![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
*The Heavenly Twins*
Jun. 25th, 2010 07:25 pm*The Heavenly Twins* was proposed by, I think, Amy_This, and I am glad it was recommended because I had never previously heard of it and I suspect I never would have heard of it. It appears to be a solid, second rate novel about the ‘women problem’ written with a distinctly nineteenth-century feminist slant.
I particularly like the emphasis on always doing what each person thinks is right and on asserting individuality. Angelica thinks: ‘I am not a wooden ship to be steered, but a human soul with a sacred individuality to be preserved, and the grand right of private judgment.’
On Diva_Flip's recommendation I got a feminist companion to literature in English which included an entry on Sarah Grant: born Frances Elizabeth Clarke (later McFall) 1854-1943, educated at home and unhappily at two schools, married a doctor at sixteen, his experience of working at an institution for prostitutes with venereal diseases is fictionalised in *The Beth Book* (1897) - travelled to the near east - began publishing 1888 - *The Heavenly Twins* was influenced by knowledge gained from her support for Josephine Butler’s crusade to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act - sold 20,000 copies in the first year - lectured extensively including on rational dress, prominent in suffragette movement.
There, bet that's more than most of you knew as well.
But I must confess that I have not read it all. Not because I did not like it, but because I could not find a hard copy of it. I found the Guttenberg edition but I simply could not read a text so long on the screen. I converted it into Pages and even in 11 point font it was 650 pages long, so I could not afford to print the whole thing. I’ve read about half, printed out, and this experience has confirmed my feeling that anything like an IPad reader will be no good for me. I just can’t read extensive texts in electronic form.
So, that’s where my analysis is at: I disliked the format in which I read the text. The text itself, as much as I could get through, was very interesting.
I particularly like the emphasis on always doing what each person thinks is right and on asserting individuality. Angelica thinks: ‘I am not a wooden ship to be steered, but a human soul with a sacred individuality to be preserved, and the grand right of private judgment.’
On Diva_Flip's recommendation I got a feminist companion to literature in English which included an entry on Sarah Grant: born Frances Elizabeth Clarke (later McFall) 1854-1943, educated at home and unhappily at two schools, married a doctor at sixteen, his experience of working at an institution for prostitutes with venereal diseases is fictionalised in *The Beth Book* (1897) - travelled to the near east - began publishing 1888 - *The Heavenly Twins* was influenced by knowledge gained from her support for Josephine Butler’s crusade to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act - sold 20,000 copies in the first year - lectured extensively including on rational dress, prominent in suffragette movement.
There, bet that's more than most of you knew as well.
But I must confess that I have not read it all. Not because I did not like it, but because I could not find a hard copy of it. I found the Guttenberg edition but I simply could not read a text so long on the screen. I converted it into Pages and even in 11 point font it was 650 pages long, so I could not afford to print the whole thing. I’ve read about half, printed out, and this experience has confirmed my feeling that anything like an IPad reader will be no good for me. I just can’t read extensive texts in electronic form.
So, that’s where my analysis is at: I disliked the format in which I read the text. The text itself, as much as I could get through, was very interesting.
