Shannon Costello

I see Philip Pullman as an important voice in what I fondly refer to as middle-school fiction- though really his voice reaches much farther than juvenile fiction.  Because I’m trying to figure him out I keep reading his books.  Earlier this year I read The Scarecrow and His Servant, which did little to interest me.  The three books mentioned above, however, were particularly enjoyable as well as informative.

First of all, I noticed the Philip Pullman’s “voice” in a way I hadn’t previously.  After reading a line about how the characters in the room before the seance were “packed in like dates” I realized that Philip Pullman has a way of writing that is unique to him and that I really enjoy.

Philip Pullman raises some good questions.  It’s funny how one can read a novel and know when the author is saying something that they mean even outside of their story.  Reading Judy Blume and L. M. Montgomery fiction will give you a pretty clear idea of what they think is important.  If the Golden Compass books tell you what he doesn’t believe in, these books show what he does believe.  He’s got a big problem with exploiting the poor to get rich, for example.  The protagonist, Sally Lockhart, comes to realize that such exploitation can be done passively, simply by allowing oneself to remain ignorant of the truth.  One of his nicer minor characters states that it is better to first help the poor physically- and once the more urgent physical needs are met, then maybe (doubtingly) one can talk about Jesus.

He describes the Sally Lockhart books as “historical thrillers”.  There is indeed a strong historical current in them that delves below mere events in order to highlight attitudes.  I recently finished a biography of George Eliot, a woman who clung to Christianity as a girl only to reject it in her twenties.  The the biography and this trio of novels illustrate similar attitudes toward the relationship between law and marriage:  legal marriage is not really necessary.  That’s why Eliot was comfortable with living with a man who was legally unable to divorce his unfaithful wife.  To her the spirit of what she was doing was important- she considered herself married.  Pullman’s protagonist deliberately has sex with the man she loves before they are married.  To her it proved something to perform that act out of love rather than because she was legally married.  Both George Eliot in real Victorian England and Sally Lockart in fictional Victorian England pay steep social consequences for their actions.  George Eliot had to get pretty famous before some women began to accept her society.  She never saw some of her family again.  Sally is ostracized as a single mother who was not a widow.  The point of dragging George Eliot into all of this is that Sally’s attitude towards marriage is a real attitude.

Now I have to make a really mean criticism:  there were moments in these books when I was reminded of the exaggerated plots of (I am so sorry to say this)…Grace Livingston HIll. Grace Livingston Hill delights in getting her helpless females on the run by having everyone turn against them.  Wicked stepmother turns loving father against daughter…she runs away and he tries to persuade her to return home by putting a hold on her bank account.  So now she’s alone and penniless.  And all of her “friends” are too busy throwing wild parties with lots of ragtime music and fingernail polish to be of any use at all.  So the stage is set for the nice young man as well as the mean kidnapper.  It’s just a little too ridiculous.

In The Tiger in the Well, a mean man has managed to convince a judge (faked documents) that Sally had married him a few years ago.  His purpose was to pursecute Sally by taking away her daughter and money.  Oh, and most of Sally’s friends were in South America and therefore out of touch.  Oh and, oops, the family lawyer had died and his partner was ridiculously, incredibly passive.  That lawyer was the last straw.   He wasn’t bad, just passive.  Why didn’t he trust Sally?  How could a lawyer (a partner of a very good lawyer) take the attitude he took towards Sally’s very serious problem?  It’s just the sort of plot that forces an author to bend too far backwords to make it work, though the stage does get set for the nice young man.

Philip Pullman does allow reality to intrude in fun ways.  I particularly enjoyed the scene in the patent library where Sally looked through various indexes, got the help of a specialist in Russian, and filled out request forms for various items.  I’ve done that kind of thing…he had all the details correct, so I’m assuming Philip Pullman has done it too.  Actually he says on his website that he did so much research for these books that he will definitely write more Sally Lockhart stories.  I look forward to reading them.