Tag: classics

Day 733: Little Women

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Cover for Little WomenOver the past months I have occasionally reread a childhood favorite to see what I think about it now. The Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables, for example, came through with honors. Not only were both beautifully written, but I found them as entertaining as an adult as I did as a child.

Little Women doesn’t fare quite as well. I found some of the same parts of it affecting as I did when I was young. Who wouldn’t sympathize with these girls, bravely coping without the things their friends have, doing without their father for over a year, getting along as cheerfully as they can? However, as a child reading the book, I didn’t notice that almost every chapter ends with a moral lesson.

The novel covers about 12 years in the lives of the March family, beginning during the American Civil War. For the first half of the novel, Mr. March is away as a chaplain for the Union army. The main character is Jo March, at the start of the novel a tomboyish, gawky 15-year-old who loves writing and putting on plays, reading, and writing stories.

Her older sister Meg is more ladylike and laments having to wear old things to parties. Beth is the third sister, who is too shy to go to school. Amy is the youngest and a little spoiled. Although there are certainly events in their lives, the story is about how Marmee, their mother, raises them all to be good, productive women.

One of the closest relationships in the novel is the friendship between the family and their neighbor Laurie, a rich young man being raised by his grandfather. This and other relationships are warm ones, and the Marches all seem like real people, as do their friends.

If Alcott could have let up a bit on the moralizing, I would have enjoyed the novel more. The other two novels I mentioned earlier also have moral messages, but they leave the reader to figure them out themselves. Still, I’m sure any young girl reading this novel would be as drawn by it as I was years ago.

My comments have made me wonder what I would think of Eight Cousins, which was actually my favorite book by Alcott when I was a child. I’m a little afraid to find out.

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Day 725: The Warden

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Cover for The WardenThe Warden was the first of Anthony Trollope’s Barchester novels, inspired by a setting and a series of Church of England preferment scandals. A chronicler of 19th century life, Trollope was interested in the intersections between practical and emotional considerations. He was a prolific writer known for complex, realistic novels.

The main character of The Warden is Mr. Harding, a kindly, well-meaning canon who is warden of a charitable hospital, sort of a retirement home for poor old men. For his care of the twelve old men’s spiritual well-being, he receives a salary of £800 a year. It is a position that involves little work and also includes a comfortable house, where he lives with his younger daughter Eleanor.

John Bold has been a friend of this house since a young boy, and Eleanor’s friends are expecting to hear of their engagement. John is a wealthy young man who doesn’t have to work for a living, so he has turned his attentions to reform. After a preferment scandal in another town, he decides to look into the will of the man who endowed the hospital. He finds that the pay of the warden has increased 25 times since the endowment 400 years ago, while the residents’ stipends have not increased, although of course the cost of their food and lodging and medical care has increased and is taken care of by the trust. In fact, the only increase the residents have had has come out of Mr. Harding’s own pocket.

Despite his sister’s advice, instead of taking this issue up with the church or the trust, John Bold brings a lawsuit on behalf of the hospital residents and takes the issue to The Jupiter, a powerful newspaper. His lawyer gets most of the elderly residents to sign a petition, rashly promising them £100 a year each. (Note how well the math works here. Even if they took all of Mr. Hardings’ salary, they wouldn’t have enough money to pay each of the residents £100 a year.)

It is Mr. Hardings’ reaction that forms the core of the novel, for he is not interested, like the lawyers and his son-in-law the archbishop, in whether the case will be won or lost but in whether the plaintiff’s point is morally correct. Although he has never given his position any thought, in fact is simply an employee of the trust, he is concerned that the intent of the original will might have been that the recipients of the charity should receive a larger share of it.

Except for his mild-mannered friend, the bishop, he cannot find anyone who will even enter into a discussion with him on this topic. And the bishop is completely dominated by his son, the archbishop Dr. Grantly. Dr. Grantly pushes aside Mr. Hardings’ concerns, which he considers weak, disregarding his wife’s ascerbic comments on how poorly he is handling her father. Soon, a newspaper article has appeared that makes poor Mr. Harding look greedy and grasping.

Not only is Trollope interested in exploring the differences between the reactions of Mr. Hardy, high-minded and feeling, and the lawyers and Dr. Grantly, all business and practicality, but he is also interested in the ramifications of reform. Although he shows there is corruption, this corruption is more of the institutional kind that has evolved over time. No one is purposefully trying to cheat anyone. On the other hand, he wants to point out that the alternatives to these entrenched systems might actually be worse.

We can predict that Mr. Harding ends up financially worse off than he started but that the hospital inhabitants do, too. Trollope’s first Barsetshire novel is quiet and slyly ironic. Trollope is not as often read these days, but he is certainly worth reading.

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Day 723: Greenbanks

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Cover for GreenbanksBest Book of the Week!
This novel begins with a large family Christmas dinner at Greenbanks, the home of Robert and Louise Ashton. It is around 1910. Louise is in her late middle age, a quiet, kind woman who delights in her housekeeping skills and her garden. Her husband, a serial philanderer, has proved a source of pain and humiliation, but she has tried to live it down.

Although the Ashtons are grandparents, three of their grown children live at home. Jim works at the family business, allowing his father to devote little time to it. Charles also purportedly works there, but he prefers to spend time fiddling with inventions, tinkling the piano, and entertaining his adoring mother. Laura is just about to engage herself to Cecil Bradfield. Rachel, the five-year-old daughter of Letty and Ambrose, is Louise’s favorite grandchild.

Robert soon dies in embarrassing circumstances. But even though the novel follows the fortunes of the family over roughly 15 years, it concentrates on the relationship between Louise and Rachel. Rachel, with a self-absorbed mother and an officious father, loves spending as much time as possible at Greenbanks with her grandmother.

The novel has overtones that are feminist for the time, as Rachel finds she has a gift for scholarship. Her father’s rigid and old-fashioned ideas about the place of an education in the lives of young women cost her a scholarship at Oxford, but she manages to continue her education despite him.

Inside cover
The cover at the top is really plain, but for some reason Amazon shows this picture, which is actually the inside of the cover!

One source of disagreement in the family is Louise’s choice of companion. Louise always felt sorry for Kate Barlow when she was a child and tried to include her in family activities. When Kate was a young woman, it was rumored she became pregnant by a married man and had his child, then was thrown off by her parents. Louise meets her in town one day and begins a correspondence with the reluctant woman. After Charles leaves for South Africa and her other two children marry, she invites Kate to become her companion. But Kate never really accepts Louise’s kindness.

The story of the Ashtons is told in spare, matter-of-fact prose that makes no attempt to influence the reader. Many of the characters are flawed and some are unlikable, but there are no heroes and villains here, just a set of ordinary middle-class people. It’s difficult, then, to explain why I so much enjoyed reading this novel. Whipple is a master of style and shows us her characters in the fullness of their lives.

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Day 713: Salem Chapel

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Cover for Salem ChapelBest Book of the Week!
Because of the order the books were listed in on Wikipedia, I thought that Salem Chapel was the first of Margaret Oliphant’s Chronicles of Carlingford. However, the introduction to the book says it is the second. When I started to read it, I thought it was going to be, like Miss Marjoribanks, a light satire on society, only a different level of society. But it is much more dramatic than that.

Arthur Vincent proudly takes up his first clergy position as the Dissenting vicar of Salem Chapel at Carlingford. He is an educated gentleman of some ability, and he is certain he will soon be an accepted member of the best Carlingford society. But he receives a shock when he meets his congregation of buttermen, poulterers, and greengrocers and their wives. He soon finds, too, that he is expected to bend to their wishes, as they pay his salary.

Arthur is a proud young man of good family, and this doesn’t sit well with him. Still, he makes an impression with his first sermon and dutifully goes about his business until he is struck by the sight of the beautiful, young Dowager Lady Western. Although a mutual acquaintance tries to warn him not to make anything of her warm manner to him, as she is like that with everyone, he doesn’t pay attention. Soon, he is informed that his parishioners are displeased. He has been seen paying a call in Grange Lane, the home of the upper-class residents of Carlingford (and setting of Miss Marjoribanks), who all attend St. Roque’s.

Arthur has also made the acquaintance of a less prosperous woman, Mrs. Hilyard, an impoverished gentlewoman who takes in sewing. Mrs. Hilyard is an odd and unfortunate woman, and it is a favor she asks of Arthur and his family that drives the larger actions of the plot.

Up until the major events are set in motion, I found the book amusing, as when Arthur, moonstruck by the sight of Lady Western, spends an entire week daydreaming about her. His congregation interprets this lack of activity as a scholarly application to his sermon and is impressed.

This novel contains wonderful characters who can be a bit Dickensian, like the well-meaning butterman Deacon Tozer or the disturbing Mrs. Hilyard, who reminds me a bit of Rose Dartle in David Copperfield. From humor, the novel soon takes a more serious turn.

The introduction to this novel says that once Mrs. Oliphant was one of the most well-regarded of the Victorian novelists, but she is now nearly forgotten. I have found the two of her novels I’ve read to be very entertaining. I think she reminds me, with a delicate touch, more of Jane Austen than any other writer I’ve encountered, and some of the events of Salem Chapel are remindful of Pride and Prejudice. I can only hope that more people will decide to read the works of Margaret Oliphant.

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Day 707: Don Quijote

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Cover for Don QuijoteI know. This is not the spelling of “Quixote” most people are accustomed to seeing, but it is the one used in my Norton Critical Edition, translated by Burton Raffel. And a sprightly translation it is.

Don Quijote is the story of an old man who has studied the popular chivalric romances so much that they have addled his brain. He declares himself a knight errant and takes to the road seeking adventure. Accompanying him is a neighboring farmer, Sancho Panza, who he has convinced to come with him as his squire in exchange for a share in certain rewards. In particular, Sancho has his heart set on the governorship of an island.

Don Quijote doesn’t just look for adventure. In the first book, he hurls himself at every passer by, convincing himself that windmills are giants, a barber is a knight, an inn is a castle. Above all else, he worships his lady, the beautiful Dulcinea, whom he has never met but whom Sancho remembers as a muscular peasant girl.

Don Quijote is both a parody of the chivalric romances and a satire against the Spanish conquistadores. Its most important distinction is that it is considered the first modern novel. I found volume one to be amusing in a sort of slapstick style, as Don Quijote’s adventures always go wrong and end up with him and Sancho Panza being beaten up.

Volume two was a little too much of the same, though. In a bit of metafiction, Cervantes lists some of the things readers criticized from the first volume and then attempts to avoid them. So, for example, the two adventurers are not beaten up as often. However, both volumes contain long disquisitions on such topics as marriage, poetry, chivalry that don’t all translate well into modern times.

Finally, after Don Quijote had himself lowered into Montesino’s Cave to see its wonders and then fell asleep and dreamt a bunch of nonsense and never even saw the cave, I had to stop. Quijote was in the midst of recounting his ridiculous dream, which he took for reality, and it seemed to go on and on. I leafed ahead, looking for the end of it, never found the end, and finally lost patience. I fully believe, since apparently someone else published a book about our hero after the first volume came out, that Cervantes only brought Quijote back out on the road so that he could kill him off at the end.

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Day 688: The Age of Innocence

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Cover for The Age of InnocenceI have certainly read The Age of Innocence before, but it was not until this rereading that I gained a full appreciation for its subtlety and complexity. I may have read it years ago, but I became really interested in it after an interview with Martin Scorsese about his movie adaptation (my favorite film ever) where he commented on “the brutality under the manners” of the upper class New Yorkers in the novel, set in the 1870’s, and likened them to gangsters.

This novel is about the tension between individual desires and the expectations of a rigid society. However, it is also about the two main characters trying to do the right thing in the face of yearning and passion.

Newland Archer is an intellectually inclined young man interested in art and travel who thinks he understands but sometimes is a little impatient of the rigid and insular customs of his time and social class. He has just become engaged to May Welland during a difficult time for the Welland family. May’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, has returned to New York to her family, having left her husband, and society is shocked to see them bringing her to parties and the theatre. Archer decides to show solidarity with the Wellands and soon finds himself drawn into the Countess’ affairs in his professional capacity as a lawyer. Countess Olenska wants to divorce her husband, and the family is horrified, asking Newland to convince her not to.

Newland succeeds, but he soon realizes that he is in love with Ellen Olenska himself. Ellen is determined not to betray her cousin.  When she admits she loves Newland, she comments that by getting her to drop her divorce, he has assured that they can never be together. A disappointed Newland marries May.

Within a short time, Newland regrets his marriage and foresees a gray existence of doing the same things with the same people year after year. The innocence and purity he saw in May is actually an incuriosity and inability to grow or change. Although Newland doesn’t see Ellen, who has moved to Washington, he has begun to think of her as the only real corner of his life. All these feelings are brought to a climax when the Countess returns to New York and her family decides she should reunite with her husband.

This novel is vivid with carefully observed descriptions. Underlying it all is an understated yet savage critique of petty and provincial New York society of the time. Almost every sentence is double-edged, such as when Wharton describes a soprano’s solo in the first chapter:

She sang, of course “M’ama!” not “he loves me,” since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

Nice! I understand that when this book was published, nearly 50 years after its setting, members of New York society were still able to match most of the characters in the novel with their real counterparts.

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Day 687: Someone At a Distance

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Cover for Someone at a DistanceBest Book of the Week!
I would normally not give away something important that happens well into a novel, but the book blurb openly presents it as the novel’s central conflict. The Norths are an affectionate and happy family with little to discontent them in post-World War I England. Avery enjoys his work as a partner in a publishing firm and is a loving husband and father. He dotes on his daughter Anne especially. Ellen loves her family and her garden. Although she perhaps does too much for her family, she enjoys it. Hugh is serving his term in the army but can’t wait to get out and work at his father’s firm. Fifteen-year-old Anne loves her family and especially her horse.

The only small annoyance in the family’s life is Avery’s mother, who is critical and discontented, wanting more attention than the busy family can provide. But she soon solves her own problem by hiring a companion, a French girl named Louise Lanier.

Louise is a selfish and discontented young woman who is fleeing the end of an affair in which she was felt to be socially inferior to her lover and unworthy of marrying him. Eventually, she sets her sights on Avery, heedless of any destruction she may wreak with her harmful intentions and toxic personality.

I spent the first half of this novel entranced by this perceptive and layered novel and the last third in tears. The characters are wonderfully realized. Perhaps Louise’s character lacks a little nuance, but we have all met people who are able to justify their own bad behavior to themselves. This is a great book that should have had more attention since it was written in the 1930’s.

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Classics Spin #9!

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Cover for The MoonstoneI always enjoy the Classics Club spin, where the club invites members to post a list of 20 book from their Classics Club lists, draws a number, and then you promise to read the book corresponding to that number by the deadline. Unfortunately, the date for posting that list always seems to fall on the same day as Literary Wives club, so I’m posting it a little early. Here is my list, and I will read the book chosen by May 15.

  1. The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
  2. Henry VI Pt I by William Shakespeare (chosen by the spin)
  3. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  4. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
  5. Night by Elie Wiesel
  6. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  7. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
  8. Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy
  9. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
  10. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  11. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  12. The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro
  13. Ada by Vladimir Nabokov
  14. Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley
  15. A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor
  16. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  17. Middlemarch by George Eliot
  18. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
  19. The True Heart by Sylvia Townsend Warner
  20. Beloved by Toni Morrison

Day 664: Miss Marjoribanks

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Cover for Miss MarjoribanksBest Book of the Week!
It’s not often that I discover a delightful novel by a classic author whose works I am unfamiliar with. But that’s the case with Miss Marjoribanks. It is a wonderfully ironic comic novel about middle class mores with an exasperating and ultimately lovable heroine.

We first meet Lucilla Marjoribanks at the age of 15. Her long-ailing mother has died, and Lucilla rushes home vowing to be a comfort to her father. Dr. Marjoribanks, who has been looking forward to a comfortable bachelor existence, wastes no time in sending her back to school.

Four years pass, and Miss Marjoribanks returns from her tour on the continent determined to devote herself to her father for the next ten years, suggesting that by then she may have “gone off” a little and will start looking for a husband. Lucilla is a young woman of energy and complete self-confidence who is determined to be a force in Carlingford society. But first she must deal with a proposal from her cousin, Tom Marjoribanks. She loses no time in dispatching him to India.

Dr. Marjoribanks watches in amusement as Lucilla calmly removes the reins of his household from his redoubtable cook Nancy and begins to take control of Carlingford society. Her first project is to begin a series of “evenings” every Thursday.

As Lucilla deftly and with dauntless good humor manages the affairs of her friends, somehow none of a series of eligible men ever come up to scratch with a marriage proposal when her friends expect them to. But Lucilla insists she will dedicate herself to her father’s happiness at least until she is 29.

Although Lucilla, with her managing ways, could easily be a figure of satire, I grew to admire her and like her friends and neighbors, who are fully realized even though  this book is the fifth in a series and I have not read the others. We even feel sympathy for Barbara Lake, the contralto whose voice goes so well with Lucilla’s that Lucilla invites her to her evenings. Barbara, from a lower strata of society, sees Lucilla’s actions as condescension and rewards Lucilla’s impulse with spite.

I was hugely entertained by Lucilla’s career and have already started looking for more books by Oliphant. Margaret Oliphant, I find, was once one of the most popular authors of the mid-19th century, and she deserves to be remembered.

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Day 638: The Singing Sands

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Cover for The Singing SandsEvery once in awhile, I like to read a classic mystery, and I have only read a few by Josephine Tey. Tey’s novels acted as a bridge between the Golden Age of mysteries and the modern mystery, when the genre moved toward more realism.

The overworked Inspector Grant is on his way to a holiday in Scotland and is concerned because he has developed a debilitating claustrophobia. Upon leaving the train at Euston station, he comes across a porter trying to rouse an apparently inebriated passenger. Grant sees right away that the man is dead. When he examines the body, he drops some of his own papers, and while picking them up, accidentally removes the dead man’s newspaper.

Relaxing at his cousin’s house in the Highlands and preparing to go fishing, Grant checks the paper the next day to see what it says about the dead man. His face has stuck in Grant’s mind. He finds that the man has been identified as a Frenchman named Charles Martin. He has already discovered the man’s newspaper, with some verse scratched on it referring to animals that talk, streams that stand, stones that walk, and singing sand. He recognizes the man’s handwriting as the unformed style learned by British schoolboys, and he can’t imagine that the dead man was French. So, he decides to look into the death a bit more.

Except for The Daughter of Time, Tey’s most well-known book, I have only read a couple of Tey’s one-off novels, not her Inspector Grant mysteries. After reading this one, I think I’ll look for more. Inspector Grant is interesting and likable, as are the relatives he visits. The mystery is involving without being so overcomplicated as to be unlikely, as Golden Age mysteries often are. When Grant travels to the island of Claddagh (referred to as Cladda in the novel) in search of the singing sands, we also get to explore a new landscape.