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Jane Harris discusses many aspects of her first novel, The Observations, including why she chose to set the book half way between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and in what ways the heroine, Bessy, is based on Jane's mother.
It seems that everyone who reads The Observations is fascinated by the
narrative voice of Bessy Buckley - by the freshness of her diction, the earthy
glow of her humor, and her inventive use of slang. How were you able to devise a
voice that is so coarse and untutored yet so thoughtful and engaging?
I think it comes mainly from my background, from my Irish and Scottish family
and friends, in particular my mother, Kate, and my aunt Sheila and my friend
Noeleen. Lots of Bessy's sayings and turns of phrase belong to them, as does her
sense of humor. My mother, who was brought up in Belfast, is always saying
"Jesus Murphy," for instance. I checked that these phrases would be historically
feasible and then used them. Both my mother and aunt are great storytellers and
have wicked senses of humor. And my aunt is a very optimistic person, so I gave Bessy that indomitable quality. In addition to what I used from family and
friends, I found a few dictionaries of historical slang that were useful. There
were also times when I simply made stuff up - so some of it comes from my
imagination.
Your novel has prompted comparisons with Fielding and Thackeray. In the
book's atmosphere of destitute but attractive servant girls, spooky country
estates, and deranged mistresses locked in their rooms, I thought I caught a
whiff or two of Jane Eyre. And yet, of course, The Observations is
nothing if not original. How does an author handle the task of responding to
classical models without simply repeating them?
Yes, there have been lots of comparisons with other writers - it seems
inevitable when people are trying to classify a new writer's work. I read a lot
of nineteenth-century literature during the writing process, concentrating on
Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Charlotte Brontë (so I'm not surprised
there's a whiff of Jane Eyre, especially in the spooky bits!). I hope there are
a few things that make Bessy's story seem fresh. One is the fact that it is
being narrated by Bessy herself: a servant girl with a shady past, an immigrant,
someone who is definitely situated on the margins of society. That gives it a
more modern twist since most of those nineteenth-century tales were narrated by
protagonists such as Jane Eyre and David Copperfield who - even if they were
relatively poor or "shabby genteel" - were at least better educated than Bessy. I
also hope that the voice is a distinguishing factor in The Observations. I
immersed myself in heavily voiced fiction, both classic texts (such as The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye) and more modern
novels, such as Peter Carey's wonderful The True History of the Kelly Gang and
Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy.
Among your American readers, it is likely that many of those who have visited
Scotland have seen the districts between Glasgow and Edinburgh only through the
window of a train - perhaps traveling the same line where Nora Hughes meets her
end. What led you to choose this land as the setting for your novel? Does it
hold a special significance for you?
It is exactly because this place has no significance for me that I chose it.
In fact, I had completed a draft of the novel before I had ever really visited
there and I, too, had only really passed through in train or car en route to
Glasgow or Edinburgh. I wanted a kind of no-man's-land, somewhere indefinable.
In Scotland, fiction is often clearly identified with one of four regions: the
east coast and Edinburgh, the west coast and Glasgow, the Highlands, and the
Lowlands. I wanted the book to exist outside of these well-trodden territories
so that it couldn't be easily pigeonholed. I also wanted this lack of
specificity to add to the otherworldly quality of the book. When I did visit the
area I was pleasantly surprised that my imagining of it came very close to the
reality.
Despite her many "punctuation lessons" with her mistress, one of the
signature qualities of Bessy's writing is that she can never get the hang of
sentence boundaries. When writing the novel, did you find it difficult to
suspend your knowledge of grammar and adapt to Bessy's more chaotic mode of
expression?
Actually, it was the other way around - I found that Bessy's punctuation and
grammar overtook me so much that it kept cropping up in everything else I wrote,
from e-mails to work correspondence. I think it still lingers even now (so
apologies if my punctuation is terrible).
Given the utterly humiliating and poisonous moral environment from which
Bessy emerges, some may find it astonishing that she retains so much humor and
determination. To what do you attribute her extreme resiliency?
I worked in a high-security prison as writer in residence some years ago and
was astounded by the black humor and resilience of inmates and staff. It seems
that some people find humor a great way of coping with the impossible. Either
you let circumstances bring you down or you rise above them. I gave a quality of
optimism and humor to Bessy that I saw in some of those prisoners, both male and
female. Also, it would have made for a pretty depressing read if Bessy had been
ground down by her past. What makes her a sympathetic heroine is that she keeps
going and is never depressed for too long about what happens to her.
At the core of The Observations is an unusual friendship that somehow
survives class division, betrayal, and madness. What is the understanding of
friendship that you would like to impart to your readers through this novel?
Exactly that - I love it that the two female protagonists are unlikely friends,
but that somehow they end up saving each other.
Of the many sorts of fear your novel addresses, perhaps the most recurrent
might be termed scopophobia - a fear of being watched or looked at. Why do you
suppose it is that human beings, who are so often famished for attention, harbor
such deep anxieties about being watched?
Well I'm no scientist so all I will be doing is supposing - but I imagine it
goes back to something very primal, from a time when we were wary of being
stalked by predatory wild animals. On a more personal level, I don't like the
limelight and I hate having my photograph taken.
It is a nice irony that, at the end of the novel, Bessy ends up being
Arabella's observer, and it is her account of her former mistress, not the other
way around, that becomes a matter of interest to the psychological profession.
Do you see Bessy as having triumphed over Arabella or as merely having risen to
a level at which they can regard each other as equals?
I definitely don't see Bessy as having triumphed over Arabella and neither
does she. I don't actually even think that Bessy would ever consider herself to
be Arabella's equal - she is loyal to her and touched that Arabella considers her
a friend but will always hold her in a certain amount of awe.
Readers who have themselves attempted to publish their work will get a
chuckle out of Bessy's exchanges in chapter twenty-four with prospective
publishers of her mistress's manuscript. Is there any personal history behind
this bit of satire?
Yes, I had fun with that. I suppose some of it is based on my experience of
short story writing some years ago, before I got sidetracked into writing for
film and then writing this novel. I remember one rejection from a tiny magazine.
The editor had simply written on the story I had submitted "Not quite," which
seemed to me both hilarious and humiliating - although I imagine that his vast
power had gone to his head and that humiliation was his main intention.
For Bessy Buckley, writing is obviously an avenue toward self-knowledge. Has
writing been a means of self-discovery for you as well?
Oh yes. Not just a means of self-discovery but a means of self-fulfillment
and survival.
The last page of the novel indicates that, now that Bessy has penned her own
life story, she is tempted to make up another story "out of [her] own head."
What do you suppose this story might be like, and do you intend to write it?
Well, I'm not sure that Bessy will write something out of her own head. But I
have not dismissed the possibility that we will see the further adventures of
Bessy, whatever they may be. A lot of people who have read the novel have told
me that they are dying to know what happens to her next and the narrative is
open-ended enough to be revisited. I am writing something different now, but
have it in mind to take Bessy on another adventure a few years from now.
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
Novelist, biographer, and poet Peter Ackroyd was born in London on October 5, 1949.
He graduated from Clare College, Cambridge, and studied at Yale University as a Mellon Fellow, where he completed Notes for a New Culture: ...
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Clare read History at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she was a Senior Scholar. She graduated with a Double First.
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