영어로 읽는 고전 _ 그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 새 이름
그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 『새 이름(A New Name)』은 20세기 초에 쓰인 장편 소설이다. 이야기의 중심에는 머레이 밴 렌슬레어(Murray Van Rensselaer)라는 부유한 청년이 있다. 그는 얼마 전 다시 만난 베시 채퍼렐(Bessie Chapparelle)이라는 소녀와 관련된 비극적인 자동차 사고의 여파와 정면으로 마주하게 된다. 자신의 무모한 행동이 가져온 죄책감의 무게에 짓눌리는 머레이의 모습을 따라가며, 작품은 구원과 정체성, 그리고 계층 간의 뚜렷한 간극이라는 주제를 깊이 있게 탐구한다.소설의 도입부에서 머레이는 블레이클리 병원의 차가운 복도 한쪽에서 초조하게 소식을 기다린다. 그가 일으킨 교통사고로 베시가 중상을 입고 사경을 헤매고 있기 때문이다. 그의 머릿속에는 자기혐오와 후회가 뒤엉켜 떠오르는데, 무모하게 차를 몰았던 자신의 선택은 물론, 과거에 자신에게 따뜻하게 대해 주었던 베시 어머니에게 끼칠 충격까지가 한꺼번에 머레이의 양심을 짓누른다. 마침내 베시가 숨을 거두었다는 소식이 전해지자, 그는 자신이 사실상 한 사람의 목숨을 빼앗은 살인자라는 차디찬 자각에 사로잡힌다. 그리고 그 끔찍한 현실로부터 도망치듯, 그는 자신의 모든 삶을 등진 채 무작정 어둠 속으로 달아난다.이렇듯 도입부는 머레이의 격렬한 내적 갈등과, 그를 베시 모녀와 결정적으로 갈라놓는 사회·경제적 간극을 인상적으로 부각시키며, 앞으로 펼쳐질 이야기에 묵직하고도 강렬한 분위기를 마련해 놓는다.
Classics Read in English _ A new name by Grace Livingston Hill
A New Name, an early twentieth-century novel by Grace Livingston Hill, opens upon the moral unraveling of a privileged young man named Murray Van Rensselaer, whose carelessness has set in motion a tragedy he is wholly unprepared to face. At the heart of the story stands his recent, fateful reunion with Bessie Chapparelle — a young woman of modest background — and the catastrophic automobile accident that comes to define everything that follows. Through Murray's anguished reckoning with guilt and consequence, Hill turns her attention to questions of redemption, identity, and the stark dividing line that wealth draws between human lives.
The novel begins in the hushed corridors of Blakeley Hospital, where Murray waits in mounting dread for word of the gravely injured Bessie. His thoughts circle in restless misery between self-reproach and shame: shame for the reckless driving that brought them here, and a deeper anguish over what the news will mean for Bessie's mother, a woman whose past kindness toward him now feels almost unbearable to recall. When at last the word of Bessie's death reaches him, the realization settles over him with chilling finality — that, in everything but the eye of the law, he has the blood of an innocent on his hands. Unable to bear the weight of what he has done, he flees, abandoning his name, his standing, and his entire former life in a single, desperate act of escape.
From this charged opening, Hill establishes both the moral urgency of her novel and the social distance that separates Murray from the world Bessie inhabited — a distance that the story's title quietly hints he will, in time, be forced to cross. The result is a deeply atmospheric beginning, taut with conscience and foreboding, that prepares the reader for a tale of judgment, transformation, and the possibility of being made wholly new.
Among the contents
Murray Van Rensselaer had been waiting for an hour and a quarter in the reception-room of the Blakeley Hospital.
He was not good at waiting. Things usually came at his call, or sometimes even anticipated his desires. It was incredible that he should suddenly find himself in such a maddening set of circumstances!
He still wore the great fur-lined overcoat in which he had arrived after the accident, but he seemed to be unaware of it as he paced excitedly up and down the stark leather-upholstered room.
Across the marble corridor he could just see the tip of white starched linen that was the cap of the uniformed person with double-lensed spectacles who sat at the roll-top desk and presided over this fiendish place.
Three times he had pranced pompously across the tessellated floor and demanded to know what had become of the patient he had brought in.
