Well, this is one strange book. I've read three of Emily Hilda Young's novels in the past year and loved all of them -- they were Miss Mole, Chatterton Square, and William. So, when I got the chance to read this, which was her third novel, and earlier than these others, I jumped at it. But I think if I hadn't known who it was by, I wouldn't have recognised it as being by the same author. Yes, it does deal with a family, and families and their interactions are big in the three later novels of Young's I've read so far. But she is known now, if at all, as a writer of "domestic modernism", and if this means what I take it to mean, it's not a term I'd apply to this 1916 novel. Think DH Lawrence meets Thomas Hardy with a dash of Emily Bronte and you won't be far wrong.
DH Lawrence? I hear you cry. Well yes. I've just watched the BBC's two-part Women in Love, which was adapted from that novel and DHL's earlier The Rainbow -- which was published in 1915, the year before Moor Fires. I don't know how many of you saw that TV version, but I watched it mostly fascinated and occasionally appalled. I read both novels when I was an undergraduate and I seem to remember loving them, but I did find some of Lawrence's dialogue a bit much this time round. Anyway, I must hasten to say that you won't find any nude wrestling or graphic sex scenes in Moor Fires, nor does anybody's mother advise them to look for "love that will burn your very soul". But sex does seem to be important to EH Young and it is dealt with in an interesting way in this novel.
Set on a rather deserted stretch of moorland (Hardy? Bronte?) this novel focuses on the life and loves of a pair of sisters (Lawrence?). They are Helen and Miriam Caniper, and they are twins, though clearly not identical, either in looks or character -- Helen is a "domestic being" and in love with her home and with the wild moorland, while Miriam passionately desires to escape, and enjoys tormenting men with her more obvious beauty. Both sisters have admirers -- Helen's is the local doctor, the rather unfortunately named Zebedee (yes, really -- shades of The Magic Roundabout for us oldies) while Miriam's is George, a local farmer, a man of few words and many passions. Helen and Zebedee reach an understanding -- they will marry, but not until he has been abroad for some months to restore his health. While he is away, Miriam gets into deep water with George, who, pushed to the limit by her endless teasing, sets out to force her to submit to him. Helen bursts into the room just as this act is about to take place and manages to prevent it, but only by agreeing that she will marry George herself. And so she does, though full of guilt and misgivings about her absent fiance. At first she manages to keep George at arms' length, but slowly she comes to appreciate him more and eventually she starts to sleep with him, and, moreover, to enjoy it. This whole development causes some problems, needless to say, when the doctor returns, but somehow or other Helen manages to convince him that she still loves him though she also now loves George.
So -- this is all rather fascinating. The sexual theme, though by no means graphic, is dealt with in an interesting way here. And the ending, which I'm not going to give away in case you ever manage to get hold of this novel, is quite surprising and shocking and upsetting. I have to say that I prefer EHYin her more domestically realist mode -- the writing here tends to get a bit overstretched and there's a good deal of moorland description which somewhat reminded me of The Return of the Native, not my most favorite recent read. But it's as if you can see the mature EH Young struggling to get out here -- she hasn't yet found her voice or her wit, but her intelligence and perceptiveness about people and their interations is in place. She sure is an interesting writer and there is some great stuff in here.
