Classics Challenge Wrap-Up

A Reader's Journal hosted the Classics Challenge. Participants chose five classics to read during January and February. I read all five of my original choices:

1. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
2. Middlemarch by George Eliot
3. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
4. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
5. Daisy Miller by Henry James

The best book: oh no, I can't really pick. All of them but Daisy Miller were stunning, in their own ways.

What book could I have done without? Daisy Miller by Henry James. I just don't think that novellas are for me!

Any new authors? Yep-Wilkie Collins, Isak Dinesen, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon.

Books I did not finish: none!

What did I learn from this challenge? That I really need to incorporate more classics into my life. More importantly, I realised that good classics have universal themes and characters that fit right into my 21st century life.

(Note: thanks to Nyssaneala for the idea to have questions!)

Daisy Miller (thoughts)

I realised that I hadn't review my fifth and final classics challenge, Henry James' Daisy Miller.

I first 'heard of' Henry James in a novel I read last year by Colm Toibin called The Master. Toibin basically writes a somewhat-fictionalized account of certain parts of Henry James' life. That novel was so interesting, I decided I wanted to read some of James' actual books. So, this summer I read The Ambassadors, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The Classics Challenge rolled around, and it seemed natural to put some James on my list. Originally, I was going to read Portrait of a Lady. But, then I was worried that with the other challenges I had bitten off more than I could chew. Added to the fact that Daisy Miller is what made James famous, I went for the novella instead.

Now, I'm wishing I had stuck with Portrait of a Lady. I mean, I enjoyed reading Daisy Miller, but I think I prefer James when he has space to stretch out and take a couple of deep breaths. I missed the slow development of character, the teasing glimpses of plot, that The Ambassadors won me over with. I also felt as if I didn't really understand the *world* of Daisy Miller: there was no flesh. While I enjoyed Daisy and the narrator's characters, I didn't feel that they had much opportunity to grow.

So, in the end Daisy Miller was well-written, but way too short to satisfy me. The ending was very abrupt (don't want to give it away, for those who don't know it), and the reader is left wondering what the hell just happened. It also carries a hint of allegory, though I'm not sure what kind. I'm not sorry that I read it, after all it took under an hour to read, but I wouldn't recommend it to people who love classics because of all of their detail, their tidy endings, and their slow-moving plots. This felt almost like a modern novella. Also, while I love novels, and adore well-written short stories, the novella seems like an unhappy offspring, who got its father's nose, and mother's eyes, and yet isn't as pretty as either.

Lady Audley's Secret (thoughts)

I devoured my fourth classics challenge, Lady Audley's Secret, starting it Thursday night and finishing it Friday evening (would've been sooner if not for pesky classes and homework). It was just what I needed at the time: the good characters all end up happily, the bad ones unhappily, and in the middle is a lot of gothic English.

In brief, two gentlemen go to visit the Audley estate, where a new, much younger wife is conquering all of the small village's hearts. However, one of the gentlemen myseriously disappears, causing his friend to begin to investigate. The more the friend looks into things, the more it appears that Lady Audley is not what she seems...

The 'mystery' of the novel is painfully obvious for the reader, as well as for the friend doing the investigations. The plot isn't really the point; instead, the heart of the novel is in the characters, all of whom are very finely drawn. From the kind-hearted but lazy friend, to his fox-hunting, 'gypsy faced' cousin, the characters manage to be both stereotypical and immensely human. I loved curling up with them all. The writing is quite good; Braddon knows how to balance her sentences, and I really enjoyed her language. She managed to sketch the settings for all of her characters without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. In fact, the novel feels very modern: it could've been historical fiction, instead of a classic.

All in all, I highly recommend this for when you just want to escape. Nothing in the novel is particularly serious, and you'll end up with the feeling that all is right in the world.

Favorite Passages:

For you see Miss Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. (6)

"Why don't I love her? Why is it that although I know her to be pretty, and pure, and good, and truthful, I don't love her? Her image never haunts me, expcet reproachfully. I never see her in my dreams. I never wake up suddenly in the dead of night with her eyes shining upon me and her warm breath upon my cheek, or with the fingers of her soft hand clinging to mine. No, I'm not in love with her; I can't fall in love with her." (334)

Out of Africa (thoughts)

Out of Africa was my third classics challenge read and by far the most challenging. Her prose makes me weak in the knees; her laten racism draws me back up.

The book itself is a memoir of Dane Isak Dinesen's life in Africa. I looked up Dinesen a little after I read the book; I'll talk about her life later.

Dinesen is a beautiful writer. She's really good at creating a scene and capturing her feelings. The book doesn't really follow a chronological order, except for the last chapter about her preperations to return to Denmrk. Instead, it's a random collection of vignettes; sometimes, Dinesen spells out the 'lesson,' but usually she leaves that for the reader to determine. At the same time that I revelled in her prose, some of her morals horrified me. After all, she's writing when Kenya was still a colony, when Kenyans were 'Natives,' and when big game hunting was a popular sport for gentrified Europe. So, in between her discussions of the majestic mountains, or the orphaned gazelle that she helped raise, are passages about killing lions, wildebeest, etc. or patronizing observations on 'the Natives.'

I'm a vegetarian, so I feel that I'm fairly far at the sensitive end to descriptions of hunting. And, believe me, there were times when Dinesen turned my stomach a bit. But she also showed me, for the first time, *why* people hunt. Do I think that hunting is moral now? Absolutely not. But the discussions of hunting shouldn't scare anyone off of reading the book; they aren't very plentiful, mainly just passing references to her youth or friend Denys. I can't truly comment re: her discussion of 'Natives,' since I'm white. I didn't agree with them, but they didn't destroy the book for me. I feel that Out of Africa is a window into a certain kind of privileged, self-absorbed life style, led by a woman of unexpectedly profound insight. For me, this insight was worth the occassional offensive passage. But, the reader should go in aware that the book contains racist ideas.

Thus, Out of Africa challenged me more than I ever expected to be challenged. Dinesen truly brought me into her mind; I saw with her eyes, judged with her morals, and loved with her heart. I only wish that this book was longer.

After looking up Dinesen online, I discovered some interesting facts (that you would never know from reading the book). Her true name was Karen Blixen, and she moved to Kenya because of her husband. He gave her syphilis early in their marriage, but they stayed married for nine years, when he left her. Her 'friend' Denys was actually her lover; however, their relationship was rather complicated (i.e.-he was bisexual, and more attracted to men). Apparently, the movie Out of Africa focuses on these facts. So, if you've seen the movie, don't expect the book to be anything similar.

Really, I think that Dinesen's words are the best way to convince you that you should read Out of Africa. Because you really should.

The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air...The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of the hills and the woods a fresh deep blue....In the highlands, you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be. (4)

Here lay before you a hundred miles' gallop over grass and open undulating land; there was not a fence nor a ditch, and no road...There were low thorn trees regularly spread over the plain, and long deep valleys with dry riverbeds of big flat stones, where you had to find a deer-path here and there to take you across. After a little while you became aware of how still it was out here. Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel that it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed an noisy world, into a still country. (98)

Still, by his presence, he turned my home into a chosen, comfortable corner of the world. (223)

Denys and Kanuthia pulled up their sleeves and as the sun rose they skinned the lions...We sat on the short grass and ate and drank. The dead lions, close by, looked magnificent in their nakedness, there was not a particle of superfluous fat on them, each muscle was a bold controlled curve, they needed no cloak, they were, all through, what they out to be. (231)

The flamboyant red Acacia flowers in the gardens of Mombasa, unbelievably intense of colour and delicate of leaf. The sun burns and scorches Mombasa; the air is salt here, the breeze brings in every day fresh supplies of brine from the East, and the soil itself is salted so that very little grass grows, and the ground is bare like a dancing-floor. But the ancient mango trees have a dense dark-green foliage and give benignant shade; they create a circular pool of black coolness beneath them. (298)

In the long yeas before them, will the Giraffes sometimes dream of their lost country? Where are they now, where have they done to, the grass and the thorn-trees, the rivers and water-holes and the blue mountains? The high sweet air over the plains has lifted and withdrawn. Where have the other Giraffes gone to, that were side by side with them when they set going, and cantered over the undulating land? They have left them, they have all gone, and it seems that they are never coming back.
In the night, where is the full moon? (299)

Men, I think, cannot easily or harmoniously envy or triumph over one another. But it goes without saying that the bride triumphs over the bridesmaids, and that the lying-in-visitors envy the mother of the child; and none of the parties feel the worse on that account. (392)

If I know a song of Africa-of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of the Ngong hills look out for me?

Middlemarch (thoughts)

Ah, how to talk of a classic like Middlemarch? I suppose, since I've never taken a lit class in my life, I'll just approach it from my experience.

I happen to love Jane Austen. I feel that George Eliot is like Jane's more serious and studious older sister. They both deal with English countryside society; not the ridiculously wealthy titled folk, but not the poor either. They both tend to focus on marriage and family relationships. They both move through day-to-day life at a pretty slow pace. Nevertheless, they're very different.

But, first a brief synopsis of Middlemarch. It looks at life in the small English town of Middlemarch (a surprise, I know), somewhere in the nineteenth century. It begins by following young girls as they go from single to married: Miss Dorothea Brooke, her sister Celia, and Miss Rosamond Vincy are all married off in their turns during the first part of the book. Miss Brooke marries an older clergyman, Mr. Causabon (I love that name!) and Miss Vincy marries the newly-arrived young doctor, Lydgate. Celia marries one of the gentry of the area; she's only a peripheral character, who exists (imo) in order to represent the *ideal* match. Following this, Eliot examines how Dorothea and Rosamond both become disillusioned in their marriages. The book includes a whole cast of other characters, some of them loveable, some of them hateable, and by the last part of the book, the plot has been thickened with a certain someone's disreputable past. However, most of these events are told through the 'eyes' of Dorothea, Rosamond, and the men connected to them (either through blood, marriage, or love). I will say now, I feel that this book is a great length. My copy was the Norton critical edition, meaning absolutely miniature type, and still weighed in at 578 pages (the Penguin edition is 880). Therefore, you can really settle in with the characters, and get attached, knowing that they're not going to be rudely snatched from you in another hour or two. Lots of cups of tea went into this reading, which is just the way I like it. Also, a great first line: "Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress." This woman can write.

Obviously, I'm leaving a lot out. But you can see how this rather resembles an Austen novel; Rosamond takes a whole part to get married, and there are worries about Lydgate's attachment, and her parents' disapproval. But, whereas Austen tends to end her books at the marriage (in fact, *always* ends them at the marriage or engagement), thereby leaving the reader to imagine the ensuing marital bliss, Eliot actually goes there. I feel that she casts a more realistic look at life; her characters don't have the 'sparkling wit' Austen's are known for. Furthermore, they resign themselves to less-than-perfect situations. Life does not always turn out the way they want it to. Eliot also shows her disapproval of aspects of English society. Austen, when she wishes to show disapproval, uses mockery and draws satirical characters. Eliot tends to just add sermonizing sentences to the novel; her personal voice comes through as very serious. When I read Austen, I can hear a supressed laugh in the narrator's tone; Eliot has more sadness.

And yet, I really enjoyed the book. When I read Austen, I end up wanting to be her herione. With Middlemarch, I ended up seeing that I can overcome the challenges in my personal life. Marriage isn't always fun and games; you have to fight for it, you have to compromise and change habits to make things work. Even so, it's something that normal people can do. They don't have to be as clever as Elizabeth Bennet, as sweet as Jane, as rich as Darcy. They just have to realize the value of having someone else. At least, that's what I took away from it. I highly recommend this book for those moments when you need someone to say 'Buck up, and deal with it' in a gentler manner. By reminding me that life has its downs, Eliot made the ups that much more precious. I am grateful to her for that.

Favorite Passages:

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about th elips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts-not to hurt others. (41)

Will Ladislaw's smile was delightful, unless you were angry with him beforehand; it was a gush of inward light illuminating the transparent skin as well as the eyes, and playing about every curve and line as if some Ariel were touching them with a new charm, and banishing for ever the traces of moodiness. (142)

"But I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me."
"What is that?" said Will, rather jealous of the belief.
"That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't know quite what it is and canot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil-widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower."(270)

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present; it is not a repented error shaken lookse from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours andthe tinglings of a merited shame. (425)

(This one requires a bit of preface. Dorothea is flustered about love at the moment and trying not to think about it.)
Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of it, would certainly keep her mind steady. Unhappily her mind slipped off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading sentences twice over with an intense consciousness of many things, but not of any one thing contained in the text. This was hopeless. (555)

The Moonstone (thoughts)

I finished the first book on my list of classics last night, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Firstly, I felt rather silly, because I was definitely under the impression that Wilkie Collins was a woman. I'm not sure why I thought that; Wilkie seems like a girly name (i.e.-Muffin) to me. At least I've realized my mistake!

On to the book. The premise is pretty simple; a very large diamond goes missing. Who stole it and why? The narrative is more complex: there are five actual narrators and extended letters from a couple more. This seems to be the book's strength as well as its downfall. I very much enjoyed the story when it was told me a likeable narrator. However, I didn't enjoy it all with two of the narrators; it was difficult to keep myself going through those sections.

I enjoyed the high-drama of the book, with its beautiful, histronic heiress, love-sick continental, mysterious traveller, the loyal old servant, etc. While I wouldn't call the characters 'fleshed out,' they all portrayed their stereotypes to a T. After all, sometimes stereotypes are refreshing! If you enjoy English literature of this time period (nineteenth century), you'll probably enjoy The Moonstone.

As much as I enjoyed it while I was reading it, I don't think that I'd reread it. In general, I'll happily reread a book over and over, but only if I enjoy the characters. After all, if the plot is the strength, what's the point of rereading it? You already know it! But strong characters, on the other hand, are like old friends: it's fun to drop in on them every once in awhile.

So, I feel that The Moonstone was a satisfactory beginning to the classics challenge. I feel fulfilled for having read it, I enjoyed reading it, and now I can put it aside. lol

Favorite Passages:

There, coming out on us from among the hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman, dressed in a beautiful fawn-colored suit, with gloves and hat to match, witha rose in his button-hole, and a smile on his face that might have set the Shivering Sand itself smiling at him in return. (28)

"After believing in him as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking of him by day, and dreaming of him by night-he wonders I didn't charge him with his disgrace the first time we met: "My heart's darling, you are a Thief! My hero whom I love and honour, you have crept into my room under cover of the night, and stolen my Diamond!" That is what I ought to have said. You villain, you mean, mean, mean villain, I would have lost fifty diamonds, rather than see your face lying to me, as I see it lying now!" (389)

Classics Challenge!

Here's my list for the Winter's Classics Challenge (hosted by booklog at A Reader's Journal). I'm very excited about this, for several reasons. After all, I'm an Aries, so I always love a good challenge. And I really enjoy classic literature, so this made me search for new ones instead of just rereading old ones. :D

1. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
I've been meaning to read this forever: it's referenced in so many other books that I read!

2. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Another book I've always wanted to read. In fact, I've checked it out from the library a couple times in the past and just never got around to it. But I'm hoping to start a biography of George Eliot next month, and it'd be kind of odd to read the bio without having read any of the real works.

3. Out of Africa by Isak Dineson
This will get me off the European continent for awhile, if not out of the European mindset!

4. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Hadn't heard of this book before running across it on A High and Hidden Place's challenge list. I'm always up for a perfectly new author. Furthermore, I haven't really read any Victorian gothic novels before, so between this and The Moonstone, I should have my fill!

5. The Portrait of a Lady or Daisy Miller by Henry James
I'm leaving this choice open, because it'll depend on how much time I have left! I thought that the men probably deserved one author on the list, and this way I'm reading another American as well. As an American who lived half my life in Europe, I've always enjoyed reading James. And yet, I've never gotten around to two of his most famous works!