영어로 읽는 고전 _ 그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 마샤 스카일러
그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 『마샤 스카일러(Marcia Schuyler)』는 20세기 초에 쓰인 장편 소설이다. 이야기의 중심에는 이제 막 어른의 문턱에 다다른 어린 소녀 마샤가 있다. 그녀는 언니 케이트(Kate)의 결혼을 며칠 앞둔 시점에서, 가족이 자신에게 부과하는 기대와 가슴속 깊은 곳에 자라 가는 자기만의 꿈 사이를 조심스레 오간다. 작품은 마샤라는 한 소녀의 눈을 통해, 사랑과 희생, 그리고 그 시대의 엄격한 사회적 규범 속에서 한 사람이 자신의 정체성을 찾아 가는 여정을 잔잔하지만 깊이 있게 풀어낸다.소설의 도입부에서 우리는 햇살이 가득 내려앉은 들판에서 야생 검은딸기를 따고 있는 마샤를 만나게 된다. 그녀는 다가올 언니의 결혼식 준비로 분주한 집안 분위기 속에서도, 마음 한구석에서 자신만의 작은 소망들을 가만히 꿈꾸어 본다. 자기에게도 새 드레스가 한 벌쯤 있었으면 좋겠다는 어린 마음은, 그녀가 아직 얼마나 순수하고 어린 소녀인지를 다정하게 드러내 보이며, 동시에 케이트와 매력적인 청년 데이비드 스패퍼드(David Spafford)의 결혼 준비라는 어른들의 세계와 묘한 대조를 이룬다.이야기가 차츰 펼쳐지면서, 마샤 자신도 미처 인정하지 못한 데이비드를 향한 어렴풋한 마음과, 자기중심적인 언니와 무뚝뚝한 새어머니에 대한 답답함이 한층 또렷이 드러난다. 그리고 이러한 미묘한 긴장은, 그토록 완벽해 보였던 케이트의 결혼 계획이 서서히 균열을 일으키며 무너지기 시작할 때 본격적으로 모습을 드러낼 복잡한 사건들의 자리를 미리 마련해 놓는다. 이렇듯 도입부는 가족의 기대와 자기만의 꿈 사이에서 흔들리는 마샤의 내면 풍경을 섬세하게 비추며, 앞으로의 이야기 속에서 그녀가 분명한 인격적 성장을 이루어 가리라는 사실을 부드럽게 예고한다.
Classics Read in English _ Marcia Schuyler by Grace Livingston Hill
Marcia Schuyler, an early twentieth-century novel by Grace Livingston Hill, gathers its quiet emotional power around a young girl just stepping onto the threshold of womanhood. Set in the days leading up to her elder sister Kate's wedding, the story watches as Marcia moves cautiously between the duties her household lays upon her and the half-formed, tender hopes that have begun to take shape inside her own heart. Through Marcia's clear, observant gaze, Hill turns her attention to themes of love and self-sacrifice, and to the difficult art of discovering one's own identity within the closely drawn lines of nineteenth-century social expectation.
The novel opens upon a sunlit meadow where Marcia is gathering wild blackberries, her thoughts drifting freely even amid the busy preparations that have begun to fill the family home. Her small, half-shy longing for a pretty new dress of her own gently reveals just how young and unworldly she still is, and quietly sets her childlike inner world against the grown-up landscape of her sister's coming marriage to the charming David Spafford. In these early pages the contrast feels almost weightless, but it is precisely from such modest beginnings that Hill builds her real foundation.
As the narrative gathers itself, the unspoken — and as yet only half-recognized — tenderness Marcia feels toward David begins to press more clearly against her frustrations with a self-absorbed sister and an emotionally distant stepmother. Hill allows that tension to remain just beneath the surface, where it begins quietly to prepare the ground for the upheaval that will follow once Kate's apparently flawless wedding plans begin, with startling suddenness, to unravel. In the very rhythm of these opening pages — the daydreams in the sunlit field, the small frustrations, the unspoken affections — Hill sketches with delicate strokes the inner life of a young woman caught between obligation and dream, leaving the reader in no doubt that the story to come will become, above all, the slow and clear-eyed shaping of Marcia's character.
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The sun was already up and the grass blades were twinkling with sparkles of dew, as Marcia stepped from the kitchen door.
She wore a chocolate calico with little sprigs of red and white scattered over it, her hair was in smooth brown braids down her back, and there was a flush on her round cheeks that might have been but the reflection of the rosy light in the East. Her face was as untroubled as the summer morning, in its freshness, and her eyes as dreamy as the soft clouds that hovered upon the horizon uncertain where they were to be sent for the day.
Marcia walked lightly through the grass, and the way behind her sparkled again like that of the girl in the fairy-tale who left jewels wherever she passed.
A rail fence stopped her, which she mounted as though it had been a steed to carry her onward, and sat a moment looking at the beauty of the morning, her eyes taking on that far-away look that annoyed her stepmother when she wanted her to hurry with the dishes, or finish a long seam before it was time to get supper.
