This little novel, the first of a novel sequence of 12 further volumes, has a place in literary history as the first novel in English to be described as 'stream of consciousness' in a review by May Sinclair (author of Uncanny Stories) in the Egoist in April 1918. It is a fictionalised (not autofiction because the name of the narrator is changed) version of Richardson's 1891 experience as a 17-year-old student teacher at a finishing school in Hanover in Germany. The rest of the novel sequence closely follows the events of Richardson's life.
It wasn't what I would describe as 'stream of consciousness'. Although the narration is entirely from the perspective of protagonist Miriam Henderson, it seemed more of an interior monologue. There were moments when the prose departed from standard grammatical structure or when we experienced raw sensory impressions or when memories interrupted the conscious thought, but most of the time Miriam's thought processes were quite orderly and the narration normal. I suppose that it was a first attempt at SoC, but it showed how quickly the technique advanced: Ulysses by James Joyce began serial publication just 5 years after Pointed Roofs and Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway was published ten years after PR. But certainly PR is written from a perspective inside the skin of its narrator and there are certainly elements of SoC.
Unfortunately, the events described in the book are really rather mundane. I suppose that a day in the life of an insurance salesman, or the hour-by-hour account of a lady planning a dinner party are also mundane but perhaps they are forgivable because of their tight time-frame, while PR's time period is months.
It does evoke a feeling of the claustrophobia of an all-girls finishing school with its strained relationships. Towards the end there is a thunderstorm to which most of the schoolgirls (and the head teacher) react with hysteria. The headteacher is also liable to sudden storms and is memorably condemnatory when she discovers that the girls have been talking about boys which is impure! Although up till that point the attitude towards this sort of thing seemed to be relaxed.
The portraits of the headteacher Fraulein Pfaff and the informal Head Girl, confident Australian Gertrude, were well-developed. Otherwise there were probably too many characters for me to understand any of them in depth.
Selected quotes:
- “Lilla, with her black hair and the specks of bright amber in the brown of her eyes.” (1.1) I loved that detailed study of eye colour. Eyes are something the narrator repeatedly notices.
- “The polished floor was uncarpeted save for an archipelago of mats and rugs.” (3.4)
- “Perhaps that was how it was with the English. They knew, but they did not dare.” (3.8)
August 2025; 146 pages
First published in the UK by Duckworth in 1915
My paperback version was issued by Zinc Read in 2023.
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