The Life And Death Of Harriett Frean (1980) - Plot & Excerpts
This short novel tells the disturbing tale of a Victorian girl named Harriett Frean and her attempt to live a "morally beautiful" life... a decision that becomes more difficult when she falls in love with her best friend's fiancé. The story calls into question whether or not doing the moral thing always leads to the greatest happiness for everyone involved and explores the concept that you may be mistaken when you let your actions be dictated by what you think other people want for you. I really enjoyed this book, which covers the entire 70 years of Harriett's life at a fast pace and makes you question Harriett's morally sound (but perhaps emotionally unsound) decisions. This book really explores the question of how to do the right thing, and the way that good intentions can lead to bad consequences. It also questions whether being moral is still "good" if you take too much pride in your morals and enjoy feeling superior because of making the "right" decision - it all comes down to motive in the end. As a reader I felt simultaneously annoyed with Harriett for letting all the joy slip from her life and sorry for her, because her parents brought her up on such a mixture of well meaning lies and patient disappointment that meant she could never selfishly pursue her own happiness. Left to question what the reader would do in Harriett's place you are left with a lingering doubt... would you seize the day and be bold in the pursuit of happiness, causing pain in the short term but happiness in the long term, or would you, like Harriett, try and do the socially acceptable thing and comfort yourself that you had behaved "beautifully"? Reading this tale I couldn't help but write in my mind the parallel life of Harriett if she had made a different decision and am not sure if her life would have been happier, only different. In the end, this is a novel about the choices we make and how we live with them when we can't go back and change our minds.
I got this from the notorious 1001 Books you Must Read or We Will Put Your Household Pets in a Food Blender We Are Serious. I know some people do not like that list much but this slender bitter novel from 1922 would have otherwise passed me by completely.This novel is a ferocious yet so genteelly understated attack on that exalted Victorian female virtue of self-denial. The idea is that you live a life of private misery because you do nothing to make your parents or anyone else the least bit upset ever. Never assert, never disagree, don’t marry the person you love, nothing for you, everything for them. And you revel in this secret pathological abnegation with all the pervy thrill of a hairshirted medieval monk. The more unhappy you are because you’re not doing anything you want to do the happier you are because you know you’re such a good good good person. May Sinclair then gives this a magnificent further twist – and by these actions, or non-actions, you compound the unhappiness of the very people you think you’re making happy by your self-denial. This was great. Bleak, bitter, short - what's not to like here? Read in a couple of hours, but will glow in my mind for years to come.
What do You think about The Life And Death Of Harriett Frean (1980)?
Who is Harriett Frean? she is an insignificant women with no past no present and no future.Her life is so empty, the book reminded me of the curious case of Benjamin Button , which contained an insignificant life as well.There are a lot of lessons that you could learn from this book, such as never be too good, never give up your dreams , and be yourself.Harriett seemed to me that she hadn't developed a personality of her own in her entire life, the book began with Harriett the child , and she hadn't grown a year ever since.She was so dependent of her parents, her whole world consisted of them, she regarded them as perfect people and she never wanted anything else while with them.Harriett's education surrounded her with bars of protection from the outside world ,which soon become bars that were imprisoning her.
—Safae
I’d never heard of this book or its author until I came across a Bookcrossing copy at a café in Boston. The author was apparently a distinguished British novelist in the period after the First World War and I’m really glad to have discovered this Virago Modern Classic. It was easy to read but a sad tale of a narrow and repressed life, and the futility of self-sacrifice. Harriett is the only child of her highly moral Victorian parents who have inculcated her with the virtue of behaving well. When
—Mrsgaskell
I was intrigued by a novel that covered an entire lifetime in such a slim volume, and this book certainly delivered the impact of a much larger tome with admirable concision. It follows the life of Harriet Frean as she grows up the only child of an upper middle class Victorian couple, through to her spinsterhood - but it is not the events of her life that make this novel powerful. It traces the moral and cultural shifts of the late Victorian period - which I was completely unaware of - and the desperately sad impact of a youthful decision based on outdated or misconceived moral standards. It recreates like few other books I have read the domestic Victorian mindset, mores and day-to-day life, the enormous repression of emotion that in this case reverberates in a terrifying way.
—Kitty
