The role of literature in the story

Part of your essay must focus on the role of literature in “Her Share of Sorrow” by Tessa Hadley.

For Ruby, literature is the main way in which she manages to initiate the journey of self-discovery. Before coming across the Victorian novels in the attic in the holiday house in France, Ruby’s reading experiences have been dreadful: “The ones she’d been given as presents, or been forced to read in class, had seemed too drearily like her own real-life childish routines of home and school and family.” (ll. 57-58)

For her, books were something she was “forced” (l. 57) to read and which she simply did not enjoy because they reminded her of obligations and routine.

The books she finds in France, however, are something different: “She hadn’t had any idea that books could transport you like this – into something better.” (ll. 58-59)

The Victorian novels stir her imagination and make her discover new realities. For instance, the books she usually read presented children as being joyful and never getting worse from an illness, whereas the novel “East Lynne” presented a child dying:

She was astonished when little William died. Children always got better in books, didn’t they? (...)The audacity of it took Ruby’s breath away, as if something raw and wild had been dragged from where it was concealed...