Realism

All books from the realism literary period

On Twain and Eliot, Flaubert and Art, and everything else I’ve been reading

11 Jun 2012

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Despite not having written a post here on the blog in ages, I have been reading a lot. Each day I have a choice few minutes where I have to decide, should I read or should I post on the blog? And reading has been winning out. I can’t feel too bad about that, although I wish I could some how find the time to be a better blog writer.

Since my last post on the Hunchback of Notre Dame I pulled a 180 and instead of reading Les Mis or another French work, I picked up Mark Twain. It was actually Dd’s doing. She was reading her kid’s version of Tom Sawyer and wanted me to join her when she found out Twain was in my book collection too. I think she ended up liking Tom Sawyer more than I did, not surprising as it really does a wonderful job of capturing childhood adventure. I moved on to Huckleberry Finn next. Dd had finished her Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry way before me but Hey, mine’s got a lot more words!

I remember Hemingway saying that ‘all modern American lit comes from Huckleberry Finn‘ so I was intrigued and curious how Huck would differ from the simplicity and scattered story of Tom Sawyer. Well I don’t know if I see in Huck what Hemingway saw, but it was certainly better. I loved Huck’s voice and his conflict between being a “good boy” and doing what was truly Good. Towards the end of Huck, Tom Sawyer shows up and things get very comical and borderline silly. Poor Jim for having to put up with those boys lol. I felt torn about Jim’s character overall. It seemed he was just on the edge of being a fully developed real person but then Twain would pull him back and use stereotypical humor. Perhaps this was Twain’s intent and not failure but I was disappointed that Twain was not… a little braver.

My daughter moved on to reading The Prince and the Pauper but I was Twain-ed out, so I picked up George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I’ve been wanting to read Middlemarch for awhile since everyone talks about how wonderful it is. But I was a little worried that I would need my full concentration cap on for Eliot’s writing. I’ve read some of her short stories, some being easy reads but others requiring focus. I’m almost on page 400 of Middlemarch now and I am really enjoying it. The reading is going faster than I expected, really not difficult at all. Although, there are some paragraphs, that I must admit, I have little idea about what the heck Eliot is on about. I think this is just a problem of historical perspective though. I just don’t get her timely political jokes. It does not take away from the story though.

I am getting to the point where I am a little annoyed with the lack of footnotes in the Barnes and Noble classics editions. It’s bothered me in multiple books now. There are clearly references that should be explained that have no footnotes at all. In the Hunchback of Notre Dame for example, there is a lot of Latin and there was only footnotes with translations for about half of the Latin phrases! Where is the sense in that? If you’re going to translate SOME of the Latin then we are obviously under the assumption that the reader does not read Latin lol, so why not translate all??

Besides Middlemarch, I am also reading Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. I actaully picked this one up because I was on my way to the hair salon and I didn’t want to huck around the 5lb book that is Middlemarch! I was enjoying the kaleidoscope view of Madame Bovary, it was an interesting contrast with the more straight froward Middlemarch. But I’ve set aside Flaubert for awhile until I finish with Eliot. I’ve got about 200 pages left in Madame Bovary and I’m interested to see if she has “actual” affairs or if the affairs in her head are it lol. I do feel for her, her loneliness and depression. But there is definitely a distance from the characters created in Flaubert’s writing. I think it is like looking through a keyhole rather than experiencing the character’s lives directly.

Also on the night table, well not actually because it would cause my table to flip over, is Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. This is a college art history text book, technically two books volume 1 and 2. I ordered these for what I felt was a good price via Amazon marketplace. When I saw how large they were I wasn’t sure if I was going to make any good headway with them since I have so many other things going on. But surprisingly, I am already half was through the first volume. It’s looking like I’ll be able to finish both in a timely manner, vs having another large book that I have not cracked yet guilting me from the shelf.

Even though they are textbooks, the Gardner’s art books are very interesting, not dry at all. Volume 1 starts off with pre-historic art and moves through to Gothic in the Middle Ages. Volume II picks up there and moves through to modern times (leaving off at 1990). What I really enjoy about these books is that there is as much history as art. Each piece and movement is really put in context. Also the books include much about architecture, which hasn’t been a passion of mine in the past but I am finding it really interested along side other art. The only problem with these Gardner books, is they are so big and heavy that I can only read them in certain situations. These are not bring to bed books lol. I almost ordered the all in one Gardner’s art, I think that one must be 1500 pages. Can you image how cumbersome? I dodged a bullet there!

When I’m not reading one of the above books, I’m teaching myself Latin. For fun. ‘Cause I’m a nerd like that lol. I am using Wheelock’s Latin and worbook. Plus Lingua Latina textbook and workbook. I started out with Wheelock which is grammar based because in the past I tried to learn French with Rosetta Stone. I got pretty bored with RS and felt it kind of useless because it just taught random words with out any grammar context. With Rosetta I ended up knowing random bits like: black cat, horse, red car, but really nothing useful and I didn’t have any understanding of the language. So this time I decided to use the good old fashion book method, including grammar.

I’m am slowly chugging away with Wheelock but I’ll admit it’s not the most fascinating layout or method lol. Along side though, I am using Lingua Latina which is an immersion method. The whole book is in Latin. It starts out very simple and you can figure out what is being said by the context. So that I don’t miss out on the grammar with Lingua Latina, I am using the student book on the side. This extra book just points out and explains the grammar more fully and includes vocab lists for each chapter.

I am enjoying Lingua more than Wheelock but I think both are important. I am on chapter 4 with Lingua and just finished chapter 2 in Wheelock. I find I have to reread each chapter 3-4 times, with each read I absorb something more. Using the workbooks with both is also a must for me! So it’s slow going but I’m looking forward to one day being able to read Latin. I image going into a museum and being able to read the Latin carving under a sculpture or notes under a painting, how cool would that be!

Another thing keeping me busy is preparing for school in the Fall. I took my college placement test a few days ago. I did well on the English portions, only missing one or two. But the math….was sad lol. Oh well, I expected it. I had been reviewing math knowing that I had to take this test but at this point I just feel if I don’t know if fully I might at well just take the class, no big deal.

So that’s my little update, now back to reading!

 

By: Shannon Category: Ancient Rome, Classic literature, Non-fiction, Now reading, Realism, Self education, Victorian Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Anne Bronte Agnes Grey finished

6 May 2011

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“All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge; I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to other, but the world may judge for itself: shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture, and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.”

I enjoyed Agnes Grey much more than I thought I would. For some reason, I thought it would be stoic and moralizing. I guess Anne Bronte’s reputation as the serious sister gave me a preconceived notion. There are indeed many morals that Agnes tries to teach the horrible children and parents she, as a governess, is charged with and there is also a lot of religion, or ‘God talk’ as I like to call it. But the book is written with such a light hand that it never comes across as preachy. I actually found Agnes’ faith and Mr. Weston’s sermons very touching. That is saying a lot from an atheist.

Mr. Weston advising a woman who is struggling with her faith:

“..if many shall seek to enter in at the strait gate and shall not be able, it is their own sins that hinder them; just as a man with a large sack on his back, might wish to pass through a narrow doorway, and find it impossible to do so, unless, he would leave his sack behind him.”

I was primarily interested in reading Agnes Grey to compare it against her sisters’ work. Anne has probably always been compared to her sisters with unfair results I think. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are each a torrent of emotion; where even nature bends to the drama. Agnes Grey is quieter but a more honest emotion in my opinion. I could relate more closely to Agnes because I felt I would think and act the same in her situation. AG is a straight forward, true life account of Agnes’ struggle with loneliness and ill-treatment. It’s not a tidal wave that knocks you over but it is still moving.

Agnes on the struggle those born without beauty face:

“As well might the humble glow-worm despise that power of giving light, without which, the roving fly might pass her and repass her a thousand times, and never light beside her; he vainly seeking her, she longing to be found, but with no power to make her presence known, no voice to call him, no wings to follow his flight;…the fly must seek another mate, the worm must live and die alone.” 

Like Villette, Agnes thinks to keep some of the story and her feelings to herself. But you always know exactly what she is thinking and it is not long before she comes out with it. This is very satisfying because you want to be her confidant. Her one true friend.

Although it may not be an earth shattering work I think there is a quiet genius in the narration. AG is told in the first person and her story is so very convincing that I often found myself thinking of her as Anne, not Agnes. Again like Villette AG is said to have been influenced by real life experiences of the author. But although both novels may be autobiographical, only with Agnes did I feel 100% sucked into the story to the point that I needed to remind myself that it was a story.

Like Charlotte’s and Emily’s work, sadness, isolation, and the expectation of a short, hard life pervades Anne Bronte’s novel. The Bronte sisters may have been geniuses, but I do not envy them.

“We have had trials, and we know that we must have them again; but we bear them well together, and endeavor to fortify ourselves and each other against the final separation–that greatest of all afflictions to the survivor; but, if we keep in mind the glorious Heaven beyond, where both may meet again, and sin and sorrow are unknown, surely that too may be borne”

By: Shannon Category: Classic literature, Finis, analysis and reviews, Realism, Victorian Tags: ,

Charles Dickens Nicholas Nickleby finished

21 Feb 2011

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No Spoilers but discussing the book as a whole and vague reference to the ending


So I finished Nicholas Nickleby yesterday and although I enjoyed the book, I was a little disappointed in the ending. Like most of the Dickens I’ve read, the end of the story gets wrapped up so quickly in a tidy little package. All the characters in their proper place and no storyline string left undone. It’s all so nice and neat that it feels forced. I can’t blame Dickens alone for this. I’ve read that this was the style of the time, and readers basically demanded it. I had the same disappointment with Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. After so many twists and turns, ups and downs, a full stop ending feels abrupt.

Again like most Dicken’s books, there are quite a few themes going on all at once. You could classify NN as a coming of age story but we get a pretty good look at many characters besides Nicholas and their own abbreviated journeys. What most of these characters have in common is love. Not your typical boy-loves-girl plot but all the different types and corruptions of what can be called love. I searched a bit online to see if anyone else picked up on this theme but I couldn’t find anything which surprised me. That’s the great thing about a good book though, we can each take something different from the story. Since I already outlined my NN love theory, I won’t go into it again here.

Getting back to the coming of age storyline, the perspective of NN differs greatly from the journey taken in Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Oliver Twist because unlike Pip, David, and Oliver, when we meet Nicholas he is already grown. His character is already formed and it doesn’t really change much as the story progresses. His quest is not to become a man but to become the man of the family. After the death of his father (no spoiler, happens before our story even really begins) it falls to Nicholas to provide for his mother and sister. The family must also try to find their new place in society.

Before the death of his father, Nicholas was a well educated, middle-class, country gentleman. Being from the country and only having a small fortune to live on, the family’s status is not high but it is certainly respectable. When Nickleby Sr squanders the family fortune and then kicks the bucket, they have to sell the country house, and move into the city in search of a new beginning (they hope with the assistance of Uncle Ralph).

Now penniless, the family has to accept their new poor, working class, social status. It’s very important to Nicholas that they do accept this and not try to social climb. Since Nicholas and his sister Kate are grown adults and had a decent upbringing, they have self respect. They have their morals firmly in place.  They expect one human being to treat another with kindness and respect. Kate especially is somewhat shocked by how she is treated out in the working world. Brother and sister both, try very hard to check their pride and accept that they are now, and will forever be, working class. Nicholas even suggests that it would be better for them both to become old spinsters than marry above their station and into money.

So the plot of the book is basically Nicholas’ trials and tribulations while he tries to find a means of providing for his family. Along the way we encounter many characters and situations that illustrate the other themes of the story. Vanity, hope, benevolence, sympathy, and child rearing. The characters come together to form many different types of family units. Interestingly, some characters could not care less about their relations and others, although extremely cruel to every single other person they encounter,  care very deeply and sing the praises of their wife and children.

Again because Nicholas and Kate are adults, they can judge the cruelty, foolishness, and deceit they see in the other characters and situations. Unlike David, Pip, and Oliver; Nicholas is not naive. He occasionally judges others behaviors harshly though not unjustly. He has a deeply sympathetic heart but also a violent temper, which you would expect from a confident 19 or 20 year old. Several times in the book Nicholas has to restrain himself from handing out a sound beating and he won’t suffer to have his nose tweaked. So often while reading Dickens you just wish someone would give XX a thrashing and here we finally have Nicholas to do so.

By: Shannon Category: Classic literature, Finis, analysis and reviews, Realism, Victorian

Nicholas Nickleby illustrations

18 Feb 2011

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First a short history of the illustrator Fred Barnard, via Wikipedia
Frederick Barnard (1846 London - September 1896) popularly known as Fred Barnard, was a Victorian illustrator, caricaturist and genre painter. He is noted for his work on the novels of Charles Dickens published between 1871 and 1879 by Chapman and Hall.[1]
Barnard undertook an enormous task when he was commissioned in 1871 by Chapman and Hall to illustrate nine volumes of the Household Edition of Dickens’s works. Included would be Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Sketches by Boz, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, Dombey and Son and Martin Chuzzlewit. He followed in the footsteps of the respected Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”) who had worked with Dickens himself. For his prodigious output of some 450 illustrations over an eight-year period, Barnard could lay just claim to the title of “The Charles Dickens among black-and-white artists”. Frederick Barnard brought an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Dickens novels to bear on his work.
A young man when he started on his mammoth task, Barnard decided that he would concentrate on scenes other than those that Browne and Dickens had chosen to portray. Whereas ‘Phiz’ was inclined to create dramatic group scenes for his prints, Barnard was more interested in showing the relationships between pairs of characters. While Phiz had to produce illustrations for the monthly serials as Dickens wrote them, Barnard had the advantage of being able to read the complete work repeatedly before starting on his drawings. At the same time Barnard had to seamlessly blend the characters as visualised by ‘Phiz’ with his own style, not daring to deviate too much from their established appearance.
After the death of his son Geoffrey in 1891, Fred Barnard went into a decline. Although his work was unaffected, his relationship with his wife Alice suffered and at age forty-nine his bedclothes caught fire from the pipe he was smoking, while under the influence of a drug which was probably laudanum. He died of suffocation and his body was badly charred.

Poor Frank couldn’t have had a more Dickensian ending if he had spontaneously combusted.

“The schoolmaster and his companion looked steadily at each other for a few seconds, and then exchanged a very meaning smile.”

Mr. Squeers and Mr. Snawley understand each other with regards to the boys “education”.

“Snubs and Romans are plentiful enough and there are flats of all sorts and sizes when there’s a meeting at Exeter Hall.”

Miss La Creevy searches for a fancy nose for an ugly little boy.

“Very glad to make your acquaintance, Miss”, said Squeers, raising his hat an inch or two.”

Mr. Squeers barely escapes being soundly pummelled for his creepster greeting of Kate.

“Pain and fear, pain and fear for me, alive or dead. No hope, no hope!”

Smike contemplates his future.

“Sir Mulberry Hawk and his friend exchange glances over the top of the bonnet.”

Sir Mulberry wraps Mrs. Nickleby around his titled little finger.

   
“I see how it is” said poor Noggs, drawing from his pocket what seemed to be a very old duster, and wiping Kate’s eyes with it as gently as if she were an infant.”
Ralph’s mis-treatment of Kate pushes Newman over the edge, but we don’t find that out until later..
“Sir Mulberry, shortening his whip, applied it furiously to the head and shoulders of Nicholas. It was broken in the struggle: Nicholas gained the heavy handle, and with it laid open one side of his antagonist’s face from the eye to lip.”
Nicholas comes to the defense of his sister’s honor and never was a lashing so enjoyable.
“Night found him, at last, still harping on the same theme, and still pursuing the same unprofitable reflections.”

A letter from Nicholas tells Ralph where he can stick it.


“I am a most miserable and wretched outcast, nearly sixty years old, and as destitute and helpless as a child of six”

We find out what happens to the friends of money lenders.

By: Shannon Category: Classic literature, Illustrations, Realism, Victorian

Back of the Book: Agnes Grey

17 Feb 2011

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“Written when woman–and workers generally–had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequalities of the rigid class system in mid-nineteeth-century Britain. Agnes comes from a respectable middle-class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a governess. Pampered and protected at home, she is unprepared for the harsh reality of a governess’s life. At the Bloomfields’ and later the Murrays’, she suffers under the snobbery and sadism of the self-indulgent upper-class adults and the shrieking insolence of their spoiled children. Worse the unique social and economic position of a governess–”beneath” her employers but “above” their servants–condemns her to a life of loneliness.
Less celebrated than her older sisters Charlotte and Emily, Anne Bronte was also less interested in spinning wildly symbolic, romantic tales and more determined to draw realistic images of conditions in Victorian England that needed changing.”

By: Shannon Category: Back of the book, Classic literature, Realism, Victorian
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