I read Harriet Hume to close out the set of novels whose characters personify Virginia Woolf's themes from "A Room of One's Own." All three novels - written by Woolf, Rebecca West, and Vita Sackville-West - contrast the feminine appreciation for beauty with the masculine urge to dominate.This novel details a strange love affair in which the heroine inexplicably develops the ability to read the thoughts of her suitor. As one might imagine, it doesn't take long for things to sour. In this case, she withers to hear his preference for worldly pleasures - financial success and power - over the ethereal pleasure of loving Harriet and appreciating the simple beauty of nature. Realizing their incompatibility, he leaves her but then flails in the life he has pragmatically constructed as he cannot bear the glare of her witness to his ugly ambitions: "She had come between him and every human being's right not to know quite what he is doing."Just as it was difficult to understand why Vita Sackville-West's characters were making such a fuss over the self-absorbed Lady Slane in All Passion Spent, it was insulting (as a woman) to see Harriet waste a minute over the disgustingly dull Arnold. At one point, Harriet gets up to leave and Arnold protests: "You are not a person of importance. I doubt if you have many appointments. You had better stay with me in this very pretty room. It will not be for long, since I am sure to weary of you soon, and will kindly send you home in my magnificent new motor-car. So make the most of your time. And to tell you the truth, oh, my love, I find great joy in having you here among all my treasures!"While all three authors are riffing on Woolf's expressed frustrations about gender inequality, and using their admirable powers of expression to trump up the case for women as the superior sex while they're at it, only To the Lighthouse manages to escape caricature and infuse her observations with enough empathy to make a great novel.
A young man, Arnold Condorex, has an affair with Harriet Hume, a beautiful piano player. Then he leaves her to have a successful career in politics, but she shows up at different stages of his life to make him see how his life is going wrong. The book is also called "A London fantasy" and every time he meets Harriet again something fantastical happens, such as all the statues in London coming to life or three young women turning into trees. The writing is wonderful and I love the London that is portrayed in here and really enjoy the fantastical element, but I never really cared for the characters. It's very distracting when Arnold keeps calling Harriet "trollop" and "bitch" and it's not supposed to be insulting, and I have no idea why Harriet cared for him at all. She wasn't a real person but rather some sort of symbol of femininity.
What do You think about Harriet Hume (1980)?
This is an odd book, and I would have rated it rather more lowly, but I really liked the tone. There's something about British books written between the wars. They have kind of a sweet sadness that almost has a desperate hope that nothing bad will even happen again. Sometimes you can tell they are firmly ignoring the signs of impending war. Not in this book, but sometimes. And I sometimes wonder if letting go of some dreams isn't better than railing against the world because you can't achieve them.
—Melanie
