Thyrza

Thyrza

George Gissing's (1857 -- 1903)novel "Thyrza" (1887) centers upon the death of a beautiful young woman, as does the poem for which the book is named, Byron's "Elegy on Thyrza". The book was Gissing's fifth published novel and one of a series of early works in which he explored the lives of the London poor. A young naive Gissing sold the copyright to the book for a pittance. "Thyrza" is a lengthy book with a difficult and intricate plot and a distinctly dated Victorian writing style. These considerations help explain why the book is little read today. But I love the book and wanted at least to raise awareness of it in this review. With the advent of digitalization, it is easy for those who wish to pursue this novel to do so. I offer the following bare outline of the novel.

Most of the story is set in Lambeth, a poor working-class area of London. The characters are not at the bottom of the economic ladder, but they are poor factory workers who must work long hours at thankless, mindless drudgery to live. Much of the book is a story of class conflict. The primary male character is Walter Egremont, a young man of wealth who has inherited his father's oil-cloth factory. Egremont is weak, unfocused, but well-meaning. As with many people today, he does not know what to do with his life. At length he forms the plan of giving lectures on English literature to a select group of workers in Lambeth to raise their perspective on life from their day to day activites and to instill in select individuals a love of beauty and learning. Before leaving for his planned mission in Lambeth, Egremont proposes to a lovely young woman of his own class, Annabel, who rejects him.

Egremont's lectures are received indifferently in Lambeth, but he presses on and tries to fund and establish a free library in the community. He asks a middle aged candle worker named Gilbert Grail, who has read extensively during a harried life, to serve as the librarian. Gilbert uses the opportunity for economic freedom that Egremont has offered him to propose to the beautiful and frail Thyrza Trent, age 17, with whom he has shared his love of literature and reading, and whom he has long loved from afar. Thyzra has a beautiful, untrained singing voice. Thyrza accepts Grail's proposal. As the novel goes forward, Thyrza falls in love with Egremont. Egremont loves Thyrza as well but, because of her engagement to Grail, tries to suppress his feelings. Shamed at breaking her engagement to Grail, Thyrza runs away from Lambeth and almost dies.

She is rescued by an elderly woman friend of Egremont's, Mrs. Ormonde, who tries to make a lady of Thyrza (a Pygmalion-type theme is common in Gissing) and to train her heretofore untutored singing voice. Ormonde opposes Egremont's passion and contemplated marriage to Thyrza on grounds that the two are of radically different and irreconciliable social classes and backgrounds. She persuades Egremont to spend two years away in America after which, she promises, she will not interfere if Egremont decides to propose to Thyrza. At the close of the two years, Egremont's idealism much diminished, Mrs Ormonde again persuades Egremont not to propose to Thyrza. Heartbroken, Thyrza returns to Lambeth and offers to marry her original suitor, Gilbert Grail. But she dies before the marriage can take place. Egremont then proposes again to Annabel and is accepted. In accepting, Annabel tells Egremont that he has missed the opportunity to make something valuable of his life by marrying Thyrza. The marriage of Annabel and Egremont will be comfortable but dull and passionless.

Much of the force of "Thyrza" derives from its descriptive passages, of nature, of upper-class England, but especially of the streets, shops and people of Lambeth. For example, in a scene in which a group of poor children dance to a barrel-organ playing on Lambeth Walk, Gissing describes (Chapter IX):

"the life of men who toil without hope, yet with the hunger of an unshaped desire; of women in whom the sweetness of their sex is perishing under labour and misery; the laugh, the song of the girl who strives to enjoy her year or two of youthful vigour, knowing the darkness of the years to come; the careless defiance of the youth who feels his blood and revolts against the lot which would tame it; all that is purely human in these darkened multitudes speaks to you as you listen. It is the self-conscious striving of a nature, which knows not what it would attain, which deforms a true thought by gross expression, which clutches at the beautiful and soils it with foul hands."

Gissing offers sympathetic, rounded portrayals of many people of Lambeth, including Thyrza's older sister Lydia, Gilbert Grail, a working girl named Totty Nanacarrow, a young man named Luke Ackroyd who, like Egremont, has difficulty finding direction for his life. He ultimately marries Lydia. Egremont, the most modern character in the tale with his vacillation, good intention and ultimate lack of passion or commitment, receives a convincing portrayal. Thyrza herself is an idealization.

As with much of Gissing, "Thyrza" is a mixture of social realism and romantic love. For all its emphsis on Lambeth and on the difficulty of uplifting the poor through programs of literary education, the focus of this novel is on passion and of the rarity and supreme importance in Gissing's eyes of true love. The heroine, Thyrza, is willing to break her engagement because she feels the force of love, physical as well as intellectual for Egremont. Egremont in the last analysis lacks the courage to act upon his feelings, and his life remains forever poor and atrophied as a result.

While the story threatens at times to lapse into sentimentality, "Thyrza" is a deeply-felt and thoughtful novel. It will never be widely read but its name deserves to be known. "Thyrza" will continue to find its own small group of readers.