The House with the Green Shutters

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The House with the Green Shutters is a novel by the Scottish writer George Douglas Brown, first published in 1901 by John MacQueen. Set in mid-19th century Ayrshire, in the fictitious town of Barbie which is based on his native Ochiltree, it consciously violates the conventions of the sentimental kailyard school, and is sometimes quoted as an influence on the Scottish Renaissance. Chapter XX. He struts around Barbie, smoking cigarettes. During his summer holidays, he acquires a habit of drinking to excess. El escritor escocés lo narra todo con esa fluidez que tiene lo inevitable. Y, por si no se entiende por sus acciones o sus palabras, su descripción del carácter escocés es todo un tratado de mala leche, no exento de moralidad. Algo natural en un mundo sin ética ni valores, más allá del precio de las cosas o del último rumor. No, no hay nada glorioso en estas vidas. Ni en estas tierras. Nosotros, que nos tomábamos el té con una nube de leche, unas galletitas escocesas mojadas en whisky y Liam O’Flynn sonando de fondo, hemos perdido un nuevo paraíso. Otro más. Para Gourlay el futuro no es cómo discurrirá su negocio. Firmemente instalado, todo debería ir bien por los siglos de los siglos, y la casa de las persianas verdes es la prueba de ello, sólidamente presente. El futuro es su hijo (aunque no esté muy convencido de ello, no tiene otra alternativa). Pero su hijo, un inútil que ni tan siquiera ha heredado la fuerza del padre, solo aspira a instalarse en esa comodidad de la empresa paterna, en la que nada puede fallar. La voluntad de uno en que tenga unos estudios (aunque solo sea para no ser menos que nadie) y la imposibilidad del otro de aprender, completarán esa viaje del día a la noche, aunque sería mejor decir el viaje de la noche profunda a las tinieblas.

Chapter XV. Gourlay's pony "Tam" dies. Forced to use the bus, he overhears that Wilson's son is to go to Edinburgh to study, and Gourlay resolves to send John there too. So?" said Gourlay. "God, ay!" he went on; "you're making a nice job of him. He'll be a credit to the house. Oh, it's right, no doubt, that you should neglect your work till he consents to rise." George Douglas Brown era escocés. Su carrera fue breve (Maugham dice que afortunadamente, porque quién sabe si habría logrado escribir un libro mejor que este). Fue pobre de solemnidad hasta que publicó este libro, y tras ello tuvo la mala fortuna de morirse, con lo cual no puede decirse que su vida fuera especialmente feliz. Quizás esa fatalidad propia le llevó a escribir esta absorbente historia de fatalidades. Hay que decir, por si no se ha entendido aún, que la visión de Escocia que nos dejó es una invitación a hundir aquella región en las aguas del frío Atlántico y no dejarla salir a flote. Igual ni tan siquiera es un caso particular y, simplemente, el mundo es así. En todo caso, el descenso a los infiernos de John Gourlay y familia (descender es un decir, puesto que ya estaban instalados cómodamente en ellos), se convierte en sus manos en una tragedia de dimensiones épicas, que Brown atribuye, cita bíblica mediante, a la falta de caridad (sentimiento al parece tan poco apreciado por aquellos parajes como el agua). The mother and daughter were completely alone now and aware that even the house must go to the creditors. Although they were both dying of cancer and consumption, they divided the rest of the poison and accelerated their union with Gourlay and John in death. The pride, the lust, and the greed were gone. The House with the Green Shutters had claimed them all. Critical Evaluation:

Old Gourlay is the perfect brute and tirannical house-father in the small village of Barbie. He bullies his weak but highly perceptive son John, his sloppy wife and his consumptive daughter Janet. In the village too, he is feared - a lot of 'glowering' is done on his part. Inevitably, his downfall awaits him, first when he meets a rival carrier Wilson, next when his ailing son fails to live up to his high expectations. John, succumbing to drink, kills his father. The murder is covered up by his mother and sister, but the glowering eyes haunt John in the night. Finally, the remainder of the household commits suicide. Chapter XXIII. John is expelled from the university. What with the serious illnesses of Janet and Mrs Gourlay, the family is on the brink of financial ruin.

George Douglas Brown (26 January 1869 – 28 August 1902) was a Scottish novelist, best known for his highly influential realist novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901), which was published the year before his death at the age of 33. But what is missing is any contrast or warmth. Even in hard-drinking Scotland, not all men were horrible to their wives and children, nor to each other. I understand that Brown was writing this, in 1901, as a realist reaction to the excessive sentimentality of the portrayal of Scottish village life in the earlier Scottish literary movement known as the Kailyard school, but I feel he’s gone way too far in the other direction. While I do recognise the character traits, cruelty and mean-spiritedness he shows as being an accurate depiction of the worst of Scottish culture, it is not the whole of it, and by giving nothing to contrast with it, Brown ultimately fails to make his town any more convincing than the twee villages of the writers he’s reacting against. The novel describes the struggles of a proud and taciturn carrier, John Gourlay, against the spiteful comments and petty machinations of the envious and idle villagers of Barbie (the "bodies"). [1] The sudden return after fifteen years' absence of the ambitious merchant, James Wilson, son of a mole-catcher, leads to commercial competition against which Gourlay has trouble responding.The positive reaction greatly encouraged Brown who planned another novel called The Incompatibles and a book on his "rules of writing"; however both were never to be finished, due to the author's death. To break a man’s spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he lives, send him slinking away animo castrato – for that is what it comes to – is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost – derives from it, indeed. Overall, The House with the Green Shutters was fascinating. I found it interesting in the sense that at the intro, I accepted that I wasn't going to like the main character--and, I assumed, the protagonist. Gourlay Sr., however, is not what I would call a protagonist.

Hay obras cuyo valor está estrechamente ligado a la época en la que fueron escritas, este me parece el caso de esta novela. Según nos explica Somerset Maugham en el prólogo que acompaña la edición de Ardicia, la novela supuso una ruptura con todo lo que se estaba publicando sobre Escocia y los escoceses por aquellos años. Perdida ahora toda la fuerza de tal argumento, ningún otro atractivo ha pasado a ocupar su lugar.

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date: 27 November 2023 House with the Green Shutters, The, Source: The Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction Author(s): Sandra KempSandra Kemp, Charlotte MitchellCharlotte Mitchell, David TrotterDavid Trotter Home> Fiction from Scotland> The House with the Green Shutters The House with the Green Shutters By (author) George Douglas Brown George Douglas Brown’s reputation rests on this single novel, THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS. Born at Ochiltree in Scotland to a poor family, he managed to attend Glasgow University and Oxford. In 1895, he went to London as a freelance writer. Not until 1901 with THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS did he win recognition. The novel was praised by Andrew Lang and was well received in England and the United States. His royalties in the summer of 1902 brought him the only financial ease he ever knew, but in August of the year, he suddenly died. The novel describes the struggles of a proud and taciturn carrier, John Gourlay, against the spiteful comments and petty machinations of the envious and idle villagers of Barbie (the "bodies"). (Introduction by Wikipedia)