Moods, or, You Could Solve This With Polyamory
According to her journals, Alcott wrote the first the first draft of Moods in August 1860 and edited it the following January. Like Jo in the "Literary Lessons" chapter, Little Women, she was told it was too long and took out ten chapters and shortened some of the others, and it was published in December 1864.
In a letter she wrote "Moods is not what I meant to have it, for I followed bad advice and took out many things which explained my idea and & made the characters more natural & consistent. I see my mistake now for I find myself accused of Spiritualism, Free Love, Affinities and all sorts of horrors I know little about and don't believe in." She meant for the story to be about the trials of a "moody" young girl while most readers interpreted it as a book about marriage. For that I can't blame them - I can see both aspects in it but find the topic of marriage the dominant one.
Epigraph from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Experience": "Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus."
Chapter 1: In A Year
The room fronted the west, but a black cloud, barred with red, robbed the hour of twilight's tranquil charm. Shadows haunted it, lurking in corners like spies set there to watch the man who stood among them mute and motionless as if himself a shadow. Like The Inheritance it starts off with a description of the house.
Adam Warwick asks Ottila, his fiancee of one month, to set him free. He says that she deceived him into loving her and now that he knows her for the maneater she is, he doesn't love her anyone. Ottila begs him to keep her because her attachment is sincere. They end with a compromise: he will give her a year to improve her character and then they will meet again.
Chapter 2: Whims
Prue attempts to get her younger sister Sylvia out of bed. "I am only tired of everybody and everything, and see nothing worth getting up for; so I shall just stay here till I do. Please put the curtain down and leave me in peace." Prue suggests several ways to pass her time; Sylvia shuts them all down. Prue suggests she join her and their brother Mark on a call to Geoffrey Moor who just returned from Switzerland.
Sylvia says New people always disappoint me, especially if I've heard them praised ever since I was born.
It's an interesting way to introduce our heroine - some will find it unsympathetic and some will relate.
At lunch Sylvia tells them that yesterday she took a run in Moor's garden, slipped into the house, and took a book from his library. Introduce her to Liesel Meminger. She saw him playing with his gardener's children but he didn't see her. Prue is horrified and Mark is amused.
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION I'LL TAKE THAT AS A BLEAK HOUSE REFERENCE.
Later, Moor comes to the Yule house and is charmed by a boy working in the garden, only to realize that the boy is Sylvia. After the Yules and Moor have dinner, Prue vents to their dad.
"Something must be done about that child, father, for she is getting entirely beyond my control. If I attempt to make her study she writes poetry instead of her exercises, draws caricatures instead of sketching properly, and bewilders her music teacher by asking questions about Beethoven and Mendelssohn, as if they were personal friends of his. If I beg her to take exercise, she rides like an Amazon all over the Island, grubs in the garden as if for her living, or goes paddling about the bay till I'm distracted lest the tide should carry her out to sea. She is so wanting in moderation she gets ill, and when I give her proper medicines she flings them out of the window, and threatens to send that worthy, Dr. Baum, after them. Yet she must need something to set her right, for she is either overflowing with unnatural spirits or melancholy enough to break one's heart."
Moor sees the stolen book and decides not to take it back. This is partly based on real life - he is Emerson and young LMA borrowed from his library frequently.
Sylvia has a collection of animals: toad, bees, blind bird, caterpillar, and field mouse. Moor is even more charmed by it.
She and Mr. Yule take a twilight walk. He doesn't seem to have any interest in taming her; in fact I think he's probably her favorite child. Mark wants to introduce her to some protential lovers, but she's afraid that love will be cruel to her. She sings for everyone and Moor compliments her.
Chapter 3: Afloat
Mark, Moor, and Moor's friend Warwick are about to take a two-day trip up the river. At first Mark says she can't come, then that she can if 1) Mr. Yule and Prue say yes, 2) she has appropriate clothes, and 3) she packs lightly.
Sylvia agrees to it all, and the four set off. There's a lot of description of the scenes they pass and she enjoys them very much, to the point of tearing up at the beauty of it. When she and Mark are alone she asks him about Warwick.
"Violently virtuous. He is a masterful soul, bent on living out his beliefs and aspirations at any cost. Much given to denunciation of wrong-doing everywhere, and eager to execute justice upon all offenders high or low. Yet he possesses great nobility of character, great audacity of mind, and leads a life of the sternest integrity."
He has no family, is poor but with few wants, left college after a year to ~study the world.~ "I know I shall like him very much," says Sylvia. Mark asks how she likes his other friend, she replies that he is just the friend she needs.
"Better leave Platonics till you're forty. Though Moor is twelve years older than yourself he is a young man still, and you are grown a very captivating little woman."
She insists that a woman and a man can be friends.
They sleep in a barn. In the middle of a night she hears a noise, but she doesn't want the men to think she's a coward, so she lies still and doesn't say anything. It turns out to be a cow.
Chapter 4: Through Flood and Fire and Field
Well, that sounds exciting!
Sylvia naps, Warwick reads, and Moor and Mark climb a cliff to sketch the view. Sylvia picks up Mark's book and reads it for awhile. She drops up and Warwick sees and says Are you allowed to read what you choose? and she answers yes, she is and she likes the book very much. He advises her to throw it in the river.
Dude. WTF. Any chance of me liking him is gone forever. If he'd actually engaged her in a discussion of the book's contents, that would be polite, but he didn't. I haven't the faintest idea what the book is, or if it's meant to be a real one at all.
They start making baskets without talking. "He treats me like a child,- very well, then, I'll behave like one, and beset him with questions till he is driven to speak; for he can talk, he ought to talk, he shall talk." GO SYLVIA.
Sylvia's basket falls apart when she fills it with berries. Rowing down the river they see a forest fire, which she runs toward. Warwick is like you're no Casabianca - "the boy stood on the burning ship" - and she's like good, that silly boy got what he deserved. Oh no, they didn't moor (ha) the boat, so they have to take a long walk across the river's bridge. Warwick gets a bird to eat out of his hand because he's based on Thoreau, and she thinks it's super cool.
Yeah, that wasn't as exciting a chapter as it sounded.
Chapter 5: The Golden Wedding
A thunder-shower causes the foursome to seek refuge at the nearest house. A "lively old woman" welcomes them in. She and her husband are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary with their seven sons, three daughters, their kids-in-law, and an unspecified number of grandchildren.
They have a feast: pyramids of cake, regiments of pies, quagmires of jelly, snow-banks of bread, and gold mines of butter; every possible article of food, from baked beans to wedding cake, finding a place on that sacrificial altar. Then dancing and singing. It's an uneventful chapter but IMO the highlight of the book so far and thematicially relevent. The way it's written you just feel like you're right there in the room.
Chapter 6: Why Sylvia was Happy
Begins with Prue saying, "I never did understand you, Sylvia; and this last month you have been a perfect enigma to me." And she's started to take interest in clothes.
Warwick randomly asks her whether rash promises should be kept. In her opinion, "If the promise was freely given, no sin committed in its keeping, and no peace troubled but one's own, I should say yes."
She winds Berlin wool, his color first, "This fine scarlet, strong, enduring, and martial, like yourself." She realizes that she's in love with him.
Warwick disappears for several weeks. She understands that he went to free himself from some woman.
Chapter 7: Dull But Necessary
Backstory of the Yule family. John Yule made an impusive marriage and came to regret it, and when Mrs. Yule died after giving birth to Sylvia she said "Free at last, thank God for that!" Whoa. So Sylvia never had a mother, and LMA tells us she never had a friend either, until Moor came along.
The chapter opens by saying that readers who don't care for non-action can skip it. I love that.
Chapter 8: No
Moor proposes to Sylvia, who says no. He is disappointed. She insists they can be dear friends. He replies, "I have a firm belief that you will love me yet, because I cleave to you with heart and soul, long for you continually, and think you the one woman of the world."
Alone, she thinks about how happy she and Warwick would be.
Chapter 9: Holly
Christmas morning. She receives a bouquet of holly with no name. Her family guesses it is from Moor, but she knows it's from Warwick. At a party she recognizes his friend Gabriel who mentions that Warwick is engaged to Gabriel's cousin. WTF? thinks Sylvia. And (continues Gabriel) he's completely deserted her! And she's here at the party!
Sylvia sees her but doesn't talk to her. When the evening ends she looks at the bouquet and a card falls out - from Moor.
Chapter 10: Yes
Sylvia falls into depression for the rest of the winter. Mark paints a picture of the Golden Wedding and sends it to an Exhibition along with a Clytemnestra. He's so surprised to find Clytemnestra dismissed and the Wedding praised that he says "What the deuce does [the critic] mean!"
"The work which warms the heart is greater than that which freezes the blood," responds Mr. Yule.
The piece of success leads him to propose to his dear Jessie. Sylvia is super happy for them. If there's one thing in this book I like it's the sibling relationships.
Moor arrives at the Yule house, greeting her with, "Are we friends or lovers?" "Anything, if you will only stay," she replies. Sylvia no!
I'm not usually one to complain about miscommunication plots, because I find characters usually have good reasons for miscommunication and I understand trauma. Actually, it's not so much the lack of talking I mind here, it's the impulsiveness.
Chapter 11: Wooing
Halfway point, such joy!
Mark has his heart set on a double wedding. Sylvia doesn't agree until she hears from Mark that Ottila is married, without bothering to ask who she's married to. Oh, it's like Marianne Dashwood got Elinor Dashwood's plotline.
Chapter 12: Wedding
As the title says. The gardener's little girl from Chapter 2 sneaks into the ceremony and runs up to Sylvia, who holds her for the rest of the ceremony. Other than that it goes very well and a Mrs. Grundy declares it "the most charming affair of the season."
Chapter 13: Sylvia's Honeymoon
"Sylvia could not be otherwise than happy, for finding unbounded liberty and love her portion, she had nothing to regret, and regarded marriage as an agreeable process which had simply changed her name and given her protector, friend, and lover all in one."
They travel to the mountains, where Sylvia has never been (and neither have I). One day Moor goes to view an ice palace and she stays behind. While looking at a pool she hears someone behind her, and who is it but Warwick? He sweeps her up in a hug. She says I know you got maried and he replies how could he marry when he loves her? Ooops.
He confesses that he knew Moor loved her and that was why he left. She tells him that she's married and he correctly guesses Moor. Then he cries, and the narrator thinks he is even more manly for it.
Chapter 14: A Fireside Fete
Sylvia braids her hair "a la Morlena Kenwigs" who is a character in Nicholas Nickleby. Anytime Alcott references someone unfamiliar there's about a 90% chance that it's a Dickens character.
She and Moor spend the evening with Warwick and Moor's cousin Faith Dane. Moor notes that Warwick has had too much solitude lately and he's like, yeah, I have, and Moor like's stay with us!
Chapter 15: Early and Late
The gang gossips about Helen Chesterfield, who married a Frenchman old enough to be her father and ran away with a younger man. Sylvia is sympathetic to the motherless friendless girl; Mark is astonished that she can excuse her. Warwick says she should have "demanded her liberty" and married the lover. Prue is scandalized. He adds that people should take more thought before leaping into matrimony. Faith thinks that Helen should have tried harder to love her husband.
Chapter 16: In the Twilight
Warwick insists that Sylvia is doing all three of them wrong and "a single duty lies before you; delay is weak, deceit is wicked." Do you like this guy? I don't like this guy. She argues that Moor's happiness is her duty. She will try to love him more, and Warwick must leave for her to do so.
Chapter 17: Asleep and Awake
Opens with Moor writing at two o'clock in the morning. His sleepwalking wife comes in and wakes herself up by saying, "No, no, you must not speak! I will not hear you!"
She asks what he's studying and he answers his wife. He knows she's been unhappy these past few months. "Sylvia, what stands between us?" "Adam Warwick." Moor feels shocked and upset while she is relieved.
Chapter 18: What Next?
Sylvia wakes up to find a note from Moor, who has gone to Faith's house. He also left behind his diary for her to read. She persues it, wondering why she "could not give such genius and affection its reward."
She visits Faith to ask what Faith would do, caught between two men, and Faith answers cleave herself to neither. And then we're hit with some ablism: "If you were blind, a cripple, or cursed with some incurable infirmity of body, would not you hesitate to bind yourself and your affliction to another?" Sylvia responds of course not and thanks God that she hasn't yet passed her contradictory nature onto a child.
Chapter ends with Moor and Warwick sailing off to Europe, because it doesn't occur to them that this whole thing could be solved with a threesome. I know it's annoyingly cliche to say OT3s solve love triangles, but in this case it totally would.
Chapter 19: Six Months
Sylvia endures the gossip, which then turns to sympathy for an abandoned wife, and devotes herself to her father. Prue gets married to a a clergyman with three dead wives and nine children. Yes, seriously.
She receives a book of Thoreau - I mean Warwick's essays and Emer - Moor's poems. Each had helped the other; Warwick's rugged prose gathered grace from Moor's poetry, and Moor's smoothly flowing lines acquired power from Warwick's prose. Each had given her his best, and very proud was Sylvia of the little book, over which she pored day after day, living on and in it, eagerly collecting all praises, resenting all censures, and thinking it the one perfect volume in the world.
Mark and Jessie have a baby and name her Sylvia. She spends so much time with her namesake that Jessie grows slightly jealous.
Chapter 20: Come
Oh god, this is fantastic.
In a small Italian town not far from Rome, a traveller stood listening to an account of a battle lately fought near by, in which the town had suffered much, yet been forever honored in the eyes of its inhabitants, by having been the headquarters of the Hero of Italy. An inquiry of the traveller's concerning a countryman of whom he was in search, created a sensation at the little inn, and elicited the story of the battle, one incident of which was still the all-absorbing topic with the excited villagers. This was the incident which one of the group related with the dramatic effects of a language composed almost as much of gesture as of words, and an audience as picturesque as could well be conceived.
Yeah, Warwick got wounded in a battle. WTF, that's a delightfully jarring scene change. I declare it the second-best part of the book after the Golden Wedding. They reunite and Moor says Sylvia sent him a three word letter - "Geoffrey, come home."
Two weeks later they find themselves on a SINKING SHIP. I LOVE IT. Warwick is like go, you have a wife! and Moor is like not without you! They argue about it so long that the lifeboat floats away without them, but they are very close to shore and decide to go for it.
About [Warwick's] waist still hung a fragment of the rope which had lowered more than one baby to its mother's arms; before them the shattered taffrail rose and fell as the waves beat over it. Wrenching a spar away he lashed Moor to it, explaining his purpose as he worked. There was only rope enough for one, and in the darkness Moor believed that Warwick had taken equal precautions for himself. "Now Geoffrey your hand, and when the next wave ebbs let us follow it. If we are parted and you see her first tell her I remembered, and give her this." In the black night with only Heaven to see them the men kissed tenderly as women, then hand in hand sprang out into the sea.
Moor makes it and Warwick dies. You can see LMA's Gothic career shining through the text.
Chapter 21: Out of the Shadow
Moor tells his wife what happened and is surprised at how calmly she takes it. It's because she's dying of . . . something. Victorian Heroine Wasting Fever.
Sylvia tells her father that if she has done nothing else in her life then her death will inspire Mark to love his Jessie more and inspire Geoffrey to write some genius poems. Then she dies. The End.
Next: A Long Fatal Love Chase. Yay, something I like.
This entry was originally posted at https://nocowardsoul.dreamwidth.org/39367.html
In a letter she wrote "Moods is not what I meant to have it, for I followed bad advice and took out many things which explained my idea and & made the characters more natural & consistent. I see my mistake now for I find myself accused of Spiritualism, Free Love, Affinities and all sorts of horrors I know little about and don't believe in." She meant for the story to be about the trials of a "moody" young girl while most readers interpreted it as a book about marriage. For that I can't blame them - I can see both aspects in it but find the topic of marriage the dominant one.
Epigraph from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Experience": "Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus."
Chapter 1: In A Year
The room fronted the west, but a black cloud, barred with red, robbed the hour of twilight's tranquil charm. Shadows haunted it, lurking in corners like spies set there to watch the man who stood among them mute and motionless as if himself a shadow. Like The Inheritance it starts off with a description of the house.
Adam Warwick asks Ottila, his fiancee of one month, to set him free. He says that she deceived him into loving her and now that he knows her for the maneater she is, he doesn't love her anyone. Ottila begs him to keep her because her attachment is sincere. They end with a compromise: he will give her a year to improve her character and then they will meet again.
Chapter 2: Whims
Prue attempts to get her younger sister Sylvia out of bed. "I am only tired of everybody and everything, and see nothing worth getting up for; so I shall just stay here till I do. Please put the curtain down and leave me in peace." Prue suggests several ways to pass her time; Sylvia shuts them all down. Prue suggests she join her and their brother Mark on a call to Geoffrey Moor who just returned from Switzerland.
Sylvia says New people always disappoint me, especially if I've heard them praised ever since I was born.
It's an interesting way to introduce our heroine - some will find it unsympathetic and some will relate.
At lunch Sylvia tells them that yesterday she took a run in Moor's garden, slipped into the house, and took a book from his library. Introduce her to Liesel Meminger. She saw him playing with his gardener's children but he didn't see her. Prue is horrified and Mark is amused.
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION I'LL TAKE THAT AS A BLEAK HOUSE REFERENCE.
Later, Moor comes to the Yule house and is charmed by a boy working in the garden, only to realize that the boy is Sylvia. After the Yules and Moor have dinner, Prue vents to their dad.
"Something must be done about that child, father, for she is getting entirely beyond my control. If I attempt to make her study she writes poetry instead of her exercises, draws caricatures instead of sketching properly, and bewilders her music teacher by asking questions about Beethoven and Mendelssohn, as if they were personal friends of his. If I beg her to take exercise, she rides like an Amazon all over the Island, grubs in the garden as if for her living, or goes paddling about the bay till I'm distracted lest the tide should carry her out to sea. She is so wanting in moderation she gets ill, and when I give her proper medicines she flings them out of the window, and threatens to send that worthy, Dr. Baum, after them. Yet she must need something to set her right, for she is either overflowing with unnatural spirits or melancholy enough to break one's heart."
Moor sees the stolen book and decides not to take it back. This is partly based on real life - he is Emerson and young LMA borrowed from his library frequently.
Sylvia has a collection of animals: toad, bees, blind bird, caterpillar, and field mouse. Moor is even more charmed by it.
She and Mr. Yule take a twilight walk. He doesn't seem to have any interest in taming her; in fact I think he's probably her favorite child. Mark wants to introduce her to some protential lovers, but she's afraid that love will be cruel to her. She sings for everyone and Moor compliments her.
Chapter 3: Afloat
Mark, Moor, and Moor's friend Warwick are about to take a two-day trip up the river. At first Mark says she can't come, then that she can if 1) Mr. Yule and Prue say yes, 2) she has appropriate clothes, and 3) she packs lightly.
Sylvia agrees to it all, and the four set off. There's a lot of description of the scenes they pass and she enjoys them very much, to the point of tearing up at the beauty of it. When she and Mark are alone she asks him about Warwick.
"Violently virtuous. He is a masterful soul, bent on living out his beliefs and aspirations at any cost. Much given to denunciation of wrong-doing everywhere, and eager to execute justice upon all offenders high or low. Yet he possesses great nobility of character, great audacity of mind, and leads a life of the sternest integrity."
He has no family, is poor but with few wants, left college after a year to ~study the world.~ "I know I shall like him very much," says Sylvia. Mark asks how she likes his other friend, she replies that he is just the friend she needs.
"Better leave Platonics till you're forty. Though Moor is twelve years older than yourself he is a young man still, and you are grown a very captivating little woman."
She insists that a woman and a man can be friends.
They sleep in a barn. In the middle of a night she hears a noise, but she doesn't want the men to think she's a coward, so she lies still and doesn't say anything. It turns out to be a cow.
Chapter 4: Through Flood and Fire and Field
Well, that sounds exciting!
Sylvia naps, Warwick reads, and Moor and Mark climb a cliff to sketch the view. Sylvia picks up Mark's book and reads it for awhile. She drops up and Warwick sees and says Are you allowed to read what you choose? and she answers yes, she is and she likes the book very much. He advises her to throw it in the river.
Dude. WTF. Any chance of me liking him is gone forever. If he'd actually engaged her in a discussion of the book's contents, that would be polite, but he didn't. I haven't the faintest idea what the book is, or if it's meant to be a real one at all.
They start making baskets without talking. "He treats me like a child,- very well, then, I'll behave like one, and beset him with questions till he is driven to speak; for he can talk, he ought to talk, he shall talk." GO SYLVIA.
Sylvia's basket falls apart when she fills it with berries. Rowing down the river they see a forest fire, which she runs toward. Warwick is like you're no Casabianca - "the boy stood on the burning ship" - and she's like good, that silly boy got what he deserved. Oh no, they didn't moor (ha) the boat, so they have to take a long walk across the river's bridge. Warwick gets a bird to eat out of his hand because he's based on Thoreau, and she thinks it's super cool.
Yeah, that wasn't as exciting a chapter as it sounded.
Chapter 5: The Golden Wedding
A thunder-shower causes the foursome to seek refuge at the nearest house. A "lively old woman" welcomes them in. She and her husband are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary with their seven sons, three daughters, their kids-in-law, and an unspecified number of grandchildren.
They have a feast: pyramids of cake, regiments of pies, quagmires of jelly, snow-banks of bread, and gold mines of butter; every possible article of food, from baked beans to wedding cake, finding a place on that sacrificial altar. Then dancing and singing. It's an uneventful chapter but IMO the highlight of the book so far and thematicially relevent. The way it's written you just feel like you're right there in the room.
Chapter 6: Why Sylvia was Happy
Begins with Prue saying, "I never did understand you, Sylvia; and this last month you have been a perfect enigma to me." And she's started to take interest in clothes.
Warwick randomly asks her whether rash promises should be kept. In her opinion, "If the promise was freely given, no sin committed in its keeping, and no peace troubled but one's own, I should say yes."
She winds Berlin wool, his color first, "This fine scarlet, strong, enduring, and martial, like yourself." She realizes that she's in love with him.
Warwick disappears for several weeks. She understands that he went to free himself from some woman.
Chapter 7: Dull But Necessary
Backstory of the Yule family. John Yule made an impusive marriage and came to regret it, and when Mrs. Yule died after giving birth to Sylvia she said "Free at last, thank God for that!" Whoa. So Sylvia never had a mother, and LMA tells us she never had a friend either, until Moor came along.
The chapter opens by saying that readers who don't care for non-action can skip it. I love that.
Chapter 8: No
Moor proposes to Sylvia, who says no. He is disappointed. She insists they can be dear friends. He replies, "I have a firm belief that you will love me yet, because I cleave to you with heart and soul, long for you continually, and think you the one woman of the world."
Alone, she thinks about how happy she and Warwick would be.
Chapter 9: Holly
Christmas morning. She receives a bouquet of holly with no name. Her family guesses it is from Moor, but she knows it's from Warwick. At a party she recognizes his friend Gabriel who mentions that Warwick is engaged to Gabriel's cousin. WTF? thinks Sylvia. And (continues Gabriel) he's completely deserted her! And she's here at the party!
Sylvia sees her but doesn't talk to her. When the evening ends she looks at the bouquet and a card falls out - from Moor.
Chapter 10: Yes
Sylvia falls into depression for the rest of the winter. Mark paints a picture of the Golden Wedding and sends it to an Exhibition along with a Clytemnestra. He's so surprised to find Clytemnestra dismissed and the Wedding praised that he says "What the deuce does [the critic] mean!"
"The work which warms the heart is greater than that which freezes the blood," responds Mr. Yule.
The piece of success leads him to propose to his dear Jessie. Sylvia is super happy for them. If there's one thing in this book I like it's the sibling relationships.
Moor arrives at the Yule house, greeting her with, "Are we friends or lovers?" "Anything, if you will only stay," she replies. Sylvia no!
I'm not usually one to complain about miscommunication plots, because I find characters usually have good reasons for miscommunication and I understand trauma. Actually, it's not so much the lack of talking I mind here, it's the impulsiveness.
Chapter 11: Wooing
Halfway point, such joy!
Mark has his heart set on a double wedding. Sylvia doesn't agree until she hears from Mark that Ottila is married, without bothering to ask who she's married to. Oh, it's like Marianne Dashwood got Elinor Dashwood's plotline.
Chapter 12: Wedding
As the title says. The gardener's little girl from Chapter 2 sneaks into the ceremony and runs up to Sylvia, who holds her for the rest of the ceremony. Other than that it goes very well and a Mrs. Grundy declares it "the most charming affair of the season."
Chapter 13: Sylvia's Honeymoon
"Sylvia could not be otherwise than happy, for finding unbounded liberty and love her portion, she had nothing to regret, and regarded marriage as an agreeable process which had simply changed her name and given her protector, friend, and lover all in one."
They travel to the mountains, where Sylvia has never been (and neither have I). One day Moor goes to view an ice palace and she stays behind. While looking at a pool she hears someone behind her, and who is it but Warwick? He sweeps her up in a hug. She says I know you got maried and he replies how could he marry when he loves her? Ooops.
He confesses that he knew Moor loved her and that was why he left. She tells him that she's married and he correctly guesses Moor. Then he cries, and the narrator thinks he is even more manly for it.
Chapter 14: A Fireside Fete
Sylvia braids her hair "a la Morlena Kenwigs" who is a character in Nicholas Nickleby. Anytime Alcott references someone unfamiliar there's about a 90% chance that it's a Dickens character.
She and Moor spend the evening with Warwick and Moor's cousin Faith Dane. Moor notes that Warwick has had too much solitude lately and he's like, yeah, I have, and Moor like's stay with us!
Chapter 15: Early and Late
The gang gossips about Helen Chesterfield, who married a Frenchman old enough to be her father and ran away with a younger man. Sylvia is sympathetic to the motherless friendless girl; Mark is astonished that she can excuse her. Warwick says she should have "demanded her liberty" and married the lover. Prue is scandalized. He adds that people should take more thought before leaping into matrimony. Faith thinks that Helen should have tried harder to love her husband.
Chapter 16: In the Twilight
Warwick insists that Sylvia is doing all three of them wrong and "a single duty lies before you; delay is weak, deceit is wicked." Do you like this guy? I don't like this guy. She argues that Moor's happiness is her duty. She will try to love him more, and Warwick must leave for her to do so.
Chapter 17: Asleep and Awake
Opens with Moor writing at two o'clock in the morning. His sleepwalking wife comes in and wakes herself up by saying, "No, no, you must not speak! I will not hear you!"
She asks what he's studying and he answers his wife. He knows she's been unhappy these past few months. "Sylvia, what stands between us?" "Adam Warwick." Moor feels shocked and upset while she is relieved.
Chapter 18: What Next?
Sylvia wakes up to find a note from Moor, who has gone to Faith's house. He also left behind his diary for her to read. She persues it, wondering why she "could not give such genius and affection its reward."
She visits Faith to ask what Faith would do, caught between two men, and Faith answers cleave herself to neither. And then we're hit with some ablism: "If you were blind, a cripple, or cursed with some incurable infirmity of body, would not you hesitate to bind yourself and your affliction to another?" Sylvia responds of course not and thanks God that she hasn't yet passed her contradictory nature onto a child.
Chapter ends with Moor and Warwick sailing off to Europe, because it doesn't occur to them that this whole thing could be solved with a threesome. I know it's annoyingly cliche to say OT3s solve love triangles, but in this case it totally would.
Chapter 19: Six Months
Sylvia endures the gossip, which then turns to sympathy for an abandoned wife, and devotes herself to her father. Prue gets married to a a clergyman with three dead wives and nine children. Yes, seriously.
She receives a book of Thoreau - I mean Warwick's essays and Emer - Moor's poems. Each had helped the other; Warwick's rugged prose gathered grace from Moor's poetry, and Moor's smoothly flowing lines acquired power from Warwick's prose. Each had given her his best, and very proud was Sylvia of the little book, over which she pored day after day, living on and in it, eagerly collecting all praises, resenting all censures, and thinking it the one perfect volume in the world.
Mark and Jessie have a baby and name her Sylvia. She spends so much time with her namesake that Jessie grows slightly jealous.
Chapter 20: Come
Oh god, this is fantastic.
In a small Italian town not far from Rome, a traveller stood listening to an account of a battle lately fought near by, in which the town had suffered much, yet been forever honored in the eyes of its inhabitants, by having been the headquarters of the Hero of Italy. An inquiry of the traveller's concerning a countryman of whom he was in search, created a sensation at the little inn, and elicited the story of the battle, one incident of which was still the all-absorbing topic with the excited villagers. This was the incident which one of the group related with the dramatic effects of a language composed almost as much of gesture as of words, and an audience as picturesque as could well be conceived.
Yeah, Warwick got wounded in a battle. WTF, that's a delightfully jarring scene change. I declare it the second-best part of the book after the Golden Wedding. They reunite and Moor says Sylvia sent him a three word letter - "Geoffrey, come home."
Two weeks later they find themselves on a SINKING SHIP. I LOVE IT. Warwick is like go, you have a wife! and Moor is like not without you! They argue about it so long that the lifeboat floats away without them, but they are very close to shore and decide to go for it.
About [Warwick's] waist still hung a fragment of the rope which had lowered more than one baby to its mother's arms; before them the shattered taffrail rose and fell as the waves beat over it. Wrenching a spar away he lashed Moor to it, explaining his purpose as he worked. There was only rope enough for one, and in the darkness Moor believed that Warwick had taken equal precautions for himself. "Now Geoffrey your hand, and when the next wave ebbs let us follow it. If we are parted and you see her first tell her I remembered, and give her this." In the black night with only Heaven to see them the men kissed tenderly as women, then hand in hand sprang out into the sea.
Moor makes it and Warwick dies. You can see LMA's Gothic career shining through the text.
Chapter 21: Out of the Shadow
Moor tells his wife what happened and is surprised at how calmly she takes it. It's because she's dying of . . . something. Victorian Heroine Wasting Fever.
Sylvia tells her father that if she has done nothing else in her life then her death will inspire Mark to love his Jessie more and inspire Geoffrey to write some genius poems. Then she dies. The End.
Next: A Long Fatal Love Chase. Yay, something I like.
This entry was originally posted at https://nocowardsoul.dreamwidth.org/39367.html