(no subject)

[skygiants]

Until 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)

Comments

[antisoppist]

There is a sequel???

There is an appropriate fate for a woman whose reaction when all the money has gone and the servants have walked out is "Who is coming to rescue me?" and "Why won't that annoying screaming noise shut up?" and convincing herself that she is far too scared to go upstairs in the dark and work out how to feed her own baby?

[castiron]

It's on Project Gutenberg (assuming this link works in the UK).

Well, appropriate in the sense of "yep, I can buy that happening to a person who acts like that".

[legionseagle]

I still think it's a shame Feather was not told the plot development of what the holy fuck did I just read? immediately before her fate hit her.

[castiron]

Her hissy fit would have been visible from Alpha Centuari.

[ETA: Even though England probably isn't visible from Alpha Centuari.)