The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Awakening is one of those books that I've meant to get around to reading for years.  I don't think I was missing anything.  This book is tied with Kim by Rudyard Kipling for least favorite book of the year.  I'm aware of the book's prevailing reputation as a landmark of early feminism - please don't think I'm against books that explore the complexities of women's issues, emotions, and social limitations in the 19th century, as this is an area of interest for me.  I'm simply against this book.  

Set in New Orleans in the late 19th century, the novel tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a Kentuckian transplant to Creole society who grows to resent marriage, motherhood, social obligations, and pretty much the world.  I feel that Chopin used Edna to indict society for the constraints placed upon women, in terms of limited social freedom and under-education.  I'm just not sure that Edna is the ideal Poster Girl for this story.  Narcissistic, capricious, and immature, Edna fails to win my sympathy.  She cares very little about her children, or anyone else, really - except her lovers, who are the worst sort of losers.  Edna's judgment, sense of self-awareness, thoughts, and feelings are stunted and under-developed, and Chopin tries to makes this society's fault, in the same century that gave us the likes of Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontës, Mary Seacole, and the novels of Jane Austen. 

At the end of the book, Edna walks into the sea, seemingly to do away with herself, because society has no place for a freethinking woman of superior sensibilities like her - or at least it seems that this is the narrative Chopin is asking us to accept.  I would never begrudge any woman the need to develop a sense of personal identity - but Edna's seems to be framed in terms of a resentment and self-absorption that I found off-putting and, for me, undermined the success of the novel.

Read for The Tea and Ink Society 2024 Reading Challenge (Category: Southern Fiction) - also on my Classics Club list 

Evelina by Frances Burney

I was eager to read Evelina because I knew Jane Austen considered it a favorite.  Somehow I thought that reading Evelina would be like reading Jane Austen:  a humorous novel of manners set in a rational and moral universe.  Well.  Evelina was not what I expected.  If Jane Austen is a genteel Regency ballroom, Evelina is a wild night at Vauxhall Gardens.  With a monkey.

Evelina Anville is the legitimate, though unacknowledged, daughter of an English aristrocrat.  Upon the death of her mother, Evelina was raised in rural seclusion by her guardian, the Reverend Villairs.  Eventually, Evelina's maternal grandmother, the ridiculous Mme Duval, learns of Evelina's existence and seeks to claim her and whisk her off to France.  To keep her from Mme Duval, the Rev. Villairs sends her to Howard Grove, the country home of friends.  Little did he know that Mme Duval would find her anyway, and a trip to London would soon follow. Most of the novel revolves around humorous situations in which poor, sheltered Evelina tries to navigate her way through society.  She eventually gets a happy ending with Lord Orville. 

The tone of this book was quite surprising.  Sometimes riotous and madcap, the book's wild humor was unexpected.  At one point, two of the characters dressed up like highwaymen just so they could terrorize an obnoxious Frenchwoman.  Then there is the time when some of the characters are bored because they have nothing to gamble on, so they get two eighty-year-old women to race just so they can bet on them.  The plots can be a bit over the top, with some truly wild coincidences and situations occurring.

Evelina has very little personality - despite this being an epistolary novel, with most of the letters written by her.  Her letters are more of a vehicle to deliver the plot rather than to give us her private thoughts.  We have some glimpses, of course, but it's almost like Evelina the character is a pawn to showcase every type of ill-mannered person in London.

In truth, it is the "bad" characters who seem to dominate this novel.  Between fending off the unwanted attentions of the rogue Sir Clement Willoughby, the incessant fighting between Mme Duval and Captain Mirvan, and the crass behavior of the Branghtons, Evelina gets very little peace - and neither does the reader.

I found the character of Madame Duval extremely tiresome.  A little of her would have gone a long way.  She is so over the top, so insufferably rude, tyrannical, and obnoxious, that while one or two scenes of this woman would have been funny, her behavior is so predictably horrid that it becomes boring.  By the same token, the relentless rudeness of the Captain is wearying.  Jane Austen may have learned from this.  Her boorish characters are diverting because she allows them to season her narratives, rather than overwhelm them.

The dubious tastes and want of care of Evelina's relations and their hangers-on land her in many awkward and unsavory situations, and Evelina's own want of social competence and street smarts always makes things worse.  One night Evelina finds herself dragged out to Vauxhall Gardens.  These London pleasure gardens were popular in the 18th through the mid-19th century, and were filled with entertainments and attractions.  At night they were lit up by thousands of lamps.  Spectacle abounded, with fireworks, hot air balloons, and a giant metal waterfall which seemed to flow thanks to a clever trick of the lights.  Poor Evelina becomes separated from her party and ends up in the infamous dark walks - there's a hint of danger in this scene that lends a somber note to the lack of care being taken of her.

Vauxhall Gardens

Evelina as Cinderella 

Evelina has distinct echoes of Cinderella.  Evelina is poor and simple, marked by beauty and inner goodness.  She has a dead mother, and an ineffectual/absent actual father, and a retiring/absent surrogate father.  Mme Duval can be seen as her wicked stepmother, and the Miss Branghtons the obnoxious stepsisters.  She moves from country seclusion into high society, and catches the eye of her prince, Lord Orville.

Evelina and Jane Austen

It's a strange sensation, reading Evelina, feeling that one has met with so many little scenes already.  We have a Willoughby - and the scene where Sir Clement Willoughby carries Evelina from the wrecked coach is a bit like when Willoughby carried Marianne Dashwood.  The carriage seen with Sir Clement reminds me of Emma and Mr. Elton.  Evelina and her low connections are so similar to Elizabeth and the Bennets (though Mme Duval makes Mrs. Bennet look like the epitome of grace and refinement).  Evelina, like Lizzy Bennet, has a "passion for solitary walking."  Evelina and Lord Orville foreshadow  Elizabeth and Darcy.  In her juvenile novel Love & Friendship, Jane Austen hilariously parodies the more ludicrous parts of novels like Evelina - in her more mature work, Austen takes the best of Frances Burney and refines it.

Evelina as a Sentimental Novel

A sentimental novel relies on emotion, both in the response of the characters and the response of the reader.  The capacity to feel, and to show feelings, was thought to be a mark of high moral character.  Sentimentalism as a philosophy favored the untutored "naturalness" of the country person over the cultivated "civilized" nature of the society person.  We often think of the 18th century as the Age of Reason, characterized by rationalism.  Sentimentalism is a countercurrent - one that led to Romanticism later in the century.  Evelina, raised in rural seclusion, exhibits sensitivity, natural goodness, fine feeling, and distress at the misfortunes of others.  Thus she is the perfect sentimental "type," and her character is used by Burney to satirize and critique "cultured" society.   

Evelina was a wild ride!  I'm glad I read it, and look forward to reading more by Frances Burney, and more 18th century novels.  I haven't spent a lot of time in this century, and reading Evelina has helped me to find my feet.  I'm learning as I go!

 

Read for the Epistolary Novel category in the Tea and Ink Society 2024 Classics Reading Challenge and for the Classics Club.

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

Beautifully and sensitively written, radical in its compassion and redemptive vision, Elizabeth Gaskell's lesser-known novel Ruth shines gently in obscurity, like its titular heroine. Gaskell explores the plight of the fallen woman through the story of young Ruth Hilton.  Orphaned and naive, Ruth is charmed by rake Henry Bellingham, who induces her to run away to Wales with him.  She is ultimately abandoned by her lover  and finds herself with child.  Nearly driven to a desperate act, she is befriended by Dissenting minister Thurston Benson and his sister Faith.  Rather than condemn and ostracize Ruth for her sin, the Bensons treat Ruth with charity and kindness, offering her care and protection.  At the Bensons' behest, Ruth assumes a new surname and a new identity as a young widow. Ruth proves herself a devoted mother.  Admired for her gentle spirit, piety, and maternal love, Ruth becomes an almost Madonna-like figure.    She earns a living by sewing, and takes a position as a governess in a neighboring house.  When her secret finally comes to light, she is shunned by many. Ruth finds work as a nurse during a typhus epidemic, and nurses Henry Bellingham back to health at cost to her own in an act of true self-sacrifice. 

Gaskell's novel is deeply Christian.  She indicts shallow respectability and hypocrisy, instead presenting a vision of truly Christ-like charity, compassion, and sacrifice.  Ruth as a character is layered in Biblical allusions and identities.  Like her Biblical namesake, she is a stranger in a strange land, adopting a new people as her own, and metaphorically gleaning to support herself and her son.  In addition, we see Ruth take on the symbolic roles of Magdalen, Madonna, and Christ.  The ending of the book is not meant to be a tragedy; the Christian story never is. 

The novel contains other interesting characters and subplots.  I really enjoyed how the characters' lives twined together in their little community.  I loved the relationship between Ruth and the Bensons, as they gradually took the place of the family Ruth was so sadly lacking.    Another wonderful thing about the writing is the dramatic tension that is held for much of the book, as Ruth bears the heavy burden of her secret and fears discovery.   In this respect, it reminded me a bit of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, published just five years previously.  Helen Graham hides away with her son in a place far distant from home, under an assumed name, pretending to be a young widow... some obvious parallels to Ruth.  Helen and Ruth have even more in common in their acts of charity towards men who have wronged them.  Both novels deal with social issues surrounding women, both are suspenseful and engaging, and both definitely merit re-reading in the future. 

Classics Club Spin #37

I'm so excited to be participating in my very first Classics Club Spin!  This is a fun game played to determine which classic you will read next.  You begin by creating a numbered Spin List of 20 books remaining on your Classics Club Challenge.  Then, Lady Fortuna spins her wheel and whichever number rises to the top launches the corresponding book on your list straight to the top of your TBR pile.

Here is my Spin List:

1. Kipps - H.G. Wells
2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
3. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
4. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
5. The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals - Dorothy Wordsworth
6. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
7. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
8. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
9. A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe
10. Piers Ploughman - William Langland
11. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
12. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
13. He Knew He Was Right - Anthony Trollope
14. The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
15. Faust - Goethe
16. Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
17. Shirley - Charlotte Bronte
18. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
19. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
20. Vera - Elizabeth von Arnim

Since I have just started my Classics Club Challenge, I decided to leave even more up to chance and made use of a random number generator to create my list, making a couple of substitutions when I already had reading plans for the books selected, or when I felt the book was just too long to read in a set time.  I did, however, allow He Knew He Was Right to remain, just to add an Element of Terror to the spin (it's 952 pages long).  

I find out which book I'll be reading on Sunday!

Update:  THE WHEEL HAS SPOKEN!  I will be reading The Travels of Sir John Mandeville!

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

In 1889, Jerome K. Jerome was tasked with writing 'The Story of the Thames,' its scenery and history, for Home Chimes magazine.  In a move worthy of his three protagonists, J., George, and Harris, Jerome inadvertently managed to turn what was meant to be a serious travel guide into one of the great comic novels in English literature.  This little tidbit about art imitating life (or vice versa) somehow manages to make the book even funnier.

Not that the critics found it funny.  While Three Men in a Boat is something of a British institution today,  its initial critical reception ranged somewhere between unimpressed and sneering.  In his autobiography My Life and Times (1926), Jerome K. Jerome reminisced: "One might have imagined … that the British Empire was in danger. … The Standard spoke of me as a menace to English letters; and The Morning Post as an example of the sad results to be expected from the over-education of the lower orders. … I think I may claim to have been, for the first twenty years of my career, the best abused author in England."  

Critical disdain notwithstanding, the book sold like hot eels off a Victorian street vendor.  No longer snubbed as lowbrow and common, Three Men in a Boat has remained perennially popular with everyone possessing a sense of humor and a capacity for delight. This is one of those books I've been meaning to get around to reading for a long time, and I only regret not reading it sooner.  It really is wonderful, and very, very funny.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) - to give the book its full title - rests on the simple premise of a two-week boating trip down the Thames.  Three friends, Jerome (called J.), George, and Harris, decide that they are suffering from overwork and determine that the best remedy is a holiday.  This discussion is preceded by J.'s hilarious and hypochondriac perusal of a medical encyclopedia, during which he concludes that he is suffering from every ailment listed, with the exception of housemaid's knee.  J., George, and Harris set off on a boating holiday down the Thames, accompanied by J.'s fox terrier Montmorency.

Three Men in a Boat illustration by 20th century artist Paul Rainer

What follows is a series of anecdotes describing the journey of our three eccentric protagonists (to say nothing of the dog).  There are many digressions about particular foibles of human nature and general life observations, such as the unreliability of barometers and the advantages of cheese as a travelling companion.  The chapter subtitles had me in stitches.  Here are a few: 

Cussedness of tooth-brushes.

Heathenish instincts of tow-lines.

Being towed by girls: exciting sensation.

Possible reason why we were not drowned.

I will never stop laughing at the incident of Harris and the swans, the visit to the graveyard, and the creation of that culinary horror referred to as "Irish stew," to which Montmorency attempted to contribute a dead water-rat, "whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say."

Alongside the humor, one finds the ghost of the original travel guide to the Thames haunting the pages.  While some find that these passages detract from the novel, I feel they enhance it.  They imbue the novel with a sense of place, a love of nature, and an appreciation for history that act as a perfect counterbalance to eccentric comedy and mishap.  These elements make the novel a bit sentimental, but I don't see that as a bad thing.  I see a perfect blend of charm, hilarity, and camaraderie.  I think this book echoes through the decades, and may claim kinship with that Edwardian bucolic masterpiece The Wind in the Willows - as well as Roy Clarke's Last of the Summer Wine. 

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

"It is less than three days since we took road together, and it is as though it were a hundred years."

Teshoo Lama speaks these words to Kim, but they could be used to describe my sentiments while reading this book - as long as they are taken in the spirit of snarky weariness in which I intend them.  Perhaps if I were a British schoolboy living in 1900 I might have found this book enthralling.  Or perhaps not. While I did not find the book to be completely without interest,  I know that somehow I failed to appreciate most of its charms.

Kim is the story of an Irish Indian boy who befriends a Tibetan lama, becomes a spy for the British, and must come to terms with his own identity. Born Kimball O'Hara to an Irish soldier and a nurse maid, Kim was orphaned at an early age and raised by a half-caste Indian woman.  He has a dark tan, speaks Hindi/Urdu, and is immersed in the local Indian culture.  In consequence, few realize that he is white.    He supports himself by begging and running errands, earning himself the nickname "Friend of all the World."

Kipling himself was born in Bombay in British India in 1865, and spoke Hindi as a boy - even supposedly often thinking and dreaming in Hindi.  His own conflicted sense of belonging and dual identity are reflected in characters such as Kim and Mowgli in The Jungle Book.  Kipling is a complex writer.  Despite his real love for India, his work often suffers from a romanticized orientalism and imperialism that are problematic for modern readers.

Kim is set against the background of the Great Game, the political conflict over colonial influence between Russia and Britain in Central Asia.  This is where the espionage comes in.  I didn't find this thread of the novel very exciting, though I did enjoy the bits about his spy training.

Kim's identity quest lies at the core of the story.  In the beginning of the novel, he is virtually nameless, known mainly by his moniker "little Friend of all the World."  The nickname reinforces the fact that Kim does not definitively belong to any one group, race, or religion.  Kim meets and befriends the lama, becoming his chela, or disciple.  The lama himself embodies what it means to be "Friend of all the World" in a different sense.  He practices earthly detachment, placing no man above another, and even referring to a cobra as "brother."  When Kim encounters his father's former regiment, they determine to send him to school.  He is given European clothing, communicates in English, and is ultimately trained as a spy.  I found it interesting that working as a spy is a sort of dark parody of "Friend of all the World," as Kim takes on different identities in his work.

Kim's relationship with the lama is one of the novel's strengths.  While Kim's quest centers around the question "Who is Kim?", the lama is on his own quest to find the River of the Arrow, the site where Buddha's arrow landed and transformed into a spring.  Bathing in this river will wash away his sins and free him from "the Wheel of Things" - the material world and the cycles of earthly existence.  The lama's insistence on earthly detachment is challenged by his affection for Kim, who is like a son to him.

The climax of the novel is reserved for the last few pages.  In the end Kim changes his question from "Who is Kim?" to "What is Kim?"  He rests under a tree, connecting with "Mother Earth," and remarks that it feels that he slept a hundred years when he wakes. This is a symbolic death and resurrection in which Kim forges his own identity, not determined by the world's categories.  There are echoes of the Buddha's attainment of Enlightenment under the bodhi tree. At the same time these things are happening to Kim, the lama finds his river.  He falls into the river while in a state of spiritual transcendence, and chooses to return to earthly life to teach Kim, rejecting absolute detachment in favor of human connection.  We are left with the implication that Kim and the lama will now walk upon the Way together.

The strange thing about this book for me is that it has so many interesting themes, but the actual experience of reading it was something of a slog, as many of the plot elements just did not grip my attention.

Read for my 2024 Victorian Reading Challenge, Book published 1890s-1901.  Also part of my Classics Club list.

Victorian Reading Challenge 2024

A Pleasant Corner by John Callcott Horsley, 1865

Another reading challenge I have in progress is a Victorian Reading Challenge I set for myself.  I have a lifelong fascination with the Victorian era and its literature, and I was delighted to discover some Victorian challenges from years past at Becky's Book Reviews.  I would like to credit Becky and thank her for the inspiration, as I modified and adapted her old challenges to create my list.  

What is it that I love so much about Victorian literature?

The Victorian era stretches one hand out to tentatively brush fingers with our modern world, while the other reaches backward, clinging fondly to the traditions of a fading rural past.  Fed by the twin streams of aesthetic Romanticism and Enlightenment rationalism and innovation, the landscape of Victorian art and literature is one of contrast, contradiction, and permutation in which anything may happen.  The luminous beauty of a pre-Raphaelite painting graces a stylish and well-polished drawing room, while mere blocks away, buildings smeared with coal dust crumble to ruin, cholera lurks in the water - and Mr. Hyde may be just around the corner.  Gaslit streets, typewriters, and phonographs are wonders of modern invention - yet your neighbor may still turn out to be a vampire. Detectives begin to practice scientific deduction and forensic investigation, but ghosts, cursed diamonds, and madwomen in the attic are not entirely off the table.  The age of industrialization brings us novels of social concern over poverty and pollution in the northern mill towns, while other writers trade union meetings for harvest festivals and seek to capture the seasonal rhythms of a vanishing agrarian life.  Writers begin exploring social questions about marriage, class, education, and the role of women.  Characters begin to be developed more fully, and we see the stirrings of psychological interest.  Add to this the vivid and descriptive prose of some of the greatest masters of the English language. 

I have chosen 12 books for 2024!  I may never read this many Victorian novels in one year again, but I really wanted to immerse myself in Victorian literature this year.  This challenge is truly a labor of love for me.  The categories are helpful in ensuring that I read broadly across the era.  Without further ado, here is my list:

Female Author - Middlemarch by George Eliot

Book with a name as the title - Esther Waters by George Moore 1/15/24

Book published in serial format - Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Book published 1837-1840s - Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens 2/26/24

Book published in the 1850s - Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

Children's Book - Black Beauty by Anna Sewell 1/13/24

Book Published in the 1870s - Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy 3/15/24

Book published in the 1860s - The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 3/11/24

Anthony Trollope - The Warden 1/9/24

Mystery, Suspense, Sensation - The Beetle by Richard Marsh

Book published 1890s-1901 - Kim by Rudyard Kipling 3/17/24

Book published in the 1880s - Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

I have already completed 9 titles.  Many of these books are going towards my Classics Club Challenge, and I have also counted Silas Marner as my re-read classic for the Tea and Ink Society Challenge.  Currently reading Three Men in a Boat and reveling in the humor!