Tag: classics

Review 2706: Classics Club Spin Result! Love’s Labour’s Lost

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Love’s Labour’s Lost is the work I drew for the Classics Club spin, and it seems like a bit of a curiosity. Despite having taken several Shakespeare courses during my academic days and having attended quite a few performances, I have never read this play or seen it performed.

My Riverside edition says that the play is Shakespeare’s most Elizabethan, with lots of wordplay and references to current events and people. It also has hardly any plot. It is certain that it is meant to be a romp and that lots of things went over my head.

The King of Navarre intends to found a learned Academe in his court. To kick it off, he has got three noblemen of his court to join, and part of this is a vow to only study and fast, and to stay away from women for three years. This silly idea is already threatened, because the King has forgotten he is to receive a state visit from the Princess of France.

There is a lot of tomfoolery with the Clown and a boastful Spaniard, but the thrust of the story is that of course as soon as the young men see the Princess and her ladies in waiting, they all fall in love. But they have already made a bad impression by receiving the Princess in a field (so as not to have broken the vow to have no women at court) and the ladies are not disposed to take them seriously.

In general, I tend to get along a little better with Shakespeare’s tragedies than comedies, except that I love Much Ado about Nothing. I also think the comedies are much more effective when played than read. Sections of this play are almost all punning and wordplay, but Shakespeare has been able to introduce some beautiful lines in the form of love billets. In any case, this wasn’t my favorite of his plays.

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Review 2702: Pontoppidan Review-along! A Fortunate Man

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Yes, here it is, time for the Pontoppidan Review-along. Join me and FictionFan and post your own review or leave comments! FictionFan and I decided to read A Fortunate Man, but others of you may have chosen some other work by Pontoppidan.

A Fortunate Man is considered the most important work by Danish Nobelist Henrik Pontoppidan. It is an ambitious work that attempts to capture all the ideas and events affecting Danish life in the mid to late 19th century, and it is also considered to be quite autobiographical. The tensions between the new industrialism and accompanying modern ideas and traditional views of religion is one of the many themes of this novel.

Per Sidenius grows up in rural Jutland in a household dominated by a strict and self-righteous father—a Lutheran vicar. Per is a high-spirited boy, and his father and entire family treat him as if his boyish antics are paving the way to hell. His mother has been bedridden as long as he can remember. Per does not feel as if he belongs there.

This upbringing results in a young man who can’t wait to leave his home and deny all of his father’s religious beliefs. He wants to be an engineer, so his father finds the money—they are poor—to send him to technical school in Copenhagen. But Per is an arrogant youth determined to make his way, and he finds school a waste of time. Instead, he reads voluminously and starts working on a massive project. The growth of Denmark has been stunted since the country lost territory to Germany in the war of 1864. Per feels that Denmark has become a backwater, especially technologically, with its prominent citizens only protecting the status quo. He conceives of a plan to reopen the many waterways that used to cross the Jutland Peninsula, beginning with a freeport in the East, with the idea of revitalizing the entire area. (His dream of lining this waterway with warehouses and factories doesn’t exactly suit our modern sensibilities, but this was the Industrial Revolution.) But he is an unknown very young man with no backing or credentials. Once he finishes his plans, he finds he’s not getting anywhere. And he needs money just to live.

Per falls in with the Salomons, a family of wealthy Jews. He thinks perhaps his problems will be solved by marriage to one of their daughters and is extremely attracted to the younger one, Nanny. However, as he gets to know them, he realizes he cares for the older sister, Jakobe, a much more intelligent and cultured girl. He is also attracted at first by the family’s relaxed and hospitable approach to life. (Later, though, he starts being embarrassed by their outgoing manners and love of show, so beware, this novel contains lots of anti-Semitism. Even Per, engaged to a Jewish girl, tends to stereotype them, as in general, there is a lot of stereotyping of people of various nationalities and groups like Danish farmers, too.)

At first, Jakobe doesn’t like Per, but he is persistent and wins her over so that eventually her parents reluctantly betroth her to Per. Although Jakobe’s brother Ivan works hard to promote Per’s plan and try to line up backers, Per himself is condescending and rude to the money men (they’re a bunch of money-grubbers, he thinks!) and seems to lose interest in the project. Instead, he goes off traveling, supposedly to study but seeming to do little of that (all the while being supported by Mr. Salomon).

Per feels he is never at home anywhere. His father dies, and this death affects him by having him begin to obsess about and eventually re-embrace Christianity, just not the bleak one his father represented. And frankly, he treats Jakobe shamelessly, just before they are supposed to be married.

Pontoppidan is a Realist writer, and I often think that the Realists spend too much time on the negatives of human behavior. Almost up to here, I was rooting for Per, but when he starts delving into religion and we have to read excerpts from religious philosophies and endless ruminations by Per, I lost most of my interest (religion is a black hole to me), and frankly I felt that his behavior from there to the end was even more self-serving than before. In a quest for self-realization, which sounds laudable, I felt as if he would decide what he wanted to do and then find self-justifications for his actions.

Spoilers ahead! There is a scene where he’s basically unloading his family (he feels it would be “best” for them), and first he tells his religious wife that he doesn’t believe in God (is he lying?) and then lies to her that on a business trip to Copenhagen he met another woman, so it will be “easier” for her to split from him. She’ll understand that. (Of course, she’s a simpleton who doesn’t understand anything, at least not according to him.) When she leaves in anger, he looks up to heaven and asks if that was the right sacrifice. Doesn’t believe in God? His sacrifice? He just wants to be free and has found a way to do it. I ended up hating this guy. And then there’s the letter he gets from her years later thanking him for doing the right thing. Sure. I totally buy that.

I really enjoyed Pontoppidan’s The White Bear and about a half to three quarters of this novel. But at some point, I began to feel as if I had been reading it forever. The rest of the novel made me at first bored and then angry. I suspect from reading Pontoppidan’s Wikipedia page that this novel is at least partly biographical. If it is, he wasn’t a very nice man.

A very slight issue. I’m not sure how New York Review Books prepares its reprints and whether machine reading is involved, but usually their editions are immaculate. In this one, though, I spotted three confusions of homonyms in the first 100 or so pages. Interestingly, two of them were the reverse confusion of “bear” and “bare.” That is, in one instance “bare” should have been used but “bear” was, and in the other, the reverse. (One might have been “bear-faced.” I can’t remember.) I couldn’t tell if this was a machine-reading error not detected by an editor, an editing error, or a translation error.

Check out other reviews of Pontoppidan’s books for this event here. I’ll add them as I become aware of them:

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Review 2700: World of Wonders

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World of Wonders is the third book of Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy and the one I least got along with. All three books deal with the repercussions of a malicious act—a snowball with a rock in it that Boy Staunton threw at Dunstan Ramsay when they were boys.

To make any sense of the plot of this one, I have to recap the action of the first book, so if you are planning to read it, you might do better to just read my review of it, Fifth Business. Boy’s snowball hits, not its intended target because Ramsay ducks, but the pregnant wife of the vicar, Mrs. Dempster. Her son Paul is born prematurely, and Mrs. Dempster is not quite right thereafter. Paul disappears as a boy and reappears after years and years as Magnus Eisengrim, the world-famous magician. Fifth Business ends with Boy Staunton’s possible suicide/possible murder with the selfsame stone in his mouth just after Boy meets Magnus. Did Magnus somehow murder Boy?

In World of Wonders, Dunstan Ramsay, now an old man, is living with Magnus and his friend Liesl. Magnus is starring in a film about another magician, French illusionist Robert-Houdin, and three of the film makers are visiting. Magnus has published a largely imaginary biography through Dunstan and now he agrees to tell the true story of his life from the time he disappeared as a boy. It’s quite harrowing at first, because he was kidnapped by a small-time magician in the World of Wonders carnival, held captive, and repeatedly sodomized. That’s just the beginning of an unusual and varied life.

I thought the story of Magnus’s life was interesting, but after each segment, his friends sit around and philosophize about it, maybe the sort of discussion that is exciting and interesting when you’re engaged in it but frankly not very interesting to read, at least not to me. I thought we were leading up to some surprising exploration of Boy Stanton’s death, but that wasn’t exactly how it ended, or at least what was revealed was not surprising.

Of the three books, I really enjoyed Fifth Business. The Manticore, from the point of view of Boy’s son David, was less interesting because of its emphasis on Jungian therapy. And I found this book the least interesting. In fact, I kept putting it down and reading other things, which is not usual for me.

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Review 2697: Literary Wives! Mrs. Bridge

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Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.

Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!

We’re also welcoming a new member to our club, although she just joined, so she may not be reviewing today’s book. Our new member is Marianne of Let’s Read! You can see her bio on my Literary Wives page (link above).

My Review

For its time, Mrs. Bridge was an unusual novel, especially in its structure. It is narrated in short chunks or chapters, 117 of them and most no longer than a page. Most of them document seemingly trivial incidents, but all together, they create a detailed picture of the characters and their relationships. Nothing much seems to happen except the conduct of a certain kind of life.

Mrs. Bridge marries and moves to Kansas City. Her husband is determined to provide well for his family, and the result is that he is always working, hardly ever at home. He is successful. Soon, Mrs. Bridge is a society matron with three children, a woman very conventional and concerned with appearances and “proper” behavior, not one to face ugliness. She has servants and not much to do.

Two of her three children react against her overconcern with propriety and perhaps her lack of a sense of humor. She constantly picks on her son Doug for basically being a boy—being unconcerned with his appearance and not very worried about any of her corrections. Her oldest daughter, Ruth, just goes her own way.

Mrs. Bridge has occasionally had intentions to read more or learn Spanish or take painting lessons—improve herself—but aside from buying the tools, nothing much comes of this. Eventually she faces middle age and an empty nest and wonders what has happened to her life.

I grew up 20 to 30 years later than this novel, but I remember this same kind of life for suburban matrons, even with housework and children and no servants—the lack of mental stimulation and a feeling of lack of purpose. I found this novel sad but interesting.

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

Literary Wives logo

Most of the information about Mrs. Bridge’s marriage is implied, since we see so little of Mr. Bridge. He is definitely in charge of the family. Mrs. Bridge does everything he tells her to, including placing her vote. Yet she seems to feel that her role is to correct the children constantly over minor things—many of which would never bother Mr. Bridge. He often seems stern, yet he seems to have a better relationship with the children than she does, and we have indications that he cares about her, only his way to show it is to buy her things. A few times she shows a sexual longing that he doesn’t seem to return. Not much affection is shown, but I believe it is felt. Whether it’s stronger than that as time goes on is not clear. Basically, the two have defined roles and they keep to them without much questioning.

Really, you have to feel sorry for Mrs. Bridge, who seems to feel vaguely that she is leading a sterile life, but it’s what everyone else of that social stratum is doing, too.

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Review 2694: #ReadIndies! The Spring Begins

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I didn’t think a press for a large library would be considered independent, but I guess it is, so I have another book that qualifies for Reading Independent Publishers Month.

The focus of The Spring Begins is unusual, especially for when it was published in 1934. It is about the awakening, the possibility of romance, for three women. But they are the women usually behind the scenes—a young housemaid, a young nursemaid, and a middle-aged day governess.

Lottie, the nursemaid, is 19 years old and straight out of an orphanage. She loves the two little girls she’s in charge of as well as their baby brother, but she is afraid of Nurse. She knows nothing of men, but Nurse has been horrifying her with stories about how nasty they are and what horrible things they do, so that she can barely bring herself to look at them. But there is a nice young man who works around the grounds named George.

Maggie, the kitchen maid and scrubber, has even less status in the house than Lottie. But she is a fierce, strong girl who hates Cook but is confident of her own attractions. She feels a strong pull toward Maxwell, the gardener, even though she knows he is not the marrying kind.

Hessie is the daughter of a deceased clergyman who helps out the vicar’s wife and acts as governess to her children. She is obsessed by her own gentility and her hopes for Mr. Saul, the curate. But she behaves artificially with him, and it’s clear that he’s not interested. Hessie finds herself adrift when she learns that her younger sister, Hilda, is engaged to her long-time boss. Hilda is fulfilling their mother’s only ambition, and Hessie notices how their mother begins to spoil Hilda and ignore Hessie. She is eaten up with a combination of jealousy and sadness that her relationship with Hilda will never be as close. Also, she is being disturbed by her own unruly thoughts about relations between men and women.

Of the three women, I liked Hessie least because she is constantly judging other people and thinking about her own behavior as a lady. I liked her better, though, after a crucial event toward the end of the novel.

I found this novel interesting, but sometimes my attention wandered from it. It is vividly written, though, and its characters are believable.

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Review 2682: The Woman in the Hall

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Molly and Jay Blake have led a straitened but normal childhood until Jay is hospitalized and needs care that Lorna Blake cannot afford. So, she has Molly dress in her shabby gym dress and takes her to beg at a rich person’s house. Molly is mortified. Lorna has an unusual relationship with her servant, Susan, and we understand from a conversation that this is not the first time Lorna has done this.

Jay recovers and life returns to normal. However, periodically Lorna gets restless and begins approaching rich people, telling them outrageous stories and usually coming away with money. She is a professional con woman who uses the excuse of needing money for her daughters, when she is clearly excited by this life. In fact, in some way she makes herself believe her lies. For example, years after she lies about Jay wanting to play the violin, she says that Jay used to beg her for luxuries, including the violin. In fact, both girls are horrified by their mother’s behavior and seldom ask for anything.

Lorna has done things in the past that have made her enemies. Captain Alexander Muir-Leslie’s engagement to Sylvia, whom he adores, is broken when he tries to convince her that Lorna cheated her. So, he begins trying to track Lorna down. He travels to America because Lorna has told people that her husband, Neil Inglefield, deserted her and her daughters. But Neil Inglefield is her stepbrother, not her husband. In company with his friend, Shirley Dennison, whose romance with Neil’s brother Lorna broke up years ago, Neil sets out to find Lorna. Instead, he finds Molly.

The first part of the novel, dealing with the girl’s earlier lives, seemed to me to become a bit repetitive after a while, as Lorna pulls her cons and then turns her stories back on her children to justify herself. Later, with the introduction of Muir-Leslie, the novel begins to be more about the effects on other people’s lives of her lies. This change immediately made the novel more interesting, culminating in a grotesque betrayal of one of her daughters.

I’ve always been interested in novels about sociopaths, and Lorna is an early portrayal. Also, the words “child abuse” are never spoken, and perhaps in 1939 Lorna’s behavior wouldn’t be understood that way, but it is now. This novel is a compelling character study. There are characters to like in this novel, but Lorna isn’t one of them.

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Review 2669: Dean Street December! The Musgraves

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My last selection for Dean Street December is The Musgraves by D. E. Stevenson. It’s a little inconsequential compared to some of her others but makes a pleasant read nonetheless.

Esther Musgrave married a much older man when she was quite young, and her biggest regret of that time was that she was unable to befriend his son Walter, who was only a few years younger than herself. Despite her efforts, he was jealous and sulky, and when Charles tried to call him to order, he left university and disappeared. Charles died years later without hearing from him again.

Now two of Esther’s daughters are grown, and the other one has just finished school. Margaret is happily married to Bernard, a solicitor. Rose is dreamy and affectionate. Only Delia, the oldest daughter, poses a problem. She has very little to do and resents being asked to help out. At Bernard’s suggestion, Esther has moved off the family estate because she can’t afford to keep it up. Now Bernard is trying to sell it. Esther is happy in her small house, but Delia constantly complains about it. Delia’s only interest is in the local drama club, and she has fought for the lead in the upcoming play, but now she’s having trouble learning her lines.

A new resident has moved into the neighborhood, Eulalie Winter. Delia befriends her and becomes jealous of her, so much so that Esther feels she should not call on her. Bernard says he recognizes her as the companion of a wealthy woman who died, leaving her all her money. Her appearance and name are changed, but Bernard thinks she’s the same woman he met on a cruise with the old lady.

Rose, quite naïve, has met a young man in the woods by the abbey. Young, maybe, but a lot older than she is. He has been working on her sympathies and has convinced her not to tell her mother about their meetings.

And Walter comes to call! He has come to England on business from South Africa and says he regrets the pain he caused everyone.

Esther herself is a bit silly and ineffectual, a big worrier. But everyone in the family is going to experience a change.

I liked this one, but I didn’t really get pulled into it or feel affection for any of the characters. Still, I wanted to know what happened.

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Review 2667: Dean Street December! Cecil

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Through about 20 years’ time, Lady Anne Guthrie becomes more and more concerned about the relationship between her husband’s much younger stepbrother, Cecil, and Cecil’s mother, Lady Guthrie. Anne’s husband Charlie was already an adult when his elderly father married Edythe, who was very young. They had only one child, and Lady Guthrie, who plays the invalid card, does everything to keep her son with her, saying he is too nervous to be sent to school, keeping him out of university, and opposing his proposed career as a diplomat. This novel is set in the late 19th century, seemingly for no apparent reason, perhaps because the events later in the novel are more believable then.

Anne, who finds Lady Guthrie tiresome, thinks her decisions are misguided, but Charlie’s cousin Nealie thinks Edythe is more selfish than misguided. As Cecil grows to an adult, it becomes obvious that his mother will do anything to prevent his marriage, but Cecil sees only the sacrifice she has made to live with his frequently ill father and raise him virtually on her own.

Charlie and Anne try to help Cecil, whom they are fond of, but the events of the novel become darker as it proceeds. This is a terrific character study of a “delicate” woman who uses her health and close relationship with her son to manipulate him. I found it very involving.

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Review 2661: Dean Street December! Charlotte Fairlie

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When Charlotte Fairlie was a girl her relationship with her widowed father was close. Then he met someone, and she seemed to be nice, but as soon as they were married, she became jealous of Charlotte. In the end, he sent Charlotte to his brother, and she never saw him again. (Oddly, she reflects later that it was the only thing he could do, but I think not.)

Now Charlotte has achieved her goal since she was in school. She has been appointed head of St. Elizabeth’s, her old school. She is young for such a position but has been wearing a stodgy hat to board meetings to disguise that fact. The only thorn in her side is Miss Pinkerton, who thinks she should have had the position and is a real troublemaker.

A new girl starts at the school, Tessa MacRyne. She is an unusual child, self-possessed but homesick for her island home in Western Scotland. Charlotte catches her running away one day and learns that a letter from her mother has informed her that her parents are divorcing and her mother has returned to her parents in the U. S. Tessa feels she must return home to comfort her father. Charlotte’s handling of the situation earns her Tessa’s affection and an invitation to the island of Targ during summer break.

A friendship begins between Charlotte and Lawrence Swayne, the headmaster of the boys’ school. Unexpectedly, her proposes marriage to her, thinking they would make a great partnership.

I found this novel to be deeply touching and involving. I generally think of Stevenson’s books as very light romance, but I felt this book was a little deeper.

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Review 2660: Little Boy Lost

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When World War II broke out in France, Hilary Wainwright left his pregnant wife Lisa in Paris to rejoin his regiment, thinking that the British would be fighting in France. He only saw his son, John, once, shortly after he was born. Later, he heard that Lisa, who was working with the resistance, was dead. He had no idea what happened to the baby, but he once received a visit from Pierre Verdier, the fiancé of Lisa’s best friend, Jeanne. He reported that Lisa had given the baby to Jeanne shortly before she was arrested, but that now Jeanne was dead, and he did not know what happened to the baby.

The war is over, and Pierre returns. He tells Hilary he wants to look for John for him. Hilary is now ambivalent about finding his son. When Lisa was killed, he envisioned getting comfort from raising his son, but it has been five years. Now he’s more worried about how to tell whether any boy they find is really his.

Pierre eventually traces a boy who might be John to a Catholic orphanage in Northern France. Hilary goes to Paris to meet the people Pierre traced. He has always loved France, but post-war, the country is in dire straits. Hilary travels to the northern town to try to determine whether the boy, called Jean, is his.

Frankly, I disliked Hilary pretty much all the way through this novel. The Afterword says that it takes Hilary until the last few pages to know his own mind, but in fact, he uses every excuse to try to disassociate himself from responsibility. When he thinks he would be betraying Lisa if he accidentally took home the wrong boy, for example, it seems clear from what is said about her that she would have taken Jean as soon as she saw his plight.

Small spoiler—when it seemed Hilary was going to use his lust for an obvious slut to break his promises, I was really disgusted.

That being said, I still enjoyed reading this novel, which is touching and insightful into human weakness. It also provides a post-war view of France that is bleak and that I hadn’t read of before.

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