This raises food-for-thought for me, about how are mental creations of people can become more real than their actual physical bodies/presence. Masha is so overwhelmed with grief that she is unconscious for 10 days! then lingers in the hospital for days more, finally returning to her studies only to stop making an effort and letting her grades slide. And, of course, there is no phoning or even the sending of photos. While Masha is at the school, for example, five students die during a scarlet fever epidemic. Also, this is an era where people, of all ages, die much more frequently than they do now. Yet when mom dies, Masha has not seen her mother for eight years and these were the years when she grew from child to older teen, making memories more distant. The two were extremely close and the whole having to leave at the age of nine-for nine years-would have been a traumatic rupture triggering the clinging to memories of all Masha left behind. Masha's reaction to the death of her mother. The author writes about this time so comfortably that, reading the book, though it is filled with so much that is new because the place and era as used in a novel were relatively new to me, I felt like an insider rather than a newcomer. Though Mary Atkins' school was in Northern California in the 1850's-1860's, the similarities and differences are informative and interesting.
Must confess, part of this interest comes from having recently written a biography of Mary Atkins, an early owner of the school that became Mills College in California. How, specifically, a wealthy girls school operated, what the students and teachers were like, how the students treated each other, their concerns and activities, etc. The not speaking of the native language, Russian, by the wealthy, as if its the poorest of English cockney. The concerns of the people: The men lost in the war of 1812, often leaving estates that become impoverished since they are gone. Really enjoyed this peek into the world of St.
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