Browsing the Bookshelves

The Bewitching of Anne Gunter - a horrible and true tale of football, witchcraft, murder and the King of England by James Sharpe

In recounting the events surrounding the alleged bewitchment of a young girl, living in a quiet, rural village in Berkshire in 1604, Sharpe provides a fascinating depiction of medieval life from an unusual perspective.  The Bewitching of Anne Gunter is, in some ways, a very personal account of a small incident in the vastnesses of history.  Sharpe however succeeds in demonstrating its connections with contemporary life and its consequences in the spheres of high politics, theology and cultural development that an incident which many have glossed over as an aside becomes a pivotal in both typifying and determining the early years of the 17^th century.

Sharpe has a great story to tell as well. A young, seemingly attractive, girl, who suffers at the hands of her murderous and oppressive father, eventually finds release and, it is suggested love. Along the way, the reader finds football and murder, malefic witchcraft, satanic connections and an audience with the King at his glamorous Court in London.  So far, it sounds a little bit like popular fiction.  But this is, in fact, just what a history book should be: well-researched, well-written, enlightening and material.

Sharpe touches on so many aspects of medieval culture and society that it is difficult to encompass them all briefly. Those which stood out for me were his treatment of the distinctiveness of the phenomena of widespread belief English witchcraft in contrast to contemporary experiences in Europe and North America.  He discusses in some details the psyche of medieval society, placing witchcraft firmly in a cultural context which, for the uneducated and half-educated at least include a belief in fairies and phantoms, demons and devils, and sympathetic and image magic sitting quite comfortably alongside a devote if irrational adherence to Christianity.  The discussion of the emergence of printed material as an influence upon popular culture dates the phenomena to an earlier period than many histories, but Sharpe provides good evidence to support his case and convincing evidence of the impact of printed material in the case at hand. His treatment of the widespread perception that accusation of witchcraft was predominantly a manifestation of misogyny amounts to a debunking of conventional interpretations, making the book all the more refreshing and challenging.  Perhaps of most interest to me however is the argument running through the books that the witchcraft phenomena of the middle ages was as much a response to religion as it was step away from it.  Sharpe links closely the rise in belief in witches in England, and especially the emergence of a seeming connection between bewitchment and satanic possession, to the Reformation and its impact on the contemporary psyche.

So much was knowledge of witchcraft and possession inculcated in the folklore of the times, Sharpe argue, that those moved to feign bewitchment knew how they were expected to act and those that witnessed such bewitchment knew how to respond.  Sharpe, of course, rejects outright any suggestion that witches actually existed. Yet Anne’s particular case provokes a reassessment of that conviction.  There can be little doubt that she was a victim and suffered horribly. Her violent and painful fits, the swelling in her stomach which drove her to suicidal thoughts, her passing and vomiting of pins and other objects, amounts to an horrific account of cruelty and abuse.  Her sufferings were not brought about by the three women she accuses of bewitching her but, according to Sharpe, by her father who was seeking to further a bitter village feud by having his enemies convicted of witchcraft.  If a parent were guilty of inflicting such pain and suffering on their offspring they would be guilty of child abuse of the most horrific and unforgivable kind: is there a case for arguing that Anne father, Brian Gunter, was, after all, the ‘witch’ who plagued her?

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park  (1814), although certainly regarded as a part of the canon of English literature, is often considered to be the weakest, least dazzling of Austen’s novels. Without the witty sparkle of Pride and Prejudice or the gothic indulgence of Northanger Abbey, it has struggled at time to match the popularity of her other titles. But oh, what a treat those who pass over Mansfield Park are missing. Certainly, it is the most disturbing and perhaps the least superficially pleasing of Austen’s output but it has rewards aplenty for the careful reader.

Mansfield Park, home of the affluent Bertram family, takes in a young poor relation with the overt intention of giving her the advantages of a good education and good connections while preserving her sense of gratitude and subservience.  Fanny, the haplessly lucky chosen beneficiary of such benevolence is uprooted from friends, home, family and all that it familiar to take up residence in the grand house with her grand relations.  Austen sets Fanny up as the heroine, designed to evoke the sympathy of the reader: this is a challenge for a modern audience, many of whom will find her weak and too self-deprecating to be genuinely engaging.  And similarly, the sins and deficiencies in disposition and feeling with which Austen gifts brother and sister, Mary and Henry Crawford, may seem not so damning today as Austen intended. This however, does little to detract from the overall value of the novel itself. The relationship between the Bertram family and its colonial role (their wealth derives from sugar plantations in Antigua) is only hinted at overtly, but beautifully explored through the metaphorical position of Mansfield as the centre of all that is English.  Similarly, contemporary values regarding manners, position, influence and identity are gently rolled out for the reader through the evolving relationship between the Bertrams and their acquaintances and within the family itself. And yet, with all this meat beneath the surface, there is still a gentle and touching domestic love story, which evolves over the course of the novel as the more passionate, less fatalistic engagements and attachments of side characters wax and wane.

Mansfield Park is a masterpiece of English manners, of Englishness and of empire. It is also a pleasure to read from beginning to end. Now, I’m off to start at the beginning again!

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

I loved this book but I'm having difficulty capturing in words why I liked it as much as I did. It's gloriously written in vivid, engaging style; it's utterly believable with a range of eccentric, warm characters; and simple but very effective story to tell. But that could be said of numerous novels which are nowhere near as good as this. There is something absolutely complete and very satisfying about I Capture The Castle. It won't challenge your beliefs, it wont stimulate deep thoughts, it probably won't even extend your knowledge about anything in particular, but it doesn't need to. It has a quality all of its own which somehow infuses the book in a way that makes it both a purely pleasurable read and very rewarding at the same time. Think Josephine Tey does literary fiction. It is very English, very specific and very, very good. Highly recommended.

The Hound in the Left Hand Corner by Giles Waterfield

I enjoyed this book from start to finish. On the surface it's the story behind a particular Gainsborough painting and the mystery behind the hound in the left hand corner of the painting which does look quite right. On another level it is a spoof very loosely based on Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream - all frame by the Gainsborough which portrays an 18th century Lady St John dressed as Puck! There are multiple layers of deception both within the painting and the plot. The action takes place over the course of a single day, giving the book a very satisifying roundness. It's a light and easy read but full of black humour, wry and witty asides and ascerbic commentary on one particular aspect of the musuem world. At times, even, there are elements of slapstick humour - waiters and cheese come to mind. The characterisation is superb; a little stereotypical, but I'm sure that's intentional: for such a short book, the reader gets to know a remarkable number of characters very well and very quickly. Highly recommended.  After all, how can you resist a book with such a beguiling title>

A Passage to India by E M Forster

An elegant evocation of British India and the racial tensions which divide the colonizer from the colonised. Miss Quested, a young English woman in India for the first time, suggests that she may have been attacked by an ingratiating India during an outing laid on to please her. Amid the outpouring of racial distrust which her accusation sparks, the voices of reason and sense, and even her own doubts as to what actually happened, are completely lost. An Englishman becomes an outcast from his own for speaking in defence of an India and a kindly woman is rejected by her family for of speaking her truth rather than that of the British Raj. The events that follow, demonstrate Forster's view of the impossibility of friendships across racial divides; of unifying India as a single nation and of the duration of the British Raj.

Forster brings his own perspective to 'the India question; and is deeply critical of the British position. But this is not a one sided novel: it exposes uncomfortable truthes regarding India as much as it does uncomfortable truthes of Empire and Oppression.

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes

There’s no denying that Julian Barnes’s Before She Met Me is an absorbing, even compelling, account of one man’s descent from jealousy into obsession and ultimately to insanity.  Graham, happily and then unsatisfying married, falls for Ann, for whom he leaves his wife and daughter. With Ann, a sometime bit part actress seems to offer him the solace and companionship which Graham has just discovered that he’s been lacking all these years. By then, through the offices of his bitter ex-wife, he happens to see a film featuring, albeit briefly, Ann.  He becomes obsessed with her past, convulsively gathering evidence of her former liaisons and boyfriends and even passing acquaintances. But he can’t leave it there: and what he imagines his wife did before she met him becomes worse that what she actually did. Sad, funny and disturbing, Barnes’ prose is as always, well-measured and quite elegant. Yet there is something just a little unsatisfying about this novel. Never quite convinced that Graham’s descent is totally self-driven, the reader is left wondering about the machinations of his friends and his ex-wife particularly: the questions surrounding their role are never quite resolved and yet too closely drawn to remain provocatively ambiguous.  Barnes has done a lot better.

The Battle of Dorking by George Chesney

George Chesney’s startling account of an imagined invasion and conquest of Britain by the Germans in the 1870s was born in the shock reaction to the very real, very swift and unexpected German victories in the War of Surprises of 1870.   Filled with regret for a nation destroyed and embittered by the passiveness with which the nation ignored all the warning signed, failing to take what with hindsight seem like obvious measure of self-preservation, a unknown soldier reminisces for history grandchildren upon his experience of the Battle of Dorking.  At once level, this short story is just a shocking and gripping account of a fiction overthrow of the country. But Chesney’s tale rewards a deeper reading as well, revealing much about contemporary attitudes to empire and fears for the future.  The nameless soldier encapsulates, in his regret, concerns over the squandering of energy and enterprise swallowed in the maintenance and expansion of Empire which so dominated England in the later years of the 19^th century. And he exposes a perceived fragility in the security of the nation: that England falls so easily to the Germans is ascribed not only to a lack of preparedness but also to an arrogance born of a belief in the natural superiority of English civilisation and culture and, particularly, to the brittle basis on which British economic prosperity was based. It is in these arguments that the reader cannot fail to miss potential parallels with today’s circumstances: a national prosperity based not on manufacturing or labour but upon trade, credit, services and other business which could so easily be diverted elsewhere.

This short story, just short of 50 pages, is therefore not only a sad and foreboding tale of glories lost, but also a telling and disturbing assessment of a nation reaching the end of line of credit in stability and security.  It is certainly a quick and easy read but it is at the same time both thought-provoking and memorable.

That wonderful world of bookish-magic, LibraryThing's new unsuggester is rightly causing quite a stir. Plug in your favourite book and rather than getting list of similar books you might like to read, librarything gives you their best guess at a book that is least likely to appeal! In one easy step you can turn your reading inside out and extend your scope. Alternatively, you can just have a good laugh, safe in the knowledge that you will never read anything like that.

Try putting in what is arguably the English-speaking world's favour novel: Pride and Prejudice and among the top ten 'unsuggested books' is The art of project management by Scott Berkun and The Google story  by David Vise. A harsh judgement on what are,  I assume, perfectly sound books but librarything has one thing right: I'm sure not going to be tempted to read them by any other means.