''Pilgrimage'' is a
novel sequence by the British author
Dorothy Richardson, from the first half of the 20th century. It comprises 13 volumes, including a final posthumous volume. It is now considered a significant work of
literary modernism. Richardson's own term for the volumes was "chapters".
Overview
Miriam Henderson, the central character in the ''Pilgrimage'' novel sequence, is based on the author's own life between 1891 and 1915. ''Pilgrimage'' was read as a work of fiction and "its critics did not suspect that its content was a reshaping of DMR's own experience", nor that it was a ''
roman à clef
A ''roman à clef'' ( ; ; ) is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people and the "key" is the relationship between the non-fiction and the fiction. This m ...
''.
Miriam, like Richardson, "is the third of four daughters
hoseparents had longed for a boy and had treated her as if she fulfilled that expectation". This upbringing is reflected in Miriam's "strong ambivalence toward her role as a woman". Dorothy Richardson had the same ambivalence.
Content
The first novel ''
Pointed Roofs'' (1915), is set in 1893. At 17 years old Miriam Henderson, as Richardson herself did, teaches English at a
finishing school in
Hanover, Germany. Both author and character have to do this because of their father's financial problems. The following year, 1916, Richardson published ''Backwater'', where Miriam "works as resident governess in a school frequented by the daughters of the North London middle class".
''Honeycomb'' was published in 1917. ''
Saturday Review'' commented, "Miss Richardson is not without talent but it is the talent of neurasthenia." And that the "only living thing in the book" is "the morbid and self-conscious mind
f the heroine" In this novel Miriam works as a governess to the two children of the Corrie family during 1895. Mr. Corrie is a successful lawyer. ''Honeycomb'' ends with the suicide of Miriam's mother. Events in this novel again parallel Dorothy Richardson's own life: her mother committed suicide in 1895.
The fourth part, ''The Tunnel'', appeared in 1919. In it Miriam starts on a more independent life when she takes a room in
Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, part of the London Borough of Camden in England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural institution, cultural, intellectual, and educational ...
in central London at 21, and works as a receptionist at a dental surgery. These are events again parallel Dorothy Richardson's life. Olive Heseltine described the novel to be "simply life. Shapeless, trivial, pointless, boring, beautiful, curious, profound. And above all, absorbing." On the other hand, an "elderly male reviewer," for ''
The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. ''The Spectator'' is politically conservative, and its principal subject a ...
'' found it disturbing that "Miss Richardson is not concerned with the satisfaction of the average reader".
''Interim'', published 1920, is Richardson's fifth novel and was serialized in ''
Little Review'', along with
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
's ''
Ulysses'' in 1919. While ''
New York Times Book Review'' admits that Richardson has "talent," her heroine "is not particularly interesting" and this novel would be "probably ... almost unintelligible" to those who have not a "close acquaintance" her previous novels in the sequence. Much of the action in this chapter of ''Pilgrimage'' takes place in Miriam's lodgings.
The sixth section of ''Pilgrimage'', ''Deadlock'', appeared in 1921.
Una Hunt, in a review for ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'', referred to her "intense excitement in reading this novel," and calls ''Deadlock'' "an experience rather than a book." Richardson's interest in philosophical theories and ideas is central to ''Deadlock'', though "metaphysical questions about the nature of being and of reality pervade ''Pilgrimage'' as a whole", In ''Deadlock'', however, "Richardson first shows philosophical ideas and inquiry taking persistent and organized shape in Miriam’s maturing thought", when she "attends a course of introductory lectures by the British Idealist philosopher
John Ellis McTaggart", with her fellow lodger Michael Shatov, She discusses with him "the ideas of
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in '' ...
,
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionism, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist movement of th ...
,
Benedict de Spinoza and
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...
" amongst other things. Shatov is based on Benjamin Grad, the son of a Jewish lawyer in Russia, who lived in 1896 in the same lodging as Richardson on Endesleigh Street, Bloomsbury, London. Grad asked Richardson to marry him but she turned him down.
''Revolving Lights'' was published in 1923, and in it Miriam's friendship continues with Michael Shatov, though she has rejected marriage. Miriam also has a long holiday at the seaside home of Hypo and Alma Wilson, who are based on
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...
and his wife
Amy. In 1925 the eighth volume appeared, ''The Trap''. Miriam moves into a flat, which she shares with a Miss Holland. The title reflects that this is not a successful venture.
''Oberland'' was published in 1928 and depicts a fortnight spent by Miriam in the
Bernese Oberland
The Bernese Oberland (; ; ), sometimes also known as the Bernese Highlands, is the highest and southernmost part of the canton of Bern. It is one of the canton's five administrative regions (in which context it is referred to as ''Oberland'' witho ...
, in the
Swiss Alps
The Alps, Alpine region of Switzerland, conventionally referred to as the Swiss Alps, represents a major natural feature of the country and is, along with the Swiss Plateau and the Swiss portion of the Jura Mountains, one of its three main Physica ...
, based on Richardson's 1904 holiday there. It "focuses on the experience and influence of travel and new surroundings, celebrating a state of intense wonder—'the strange happiness of being abroad.'" The tenth part of ''Pilgrimage'', ''Dawn's Left Hand'', was published in 1931. In this novel Miriam has an affair with Hypo Wilson that leads to a pregnancy and miscarriage, based on Richardson's affair with H. G. Wells around 1907. Sex is a dominant concern of this work. Miriam's women friend Amabel writes “I love you” with a piece of soap on Miriam's mirror, which leaves Miriam wondering if she can reciprocate. Amabel was based on Veronica Leslie-Jones, an activist and suffragette who married Benjamin Grad.
Another four years passed before part 11 of ''Pilgrimage'', ''Clear Horizon'', was published in 1935. In it Miriam's relationship with Amabel continues. ''Dimple Hill'' was published in 1938 as part of a four volume Collected Edition, It was the last volume of ''Pilgrimage'' published during Dorothy Richardson's life. The edition was publicized as a complete work in twelve parts by the publisher.
In 1946 Richardson published, in ''Life and Letters'', three chapters from "A Work in Progress", and when she died left an incomplete manuscript of the 13th "chapter" of ''Pilgrimage'', ''March Moonlight'', published with a new Complete Edition, in 1967. There is brief description of Miriam meeting a Mr Noble, which is based on Dorothy Richardson's meeting in 1915 with Alan Odle, the artist son of a bank manager, who became her husband in 1917. They both lived in the same lodging house in
St John's Wood, London in 1915.
Style
In a 1918 review,
May Sinclair pointed to Richardson's characteristic use of
free indirect speech in narrative.
From early in the ''Pilgrimage'' sequence, she applied it in a
stream of consciousness
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. It is usually in the form of an interior monologue which ...
.
It has been argued that Richardson's style is more appropriately compared with that of
Henry James, rather than the more usual parallels made with
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
and
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.
Vir ...
.
Notes
{{Authority control
Book series introduced in 1915
Novel sequences
1910s books
1920s books
1930s books