Catholic Artist: Rumer Godden

I'm on break, I'm on break, I'm on break!! Hurrah! And now that I'm finally really digging into Advent and prepping for Christmas, I firstly have time to write a blog post, and secondly am in the mood to talk about Rumer Godden! 

If only I can remember how to write one of these...

What I've Read:
The Kitchen Madonna
The Story of Holly and Ivy
A Candle for St. Jude
Kingfishers Catch Fire
An Episode of Sparrows
The Greengage Summer
In This House of Brede
Five For Sorrow, Ten For Joy
Thursday's Children

Other Works By Rumer Godden (that I have yet to get to):
Honestly, too many to list. Check out the tally in this Wikipedia article. 

The reason Christmas puts me in the mood to talk about Rumer Godden is that The Story of Holly and Ivy is an acutely Christmas tale, the story of a young orphan/homeless girl, and a Christmas doll who wants a home, despite the discouragement of a stuffed owl. All of this taking place against the backdrop of the warm glow of Christmas, as shown in gorgeous illustrations. (Yes, it is a children's book. No, that doesn't make it less appealing.)  

But let me back up a moment. The reason I'm familiar with Rumer Godden at all is my mom, who found In This House of Brede several years ago (like, maybe actually eight or more years ago at this point?) and hasn't stopped pushing it on people since. (Don't get me wrong, it's very deserving of being pushed on people.) But she also made other forays into the World Of Godden, giving my siblings and me such gems as The Kitchen Madonna and The Story of Holly and Ivy. So, I have long-time positive associations with her, and so do most other members of my family (even if that's accompanied with regular teasing of Mom about her making everyone read ITHoB). 

So, who is the Godden person? In short (and very much courtesy of Wikipedia), the child of British parents, she grew up in an area of India, and ultimately went to school in England. She married, and moved back to India, which time gave her fodder for Kingfishers Catch Fire, and then returned to Britain after an apparent poisoning attempt (!), whereupon she and her husband divorced, and she remarried. About nine years later, she converted to Catholicism, after around twenty years of flirting with the Church. She died at the age of ninety, still publishing books until only two years before her death. 

Godden is interesting, because she's both more and less obvious about her Catholicism in her stories than most of the other authors we've talked about (Tolkien, O'Connor, &c). More because of the books she wrote once she was Catholic, at least two are actually about Catholic religious live (convents of nuns). Less because at least one of the books she wrote after she became Catholic doesn't have any sort of Catholicism in it at all. Or at least, not on the surface, or even obviously in the themes.

And she's also interesting because a lot of Catholic/Christian ideals and ideas make it into her work long before she actually became Catholic. Of the books on the list above, only the last three were written after her conversion, but of the others on the list, at least three have obvious Catholicism or Catholic ideals woven into them, and a couple of the others have ones less obvious. Additionally, she wrote about Catholic religious life even years before her conversion. It almost seems like she's exploring the ideas of the Church and her own ideals through her writing, which is also something I do in my own writing (well, explore ideas and ideals, at least. I'm pretty settled in the church, at the moment) even though I usually do so in nonfiction. So, I think that's pretty cool. 

And what, you ask, are these Catholic/Christian ideals and ideas in her books? Well, leaving aside what I'm going to bluntly call her books about nuns, there are several that stand out to me.
-The Kitchen Madonna is about two children trying to make their (impliedly Catholic) housekeeper happy by making her an icon, which process changes both of them for the better (but not in an irritating way). 
-A Candle For St. Jude made me very happy in that the whole book is kind of a hustle-bustle of an attempt on an old woman's part to bring together a performance which really shouldn't work, and her sister-in-law is in the background the whole time, trying to help her, but also ending up being very put-upon. In the end, it does work, and the sister-in-law attributes the success of the whole circus to a candle she lit at the shrine of St. Jude--patron saint of desperate causes. XD So, in all, it's an homage to the power of intercessory prayer and divine providence.
-An Episode of Sparrows takes its title from the fall of the sparrow, i.e. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." (Matthew 10:29-31), and while that's not, as far as I can recall, directly addressed in the book, it appears in several little moments and references, all overall adding up to a theme of there being no people, no places, that don't matter.
-The Greengage Summer takes up the problem of loving someone despite what they've done
-And Kingfishers Catch Fire, among other things, explores the fact that everyone, really every, is subject to original sin.

Now, her "books about nuns"! You may remember that I've complained on a couple of occasions about the lack of Catholic representation--which complaint I've nuanced a little bit, but I still do love seeing Catholics represented well in fiction! And two books (In This House of Brede and Five For Sorrow, Ten For Joy*) entirely about nuns, which contain within them not only a vivid depiction of the humanity of said nuns, so as not to make them paragons of virtue but people, but ALSO vivid descriptions and depictions of liturgies? Well, I'm about to die of happiness. Both books are based around one individual and her experience of religious life, but also expand to detail the life of the community and are written so as to avoid the trap that Catholic authors can sometimes fall into of over-hagiographizing nuns. (As my mom has noted on a number of occasions, she's glad she didn't know Rumer Godden, because she knows that all of her foibles would have ended up in a book at some point or another.) But even as much as the nuns are not romanticized, the life still has a beauty to it which is extremely attractive (and caused me to have a vocational crisis the first time I read it, so be warned XD). 

*I don't generally utilize footnotes, but I will note that Five For Sorrow, Ten For Joy is one in which Rumer Godden attacks problems of evil and original sin with a clarity of vision that would do Flannery O'Connor proud, and thus, the book is Not For Young Readers.

Speaking of my mother's gratitude that she never knew Rumer Godden, I think one of the things which sets her books apart from most other authors I've ever encountered is just how well she's able to enter into her characters, understanding their motivations and what makes them tick, and make them extremely individual and different from any other character. If I may be excused for using the word 'vivid' one more time, every one of her characters is SO vivid and different from every one of her other characters. I think this is probably a talent of hers, but also reflects an O'Connorian clarity of vision on her part of seeing people as they are, warts (and original sin) and all. But she's still often able to make them sympathetic to the reader, even while showing their faults. It's quite impressive, really. 

All in all, I really enjoy Godden's works--her writing style is very unique, and her characters never disappoint--and I'm really happy that she wrote so copiously, because that means I have plenty more of her stories to enjoy!

Have you read anything by Rumer Godden? Is there a particular author who makes you think of Christmas? What are you reading this December?