Pointed Roofs

'Pilgrimage' was the first expression in English of what it is to be called 'stream of conciousness' technique, predating the work of both Joyce and Woolf, echoing that of Proust with whom Dorothy Richardson stands as one of the great innovatory figures of our time. These four volumes record in detail the life of Miriram Henderson. Through her experience - personal, spiritual, intellectual - Dorothy Richardson explores intensely what it means to be a woman, presenting feminine conciousness with a new voice, a new identity.

The first chapter-volume of Dorothy Richardson’s thirteen-volume novel series Pilgrimage, Pointed Roofs is a coming of age story. The protagonist is Miriam Henderson, seventeen years old. Pointed Roofs tells the tale of Miriam’s first adventure as an adult, teaching English at a finishing school in Hanover, Germany. Though the tale is simple, it is not simply told; to capture the intensity of Miriam’s seemingly mundane experiences, Richardson developed a new narrative technique labelled “stream of consciousness” by the author May Sinclair. Pointed Roofs is a compelling account of a young woman’s dawning consciousness of what it means to be independent, an individual, and a woman in the early twentieth century. This Broadview Edition places Richardson’s inventive narrative technique in the context of early twentieth-century literary modernism, showing the “startling newness,” in May Sinclair’s words, of Richardson’s writing. Letters from Richardson to friends, publishers, and critics show the complex relationships between her work and life.

Pointed Roofs is the first in the author's 12 part opus, Pilgrimage.

""Pointed Roofs", published in 1915, is the first work (she called it a "chapter") in Dorothy Richardson's (1873-1957) series of 13 semi-autobiographical novels titled Pilgrimage, and the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. The novelist May Sinclair (1863-1946) first applied the term "stream of consciousness" In a review of Pointed Roofs (The Egoist April 1918). Miriam Henderson, the central character in Pilgrimage, is based on author's own life between 1891 and 1915."

Dorothy Richardson is existing just above the poverty line, doing secretarial work at a dentist's office and living in a seedy boarding house in Bloomsbury, when she is invited to spend the weekend with a childhood friend, Jane. Jane has recently married a writer who is on the brink of fame. His name is H.G. Wells, or Bertie, as they call him. Bertie appears unremarkable at first. But then Dorothy notices his grey-blue eyes taking her in, openly signalling approval. He tells her he and Jane have an agreement which allows them the freedom to take lovers, although Dorothy can tell her friend would not be happy with that arrangement. Not wanting to betray Jane, yet unable to draw back Dorothy free-falls into an affair with Bertie. Then a new boarder arrives at the house- beautiful Veronica Leslie-Jones-and Dorothy finds herself caught between Veronica and Bertie. Amidst the personal dramas and wreckage of a militant suffragette march, Dorothy finds her voice as a writer.

From the INTRODUCTION by May Sinclair. I HAVE been asked to write a criticism of the novels of Dorothy Richardson. I do not know whether this essay is or is not going to be a criticism, for so soon as I begin to think what I shall say I find myself criticising criticism, wondering what is the matter with it and what, if anything, can be done to make it better, to make it alive. Only a live criticism can deal appropriately with a live art. And it seems to me that the first step towards life is to throw off the philosophic cant of the nineteenth century. I don't mean that there is no philosophy of Art, or that if there has been there is to be no more of it; I mean that it is absurd to go on talking about realism and idealism, or objective and subjective art, as if the philosophies were sticking where they stood in the eighties. In those days the distinction between idealism and realism, between subjective and objective was important and precise. And so long as the ideas they stand for had importance and precision those words were lamps to the feet and lanterns to the path of the critic. Even after they had begun to lose precision and importance they still served him as useful labels for the bewildering phenomena of the arts. But now they are beginning to give trouble; they obscure the issues. Mr. J. D. Beresford in his admirable introduction to the first American edition of Pointed Roofs confesses to having felt this trouble. When he read it in manuscript he decided that it "was realism, was objective." When he read it in typescript he thought: "this ... is the most subjective thing I have ever read." It is evident that, when first faced with the startling "newness" of Miss Richardson's method and her form, the issues did seem a bit obscure to Mr. Beresford. It was as if up to one illuminating moment he had been obliged to think of methods and forms as definitely objective or definitely subjective. His illuminating moment came with the third reading when Pointed Roofs was a printed book. The book itself gave him the clue to his own trouble, which is my trouble, the first hint that criticism up till now has been content to think in cliches, missing the new trend of the philosophies of the twentieth century. All that we know of reality at first hand is given to us through contacts in which those interesting distinctions are lost. Reality is thick and deep, too thick and too deep and at the same time too fluid to be cut with any convenient carving knife. The novelist who would be close to reality must confine himself to this knowledge at first hand. He must, as Mr. Beresford says, simply "plunge in." Mr. Beresford also says that Miss Richardson is the first novelist who has plunged in. She has plunged so neatly and quietly that even admirers of her performance might remain unaware of what it is precisely that she has done. She has disappeared while they are still waiting for the splash. So that Mr. Beresford's introduction was needed....

Pilgrimage, Dorothy Richardson's thirteen-volume opus of autobiographical fiction, follows the entire arc of an independent woman's life in early twentieth-century Britain. It is one of the major works of the modernist period; indeed, it is considered by many a classic of modernist literature. In this book, Joanne Winning argues in this book, however, that Richardson's novels continue to be misunderstood in several important ways. Winning is the first critic to fully explore the issues of lesbian identity in the novels. Examining primary materials, manuscript drafts, and Richardson's previously unstudied correspondence, Winning demonstrates that Pilgrimage contains a carefully constructed, though concealed, subtext of lesbian desire and sexuality. The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson explores the ways in which Richardson used such cultural forms as sexology, psychoanalysis, and other lesbian and modernist literature of her time to create an intertextual dialogue about lesbian identity. Winning suggests that a sustained reading of lesbian sexuality in Pilgrimage is crucial to a more complete understanding of Richardson's long and sometimes difficult work. Winning also places Pilgrimage in the context of other works by female modernist writers that record lesbian identity. This approach, Winning suggests, is the first step toward recognizing and defining a literary movement that can be termed "lesbian modernism," as well as toward a deeper understanding of how lesbian modernist writers helped shape modernist literature as a whole.