Burning Bright—Reading Group Guide

Questions for Discussing Tracy Chevalier’s Novel About William Blake

Sep 20, 2007

A set of eight questions for reading groups to use when discussing the novel Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier.

1. Tracy Chevalier’s novel hinges on this comment by William Blake “The tension between contraries is what makes us ourselves. We have not just one but the other too, mixing and clashing and sparking inside us. Not just light, but dark. Not just peace, but war. Not just innocent, but experienced.’” (127)

Do you agree with Blake? Or do you believe that a person is essentially good or essentially evil with little of the opposite mixed in?

2. Gardens are a theme that Chevalier weaves through the book. From the garden where Tommy Kellaway falls from the pear tree and breaks his neck to the garden in which Maggie finds Maisie working on her hands and knees while waiting for her baby to come Chevalier describes the gardens in the story. Two very important gardens are contrasted in the story. The Kellaway’s landlord Miss Pelham’s tidily arranged garden contrasts dramatically with the overgrown garden of the Blake household where Jem catches a glimpse of Blake and his wife as naked as Adam and Eve.

Which garden is more like the garden of Eden? Do you garden? If so do you prefer formal or informal gardens? Why do you suppose Chevalier puts these gardens next to each other on the opposite side of the fence?

3. Maggie and Maisie are both important to Jem. Maisie, Jem’s older sister, is naive and innocent and often Jem finds himself protecting her as if she were younger than he was. Maggie’s street-wise ways both repel and attract Jem. From the beginning, Jem senses Maggie’s vulnerability and while he doesn’t understand it he finds himself desiring to protect her.

When Maisie first meets Maggie, she is thrilled to find that the first girl her age she meets in London is named Margaret too.

Why do you think Chevalier named both girls Margaret? How are Maisie and Maggie the same? Different? How does Jem view them?

4. William Blake and circus man Philip Astley are probably the most influential people in the Kellaway’s lives while they live in London. At one point, the two men almost come to blows over the situation of a boy who is chained as a prisoner. As the situation cools, Astley tries to connect with Blake: “‘We are both dealer’s in illusions. You make ‘em with your pen and ink and graver, while I’ —Philip Astley waved his hands at the people around him—‘I make a world out of people and props...’”(86)

Blake disagrees “You are making a distinction between reality and illusion. You see them as opposites, do you not? ...To me they are not opposites at all—they are all one.” (86)

Consider the discussion between Blake and Astley (86-88). Blake believes that the worlds he illustrates from his imagination are as real as the world around us. Do you agree? Or do you think Blake was off balance?

5. Astley reconciles the discussion and shakes hands with Blake after summarizing their lives in his way “What you are saying, sir, if I understand you, is that you are taking ideas in your head and making them into something you can see and hold in your hand; while I am taking real things—horses and acrobats and dancers—and turning them into memories...Well then, sir, I would say the world needs us both, don’t it, Fox?” (88)

Does the earth need both dreams made real and reality made into memory? Where would we be without dreams and memories? Are they different or the same?

6. Both Maggie and Jem experience the death of another human prior to the story. Jem’s brother Tommy is killed while trying to reach a pear in the garden. Maggie kills a man in self-defense.

How do their experiences with death effect how Jem and Maggie react to the events in the story? How do their experiences effect how they treat others?

7. Blake gives the Maggie and Jem each a copy of one of his books. To one he gives Songs of Innocence and to the other he gives Songs of Experience. Maggie says that he was specific about who got which book but she know longer remembers which book belongs to which.

Does it matter who has which one as Maggie suggests? Or are the children right in their impulse that the books belong together as opposites being part of a whole?

8. Here are two excerpts from Blake’s poem The Tyger, which was included in Songs of Experience:

Here is an excerpt from Blake’s poem The Lamb, which was included in Songs of Innocence:

Compare the descriptions of how the Tyger and the Lamb were created. Do you think that Blake believed that the Tyger and the Lamb were made by the same Creator? Do you believe that they are made by the same Creator? If you think that they are made by the same Creator, what makes them so very different?

The copyright of the article Burning Bright—Reading Group Guide in Modern American Fiction is owned by Melissa Howard. Permission to republish Burning Bright—Reading Group Guide in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.