On many occasions I start watching a film with my husband, and ten minutes after it has begun he claims that we have seen it before. I always deny having any knowledge of the film in question, despite him being able to a) say what is going to happen b) tell me who dunnit and c) quote imminent bits of dialogue.
I am having similar sensations as I make my way through The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I would swear I have never read this novel before, but it all seems very familiar somehow. Once I have succumbed to the rhythm of Anne Bronte's writing style (surely some of the longest and most convoluted sentences ever written), I start to have a sense of deja-vu about the relationship between Gilbert Markham and Helen Graham, and the characters surrounding them (the Millwards, Mr Lawrence, Jane and Richard Wilson...).
Is it because I have actually read it, back in the day when literature was my chiefest study...?
Or is it because it plays on themes of alcoholism and temperance?
Or it is because it is so reminiscent of my experience over the past year ?!!?
Here is Gilbert Markham writing of an evening's "entertainment" (a soiree at his mother's house):
"I now recollected having seen Mrs Wilson, in the early part of the evening, edging her chair close up to my mother, and bending forward, evidently in the delivery of some important confidential intelligence; and from the incessant wagging of her head, the frequent distortions of her wrinkled physiognomy, and the winking and malicious twinkle of her little ugly eyes, I judged it was some spicy piece of scandal that engaged her powers; and from the cautious privacy of the communication I supposed some person then present was the luckless object of her calumnies: and from all these tokens, together with my mother's looks and gestures of mingled horror and incredulity, I now concluded that object to have been Mrs Graham."
Now, quite apart from being an excellent example of Anne's looooong sentences, this is also a perfect illustration of what goes on daily in what The Decent People in the office call Whispering Corner ! This is the spot occupied by Spiteful Manager, and frequently visited by The Others (primarily Attention Seeker, Ex-Army Man and Politician's Daughter). So repellent is the incessant sotto-voce hissing which emanates from this quarter, that Former Boss once sent round an email instructing staff to stop whispering. (Not that anyone took any notice, and not that he ever bothered to do anything about it again !)
Gilbert Markham, trying to reassure Mrs Graham in a later scene, advises her:
"..their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight."
Way to go, Ms Bronte !!
I ponder on the fact that 19th Century literature repeatedly shows The Gossip as someone to be ridiculed, when she is not playing a more sinister role as the poisonous ruiner of lives. From Jane Austen to Mrs Gaskell, these spiteful and malicious characters are universally derided.
In our department, they rule the roost!
Perhaps someday someone will write a book about them.
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