
I started with the second season 'cause Sicily plus RTT told me it was the best. The second season was okay.
And then I tried to watch the first season and had to give up because the characters were monumentally uninteresting.
And then I tried to watch the third season (because I'm too brain-dead to read at night) and gave up because the characters were repulsive.
I don't know what I'm gonna watch now!
Somebody really needs to do a reality TV show based on Tess of the d'Urbervilles: The Real Milkmaids of the Vale of Blackmore. Or something.
I do love me some Thomas Hardy.
Part of that is because I'd read so many of his novels by the time I was 16.
But part of that is because Hardy was a Victorian neorealist: Despite sometimes ungainly language & syntax choices, he really knew how to create vivid characters & settings, and he has a rare ability to shift between exterior landscapes & geographies of the heart, seemingly effortlessly.
Tess lives on Hardy's pages—and she could so easily have become a caricature of the Maiden Despoiled (as so many girls in similar circumstances do on Dickens' pages.) The rape scene is almost painful to read, laid out as it is with a kind of Victorian Me Too specificity. And the death of Sorrow: So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman’s shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God’s allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.
"Conjecturally damned"!
Be still, my beating heart.
###
At this point in the novel, I noticed the light had shifted, and it was now—ulp!—two o'clock, and I l had yet to do a single Useful Thing.
So, I scurried off to the Walkway and tromped.
My tromping stamina is wayyyyyyy down. The gym sessions have certainly toned my body, and you'd think that since I do spinning for half an hour at the end of them, my cardiovascular endurance would be up, too, but that hasn't been the case. Five miles is hard for me to tromp. Three miles is really what I feel comfortable with.
Lazy! my mind scolds my body. Undisciplined!
But then I remind myself: Girl, you're old now! Three miles is not bad for a septuagenarian.
###
The evening was the evening.
I can never do Useful Work in the evenings, so I made dinner, explained the Romantic tradition in English literature to the kiskas, and watched more White Lotus.
White Lotus is not a show that binges very well.
One gets bored with the cliches.
I started with the second season 'cause Sicily plus RTT told me it was the best. The second season was okay.
And then I tried to watch the first season and had to give up because the characters were monumentally uninteresting.
And then I tried to watch the third season (because I'm too brain-dead to read at night) and gave up because the characters were repulsive.
I don't know what I'm gonna watch now!
Somebody really needs to do a reality TV show based on Tess of the d'Urbervilles: The Real Milkmaids of the Vale of Blackmore. Or something.
Progress
Re: Progress
And yes, sigh. You are correct.
no subject
When I was reading the excerpt, my mind too latched right on to "conjecturally damned" -Just great! So much in two words! Love it.
Spinning for a half hour! Whoa!
no subject
Yeah, but it doesn't seem to build up strength or endurance for weight-bearing exercise.
no subject
This is so beautiful. I'm going to try and read Tess again. (My schoolkid self still holds a grudge against Hardy for killing the horse...)
...so I made dinner, explained the Romantic tradition in English literature to the kiskas...
LOL.
no subject
I don't think I could ever bring myself to reread, say, Jude the Obscure. But Tess is very good.
no subject
But I tolerate awful unbelievable stuff very well in The White Lotus!
no subject
Yeah, Jude the Obscure may be the most heartbreaking novel ever. Just devestating. I've never had the slightest desire to reread that one.