Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840-1920

(Jacob Rumans) #1

‘Going Out, Going Alone’ 69


Wee Katie does not make it to the pictures, yet the poignancy of the story lies not
in her anguish at being denied this isolated treat, but in the general impoverish-
ment of her imagination as a consequence of fi xating on the simulated pleasures
promised by the fi lm, and the novelties she associates with modernity in gen-
eral. Her poverty, oppressive working life and lack of education – all realities of
rural life for women – of course have formed her as such. Still, urban modernity
as Findlater represents it promises no means of escape or meaningful identity
construction, but threatens to further restrict Katie’s powers of thought. She is
fi rst presented as a creature that ‘seemed scarcely to have a life of her own at all’.^48
Th is is as much due to her exhausting work routine as her lack of ‘vision’. She
remains unmoved by a view across the sea to the Isle of Skye which the narrator
compares to the ‘the shores of Heaven as weary mortals think of these’. Instead,
‘when released from her toil in the byre [Katie] would stand and gaze out at the
wonder of beauty without a single exclamation of surprise or pleasure’.^49 What
Katie is looking for instead is the arrival of the newspaper, the sound of the tink-
er’s pipes, or any other mass-produced novelty which represents Katie’s humble,
but insistent, craving for modernity’s amusements.
While ‘Th e Pictures’ presents an unromanticized rural, rather than a stereo-
typically bucolic community, a kind of elevated pastoral vision runs through the
story. Th e notion of natural beauty is seen as an essential part of understanding
the rural and its appeal, so lacking a pastoral vision makes Katie metaphorically
blind to both her surroundings and more complex thought processes which
Findlater links with responsiveness to natural beauty. She states, ‘grand pictures
were to be seen in these winter storms by anyone with seeing eyes: but Katie’s
eyes were holden’, and as a consequence, ‘no distressing thoughts of the terrors
of space or the insignifi cance of man’s place in it visited Katie’s brain when she
looked out of the skylight’.^50 Th e meaning of ‘pictures’ is evidently twofold: while
natural ‘pictures’ elevate consciousness and thought by alerting the viewer to the
desolation and beauty of the world, cinematic pictures off er diversions which
excite, but do not sustain, and ultimately stultify the imagination. Although
Katie believes that she will come back from the pictures transformed – ‘a new
creature’ – the sense of irony that runs through the story makes such a radical
transformation doubtful, meaning the real denial of her desire to see the pictures
can be read as a metaphor for mass culture as a continuous deferral of desire.^51
When Katie tries to convince a hard-hearted elderly local to cover her duties at
the farm by talking eff usively about what she supposes the pictures to be like, it is
worth noting that Katie’s words and explanation are not given, although the rest
of their conversation is meticulously recorded.^52 Katie’s imagination may be able
to overreach reality in concocting vague and fantastical ideas about the pictures
and their revolutionary potential in her life, yet in all other respects her thought
and vision are debilitated, meaning that she is unable to see things which, the
narrator suggests, might enable her to perceive more clearly her own place in the
world and the injustices of her situation.

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