Customer Reviews

The Three Sisters

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read about this book and this author in the Bronte Myth by Lucasta Miller, and I decided it might be something I would like. I enjoy reading books about the Brontes and also spin-off novels about their lives. Miller refers to May Sinclair a few times as a woman who appreciated the Brontes and mentioned, The Three Sisters as a novel where Sinclair takes the basic story of three sisters living on the Yorkshire Moors with their recluse father and makes it her own. This book follows these sisters through a period of their lives and Sinclair shows us their interactions with each other, and the small community that they live in, and focuses alot on their relationship with their father who was very domineering and controlling. At times the writing felt a bit disjointed and I had a hard time figuring out exactly what time period it took place in, but these were the only minor problems I had with the book. I would recommend this novel to others and I'm going to be reading more novels by Sinclair in the future.

I loved this book. It is the first work I have read by May Sinclair (1863-1946). I feel like a world has opened to me in discovering an author that creates such complicated female characters, evokes such compelling natural landscapes, and writes so well.

The Virago edition of the book I have features Branwell Bronte's famous painting of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Bronte on its cover. Because of that image, it's hard not to make comparisons between this story and the real-life story of the Bronte daughters and their authoritative father. However, the actual story is quite different from the Bronte's sad tale of devastating illness and premature death. The daughters in this novel are, happily, not brought down by terrible sickness (though they sometimes get sick), but tenacious of life. The father in the story is admittedly formidable, but the sisters are, in their more quiet ways, stronger than he is.

The central female character of the novel, Gwenda (Gwendolen) Cartaret, is the middle of the three daughters living with their father in a small Yorkshire village. The time period is probably the early 20th century, but this is left vague. Gwenda emerges as a wonderful person--observant, passionate about nature, physically hardy, receptive to those who respect her, but also accepting of those she does not love. The central female-male relationship in the book--Gwenda's with Steven Rowcliffe's, the local doctor--is beautifully and realistically drawn. So is Gwenda's relationship with her two sisters, Mary and Alice. Alice, the youngest sister, sensitive like Gwenda, but more limited and less self-governed, makes choices that distance some of her family members, and bring others (like Gwenda) closer. Mary, the eldest sister, is composed and difficult to know. She takes on a greater role as the novel progresses. And Steven Rowcliffe, the doctor, is complex and appealing.

It's hard not to make excited comparisons to other novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries when reading this book. I was reminded of books by Louisa May Alcott (Gwenda is similar to Jo March--eager and sensitive, brusque at times, not seeing herself as "womanly"); and George Eliot (Steven Rowcliffe is similar to Lydgate in Middlemarch--talented at medicine, vigorous but also ambivalent, wanting something more).

Since these other authors were writing before The Three Sisters was published (1914), it seems like May Sinclair must've been reading widely and receptive to all these influences on her storytelling. But the style of Sinclair's writing (a little bit Woolfian, but with shorter sentences and chapters), and the events in her stories, are unique and unpredictable, romantic yet edgily modern, and all her own.