skygiants: Mary Lennox from the Secret Garden opening the garden door (garden)
[personal profile] skygiants
Until [personal profile] osprey_archer posted about That Lass O'Lowrie's I honestly had no idea that Frances Hodgson Burnett had written books aimed at adults, or indeed any books at all other than the Big Three (The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy.)

That Lass O'Lowrie's centers on a Lancashire coal mining community and has four central characters, three of them educated outsiders: Derrick, the new mine engineer who wants to institute safety reforms; Paul Grace, the frail but earnest curate; Anice Barholm, the sensible daughter of the self-satisfied and relatively useless rector; and ✨Joan Lowrie✨.

✨Joan Lowrie✨ is a tall, brilliant, beautiful, extremely competent mine worker who over the course of the book:

- teaches herself to read
- adopts Fallen Teenager Liz and her illegitimate baby
- after telling the entire town that if they're going to be dicks to Liz they have to COME THROUGH ✨JOAN LOWRIE✨ FIRST*
- rescues her love interest from being murdered by her abusive father
- then starts secretly bodyguarding him home EVERY NIGHT, thwarting innumerable other murder attempts
- and THEN, to top it off, saves him from a mine cave-in
- and still the climax of the book is ~*~Joan Lowrie~*~, action heroine, first running away from her love interest so he doesn't demean herself by marrying her and then, when love finally triumphs, asking for more time to make herself worthy of him before they can get married, because classism is a hell of a thing

(*unfortunately, Joan Lowrie, being fictional, is not in a position to make such a threat to Frances Hodgson Burnett, who therefore has full reign to be as much of a dick to sad fallen teenager Liz and her baby as might be expected of a sentimental Victorian moralist)

Date: 2018-11-24 04:16 pm (UTC)
asakiyume: (good time)
From: [personal profile] asakiyume
This picture!!

Date: 2018-11-24 06:00 pm (UTC)
osprey_archer: (Default)
From: [personal profile] osprey_archer
JOAN LOWRY, BRINGING LIGHT INTO THE DARKNESS OF THE MINES LIKE THE MINOR GODDESS THAT SHE IS.

Date: 2018-11-25 07:12 pm (UTC)
asakiyume: (definitely definitely)
From: [personal profile] asakiyume
Yes, she should be apotheosized!

Date: 2018-11-25 07:13 pm (UTC)
asakiyume: (definitely definitely)
From: [personal profile] asakiyume
I can totally get behind this cultic worship... and I haven't even read the story yet.

Date: 2018-11-24 08:17 pm (UTC)
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
From: [personal profile] sovay
This picture!!

Right, that's beautiful.

Also, she looks like an entire town would be idiots to take her on.

Date: 2018-11-25 07:13 pm (UTC)
asakiyume: (definitely definitely)
From: [personal profile] asakiyume
100 percent hard agree

Date: 2018-11-24 10:37 pm (UTC)
dhampyresa: (Default)
From: [personal profile] dhampyresa
This is beautiful.

Date: 2018-11-25 07:19 pm (UTC)
asakiyume: (definitely definitely)
From: [personal profile] asakiyume
It's a great picture! Gotta go back and find the artist... aha! It turns out to have been ALFRED FREDERICKS

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