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A review by jocelynw
Cometh Up As a Flower by Rhoda Broughton
5.0
I came across this because of Harriet Beecher Stowe talking shit about it in Pink and White Tyranny:
That sounded more interesting than HBS's moralizing, so once I finished her novelistic diatribe I picked this up. And it was a good call; I adore it; there were times I laughed aloud, times I gasped aloud; the whole story wrung my heart.
I love Nell's surprisingly modern wry sense of humor, her heart completely on her sleeve, how convincingly Broughton has captured all the intensity of late adolescence. Nell's spirited, awkward, unconventional, emotive personality felt delightfully familiar - I could imagine her as a friend; I connected with her as someone who would respond similarly.
I almost fear to pick up anything else by Broughton; it's hard to imagine I could enjoy another like work this much, and I would hate to take the shine from it by surfeiting myself with her writing. I may just let this one sit for a while, digesting - it really got me in the heart, and I can understand why it made a splash, and it surprises me that it's so little known now.
CW: There are anti-Semitic remarks in at least three places that I noted.
The public has already been circumstantially instructed by such edifying books as “Cometh up as a Flower,” and others of a like turn, in what manner and in what terms married women can abdicate the dignity of their sex, and degrade themselves so far as to offer their whole life, and their whole selves, to some reluctant man, with too much remaining conscience or prudence to accept the sacrifice.
That sounded more interesting than HBS's moralizing, so once I finished her novelistic diatribe I picked this up. And it was a good call; I adore it; there were times I laughed aloud, times I gasped aloud; the whole story wrung my heart.
I love Nell's surprisingly modern wry sense of humor, her heart completely on her sleeve, how convincingly Broughton has captured all the intensity of late adolescence. Nell's spirited, awkward, unconventional, emotive personality felt delightfully familiar - I could imagine her as a friend; I connected with her as someone who would respond similarly.
I almost fear to pick up anything else by Broughton; it's hard to imagine I could enjoy another like work this much, and I would hate to take the shine from it by surfeiting myself with her writing. I may just let this one sit for a while, digesting - it really got me in the heart, and I can understand why it made a splash, and it surprises me that it's so little known now.
CW: There are anti-Semitic remarks in at least three places that I noted.