The Rosemary Tree: Week 3

Collecting Goudge's Literary References

Trollope, Potter, Austen and Goudge on my Goudge book case.

“It was a small library entirely lined with books. Michael gave an exclamation of pleasure. They’d have Cervantes there. They’d have Chaucer and Malory, Trollope and Jane, and all the writers in whom he delighted…”

Elizabeth Goudge, The Rosemary Tree, ch 5

Elizabeth Goudge wrote The Rosemary Tree full of literary references. There are so many, it is leading me to wonder whether it is her book with the most references. Whether it is or no, it is her reaching back in the literature of her own childhood that makes for such a rich characterization in her own story.

The Rosemary Tree was published in 1956, at a moment when literary fashion was moving on quickly from the things of the past. The “old classics” were looked down on by the Modern literary movement.

Bloomsbury Academic reports:

“There was a problem with the new type of fiction that emerged in the 1950s by writers such as Kingsley Amis and John Wain, which ‘angrily’ expressed dissatisfaction with the residual literary elites and cultural hierarchies while employing a style of plain-talking realism. According to Angus Wilson, for all the effort to move beyond the influence of modernism, the ironic thing about such post-war social novels was that their depictions of characters remained inferior…”¹

Yet, Goudge knew that if she packed her books with references to older styles of literature, she could ground them in her readers’ imaginations using these older characters and stories from English-speaking culture. She used children’s books, Medieval tales, Victorian novels, and modern poetry. She referenced hymns, a Spanish novel and the greatest Regency-era author. All these and more she packed in to The Rosemary Tree, and we will look at them today.

Chaucer, TS Eliot, Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope and Beatrix Potter are all mentioned in The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge.

Here are eleven separate literary works Goudge references in chapters 1-8, and a bit of discussion about them and their authors:

“He suppressed the last of his laughter. It was unkind to laugh at these amiable lunatics, and this one, when he had stooped from his great spindly height to launch the hedge sparrow upon its journey, had looked exactly like Michael's idea of Don Quixote, "the luminary and mirror of all knight-errantry, and for that gentle and melancholy knight Michael had always had the greatest affection. Indeed, he was almost his favorite character in literature. .. And he had been created by a man in prison... The thought of the great Cervantes, "the maimed perfection, and of his sufferings so triumphantly endured, was one of the things that had helped to keep him sane many times, he imagined.”

The Rosemary Tree, ch 1

Wilhelm Marstrand "Don Quixote and Sancho Panza" (ca. 1847) Nivaagaard museum, Denmark.

Don Quixote by Cervantes

Though many of her references are of the British greats, the most consistent reference in this novel is of a Spanish tale. John Wentworth is patterned on Don Quixote in many ways which are mentioned throughout the book. And the author’s circumstances are also relevant to Michael’s character. Goudge has used this one to the full!

Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. Considered a founding work of Western literature, it is often labelled as the first modern novel and the greatest work ever written.²

Also, here is an article which has an interesting look at many different depictions of the famous Don Quixote.