anne bronte

Add to the shelf: Classic authors in context

9 Jul 2012

2 Comments

Blackwell’s Companion to Romanticism
I’ve had this book on my Amazon wishlist for quite some time but was being held back by the price. I finally bit the bullet on it and I’m relieved to find I’m really enjoying it. This companion to Romanticism contains 52 essays on all aspects of the Romantic movement. Part 1 of the book puts Romanticism in context with chapters on movements leading up to Romanticism and historical context, including the French Revolution. Part 2 has 23 essays discussing individual novelists and poets. Part 3 discusses genres of Romanticism; the novel, gothic, travel writing, etc. Part 4 is more eclectic with essays on various issues and debates. Feminism, historicism, psychological view points plus comparisons and influences such as England and Germany, Shakespeare and the Romantics, Milton, etc.

I’m currently on Chapter 5, Britain at War, and so far I’ve found the essays very well written. The authors seem to know their subject very well and express their points clearly with factual information to back it up. I’ll compare this to what I feel are some lesser and more jumbled essays next.

David Hume had taken the skepticism of the Enlightenment to its logical conclusions. In his Treatise of Human Nature Hume argued that the notions that we have of cause and effect are simply linked to the way which we experience the events in space and time and that such notions of causation have no objective existence. Thus, one’s knowledge of causation is a matter of habit or custom, not a logical certainty. Hume expressed radical skepticism about the nature of the human self, concluding that what one called the self was merely an ever-changing ‘bundle of sensations’. It was this position that ..laid the foundations for the Romantic Idealism
~Peter Kitson, Beyond the Enlightenment

 

The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel 
I purchased the kindle version of this book and I’m glad that I did because I’m not very impressed with it. Unlike the Blackwell companion, the essays in the Cambridge companion can’t seem to express a complete thought or theory. This book has 11 essays putting the Victorian novel in historical context, discussing the industrial revolution, gender roles, race, etc. So far I’ve read 6 of the 11 and most of the essays are less about sharing with the reader “actual information” and more about the authors musings. I often felt like the authors were not expressing their opinion clearly and they jumped on to another topic or aspect of their topic before they had fully expressed or gave any backing evidence for their first opinion. The exception to this sort of scattered writing was chapter 2, Simon Eliot’s The business of Victorian publishing. Eliot seemed to know his topic very well and shared much interesting information and perspective.
I’m not sure if I will go ahead and finish this book or not. I was pretty disappointed with it but maybe the last couple chapters will surprise me.

 

The Cambridge Companion to The Brontes 
Now after the Companion to Victorian novel mess, I was concerned that this title would also be a total flop. I bought this book on Amazon used for about $2.50, so at least I didn’t have much invested in it lol. To my relief though, this Cambridge companion is great. I haven’t been able to put it down. When I saw that the very first essay was by Juliet Barker my spirits and hopes where lifted. I have the humongous The Brontes by Juliet Barker on my shelf. I haven’t read it yet but I know she is one of THE experts on the Brontes. As expected her essay, The Haworth context, was very interesting. She gave me a whole new view point on the Bronte’s father Patrick.
I am now on Chapter 6, Shirley and Villette, so excited to read this today. Probably my favorite essay so far was Angela Leighton’s The Poetry. It lead me to looking up Emily Bronte’s poem Remembrance which I posted the other day. The first line: Cold in the earth- and the deep snow piled about thee, is still running around my mind.

‘Cold in the earth- and the deep snow piled above thee’, doubles not only the fact but also the sensation of cold. The line gets colder. It probes the buried source of coldness, making cold felt. By piling on snow as well, the poet transforms the sensation of cold into literal weight, as if to force or hold something down. Snow buries the dead doubly ‘deep’, as if earth itself were not deep enough.
~Angela Leighton, The Poetry

Jane Austen in Context, the Cambridge edition
I bought this title used from Amazon as well, in the hardcover. My edition, Jane Austen in context, is just one of the series that cover all of Austen’s novels, her juvenilia, and letters. I’ve flipped through the other titles online, and it looks like each includes a lengthy introduction, numerous notes on the text, and in some cases several appendixes. Not sure if I will make it a goal to collected each but I am tempted. ;)
JA in Context covers in Part 1: Life and works, a short biography, essays on Austen’s language, literary influence, her poetry, etc. Part 2 Critical fortunes includes the reseption of Jane’s work, publishing history, and the cult of Austen. Part 3, Historical and cultural context, is the longest section. It has several essays detailing all aspects of Jane Austen’s times, Agriculture, Dress, Education, Money, and Rank, etc.
I read through the first essay, the biography. It was short but well written and it made its main focus something that is often over looked in other Austen bios, her personal finances. I’ve read snips of some of the other chapters and so far, they all look very interesting and well researched.

Edward Austen (Jane’s brother) eventually enjoyed an income greater than Mr. Darcy’s, nearly £15,000 a year, but he was not at first remarkably generous to his mother and sisters after his father’s death in 1805 left them virtually homeless. Still, his initial pledge or £100 a year did almost double his mother’s income, and eventually he housed her and his sisters in the cottage at Chawton that has become the Jane Austen museum.
~Jan Fergus, Biography Jane Austin in Context

If you are interested in flipping through any of these books you can find them in my Classics Book shop, under Companions and Context. Well, you won’t find the Cambridge Victorian companion becasue I don’t recommend that one lol but you will find the others plus some other goodies to boot. The Classics book shop is just a project I am working on for fun. It is an Amazon affiliate store that I don’t really expect any traffic on but it is hella’ fun picking out my favorite books to add to it lol.
You can find additional companions, literary criticism, and biographies in the book shop under the Lit movement category pages and under the individual authors. Note that the list price for each book is just the Amazon price, click through to check for deals on used editions. The main link for the Book Shop, if you feel like browsing, is at the top of the blog home page.

By: Shannon Category: Add to the shelf, Classic literature, Non-fiction, The Romantics, Understanding & Interpretation, Victorian Tags: , , , , , , , ,

~ Reading Journal ~

8 Mar 2012

4 Comments

Notes from my Reading Journal…..

3-2-12 Have a free day today, so I am indulging in a mini read-a-thon. From 10:30 to 3:30 I hope to read as much as I can and get caught up on some partially read books.

10:40 Reading: Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
started pg24….
Finished chapter 3 and there was just too much poetry structure info all at once; I can’t even absorb it all.
End pg 29

10:50 Taking a break to open my mail which includes my new math book from The Art of Problem Solving…
Holy mother, that is a big algebra book!
After flipping through: I’m going to love this math book. It gives a full explanation backed up with mathematical rules, rather than just saying: This is how you solve the problem..the end.
Instead is says: This is how you solve because X and Y and here again in Z.

11:00 Okay back to poetry book. Goal to read ch. 4 & 5
start pg 29, ch. 4 Design: Line length
Re: line length in poetry “What works, works for profound and understandable reasons.”

11:12 End ch. 4
Oliver’s favorite line length is the pentameter because it is the perfect length to contain a thought without leaving the reader out of breath.

11:20 Ch. 5 Design Rhyme
Punctuation is used at the end of a line that forms a complete thought. Or mid-line when the poet wants you to hesitate, ” to verify and intensify that pause”.
Seems obvious but I had not purposely thought about that before. Some lines are so short yet include a comma at the end..Is this a complete thought masked in few words?

‘A true rhyme leaves a sense of cheerfulness and resolution. A slant or off-rhyme feels darkened and disturbed by complexity.’ See Emily Dickinson for ex. of latter.

Re: the complete thought punctuation, Oliver was referring specifically to the Heroic couplet. So must evaluate other poem styles on an individual basis, if the punctuation is meant to illustrate a complete thought (or simply rhythm?)

11:45 end pg 56 thru ch. 7
I could probably finish Rules of the Dance quickly if I stick to reading it in the AM; instead of the afternoon when I am wore out.

Have Byron’s So, We’ll go no more a roving stuck in my head now.

So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

Break for lunch
Meanwhile googled Byron’s poem, Wiki describes as “the fatigue of age conquering the restlessness of youth”.
I initially thought of the poem as being about two lovers, exhausted after the first flush of falling in love. I can see how it is also about an individual or group of friends wearing out their bodies with partying. Could also transfer theme to a higher level of the individual worn out and ready for death. Or the human race wearing out its potential, quickly using up and running out of new possibilities. Floundering through the darkness in search of knowledge and the thrill of discovery but how many things are left to be discovered…

12:30 Am recharged after lunch and a pop-tart ;)
Reading: Knowing and Teaching Elementary Math. Start pg 9
Would like to at least finish the chapter, maybe 2.

Reading about teaching double digit subtraction with borrowing. I love the Chinese teacher’s term of “composing and decomposing’ (composing 10 ones into 1 ten and alternately breaking or decomposing back into ones) vs the term borrowing. Because “it is fundamental to a variety of math computations” vs a lone idea.
Chinese teachers also emphasize “the rate for composing a higher value unit” i.e 10 ones composes 1 ten, 10 tens composes 1 hundred, etc. A good term to teach because it applies to all higher #s but is there a better way to phrase it? Composing, rate, and higher value are an intimidating list of words for a child.

1:10 end on pg 23
Very interested in this book but taking a reading break. That Benadryl from earlier today is putting me into a comma. I only took half a children’s benadryl and still in a daze.

1:30 Reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall pg 679 on ipad

2:15 Finished Wildfell Hall
Have to get up and move around a bit; am become one with the couch.

Re: WildFell Hall. I read the short intro after finishing the book and it kind of pissed me off. I was reading the free Gutenberg edition, so I don’t know who wrote the intro or when; but the author of it basically states that Charlotte and Emily Bronte were much more talented than “poor Anne” because they took the pains of life and transformed them into something entirely new and distant from reality, into Art. I can see that, I love Charlotte and especially Emily, but the author goes on to say that clearly Anne is not at her sisters’ level because she merely presents reality as it is. There is no transformation.
I do not think Anne was any less talented than her sisters, she just had a different style. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have a distinct fairy tale or fable quality about them. Anne’s Wildfell Hall could easily become fable-tastic but Anne stresses in her own intro that this is reality. That there are people making these errors every day and she hopes to save them from romanticized character flaws. So it is not that Anne cannot achieve the level of fairy tale, she does not want to. Anne Bronte was a realist and that is not a fault. We could even say Anne was more progressive and daring than her sisters since, besides Dickens, few English authors were writing in the realist style when Wildfell Hall was published.

3:00 Time to start my algebra textbook

3:25
Okay the very first problem has me banging my head against the wall. And, it’s not even an algebra problem! It is just a brain warm up, the 24 game. Make 24 total using each of the following #s: 1,6,7,4.
Use addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Each # must be used once and only once to equal 24.
So I fail after about 15mins and look up the answer. How did I not think of that combo!? eeeeedeee-it.

3:30
Leaving to pick up my Dd from school. Mentally taking the next 24 game with me, #s 22, 23, 1, 1

3:55
Good news, I was able to solve the second 24 game problem, it was a pretty easy one. Nice to know I am not completely brain dead after all. It’s hard working that left side of the brain when you normally never use it! Well I guess I do, since I analyze parts, make lists, and am typically logical. But that’s all with words, numbers are a whole ‘nother game.

By: Shannon Category: Now reading, Poetry, Reading Journal, Self education Tags: , , ,

Wishing I could somehow cram all these books into my head instantaneously

1 Mar 2012

2 Comments

Right, so you already know about the 200 classic lit books waiting to be read on my shelves. Well somehow they keep multiplying! I don’t know how it happens. There are just SO many books in the world that need to be read. I have been somewhat good in that I have branched out a little on the book topics and I added several books on PDF that I can read on my iPad. Most of the other books are from the library, so I haven’t actually added too many to the physical shelf.
Still there are so many I want to read, simultaneously, that I don’t even know where to start. Here’s what’s been going on in my reading life these last couple weeks…

1- Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
I finished Shirley awhile ago, read as an ebook so no shelf clutter. I don’t know that I am going to post about it.. It was a good book but no Villette or Jane Eyre.

2-The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I am almost done with this one, have about 100 pages left. Again an ebook from Gutenberg. I liked this one a little more than Shirley but it is completely different from Anne’s other novel, Agnes Gray. Great plot but the narration structure is kind of questionable lol. It’s written in letters (epistolary) but these are the longest and most detailed letters ever written.

3-The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway
From the library, I read the first 40 pages but didn’t immediately fall deeply into the story like I did with Hem’s other books. I do think I will like the story but I am going to hold off and read this when I am in the Hem. mood.

4-The Complete Short stories Hemingway
Library. I’ve only read Hills Like White Elephants so far and I totally did not get what the ‘unsaid thing’ was. >>>is dense<<<< It probably did not help that I was standing at the stove making dinner while I read it. I want to read all of these stories but no way I can before it’s due back. Better to put this on my To Buy list but on the other hand, I’m not sure if I am a huge fan of Hem’s short stories.. They seem so abrupt! (so I googled abrupt to make sure I spelled it right, I know duh, but it was correct so yay me. And the definition is: Brief to the point of rudeness, which I thought was very funny because it perfectly describes Hemingway’s short stories lol).

5-Classic Myths to read aloud by William Russell
Library. I love this book! I actually checked it out to read to Dd, the stories are abridged for children, but her to be read pile is as long as mine! SoI haven’t had time to read it to her but I am enjoying it myself. The books give you a brief 4-8 pages version of a ton of Greek Myths. I plan on reading the adult versions some day lol, but it’s nice to get the general idea of each story since you come across them so often in other lit. Plus I love that it tells you how to pronounce the Greek and Roman names. Also, the stories have notes at the end about Greek stems and how the names of the Gods in the stories relate to our modern language. I’m on page 90 of about 250. I may have to buy this one too since I still want to read it to Dd.

6-Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
Library. This is the poetry book I posted about last month. I’m only on page 26. It’s been hard to find the right time to read this because I need quiet and concentration to really pick up on what she is talking about. It helps to be able to read the poetry examples out loud too. I’m not sure yet if this is THE poetry book for me. I tend to fall asleep while reading it..oops.

7-Decontructing Penguins by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
My last library book, I have not even opened this one yet. It is about analyzing literature in a similar method to the one I outlined in my Lit Analysis Elements post, only this book is aimed at children. The idea is to discuss and analyze books with kids in a book group setting.

Now for something completely different….

 

 

8-Knowing and teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma
This is another book that contributes to understanding of the “Singapore way’ or how mathematics is taught in Asia; but this one actually focuses on the difference in understand and teaching math between teachers in China and the US. Apparently Chinese teachers do not go to school as long or have as much education as US teachers, and yet they do a much better job teaching math. Because they have a deeper understanding of mathematics and emphasize the conceptual with their students. I’m excited to read this one and will probably start it this weekend.

9-Art of Problem Solving Pre-algebra
Alright, now you are not allowed to laugh at me but this math book is for me lol. I decided I want to go back to school, probably for an associates in education…and later a BA in lit?? So I was looking at the college placement test and realized I pretty much have forgotten everything I learned in middle and high school. I am totally clueless about algebra, fractions, etc. The Art of Problem Solving is a curriculum for kids who are gifted in math. I thought it would be perfect for me since it not only goes over the basics, rather quickly which is good, but it also goes much deeper into mathematical understanding and really challenges the student at every level. The website has several video tutorials and I’ve already remembered much of the math I thought was completely gone from my brain. But I decided to go ahead and order the text book because I want to really understand the WHY this time and learn algebra so well it won’t vanish again.

10-Teaching resources, lesson plans, and activity PDFs…. x18
Umm I went a little crazy with the Scholastic teacher express sale.. They have a ton of PDF books on sale for $1. How could I resist that?! I’m most excited about the lesson plans and activities I got for Dd on Greece and Rome. I am going to use these PDFs as well as the book Building Language (a Latin stems book by Michael Clay Thompson) to put together a Greek and Roman curriculum for Dd and I to use this summer. I mentioned the MCT Building Language book awhile ago, when I was talking about ordering his poetry book. I did finally order both (but held off on the Grammar books). Dd and I flipped through the Building Language book already and she really likes it. It’s fun to see a little lightbulb go on in her eyes when she gets the connection between the latin stems and our own language. The MCT poetry book is also beautiful but I need to do quite a bit of work before we use that. There are many references in the book to classic poets, which I love, but I want to pull examples to illustrate the lessons that are more at Dd’s level as well. I imagine reading the classic poems for her so she can HEAR the words instead of focusing on what the poem means and then
using elementary level poems for meaning, metaphor, etc. I have a couple poetry pdfs that will go with that.

So that is what is on my shelf right now. And I haven’t even decided what fiction to read after I finish with Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I should probably pick something from my TBR challenge list…Do I dare start Les Mis?

PS-I’ve included Amazon links to the books so you could read descriptions, reviews, peek inside, etc; not because I think you should buy from them

By: Shannon Category: Add to the shelf, Afterschooling, Non-fiction, Poetry, Self education Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Preparing for The Madwoman in the Attic

31 Dec 2011

7 Comments

One of my goals for 2012 is to finally read The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. I bought this book in April and read a little of it at that time but I quickly realized there were several other books I needed to read first if I was going to truly appreciate and understand Madwoman.

In April of 2011, I had only just begun my Classics reading project. I had read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Sense and Sensibility, and was right in the midst of reading Villette. Back then I had only a vague idea of who George Eliot was and no clue about Margaret Fuller or Virginia Woolf. I had not even read my now much loved Mary Shelley! I was in a sad state reading wise lol. Comparing my knowledge of 19th century woman writers now to back then, I am really pleased with the progress and understanding I have achieved. But I know there are several books I needed to read if I am going to understand all the reference in Madwoman. So, I decided to flip through it and make myself a list.

First, let me give you the synopsis of The Madwoman in the Attic via Wikipedia

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, published in 1979, examines Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. In the work, Gilbert and Gubar examine the notion that women writers of the 19th Century were confined in their writing to make their female characters either embody the “angel” or the “monster.” This struggle stemmed from male writers’ tendencies to categorize female characters as either pure, angelic women, or rebellious, unkempt madwomen. In their argument, Gilbert and Gubar point to Virginia Woolf who says women writers must “kill the aesthetic ideal through which they themselves have been ‘killed’ into art”. While it may be easy to construe that feminist writers embody the “madwoman” or “monster,” Gilbert and Gubar stressed the importance of killing off both figures because neither the angel nor the monster are accurate representations of women or women writers. Instead, Gilbert and Gubar claimed that female writers should strive for definition beyond this dichotomy, whose options are limited by a patriarchal point of view.

Are you as excited about this as I am?! Wait until you see the list of authors discussed in the book…

I decided to break it down for myself by chapter. There are so many books I’ll need to read, I’m not sure I can read all of them and the 2012 list I had already planned. So I may just read each chapter of Madwoman as I complete the works referenced. Laying it aside until the next chapter’s books are completed and then picking it back up again. I kind of hate on again off again reading but I’m not sure there is any other way if I want to get to this book anytime soon.

Chapter 1 The Queen’s Looking Glass
Goethe: Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years (especially the character Makarie)
Brothers Grimm: Little Snow White
People to know: Anne Finch and Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Chapter 2 Infection in the Sentence
Harold Bloom: Anxiety of Influence
Also referenced but to a lesser extent
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow wallpaper (ebook)
Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
People: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Chapter 3 The Parables of the Cave
Mary Shelley’s intro to The Last Man (online)

Chapter 4 Shut up in Prose: Gender and Genre in Austen’s Juvenilia
Jane Austen: Love and Friendship (ebook)
Sense and Sensibility
Northanger Abbey
Also referenced but to a lesser extent
Mansfield Park
Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 5 Jane Austen’s Cover Story
Maria Edgeworth: Castle Rackrent (ebook)
Austen: Northanger Abbey
Mansfield Park
Persuasion
Also referenced but to a lesser extent
Pride and Prejudice
Emma

Chapter 6 Milton’s Bogey
Milton: Paradise Lost
Charlotte Bronte: Shirley
Also referenced but to a lesser extent
Byron: Manfred
Woolf: A Room of One’s Own

Chapter 7 Horror’s Twin: Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve
Shelley: Frankenstein
Also referenced but to a lesser extent
George Eliot: Middlemarch

Chapter 8 Looking Oppositely: Emily Bronte’s Bible of Hell
Bronte: Wuthering Heights

Chapter 9 A Secret, Inward Wound
Charlotte Bronte: The Professor

Chapter 10 A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress
Bronte: Jane Eyre

Chapter 11 The Genesis of Hunger
Bronte: Shirley

Chapter 12 The Buried Life of Lucy Snowe
Bronte: Villette

Chapter 13 Made Keen by Lose
George Eliot: The Lifted Veil
Also referenced but to a lesser extent
Eliot: Armgart (pdf)

Chapter 14 George Eliot as the Angel of Destruction
Eliot: Scenes of a Clerical Life
Middlemarch
Also referenced but to a lesser extent
Daniel Doranda
People: Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe

Chapter 15 The Aesthetics of Renunciation
Christina Rossetti: Maude
Also referenced but to a lesser extent
Rosetti: Goblin Market
Browning: Aurora Leigh (wiki)

Chapter 16 A Woman –White
Emily Dickinson

I’m lucky that during 2011 I read a few of these books. I’ve already read much of the Austen: Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. That leaves me to read Love and Friendship, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion; not undoable. As for the Brontes, I’ve read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Villette. I still need to read Shirley, The Professor, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I am more than happy to do so since I love the Bronte sisters. I’ve already read Frankenstein of course and it’s all I can do to not read Chapter 7 of Madwoman right now, I’m so interested to see what they have to say about one of my favorite books.

George Eliot will be the biggest challenge because of her books referenced I have only read The Lifted Veil. Eliot’s books are massive too, so I may have to wait until 2013 to read them all and the corresponding chapters. I am completely new to Emily Dickinson too, so her poems and chapter 16 of Madwoman will probably be an ongoing project.

I’ll also need to read Milton’s Paradise Lost, Byron’s Manfred, and Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Luckily I already have these, and most of the other to be read titles, on my shelf. The more obscure books like Rosetti, Goethe, Edgeworth, and Browning I hope to find ebooks for.

By: Shannon Category: Classic literature, Non-fiction, The Romantics, Understanding & Interpretation, Victorian Tags: , , , , ,

Anne Bronte Agnes Grey finished

6 May 2011

2 Comments

“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: ,
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