Mr. Emerson’s Wife - Amy Belding Brown
by Zia ~ August 15th, 2005. Filed under: Books.
I’ve always preferred Thoreau to Emerson. Apparently, Emerson’s wife felt the same way.
Okay, so perhaps that’s not completely true. Brown “explores the ‘cracks’ in the historical record, the places we do not–cannot–know. [Mr. Emerson’s Wife] tells what ‘might have been.’”
And “what might have been” makes a fine story, indeed.
Lydia Jackson meets Emerson at a reception, and flattered by his interest in her mind, agrees to marry him. They remove to Concord, despite her reservations, and she is quickly disappointed in her marriage. He is often gaspingly cruel to her in his indifference and his ongoing adulation of his first wife, now dead of tuberculosis.
When the young Thoreau comes to live with them, a mutual feeling springs up between the two. At first prompted by jealousy of others coming between them and the esteemed Emerson, it grows into something independent…and later dies of its own accord. And Lydia, in a stunning scene towards the end of the book when she and Emerson are old and Thoreau is dead, says she loved Emerson all along…
Brown’s juxtaposition of the ideals of the Transcendalists compared to reality is haunting. Moving, beautifully-written. Recommend.