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Talk:Brynhild Olivier/GA1

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Latest comment: 5 years ago by Michael Goodyear in topic GA Review

GA Review

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Latest comment: 5 years ago28 comments2 people in discussion
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Reviewer: Caeciliusinhorto (talk · contribs) 17:02, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply


I will review this article. Just starting to read through now; comments shortly. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:02, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

Okay, I've read up to the end of Cambridge, Rupert Brooke and the Neo-pagans (1907–1912) and I am afraid I have serious doubts that this is ready for GA status.

I haven't seriously checked sources yet, so no comment on criterion 2, but I have concerns in particular about 1a and 3b.

Prose and grammar

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1a: "the prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct"

  • Prose is frequently unclear. There is chronological and geographical jumping around (in Childhood and education, we move from Jamaica in 1899 to Honduras in 1890
  • in 1908 we hear about Bryn's first meeting with Jacques Raverat in 1909...)
    • That's not really out of order - Raverat was commenting on the preceding material regarding the relationship between Brooke and the Oliviers. Since the date he made the comment is not really material, and potentially confusing, I removed it.--Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 17:22, 26 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • non sequitur ("In particular, Bryn demonstrated total disregard of etiquette and convention. As Margery noted "It's such a responsibility taking Bryn about...people always fall in love with her".")
  • and labyrinthine prose ("The Oliviers were noted for bathing nude ("wild swimming"), as illustrated by Gwen Raverat in her Bathers (see image), in the river with the men, under cover of darkness and illuminated by bicycle lamps, an extension of the Bedalian spirit that separated the genders after they turned thirteen.")
  • Various grammatical issues, in particular misplaced and/or missing commas. E.g. "By 1910, Bryn, now twenty-three, realised" should have a comma after "twenty-three". I fixed some grammatical errors, but I haven't touched anything beyond 1910.
    • The use of commas, is to some extent subjective. Some overuse, others underuse. Usage varies between British and American styles, while authorities disagree. I ran the text through a grammar checker, which only suggested one additional comma. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 18:11, 4 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Focus

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3b: "it stays focused on the topic"

  • There's a lot of unnecessary detail of stuff which isn't relevant to Bryn's life at all, or only tangentially so. Example: "Brooke was seated opposite the fifteen year old Noël at dinner and assisted her picking up the pieces when she dropped her coffee cup. Brooke was once more smitten."
  • Even when we are hearing about things which clearly are important in a biography of Bryn, she is often pushed to the background: "Brooke described the attraction Bryn felt for Baynes in his poem Jealousy", "Frustrated, she informed him that she and Hugh Popham were to be married."

I also have fundamental concerns with the article which don't strictly fall under any of the GA criteria:

  • layout: strictly sectioning up Bryn's early life by year doesn't seem to be the most sensible way of doing things. There are several instances where something is mentioned out of chronological place, which just acts to highlight the odd structure.
    • Fair comment. It was helpful during the original construction, in terms of organising the material chronologically (which often was not clear in sources). I deleted the year subheadings, the first sentence of each section defining the time period. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 17:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • there's a rather unnecessary amount made of how sexy the Olivier sisters were, frankly. "Siren daughters", Noël "wearing her school uniform", "Brooke was contemplating whether he could have both Bryn and Noël on their summer excursions"... The overall effect is weirdly fetishistic.
    • Sexy would not be my word. However the language used here is common to the sources. For instance "siren" was Shaw's word making an analogy to Ulysses - I will use inverted commas to emphasise it is a quote, but it was also used recently in The Sunday Times (Freeman, 2019). It is more how others saw them than necessarily how they actually were. I think you may be reading too much into the word "have" in the last quote. There is no doubt the sisters made quite an impression wherever they went, but I don't see any fetishness. Bryn was actually quite reserved. Brooke was a very disturbed young man who left a trail of emotional havoc in the lives of those he interacted with.--Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 17:50, 26 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

I think this is almost at the point where I would quickfail it, but I don't particularly want to do that. I will put the article on hold for a week. Feel free to ask for further clarification of the issues if you need it, but I'm not going to do a point-by-point deconstruction of this article until it's in a significantly better place.

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:05, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. It has been rather a long time since I last looked at this, so I will take a close look at it keeping your comments in mind. I came across this woman and her family while researching Virginia Woolf, and it struck me that she represented an important link between the Bloomsbury group and Rupert Brooke's circle, and also throws some light on the lives of children of what came to be known as the aristocracy of the left. If she seems somewhat in the background it is because of the lack of surviving primary sources. What we know of her life relies on the accounts of others. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 15:43, 25 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
As Sarah Watling says in the introduction to her biography of the Olivier sisters, they went to great trouble to ensure they were unknowable, firmly resisting biographers, and of the four, Bryn was the most successful. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 17:11, 26 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Michael Goodyear: I see that you have made quite a few changes to the article over the last week, and have definitely improved some aspects of it. However, it simply isn't of Good Article standard at the moment, and I see no prospect of that changing soon. A non-exhaustive list of issues follows:

  • The grammar is still not great. The main problem is misplaced commas throughout: some are there when they oughtn't be; some aren't there when they ought.
  • Aside from that, the text is frequently confusing or awkward:
    • Sydney Olivier was a career civil servant in the Colonial Office, and when Bryn was three, his first posting overseas leaving his family behind in London, was in October 1890.: I know what this means, but the best I can say about this phrasing is that it is inelegant.
    • Following his appointment as Colonial Administrator of Jamaica (1899–1904) he decided to summon the family to join him in 1900, returning in 1904.: presumably this means that the entire Olivier family returned to England in 1904, but this is not entirely clear.
    • All four daughters (and their parents) were considered striking in their appearance, but Brynhild was considered the beauty of the family. Meanwhile, the four sisters had developed a reputation[...]: It's not at all clear that Bryn's beauty has anything to do with the Oliviers' dubious reputation... The "meanwhile" is problematic here, but I think more than that the structure of this paragraph is an issue: we get the Oliviers' beauty, their reputation, and their educational achievements, and no obvious thread connecting them.
    • [Raverat] formed the impression that Brooke was in love with all four sisters at once, an impression that appeared to be reciprocated.: Presumably it was Brooke's love, and not Raverat's impression, which the Oliviers reciprocated!
  • I appreciate that most of the sources aren't primarily about Bryn, but this is still a biography of her. There are places in this article where that's not at all clear:
    • Later it would include A. E. H. (Hugh) Popham (1889–1970), a Cambridge diving champion: along with the dates and the comment on Popham's diving prowess, there is a note that he was at King's and a friend of Brooke's. The one relevant fact which would explain why he gets more biographical information on introduction than any of the rest of the Neo-pagan set, despite not even meriting being described as part of the core group, is that he would go on to marry Bryn – this is inexplicably omitted. So the reader needs to remember the brief mention in the lead, 1000 words previously, in order to understand this. I didn't – I had to look back up the article to work out why I was meant to care about Popham.
    • Brooke described the attraction Bryn felt for Baynes in his poem Jealousy. Shortly after, Baynes proposed to her, but was refused. Grammatically, Brooke is active here while Bryn is passive: he describes; Baynes merely "was refused". You could go as far as chopping Brooke's feelings altogether with something like Bryn was attracted to Baynes, but when he proposed to her in 1910[?] she refused him. Among other considerations[...]
    • Later that year when the Neo-pagans met at Everleigh, Wiltshire, Brook again tried to engage Bryn's affections, but discovered that if she did go sailing with him she would bring Popham. Frustrated, she informed him that she and Hugh Popham were to be married. We haven't even heard that Bryn gets engaged until it becomes relevant to Brooke's feelings!
      • Basically because I wanted to deal with this big decision in her life in the next section. I think the best way to deal with this is to shift the whole paragraph into its chronological place in the next section --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 16:01, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Sourcing

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  • The use of sources is extremely concerning: I see claims not supported by the source cited, misuse of primary sources, and claims contradicted by the source cited.
    • I am not sure what is being implied here - I would agree that misuse of sources should be concerning, but any misunderstandings could have been resolved in 1-2 days rather than simply failing the article. I think it unwise to make allegations of OR without either evidence or giving the person a chance to resolve the issue. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 01:02, 4 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
** George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House was loosely modelled on the Oliviers and their "siren" daughters: I do not see that the source cited supports such a strong claim. It gives several influences on Heartbreak House, but as far as the Oliviers are concerned it merely has them as one of a number of influences on the Shotover family – "modelled on" suggests a much more significant influence to me.
*** I think the source is actually pretty clear here "he had not too obviously let the figures of his old friend and his children show". If you think it makes a difference I will use "based" as opposed to "modelled". --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 22:11, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
    • Noël, wearing her school uniform, at dinner: I don't see that the source cited supports "wearing her school uniform", and I am incredibly sceptical of the idea that an Edwardian daughter of the upper-classes is going to a formal dinner in her father's honour wearing such an outfit.
      • You might be, but this was not your Edwardian upper class family, by any stretch of the imagination. They did not dress for dinner. Noël wore that uniform everywhere - including to this dinner (see Delaney p. 36). This detail is important because it points to Brooke's predatory nature.--Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 22:23, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
    • Brooke described the attraction Bryn felt for Baynes in his poem Jealousy: this is supported by a citation to the poem itself, which seems like a misuse of primary sources to me. It's not at all clear from the poem that it's about Bryn and Baynes.
    • [Virginia Woolf], whose two brothers were both Apostles. Woolf had two full brothers, Adrian and Thoby Stephens, and two half brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth: the source cited mentions only Adrian, and specifically says that he was not an Apostle.
      • Yes, I know, I wrote most of the Virginia Woolf article. Thoby was definitely an apostle (I added a citation), but as you point out - Lubenow seems fairly clear that Adrian was not. Yet the statement, supported by that citation, that he was, appears on several WP pages. It looks as if the error originates in the page Cambridge Apostles and has propagated from there. There may have been confusion with James Fitzjames Stephen. A possible cause of confusion is the recurrent phrase in sources - Adrian introduced his Apostle friends. Julian Bell was also an apostle. Good catch. I will amend.--Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 23:15, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

I am going to fail this nomination now: I suggest you thoroughly check through the sourcing issues, and then find someone to copyedit the article before renominating. Given the topic, you might look for a collaborator at Women in Green. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:58, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your input. However, my understanding of the GA review process is that it provides for fresh eyes and an opportunity for reviewer and nominee to work together to produce the best product, not to drop it. Furthermore when there is disagreement, the nominee has the right to ask for a second opinion. I will review your comments carefully, and revise accordingly, before renominating. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 17:06, 2 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
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