There is a continuing literary trend in which (usually) female narrators twine their own life into that of a classic author ... What Stevens brings to the now-familiar form is an incisive wit that, more often than not, she deploys against herself ... Those who are familiar with Gaskell’s work—and she continues to inspire loving devotion around the world—may fret about the way Stevens has ruthlessly filleted the novelist’s life and reoriented it for her own purposes. Then again, this is exactly what Gaskell did to Charlotte Brontë in her revisionist (for which read 'borderline-fictionalized') biography, so one could argue that there is a neat symmetry in play. Certainly, there can be no doubt about the genuine affection that drives Stevens’s project ... it would take a stonyhearted reader to begrudge Elizabeth Gaskell her happy ending.
First, Nell Stevens wrote Bleaker House, a memoir about failing to write a novel. Now, in The Victorian and the Romantic, she has written a memoir about struggling to write her doctoral dissertation. Writing about how writing is hard tends to be solipsistic and dreary, but these procrastination-born books have, instead, a kind of truant charm—like they know they should really be the other, more serious thing, the great work, but we're all here now so we may as well go get a drink.
A lover of research, Stevens falls under the spell of Elizabeth Gaskell, Victorian writer and wife of a dull parson. Stevens alternates chapters between her own life and her discoveries of Gaskell’s, using the device to great effect. When Norton finally visits Gaskell, a perfectly nice visit essentially goes nowhere. Stevens encounters much the same with Max. Such juxtapositions add up to a delightful read.
Many writers have paralleled their reading and their lives ... Ms. Stevens ups this game of fact vs. fiction by declaring that none of it really matters: 'Every word has been filtered through the distortions of my memory, bias and efforts to tell a story. . . . Studies, letters and texts excerpted here are not always faithfully quoted.' If you’re attracted to an unreliable narrator who blends the sportive and the poignant, the emotional and the knowing, Ms. Stevens’s creative memoir may hit your sweet spot. If a more conventional narrator who shares those qualities is your cup of tea, perhaps you should turn to Elizabeth Gaskell ... Does the course of Ms. Stevens’s trans-Atlantic love run smooth? It would be unfair to say. There is one shareable tidbit that’s not in the book, however. Reader, she finished the dissertation.
The Victorian and the Romantic is at its best when it shows the messiness of trying to recapture the past ... Unfortunately, the book’s dual love story is less effective. The thread between Stevens and Gaskell is a thin one, and Stevens doesn’t turn the same critical lens on her memories of Max as on her attempts to reconstruct past lives. In the end, she turns away from being, as she says, a 'critic' who takes a deeper look at herself and her relationship, in favor of becoming an 'author'—of her own life and of fiction, presumably. Stevens’s author biography announces that she is writing a novel. It will be interesting to see what she creates when she leaves her musings on the process of writing—or not writing—behind.
In 2013, Stevens, a graduate student studying mid-19th-century British expat life in Rome, fell in love with an emotionally distant American named Max while both were pursuing advanced degrees. As she fought for Max’s attention, she began to explore the relationship between the married Gaskell and the younger, aloof American critic Charles Eliot Norton, with whom Gaskell fell in love while on holiday in Rome in 1860. She alternates the first-person chapters of her own life with second-person chapters on Gaskell’s ... Steven...explores the complexities of unrequited love, and of the camaraderie she formed with a writer who lived more than a century earlier.
Completing her doctorate in Victorian literature, Stevens chose to focus on the work of Elizabeth Gaskell, a close friend of Charlotte Brontë who was tasked with writing her biography. Studying Gaskell with uninhibited obsession, she quickly noticed the parallels between her life and that of her subject. When The Life of Charlotte Brontë, was due for publication, she escaped to Rome to avoid any criticism of her work ... In the process, Gaskell met the love of her life, the notorious critic Charles Eliot Norton. This escape was a trigger for Stevens, who, in 2013, began devouring her letters and imagining what her life must have been like. Meanwhile, Stevens was also dealing with her one true love, Max, who was elusive and reluctant to own up to his feelings ... Though the result in an interesting and beautifully written contrast, the intention behind the book remains unclear, and readers may feel adrift at certain points.
