• About

Feminism, Literature and Cake

~ Recipes for happiness

Feminism, Literature and Cake

Tag Archives: Pure

‘Pure’ – Review

14 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by La Petroleuse in Book Review, Feminism, Historical, Literature

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Andrew Miller, book review, cemetery, Costa Book of the Year, French Revolution, Paris, Pure, Sceptre

"Pure" Being an unabashed lover of graves and cemeteries, I felt a genuine thrill when I found out about Andrew Miller’s 2011 novel, Pure (Sceptre). It still took me a long time to purchase and read it, but once I started, I was promptly absorbed.

Miller’s novel has this great and remarkable point in its favour: its originality. The premise is daring and unusual, the setting has an uncanny appeal, and the protagonist has an Enlightened authenticity not often found in period literature. And, much of the time I was reading, I had no idea where the plot would take me next. The clearing of a cemetery, on the eve of the French Revolution, could easily have devolved into simple horror, but Miller’s touch is subtle as he unfolds the influence of Les Saints-Innocents on the fresh, Enlightened, northern engineer Baratte. The scene is constructed through suggestion of the evils of the cemetery; and since they are never confirmed, the psychological tension between the newcomer, the locals and the cemetery is well built up and maintained.

Sometimes this lack of background and explanation works – in Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger, for example. Too often, however, when much effort has gone into creating an arc of tension, the result is anti-climax. Unfortunately, I found this to be the case with Pure. The shock and horror of the final key event, where Baratte’s friend, the overseer of the cemetery works, although admittedly a broken man and inebriate, goes mad in a single night, comes out of nowhere, and cannot simply be left undefined as the possible unwholesome influence of the cemetery. Because it simply happens, and is not explained, it gives an unpleasant sense of the morbid sensationalism and cheap shock Miller had so carefully steered clear of before.

The issue with this plot point is that the characters and narrator both pass over the fact that, in his fit of madness, the overseer rapes a fourteen-year-old girl. The horror of that event alone is lost in a frame of necrophilia and suicide; the girl simply disappears into her house for a few months, and re-emerges healed, happy to keep the baby, and to enter into a relationship with one of the men who dismantled the cemetery by which she has lived all her life.

It was disappointing to find that a novel that showed such promise in terms of originality and authenticity should fall so short when it comes to female characters and their experience. In the end, the three main female characters still do no more than slot into the stereotypes of the whore with the heart of gold, the victim, and the madwoman. Issues such as the trauma arising from rape and prostitution are passed over, and seem to dissolve entirely when the woman in question is provided with a man. It would be sad to think that, after inventing a plot premise little short of brilliant, and a protagonist at once historically sound and possessing sufficient human appeal for a modern-day audience, Andrew Miller’s imagination should have worn itself out before he got round to the rest of the plot, let alone the female characters.

FemLitCake

La Petroleuse

La Petroleuse

"... so the petroleuse [female incendiary] lurks behind the New Woman, waiting for the appropriate historical conditions before she emerges from her shadow" (Matthew Beaumont).

View Full Profile →

FemLitCake on Twitter

Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.

Recent Posts

  • Call for Papers
  • Call for Papers for Fifty Years of Sexism: What Next?
  • Registration open: In Harkness’ London: A Symposium on the Life and Work of Margaret Harkness, 22 November, Birkbeck
  • ‘To Bridle Popularity’: The return of Victorian labour rhetoric
  • On feminism and ‘happiness’, and how individualisation of experience misses the point

Tags

'Victorian values' A City Girl Andrew Miller Anna Wheeler Annie Besant Appeal of One Half the Human Race Big Fair Bake birth control bluestockings book review cake Cambridge Caroline Criado-Perez cemetery character Charles Bradlaugh Charles Dickens Christmas Contagious Diseases Acts Costa Book of the Year Easter Eleanor Marx Elizabeth Gaskell Faber and Faber Fair Trade female activists feminism French Revolution Friedrich Engels George Eastmont Harriet Taylor historical Jane Austen Jane Eyre Jeanette Winterson Jessica Swale Josephine Butler Kazuo Ishiguro literature London Man Booker Prize Margaret Harkness Mary Barton Match Girls' Strike muffins Never Let Me Go novel NW objectification On Beauty Oranges are not the only Fruit Paris plot Pure RADA Ripper Street Sceptre sexism socialism solidarity style suffragettes theatre theatre review The Daylight Gate The Enfranchisement of Women The Remains of the Day Utopia victim blaming Victorian White Teeth witchcraft women's higher education women's writing Zadie Smith

Archives

  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • May 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012

Categories

  • Art
  • Book Review
  • Cake
  • Feminism
  • Film Review
  • Historical
  • Language
  • Literature
  • Politics
  • Theatre Review
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy