Tag: 19th century

Review 2565: Classics Club Spin Result! Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

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I pulled this book for the Classics Club spin, and I’m very happy to have done so. Because of the state of my reading right now, I was hoping for a short one, and this book is only 144 pages (albeit of very small type). It’s one of the few short works left on my Classics Club list.

The autobiography was written in the 1850s about events earlier than that and published in 1861. Although by then Jacobs was free, she wrote it under the pseudonym of Linda Brent, probably to protect others.

Linda had a fairly cheerful childhood, because she was owned by a kind woman who had promised to set her grandmother free. However, on the woman’s death, her slaves were seized as assets because she owed money, and Linda and her brother William ended up in the home of Dr. Flint, a relative. Linda’s grandmother was not freed and was also owed $300 by her mistress but never got it.

Jacobs recounts many instances of brutality on the part of slave owners, but her own troubles began when she reached puberty and Dr. Flint began relentlessly pressing her, trying to get her to have sex. Essentially out of desperation, she succumbed to another white man who she liked better and had two children by him. He, Mr. Sands, tried to buy her and her children several times, but Dr. Flint refused to sell them.

Eventually, Jacobs tried to escape, and the events of her escape, which took years, are the most harrowing in the book. Even after she escaped, she was in danger of being snatched back because of the Fugitive Slave Act, and Dr. Flint didn’t stop trying to find her until he died.

I thought this book was interesting, although at times it had very religious overtones, applied to events that she thought would make her look bad. But, after all, part of her purpose was to educate people against slavery, and she didn’t want her audience to turn against her. Frankly, she does little to deserve that (mostly, she feels she sinned by sleeping with Mr. Sands), but I can see why in that time she would worry about it.

For some reason, although I had sympathy for Linda’s really horrible troubles, I didn’t get as involved with this book as I might have expected. I’m not sure why.

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Review 2555: Angle of Repose

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Again, when I finished reading this book, which was supposed to be for my A Century of Books project, I found the year already occupied. I have been using Goodreads and often Wikipedia to find books for each year, but Goodreads seems particularly inaccurate. I suspect that what happened here was that it listed the novel for, say, 1981, where I still have a hole (as of this writing in February), because of a 10-year anniversary reprint. I often check the dates if they seem suspicious, but this one didn’t. It’s especially bad now because it took eight days to read, and I am way behind on my reading. I only have a few more books to go, but from now on, I’m double-checking the publication date before I start reading.

Lyman Ward, a former academic just in his 50s, has contracted a bone disease that has frozen his neck so that he can’t turn it, confined him to a wheelchair, and resulted in the amputation of one of his legs. He is almost completely helpless, so his son wants to move him into care, but he stubbornly remains in his grandparents’ home in Grass Valley, California, being taken care of by Ada, a local woman.

His wife, Ellen, left him abruptly for his surgeon when he was helpless in the hospital. Although her partner died soon after and she has shown signs of wanting to return, he stubbornly refuses to see her.

Lyman can read, though, and do other sedentary activities. He was raised by his grandparents, and his grandmother was in her time a famous illustrator and writer, Susan Burling Ward. He has come across newspaper clippings and letters she wrote to her best friend, so he decides to write a biography of her, partly to answer questions for himself about events in his family he doesn’t understand.

Angle of Repose combines Lymon’s current experience and thoughts as he does this work with the events in the biography he is writing. The historical arc of the novel predominates, so much so that I occasionally wondered why Lyman’s story was there at all. However, by the end I understood how his grandparents’ history informs his own.

It’s a mismatch. Susan Barling as a young woman is from Upstate New York, a gifted artist just beginning to become known. She yearns for a life of culture. Her best friend, Augusta, comes from a prominent, cultured New York City family, and as young women, Susan and Augusta make a threesome of friends with Thomas Hudson, a poet and editor who goes on to become famous himself. She meets Oliver Ward, a young mining engineer, when she is very young. Unlike her other friends, he is taciturn and maybe too respectful of them all. He goes away on a job in the West for five years.

Thomas, sensitive, intelligent, and delicate, is Susan’s idea of a perfect man. He picks Augusta, though, and Oliver returns around the same time. Despite her friends’ misgivings, Susan decides to marry Oliver. Her idea is that Oliver can get some experience in the West and then move back East to live a more cultured life. She doesn’t seem to realize that to do his work, he must be in the West, and he is suited for that life.

As far as his career is concerned, Oliver seems too prone to consult Susan’s convenience, and she has unrealistic ideas. He turns down some opportunities because they don’t seem suitable to Susan. He takes a short-term job and they live apart. (She is too genteel for these rough mining camps.) She finally joins him near a mining town named New Almaden, southeast of San Jose. He has taken a house away from town, which anyway she removes herself from, as she does everywhere they live, thinking herself too good for the company. As Lyman says, his grandmother is a snob. Here she begins a pattern of not joining into society and their life but enduring it.

The couple doesn’t thrive financially. At this time, there are lots of qualified engineers available and most of them aren’t as fussy about where they’ll go. Susan’s work writing articles about the West and illustrating other writers’ work is helping support them, despite Oliver’s dislike of the situation and Susan’s complaints about it. They move to Leadville, Colorado, which although it is primitive, allows her to open her home to some intelligent visitors and have lively, informed discussions, which she loves. But the Leadville mine eventually grinds to a halt because of a lawsuit brought by would-be claim jumpers.

The couple goes to Mexico, which Susan loves, but the mine doesn’t prove promising. Their projects gain and then lose funding, and so on.

Susan writes to Augusta constantly, but Augusta never acknowledges Oliver as a fit husband. I fear that much of Susan’s growing disappointment has to do with wanting to justify her choice to her friends.

In the novel’s current time (the late 1960s and early 70s), Lyman expresses some irritating views on the times and young people. I wasn’t sure whether they were Stegner’s own views or more delineation of Lyman’s character, but Lyman eventually forms a sort of friendship with a young woman who acts as his secretary for a time.

This is ultimately a fascinating and absorbing story, but this time through (I apparently read it in the mists of time but didn’t remember anything about it) I kept getting distracted from it. I’m not sure why. I think, though, that it deserved more attention from me. Although I was bothered by Lyman seeming to blame all his grandparents’ problems on his grandmother (and after unfortunate events, his grandfather’s intransigence), the novel is considered Stegner’s masterpiece and won him the Pulitzer.

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Review 2554: #ReadingAusten25! Pride and Prejudice

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For years, I read all of Jane Austen’s novels once every year, but I haven’t done that since I started this blog. Now, Reading Austen 25 has given me an excuse to do it again.

The neighborhood is thrilled, because Netherfield Park, a large estate that has been vacant, has been leased. More importantly, the new occupant is Mr. Bingley, a young, single man of fortune. Foolish Mrs. Bennett, with five single daughters, is certain he will marry one of them.

Mr. Bingley has come with friends, and the first time everyone meets them is at a local ball. Although Mr. Bingley seems attracted to Jane Bennett, Elizabeth Bennett’s beautiful older sister, his friend Mr. Darcy stays aloof from the locals and will only dance with members of his own party. (That may seem okay to modern readers but is really very rude for the time.) When Mr. Bingley tries to get him to dance, suggesting Elizabeth as a suitable partner, Darcy slights her.

Later, Lizzy meets Mr. Wickham, a pleasing young man who grew up with Mr. Darcy. He tells her that Mr. Darcy has treated him wrongly, especially that he withheld a living from him that was promised to him by Darcy’s father. Lizzy is shocked.

Things look good for Jane, though, as Bingley is very attentive. Unfortunately, at a ball hosted by Bingley, all of Lizzy’s family except Jane behave in an embarrassing manner—her mother loudly discussing Jane’s chances with Bingley, her foolish younger sisters making exhibitions of themselves, and her father loudly correcting Mary. The next thing they know, the entire Bingley party has left for London with no intention of returning. Lizzy blames Jane’s disappointment in love on Caroline Bingley—Bingley’s sister—and on Mr. Darcy.

This novel is a domestic drama, a romance, and a witty social satire. Austen is gifted at creating characters whose personalities become obvious almost as soon as they open their mouths. I find it hard to choose my favorite Austen novel, but this one is certainly the funniest, with such characters as Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennett, and Lady Catherine De Bourgh.

Harking back to a discussion last month about Austen’s wobble between sense and sensibility, I see more evidence of it here, when Mr. Darcy takes Jane’s calm demeanor for indifference to Mr. Bingley and when, later, he doesn’t speak to Lizzy because he can’t tell if she cares for him.

Anyway, of course, this novel is great.

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Review 2546: The Temptations of Big Bear

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I can’t remember whether I found this book when looking for more about native peoples or for filling holes for my A Century of Books project. In any case, it does both.

Readers from the U. S. may not be familiar with the name “Big Bear,” but I’m betting Canadian readers are. He seems to have been their equivalent of Sitting Bull.

In The Temptations of Big Bear, Wiebe tells Big Bear’s story beginning in 1876, when the Cree, of whom Big Bear was a chief, along with other groups of native peoples and the Métis, meet to discuss a treaty with British officials. The treaty calls for the people to “sell” several hundred thousand acres to the government in exchange for small reservations and regular payments as well as assistance when they are hungry. Big Bear does not sign the treaty. He wants to wait to see what happens.

Within a few years, it becomes apparent that the buffalo, upon which the Cree depend, are dying out, so Big Bear signs the treaty. However, he does not select a reservation for his people. Instead, they continue to move among their usual environs.

This novel leads up to events at Frog Lake in 1888, where some of the Cree warriors attack the settlers, kill some, and take others prisoner. These attacks follow years of broken promises and starvation. Although Big Bear tries to stop them, he is disregarded. Of course, he is held responsible by the authorities and tried, despite all the white witnesses but one having testified for him.

This is an eloquently written novel. It is insightful and interesting, and Big Bear’s last speech at his trial made me cry.

Wiebe doesn’t cite sources, and it’s hard to tell whether some of the speeches and writings are verbatim from records or not.

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Review 2538: The New Life

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The New Life was a slow read for me. It took me almost a week, which is unusual for me with fiction. I read it for my Walter Scott Prize project.

The novel is loosely based on two men, John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis, who in the early 1890s wrote a book together. When I looked them up, it didn’t seem as if it was very loosely based—Crewe gives his characters almost identical names. But then I realized it is set after Symonds’ death in order to bring in the trial of Oscar Wilde.

John Addington is a gay man who is married and has three grown daughters. He is known for writing about a vast array of subjects. Henry Ellis is an idealistic, naïve younger man, a doctor. He marries a good friend, Edith, and their intention is to lead the way to the New Life. I wasn’t exactly sure what that entailed, but at minimum it seems to be that spouses are equal partners. Unfortunately for Henry, they never discussed the sexual side of marriage. He thought there would be consummation; Edith, a lesbian, did not. So, Henry continues a virgin with a fascination for the subject of sex. They live separately, and soon Edith has a new friend, Angelica.

Henry wishes to make a scientific study of sex and publish the results, and since he knows some gay friends, referred to at that time as “inverts,” he decides to start with them, having a theory that rather than an illness or perversion, inversion is natural. He decides to invite John Addington to join him in his project, not because he thinks he is gay, but because of his reputation as a writer about various topics.

John has been getting more tired of keeping his secret as an invert. He has confessed to his wife and occasionally has brought a man home for sex, an action that I thought was breathtakingly cruel. Now he meets Frank, a much younger, lower-class man who wants to be his friend. When John sees Henry’s proposal, he thinks such a project will change people’s ideas about inversion so that he can be free to do what he wants.

The men write the book and begin looking for a publisher. However, just at that time, Oscar Wilde is found guilty of inversion and is sentenced to jail. The backlash is such that the two fear their work is unpublishable.

If you are not a fan of graphic sex scenes, this won’t be the book for you, especially the first few hundred pages. The novel opens, for example, with a very explicit and detailed wet dream. I am not really a fan of explicit sex scenes in novels, so I found the first half of the novel hard going, despite it being well written and having vivid descriptions of life in Victorian London. (It has a wonderful description of a day that is so smoggy no one can see where they’re going.)

The novel picked up for me after the book, entitled Sexual Inversion, is published and the police go after a bookseller for selling indecent material, their book. Then it becomes about the reactions of the various characters once there is a threat to their own lives.

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Review 2534: #ReadingAusten25! Sense and Sensibility

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My original intention for ReadingAusten25 was to reread only the books I hadn’t reviewed yet. But I can’t resist Austen, so here I am reviewing Sense and Sensibility. I am not going to repeat my review of 2022, though, so you can find it here. Instead, I thought I’d look at whether the book struck me differently this time and a little at Claire Tomalin’s point of view (the wobble), as cited by Brona.

It did strike me differently. Although Elinor is still my favorite of the two sisters, they both struck me more extremely this time. Marianne seemed like a true modern teenager, not as much for her reactions to Willoughby but more in her sulking (call it what it is), her rudeness to various kind characters whom she thinks ill-bred, and so on. But the thing is, 16 in the early 19th century meant she was supposed to be an adult, or almost. (Of course, she is also under the influence of the Romantic movement in art, literature, and music.)

As for Elinor, sometimes I felt she carried her comments a little too far, into preachiness. I got a little tired of her dissections of other people’s behavior.

I also appreciate the wit of the novel more. Although I always find Austen witty, she has drawn us some priceless characters and written quite a few zingers.

I am not so sure about Tomalin’s “wobble.” I looked for it but didn’t find much evidence for it unless you count Elinor’s dash out of the room after she finds out Edward isn’t married. I’d like to hear if anyone was struck differently. I remember not agreeing with some of Tomalin’s interpretations when I read her biography of Austen.

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Review 2530: The Islandman

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I read The Islandman to fill a hole in my Century of Books project. It is the memoir of a man who was born in the Blasket Islands in far Southwest Ireland, in 1856. The Irish edition of this book was a big seller in Ireland after it was published in 1929. The islands are now unpopulated as the government removed the last inhabitant in the 1950s.

The memoir is written as a series of anecdotes but in order of time. The existence of the inhabitants was a difficult one of mostly subsistence living. The people worked hard. Fishing was a major source of food, but scavenging shipwrecks was a source of subsistence and some income (money wasn’t much in use). Most families had a cow or two, hens, maybe pigs, and a donkey for hauling peat and seaweed. Patches of land were cultivated for potatoes and grain.

Although the people were poor, because of the fishing, they did well enough during the potato famine. However, they had many more difficult periods.

O’Crohan took to schooling but only had six years of school because there was no teacher on the island the other years. He of course spoke Irish but didn’t write it well until later in his life, when people started coming to him to learn the language.

This is an interesting account, especially as I’ve been interested in life on remote islands for some time.

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Review 2527: The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes

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I knew this book might not be a good fit for me, because I usually feel that mystery short stories are too short to do much but pose puzzles, but more importantly, because I usually think it is unsuccessful when an author continues another author’s work. However, I have generally enjoyed Lyndsay Faye’s books, so I tried this one.

Purporting to be lost stories, notes, and diary entries, most by Dr. Watson but some by Holmes, this book’s 15 stories span the time from before the two met until 1902.

I am not going to run through a description of each story. Instead, I’ll comment on how authentic Faye’s stories seemed as stories about Holmes, keeping in mind that I haven’t read a Holmes story in years.

First, how much like the originals are Faye’s Holmes and Watson? Faye clearly is very familiar with the books (this applies to pretty much all the things I’ll look at, not just this one) because she makes lots of references to other cases and certainly has down Holmes’s characteristics. However, it seemed to me that her Holmes is more of a Benedict Cumberbatch Holmes than an Arthur Conan Doyle one. For one thing, he is much more expressive of emotions, more so even than Cumberbatch, especially as the book goes on. Watson seems himself, only even more flowery of description, but smarter. Also, like in the B. C. version mentioned above, his war service is stressed a lot more.

What about the mysteries? Well, you’re reading the words of a person who never once guessed the solution of a Sherlock Holmes story—until now. On the one hand, Faye’s stories are not nearly as ridiculously overcomplicated and unlikely as Doyle’s (spoilers for ACD!)—teach a snake to crawl down a rope? while dying, say “the speckled band” instead of “a snake bit me”? On the other hand, it seemed ridiculously easy to guess at least portions of the solution for most of the stories (unlike in Faye’s other mysteries—this is what I mean by mystery short stories—they’re either totally opaque or too easy). For instance, in “The Case of Colonel Warburton’s Madness,” I guessed immediately that (spoilers) gaslighting was involved and who was doing it. I just didn’t know how. Later in a story about identical twins, I knew immediately that the twins had switched.

Faye writes well and keeps up the interest. I just wish she’d write more of her own stuff.

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Review 2514: Germinal

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My copy of Germinal seems to be a special edition, released in 1942 by Nonesuch Press, and perhaps part of a book club, because inside its cover is a little insert that says it is part of a series called the Ten Great French Romances. Now, I’m not so sure of the other books, although some of them don’t strike me as Romances (not even using the original definition), but poor Zola would be rolling over in his grave. Why? Because he was basically the founder of a new kind of literary movement for his time that rejected Romanticism. It was called Naturalism and is supposed to be based in science and logic and takes an impersonal stance, observing but not commenting. It also takes determinism as one of its tenets—that is, a character’s fate is determined at the get-go.

One little personal comment before my review—I received this novel as a Christmas present from my brother after unthinkingly commenting that I had never read any Zola. After I started reading it, I realized there was a reason for that.

The novel begins and ends with Étienne Lantier. He is an engine-man who has lost his job after a dispute with the foreman, and he has been traveling north looking for work. He is starving and doesn’t expect to find any.

It’s 1866, and the revolution 70 years before has helped the middle class but not the poor. Étienne travels from place to place but finds nothing.

He meets an old man nicknamed Bonnemort whose family, the Maheus, has worked for the Montsou Mining Company for generations. He ends up hanging around one of the Montsou pits, the Voreau, and so is on hand when Maheu, Bonnemort’s son, learns that his best putter has died. (I never figured out what a putter is, but now I see it’s someone who brings empty containers up to the surface and brings filled ones down to the bottom.) Étienne has just walked off, but Maheu sends his daughter Catherine after him to fetch him back and gives him a job. (Yes, women worked in the mines, too.)

Étienne is a little better educated than the miners and has been writing to a representative of Workers International. Soon, he is talking about half-understood principles of socialism and unionism to the mine workers. The Maheus, whom he takes a bed with, are barely able to feed themselves on the wages of Maheu, Catherine, Bonnemore, and Zacharie, and in fact Zacharie is being prevented from marrying because his family needs his wages. Then the unexpected demand for repayment of a debt begins a period of starvation.

Although the novel is about an actual 1866 mining strike, a strong subplot is about Étienne’s relationship with Catherine. He at first takes her for a boy, she is so young, but because a man named Chaval is pursuing her, Étienne assumes she is loose, as most of the mining women are, so they start off badly. (Modern audiences may be upset, as I was, when they find that Catherine doesn’t enter puberty until long after she is involved in a sexual relationship with Chaval.)

After a period of hardship for all the miners, the company decides on a new policy of timbering that will essentially cut the miners’ wages. Étienne becomes their leader when the miners begin negotiations to avoid a strike.

This novel is unremittingly grim. Zola digs you right in to every detail of the miners’ lives and then includes a couple of passages that contrast this with what the middle class mine managers and owners are doing. For example, the village has just emerged from a period of starvation when Zola describes a several-course dinner party at the home of Hennebeau, the mine manager. Later, when the miners are destroying the mines, Hennebeau is too wrapped up in the discovery that his wife is unfaithful to pay much attention.

Although this novel is considered a very important work in French literature, naturalism is not for me. It is too brutal.

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Review 2506: The Voyage of the Narwhal

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In 1855, Erasmus Wells has spent years working with the items in his father’s collection of specimens, ever since he himself returned from an ill-fated exploration in the South Pacific. The members of the expedition were mocked, but the worst thing was the acclaim given to the leader after he released his book—cut and pasted from the journals and records he confiscated at the end of the trip—including Erasmus’s—but giving them no credit.

But Erasmus almost unwillingly finds himself departing on a voyage to the Arctic, to be lead by his sister Lavinia’s young fiancé, Zeke Vorhees. Zeke was raised like a younger brother to Erasmus and his brothers. He is handsome and charismatic, but may not make good leadership material. However, Erasmus has promised Lavinia he will take care of Zeke.

And Zeke proves divisive as a leader almost from the beginning, determined to do what he wants even if it unnecessarily risks the lives of his men. He almost immediately gets on bad terms with Mr. Tyler, the sailing master, even though he should be relying on Tyler’s experience. Although the purpose of the voyage is to find out more about the Franklin expedition, Erasmus becomes worried that Zeke has other intentions.

Periodically, the novel looks back at the people left behind, particularly Alexandra, who has been hired to keep Lavinia company. She is also hired by Erasmus’s brothers to color illustrations for a book of exploration, and later begins to engrave, but she yearns to travel herself.

Barrett builds suspense as the novel moves from Erasmus’s loneliness and sense of isolation to his fears about the results of Zeke’s leadership to a sense of true peril. This is a truly fascinating novel that builds on the records of actual voyages of exploration during this period. Although Erasmus has his flaws, he is a sympathetic main character. I’ve read several really good historical novels this year, and this is one of them.

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