Emma

 

I mentioned in an earlier post that, some time ago, I experienced certain BookTubers talking about a thing called Jane Austen July. As I’d never read Jane Austen, but had heard prominent Canadian authors declaring Jane Austen one of English Literature’s greatest writers, I decided to set old prejudices aside and read her most famous of novels, Pride and Prejudice. I was not disappointed. Her prose is precise, exacting, and beautiful. Sense and Sensibility followed, the following year. Then Mansfield Park.

This year, I read Emma, her longest novel. Like all her novels, on its surface it is about single ladies finding their marital match after nine-ish or so months of trials, tribulations, and misunderstandings. Emma is about relationships, sexual mostly, not that Jane Austen would be so bold as to stoop to anything remotely overt or torrid. It is Georgian at its core, after all.

The novel begins with Emma Woodhouse’s former governess’ marriage, to which Emma takes credit, professing that it was she who made the match, followed by Emma’s earnest vow that she, herself, should never marry. Honestly, she would have already, given Regency expectations (she’s 21); but whatever she might say, the real reason for her not having married (not a huge surprise, given that there is a limited supply of eligible bachelors in her village of Highbury) is probably her devotion to, and her caring for, her aging valetudinarian father.

What follows is what one might expect in an Austen novel. Emma snobbishly decides that she knows best, about just about everything. Following her supposed success of having matched Miss Taylor (now Mrs. Weston), she sets about making matches for her lesser status friend, Harriet Smith. Things go awry. Her match marries another. She sets to match her with another, and that is also a failure, for reasons not disclosed here.

All the while, she flirts. She passes judgement on others. She decides on the merit of others’ character, usually wrong, given her limited experience of romantic love and society. Indeed, Highbury is too small to even have dances, until Mrs. Weston’s dashing stepson comes to visit.

Emma is very much a comedy of manners. Emma butts into others’ business. Mr. Knightley despises gossip, but passes judgement on others once Emma expresses her opinion of them on to him. Mr. Knightley, otherwise, is the paragon of patient virtue. Emma’s sister, and Mr. Knightley’s sister-in-law, Isabella, often has little desire to speak on any subject, except her own children. Jane Fairfield appears distant and aloof. Harriet is easily convinced that she might marry above her station (one must not yourself pass judgement on past prejudices; it is what it was). Reverend Elton and his wife are snobs of the first order, he a flirt before marriage, but interested primarily in station and dowry; she, boasting, pretentious, and vulgar. I might opine that Miss Bates, an aging spinster, may be the best of the bunch: she is written for comic effect, is garrulous by nature, and quietly ridiculed behind her back for it by Emma, is hopelessly optimistic, despite her fallen circumstances, always putting others’ wellbeing and happiness before her own.

There is much more to Emma than meets the eye, however. Of course there is. There is subtle nuance: gendered space, for instance. Women spend most of their time “imprisoned” indoors, mostly in drawing rooms. Men’s scenes are primarily outdoors. It’s all about boundaries, opportunities, constraints. There are subtle hints about the “Irish Question.” The women worry what might happen to the Dixons while in “Bally-craig,” in County Antrim, in Ulster, the site of a great deal of upheaval in 1798.

Jane Austen never comes out and pontificates on a subject, but the mere mention in her novels of slavery and Ireland and relatives being in the navy, and their long absences expected, of money troubles, of entailed estates, and inheritances, and doweries, speaks of greater depth than mere romances. Jane Austen is not chic lit.

Am I done with Jane Austen for the year now that July is coming to a close? Yes and no. I’ve begun a contemporary novel, The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray. It’s something of a sequel to Emma. And Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. It’s one of a series of murder mysteries set in Jane Austen’s works, this one in Donwell Abbey, Mr. Knightley’s ancestral seat, about 20 years after the events of Emma. It’s an easy read, thus far (I’m only a couple chapters in), the prose good, with characters from the above works introduced without heavy-handed exposition. Ms. Grey (Amy Vincent) obviously loves Jane Austen’s works. Which is surprising, given her other works: She’s written several Star Wars novels. And Fantasy novels. One doesn’t expect a science fiction and fantasy writer to also write Agatha Christie inspired Jane Austen murder mysteries. But she does.

I’ve also begun Lucy Worsley’s celebrated biography of Jane, Jane Austen at Home. Again, I’m only a chapter in, but it’s obviously meticulously researched, as one would expect of the Chief Curator for Historic Royal Palaces, and the host of God knows how many thought-provoking television documentaries. She is a self described Janeite.

Jane Eyre

 

In my thoughts on Wuthering Heights, I gave Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre faint praise, which is rather unfortunate. It does not deserve it. Indeed, Jane Eyre may be as beloved as Emily’s presumably darker tale.

Is Wuthering Heights indeed darker? I do wonder about that on reflection. In many ways Charlotte’s debut novel is as dark as Emily’s sole novel, both published in 1847. That said, Wuthering Heights, despite its intermittent unreliable narration, is a far more straightforward tale, however coloured by Heathcliff’s earlier abuse and latter brutality. (If you have not read it, I highly recommend it to you.) Jane Eyre, on the other hand, was notable for its social commentary (not that Wuthering Heights does pull punches in that regard) seen through rather Calvinistic Jane’s eyes.

One should not diminish Jane, however. She is a strong female character, written at a time I expect this was a rare thing. She endures prejudice, exclusion, “banishment,” loneliness, and uncertainty. She also radiates strength, overcoming all these setbacks, and decides to make her way in the world.

It is when she accepts a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall that this novel truly begins and becomes the Gothic tale it is probably most noted as. Things are not as they seem in Thornfield Hall. Not that we are aware of this to begin. Jane settles in, and eventually catches the eye of dark, strong, and stern Edward Rochester. One wonders about the attention he directs towards her. He ought not to; he’s her employer, after all…. Things progress.

But as I mentioned earlier, all is not as it seems. 

 

I can’t not spoil this novel if I’m to do it justice.

Beware below if you haven’t read this novel and don’t want the story ruined. 

 

What lies beneath (on in this case, locked in the attic) is the darkness that shadows Rochester: Bertha. Rochester has a dark past, one rooted in the sunny Caribbean. Rochester, a 2^nd son, was sent to Jamaica to marry an heiress. He does. While there, his father and his elder brother pass away, and he becomes lord of the hall, twice over rich now.

But Bertha’s family has a history of madness, one she herself can’t escape. She goes mad, and Rochester decides to take her away from the West Indies back with him to England, where he hides her away, his marriage secret.

This explains Rochester’s sullen nature, and why he spends so little time at his ancestral seat, preferring to spend his time in London and on the continent, flirting much, but never marrying, gaining the reputation of a philanderer while at it, one imagines.

Rochester returns to Thornfield, becomes smitten with Jane. Our story unfolds.

It is dark indeed. 

It’s quite a tale. I found Charlotte’s prose less engaging than Emily’s. I also thought the dialogue that passes between Jane and Edward wooden. To be fair, the novel is over 200 years old. And I wonder how much experience she herself had with romantic love. Charlotte was a governess, and only married years after this novel was published. Take that as you will.

I might note that another novel is linked to this one: Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. Published in 1966, Ms. Rhys sought to tell the tale of the mad woman in the attic, fleshing her out, humanising her. It is defiantly a feminist take on what lies before and beneath Charlotte’s classic novel, but a believable one, a decidedly powerful one.

I’ll speak on this later.

Wuthering Heights

 

Is this one of English literature’s greatest achievements? It might be. It is certainly a much beloved classic.

It did take me some time to come to it, however. I expect that may be because, like most males, I’d come to the conclusion, without ever having read it, that it was a girl’s novel – chic lit, as it were.

Why then did I finally read it? Because I’d decided that I ought to read what I had not when I was younger: important classics. What was I reading then? SF and horror originally; then Fantasy once I’d been introduced to D&D. Some thrillers. Then Can Lit (that’s Canadian Literature). One might imagine that I inched my way towards better literature as I aged. That is true, but it is also pejorative. Who says that any form of literature is better than another? (I do, to some extent, if I’m being honest; I always have, and likely always will.) Read what you like. But I encourage one and all to challenge themselves to read outside their comfort zone.

Which brings me to Wuthering Heights. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found betwixt its covers. It’s a frame narrative: the “narrator” is a man who tells a story about a woman who tells him a story. Both might be considered unreliable narrators. The man, Mr. Lockwood, pays a visit to his landlord, Heathcliff, and finds a sullen and inhospitable household. Snowed in, he reads a diary by a Catherine Earnshaw he finds in the room he’s shown to. Lockwood later returns to the house he is renting (Thrushcross Grange), falls ill, and while recovering his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, tells the tale of how Wuthering Heights came to be as it is now. Nelly tells a captivating tale, presumed accurate and reliable, but her story is coloured by her recollections, her love of the people involved, and her prejudices against what they’ve done to one another. One then must parse her praises and condemnations by what we learn in the narrative, and come to one’s own conclusions on what she speaks on. In time, Nelly’s tale brings us up to the current date. And in time, Mr. Lockwood leaves, only to return months later, and we discover how their story resolves.

I will not tell you how it ends. Indeed, I will not tell you how the plot plays out at all. Either you already the book and know already or you haven’t and don’t. If you don’t, my telling you will spoil the tale if you’ve a mind to read it.

I do this a lot, don’t I? Not tell the tale. That’s by design. I want you to read the classic books that have stood the test of time. They’ve endured for a reason. They’re good. They’re excellent, in fact. That’s why they survive. Perhaps that’s because they are more than their mere narrative. Sometimes they are parables, sometimes retellings of far older tales, suffused with biblical and poetic themes. Often they are highly moral tales, cautionary tales, with complex, conflicted characters who do not always do the right thing.

This tale is one of those.

Despite that, and despite its age (Emily Bronte published this, her single work of fiction – she was also a poet – in 1847), its prose is quite modern, and not at all difficult as some of her contemporaries might be (I point my finger at you Edgar Allan Poe, whose works I love, but whose prose I find daunting to my somewhat dyslexic mind). It is considered the best of the Bronte sisters’ novels. I cannot claim to judge whether this is true, as, to date, the only other I’ve read is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, which I’ve only just completed. Both were good – that sounds like faint praise: both were excellent – but I believe Emily’s work is the superior of the two. This is not to say that Charlotte’s most famous work is not also phenomenal, in its way. It most certainly is! But I found Emily’s prose far more accessible, however. Maybe that’s why I, personally, place hers above her sister’s.

Long story short, I really do believe that Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is truly one of English literature’s greatest achievements, and that, if you have not read this – regardless your sex – you ought to.

The Count of Monte Cristo

 

I’m on a bit of a mission, of late. I’ve hitherto neglected reading a great any of the classics. This is not to say that I do not own them – I do – this is to say that some of them have been left languishing upon my bookshelves, gathering dust, sometimes for years, if not decades. I decided, upon reflection, that this is unacceptable. I will finally read them – now. I’m approaching 60 and, let’s be frank, time is sorter than it once was.

That sounds rather melodramatic, doesn’t it? It ought to, because it is. Which brings me to this tome, this melodramatic tale of betrayal and revenge by Alexandre Dumas, this lengthy, weighty tome. It’s long, so long that the thought of tackling it is daunting, even for those who read quickly – and I do not.

Did I tackle it? I did. And complete it? I did. In fits and starts.

What do I think of it? Did I like it? I did. Then I didn’t. Then I did, with reservation. Why? Because it was long. Staggeringly long. And unapologizingly melodramatic. But mostly because I found Edmond Dantes implausible. Not at the novel’s onset. Then I found him exceedingly naïve. And melodramatic. Indeed, I found his story riveting then. I found myself frustrated and anxious for him, as circumstance rose up against him and he found himself betrayed by a litany of self-interested ne’er-do-wells and incarcerated in the infamous Chateau d’If, left to rot when he'd committed no crime, to hide others' treason.

What I found frustrating was the middle “bit,” years after Dantes escaped from this inescapable prison, indescribably rich having inherited a long-lost treasure, and having somehow become an expert in EVERYTHING! That is what caused me to set the book aside for a time: his miraculous erudition, gleaned from the then deceased Abbe Faria, Italian priest and sage and the source of Dantes’ bequeathed fortune, who taught him everything under the sun: culture, art, politics, rhetoric, whatever…. I suppose Dantes’ years travelling in the east might also be cited for his vast knowledge, his intricate plans. But that reasoning fell flat to my mind. To elucidate, Dantes can detect a forgery at mere glance at any work of art, etc. It was then that I put the book down in disgust.

I vowed I would finish it, though. I decided to read a chapter a day. Just one. It would take some time to complete at that pace, but I’ve never been one to abandon a book.

I’m glad I did. Once I set aside my reservations and accepted the implausibility of Dantes’ encyclopedic knowledge, and the intricacies of his elaborate revenge plot, Alexandre Dumas’ masterful skill at what was once referred to as “Romance” drew me in. This is an intricately plotted story, with twists and turns, with no page unnecessary. It was still insanely implausible, to my mind. But I forgive it this.

To lavish praise and not merely complain, Dumas’ characters are well realised, his heroes and villains have concrete reasons why they do what they did. I empathize with them, but do not forgive their villainy. That said, I came to realise as I read on and Dantes’ revenge plots began to bear fruit, that he is the true villain of this story and not those who nearly succeeded in destroying his life. One might argue that they deserve what they got, but Dantes cared not a whit who suffered as he exacted his revenge.

Do I recommend this lengthy adventure? I do. But I also recommend patience with its page count. Forgive Dantes his unlikely encyclopedic knowledge, his possibly impossibly vast network of spies, informants, and debtors; gloss over Monsieur Noirtier’s miraculous ability to be understood after his paralysing stroke; and just enjoy this novel’s vast cast of characters whose tales are woven into an intricate web of twists and turns that make the journey worthwhile.

Because it is.

Moby Dick

"And I only am escaped alone to tell ye." Job

That's done, then. After three attempts throughout my life, I have finally read Melville's epic tale to completion.

I will say that I’ve been of mixed mind about it while at it. I pondered, as I plodded through, that I must be in error in my opinion; greater minds than mine, Harold Bloom's for instance, extoll the virtues of this American masterpiece. But despite repeated rereading I found the prose to be perplexing, inscrutable, and exhaustingly difficult, and passages, if not whole chapters, unfathomable. Just words. There were, to my mind, a great number of inexplicably pointless chapters, at the end of each, I've paused and wondered what I'd just read. Descriptions of paintings, erroneous exclamations on anatomy and history, pontification, passages describing the hunt, the tools of the trade, the skinning the whales, none of which I could actually picture by means of the text.

Yet, there are passages that are fluid, truly brilliant: The rift and struggle between Ahab and Starbuck, for instance. Yet these are widely spaced by those inexplicable chapters noted above that have nothing to do with the narrative of the tale.

There are aspects of its being a masterpiece, which I cannot deny: It's positively Shakespearian in its scope and its climax. Indeed, it's replete with soliloquies towards the end, Ahab's, Starbuck's, Stubb's, even Pip's; but none from Ishmael, not a one.

My criticism, if I may be so presumptuous, is in its voice: Ishmael is its initial narrator, and he remains as much, mostly; yet there are whole passages where he could never be; and by the novel's end, Ishmael is but an afterthought, the voice having passed to third-person omnipotence. Ishmael and Queequeg, who loomed so large in the first 150 pages are all but abandoned for the greater and decidedly more important tale: Ahab's blind obsession, and Starbuck's opposition to it.

How would I, in my hubris, have imagined this epic saga? I'd have kept Ishmael's voice and woven the tale of Ahab's obsession and his seduction of the crew as it unfolds from Starbuck's whaling boat and crew, seeing that Ishmael was Starbuck's oarsman, and Queequeg, Starbuck's harpooner. Why should Starbuck confide in so lowly an oarsman? Because Ishmael is a New Yorker, an educated man by all accounts, and he would appear worldly to a Nantucketer. Thus, we are given insight into Starbuck's views, just as we experience Ahab's monomaniacal obsession from afar, looming large and increasingly shadowing their limited macrocosmic view of the world, that of the microcosmic deck of the ship.

Shall I revisit this American masterpiece? I shall. Immediately, in fact, albeit more slowly, even if this rereading takes a year (although, I doubt that will be the case). I've only done this once before, with Falkner's "As I Lay Dying," which I found as equally incomprehensible as this book until its very end. Then, as now, I plumbed the final chapter, closed the covers, and then cracked them again, at the beginning, with an understanding that enlightens the text that was altogether shrouded in its initial unfolding.