Minutes of the 415th Meeting of
The Lower Widdecombe Pensioners Reading Group.
March 5th 2005

-In attendance: Rev M. Hummock, Gorgoroth, Mr. Codds, Reginald Sward, Ms Wragg

Apologies: Lord Clitheroe, Tobias Peeps, Mr. Simpkins.

This week's text under consideration: The Turn of the Screw

What with last week's rather abortive attempt to fully get to grips with Eliot's Middlemarch - largely to do with Mr. Codd's refusal to acknowledge the chairperson's exposition of the influence of Eliot's tour de force of Victorian provincialism on post-punk agit band New Model Army - we've decided to retreat to safer ground with one of James's best known short stories.
Reginald Sward opens the proceedings, suggesting that in TOS James anticipates many of the themes that would become common currency in modernist fiction: the representation of human consciousness, the fragmentation of belief systems and the psychoanalytic deconstruction of the Victorian mind. Mr Codds' opaque rejoinder - that 'It's a precaution against the vapours of an overactive imagination, most like brought on by the green sickness,' - provokes a lively debate between himself and Ms Wragg concerning the representation of the irrational and the female consciousness in Victorian literature. After a somewhat pointed jibe about attics and locks, directed by Codds at Ms Wragg, Gorgoroth picks up the reference and attempts to get the debate back on track with a lengthy and rather unusual discourse concerning Aerosmith's 1975 offering Toys in the Attic and it's evident borrowings from the Jamesian oeuvre. A slightly undignified scuffle ensues in which Reginald Sward's walking frame becomes entangled in Gorgoroth's patterned bodice. The melee is brought to an abrupt halt by a loud scream, which on investigation proves to be the work of Ms Wragg, who stands gaping at the church-hall window, her trembling digits pointing toward a pale and ghastly figure looking in. Some particularly hair-raising moments ensue, with much wailing and gnashing and cries from amongst our congregation, though happily further investigation proves the demonic presence to be none more sinister than Lord Clitheroe's butler, Simpkins. Having imbibed the best part of bottle of of Gorgoroth's homemade sloe gin, Simpkins has once again got his dates wrong - the nuns at St. Alfrege's using the church hall for aerobics on Thursday evenings at this time of year. Taking this intrusion as a sign that our literary debates are over for this evening, we revive Simpkins in the old stone trough by the church wall, and repair to the Queen's Legs for a post-debate snifter.


AOB: Rev Hummock to review the on line parish calendar.

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