Lisa > Books: partially-read‎ (32)

The location is exotic but not specified; the protagonist is guileless yet unreliable; the plot develops but isn't in any ordinary sense resolved.  We are told the story entirely from the point of view of Pearl, a child of about three years old, who has been left to look after herself while her mother is busy working. (p.18)

But the cleverness of the story, and the thing that Mansfield learned to exploit more effectively later, is in the manipulation of the point of view.  In 'Pearl Button' she is using what is (now) called 'free indirect discourse' or a 'close third person' voice, that is, writing as if the narrator is passing on a character's experiences and thoughts, but not judging them. Or not appearing to judge them, for of course there's always space between the author and the narrator in which to plant doubts and ironies; that's what the space is for. (p.19)

[The contractor] evidently felt that he was dealing with experts and that was why he simply put his best leg forward, as the saying goes.  And, indeed, in our part of the country people are good judges of singing, and it is not for nothing that the large village of Sergeyevskoye, on the Oryol Highway, is renowned throughout all Russia for its especially agreeable and harmonious singing.

The contractor sang for a long time without arousing any particular enthusiasm in his hearers; he missed the support of a choir; at last, after one particularly successful transition, which made even the Wild Gentleman smile, Booby could not restrain himself and uttered a cry of delight. (p.75)

Daisy was sixteen and Dorothy fourteen when they left Sydney in 1887. The diary of what followed, covering the years 1887-89, is an historical jewel and rare document: such is the detail, the gusto, the wit and insight and mind-set of a nineteenth-century Australian schoolgirl abroad. Full of verve and introspections, of rich perceptions, of adolescent grudges and high hopes, it traces Daisy's school life as a near-daily unfolding of cultural discovery, tempered by boarding-house ritual and classroom grind. In the two years of her Parisian stay Daisy changed from being a reluctant schoolgirl into an accomplished woman, fluent in French and, in her opinion, rather wise than when she set sail. (p.2)

…violence has declined over long stretches of time and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence. The decline, to be sure, is not smooth; it has not brought violence down to zero; and it is not guaranteed to continue. But it is an unmistakable development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children. (p.xxi)

The prevalence of rape in human history and the invisibility of the victim in the legal treatment of rape are incomprehensible from the vantage point of contemporary moral sensibilities. But they are all too comprehensible from the vantage point of the genetic interests that shaped human desires and sentiments over the course of evolution, before our sensibilities were shaped by Enlightenment humanism. A rape entangles three parties, each with a different set of interests: the rapist, the men who take a proprietary interest in the woman, and the woman herself. (p. 395)