I didn’t quite finish this week’s reading, but I got far enough to make an attempt at your thought questions. I was surprised to find myself sympathizing somewhat with Fuchsia. There was a moment I thought she was going to fall for Steerpike and I realized that I was really invested in her keeping her innocence, even if it is a crude and selfish innocence.

During the fire, I was also really surprised that Steerpike’s plan worked so smoothly. I knew that Titus would escape, but I was worried for Fuchsia and Dr. Prune. Irma’s behavior simply cracked me up. I keep seeing her as Fiona Shaw because I’ve seen publicity pictures from the BBC series.

I felt no sympathy at all for Sourdust, but I did have to say I got a certain malicious glee when Steerpike’s plans for being the next Sourdust were thwarted by the old man’s crippled 70-year-old son. As to the calf’s skull, I’m not sure what all that is about, though the mania for the completeness of the body makes sense to me in the context of the rest of Gormenghast ritual. I imagine it was Swelter who stole the skull, but I’m interested to find out if/when it crops back up.

I liked Keda at first because she seemed such a normal counterpoint to the insanity of Gormenghast, but I really disliked this whole section about her. I felt that the lovers’ fight was pointless, and unless her child can somehow restore equilibrium to Gormenghast, I don’t see the point in her narrative. Still, I have faith that Peake will draw the threads together.

Hi,
I was deliberately avoiding spoilers and ‘explanations’ of Keda’s experience and resulting actions when she returns to the Mud Dwellings – but since you ask, Jackie, here are some thoughts.
Looking closely at passages like: ‘the fear that had swept [Keda] died and her heart leapt with inexplicable joy and … left her with an earthless elation and a courage that she could not understand’, I recognized a state that we can find in poetry – think of Wordsworth: ‘My heart leaps up when I behold…’ – but almost never in novels.
Her unexpected, inexplicable and wholly unlooked-for experience is ecstasy. It’s a state that comes out of blue and is characterized by ‘generalized love towards everything and everybody, and notably to what is normally repulsive’ (Marghanita Laski) like the mangy dog. Keda ‘felt her heart was breaking with a love so universal that it drew into its atmosphere all things because they were; the evil, the good, the rich, the poor, the ugly, the beautiful, and the scratching of this little yellowish hound.’
The fruit of ecstasy is the realization that to live the whole of the life we are capable of is to live entirely in the present, ‘the NOW that fills us’. It gives a sense of ‘invulnerability before the world’ – of extraordinary freedom. ‘I am clear – clear!’ says Keda.
But coming down from this height is tough. Keda’s subsequent behaviour is fairly typical of the ecstatic.
Such an experience is rarely described in novels because it is essentially wordless and leaves no images – simply unimaginable (until it hits you). You have to experience it to recognize it.
Peake tried to describe it here, and did not quite pull it off (because it’s impossible). But it’s the nearest thing to succeeding that I have found in prose.
I wholly agree, Jackie: Peake ‘achieved an amazing piece of writing. I haven’t read anything that comes close to the vividness of the world he has created.’ It is one of the great books of English literature. Read it once, and it’s with you for life. As C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘With Gormenghast’ Peake created ‘a new universal.’
Enjoy!
(All my quotes except the Laski are from the Keda episode of TG.)