Helbeck of Bannisdale Complete Mrs Humphry Ward 9781530676750 Books
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Helbeck of Bannisdale Complete Mrs Humphry Ward 9781530676750 Books
Mrs Ward, a famous agnostic who throughout her life criticized Anglican orthodoxy, makes a leap of faith to portray a highly religious Catholic. Helbeck is the devout Catholic bachelor owner of a rundown estate, the estate of an ancient Catholic family, much persecuted over the centuries by Protestants. He is stripping the house of everything of value to support his Catholic charities. His recently widowed sister arrives, with a daughter -- they are destitute and dependent on Helbeck. The daughter, Laura, taught skepticism by her father, holds Helbeck and his religion in contempt. During her stay with Helbeck she makes contact with relatives of her father who live nearby in the isolated region -- North England hill-billies. This family are extreme Dissenter fundamentalist Protestants who have a long-standing hatred of Helbeck. Mrs Ward's portrait of these ignorant people is striking. Helbeck assumes responsibility for the young Laura, over her objections, to protect her from these unsavory people. Naturally, a love grows between Helbeck, who resists mightily as it disturbs his celibate piety, and Laura, who resists as she cannot imagine marrying a Catholic. Mrs Ward did a lot of research to get the Catholic theme right. (Her father moved from Anglican to Catholic and back several times: she struggled to avoid offending him with this story.) She produced a compelling story of the conflict and its inevitable denouement.Product details
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Helbeck of Bannisdale Complete Mrs Humphry Ward 9781530676750 Books Reviews
This is a romantic novel published just before the turn of the Nineteenth Century in 1898. I think it would be pleasing to anybody who is a fan of the Brontes, Jane Austen, or Daphne du Maurier, but it seems to me to be a less well-written than the books by those more famous writers. I found that several baffling opening scenes became comprehensible once I got into the tale and learned more about the characters and the locale to whit the main character, Helbeck, is a devout Catholic, and the Catholic religion is integral to the story.
The story is about two unlikely lovers, which isn't an unusual feature in romances; but the fact that the psychological conflict in the tale deals IN DEPTH with an obstacle of RELIGIOUS CONFLICT turns out to be pretty astonishing. Middle-aged bachelor Helbeck is satisfied with living an unusually pious, abstemious, and charitable life on the deteriorating estate of his centuries-old family until he comes into contact with Laura, an impetuous and rude young woman taught to be a free-thinker by her intellectual father, who arrives with her stepmother for a visit at the Bannisdale mansion. The relationship that develops between the two main protagonists and some of the supporting characters serves as a vehicle for a sub-theme--which is nonetheless also a major and oddly important theme--about the specific religious conflict between traditional, very pious Catholicism and modern concepts of freedom and personhood. Catholicism in the person of Helbeck, who emerges as both an admirable and compelling character, is intermittently assailed by Laura, whose emotional resistance to him bespeaks an admixture that would include what might perhaps rightly be termed poorly-defined scientific atheism, paganism, anti-"Papist" Protestantism, and just modern "free-thought" in general. This personality clash at the heart of the story seems to be the em-bodiment of clashing religious attitudes in which ideas that are new and raw, not well enough thought out, and emotionally undisciplined are struggling to come to terms with an adamantine formal religion that is highly ordered, mystical, and resolutely firm.
The author writes knowledgeably and sympathetically about Catholicism, which I would never have expected to find handled in a romantic novel. However, despite the tension of the religious clash, the story can be read just basically as a good "love story." It isn't a highly intellectual book, and the reader could probably regard the religious conflict in the tale from just the usual viewpoint of anybody who likes to read novels and romances. The story soon cast over me the spell of a good work of fiction and it was hard to put down.
Laura Fountain's surname probably was deliberately chosen by the author to suggest the natural vivacity and volatile elements that are part of Laura's nature. Notice, too, how Laura feels deep connections with some of the watery manifestations of nature on the Bannisdale estate, especially the wild River Gleet. Early in the story, her character is so proud, critically outspoken, and willful that any reader is bound to dislike her, but over the course of about 500 pages she changes. She seems to experience a very basic Christian conversion at one point, but this is only implied by the author. There is anxiety created throughout the story by the back-and-forth changes of mind and heart that take place in Laura. The action takes place within over-all circumstances that are torn-apart and at odds. This is a story of intense Conflicts, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual. There are ominous tensions between qualities of refinement and rudeness, sensitivity and obtuse carelessness (sometimes admixed in the same character), the crumbling estate and the earthy farm, the old rural way of life and the new industrialized town life, and the ideals and tendencies of Catholicism and Protestantism.
Perhaps there are implications to be drawn from Alan Helbeck's surname, too. The "Hel-" syllable could suggest the abode of the damned, a place of suffering and punishment. The root meaning of the "-beck" syllable can refer either to a mountain stream or to a "call" or summons. The combination of these meanings might possibly apply in an ironic way to Alan Helbeck's tormented destiny with regard to Laura, or hers to him.
Other characters' surnames which obviously seem meaningful are Mason and Friedland. (And there may be other meaning-filled names that I've failed to notice.)
I think that the book is provocative from the point of view of dealing so deliberately with Catholicism versus inchoate ideas of personal freedom. From what I read in a brief on-line biography of the author, she observed this same kind of conflict in her parents during her early family life. Despite the length of the book, I feel that the author didn't deal adequately--especially from an emotional standpoint--with the situation she created and the plot that she ultimately unraveled for the reader. After the author has managed to provide the opening up and expectation of a believable love union in the midst of the very great unlikelihood of one, she stuns the reader with an unexpected ending which doesn't satisfy the reader's needs and expectations. Anyway, I wasn't prepared for what happened and still feel troubled by the story long since having first read it. In its odd way, it's an interesting, unusual, and intriguing novel.
I recommend that the reader NOT read anything about the author and not even read any of the author's prefaces to other editions of the book until AFTER reading the story of Helbeck and Laura. Just plunge in with a pure, unprejudiced mind and imagination. I think the story will have greater impact that way.
[I took the trouble to seek out and order the original 1898 Vol I and II editions of the book, which were not more expensive than the modern versions. Enjoyed reading the antique copies. The complete novel is a 2-volume set which sometimes comes as one volume, or sometimes as two. Make sure you obtain BOTH volumes.]
Alan Helbeck and Laura Fountain are physically attracted to each other but their wills are far from coalescent. They differ in their spiritual upbringing, Laura growing up with a father averse to religious beliefs and Alan steeped in Catholicism and all its acoutrements of faith. From their first meeting they are at odds not only with religion but with family differences. Most distressing to Laura is the stronghold that the priests, bishops and Jesuits have in persuading Alan to denude his house of its most valuable contents to support its need for the building up of schools and orphanages. Helbeck is devoutly Catholic and Laura stubbornly against and although they love each other there is no compromise as catholic belief will not allow it.
it is a heartbreaking story as all the submission has to be on Laura and she struggles and vacilates between becoming catholic or just letting go of Alan alltogether. The poor girl is tormented with the persuasion of the brother and his sister who is her stepmother. It is too difficult a choice for her and in the end she finds her own way of escape. Difficult to read that a man in love could be such an ascetic as to trample on the personal choice of another. Not very complimentary of the catholic creed of salvation by works even though those works include being merciful to the poor.
Good, interesting edition.
Mrs Ward, a famous agnostic who throughout her life criticized Anglican orthodoxy, makes a leap of faith to portray a highly religious Catholic. Helbeck is the devout Catholic bachelor owner of a rundown estate, the estate of an ancient Catholic family, much persecuted over the centuries by Protestants. He is stripping the house of everything of value to support his Catholic charities. His recently widowed sister arrives, with a daughter -- they are destitute and dependent on Helbeck. The daughter, Laura, taught skepticism by her father, holds Helbeck and his religion in contempt. During her stay with Helbeck she makes contact with relatives of her father who live nearby in the isolated region -- North England hill-billies. This family are extreme Dissenter fundamentalist Protestants who have a long-standing hatred of Helbeck. Mrs Ward's portrait of these ignorant people is striking. Helbeck assumes responsibility for the young Laura, over her objections, to protect her from these unsavory people. Naturally, a love grows between Helbeck, who resists mightily as it disturbs his celibate piety, and Laura, who resists as she cannot imagine marrying a Catholic. Mrs Ward did a lot of research to get the Catholic theme right. (Her father moved from Anglican to Catholic and back several times she struggled to avoid offending him with this story.) She produced a compelling story of the conflict and its inevitable denouement.
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