House with the Green Shutters
讀書樂編號：4255
推介人： 黃韻玲校友
After reading “House with the Green Shutters”, I could finally realize why George Douglas Brown described it as ‘a brutal and bloody work’ and why it sold so well. Perhaps, this “semi-biography” was truly written in response to the ‘sentimental slop’ then. George Douglas Brown was born in 1869 in Ayrshire in a local farming family. He was raised by his mother, and so was very unreasonable. But, he obtained a bursary to the University of Glasgow and later a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. And Brown moved to London to work in the profession of journalism after his mother passed away. He has really created a good deal of journals and started working on this book in the fall of 1900. It gained great prestige and was even brought into comparison to Balzac and Stevenson. Unfortunately, he died from pneumonia in 1902, when he was only 33 years old. Due to his illegitimacy, Brown was rejected by his father in the village of Barbie loosely based on Ochiltree in Ayrshire. John Gourlay was a merchant in the village of Barbie and, with his success, the villagers were jealous of him, as shown by his famous house with green shutters. He was the strongest person in his family, and so bullied them, especially his son with a good sensitivity and talent but weak body. He declined the railway and didn’t want to get accustomed to the industrailisation of Ayrhire, which was on the increase, and finally this resulted in murder, suicide, and the deterioration of his family.
