The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post. ![]() Raine’s story along with Lister’s should be told. “Learned by Heart” is a moving, entertaining read. (Lister wrote one-sixth of her diaries in code to hide from homophobic eyes.) “I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs,” Lister wrote in a coded entry in her diary on Oct. “Because she looked into her heart and wrote about what she found there with unflinching precision,” Donoghue wrote in her “Guardian” essay. Lister had the sexual ethics of a bonobo, Donoghue continued, “lying to every lover as a matter of policy.” “There’s nothing noble about Anne Lister…,” Donoghue wrote of Lister in “The Guardian.” As Lister’s Barbara Stanwyck to Raine’s June Cleaver. Raine frequently comes across as loyal, passionate, but too needy and clingy. Unfortunately, as so often happens, Lister, the bad, outrageous girl, is far more interesting than Raine. And, that, sadly, Raine is writing from what is then called an “insane asylum.”Īs is evident from “The Pull of The Stars,” and her other historical novels, Donoghue has an unerring talent for creating fascinating tales out of true stories. It’s clear from this correspondence that Lister has (and will have) other lovers than Raine. “Learned by Heart” is heartbreaking because its chapters are intertwined with letters that Raine writes to Lister in 1815. One day, Lister and Raine, who call each other by their last names, alone in a church, conduct a marriage ceremony for themselves. ![]() Lister, known even at this young age for being too smart for her own good, is assigned to room with Raine - isolated from the other girls - in the tiny room they call “the Slope.” Donoghue skillfully illuminates how the girls’ friendship becomes sexual, passionate first love. When Lister arrives at the school, Raine’s world and personality are transformed. “She’s trained herself to wake at seven,” Donoghue writes, “just before the bell.” ![]() Aware of unspoken racial bias (against people who are part Indian and part English), she wants to blend in – to stay out of trouble in this school with its many rules. Prior to Lister’s arrival, Raine is mousy, rule abiding.īecause Raine’s from India, she sleeps alone in a small room. Raine arrives at the Manor School before Lister. Perhaps, for this reason, “Learned by Hand” focuses on Raine’s point of view. Through “Gentleman Jack” and her diaries (which are being digitalized), Lister, with her brilliance and charismatic personality, has become a queer culture icon. After her father and mother die, she’s left an orphan with a small inheritance. ![]() In an author’s note, Donoghue writes of a letter of Raine’s that refers to her as having “sprung from an illicit connection.” Another letter calls Raine a “lady of colour.” He and an Indian woman, whom he did not legally marry, had Raine. Her father, who was English, was a surgeon with the East India Company. Raine was born in Madras (now Chennai) in India. Much of the novel takes place in 1805-1806, when, at age 14 and 15, Lister and Raine were students at Miss Hargrave’s Manor School, a boarding school for girls in York. Raine is believed to have been Lister’s first lover. “Learned by Heart,” an intriguing historical novel by Emma Donoghue is based on the true story of the queer relationship of Lister and Eliza Raine.
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