Classics thing: Or What I think of Famous Books

[Jolene Brown]

I found Det Gar An on google books and read it because of this thread. It was a fun, quick read - I would recommend it to anyone who wants to try something different - I don't think I've ever read a single piece of Swedish fiction - the title in English was Sara Videbeck, by the way. The logistics lost me a bit at the end, in terms of how exactly they planned to arrange their lives, but I was really sleepy, so that may be why. I just loved the opening setpiece on the ship when they meet, and the sergeant keeps making the wrong moves.

[Maia]

I guess that I'll just appropriate this thread that seems to have fallen into disuse, since I have gone wild on the iBooks and downloaded tons of free classics, or 19th century books in any case. As an aside, I was quite shocked how great it feels to use this program to read on an iPad.

Anyway, this thread and many other mentions and comparisons compelled me, finally, to read "The Wuthering Heights". Interestingly enough, I found it very readable , which was quite an accomplishment, considering the fact that there is only one not entirely unpleasant character in the whole book!

Nor do I understand how Heathcliff could have ever been seen as some kind of romantic hero? I thought that he was portrayed, expressly, as a warning and we see a young woman, who harbored silly delusions about him, horribly burned? Nor is Cathy senior the one "good woman", who could tame him - she is, indeed, his soul twin, with everything that it implies.

Even though I thought that her transition from a strong girl, who didn't cry when a bulldog fastened itself to her foot into a damsel who had fits and vapors and actually died from that trusty19th century mainstay - "nervous fever", that she explicitly provoked in herself over a very minor set-back, when all is said and done, feels quite artificial and implausible.

Also, the whole cast is thoroughly unpleasant and either major drama queens or stupid, or both. In the end, I didn't sympathize with any of them, except for Nell, in a limited fashion. Nevertheless, certain scenes were still quite moving.

Oh, and it is evident that Rowling cribbed a lot of things from "Wuthering Heights" rather shamelessly, only in the original they actually make more sense, character-wise.

I was also surprised how idle the "gentlewomen" characters were, even when they were living in just a 2-servant households like the Earnshows. I mean, they really seemed more like well-to farmers than gentry.

Austen heroines, even when they live in much better circumstances, always have much more to do, somehow, including some participation in the running of the household, visiting the sick tenants, etc. I wonder if it is because Austen actually knew that life and Emily Brontë didn't?

I have also noticed a couple of very unexpected things, which I was truly surprised to see in such an old novel, namely:

A young woman of 16 - 17 climbing trees (!) and nobody thinking it in the least unseemly

The concept of "teen years" - I have heard so often that they were the invention of 20-eth century, but apparently not.

P.S.: oh, and another one - use of family name and/or seemingly invented names as first names. I thought that this started in the US and at somewhat later time, but apparently not.

[cseresz.reborn]

A few years ago a new publication from Flaubert's archives had showed he had written very explicit scenes between the heroine and her lovers, probably as a masturbatory exercise.

:)

Maia,

I'm reading Wuthering Heights (for the umpteenth time) right now. Well, you are right and you are wrong.

I wonder if it is because Austen actually knew that life and Emily Brontë didn't?

There are simply too many errors in this book. Most of the errors have no consequence. That's true but Brontë’s goal was not to entertain or to amuse but to benefit those whom it might concern / to show us the dark territories of the human soul etc. Austen's goal: most important to her was to provide moral instructions.

And don't forget to read The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson! (Jane Austen had no personal knowledge of the changes that the onset of the Industrial Revolution at all.)