Category: Classics

Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola

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Thérèse is a young woman trapped in an unhappy marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille Raquin. On the surface she appears quiet and passive, never voicing an opinion of her own. But underneath Thérèse is a passionate person who longs to break away from her boring, oppressive existence. When Camille introduces her to an old friend, Laurent, the two begin an affair. Desperate to find a way in which they can be together, Thérèse and Laurent are driven to commit a terrible crime – a crime that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

If you think I’ve given too much away then I can tell you that this crime takes place quite early in the story and is not the climax of the book. The point of the story is what happens afterwards when Zola begins to explore the psychological effects this action has on the characters.

Thérèse Raquin, as you will have guessed, is a very dark book which becomes increasingly feverish and claustrophobic with scenes of violence and cruelty. I haven’t read much 19th century French literature, apart from a few books by Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, and one thing that struck me about Zola’s writing was how much more daring and graphic this book is than British novels from the same period. The reader becomes locked inside the tormented minds of Thérèse and Laurent, sharing their fear and terror, their nightmares and sleepless nights, their inability to enjoy being together because the horror of what they have done stands between them. If you’ve read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, there are some similarities here.

This book could be enjoyed just for the dramatic plot (it’s as tense and gripping as any modern thriller) but I also thought the four main characters – Thérèse, Laurent, Camille and Madame Raquin – were fascinating and very vividly drawn. Zola apparently said that his aim was to create characters with different temperaments and see how each of them reacted to the situation they were in.

As the first book I’ve read by Zola, I wasn’t sure what I could expect from Thérèse Raquin but I thought it was excellent and I’ll certainly be reading more of his books.

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

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Thomas Hardy really seems to be an author people either love or hate and Jude the Obscure must be the book that divides opinion more than any of his others. This is the third Hardy book I’ve read, the first two being Tess of the d’Urbervilles and A Pair of Blue Eyes and although this one didn’t have quite the same emotional impact on me that Tess did, I was still moved to tears in places.

Jude Fawley is eleven years old when he sees his schoolmaster, Mr Phillotson, leave the hamlet of Marygreen to go and study in the great city of Christminster. As a working-class boy it’s unlikely that Jude will ever be able to do the same. His only chance is to spend the next few years teaching himself Greek and Latin from books every night after going out to work through the day. Jude hopes that hard work, determination and a desire for knowledge will be enough to enable him to fulfil his dream of going to university in Christminster.

“It is a city of light,” he said to himself.

“The tree of knowledge grows there,” he added a few steps further on.

“It is a place that teachers of men spring from and go to.”

“It is what you may call a castle, manned by scholarship and religion.”

After this figure he was silent a long while, till he added:

“It would just suit me.”

What makes this so sad is that we, as readers, can see almost from the beginning that Jude is going to be disappointed. The class system in Victorian England meant it was almost impossible for someone in Jude’s position to go to university. The hopelessness of his situation becomes clear when the head of one of the Christminster colleges advises him that as a working man he should ‘remain in his own sphere and stick to his trade’. Jude’s response is to write on the college wall with a piece of chalk: “_I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you: yea, who knoweth not such things as these?_”–Job xii. 3. That scene was one of many that made my heart break for Jude.

But education is not the only problem Jude faces. Following a disastrous marriage to a pig farmer’s daughter, he falls in love with his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who has also been unhappily married. Disillusioned with marriage, Jude and Sue decide to live together without marrying, but this unconventional arrangement could have tragic consequences.

I can see why this book was so controversial at the time of its publication (1895) as there are a few aspects of the story that must have been quite shocking for Victorian readers, particularly the way it challenges the way we think about Christianity and marriage. Hardy places Jude and Sue into a situation which he could use to explore England’s marriage and divorce laws as well as the problems that faced two unmarried people living together and how they could (or couldn’t) reconcile this with their religious and moral beliefs.

All of this eventually leads to a devastating tragedy which takes place towards the end of the book – anyone who has read it will know what I’m referring to and for those of you who haven’t, I can tell you it’s one of the saddest scenes you’re ever likely to read. A couple of pages before it happened I guessed (knowing Hardy) what was going to occur and yet I still wasn’t really prepared for it. One of the reasons people give for not liking Hardy is that he’s too depressing and while I can’t deny that this book is relentlessly tragic and heartbreaking, I still felt compelled to keep reading, to find out what happened next, to see what further ordeals Jude would have to face.

I can’t recommend Jude the Obscure highly enough, unless you really just don’t like this type of book. Now I need to decide which of his books I should read next…

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

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Virginia Woolf is one of those authors who I’ve always felt slightly intimidated by but after finally reading one of her books I’m pleased to say I’m no longer afraid of her. I’m glad I chose to begin with this book because I found it witty, engaging and surprisingly easy to read, as well as being a very original and fascinating story. In Orlando, Woolf has surely created one of the most unusual protagonists in literature: a character who lives for four hundred years and changes gender midway through his/her life.

The book, although obviously a work of fiction, is presented as a biography. We first meet Orlando as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, during the final years of the reign of Elizabeth I, and the biographer follows our hero/heroine throughout the centuries. The book covers a period of four hundred years and during this time Orlando ages only slightly. At one point in the story Orlando sleeps for a week and awakens to find that he is now a woman – and gradually her perceptions of the world and the roles of males and females begin to change. No explanation is given for Orlando’s remarkable life span or gender change; it’s simply accepted that those things have occurred.

As you would expect, over the course of four hundred years Orlando has a lot of unusual experiences and adventures, both as a man and as a woman living through the Elizabethan age, the Great Frost (one of the most memorable episodes of the story, for me), the Restoration period, the 18th century, and the Victorian era. One thread that runs through the entire story is Orlando’s love of literature and attempts at becoming a writer. The story finally comes to its conclusion in 1928, at which point we can look back at everything Orlando has been through and what she has learned about gender, love and what it means to be an artist.

I’m not a fan of the stream of consciousness writing style but although there’s some of that in Orlando, particularly in the second half of the book, much of it was in the form of a more conventional narrative and I didn’t find it hard to read at all. I was aware that this book has been described as a love letter from Woolf to her friend, Vita Sackville-West, but I deliberately avoided reading the introduction first as I wanted to enjoy the book on its own merits as a novel first. But after I’d finished the story it was interesting to turn back and find out more about the inspiration behind it and how some of the events that take place in the story relate to aspects of Sackville-West’s and Woolf’s own lives.

Orlando is a very clever and imaginative piece of writing. I’ve heard that this is one of Woolf’s more accessible books and now that I’ve read it, I think I would advise other people who are new to her work to try this one first too.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

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I’d been wanting to read The Master and Margarita for a long time but had always felt too intimidated to pick it up. I expect there are probably other people who feel the same, so I want to reassure you that there’s really no need to be scared! Yes, it’s Russian literature, but it’s a lot easier to read and understand than I thought it would be. After just a couple of pages I could tell I was going to love it – isn’t it great when that happens?

It’s best if you know as little as possible before you begin, so to put it as simply as I can, The Master and Margarita imagines that the devil, in the guise of Professor Woland, arrives in Soviet Moscow and proceeds to wreak havoc on the city’s literary world. Woland is accompanied by a retinue of memorable characters including his assistant, Koroviev – a tall, skinny man in a jockey’s cap and broken pince-nez glasses – and a giant, talking black cat known as Behemoth. This storyline is interwoven with the story of Pontius Pilate, giving us an insight into Pilate’s thoughts and feelings in the period leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. A third thread of the novel, closely connected to the other two, features a romance between the writer of the Pontius Pilate story, a mysterious man who is referred to only as ‘The Master’, and his lover, Margarita.

This was a fantastic book – it was breathtakingly different and original, with so many different layers to it. There were some scenes that were so surreal and bizarre I had to read them twice to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood. I’m sorry I can’t give any examples of what I mean, but I don’t want to spoil any of the fun for you! Admittedly there were a few parts of the book where the story seemed to lose its way for a while, but the engaging writing, weird and wonderful characters and the dark humour all helped to keep me interested. There were some excellent set pieces too: the séance in the theatre, Margarita’s moonlight flight, the Great Ball at Satan’s, to name just a few that have stuck in my mind.

A quick note on the translation: the version I read was the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation which, as far as I can tell from reading other reviews, may not be the best one. Personally I didn’t have any complaints about this translation, though obviously I can’t compare it with the others because I haven’t read them.

This is a book that I would definitely like to read again in the future; I might not find it as stunning the second time round but I’m sure I’ll be able to pick up on lots of little details that I missed the first time. I hope I’ve convinced you to give it a try too!

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

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Anthony Trollope was a new discovery for me last year and has now become one of my favourite Victorian authors. I read The Warden last April and Barchester Towers in November and then I swore I wouldn’t wait another six months before reading my next Trollope. And that’s exactly what I have done! Maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve waited so long though, because I love Trollope’s books so much I don’t really want to rush through them too quickly.

In this third volume of the Chronicles of Barsetshire, Trollope takes us away from the cathedral town of Barchester (the setting for the previous two novels) to Greshambury, a small town in another part of the county. Here we meet Dr Thorne, and his beloved niece, Mary. Mary’s birth was surrounded by scandal and she has been brought up by her uncle unaware of her mother’s family and the fact that she is related to the wealthy baronet Sir Roger Scatcherd, the doctor’s friend who is slowly drinking himself to death.

Another friend of the doctor’s is Squire Gresham, whose son, Frank, falls in love with Mary. Unfortunately the Greshams are having money problems and Frank’s family are determined that he must marry a rich woman, which Mary is not. The squire’s wife, Lady Arabella, does her best to keep Frank and Mary apart but will she succeed – or will something happen to change Mary’s fortunes?

As well as the class divide and the social stigma of illegitimacy, other themes include the corruption involved in Victorian politics and the effects of alcoholism. None of the Trollope books I’ve read so far could be described as having an enthralling plot and this one even less so. After reading the first few chapters, although I did enjoy them, I was starting to wonder when the story was going to begin. But although Trollope’s books may initially appear to be about very little, his plots are deceptively clever and intricate, and he has a way of pulling the reader into the story so that you become completely absorbed in the moral dilemmas of his characters. And he does apologise for the slow start too…

I feel quite an apology is due for beginning a novel with two long dull chapters full of description. I am perfectly aware of the danger of such a course… It can hardly be expected that any one will consent to go through with a fiction that offers so little allurement in its first pages; but twist it as I will I cannot do otherwise. I find that I cannot make poor Mr Gresham hem and haw and turn himself uneasily in his arm-chair in a natural manner till I have said why he is uneasy. I cannot bring my doctor speaking his mind freely among the bigwigs till I have explained that it is in accordance with his usual character to do so.

I mentioned in my review of Barchester Towers the habit Trollope has of telling us in advance what’s going to happen and he does it again in this book. The outcome of the novel is completely obvious from the beginning, so if you prefer your books to be full of suspense and surprises then Trollope is maybe not the author for you – although I do usually prefer suspense and surprises myself and yet I still like Trollope. I love his warm, witty writing style so much that I don’t at all mind the number of pages he spends introducing us to his characters and describing their backgrounds, appearances and personality traits. This is something that often bores me in books by other authors, but Trollope’s characters are so interesting that I really enjoy getting to know them all.

I was slightly disappointed that our old friends from the previous two books, Mr Harding, his daughter Eleanor and son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly didn’t feature in Doctor Thorne (although the Bishop and Mrs Proudie from Barchester Towers do make a brief appearance), but the new set of characters made up for it. In fact, the relationship between Dr Thorne and his niece Mary reminded me very much of Mr Harding and Eleanor. With the exception of Frank himself, I didn’t really like any of the Greshams or their relatives, the de Courcys (how much sympathy can you have with characters who are constantly saying things like, “If you marry a girl without a fortune, Frank, how are you to live?”) I did like Frank, Dr Thorne and Mary, and I also enjoyed all the scenes involving the two baronets Sir Roger Scatcherd and his son Louis, both unforgettable characters!

Next in the series is Framley Parsonage. I won’t make any promises this time about how long it will be before I read it, but I’m already looking forward to another enjoyable visit to Barsetshire.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

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North and South is the story of Margaret Hale, a young woman who lives with her parents at their parsonage in the idyllic village of Helstone in the south of England. When Margaret’s father decides to resign as parson and takes a new job as a tutor in the northern manufacturing town of Milton, the Hale family initially find it difficult to adapt to their new environment. It is not until Margaret meets some of the inhabitants of Milton that the town begins to feel like home. She forms a close friendship with the Higgins family – the invalid Bessy, her younger sister Mary and their father, Nicholas, who works at the cotton mill. But when the Hales also get to know Mr Thornton, a wealthy mill owner, Margaret finds herself caught in a conflict between the poor mill workers and their rich masters.

There’s also a romantic element to the novel: Mr Thornton falls in love with Margaret who unfortunately is prejudiced against what she calls ‘shoppy people’. She seems to make up her mind to dislike him before she even gets to know him because he’s a tradesman who has earned his money rather than inheriting it and is not her idea of a real gentleman. And to make things worse, Mr Thornton’s mother thinks Margaret is haughty and wants to stop her son from becoming involved with her.

Although there were also a lot of things to like about Margaret, her attitude towards Mr Thornton prevented me from really warming to her until the second half of the book when after meeting different types of people and being exposed to important social issues she begins to reassess some of her views and starts to grow as a person. By the end of the book I didn’t find her the annoying character I did at the beginning. It was interesting to see how both Mr Thornton and Nicholas Higgins also changed due to Margaret’s influence. There’s a lot of character development in this book, which was one of the things I loved about it.

The book takes place during the industrial revolution, an important and interesting period of history. It was a time of progress, allowing the factory owners to develop great wealth and the country’s economy to grow. However, the factory employees were working under appalling conditions, with absolutely no regard for their health and safety. Bessy Higgins is one example of this: she is only nineteen years old and has already developed a lung disease which she blames on inhaling ‘fluff’ from the cotton in the mill where she used to work.

Most of this industry was concentrated in the north of the country, in towns and cities such as the fictional Milton. Gaskell herself was born in London but spent most of her childhood in Cheshire and then settled in Manchester after her marriage (the town of Milton is thought to be based on Manchester), so she would have had first-hand knowledge of the northern way of life and how it may have differed from life in the south. Even today many people still have certain views and misconceptions about the differences between northern and southern England and even more so at the time when Gaskell was writing this novel, so I did appreciate the way she showed both the positive and the negative things about both regions.

North and South hasn’t become one of my favourite classics, but I did still enjoy it, although I was slightly disappointed by the way the book ended – not because I was unhappy with the outcome but because it seemed too abrupt. After reading The Moorland Cottage in February, I’ve now read the required two books to complete the Gaskell Reading Challenge, but as I’ve enjoyed both of my choices I’m sure I’ll be reading more of Gaskell’s work in the future!

Classics Circuit Tour: Jane Austen (Persuasion) vs Charles Dickens (The Mystery of Edwin Drood)

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Today, as part of a Classics Circuit Tour, I’m hosting a duel between two very different authors: Jane Austen and Charles Dickens!

Tour participants were invited to choose a novel by either Austen or Dickens – or both. As there were still a couple of Austen novels I hadn’t read, as well as a whole pile of unread Dickens books, I decided this would be a good opportunity to read one of each. But which one would I like the best?

The first book I want to discuss is Jane Austen’s Persuasion, a moving story of mistakes, misunderstandings and second chances.

Austen begins by introducing us to the Elliot family: the vain and conceited Sir Walter of Kellynch Hall and his three daughters, Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary. Mary is married with children of her own, but Elizabeth and Anne still live at home. Elizabeth is very like her father but Anne is gentle, kind-hearted and intelligent. We also meet Lady Russell, a family friend who took on the role of advisor to the girls following the death of their mother.

Several years prior to the beginning of our story, Lady Russell persuaded Anne against marrying Frederick Wentworth, who at that time was a poor young naval officer. Anne has tried to move on with her life but has been unable to forget her first love and she is still unmarried eight years later when she hears that he has returned as the wealthy and respectable Captain Wentworth. Unexpectedly thrown back into his company and forced to see him with another woman, Louisa Musgrove, Anne knows she still loves him – but can Wentworth forgive her for breaking off their engagement all those years ago?

In comparison to the other Austen books I’ve read this one feels more serious and subdued. Anne Elliot is twenty-seven years old which makes her the oldest of Austen’s heroines and this could explain the different tone of the book (as well as the fact that Jane Austen herself was older, this being her final novel). We don’t see Anne as a younger girl in the days of her original romance with Wentworth; instead we meet her when she’s older and more mature. Anne is not a lively, spirited young woman like Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse but she has a quiet strength and a warm heart and it’s easy to see what Captain Wentworth loved in her.

It’s slightly disappointing that Anne and Wentworth are kept apart through most of the novel and have little direct interaction with each other, but I appreciated the way Austen kept the reader waiting and wondering, giving the story a sense of restraint and tension. I loved this book and I think it might even have become my favourite Austen novel – although that could still change after I read Sense and Sensibility, which is the only one of her books that I still need to read.

Moving on to Charles Dickens…

There were plenty of Dickens books I could have chosen, as I’ve only read three of them so far (A Christmas Carol, Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend) but as I’d also committed to reading a Jane Austen book I thought I’d better pick one of his shorter novels.

Trying to avoid one of his eight hundred page tomes played a large part in my decision to read The Mystery of Edwin Drood for the Duelling Authors tour. In comparison to other Dickens novels it’s relatively short – and for a good reason. It’s the novel Dickens was working on when he died in 1870 and unfortunately he was unable to complete it. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about reading an unfinished book but I can tell you that reaching the final page and realising that the mystery wasn’t going to be solved was every bit as frustrating as you might expect!

A large part of the novel is set in the fictional cathedral town of Cloisterham, which is thought to have been based on Rochester, where Dickens lived. We are also taken on a journey into the darker side of Victorian London; the opening scenes of the book take place in Princess Puffer’s opium den, to which Cloisterham choirmaster and piano teacher John Jasper is a regular visitor.

We learn that Jasper is in love with Rosa Bud, an orphan who lives at the Nun’s House in Cloisterham. There are only two problems with this: the first is that Rosa finds Jasper terrifying; the second is that she’s already engaged to his nephew, Edwin Drood, who is only a few years younger than Jasper himself. So when Drood disappears and is presumed to have been murdered it should be obvious who’s to blame, shouldn’t it? Well, no. There’s another suspect: Neville Landless, recently arrived in Cloisterham with his twin sister Helena, who is known to have previously had a violent argument with Drood and was with him the night before his disappearance.

Unfortunately we never find out what really happened to Drood and a number of other storylines are also left unresolved. We can guess what might have been going to happen, and I was able to find lots of possible theories online, but maybe Dickens had a few surprise twists planned for us – we’ll probably never know for certain.

Compared to the other Dickens books I’ve read, I found this one more direct and easy to follow, with less sub-plots and superfluous characters. Almost every chapter helps to move the story forward significantly. It was also quite funny in places, which was good as I haven’t really got on with Dickens’ sense of humour in the past. I can’t help thinking I’ve done things backwards though: I read Drood by Dan Simmons last year, which meant that when I started this book I felt I knew part of the story already. Many of the characters’ names were familiar and I could appreciate how cleverly Simmons had incorporated elements of Dickens’ novel into his own: the opium dens, the tours of the cathedral vaults and crypts, Drood’s interest in Egypt, the ‘hideous small boy’ who throws stones at Durdles. I think it would have been more sensible to have read this book first before the Dan Simmons one!

So who has emerged as the victor of this duel? Well, The Mystery of Edwin Drood was a fun, entertaining read but Persuasion I’m sure will be one of my books of the year – so I think Jane Austen is the winner here!

If you’re still not sure which author you prefer, the other Classics Circuit participants’ Austen and Dickens reviews might help you decide – you can find a full list of tour stops on the Classics Circuit blog.