The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and . . . becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief.”

     Last year I read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter for the Transcendentalist event and quite liked it. This year The House of the Seven Gables is the last of the classics I read for the Classics Challenge.  The House of the Seven Gables is often called a Gothic romance or a Gothic horror. It actually is neither. Although there is a bit of an abrupt love story woven in, calling it a romance is too much of a stretch. Also, any supernatural element to the story is only very dimly suggested, never really played out.

     The story revolves around the seven gabled Pyncheon house, an old, melancholy mansion in New England with a bloody history. The present inhabitants of the house are Hepzibah Pyncheon who is a nervous old maid, her brother Clifford who is emotionally shattered from events in his past, their cousin Phoebe, a delightful young country girl and a mysterious daguerreotypist.  I’m not going to divulge too much of the plot because there really isn't much of a plot anyway.

     Hawthorne’s style of writing is not for everyone. It requires a fair bit of patience for the reader to wade through his long-winded and heavy prose. This verbose style worked pretty well in The Scarlet letter, lending real insight into the mind of the protagonist and even her tormentors. In The House of the Seven Gables though, it wore me out.  This explaining of every nuance and character trait was not only tiring but also slightly patronizing  I always prefer it when author leave us to figure out the characters for ourselves without spelling it all out. All in all, not my favorite classic of the year.

     And that’s it from me for this year. It’s been a hectic year with a lot of changes for our family. The changes were all good and for that I’m thankful, but it has meant that I've had a lot less time for reading and blogging. I’m hoping that 2013 will be more restful and leisurely. To make it easier on myself I've decided not to take part in any challenges or readalongs. I want my reading to be more spontaneous. I hope to take part in The Short Story Initiative as often as I can and perhaps any short term events I fancy that aren't too much pressure. I also hope to go a little easy on the classics next year and read more contemporary fiction. I don’t think I've read anything this year that was written in my lifetimeJ.

I wish you all Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year. I hope 2013 will bring joy and peace to all. See you next year.

A Classics Challenge- December Prompt.

So, here's the last installment of the Classics Challenge Prompts. It's been a great challenge to take part in and despite the crazy year I've had, I've actually managed to stay on track with my reading schedule. More or less. So here's this month's prompt:

Link to your favorite Classic Literature post you've written this year, it doesn't have to be related to this challenge. Just something you'd enjoy sharing.

Or make a list of what you read for the challenge, you could compare it to your original list drawn up late 2011 when you were planning what to read, link to the posts you've written for the challenge, how many authors you've read or any little stat or detail you'd like to share.

Ok, so my favorite classic read this year and my favorite review too is Mrs Dalloway. It stayed with me long after I'd read it and the post that followed, was one of my longer ones. It would have been a lot longer still had I not pruned it drastically. Didn't want to test the patience of my readers.

Here's my list of books read for this challenge. If you click on the names it will lead you to my post about the book.  

1. Midsummer Nights Dream
2. A Connecticut Yankee in KingArthurs Court
3. Daddy Long Legs
4. Mrs Dalloway
5. Animal Farm
6. Of Mice and Men
7. The House of Seven Gables

I have read all the books I intended to and I've posted on 7 prompts so far. I think. So that makes this a successfully completed challenge for me. And I enjoyed every minute of it too. 

A Classics Challenge- November

Last month I read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and hopefully I'll get down to doing a review of it soon. That leaves me with just one more book to go before I'm officially done with the challenge. My last classic for 2012 is going to be The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Anyone read it? Nice?

Moving on to this months questions, here they are:
Of all the Classics you've read this year is there an author or movement that has become your new favorite? Which book did you enjoy the most? Or were baffled by? Who's the best character? The most exasperating? From reading other participants' posts which book do you plan to read and are most intrigued by?

My favorite classic of the year, hands down, is Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and Clarissa Dalloway is my favorite character.  Animal Farm was wonderful too BUT I just felt really strongly about Mrs Dalloway. I can't think of any character that exasperated me but I did feel that the character of Daddy-long-legs was not quite as enigmatic as he should have been. Karen's lovely post about Villette reminded me that this book has been on my to-read list for far too long. I definitely intend to get to it in 2013.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than the others.

-          Animal Farm

   If you've ever heard or read anything by or about George Orwell, you know to expect a political subtext to his work. This book is probably one of his most incisive political works. What makes this remarkable is that all its principle characters are animals.

    Manor Farm belongs to the harsh and irresponsible Mr Jones who treats his farm animals very shoddily. The animals are used to bearing this with mute resignation until one night; Old Major the boar calls a meeting and shares his dream of a farm run by the animals themselves. He teaches the animals ‘Beasts of England’, a song which is to become the anthem of the revolution. When old Major dies, two pigs called Snowball and Napoleon take it upon themselves to lead the revolution. The revolt happens quite organically and much sooner than planned. The animals chase off Mr Jones, take control of the farm and rename it Animal Farm. Almost instantly their lives are much improved. Under the leadership of Snowball and Napoleon, the animals work hard and the farm prospers. However, power starts to corrupt the pigs. The tranquility and comradeship of the animals is threatened and things start to go rapidly downhill from there on. The ending was especially brilliant I thought. Chilling and poignant.

    Animal Farm is often, mistakenly touted as Orwell’s diatribe against socialism but Orwell is really making a comment on dictatorship and not on the people’s movement. Apparently Orwell intended this book to be a specific attack at Stalin but really, it is just as relevant to any dictatorship the world over. Orwell also takes pot-shots at organised religion and its sedating effect on the masses. Moses, a Raven and Mr Jones’ pet, tells the weary animals of a beautiful land called Sugarcandy Mountain where all animals go after they die but only if they work very hard when they are alive and never question their master.

    I’d urge you to give this book a try even if politics doesn't interest you. This isn't some dry political treatise. There is a story here that is engaging and thought-provoking irrespective of what your political ideology may be.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

“The World had raised its whip; where will it descend?”

                                                                   -  Mrs Dalloway

       Mrs Dalloway is one of those rare books that I abandoned midway despite really wanting to read it. This was over three years ago when my son had just been born.  Let me share some hard earned wisdom with you:  Mrs Dalloway  is not the best read when you’re wading through post partum depression. In fact, you may want to avoid Virginia Woolf entirely. Anyhow, now that I’m not perpetually sleep-deprived and cranky (much) I thought I’d give  Mrs Dalloway  another go. I was surprised at how much darker it had felt the first time I’d taken it up. Goes to show, doesn’t it, that a book can mean such different things depending on where you are in your life. Now, I’m not suggesting that this book is actually all bright and sunshiny, far from it, but it’s more thought-provoking than depressing.

       Clarissa Dalloway is throwing a party that evening and the book follows her and a few other characters around London during the hours preceding the party.  The narrative zigzags between the past and the present, thoughts and words, but Woolf does this with such skill that you are never confused.  Since there’s nothing here that can conventionally be termed a story, I’d like to examine some of the elements of the book that interested me.

       Clarissa Dalloway: Woolf lived with Clarissa Dalloway for a long time before finally giving her a book of her own. The character first appears in the novel The Voyage Out and then in the short story Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street, before evolving into the woman we meet in Mrs Dalloway. Clarissa is a wonderfully multi-layered character. At first glance she’s just another charming, but shallow and self centred woman of privilege. But beneath the serene exterior, she has her own struggles with life, age, mortality and isolation, although her struggles aren’t dramatic or noisy.

       Septimus Smith: Woolf intended Septimus to be another version of Clarissa. In her notes she refers to Septimus as Clarissa’s twin. Interestingly the two characters never meet or interact but it’s easy to see the link between them. Septimus suffers from post-war trauma and hallucinations. He is also convinced that humanity is innately cruel and therefore not worth being a part of. 

“For the truth is (let her ignore it) that human beings have neither kindness nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment. They hunt in packs. Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness. They desert the fallen.”

       Clarissa’s loves: Richard Dalloway, the very proper and safe man she married, loves Clarissa in his own measured way but one is never quite sure if Clarissa feels anything beyond affection for him. Peter Walsh is the romance of her girlhood whom she rejected because he unsettled her. Now he’s back and a lot of her feelings for him are probably because he represents her youth. However, Clarissa’s most passionate love is for Sally Seton, a radical and bold girl who visited Clarissa when they were both young. 

       Dr Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw: Woolf really spews venom at the medical community of her time through these two characters. They are perhaps the most caricature-like of all her characters. Dr Holmes, the family physician, is insufferably patronizing. He seems to think Septimus is just being a bother and there’s nothing wrong with him that a hobby and some distraction wouldn’t cure. Dr Bradshaw, the specialist, on the other hand, pretends to sympathise but his ‘cure’ is really just a way of shutting the mentally infirm out of society.

“Sir William not only prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views, until they too shared his sense of proportion.”

       Woolf’s notes suggest that she intended this book to be a sort of juxtaposition of the sane and insane, the living and the dead, the past and the present. She succeeds quite spectacularly in this regard. Admittedly, Mrs Dalloway takes some effort to read despite being a very slim book. But don’t let this put you off. I know a lot of people who have read and hated it but I still suggest you give this a chance, possibly even a second chance. I think it’s worth the effort.

A Classics Challenge August Prompt : Quotes from Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Rather than a questions this month's prompt is to share a memorable

Quote

... or a few of them from what you're currently reading. Try to select one that are not so well-known but, of course, if you can't help yourself share it too!

My classic for this month is Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.

 Here's my favorite quote from the book.

“Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying – what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.” 

The quote is perhaps unlikely to find a place in any 'quotable quotes' book but it reflects the theme of the book and what Woolf was trying to convey, that feelings are more valid and important than thoughts. In the same vein is another quote,

 “What does the brain matter compared with the heart?” 

As you can see, this is an underlying theme throughout the book. I must leave you with another quote which is not from the book but about the book.

"I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide: the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side - something like that." -Virginia Woolf on Mrs Dalloway.

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster

"One can’t help thinking, Daddy, what a colorless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman, whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge-is fundamentally and always interested in clothes.”

    I read Daddy-Long-Legs as part of my classics challenge about a month ago but I’m only now getting around to writing about it. This is largely because it not an easy book to write about. Let me explain. Daddy-Long-Legs has no real plot. Well, it does, but its wafer thin and quite unremarkable. It also has just one real character: Jerusha a.k.a Judy. While other people are mentioned, they exist only as part of Judy’s narrative. Judy herself doesn’t really do very much and nothing very much happens to her either. All of this isn’t meant to imply that the book is boring. Hardly that. But it is difficult to write about without getting down to a textbook analysis of a very adorable character.

     To summarize briefly; Daddy-Long-Legs is an epistolary novel about an orphan, Judy, who has been given the chance to go to college by an unknown benefactor. This benefactor, whom Judy calls Daddy-Long-Legs because of his long legged shadow, expects her to update him about her life through regular letters. Judy enthusiastically obliges and we ‘see’ her life at college and beyond, play out through those letters.

     I hate to resort to a cliché and call this a coming-of-age tale, but I’m afraid it does belong to that category. However, this is less Catcher in the Rye and more Anne of Green Gables with a little added spirit and insight. The evolution of the letters in terms of style, tone and content is interesting.  Judy’s observations about the world around her, the people she meets and her own developing character are the most engaging and endearing parts of the book. Since she has never seen or heard Daddy-Long-Legs, he is almost an imaginary character to her and so she is able to write to him with absolute candor.

“We had a bishop this morning and what do you think he said?

"The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this,'The poor ye have always with you.' They were put here in order to keep us charitable."
The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I hadn't grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.” 

     This book is worth reading for Judy alone. It’s a small book and a very easy read. If you liked Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, you’ll probably like this one too.  

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

   

    Sorry about slipping off the radar again. Too many things happening all at once and I couldn’t settle down to reading or writing. Nothing tragic or terrible, just one of those weird times when your mind seems to have switched off. I am so behind on all my challenges but I think I can still catch up. Anyways, it’s supposed to be fun right? So I’m not going to pile any pressure on myself.  

   I managed to finish Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court although it has taken me over a month to do so. Let this not put you off the book though. The delay was entirely due to the crazy time I've been having and nothing to do with the book’s length or quality. In fact, I would very much like to go back and re-read this when life is a little less hectic.

    I have read and reviewed Mark Twain’s short stories here and they are the reason I chose A Connecticut Yankee... as one of my Classic’s Challenge reads. I expected it to be a crazy, hilarious book and it is, but it is also so much more than that.  It is insightful, thought-provoking and sometimes quite grim too.

    The title pretty much summarizes the book for you. Hank Morgan is a resourceful and enterprising Yankee from the 19^th century.  After a head injury, he wakes up in 6^th century Camelot which is not quite the romantic and ethereal land we imagine it to be.  He is almost burned at the stake for being peculiar but Hank can think on his feet pretty sharp. Not only does he manage to escape a brutal death, he takes over the mantle of Head Magician from a disgruntled Merlin.  Hank, or The Boss, as he is now known, sets about improving and modernizing Camelot without rousing suspicion or alarm. But he finds that the general populace have immense respect for hocus pocus and very little for human rights.

    This book reminded me a bit of Twain’s Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven story which I’ve reviewed here. Not that the plots are similar but they both have an absurd, fantastical central idea which Twain uses to make a point about religion and society. A Connecticut Yankee... rips off the rose tinted glasses with which we view the past and shows us the ugly reality of an un-evolved society where brutality is passed off as gallantry. Having said all that, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is also a really fun read.  

A Classics Challenge March Prompt: Setting

Here's my 2nd entry for A Classics Challenge hosted by November's Autumn.This month's prompt focuses on the setting of novel. This month I'm reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I've only just started on the book so I'm just picking the questions I can answer from each level.

How has the author introduced the setting ?

The book opens in Warwick Castle but the action really begins in Camelot so I'm going with the author's description of what Camelot was like. "It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream,and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was full of the smell of birds,flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life,nothing going on. The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side"

What does it tell you about the character? about the time period?
Rarely does the very name of a place tell you so much about the time period of the story and even the characters you are bound to encounter. Mention Camelot and you are instantly transported to medieval times and King Arthur's legend.

How do you envision it? Find a few images or describe it. 

I imagine Camelot to be something like this although, really, its greatest attraction to fiction writers and romantics everywhere is that it can be anything you want. It defies any particular imagery since we don't know where exactly it was supposed to be located but I think you'll agree that it's impossible to imagine Camelot without an imposing medieval castle.

If this particular setting was changed how would it affect the course of the story? 

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is, as the title very clearly states, about a Yankee who is  mysteriously transported back in time to Camelot during King Arthur's reign. As you can imagine, this makes the setting crucial and the story cannot possibly be set anywhere else if it is to remain what it is.

I'm quite enjoying this book although I haven't made much progress. I've spent most of my reading time immersed in Irish Short Stories. Fortunately this is a short book so I'm hoping to finish it in a week or two and have a review up. Anybody else read this? 

Img: http://www.inmarkt.nl/~warriors/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=2

The Classics Challenge January Prompt

So here's how (I think) this works: Every month Katherine puts up a bunch of questions for us to answer on our blogs about the classic we are currently reading or have just finished reading. Just like you would do in any blog hop. Only here, there are three different levels of questions to choose from, based on how much of the book you have read. This month's focus is on the Author. I picked Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as my first classic. I'm almost done reading it but I'm going to stick with the level 1 questions because this is after all Shakespeare Reading Month and I'll probably be going on about him quite a bit in the days to come so i'll start easy here. I'm sure Shakespeare is an auspicious start  to my blogging in 2012.

Who is the author? 

William Shakespeare

What do they look like?

Where did they live?

Stratford-upon-Avon was where he was born and raised. He spent his short retirement here and eventually died here. Most of his working life,however, was spent  in London.

Shakespeare's Birthplace

What does their handwriting look like?

Although no substantiated documents in his handwriting have survived, here is what his signature (is supposed to have) looked like.

What are some of the other novels they've written? 

Phew! that would be a long list. Shakespeare has written 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. Some of his most famous play's are Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear.

What is an interesting and random fact about their life?

Shakespeare never published any of his plays. All of his plays were published after his death.

My post about A Midsummer Night's Dream should be up in a couple of days. I hope you'll drop in then.