24.5.2009

A Tale of Two Plots

 

    A Tale of Two Plots

http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/%C3%81ratugur%20s%C3%AD%C3%B0an.mp3


    This case involves the furore that broke out over 2 books which were published 50 years apart in different parts of the world yet have so many points in common that claims of plagiarism were levelled, claims hotly denied by one of the authors involved, Colleen McCullough. The books in question are M's the Ladies of Missalongbi and the earlier The Blue Castle by Canada's Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Cables.

    Consider the plots.

    The heroine of The Ladies is Miss Hurlingford, a plain 30 year old spinster who lives with her mother and elderly aunt in a small pre WWl town in the Blue Mountains, west of Sidney. Througout her life she has been afraid of offending theHurlingford's clan's opinions and prejudices. her only pleasure in life is her visits to the local lending library, where she borrows romantic novels. She suffers from pains around her heart and is sent to see a specialist. He tells her the pains are not serious, but she finds an unaddressed letter on his desk, telling a patient ahe has no more than a year to live. Missy decides that she will live her life as though she had received the letter. It liberates her, ridding her of her inhibitions. She begins to speak her mind. She also falls in love with the mysterious John Smith, a local recluse with a shady past, a rugged red-haired man She shows him the letter and asks him to marry her for the short time she has left. Startled, he nevertheless agrees. Now the plot of The Blue Castle. The heroine is Valancy Stirling homely 29 year old spinster who lives with her domineering mother and an elderly cousin in a small Ontario town. She has spent her life being patronized by the Stirling clan's opinions and prejudices. She is totally without status or independence. Her mother is even reluctant to let her walk to the library alone. She consults a doctor about pains around the heart. He treats her in off-hand manner and later informs her by letter she has severe angina and no more than a year to live. This news liberates her and she decides to live for herself and have some fun. She falls in love with a mysterious reclusive bachelor, Barney Snaith, a rugged red haired man with a bad reputation. Valancy shows him the letter and proposes to him. Startled, he agrees to marry her. When valancy discovers the letter was a mistake, she tells all.

    Both men turn out to be other than they appear. Smith is, in fact a wealthy landowner, Snaith the son of a millionaire. In both stories the couples live happily ever after.

    Canadian journalist Maureen Garvie broke the story of the 2 plots, but did not raise the possibility of coincidence. Yet it seems incredible, that McCullough a highly successful and imaginative author would copy somebody elses work. -I'm not that stupid. It hurts that people would say that I was that bloody stupid, she told the Sidney Sunday Telegraph on 21 feb. 1988. -It might have been subconsciously therem but it's not plagiarism. I am not a thief and I have never been a thief. Later that year she told the Weekend Australian: -It is something I never thought would happen to me. I remember reading the Blue Castle when I was 10 years old and I definately didn't take anything from it-and if there were any similarities between the 2 books it was from my subconscious. In a further interview with the Sidney Morning Herald Miss McC. also admitted she had based the novel on her own experience. -I'm no Miss Australia to look at, I never was and it was because of my own personal experience that I have had a particular fascination with the old maid, she said. 4 or 5 of her novels have featured unmarried women as heroines or villains. -The life I gave Missy is based on my own experiences and those of my mother, who really had a tough time of it-if you look inside the cover you'll see that the book is devoted to her. She also said that the idea of a woman trying to catch a man on the basis that she was dying had come to her a long time ago because I met yet another woman who did just that.

    The key would seem to lie in the fact that McC. had read the other novel, eventhough it was 40 years earlier. The brain and its abilities remains a largely unknown quantity and her belief that it was her imagination and her own personal experiences and feelings providing those details, even the plot, is quite acceptable.

    Consider some more details.

    Both heroines work at useless tasks Valancy piecing quilts, Missy hemming linen.

    Both must eat porridge daily for breakfast and dress only in brown, which they both hate.

    Both also have to wear unfashionable sailor hats. Each has an identical high-necked, long-sleeved sexless nightgown... and so it goes on.

    Nancy Seitz, who co-edited M's work in America says:

    - Yes it is puzzling and worruing. I have to admit that there are striking similarities.

    Her British editor Rosemary Cheetham says:

    - Of all the writers I know, Colleen McCullough is the one I would least suspect of any sort of plagiarism. The nature of the woman is so fiercely independent and formidable it would be complete anathema to her. She is extraordinarily original and bubbling over with ideas. A final point on this: during an argument about whether this M. indident could even be considered a coincidence, my attention was drawn to the case of the Scottish poet Grieve who wrote under the pseudonym MacDiarmid. His most anthologized poem does not appear in his Collected Poems, published in 1962, since it was revealed that it is versification oa anothe writer's prose.