Reading: The Fires of Bride
May. 20th, 2017 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartAs I recall, I borrowed Ellen Galford's The Fires of Bride from the local library more than once when I was a teenager. I borrowed it the first time because teenage feminist me would borrow anything with the Women's Press's black and white striped spine, and then I borrowed it again (and again) because I loved it; it was funny and feminist and fuelled a burning ambition to live in artistic solitude somewhere remote and spectacularly beautiful when I grew up. (Alas, I turned out not really to be the artistic type, and I don't think solitude would be good for my mental health, so it's probably better that I ended up living in suburbia and having a prosaic career in finance and administration, but at fourteen the prospect would definitely have horrified me.)
I was a bit apprehensive about re-reading it, but I needn't have worried; it's still very funny, and very feminist. It's the story of an artist, Maria, who accepts an invitation to visit lady of the manor, local doctor and probable witch Catriona on the remote Hebridean island of Cailleach, and ends up staying. On the one hand, it's the story of a woman finding her confidence and her identity as an artist and a person, fairly typical of feminist novels of the 80s; on another, it's a humorous portrait of a rural community which owes something to Ealing comedies (it's a bit like Local Hero, which I think I discovered shortly after reading the book, and which is one of my favourite films, though it would have been even better with more lesbians); on a third, it's a quasi-fantasy about communities of women facing up to the patriarchy throughout history, and about the survival of pagan goddess-worship throughout centuries of Christianity. I still liked it a lot; maybe I'll see if I can track down copies of Ellen Galford's other novels as well.
I was a bit apprehensive about re-reading it, but I needn't have worried; it's still very funny, and very feminist. It's the story of an artist, Maria, who accepts an invitation to visit lady of the manor, local doctor and probable witch Catriona on the remote Hebridean island of Cailleach, and ends up staying. On the one hand, it's the story of a woman finding her confidence and her identity as an artist and a person, fairly typical of feminist novels of the 80s; on another, it's a humorous portrait of a rural community which owes something to Ealing comedies (it's a bit like Local Hero, which I think I discovered shortly after reading the book, and which is one of my favourite films, though it would have been even better with more lesbians); on a third, it's a quasi-fantasy about communities of women facing up to the patriarchy throughout history, and about the survival of pagan goddess-worship throughout centuries of Christianity. I still liked it a lot; maybe I'll see if I can track down copies of Ellen Galford's other novels as well.
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Date: 2017-05-21 09:21 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-05-21 09:48 am (UTC)That's me in the pic!
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