At the beginning of Flight Alice is happy to leave her Grandfather and get married, but the grandfather isn’t too sure and is very possessive because she is the last granddaughter to leave home (‘last to fly from the nest’). But he sees sense when she brings him another pigeon and tells him:
‘You must shut it up for a bit, until it knows this is his home’.
She is telling her grandfather that when she has settled in with Steven she will have a new home but will visit regularly to her old home. He furthermore realises that it’s a bit like letting his pigeons go for the first time, because you’re never sure whether they will fly home or not. Also at this point Alice realises that she will be shut away for a bit and the thought of marriage is not as appealing as she thought it was going to be.
Malachi’s Cove is set on a wild, rocky cove on the coast of Cornwall in the 19th century. It is important to set the scene in detail and that’s what Trollope has done, devoting a whole paragraph to it, he is also speaking in first person so you feel like your there and it makes it more personal. The cove plays an important role in this story, as it expresses Mally’s character and how she doesn’t want anyone to enter her life particularly Barty Gunliffe.
‘He had set on his thieving son to destroy her in this wicked way’, this was explaining how the framer Gunliffe had got his son to collect and seaweed from the cove and how Mally despised him for it. The cove is described as, ‘narrow, steep, hard to enter’; Mally will not open up and is difficult to enter. It also represents her appearance as ‘wild, rugged’; this is what the villagers think of Mally.
Flight is set in a garden where the grandfather is dealing with his pigeons and Alice is swinging on the garden gate. It is a peaceful atmosphere, but it soon changes when he sees her looking for something; ‘ the mood shifted’. The birds reflect Alice’s and her grandfathers’ relationship, when the grandfather sees Alice happy he gets the pigeon out and is ready to set it free but when he realises that she’s looking for Steven, he soon snatches back the bird;
‘He deliberately held out his wrist for the bird to take flight, and caught it again at the moment it spread its wings’.
The bird is acting like Alice because it is straining to be released and set free. Like Alice is trying to be set free but is emotionally stopped by her over protective grandfather.
The first impressions of Mally is made by the narrator and how he saw her:
‘Wild looking, almost unearthly creature, with wild-flowing, black, uncombed hair, small in stature, with small hands and bright black eyes’.
But then the villagers thought she was a thorough little vixen, and she had no friends to prove them wrong. She was protective of her grandfather and people around thought that she was so good to him. She was quite unsociable but made the effort to go to church on Sunday if she could, even though she wasn’t dressed for the part. At the start she hated Barty Gunliffe and certainly showed her hatred. The seaweed was her liberty but as Barty was taking the seaweed he took her independence with him as well. But when she rescues him she sees him as beautiful. This is when she changes her attitude towards him because she realises he has feelings and willingly surrenders her freedom.
Alice is a typical 1950s woman who wants to marry and have children to look after, unlike Mally who doesn’t want any of this. Alice gets along well with her grandfather like Mally does, but Alice’s grandfather doesn’t want her to leave home whereas Old Glos wouldn’t mind Mally getting married because he would get a nicer house and some security, which he got.
Alice and Steven were in a playful relationship of young love and Steven had won Alice’s love, and stole it from her grandfather. Whereas Barty had to earn his love and thought of Mally as a challenge that had to be won, and was.
Alice at the start was all for marriage and being dependant on Steven but seeing her grandfather with his pigeons made her change her mind because she would have to be locked away and do whatever Steven wanted her to do like the birds to their master. Mally made it clear at the beginning that she didn’t want anything to do with marriage and wanted to keep her independence. But then she sees a man in a different light and thinks about the security she would have if she married Barty.
Mally is very protective of her grandfather, because he was old and couldn’t do much. She was possessive of her cove and her seaweed, because if anyone entered the cove they were entering Mally, and if anyone took any seaweed they were taking a bit of Mally’s independence.
Alice’s grandfather is possessive of her because she is the last bird to leave the nest and this makes him wary. He also thinks of her like one of his birds because if the bird hasn’t been there long enough it will fly somewhere different and will not remember the way, like Alice may forget where her home is if she leaves too early. He also resents her relationship with Steven because the more love Alice gives to Steven, the more love is taken away from her grandfather.
Mally and Barty quarrel because of the dispute between the ownership of the seaweed, therefore they become rivals. Mally claims to hate Barty because he is taking away her seaweed: ‘I’ll hamstring the beast the next time as he’s down here!’ Mally is talking about Barty’s donkey, which reflects her anger on him. She also swears that she would never save Barty if he ever got into difficulties in the cove, but then later contradicts herself by saving him.
Alice and her grandfather argue because he doesn’t want her to leave home and tries to prevent by emotional blackmail, which in the end worked. He uses the blackmail by showing that he is unhappy at the prospect of losing her. But she tries to fight but by showing that she is happy about the marriage by buying him a pigeon and showing him that she is capable of looking after herself, and trying to reassure his, and maybe her, fears and worries.
The climax of Malachi’s Cove is when Barty falls into the hole in the rocks. This happened because he knew Mally was winning the competition and didn’t like the idea of a women beating him, therefore he decided to go against Mally’s warning and thought he was strong enough to get the large amount of seaweed, but the plan went wrong and he fell in. Luckily Mally had the skill and strength to save him, she also forgets her pride and her promise that she wouldn’t save him. She then went to get the Gunliffes thinking that they would understand, but they accused her of murder instead.
The turning point in Flight was when Alice and Steven give the grandfather a new pigeon as a peace offering. They can see that in his eyes he really likes it and that it is an offer from Steven to swap Alice for the bird. Then the old man thanks them in his own way by saying:
‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs’.
He half meant this comment in a spiteful way but luckily Alice didn’t take it that way and took it as a light hearted joke.
Mally changes her attitude extremely quickly by knowing that she loves Barty. The Gunliffes feelings also changed towards Mally because they realised that she didn’t try to kill their son, but saved him, and let her into the family. Everyone’s character changes at this point because Mally becomes the traditional lady that she thought she would never be, forgetting her independence to marry Barty. Barty realises that women can be as good as men (at times). The Gunliffes take in Mally, and Old Glos gets lucky because he spends his last few days in a nice, well kept house.
In Flight the change of attitude happens when the old man realises that he must let go of Alice and trust she will ‘fly’ home after she’s married. Lessing has set this out very well because the grandfather has let his pigeons go. Even though Alice is grateful for her grandfather making such an emotional decision, she seems at the thought that she might have lost her freedom by choosing marriage.
In Malachi’s Cove the cove represents the entrance to Mally's mind and feelings, that is why she doesn’t like anyone entering it. She thinks that if anyone comes inside it, it will effect her, which is why she hated Barty because he got into her thoughts too often. There are very subtle hints in there about her not wanting to be entered sexually either, but these hints had to be very restrained because in the Victorian times sex was not talked about. The seaweed represents her independence, so if the seaweed were taken away from her like it was when she married Barty her independence would be gone. The stormy weather and the wild surroundings express Mally's and Barty’s feelings for one another because a storm can be exciting but it can also clash and be scary, so I think that at first the weather would be frightening but then suddenly turn exciting like Mally and Barty’s relationship.
In Flight the old man’s relationship with his pigeons symbolises his feelings about his daughter. Because at the beginning, when he got angry and saw Alice with Steven he didn’t want to let the pigeons go and held them back, like he didn’t want Alice to go so held her back with emotions. But at the end after he had finally let his granddaughter go he said to his pigeon ‘Now you can go’, this is like he is speaking to Alice and setting her free.
Mally has conformed to the Victorian ideal of womanhood by giving up independence on marriage to find happiness. This would be a perfect ending for a Victorian lady and that would be what they expected. The author, being a man, has thought that the story would be better off with a happy ending rather than a sad one, and I think this reflects that period of time because that’s what women would’ve been expected to do.
There seems to be a suggestion that Alice is sad at the realisation that marriage will involve a loss of freedom. This ending completely supports Lessing’s ideas about women’s rights in the 1950s. This would have appealed to women who were fed up with being a housewife and maybe wanted a bit more in life.
I am disappointed by the ending of Malachi’s Cove because there’s not that much lead up to Mally changing her mind and she doesn’t really think about losing her independence. She just collapsed when someone pushed her; she didn’t stick up for her rights or beliefs. Barty could’ve been manlier and Mally could’ve put up more of a challenge. These days stories have a lot more sexual activities and usual the women are more emotional and it doesn’t always ending happily.
I liked Flight because it showed a lot of emotion and what relationships can be like. It also hinted at the end that Alice wasn’t too happy about getting married now, which showed that women do have a choice and they’re not just there to do the cleaning and washing up. I think it could’ve been made a little bit longer and during a longer space of time, as it all happened in just one afternoon. I think people may like this story but I think it should have a bit more emotion in it and maybe some notes on what Steven and Alice did when they went to get the grandfather the bird.
