Literary references in ‘I for Isobel’
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The Little Match Girl – p.6
Sherlock Holmes: A Case of identity – p.7
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The Complete Works of Arthur Conan Doyle – p.8
Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – p.13
The Wide, Wide World – p.33 (Isobel’s spiritual journey begins)
Twelfth Night – p.36 (‘Shakespeare belonged to Isobel…Shakespeare belonged to everybody, like God’)
Lives of the Saints & The Oxford Dictionary of Saints – p.41
Shakespeare, Byron, Keats and Shelley – p.50
The Last Chronicle of Barset p.56
Trollope – p.56
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‘…whenever she wasn’t reading, no matter what was happening in the outside world, she was
conscious of being in exile from Barsetshire.’
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf – p.56
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‘Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to
conceive the things which are really mere commonplace of existence. If we could fly out of that
window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer
things which are going on…’
‘…having a modest ambition to meet life, to be adequate. She had an idea of a life of her own, like the
room of her own, where she chose the furniture – no rages, not black passions, no buffeting from
the world.’
‘…she did not know, not within an hour, what time it was, which marred the symbolic gesture or
made it more symbolic still’
David Copperfield – p. 74 (the character of Mr. Micawbar)
Framley Parsonage – p.78
Not So Deep as a Well – p.79 Dorothy Parker
The Prime Minister – p.89
W.H. Auden
o ‘It’s no use turning nasty,
It’s no use turning good.
You’re what you are and nothing you do
Will get you out of the wood.’ – p.146
Stephen Spender
Letter to Lord Byron (Auden’s) – p.91
Don Juan – p.93
Can You Forgive Her? – p.100
Silas Marner – p.101
Middlemarch – p.101
George Eliot – p.101
George Meredith – p.101
MacNeice – p. 104
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky – p.115
The Brothers Karamazov – p.117
Marie Celeste – p.124
Miss Havisham – p.148
The Lady of Shallot – p.151
o ‘His cool, inexpressive voice made her think with regret of the blue and gold dream’ – p.151
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Light in August by Faulkner – p.151
Words of the Saints – p.152
Plato (152ish - 178)
Turgenev (p.178)
The Book is Gone (179)
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It was a present for a real girl (Pinocchio) Maeve – alter ego.
‘right behavior first’ (p.60)
‘I’m not here. I’m in Czechoslovakia with Mr. Vorocic’ p.66
‘It’s alive. It breathes!’ (p.78)
Isobel as a preposition (p.95)
Joseph
‘She was really alive now.’ (p. 104)
‘But oh, Joseph, why do they hate me? If it was just the Eleventh Commandment I could bear it.’ The
Eleventh Commandment was Thou shalt not be different.’ – p.110
‘Couldn’t she have pretended?’ – p. 134
‘You could change your name, have your face altered, change your country and your language, but in the
end you would resurrect your self.’ – p.146
‘Why can’t you be yourself a little more?’ – p.149
Sister Ignatius
St. Perpetua (freedom)
Saint Augustine (fear)
Saint John of the Cross (p.157 – p.163)
Saint Thomas More (p.163 – p.164)
Saint Joan, Saint Agnes, Saint Isabel (p.163)
Reading book on Saints: ‘…there was one message that came through, always: give up, sacrifice’ p.42
TITLE: I as advocate. ‘You can’t be expected to look after yourself at your age. Who else is going to look out
for you, for God’s sake?’ (p.71) Aunt Nolene is for Isobel – ‘You will get nothing out of this world unless you
fight for it.’ (p.71)
Metaphor of the baby in the oven – Sylvia Plath?? She feels like the baby – nobody came in time to save her
from her parents (p.177)
‘Idiot wants a mother. Idiot can’t have one. Life is difficult.’ (p.121)
INERTIA – p.152