Life Lines

A Shared Reading activity pack

to read wherever you are
Issue 58

For more Shared Reading, poems and texts,

email us at: coronavirus@thereader.org.uk
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“What is all this juice and all this joy?”

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring

The Reader is a charity which usually brings people together to listen

to stories, extracts and poems in free, weekly Shared Reading
groups. In these Life Lines activity packs we hope to offer everyone
the same comfort, meaning and connection through great literature
that our reading groups provide – wherever it finds you.
Each Life Lines pack will bring you some of a story and a poem,
which you can read in your own time. Along with the reading, you’ll
find a selection of thoughts and feelings shared by other fellow
readers about the chosen pieces. We suggest that reading the poem
or the story out loud is a great way to fully immerse yourself in the
reading experience and discover your own personal connections with
the material. It may feel strange but it does make a difference, so do
please give it a try!

It has felt like a long slow Spring this year so I am trying to

encourage it with some heat from Chapter 7 of Adam Bede by George
Eliot! While visiting Mr and Mrs Poyser’s Hall Farm with Mr Irwine,
Captain Arthur Donnithorne has asked to see Mrs Poyser’s renowned
dairy where her husband’s niece, Hetty Sorrel, is making butter. But is
it the dairy or Hetty herself who is the centre of attraction and if so,
why? And what of Hetty herself? Feel free to make notes on your own
thoughts and feelings as you go , perhaps marking words or
sentences that particularly stand out to you…

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Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain

Donnithorne entered the dairy and spoke to her; but it
was not at all a distressed blush, for it was
inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with
sparkles from under long curled dark eyelashes; and
while her aunt was discoursing to him about the
limited amount of milk that was to be spared for
butter and cheese so long as the calves were not all
weaned, and the large quantity but inferior quality
of milk yielded by the short-horn, which had been
bought on experiment, together with other matters
which must be interesting to a young gentleman who
would one day be a landlord, Hetty tossed and
patted her pound of butter with quite a self-
possessed, coquettish air, slily conscious that no turn
of her head was lost.
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to
make fools of themselves in various styles, from the
desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of
beauty which seems made to turn the heads not
only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of
women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very
small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises
with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to
toddle and to engage in conscious mischief – a
beauty with which you can never be angry, but that
you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend
the state of mind into which it throws you. Hetty
Sorrel’s was that sort of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs
Poyser, who professed to despise all personal
attractions and intended to be the severest of
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mentors, continually gazed at Hetty’s charms by the
Slide 4

sly, fascinated in spite of herself; and after administering such a

scolding as naturally flowed from her anxiety to do well by her
husband’s niece – who had no mother of her own to scold her,
poor thing! – she would often confess to her husband, when
they were safe out of hearing, that she firmly believed, ‘the
naughtier the little huzzy behaved, the prettier she looked.’

Pause for Thought…

Earlier in this chapter Hetty is described as a ‘distractingly pretty
girl of seventeen’ and here we begin to see the effect she has on
those around her. She doesn’t seem to be innocent of knowing
the effect she has – in the first paragraph there are lots of
‘smiles and dimples’ and she is ‘slily conscious that no turn of her
head was lost’. It feels like there might be two conversations
going on here doesn’t it? The conversation between Mrs Poyser
and Captain Donnithorne about the technical details of the farm,
and the non-verbal conversation between Hetty’s tossing and
patting of her butter with all the added sparkles and
Donnithorne’s attentive gaze?
I am struck in the second paragraph by the line ‘a beauty with
which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush
for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it
throws you,’ talking of Hetty’s particular kind of beauty. This line
feels contradictory, ‘never be angry, but that you feel ready to
crush’ – it feels like there is some hidden violence there held
back, some tension maybe? Why might beauty might us feel like
this? Maybe this links to what Eliot is saying about men making
‘fools of themselves’, but women are not excluded, as we see
Mrs Poyser too is ‘fascinated in spite of herself’. What is it about
some kinds of beauty that affect us in this way and why?
It makes me a bit worried for Hetty, especially as Donnithorne is
a future landlord. I wonder what you feel? Let’s carry on…. 4
Slide 5

It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty’s cheek was like a
rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her
large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and
that her curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap
while she was at work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her
forehead, and about her white shell-like ears; it is of little use for
me to say how lovely was the contour of her pink and white
neckerchief, tucked into her low plum-coloured stuff bodice, or
how the linen butter-making apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to
be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such charming
lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled buckled shoes
lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when
empty of her foot and ankle; - of little use, unless you have seen a
woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for
otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely
woman, she would not in the least resemble that distracting kitten-
like maiden. I might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring
day, but if you had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in
straining your eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering
through the still lanes when the fresh-opened blossoms, fill them
with a sacred, silent beauty like that of fretted aisles, where would
be the use of my descriptive catalogue? I could never make you
know what I meant by a bright spring day. Hetty’s was a springtide
beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed,
gamboling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence – the
innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being
incline for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe
steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in
the middle of a bog.
And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a
pretty girl is thrown in making up butter – tossing movements that
give a charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the
round white neck; little patting and rolling movements with the
palm of the hand, and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot
at all be effected without a great play of the pouting mouth and the
dark eyes. And then the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh
charm – it is so pure, so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould
with such a beautiful firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light!
Moreover, Hetty was particularly clever at making up the butter; it
was the one performance of hers that her aunt allowed to pass
without severe criticism; so she handled it with all the grace that
belongs to mastery.
Pause for more thought….I love that ‘soft roguishness’ in the first
paragraph here, and all the description of her clothes, all the ‘pink and
white’ and ‘plum-coloured’ bodice making Hetty seem good enough 5
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to eat, which is perhaps what Captain Donnithorne is wanting to do! I

wonder what those lines about Spring make you feel? I know I have
been loving the ‘fresh-opened blossoms’ of this May time, and a week
yesterday I saw my first ascending lark, which took my breath away.
These things have felt so precious in the strange and indigestible year
we have all had, so I feel I have some sense of the power of Hetty’s
beauty. I wonder what you might have seen this Spring that could add to
what is invoked here? I love the line, ‘Hetty’s was a springtide beauty’ –
Eliot could just have written ‘a spring beauty’, but the addition of ‘tide’
seems to bring in something else doesn’t it? A sense of time maybe, that
spring is tidal like a wave that will wash in and then recede? I wonder
what this brings to how we see and feel about Hetty?
In the second paragraph it’s as if we get a close up on Hetty – I wonder if
this is because the Captain is looking even more intently, or whether
Eliot is trying to get us to see more clearly? I’m struck by that word,
‘performance’ - I wonder what associations that word has for you? It
makes me wonder about Hetty herself and what is going on for her
inside, in her heart and mind – there is so much focus on the external
isn’t there? Is this part of what beauty does to us, keeping us on the
surface of things? I wonder what the relationship is between Hetty and
her beauty? I’m reminded of Mrs Poyser’s description of Hetty as having
‘no mother of her own’ and again I feel a bit concerned about who there
is to guide her? I wonder what your thoughts are?

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Time for a poem ….

We’ll pick up with another story again in our next

issue, but now a pause for some poetry. Poetry isn’t
always easy for everyone to get going with. In our
Shared Reading groups we read a poem out loud a few
times, to give ourselves a bit of time to hear it
aloud. Give this a go yourself and see if it helps
you to feel comfortable with the words, even if
you’re still not sure what it’s all about!

We aren’t looking to find an answer here, or what the

person writing it might have meant when they wrote
it. We’re just looking to see if any feelings or
ideas come up when we read it – and often we find
that the more time you allow yourself to simply be
with the poem, the more thoughts and feelings will
come through.

One of the keys is to enjoy yourself: take your time,

read it out loud, have a think about any bits you
like, or that puzzle you, then… have another read!

This week’s Featured Poem is Spring by Gerard Manley

Hopkins. I suppose it takes up the idea of
that,‘Springtide beauty’of Hetty’s and asks some
different questions, like the one quoted at the top
of this pack, ‘What is all this juice and all this
joy?’

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Slide 8

Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.-Have, get, before it cloy,

Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

I love the sense of time speeding up in the Spring portrayed here, the weeds
‘shoot’, the ‘blue is all in a rush’ with the ‘racing’ lambs. It make me think of that
expression, ‘the sap is rising’ - a friend helped me listen to this one spring –
you really can hear it! That feeling of things quickening is very strong – this year
maybe we’ve been waiting even more avidly than usual for Spring to do it’s
thing and for us to come to life again too? The suggestion in the second verse
is that ‘all this juice and all this joy’ is a reminder or ‘strain’ of the original Garden
of Eden – why might this be do you think? I love that simple instruction, ‘Have,
get, before it cloy’ – and then we get the rest of the thought in the next verse
with ‘Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning’. Whether we are
religious or not, there is a sense of the freshness of Spring into the’ fall’ of
Autumn isn’t there, inscribed in our seasons?
I’m drawn to that ‘rinse and wring’ in the first verse, some sense of being
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cleaned thoroughly – I wonder what associations it holds for you?
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We’ve left this page blank for you to make notes,

draw a picture, have a go at writing yourself or jot
down something you’d like to tell us…

Slide 10
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