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A Farewell To Arms
A Farewell to Arms follows the experiences of Frederic Henry, a volunteer for the Italian ambulance services in the First World War. It is a story of comradeship, of military injustice, and of disillusionment, but above all it is a love story, between the American Henry and an English nurse, Catherine.
Despite the brutality of the story, the hard-drinking central character and the starkness of the prose, A Farewell to Arms is a moving testament both to love and to the overwhelming loss of war.
‘A novel of great power’
Times Literary Supplement
‘A most beautiful, moving and human book’
Vita Sackville West
‘The impartiality of the presentation of war is
as remarkable as the sincerity of the record of love’
Guardian
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 1899. The son of a doctor, he was the second of six children growing up in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. In 1917 he became a journalist. A year later, he volunteered as an ambulance driver in Italy, where he was wounded and twice decorated, an experience that informed his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms.
An admired and much-imitated writer, he was famed for his masculine pursuits, such as bull-fighting, and his deceptively simple style of writing. His best known works include For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises and The Old man and the Sea, after the publication of which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954. He also published other novels, short stories and a posthumous memoir, A Moveable Feast.
After an often troubled life, including several marriages and involvement in The Spanish Civil war and the Second World War, Hemingway settled in Cuba, where he lived for fourteen years. He died in 1961.
Reactions to the book in 1929
Orlo Williams's review of A Farewell to Arms was published in the TLS of November 28, 1929.Mr. Ernest Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS (Cape, 7s. 6d. net) is a novel of great power. Though it adds one to the now many novels of war, it is unlike any other, for Mr. Hemingway's method and outlook are entirely his own. Though his mental processes, his language and his subject-matter are not what we in England should call "typically American," he is one of the few writers in the English language who is distinctively and absolutely American. To everything British he is foreign, and the British, though he likes them, are foreign to him. Nobody but an American could have his staccato style, his particular turn of dialogue, his power of rejecting everything that is extraneous to his keen but selective vision, his dismal animation, his unrationalized pessimism. It is always the same mind, the same man — one who finds no comfort but in vivid circumstance and pleasure of the senses — who tells the story: he tells it to himself, either in long passages of terse dialogue or in direct reflections of his own retina, hardly ever stopping to register a mental comment.
Here, at all events, he has found a theme more suited to him than any before. Goodbye to all that?
A Farewell to Arms reviewed in the Guardian, December 13, 1929
There is something so complete in Mr Hemingway's achievement in A Farewell to Arms that one is left speculating as to whether another novel will follow in this manner, and whether it does not complete both a period and a phase.
The story starts brilliantly with the love-making between the young American hero, Henry, a volunteer in the Italian Ambulance Service, and Catherine Barkley, an English nurse in the British hospital at Goritzia. There is subtle feminine charm in the Englishwoman's response to the man, who, at first, is just amusing himself, but the affair soon develops into real passion.
Henry, whose good relations with the Italian officers in his mess are drawn with delightful freshness, is wounded, with a smashed knee in a night assault near Plava, and is sent down from the field hospital to the American hospital at Milan, where he is the first case, and here Miss Barkley gets a transfer to nurse him.
All the descriptions of life at the front and in the hospitals, the talk of the officers, privates, and doctors, are crisply natural and make a convincing narrative, though the hero is perhaps already a little too mature and experienced. Catherine (who might be a younger sister of the heroine of Fiesta) is most skilfully modelled as the eternal feminine in nursing dress.
In the scenes in the Milan hospital, where love laughs at matrons and maids, the author increases his hold over us. And the story deepens in force when Henry, patched up, returns to the Isonzo front. The year has been a serious one for the Italian army, and the breakthrough of the Germans at Caporetto brings disaster.
The last 50 pages of book three describe the Italian army in retreat, the block of transport on the main roads, the bogging and abandonment of Henry's cars on a side road, the Italian privates' behaviour and their hatred of the war, and finally the shooting of the elderly officers in retreat by the Italian battle police at the Tagliamento - these pages are masterly.
The American hero escapes death by diving into the river and, later, arrest by concealing himself in a gun truck till it reaches Milan. Thence in mufti he gets to Stiesa and meets Catherine, and the lovers escape to Switzerland by a long night row up the lake. The scenes on the Italian plains hold more atmospheric truth than those of the mountain roads, but all are admirably wrought.
The impartiality of the presentation of war is as remarkable as the sincerity of the record of love passion. With remorseless artistic instinct Mr Hemingway proceeds to match the horrors of human slaughter by his final chapter of Catherine's agony and death as, "a maternity case".
Here he rises to his highest pitch, for Catherine's blotting-out is but complementary to the massacre of the millions on the fronts. Henry's coolness of observation in its detailed actuality is perhaps too stressed in the last pages, for in hours of great emotional strain material fact seems to detach itself as a separate phenomenon, and Henry remains too set; but the author's method prevails and triumphs in the last line.
BOSTON POLICE BAR SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE; Superintendent Acts on Objections to Ernest Hemingway's Serial, "Farewell to Arms."
BOSTON, Mass., June 20.--The June issue of Scribner's Magazine was barred from bookstands here yesterday by Michael H. Crowley, Superintendent of Police, because of objections to an instalment of Ernest Hemingway's serial, "A Farewell to Arms." It is said that some persons deemed part of the instalment salacious.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- How are food and drink used to create atmosphere in the book?
- What sort of traits does Henry admire in Rinaldi? Does he represent Hemingway’s vision of the ideal Italian, and is Henry the ideal American?
- What is the effect of the contrasts in landscape and lifestyle in Italy and Switzerland?
- Do you think that Catherine is a childlike character? Do she and Henry speak to each other like children, and why?
- In both the army and the nursing home, how does Hemingway treat authority?
- How easy is it to imagine Henry outside the context of a war?
- How do you react to the bleakness of Hemingway’s prose style?
- How could the fate of Catherine and her baby be representative of Hemingway’s view of the nature of war itself?
OTHER BOOKS BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY
STORIES
Three Stories & Ten Poems, 1923
In Our Time, 1925
Winner Take Nothing, 1933
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, 1938
NOVELS
The Torrents of Spring, 1926
The Sun Also Rises, 1926
Men Without Women, 1927
To Have and Have Not, 1937
For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940
Across the River and Into the Trees, 1950
The Old Man and The Sea, 1952
NON-FICTION
Death In The Afternoon, 1932
Green Hills of Africa, 1935
A Moveable Feast, 1964
Birdsong ~ Sebastian Faulks
Goodbye to All That ~ Robert Graves
The Naked and the Dead ~ Norman Mailer
All Quiet on the Western Front ~ Erich Marie Remarque
The Ernest Hemingway foundation
The Ernest Hemingway Resource Centre
Brighton Rock
Pinkie Brown is the newly appointed leader of the rival to the Colleoni race gang in Brighton. The gang’s previous leader, Battling Kite, for whom Pinkie was right-hand man, was murdered by the Colleoni gang, because of information supplied by Fred Hale, a reporter turned informer. In revenge Pinkie murders Hale. The murder is rash and Pinkie spends the remainder of the novel trying to cover up the small mistakes that tie him to the murder. Every cover-up effort Pinkie makes fails to solve the problem entirely, leading him to make further murders which result in further cover ups.
Ida Arnold, an easy-going demimondaine who Hale befriends on the last day of his life in an attempt to stave off his potential killers, turns detective when she discovers discrepancies in the events surrounding his death and doggedly pursues Pinkie in her search for justice.
Rose is a young waitress who stumbles upon a major flaw in Pinkie’s alibi. In order to ensure her silence Pinkie marries her and then coerces her into a suicide pact. When Ida realises that she will not gain her evidence against Pinkie she sets her heart to saving Rose instead.
‘The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists…
A master of storytelling’
The Times
‘I read Brighton Rock when I was about thirteen.
One of the first lessons I took from it was
that a serious novel could be an exciting novel -
that the novel of adventure could also be the novel of ideas’
Ian McEwan
‘Graham Greene had wit and grace and character
and story and a transcendent universal compassion
that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature’
John le Carre
‘A superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy’
New York Times
Henry Graham Greene was born on October 2, 1904 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. He was the fourth of six children and his father was headmaster of his high school for which he was tormented by fellow pupils. After a number of unsuccessful suicide attempts he was sent to a therapist who encouraged him to write as a means of healing.
Greene went on to Balliol College where he studied Modern History. It was here that Greene gained experience as an editor at The Oxford Outlook; developed an interest in politics after joining the Communist Party; and honed his skills at writing, with one novel Anthony Sant complete before he graduated.
After graduating with a BA in 1925, Greene was employed as a subeditor at the Nottingham Journal after two abortive positions at other companies. His dislike of Nottingham's seediness manifested in his later novel Brighton Rock.
Greene moved on to a job as a subeditor at The Times in London. There he married Vivien Dayrell-Browning in October 1927 and with her had a daughter, Lucy Caroline, and a son Francis. After a number of years he gave up his much-loved job to become a full time writer.
Greene began his world-renowned travelling in part to satisfy his lust for adventure, and in part to seek out material for his writing. A trip to Sweden resulted in England Made Me. An exhausting 400-mile trek through the jungles of Liberia not only gave Greene a near brush with death, but provided fodder for Journey Without Maps. During World War II, he worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in Sierra Leone, which became the setting for The Heart of the Matter. His journey to Mexico to witness the religious purges in 1938 was described in The Lawless Roads. Greene's horror of the Catholic persecution in Mexico led him to write The Power and the Glory, arguably the best novel of his career. It was both acclaimed (being the Hawthornden Prize winner in 1941) and condemned (by the Vatican). The frenetic globetrotting to troubled areas of the world continued until Greene was physically unable to do so in his later years.
Greene's financial success as an author enabled him to associate with many famous figures of his time: T.S. Eliot, Herbert Read, Evelyn Waugh, Alexander Korda, Ian Fleming, Noel Coward, among others. He had many extra-marital affairs, and confessed he was "a bad husband and a fickle lover", although he never revealed his affairs in his two autobiographies. He separated from his wife in 1948 but they never divorced. Towards the end of his life, Greene lived in Vevey, Switzerland with his companion Yvonne Cloetta. He died there peacefully on April 3, 1991.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Does Pinkie have a morbid and deluded imagination, or is he right in his view of the world?
- Do you believe that Pinkie would be satisfied/happy and consider himself successful if he had managed to: silence Rose, move out of the room he rents at Frank’s, gain control of the race track and somehow manage to run Colleoni out of Brighton?
- Do you feel that it is unrealistic how easily Ida seems to come across evidence and clues that will lead her to her goal of justice (even gaining help from the ‘spirit world’ via the Ouija Board) while Pinkie seems to be thwarted at every turn (relying on greater risks to secure his innocence in the Hale murder)?
- Pinkie constantly reminds Rose that he isn’t afraid of anything, he fears nothing, yet his actions betray his words; he is willing to do almost anything to avoid going to jail. Does Pinkie fear damnation in the afterlife? Or is he more afraid of physical pain, embarrassment and jail?
- When and how does Pinkie change from being the hunter "before the kill" to being the hunted?
- Do you feel that Rose does what Pinkie wants out of Love or out of her Duty as a wife? Is she not too young to know and understand true love and therefore confuses the two?
- The Title of Brighton Rock is chosen by Greene as analogy for human nature; the idea that human’s never change. With this pessimistic view in mind do you think that people can only be born good or that that they have the free will to change? Can we blame experiences in his youth and the poverty into which Pinkie was born on the development of evil within him when Rose herself is from a similar background and is clearly not evil?
- How far would you agree that the novel is not so much about Brighton, as about heaven and hell?
- To what extent do you think this book is about guilt?
OTHER BOOKS BY GRAHAM GREENE
NOVELS
Babbling April (1925)
The Man Within (1929)
The Name of Action (1930)
Rumour at Nightfall (1932)
Stamboul Train ( Orient Express ) (1932)
It's a Battlefield (1934)
England made Me (1935)
The Bear Fell Free (1935)
A Gun for Sale ( This Gun for Hire ) (1936)
Brighton Rock (1938)
The Confidential Agent (1939)
The Power and The Glory ( The Labyrinthine Ways ) (1940)
The Ministry of Fear (1943)
The Heart of the Matter (1948)
The Third Man (1950)
The End of the Affair (1951)
The Quiet American (1955)
Our Man in Havana (1958)
A Burnt-Out Case (1961)
A Sense of Reality (1963)
The Comedians (1966)
Travels with My Aunt (1969)
The Honorary Consul (1973)
The Human Factor (1978)
Dr. Fischer of Geneva, or The Bomb Party (1980)
Monsignor Quixote (1982)
Getting to Know the General (1985)
The Tenth Man (1985)
The Captain and the Enemy (1988)
SHORT STORIES
A Little Place Off the Edgware Road (1941)
All But Empty (1947)
Awful When You Think of It
Beauty
Chagrin in Three Parts
Cheap in August
The Destructors
Doctor Crombie
The End of the Party
The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen
May We Borrow Your Husband?
Mortmain
The Over-Night Bag
The Root of All Evil
A Shocking Accident
Two Gentle People
The Last Word and Other Stories
Collected Short Stories (1987)
TRAVEL
Journey without Maps (1936)
The Lawless Roads ( Another Mexico ) (1939)
In Search of a Character
Getting to Know the General
ESSAYS
Yours etc.
Reflections
Mornings in the Dark
Collected Essays
PLAYS
The Potting Shed (1957)
The Return Of A.J. Raffles (1975)
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A Sort of Life (1971)
Ways of Escape (1980)
Fragments of an Autobiography
A World of my Own
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
The Little Train
The Little Horse-Bus
The Little Steamroller
The Little Fire Engine
Heart of Darkness ~ Joseph Conrad
The Thirty-Nine Steps ~ John Buchan
The Unconsoled ~ Kazuo Ishiguro
John Le Carré
Brighton Rock film (1947) starring Richard Attenborough, Carol Marsh, Hermione Baddeley, William Hartnell, Nigel Stock
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/greene.htm
http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/prose/brightonrock.htm#top
http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene
BUtterfield 8
BUtterfield 8 chronicles the fast life and quick demise of Gloria Wandrous, the ultimate New York party girl. The novel is set in Manhattan in the early 1930s – a time when The Prohibition and The Great Depression dominated everyone’s lives and was the ubiquitous backdrop to society. As a result of The Prohibition, New York became riddled with illegal underground bars known as speakeasies. These speakeasies were Gloria’s haunt, the places she went to dull the emotional pain that she carried with her since childhood.
Growing up, Gloria was emotionally neglected by her mother and sexually molested by two men she should have been able to trust. The demons from her childhood follow her everywhere from one speakeasy to another, from one man’s bed to the next – preventing her from ever loving herself or any man. One Sunday morning, she wakes up in Weston Ligget’s bed, a married man, and after examining his family home, takes his wife’s mink coat. The consequences of this simple act are far-reaching and change the course of Gloria’s life.
Gloria Wandrous lives the ultimate hedonist’s life – shopping, drinking, dancing and bed-hopping – and looks set to carry on down this path of emotional self-destruction, but at the end of the novel she discovers her maternal side, and resolves to pull herself together, be respectable and keep regular hours. But beyond the simple act of making a decision that would help her and not harm her – she finally allows herself to love and be loved.
O’Hara based BUtterfield 8 on a true story – the mysterious death of New York socialite, Starr Faithfull. Her beautifully-dressed body was found washed up on a beach in Long Island and to this day her death remains a mystery – did she commit suicide, was she murdered or was it simply an accident? O’Hara used this real-life tragedy to recreate the life of an outwardly glamorous, and inwardly broken, young woman who meets her end in a decidedly abrupt, brutal and conspicuous way.
The characters are flawed and constantly contradict themselves in their actions and their thoughts – and ultimately this is what makes the novel a classic. It takes a magnifying lens to human behaviour and exposes issues that are every bit as relevant today as they were in the 1930s – alcoholism, pedophilia, abortion, infidelity, possession, addiction, broken families and the dark side of love.
"A man who knows exactly what he is writing about
and has written it marvelously well"
Ernest Hemingway
"O’Hara understood better than any other American writer
how class can both reveal and shape character"
Fran Lebowitz
O'Hara occupies a unique position...
He is the only American writer to whom America presents itself
as a social scene in the way it once presented itself
to Henry James, or France to Proust
Lionel Trilling, New York Times
John O’Hara was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania on 31 January 1905. Three decades after his death, O'Hara is chiefly remembered for two novels, Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8 and for several collections of short stories. His literary accolades have, however, been largely overshadowed by the legend of his snobbish and belligerent demeanour: his drinking, his propensity for violence and his overt social climbing.
His critics may be divided in their judgement of his character but one thing remains undisputed – O’Hara had a knack for capturing natural dialogue and was able to paint the portrait of American social class beautifully.
He died in April 1970 and the epitaph on his tombstone, which he wrote himself, reads: "Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time, the first half of the twentieth century. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well."
There is no author interview with John O'Hara available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Why do you think Gloria really took Emily Ligget’s mink coat? Was it to make sure that Weston contacted her again?
- Do you think that had Gloria had a stronger mother – a mother who protected her and believed her claims of molestation – she would have led a different life?
- At one point in the novel Gloria says to Eddie: ‘I know what’s right. But I’m so strongly tempted’. Why does she find it so hard to resist temptation?
- Gloria epitomizes freedom and adventure, something Weston craves as a middle-aged, unhappily married man. Do you think that Weston really ever loved Gloria?
- How do you explain Ligget’s tireless pursuit of the mink coat, even after Gloria’s death?
- The novel is rich in detail and O’Hara paints an intricate portrait of life in Manhattan in the early 1930s. Do you think that O’Hara’s portrayal of human relationships is particular to this time in American history, given The Great Depression and the Prohibition, or is he writing about universal and intrinsically human characteristics?
- Why does Gloria not bring charges against Dr Reddington for his sexual exploitation of her?
- Do you think that Dr Reddington suffers any kind of retribution at the end of the novel? Is his a happy ending?
Appointment in Samarra (1934)
Hope of Heaven
Pal Joey (1940)
A Rage to Live (1949)
Ten North Frederick (1955)
NON-FICTION
The Art Of Burning Bridges. A Life of John O'Hara ~ Geoffrey Wolff
FICTION
Appointment In Samarra ~ John O’Hara
The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Revolutionary Road ~ Richard Yates
FILM
BUtterfield 8 (1960). Directed by Daniel Man. Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey.
Cider With Rosie
At all times wonderfully evocative and poignant, Cider With Rosie is a charming memoir of Laurie Lee's childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a world that is tangibly real and yet reminiscent of a now distant past.
In this idyllic pastoral setting, unencumbered by the callous father who so quickly abandoned his family responsibilities, Laurie's adoring mother becomes the centre of his world as she struggles to raise a growing family against the backdrop of the Great War.
The sophisticated adult author's retrospective commentary on events is endearingly juxtaposed with that of the innocent, spotty youth, permanently prone to tears and self-absorption.
Rosie's identity from the novel Cider with Rosie was kept secret for 25 years. She was Rose Buckland, Lee's cousin by marriage. The memoir has sold more than six million copies.
'An enchanting book, an exquisite farewell, not only to childhood,
and boyhood,
but also to an England that has vanished.'
JB Priestly
'Remains as fresh and full of joy and gratitude for youth
and its sensations as when it first appeared.
It sings in the memory'
Sunday Times
'It has got… a marvellous morning freshness…
There is hardly a sentence in it that does not set the
sense of touch and smell, as well as sight and hearing, tingling'
Daily Mail
'He had a nightingale inside him, a capacity for sensuous, lyrical
precision'
Guardian
'Lee was a poet whose deft passage into prose carried
with it much of the rhythm and accuracy of the poet's language'
Mignon Khargie, Art Director of Salon
Laurie Lee was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 1914, and was educated at
Slad village school and Stroud Central School. In his teens Lee had already
began to write poems. He had met two sisters who encouraged him in his writing
aspirations. At the age of nineteen he walked to London and then travelled on
foot through Spain, where he was trapped by the outbreak of the Civil War. He
later returned by crossing the Pyrenees, as described in his book As I Walked
Out one Midsummer Morning. During World War II he made documentary films
for the General Post Office film unit (1939-40), and the Crown Film Unit (1941-43).
From 1944 to 1946 he worked as an editor at the Ministry of Information Publications.
In 1950 he married Catherine Polge and they had one daughter.
He died in May 1997.
An extract from his last radio interview with BBC Gloucestershire, with Mark Hurrell, on the novel:
"When I wrote it, I was writing it in order to set down things I remembered with pleasure about our small, local life in Slad.
But I remember towards the end thinking "why am I writing this in a world which is so threatened by the dark clouds and threats of cosmic destruction?" This is only a small story, it can only interest my family and a few neighbours.
What happened was unpredictable but it also reminded many readers of their beginnings and their family recollections.
I was getting letters saying 'I've read your book and it's just like what my grandmother used to tell me' or 'your mother does remind me of my mother' and long pages about returning to their recollections of their beginnings in similar circumstances.
I was reminding them of their lives and I think that was why it was read so much, but this was quite unintentional and unpredictable.
It was the end of a semi-feudal life and it was also the beginning of one's own life. And these I think were the reasons why so many people read it - of course it was beautifully written too!
Actually I take that back, it's not beautifully written, it's funny."
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Consider the depiction of women in the book, and how this progresses from beginning to end as Lee grows up.
- At first glance the book appears to be idyllic and happy; full of pleasant, carefree images and anecdotes. Yet there are also many moments of darkness. Consider the dark side of the book, in reference to any disturbing episodes you can think of. On balance which feeling stays with you most by the end of the book?
- It might be said that the book is either about life or about death. What do you think - which does it concentrate on more?
- Consider Lee's use of humour throughout the book. In what way does it occur and what purpose do you think it serves?
- To what extent was Lee's mother a good mother, or role model for Lee?
- A major issue within the book is that of tradition, and the old country
life, versus modernisation. Discuss Lee's attitude to both, and where you
think he falls in support of most by the end.
Selected works:
The Sune My Monument, 1944
Land at War, 1945
The Bloom of Candles, 1947
We Made a Film in Cyprus, 1947 (with R. Keene)
Peasant's Priest, 1948 (play)
The Voyage of Magellan, 1948 (play, radio play in 1946)
An Obstinate Exile, 1951
ed.: New Poems, 1954 (with C. Hassall, R. Warner)
A Rose for Winter, 1955
My Many-Coated Man, 1955
Poems, 1960
Man Must Move / The Wonderful World of Transport, 1960 (with D. Lambert)
The Firstborn / Two Women, 1964
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, 1969
Pergamon Poets 10, 1970 (with C. Causley. ed. by E. Owen)
I Can't Stay Long, 1976
Innocent in the Mirror, 1978
Two Women, 1983
Selected Poems, 1983
A Moment of War, 1991
SCREENPLAYS
Cyprus is an Island, 1946
A Tale in a Teacup, 1947
Cider With Laurie: Laurie Lee Remembered ~ Barbara Hooper
The Go-between ~ L.P. Hartley
My Family and Other Animals ~ Gerald Durrell
To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye ~ J.D. Salinger
David Copperfield
David Copperfield or The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (which he never meant to publish on any account) is the first person account of the life of the eponymous hero, David Copperfield. It was the first of Dickens’ novels to be told entirely in the first person, and is generally accepted to be the most autobiographical of his works. As an author noted for the resonant and symbolic names he gives his characters, it may be significant that David Copperfield shares the same initials, reversed, with Charles Dickens.
The novel was said by Dickens to be his “favourite child” and it contains some of the most memorable characters of all of his work, including several, particularly Uriah Heep, who have passed into the popular consciousness and whose names are known even to those who have never read the novel. Richard Carter, MD, has even described “Uriah Heep Syndrome” in the journal World Journal of Surgery, noting that Dickens’ portrayal of the villain accurately describes a real medical condition; primary palmar hyperhidrosis, the most common cause of which is emotional stress. References to the novel pepper literature, from Catcher in the Rye by Holden Caulfield, to What Katy Did at School by Susan Coolidge.
The story opens with David’s birth, he is a posthumous son, as his father has died some months previously. Present at his birth are his aunt, Betsy Trotwood, later a key figure in the novel, and the family servant Pegotty. Miss Trotwood is convinced that the baby will be a girl (and decides that she should also be called Betsy). When David is born, clearly a boy, she leaves the house in disgust.
His early life is idyllic: he spends happy holidays with Pegotty’s brother and his family by the sea, including the pretty little Emily. But when David is still a small boy his mother remarries the terrifying Mr Murdstone. Mr Murdstone and his equally formidable sister soon reshape the household to suit their own purposes, easily subduing David’s charming but frail mother. David’s life becomes a misery; forbidden to socialise with his mother, but equally forbidden to shelter in his room he becomes a timid shadow. When he finally lashes out and bites Mr Murdstone, his step-father seizes the chance to send him away to a harsh boarding school, where he makes two influential friends, Steerforth and Traddles.
Shortly after his mother gives birth to Mr Murdstone’s son, but she never fully recovers from the birth, and finally news is sent to David at school to tell him that both she and his baby brother have died.
From here David is effectively abandoned; he is sent to work in a factory part-owned by Mr Murdstone, a section of the narrative thought to be influenced by Dickens’ own experiences in a factory as a young boy. It is a miserable existence, but David finds some comfort with his landlord Mr Micawber and his eccentric family. Like Dickens’ father, Mr Micawber is in permanent financial crisis, and is eventually imprisoned for debt. David is left homeless and friendless, and in desperation makes up his mind to run away and seek help from Betsy Trotwood. He walks all the way from London to her house at Dover, and finds her at home. She agrees to shelter him, and later becomes deeply fond of her adopted son, sending him to the best school in the locality, where he meets more life-long friends, Dr Strong and Agnes Wickfield, as well as the sinister Uriah Heep, and finally Betsy establishes David in a legal career in London.
It is here that the second part of the novel effectively begins – where the first part is the account of an unhappy, abandoned childhood, the second part is much more a story of success. Copperfield establishes himself in the legal profession and later becomes a successful and even acclaimed author, in another mirror of Dickens’ life. He also meets, woos and marries his first love, Dora. His adult life is not free from heartbreak – his friends’ troubles are his troubles too, and he has his own share of sadness when Dora suffers a miscarriage, sickens, and eventually dies.
Throughout the second half of the novel David’s life intertwines with the characters Dickens established in the first half, and we follow the fortunes of his friends – Agnes and Mr Wickfield, Dr Strong, Pegotty, Mr Pegotty, Ham and Little Emily, Mr Dick and Betsy Trotwood, the Micawbers, Thomas Traddles, and the morally ambiguous James Steerforth – as well as his enemies – Mr and Miss Murdstone and Uriah Heep. By crossing these different narrative strands Dickens achieves some of the great dramatic moments of the novel – Copperfield introduces Steerforth to the Pegotty family, only for him to seduce and almost ruin Little Emily. And when Uriah Heep turns his malevolent intent on to Mr Micawber and Betsy Trotwood, out of hatred for Copperfield, it proves his ultimate undoing.
In the final pages Dickens provides David with a resolution, and gives a satisfying and just ending for almost all the characters. But a few villains are left unpunished, most significantly Mr and Miss Murdstone, perhaps Dickens’ illustration of the fact that it is in childhood that we are at our most vulnerable, and its ogres are the hardest to vanquish.
‘In this book of David Copperfield,
[Dickens] has created creatures who cling to us and tyrannise over us,
creatures whom we would not forget if we could,
creatures whom we could not forget if we would,
creatures who are more actual than the man who made them.’
G. K. Chesterton
‘He’s a marvellous writer’
William Trevor
‘There is no one Dickens novel I could pick over all the others.
Dickens is huge—like the sky.
Pick any page of Dickens and it is immediately recognisable as him,
yet he might be doing social satire, or farce, or horror,
or a psychological study of a murderer—or any combination of these’
Susannah Clarke
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Landport in Portsmouth, the second of eight children, and when he was five the family relocated to Chatham in Kent, and later to Camden Town in London.
By most accounts his early childhood seems to have been happy, but he received an abrupt introduction to the harsher realities of life when he was twelve years old and his father was imprisoned for debt. Dickens was sent to work in a shoe polish factory where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on the jars of thick polish. This money paid for his lodgings in Camden Town and helped him to support his family. It is believed that the experience fed into his later vivid depictions of child-labour and exploitation in his novels.
At the age of seventeen, he became a court stenographer and, in 1830, he met his first love, Maria Beadnell. It is believed that she was the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield, which is regarded as Dickens’ most autobiographical work and was his own favourite. However, unlike Copperfield, Dickens did not marry his first love; the courtship was ended when Maria's parents sent her to school in Paris.
The Pickwick Papers, his first commercial success, was published in 1836, the same year that he married Catherine Hogarth. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent, they set up home in Bloomsbury, where they produced ten children. His ninth child, born in 1851, was named Dora. His descendents include the novelist Monica Dickens (his great-grandaughter, via his son Henry Fielding Dickens).
His marriage to Catherine does not seem to have been entirely happy; they separated in1858 at a time when divorce was almost unthinkable, particularly for someone in Dickens’ position. Critics have pointed to a meeting he sought in 1855 with his first love, Maria Beadnell, as an indication of his marital dissatisfaction.
The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837 while The Pickwick Papers was still running and Dickens went on to write over a dozen novels, including Hard Times and Bleak House. David Copperfield was, like many of Dickens’ novels, also originally published in the form of a serialisation, and only later published in book form. The serialisation ran from 1849 until 1850.
In 1853, Dickens gave his first public reading in Birmingham of A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth. A year later in Bradford, Dickens performed for an audience of 3,700 people. Between 1858 and his death in 1870, Dickens performed hundreds of public readings of his work, which were a massive popular and financial success. By the late 1860's Dickens' readings had become so eagerly anticipated that sometimes thousands had to be turned away.
On 9 June 1865, while returning from France, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in which the first seven carriages of the train plunged off a cast iron bridge that was being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. Dickens spent some time tending to the wounded and the dying before rescuers arrived. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and returned to his carriage to retrieve it.
Dickens died on 9 June 1870 leaving his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Dickens' will stipulated that no memorial be erected to honour him. The only life-size bronze statue of Dickens, cast in 1891 by Francis Edwin Elwell, is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States.
There is no author interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- ‘In this book of David Copperfield, [Dickens] has created creatures who cling to us and tyrannise over us, creatures whom we would not forget if we could’ GK Chesterton. Do you agree with Chesterton’s assessment of the characters in David Copperfield? Which of the characters do you personally find most memorable and lasting?
- As previously discussed, Uriah Heep is one of the most famous villains in Dickens’ novels. Why do you think he is so memorable? What traits does he share with Copperfield, and why do you think the two have such an intense mutual animosity?
- A major theme of the novel is that of impulse versus discipline, and the phrase ‘undisciplined heart’ is a constantly recurring one, particularly towards the end of the novel. What do you think Dickens means by the repeated phrase ‘an undisciplined heart’? In what ways does Dickens portray the effect of this with different characters throughout the novel and do you think David succeeds in disciplining his own heart by the end?
- a) David’s life, like that of many characters in literature and fairy-tales, is made up of a deeply unhappy childhood, rewarded by a happy and fulfilled adulthood. Why do you think this pattern is so common in literature and what other examples can you think of?
b) Given a choice, would you prefer a happy childhood followed by an unhappy adult life, or the reverse?
- David Copperfield is often cited as an example of a Bildungsroman; a novel which generally describes the growth of the protagonist to adulthood, and illustrates the psychological and moral shaping of their personality in the process. Do you agree with this classification? If so, what is Copperfield’s moral journey and what do you think Dickens was trying to say?
- Dickens often uses his novels to address social and political issues, such as child labour and exploitation. What issues do you find addressed in David Copperfield? Do modern authors use their novels in this way or do you think the practice is dying out?
- Marriages in different forms are constantly portrayed and contrasted throughout the novel, and are often analysed and depicted in great detail. Why do you think Dickens returns to this theme so frequently in David Copperfield and what do you think he is trying to say? Which of the marriages in the novel do you consider to be successful and why?
OTHER BOOKS BY CHARLES DICKENS
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club – known as The Pickwick Papers (1837)
The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1838)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1839)
Barnaby Rudge (1841)
Master Humphrey's Clock (1841)
The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)
A Christmas Carol (1843)
The Chimes (1844)
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1844)
The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home (1845)
The Battle of Life (1846)
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848)
Dombey and Son (1848)
David Copperfield (1850)
Bleak House (1853)
Hard Times (1854)
Little Dorrit (1857)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
The Uncommercial Traveller (1860)
Great Expectations (1861)
Our Mutual Friend (1865)
No Thoroughfare (1867) (with Wilkie Collins)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1890) (with Wilkie Collins)
Oliver Twist ~ Charles Dickens
Great Expectations ~ Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre ~ Charlotte Bronte
Dickens ~ Peter Ackroyd (Vintage, 2002)
London ~ Peter Ackroyd (Chatto and Windus, 2000)
The Dickens Fellowship
The Dickens page
The Dickens Museum (situated at his former home in Doughty Street, London)
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories
How thin is the line between good and evil?
Dr Jekyll has been experimenting with his identity. He has developed a drug which separates the two sides of his nature and allows him to occasionally abandon himself to his most corrupt inclinations as the monstrous Mr Hyde. But gradually he begins to find that the journey back to goodness becomes more and more difficult, and the risk that Mr Hyde will break free entirely from Dr Jekyll’s control puts all of London in grave peril.
‘Stevenson’s short stories are certain to retain their position in English literature. His serious rivals are few indeed’
Arthur Conan Doyle
‘Mr Hyde's sordid and perhaps deviant excesses are rendered more suggestive through being left undescribed’
Sarah Waters
‘A fable that lies nearer to poetry than to ordinary prose fiction’
Vladimir Nabokov
‘Robert Louis Stevenson.was a storyteller, that's what I'd like to be, that's what I'm trying to be’
Quintin Jardine
‘Jekyll and Hyde, in particular, is such an important novel in terms of suspense and setting a perfect scene for crime’
Alanna Knight
‘Another genius Scottish take on the theme of split personalities. Needs no further introduction’
Maggie O'Farrell
Robert Louis Stevenson was born on 13 November 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland to a family of lighthouse designers and engineers. He studied at Edinburgh University from the age of seventeen in the hopes of following in his fathers footsteps and becoming an engineer, however he soon realized that his passion was for literature.
He travelled extensively in Europe and began his writing career during these years. He met his future wife, Fanny, in France in 1876 and they were married in 1880. Between the years 1880-1887 despite his developing illness Stevenson produced his best known works, Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and two volumes of verse, A Child's Garden of Verses (1885) and Underwoods (1887). Stevenson died on December 3rd, 1894 at the age of 44 in Samoa, South Pacific.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
-
The story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has often been adapted for film and cinema. How do you think the book differs from the adaptations? Has your opinion of the story changed? Discuss using one example. (eg. the recent BBC series starring James Nesbitt, or the film Mary Reilly)
- The main narrative is provided by Utterson, how does this evoke suspense?
- How do you think the environment of Victorian Britain, which provides the setting for the story, emulates the dark themes portrayed by Stevenson?
- Do you think the duality represented through Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde represents an element of everyone’s inner psyche? Does everyone have a good and evil side?
- Mr Hyde is often described in biblical terms, e.g. ‘Satan’s signature’. What significance do you think these Biblical references bear to the plot?
- Dr Jekyll talks about the pleasures he wished to experience through his transformation. What pleasures do you think he was talking about?
- In modern society drug related crime is more apparent than ever. What parallels do you think one can draw from Dr Jekyll experience with narcotics in relation to modern times?
- The book has been describes as ‘one of the best guide books of Victorian times.’ Do you agree with this statement?
- In the final chapter, through the letter from Henry Jekyll to Utterson we are able to hear an account of events from the inside. What affect does this have on your feelings towards Dr Jekyll? Does it make you empathise with his character or add to your disdain?
- Why do you think, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has remained such a classic since its first release in 1886?
NOVELS
Treasure Island (1883)
Prince Otto (1885)
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses(1884)
Kidnapped(1886)
The Master of Ballantrae (1889)
The Wrong Box (1889)
The Wrecker (1892)
Catriona(1893)
The Ebb Tide (1894)
Weir of Hermiston (1896)
St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (1897)
SHORT STORIES
A Lodging for the Night (1877)
The Sire De Malétroits Door (1877)
An Old Song (1877)
Edifying Letters of the Rutherford Family (1877)
Later-day Arabian Nights (1878)
Providence and the Guitar (1878)
The Pavilion on the Links (1880)
The Story of a Lie (1882)
The Merry Men (1882)
The Body Snatcher (1884)
Markheim (1885)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
Will O' the Mill (1887)
Thrawn Janet (1887)
Olalla (1887)
The Treasure of Franchard (1887)
The Misadventures of John Nicholson: A Christmas Story (1887)
The Bottle Imp (1891)
The Beach of Falesa (1893)
The Isle of Voice (1893)
POETRY
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
My Shadow and The Lamplighter
Underwoods (1887),
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)
Ballads (1891)
TRAVEL WRITING
An Inland Voyage (1878)
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879)
The Silverado Squatters (1883)
Across the Plains (written in 1879–80, published in 1892)
The Amateur Emigrant (written 1879–80, published 1895)
Frankenstein ~ Mary Shelley
The Turn of the Screw ~ Henry James
The Woman in White ~ Wilkie Collins
The Woman in Black ~ Susan Hill
The Picture of Dorian Grey ~ Oscar Wilde
Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs ~ Irvine Welsh
Dracula ~ Bram Stoker
Murders in the Rue Morgue ~ Edgar Allan Poe
Hear A L Kennedy reading from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Ian Rankin investigates: Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
HighBeam Encyclopedia – includes a list of articles about the book
Dracula
Jonathan Harker is an ambitious young lawyer, sent by his employer on an assignment to a client in Transylvania. He is welcomed by the gracious, aristocratic Count but soon finds himself imprisoned by his mysterious host and menaced by a predatory coterie of women. As the shadows close in he begins to realise that the Count does not intend for him to return home…
Back in England his fiancée Mina Murray and her friend Lucy Westenra are menaced by a malevolent, debilitating force which seems intent on causing suffering and destruction. Can the devil really have arrived on England’s shores? And what is it that he hungers for so desperately?
Slowly the patchwork narrative of diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings begins to reveal a terrifying answer, and Mina, Lucy and their friends must band together to save themselves, if they can.
‘An exercise in masculine anxiety and nationalist paranoia,
Stoker’s novel is filled with scenes which are staggeringly lurid and perverse’
Sarah Waters
Abraham “Bram” Stoker was born in a suburb of Dublin on 8th November 1847, the third of seven children. His parents were Abraham Stoker and the feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley. Stoker was a delicate child and said of himself, "In my babyhood I used, I understand, to be often at the point of death. Certainly till I was about seven years old I never knew what it was to stand upright. I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years."
As he grew he made a complete recovery and eventually went up to Trinity College, Dublin in 1864, where in addition to his studies he excelled as an outstanding athlete. He graduated in 1870, but maintained ties with the college, and later became friendly with the Wilde family when Oscar Wilde entered the college in 1871.
After university Stoker worked as a civil servant at Dublin Castle, combining his duties with writing in his spare time. He wrote his first book, Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, and worked for a time as drama critic for the Dublin Evening Mail. His review of Hamlet came to the attention of the actor Henry Irving, who arranged a meeting. They became close friends, and eventually in 1878 Irving asked Stoker to become his manager.
In December of the same year Stoker married the famous belle Florence Balcombe (whose previous admirers included Oscar Wilde). The couple moved to London, where Stoker took up a position as business manager of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre and Florence gave birth to their only child, a son, born 31st December 1879. They named him Irving Noel for as a tribute to Henry Irving.
Stoker was to work for Irving for almost thirty years, but always found time to write alongside his day job, supplementing his income by producing short stories, novels and supernatural thrillers, as well as a biography Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (published in 1906, the year after the actor’s death). His association with Irving gave him access to London society, but the relationship was complex. According the biographer Barbara Belford, "Stoker indentured himself to Irving in the same way as Renfield bound himself to Dracula." It is also said that Stoker’s son, originally christened Irving Noel but always known as Noel, dropped the use of his first name out of exasperation and resentment of his father’s employer.
Bram Stoker died on 20th April 1912, and was cremated. His ashes are interred at Golders Green Crematorium, in the same urn as those of his son Noel.
Background to the novel
Stoker is thought to have begun research for a vampire novel as early as 1890, and there are many rumours surrounding the origins of the tale. Stoker’s son Noel apparently claimed that the novel originated in a nightmare his father had had after eating too much dressed crab. Others have said that a visit to Slains Castle at Cruden Bay was the inspiration for the story and that Stoker began writing the novel in Cruden Bay. Others point to the figure of Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler as the inspiration for Count Dracula. However all these versions of events have been disputed by critics, and appropriately for a horror novel the true inspirations for the Count seem shrouded in mystery.
Certainly much of novel seems to originate in Stoker’s reading. He never visited Transylvania, despite the vivid descriptions in Dracula, and took all his local colour and accounts of local legends from research. The characterisations of the vampires, particularly the women, owe something to Sheridan Lefanu’s 1871 novel Carmilla, and it has been suggested that the epistolary form of the novel was influenced by Wilkie Collin’s The Woman in White, which is also told in diary form. However Stoker’s use of “supporting documentation” in the form of letters and fictional newspaper articles, adds to the form.
The novel was published in 1897, but as late as May of that year Stoker was using his original title “The Un-dead” – a term he coined and one that is indelibly associated with Dracula to this day.There is no interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Over the years different critics have claimed that Dracula and the figure of the vampire is an allegory for different forms of evil – from aristocratic greed, to male aggression, to female emancipation, to sexually transmitted disease. What does Dracula mean to you and what do you find most frightening about him?
- The writer Sarah Waters has described Dracula as ‘An exercise in masculine anxiety and nationalist paranoia’. Do you agree? What anxieties do you think Bram Stoker was expressing through the character of Dracula?
- What aspects of the novel do you think would have been most shocking and frightening to contemporary readers, and how does this contrast with a modern reading of the novel?
- A critic at The New York Times wrote of Dracula, ‘Those who cannot find their own reflection in Bram Stoker’s still-living creature are surely the undead.’ Do you think this is true? What aspects of yourself do you find in the character of Dracula?
- Dracula is one of the most filmed and adapted novels of all time and almost everyone has encountered the character of Dracula in some form or other, even if they’ve never read the book. Did you have an idea of Dracula before you read the novel and how was it different to Bram Stoker’s character?
- Why do you think the character of Dracula has endured so well?
- What effect does contact with Dracula have on the various characters in the novel? How does their behaviour change? Does this differ between the men and the women?
- “We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flow the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fought… Is it a wonder that we were a conquering face, that we were proud?”Dracula (p31-2)
Class is a strong theme throughout the novel; is it important that Dracula is a feudal landlord and what effect does it have on our reading of his character? How does Stoker characterise the peasants in Transylvania and the working-class of Whitby?
- The novel is, like Wuthering Heights and A Woman in White, not a straightforward narrative. Instead it is written in the form of diary entries, letters and ‘newspaper clippings’. Why do you think Stoker chose to frame the story in this way, and how successful do you think he is at evoking the different voices?
- Dracula is not the only character to live on in other novels – Mina Murray is also immortalised in the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. The story has her leading a team of superheroes including the Invisible Man and Doctor Jekyll, after the death of her husband. The story suggests she has picked up more from Dracula than Stoker admits…
Do you agree Mina and Dracula are the most interesting characters in the novel, and do you find Mina an unconventional heroine?
For a full bibliography see Wikipedia
His most popular novels today include:
The Snake’s Pass (1890)
The Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903)
The Lady of the Shroud (1909)
The Lair of the White Worm (1911)
NOVELS:
Carmilla ~ Sheridin Lefanu (Soft editions)
Interview with the Vampire ~ Anne Rice (Time Warner)
The Historian ~ Elizabeth Kostova (Time Warner)
Frankenstein ~ Mary Shelley (Vintage) – read our guide
GRAPHIC NOVELS
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ~ Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill (Titan)
BIOGRAPHY:
From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker ~ Paul Murray (Jonathan Cape)
Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula ~ Barbara Belford (Da Capo Press/Alfred Knopf)
Great Expectations
Pip, a young orphan boy, lives with his bad-tempered older sister and her kindly husband, Joe, in the marshes of Kent. Visiting his parents’ grave one day Pip encounters a vicious escaped convict, Magwitch, who he helps by providing him with a file and food; the convict is captured nevertheless but protects the young boy by claiming that it was he who stole the items. Pip is then hired as a playmate for Estella, the adopted daughter of the eccentric Miss Havisham; falling in love with the beautiful, but haughty young woman he dreams of becoming a gentleman worthy of her. Although wealthy Miss Havisham does nothing to intervene when Pip is apprenticed to Joe as a common labourer when he is informed that he has a secret benefactor and must move to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman he assumes that it is Miss Havisham. He moves to the city of London with great expectations of increasing his social status and during this metamorphosis neglects his friendships with his family and former friends and begins a life of wealth and privilege.
Several years pass and, to Pip’s horror, his true benefactor is revealed to be Magwitch, rather than Miss Havisham. It transpires that the convict was so touched by young Pip’s kindness when he was on the run that when he was exiled from England he dedicated his life to making a fortune and rewarding the boy who helped him. Now, however, he needs Pip’s help again to evade the police and his former partner in crime. As Pip begins to see the good in a man he once despised, the truth about Estella’s parentage and the mystery of the man who jilted Miss Havisham so many years before are slowly revealed and the many strands of this spell-binding, classic novel come together.
‘He’s a marvellous writer’
William Trevor
‘A story of the traumas of sex and class.
My favourite moment is the one where Magwitch makes his stumbling way
up the shadowy staircase towards an unnerved but unsuspecting Pip:
the halting but inexorable rise of the repressed “from the darkness beneath”’
Sarah Waters
‘There is no one Dickens novel I could pick over all the others.
Dickens is huge—like the sky.
Pick any page of Dickens and it’s immediately recognizable as him,
yet he might be doing social satire, or farce, or horror,
or a psychological study of a murderer—or any combination of these’
Susannah Clarke
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Landport in Portsmouth, the second of eight children, and when he was five the family relocated to Chatham in Kent. When he was twelve years old he was sent to work in a shoe polish factory because his father had been imprisoned for debt. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on the jars of thick polish and this money paid for his lodgings in Camden Town and helped him to support his family. At the age of seventeen, he became a court stenographer and, in 1830, he met his first love, Maria Beadnell. It is believed that she was the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield, which is regarded as Dickens’ most autobiographical work and was his own favourite. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and effectively ended the relationship when they sent her to school in Paris.
The Pickwick Papers, his first commercial success, was published in 1836, the same year that he married Catherine Hogarth. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent, they set up home in Bloomsbury, where they produced ten children. The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837 while The Pickwick Papers was still running and Dickens went on to write over a dozen novels, including Hard Times and Bleak House. In 1853, Dickens gave his first public reading in Birmingham, England of A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth. A year later in Bradford, Dickens performed for an audience of 3,700 people. Between 1858 and his death in 1870, Dickens performed hundreds of public readings of his work, which were a massive popular and financial success. By the late 1860's Dickens' readings had become so eagerly anticipated that sometimes thousands had to be turned away.
On 9 June 1865, while returning from France, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in which the first seven carriages of the train plunged off a cast iron bridge that was being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. Dickens spent some time tending to the wounded and the dying before rescuers arrived. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and returned to his carriage to retrieve it
Dickens died on 9 June 1870 leaving his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Dickens' will stipulated that no memorial be erected to honour him. The only life-size bronze statue of Dickens, cast in 1891 by Francis Edwin Elwell, is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States.
There is no author interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Discuss the theme of ‘expectations’ – how are Pip’s expectations in life different from those of his brother-in-law Joe, Estella, Miss Havisham and Herbert Pocket?
- How different do you think Pip’s life would have been had he never left the forge and travelled to London? Are the lessons he learnt on his journey necessary for him to be happy in his later life?
- Why do you think Pip falls in love with Estella when she is so cruel to him, and what keeps him loving her despite her apparent indifference to him? Compare Estella and Biddy’s characters, and Biddy and Joe’s relationship with that of Estella and Pip.
- Great Expectations explores themes of suffering and guilt but there are also many moments of irony and humour. Were you surprised that in a serious novel the author included more humorous characters like Wemmick and his Aged Parent?
- Consider the characterisation of Miss Havisham and her treatment of Estella: do you feel sorry for her and the way she ended her life?
- Discuss how Dickens creates a sense of atmosphere: which settings were most vivid to you?
- How important is the theme of social class to the novel? Do you think Pip’s desire to be a gentleman to win Estella’s hand is still relevant today?
- Why do you think Magwitch is so affected by Pip’s behaviour that he dedicates his life to making him into a gentleman?
- Who was your favourite character in the novel?
- In the novel’s original conclusion, Estella and Pip were finally separated from one another, but on the suggestion of a friend Dickens changed the ending to the present one: do you think he was right to follow his friend’s advice? Which ending do you prefer?
OTHER BOOKS BY CHARLES DICKENS
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837)
aka The Pickwick Papers
The Adventures of Oliver Twist(1838)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1839)
Barnaby Rudge(1841)
Master Humphrey's Clock (1841)
The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)
A Christmas Carol(1843)
aka Being a Ghost Story of Christmas
The Chimes (1844)
aka A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1844)
The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home(1845)
The Battle of Life (1846)
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848)
aka A Fancy for Christmas-Time
Dombey and Son (1848)
David Copperfield (1850)
Bleak House (1853)
Hard Times: For These Times (1854)
Little Dorrit (1857)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
The Uncommercial Traveller (1860)
Great Expectations (1861)
Our Mutual Friend (1865)
No Thoroughfare (1867) (with Wilkie Collins)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1890) (with Wilkie Collins)
Middlemarch ~ George Eliot (Vintage Classics, 2007) - read our guide
Dickens ~ Peter Ackroyd (Vintage, 2002)
London ~ Peter Ackroyd (Chatto and Windus, 2000)
Great Expectations ~ 1917, 1946 and 1998 film versions
Gulliver's Travels: and Alexander Pope's Verses on Gulliver's Travels
Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, or Gulliver’s Travels, was published pseudonymously in 1726. Swift’s masterpiece took him over six years to write.
The book opens with Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon, shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput, whose inhabitants are only six inches tall and who regard him as a dangerous ‘man-mountain’. Being so small, the Lilliputians’ social customs and pomp seem absurd, and their petty political debates (should an egg be broken at the big or small end?) are likewise appropriate to their stature. Gulliver travels on to encounter the giants of Brobdingnag, whose king is disgusted by what Gulliver tells him about England; the cerebral scientists and philosophers of Laputa and Lagado, who are so engrossed in thought that they have to be ‘flapped’ awake during conversations and who employ all their knowledge uselessly trying to extract sunshine from cucumbers and return excrement to its original food-stuffs; and the unfortunate Struldbrugs, who are immortal but extremely old.
In the final section, Gulliver travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. The Houyhnhnms are horses blessed with reason and virtue, and are so incapable of lying and deceit that they have no word for it in their language. They demonstrate to Gulliver that reason alone is sufficient for the proper conduct of life. Alongside them live the anthropoid Yahoos, who look human but live in a state of brutal degeneracy.
Gulliver develops a violent dislike towards the Yahoos, and, when he is repatriated to England, is so disgusted by the ‘civilised’ Yahoos around him that he spends his days with horses rather than living with his own family.
‘Swift's world-famous satire was an instant bestseller…
his vision is dark, often verging on the obscene’
Robert McCrum, Guardian
Jonathan Swift was born in 1667 in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College in that city. He was a distant cousin of John Dryden. Swift’s father was a lawyer who had gone to Ireland after the Restoration, but he died before his son’s birth. Little is known about Swift’ early life, but it is thought that his English-born mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him to be raised by his father’s family. In 1688 he left Ireland for England where he became secretary to Sir William Temple, however he returned to Ireland two years later for health reasons.
Over the next few years he travelled between Ireland and England, and obtained an MA from Hertford College, Oxford, in 1692. Eventually he was ordained to the Church of Ireland, and in 1713 he became dean of St Patrick’s in Dublin. During this time he wrote many pamphlets in support of Irish causes, including A Modest Proposal (1729), a savage satire proposing that the poor of Ireland support themselves by selling their children to the rich for consumption as meat. He also began work on Gulliver’s Travels.
Although nominally a Whig, Swift became editor of the Tory journal, the Examiner, and political satire forms a large part of his life’s work. Gulliver’s Travels is the only book for which he received any money (£200).
Swift gave one-third of his income to charities and he left the bulk of his fortune to fund St Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles. He was himself thought by many to be insane in his later years.
It is unclear whether Swift ever formally married, but he was very close to Esther Johnson, known as Stella, whom he had originally met through William Temple when she was 8 years old. Some claim that they married secretly in 1716 but this has never been proved. After his death in 1745, he was buried beside her in St Patrick’s, Dublin.
There is a memorial to Swift in St Patrick’s Cathedral, bearing a Latin epitaph, that he composed himself. In translation it reads: ‘Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, D.D., dean of this cathedral, where burning indignation can no longer lacerate his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate if you can a man who was an undaunted champion of liberty.’
W B Yeats composed his own translation which runs:
Swift has sailed into his rest.
Savage indignation there
cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
world-besotted traveller.
He served human liberty.
Jonathan Swift
"I have employd my time… in finishing correcting, amending, and Transcribing my Travels, in four parts Compleat newly Augmented, and intended for the press when the world shall deserve them, or rather when a Printer shall be found brave enough to venture his Eares…the chief end I propose to my self in all my labors is to vex the world rather than divert it, and if I could compass that designe without hurting my own person or Fortune I would be the Indefatigable writer you have ever seen…I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is towards individuals for instance I hate the tribe of Lawyers, but I love Councellor such a one, Judge such a one for so with Physicians – I will not Speak of my own Trade – Soldiers, English, Scotch, French; and the rest but principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I hartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed my self many years (but do not tell) and so I shall go on till I have done with them…Upon this great foundation of Misanthropy…the whole building of my Travels is erected."
Taken from a letter by Swift to Alexander Pope, 29 September 1725
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Gulliver’s Travels has frequently been adapted for children, and according to Swift’s friend and contemporary John Gay it was read ‘from the cabinet council to the nursery’. Do you think the novel in its original form is suitable for children? Why do you think so many people have wanted to adapt children’s versions?
- Swift was a political pamphleteer before writing Gulliver’s Travels and the book was conceived as a satire upon the state of European government. What political points do you think Swift was trying to make with each of the lands? Are his criticisms still relevant? If so, what does each land have to tell us about human nature and politics today?
- The novel is highly structured in terms of Gulliver’s personal journey and the nature of the lands he travels through. For example each land can act as a contrasting pair with another land (big/small, complex/simplistic). What other forms of structure and progression can you see in the novel?
- The Vintage edition is published with many archaic spellings (for example rouzed for roused, publick for public, and tryal for trial). Did you enjoy this or did you find it distracting? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of modernising texts?
- ‘I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is towards individuals for instance I hate the tribe of Lawyers, but I love Councellor such a one…I hate and detest that animal called man, although I hartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth.’ Taken from Jonathan Swift’s letter to Alexander Pope (1725). What evidence for this can you find in Gulliver’s Travels? Do you agree with Swift?
- Which land would you most like to visit yourself?
- Some critics have described Gulliver’s Travels as proto-Science Fiction. How far does it fit the genre? What elements of Sci-Fi can you find in the novel?
- Several feminist writers, including Davy King and Alison Fell, have written about the role of Mrs Gulliver. Why do you think they decided to do this? Were you interested in Mrs Gulliver’s character?
- Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels, according to a letter he wrote to Pope, ‘to vex the world, not to divert it.’ Do you think he succeeded?
The Battle of the Books (1704)
An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1708)
Journal to Stella (1710–13)
A Modest Proposal (1729)
Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (1739)
Jonathan Swift, A Hypocrite Reversed: A Critical Biography ~ David Nokes
The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift (5 volumes)
The Life and Strange and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe ~ Daniel Defoe
Candide ~ Voltaire
The Rape of the Lock ~ Alexander Pope
Atomised ~ Michel Houellebecq - read our guide
The Mistress of Lilliput ~ Alison Fell
Gulliver's Travels ~ retold by Martin Jenkins (a modernised version)
Interesting biography of Swift, fuller bibliography and some portraits and photographs
E-text of Swift’s A Modest Proposal
Essays on Swift’s life, religious and political beliefs, together with useful resources on the historical and political context for his writing.
I Capture The Castle
I Capture the Castle was first published in 1949 and is set in the British countryside of the 1930s. 'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the famous first line of this witty and moving classic about a girl reaching adulthood and experiencing love for the first time.
Cassandra Mortmain lives in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere and records her extraordinary life with her bohemian and impoverished family in a series of journals. She vividly, and frankly, depicts her life with her odd and enchanting family. The household consists of her little brother Thomas, her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fadingly glamorous stepmother, Topaz, who enjoys walking the grounds naked at night, and her eccentric novelist father who keeps them all in poverty as a result of his writer's block. Finally, there is Stephen, dazzlingly handsome and consumed with unrequited love for Cassandra.
Cassandra's journals describe how the Mortmain's isolated existence is radically altered when the American heirs to the castle arrive, bringing new romantic opportunities for both sisters.
The Vintage edition includes an introduction by Valerie Grove who has also written a biography of Dodie Smith called Dear Dodie. I Capture the Castle sold over a million copies after its first publication by Heinemann and was made into a major film in 2003 - www.capturethecastlemovie.com.
'This book has one of the most charismatic
narrators I've ever met'
J. K. Rowling
'I know of few novels - except Pride
and Prejudice - that inspire as much fierce lifelong
affection in their readers'
Joanna Trollope
'A delicious, compulsively readable novel
about young love and its vicissitudes'
Erica Jong
'It's as fresh as if it were written this morning
and as classic as Jane Austen. I'm very happy to have met it'
Donald Westlake
'A good story, flourishing characters,
and the most persuasive narrative voice.
This is a clever book, beneath the surface
simplicity…It is Cassandra's voice, a marriage of
artlessness and shrewd perception, that is the
touch of genius.'
Penelope Lively, Guardian
'To say that I couldn't put it down is hardly original,
but true…I think it is a book that will be much lived
in by many people, because you can live inside it, like Dickens.'
Christopher Isherwood
'A sparkling novel, a work of wit, irony and
feeling…uncork the
champagne for I Capture the Castle'
Los Angeles Times
'Dreamy and funny...an odd, shimmering
timelessness clings to its pages.
A thousand and one cheers for its reissue'
Entertainment Weekly
Dodie Smith was a dramatist, novelist and writer for children. She was born
in Lancashire on May 3,1896, grew up in Manchester and trained at RADA. She
began her playwriting career in 1931 when she scored a hit with her play Autumn
Crocus. In 1939, she went to US with her manager Alec Beesley whom she later
married. There she wrote for Hollywood, made a close friend of Christopher Isherwood
and acquired the first of her beloved Dalmatian dogs. Her bestselling novel,
I Capture the Castle, was published in 1949. The Beesleys returned to
the UK in 1954 and, in 1956, the fantastically successful, The One Hundred
and One Dalmatians was published. Between 1974 and 1985 Dodie Smith wrote
four volumes of memoirs; Look Back With Love, Look Back With Mixed
Feelings, Look Back With Astonishment and Look Back With Gratitude.
She died in November, 1990.
There is no author interview with Dodie Smith available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- As I Capture the Castle is made up of Cassandra's diaries, she is
'captured' in the novel just as much as she herself endeavours to 'capture'
life in the castle. In what ways does Cassandra change during the months the
novel covers?
-
' "Which would be nicest - Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?"' Cassandra repeatedly refers to Pride and Prejudice and two of the reviews quoted above also make a connection between I Capture the Castle and Jane Austen. Can you identify examples of the influence of Jane Austen and/or Charlotte Brontë in Dodie Smith's writing? How do the other references to literature in the novel affect your reading?
-
Consider the attitudes to class depicted in the novel. In what ways can the Mortmains be seen to be a particularly modern family and in what ways do their attitudes reflect the standards of the time?
-
'The only Henry James novel I ever tried to read was What Maisie Knew, when I was about nine - I expected it to be a book for children.' I Capture the Castle is seen as a classic example of crossover literature which appeals to both adults and children. What other examples of this sort of writing have you come across and how do they compare with I Capture the Castle?
-
Compare Cassandra's feelings about her home and the countryside with her experiences in London?
-
'It is a pity that Simon is the heir, because Rose thinks the beard is disgusting; but perhaps we can get it off.' How do you feel about the way men are portrayed in this novel?
PLAYS
Autumn Crocus, 1931
Service, 1932
Touch Wood, 1934
Call It A Day, 1935
Bonnet Over the Windmill, 1937
Dear Octopus, 1938
Lovers and Friends, 1943
Letter from Paris, 1952
FICTION
The New Moon with the Old, 1963
The Town in Bloom, 1965
It Ends with Revelations, 1967
A Tale of Two Families, 1970
The Girl from the Candle-lit Bath, 1978
CHILDREN'S FICTION
The Hundred and One Dalmations, 1956
The Starlight Barking, 1967
The Midnight Kittens, 1978
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Look Back with Love, 1974
Look Back with Mixed Feelings, 1978
Look Back in Astonishment, 1979
Look Back with Gratitude, 1985
Dear Dodie ~ Valerie Grove
Cider with Rosie ~ Laurie Lee
My Family and Other Animals ~ Gerald Durrell
To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee
Pride and Prejudice ~ Jane Austen
Lost Years ~ Christopher Isherwood
Jane Eyre
Orphaned at a young age, Jane Eyre is sent to live with her aunt, Mrs. Reed. Bullied by her cousins and aunt, Jane lashes out one day and is sent away to Lowood School as punishment. She is very unhappy at Lowood School, where she is treated cruelly by the staff, particularly the headmaster Mr Brocklehurst, an abusive and hypocritical man. Jane befriends Helen Burns, who is subsequently killed by a tuberculosis epidemic that sweeps the school. The epidemic also brings Brocklehurst’s cruelty to light, and after he is replaced, Jane spends 8 happy years at Lowood – 6 as a student, 2 as a teacher.
Deciding at last to leave Lowood, Jane accepts a post as governess at Thornfield Hall, a nearby estate, caring for Adele, the French charge of Mr. Rochester. Though Rochester is an ugly, bad-tempered man, he is Jane’s equal in passion and ungovernable spirit, and Jane falls in love with him. She saves Rochester from a fire in his bedroom one night, which he intimates was started by a drunken servant named Grace Poole. But Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, and other violent and unexplained occurrences bring Jane and Mr Rochester closer, while deepening the mystery that surrounds Thornfield. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche. But Rochester instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly.
The wedding day arrives, and as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their vows, Rochester’s friend Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother of that wife—a woman named Bertha. Rochester does not deny Mason’s claims, but he explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes Jane back to Thornfield, where they witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal. Bertha was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story. Knowing that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane flees Thornfield.
Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to beg and to sleep in the open. At last, a curate,St. John and his sisters Mary and Diana and take her in. They become friends, though Jane refuses to tell them anything of her past. St John gives her the post of mistress at the village school, and after secretly inquiring into her history, he reveals they are cousins, and that Jane has inherited £20,000 from her uncle.
St. John, a gifted, devout but cold man, is determined to travel to India as a missionary, and, judging Jane to be a suitable companion, he asks her to marry him. Jane instinctively refuses, as they do not love one another, but St.John is convinced it is her duty. While tormented by indecision, Jane hears a supernatural voice, Mr Rochester’s, calling to her across the Moors. Jane rushes back to Thornfield to find that it has been burned to the ground, that Bertha Mason died in the blaze and that Rochester was crippled and blinded in his attempt to save her. As his essential companion and true love, Jane is at last Rochester’s equal partner, and they marry at last.
‘One of the most perfectly structured novels of all time’
Sarah Waters
‘At the end we are steeped through and through
with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë’
Virginia Woolf
Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, the third of six children, to Patrick Brontë and his wife, Maria Branwell. Maria died of cancer in 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to the care of her sister Elizabeth Branwell. In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (which she would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). Its poor conditions, Charlotte maintained, permanently affected her health and physical development and hastened the deaths of her two elder sisters, who died of tuberculosis in 1825 soon after they were removed from the school.
Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head School in Mirfield. During this period she wrote her novella The Green Dwarf under the name of Wellesley. Charlotte returned as a teacher from 1835 to 1838. In 1839 she took up the first of many positions as governess to various families in Yorkshire, a career she pursued until 1841. In 1842 she and Emily travelled to Brussels to enroll in a pensionnat. In return for board and tuition, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Charlotte finally returned to Haworth in January 1844 and later used her time at the pensionnat as the inspiration for some of The Professor and Villette.
In May 1846, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne published a joint collection of poetry under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Although the book failed to attract interest (only two copies were sold), the sisters decided to continue writing for publication and began work on their first novels. Charlotte continued to use the name 'Currer Bell' when she published her first two novels.
Charlotte's brother, Branwell, the only son of the family, died of chronic bronchitis in 1848. Emily and Anne both died of pulmonary tuberculosis in December 1848 and May 1849, respectively. Charlotte and her father were now left alone. In view of the enormous success of Jane Eyre, she was persuaded by her publisher to visit London occasionally, where she revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle, becoming friends with Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray and G. H. Lewes. However, she never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she did not want to leave her aging father's side.
In June 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate, and became pregnant very soon thereafter. Her health declined rapidly during this time. Charlotte and her unborn child died March 31, 1855.There is no interview with Charlotte Bronte available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- How much difference does it make to Jane Eyre that it is told in the first person? What sort of voice does Jane have? Do you trust her as a narrator?
- Jane is not a typical Victorian heroine – she has no wealth, family, social position or beauty. In what ways is she a true heroine? Which other literary heroines does she remind you of?
- Several religious or moral figures appear in Jane Eyre. How do you think they are represented? Think in particular of Helen Burns, St John and Mr. Brocklehurst.
- Is Mr. Rochester an attractive character? What makes Jane fall in love with him?
- Is Jane Eyre a feminist novel? If so, why?
- Jane has several homes during the course of the novel, which she is either forced to leave or runs away from. Why do you think this is? Does she ever really belong anywhere?
- How does Jane’s character grow and change? How important is her childhood and education to her adult self? Does she change when she is at Thornfield?
- Why do you think that Bertha, once beautiful, has become insane and violent? how do you think Rochester would treat Jane if she became insane? Would it be different from how he treated Bertha?
OTHER BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE
FICTION
The Green Dwarf, 1833
Shirley, 1849
Villette, 1853
The Professor, 1857
POETRY
Apostasy
Evening Solace
Frances
Gilbert
Life
Mementos
On The Death Of Anne Bronte
Parting
Passion
Pilate's Wife's Dream
Preference
Presentiment
Regret
Stanzas
The Letter
The Missionary
The Teacher's Monologue
The Wife's Will
The Wood
Winter Stores
Thirteenth Tale ~ Diane Setterfield
Wide Sargasso Sea ~ Jean Rhys
Rebecca ~ Daphne du Maurier
Mansfield Park ~ Jane Austen
North & South ~ Elizabeth Gaskell
Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Bronte
Agnes Grey ~ Anne Bronte
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ~ Anne Bronte
The Life of Charlotte Bronte ~ Elizabeth Gaskell
The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination ~ Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar
The Brontë Parsonage Museum and Brontë Society website
Mary Barton
Mary Barton is the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, a widely acclaimed work based on the actual murder, in 1831, of a progressive mill owner. Mary Barton is the pretty daughter of a factory worker who finds herself dreaming of a better life when the mill-owner’s charming son, Henry, starts to court her. She rejects her childhood friend Jem’s affections in the hope of marrying Henry and escaping from the hard and bitter life that is the fate of the workers, who are resentfully dependent on the callous mill-owners for their livelihoods. But when Henry is shot dead in the street Jem becomes the prime suspect and Mary finds her loyalties tested to the limit.
The novel opens on a rural scene, Green Heys Fields on the outskirts of Manchester, where we are introduced to the Bartons and the Wilsons, two working class families. John Barton talks to his best friend George Wilson about his worries, the poor pay and working conditions in the factories, and on the disparity between the rich and the poor. His wife, Mary, is distraught following the disappearance of her sister Esther, and is comforted by Jane Wilson.
A tragedy soon befalls the Barton family, when Mrs. Barton dies in childbirth. John is distraught, having failed to overcome the death of his son Tom some years earlier, and, in an effort to distract himself becomes increasingly involved with the rights of the poor, taking a prominent role within the trade unions and in the Chartist movement.
Following her father’s wishes, Mary takes up work at a dress-maker's. Her beauty and good nature soon attract the attention of two suitors, childhood friend Jem Wilson and the rich Henry Carson, son of a wealthy local mill owner.
Mary is initially dismissive of the attentions of Jem, hoping to receive an offer of marriage from the rich and handsome Henry Carson. However, after refusing Jem’s proposal, she realises the error of her ways; that it is Jem she truly loves. She attempts to sever ties with Henry, but he refuses to take no for an answer, and hounds her relentlessly.
His attention is noted by erstwhile aunt Esther, now living as a prostitute in Manchester. She warns John Barton of the danger Henry poses, but John is disgusted by his fallen sister-in-law, and dismisses her claims. Falling in a stupor, Esther is arrested for disorderly conduct and sent to prison for a month. Upon her release she talks to Jem with the same purpose. Jem promises that he will protect Mary and confronts Henry Carson, eventually entering into a fight with him, which is witnessed by a policeman passing by.
Relations between factory workers and the masters deteriorate further in Manchester. A large order has arrived, which could be secured by the Manchester mills if they were willing to match the production costs of cheaper factories on the continent. The wages of the workers are reduced as a result. A strike is organised, and living conditions grow increasingly difficult for the working classes. Poor workers from the countryside are attracted to the mills by the owners, but they are ambushed and beaten by those striking. A group of leading trade union officials, including John Barton, is sent to negotiate with the owners, including Henry Carson, but to no avail. The discussions break down with both sides refusing to concede. The workers retire in anguish, vowing to take revenge on their masters.
Henry Carson is shot dead soon after Jem is immediately arrested on suspicion of murder, a policeman remembering their violent confrontation, and worse, his gun having been found at the scene of the crime. Mary soon realises that the murderer is not Jem but her father. She enlists the help of a neighbour and family friends Job Legh, and his blind grand-daughter Margaret, and travels to Liverpool to find Will Wilson, Jem's cousin and a sailor, who was with him on the night of the murder. By the time she arrives Will has already left port, but Mary charters a small vessel to reach his ship. Although failing to board, a message is shouted to Will, and he promises to return and save his cousin. Mary returns to port in a daze, and is taken in by a kindly old sailor, Ben Sturgis, and his wife.
During the trial, Mary confesses her love for Jem. Will arrives in court to testify, and his account convinces the jury to find Jem not guilty. The stress of the boat trip and the trial leaves Mary with a dangerous fever, she collapses and is nursed by Ben and his wife.
Eventually she returns to Manchester, to find her father morose and disfigured by sorrow and starvation at home. He summons Henry's father, the mill owner John Carson to confess his guilt, and explain his motives. Carson, furious at the outcome of the previous trial, is set on revenge, but, after turning to the Bible, decides to forgive Barton who dies soon afterwards in Carson's arms.
Despite his acquittal Jem’s reputation is destroyed by his accusal, he is dismissed by the engineering foundry, and unable to find further work. He decides to move to Canada, where the novel ends with Mary, Jem and their small child awaiting the visit of Will and Margaret, her eyesight restored.
Character List
The Barton Family
John Barton — A lower class millworker and Chartist delegate
Mrs. Mary Barton — John Barton’s wife, and mother to Mary
Mary Barton – titular character, a seamstress
Esther Barton — Sister of Mrs. Mary Barton, moves to Bristol at beginning of novel but returns to Manchester in desperation.
The Wilson Family
George Wilson — John Barton's best friend. A worker at Henry Carson's mill.
Jane Wilson — George Wilson's wife
James (Jem) Wilson — Son of George and Jane. Engineer and inventor.
Alice Wilson — George Wilson's sister. A a herbalist, sick-nurse and washerwoman
Will Wilson — Alice's nephew, whom she brought up after the death of his parents. He leaves home to become a sailor.
Margaret Jennings — Neighbour of Alice and good friend of Mary. Singer.
Job Legh — Margaret's grandfather. Naturalist and collector.
The Carson Family
Mr. John Carson — Owner of a mill in Manchester and a member of the middle class.
Henry Carson — Son of Mr. John Carson. Arrogant and dismissive of the rights of workers
Ben Sturgis — An old sailor, who looks after Mary during her stay in Liverpool.
Background
In 1832 Elizabeth married William Gaskell, who was at the time the assistant minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester. They settled in Manchester and she joined him there in his work with the poor distributing food and clothes at Cross Street Chapel. In 1850 the couple moved to 42 Plymouth Grove, a large house outside of the town, and beyond the manufacturing district with a view of the countryside.
Elizabeth began writing as a means of distraction following the death of her infant son William from Scarlet Fever. It was from this sorrow that her first novel, Mary Barton was born.
It was a time of great political change in England, with Manchester as a centre of Chartist activity. Manchester at the time had also become a symbol of the new industrial age, the landscape transformed by rapid expansion. The multitude of factories and industrial works that were being built led to disorganised and uncontrolled urban development to house the workforce, large areas of cramped and unsanitary living conditions, and extreme poverty.
Elizabeth was thus able to observe the political, cultural and industrial changes in Manchester closely, incorporating her thoughts on poverty and social tensions into her writing. In the preface to the novel she wrote that she was inspired by thinking -
‘How deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided. I had always felt a deep sympathy with the careworn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want.’
Mary Barton was anonymously published in 1848, seizing the attention of the nation with its descriptions of the suffering of workers in Manchester. Widely reviewed and much discussed, it also attracted the attention of Charles Dickens, who first published the story in Household Words and All the Year Round.
"A story of scandal, class conflict and bitter rivalry"
Guardian
"Mary Barton is the first and arguably the finest of them.
In it, early trade-union radicalism and competition
between old industrial methods and
new is the background to a powerful,
often heartbreaking depiction of real rather
than ideal Victorian family life"
Independent
Elizabeth Gaskell was born on 29 September 1810 in London. She was brought up in Knutsford, Cheshire by her aunt after her mother died when she was two years old. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, who was a Unitarian minister like her father. After their marriage they lived in Manchester with their children. Elizabeth Gaskell published her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848 to great success. She went on to publish much of her work in Charles Dickens’s magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round. Along with short stories and a biography of Charlotte Brontë, she published five more novels including North and South (1855) and Wives and Daughters (1866). Wives and Daughters is unfinished as Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly of heart failure on 12 November 1865.
There is no author interview with Elizabeth Gaskell available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- What does Mary Barton tell us about living conditions in Manchester during the mid-nineteenth century? What role does social class play in the novel?
- Consider the characters of John Barton, Job Legh and John Carson. How are the three men different? How are they similar?
- Examine the character of Mary Barton. To what extent do you think she is a force for good in the story? What is the significance of the novel’s title?
- Discuss the importance of the family among the working classes of the time.
- Discuss the importance of women, and particularly mothers in the novel.
- Examine comparisons between the rich and the poor in the novel, for example the conditions of the Davenport household and the contrasting luxury of the Carson establishment household. What do you think Elizabeth Gaskell is attempting to convey in her realistic descriptions? What does the novel say of Gaskell’s own beliefs?
- What do you think Gaskell imagines the outcome of the class divide to be? What does she suggest to reduce the division between classes?
- Examine the theme of injustice in the novel. To what extent do you think the characters are treated fairly? If not, why not?
- Examine the theme of redemption in the novel. In particular look at the relationship between John Carson and John Barton, and Gaskell's presentation of Esther.
- Identify the hopes of both John and Mary Barton in the first half of the novel. To what extent are these ambitions realistic? How are they connected?
- Look at the narrative voice in Mary Barton. Do you think Gaskell appears as a passive narrator or as a guide for the reader?
- Gaskell refers to the characters in Mary Barton as being out of her control. What does this reflect?
OTHER BOOKS BY ELIZABETH GASKELL
NOVELS
Mary Barton (1848)
Cranford (1851-3)
Ruth (1853)
North and South (1854-5)
Sylvia's Lovers (1863)
Cousin Phillis (1864)
Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story (1865)
COLLECTIONS
The Moorland Cottage (1850)
The Old Nurse's Story (1852)
Lizzie Leigh (1855)
My Lady Ludlow (1859)
Round the Sofa (1859)
Lois the Witch (1861)
A Dark Night's Work (1863)
SHORT STORIES (PARTIAL)
Libbie Marsh's Three Eras (1847)
Christmas Storms and Sunshine (1848)
The Squire's Story (1853)
Half a Life-time Ago (1855)
An Accursed Race (1855)
The Poor Clare (1856)
"The Manchester Marriage" (1858), a chapter of A House to Let, co-written with Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Adelaide Anne Procter
The Half-brothers (1859)
The Grey Woman (1861)
NON-FICTION
The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)Hard Times ~ Charles Dickens
Great Expectations ~ Charles Dickens
Mrs Dalloway ~ Virginia Woolf
Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Bronte
The Society’s objects are to promote and encourage the study and appreciation of the work and life of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865). To record sources of information about the work of Elizabeth Gaskell and any other material relating to her life, family, work and memory. To foster and stimulate an understanding of her work and life by other means.
To arrange visits to places associated with her or her books. To encourage republication of her work. To promote and support special projects relating to her life and work at suitable times.
To co-operate with other societies having an interest in Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell and her times.
British Association for Victorian Studies
Mrs Dalloway
Mrs Dalloway portrays the events of a single June day in London in 1923. As Clarissa Dalloway prepares for a party she is to give that evening, her alter-ego, Septimus Warren- Smith, a shell-shocked war-veteran descends into madness. Using stream-of-consciousness technique, Virginia Woolf explores the thoughts, emotions and relationships of these two characters and others connected with them. The narrative gently flows from one character's mind to another's, so that we are offered many different perspectives of the world. As Septimus's fate unravels - though he and Clarissa Dalloway never meet - we come to see that this young man functions as a kind of other self for Mrs Dalloway and the ensuing events that unfold in Septimus's life strike a melancholy chord of truth deep in her soul that she cannot deny.
'Mrs Dalloway contains some of the most beautiful, complex,
incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English,
and that alone would be reason enough to read it.
It is one of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century'.
Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
Virginia Woolf was a great writer. Her voice is distinctive;
her style is her own…Woolf was not an imitator. She was an innovator
who redefined the novel and pointed
the way towards its future possibilities'
Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
'In her writing, even her light writing, central control entered.
She was master of her complicated equipment, and though most of us like
to write sometimes seriously and sometimes in fun, few of us can so manage
the two impulses that they speed each other up, as hers did.'
E.M. Forster
'None of that company -except, perhaps T.S Eliot…
did more to establish the possibilities of literary innovation'
Frank Kermode
'There is something magnificent as well as touching about her
achievement [in Mrs Dalloway]'
Claire Tomalin, former literary editor of Sunday Times
Virginia Woolf was born on 25 January 1882 in London to Leslie Stephen and
Julia Jackson Duckworth. Her father Leslie Stephen, a former clergyman, was
a journalist, biographer and historian of ideas and Virginia grew up in a wealthy,
privileged environment with continual access to her father's library, his writing
talent and his intellectual conversation. Virginia suffered from unstable mental
health throughout her life. She suffered from three major mental breakdowns,
the first occurring after the death of her mother in 1895. Following the death
of her father in 1904, Virginia suffered her second breakdown and attempted
to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. Following her father's death,
Woolf and her siblings moved to Bloomsbury and it was here that she met The
Bloomsbury Group including E.M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. The Bloomsbury
group were dedicated above all to the liberal discussion of politics and art
and, in 1912, Woolf married a fellow member, Leonard Woolf. In 1917, Leonard
founded The Hogarth Press in order for them to be able to freely publish their
own works. Subsequently, in 1913 Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out
was published and an extraordinary literary output of ground-breaking material
was to follow this over the course of her life. Her most notable publications
included Night and Day, Jacob's Room, Mrs Dalloway, To
the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One's Own, The Waves,
The Years and Between the Acts. Virginia's compulsive drive to
work and her natural fragile state may have contributed to the mental breakdowns
she suffered during her life, indeed her third breakdown occurred the year her
first book was published. Sadly, in March 1941, Woolf committed suicide by drowning
herself in the river Ouse, leaving a note behind for her husband and sister.
She feared her madness was returning and that she would not be able to continue
writing.
Author interview not available (here are some comments by Virginia Woolf instead)
On Mrs Dalloway
'I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide, the world seen by the sane
and the insane, side by side'.
'In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense.'
Extracts taken from A Passionate Apprentice: the early journals - Virginia Woolf, Pimlico, February 2004
'Descriptive writing is dangerous & tempting. It is easy, with little expense of brain power, to make something. One seizes some broad aspect, as of water or colour, & makes a note of it. This single quality gives the tone of a piece. As a matter of fact, the subject is probably infinitely subtle, no more amenable to impressionistic treatment than the human character. What one records is really the state of ones own mind.'
Woolf wishes to discover 'some real thing behind appearances'. These 'moments of being' she describes as blows of 'sledge-hammer force' 'as one gets older one has a greater power through reason to provide an explanation; and this explanation blunts the sledge-hammer force of the blow…the shock receiving capacity is what makes me a writer. I hazard the explanation that a shock is at once in my case followed by the desire to explain it. I feel that I have had a blow…it is, or will become a revelation of some order; it is some token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost it's power to hurt me; it gives me…a great delight to put the severed parts together. Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me.'
'To be socially great, I believe, is a really noble ambition - for consider what it means. You have, for a certain space of time to realise as nearly as can be, an ideal…You come to a party meaning to give pleasure; therefore you leave your sorrows and worries at home - for the moment…The truth is, to be successful socially one wants the courage of a hero. There is nothing really so desperately difficult, I am sure, as laughter. The whole pressure of the world is to make you take things seriously…It is a luxury to most people to express their emotions. Society is the most bracing antidote for this kind of thing; to be successful I think one must be a Stoic with a heart.'
Her suicide note (addressed to her husband Leonard Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell):
'I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on any longer in these terrible times. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot any longer. I owe all my happiness to you but cannot go on and spoil your life.'
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Virginia Woolf describes her stream-of-consciousness technique as a 'tunnelling
process'. 'I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters…I tell
the past in instalments as I have need of it.' How do you think the use
of the stream of consciousness technique affects your reading of Mrs Dalloway?
- Clarissa's insight that Septimus 'was somehow like her' may seem radical in light of their differences in social standing, gender and background. How can Septimus be seen as Mrs Dalloway's alter-ego or other self in the novel?
-
Mrs Dalloway may be read as a critique of a post-war society that kills the soul and that has lost all sense of value and direction. Think about Septimus's descent into madness, his medical treatment and Mrs Dalloway's response to his suicide ('Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate.'), in light of these ideas.
-
Virginia Woolf examines the nature of our sense of self in Mrs Dalloway. Mrs Dalloway is aware that she cannot be compartmentalized into a single person 'She alone knew how different the parts were', 'she would not say of anyone in the world now that they were this or they were that'. Examine the idea of sense of self in Mrs Dalloway in light of these characters and any other characters you may wish to bring into the discussion.
-
Conversion is seen as a constant threat in the novel. Which characters wish to convert others, and what are they trying to convert others to? Are some characters more susceptible to conversion than others?
-
Nature is referred to many times throughout the novels. Look at they way certain characters relate to the natural world. What does this tell you about them?
The Voyage Out 1915
Night and Day 1919
Jacob's Ladder 1922
To the Lighthouse 1927
Orlando 1928
A Room of One's Own 1929
The Waves 1931
Flush 1933
The Years 1937
Three Guineas 1938
Roger Fry 1940
Between the Acts 1941
Virginia Woolf ~ Hermione Lee
Tristram Shandy ~ Laurence Sterne
The Hours ~ Michael Cunningham
North and South
When Margaret Hales’ cousin, Edith, marries Captain Lennox, and, her aunt, Mrs Shaw, moves to warmer climates for her health, she returns home from Harley Street to rejoin her parents in Helstone, Hampshire. Enjoying the quieter life of her father’s parish, Margaret thinks that nothing can spoil the peace. However a surprise proposal from Edith’s brother-in-law, barrister Mr Henry Lennox, and a dramatic decision by her father occur on the same day, which change her settled life forever.
Mr Hale has a crisis of faith therefore decides to leave the church to become a tutor in Milton, an industrial town in Northern England. Milton is sooty and noisy, centred around the cotton mills that employ most of its inhabitants. Arriving from a rural idyll in the south, Margaret is initially shocked by the social unrest – especially the workers’ strike - and poverty she finds in her new hometown. Yet as she begins to befriend her neighbours, the Higginses, and her stormy relationship with the mill-owner John Thornton develops, she starts to see Milton in a different light. However, her mother does not react so well to her new life and becomes ill.
As the workers’ strike intensifies, Mrs Hale worsens and the doctor informs Margaret that her mother will not recover. To ease her mother’s pains, she must procure a waterbed from the Thorntons. As she walks to Mr Thornton’s cotton mill and residence, she realises that something is seriously wrong. She is ushered into the Thornton’s house as the workers breakdown the gate and demand to see Mr Thornton, who has employed Irish workers to run the mill while those in Milton strike thus enraging them. As he tries to command their attention, Margaret rushes out to guard him from harm. After this selfless and caring act, Mr Thornton proposes to her only to be turned down.
As Mrs Hale deteriorates and her husband and her loyal servant, Dixon, sit by her side, Margaret arranges for her brother, Frederick, who is in exile after leading a mutiny in the Navy, to visit in secret. On the day Frederick arrives their mother dies. Even as they grieve, the Hales realise how dangerous it is for Frederick to be in England especially with a large bounty out for his arrest. He must return to Spain – and soon. Before he leaves Mr Hale and Margaret persuade him to talk to Mr Lennox about the likelihood of him being acquitted at a Court Marshal.
As Margaret and Frederick spend their last few minutes together before his train to London, Mr Thornton rides by, assuming they are lovers he leaves them in peace doing his best to ignore the injury to his feelings. However the loving goodbye between the siblings is shattered when Leonards, an old acquaintance of Fredrick’s, recognises him. A struggle ensures and Leonards falls, later dying of his injuries. In a bid to keep her brother’s visit and identity a secret, Margaret lies to the police about being at the station when Leonards was pushed and Mr Thornton, a magistrate of the town, does not expose her lie. Embarrassed by her behaviour, she cannot bear to face Mr Thornton or bring herself to explain what happened.
Mr Hale takes up the invitation of Mr Bell, Margaret’s godfather, to visit him in Oxford in an attempt to raise his spirits – while he is there Mr Hale passes away peacefully in his sleep. Left alone in Milton and now an orphan, Margaret is soon joined by her aunt Shaw, who persuades her to come and live with herself, Edith, Captain Lennox and their young family, who have recently returned from Corfu. Edith agrees and enters a life she once knew, but is now very alien to her.
Back in Milton, Mr Thornton’s fortunes crumble as Margaret’s bloom; upon the death of Mr Bell she inherits properties in Milton and an income. Hearing of Mr Thornton’s difficulties, she resolves to help him financially. The pair meet in London and soon realise their true feelings. The book ends end in a proposal, and the promise of a happier future together.
‘Pah! to Dickens. Eat your heart out, Little Nell.
That Elizabeth Gaskell could write a death scene to make your socks melt’
Scotsman
‘Gaskell saw the emotional and economic realities of
ordinary life with a steely honesty’
The Times
‘One of the most perceptive novels of the mid-Victorian era’
Glasgow Herald
‘North and South explores themes that still seem strikingly modern.
One hundred and fifty years after it appeared, the North-South divide -
and the social and economic gulf it implies - remains intact’
Daily Mail
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (née Stevenson) was born on 29 September 1810 in Chelsea, London. Her father William, was a civil servant. Her mother, Eliza, died on 29 October 1811 and she was brought up by Hannah Lumb, her aunt, in Knutsford, Cheshire, a small town near Manchester which later became the basis for Cranford.
In 1832 she married William Gaskell, who was a Unitarian minister and they settled in the industrial city of Manchester. They had several children: a stillborn daughter in 1833, followed by Marianne (1834), Margaret Emily (1837), known as Meta, Florence Elizabeth (1842), William (1844-1845) and Julia Bradford (1846).
After her only son, William, died of scarlet fever she began to write. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. It was an immediate success, winning the praise of Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle.
Dickens invited her to contribute to his magazine, 'Household Words', where her next major work, Cranford, appeared in 1853. North and South was published the following year. Gaskell’s work brought her many friends, including the novelist Charlotte Brontë. When Charlotte died in 1855, her father, Patrick Brontë, asked Gaskell to write her biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857).
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth’s final novel, was left unfinished when she died suddenly of heart failure on 12 November 1865 in Holybourne, Hampshire, aged 55.
Background to the novel
The first installment of North and South appeared in Dickens’ Household Words on 2 September 1854 but it was not a success in serial form, sales of the magazine dropped and Mrs Gaskell fell behind with episodes. However she battled on, even persuading Dickens to extent the serial from twenty to twenty-two installments.
The final installment appeared on 27 January 1855. Dickens wrote to congratulate her and even added £50 to the £250 due as a peace offering.
When the novel appeared in volume form, she expanded the last few chapters and added a preface stating that because of restrictions of the magazine format the ‘author found it impossible to develop the story in the manner originally intended’.
Extract from Elizabeth Gaskell’s letter to her friend Emily:
‘I’ve got to (with Margaret – I’m off at her following your letter) when they’ve quarreled, silently, after the lie and she knows she loves him, and he is trying not to love her; and Frederick is gone back to Spain and Mrs Hale is dead and Mr Bell has come to stay with the Hales, and Mr Thornton ought to be developing himself – and Mr Hale ought to die – and if I could get over this next piece I could swim through the London life beautifully into sunset glory of the last scene. But hitherto Thornton is good; and I’m afraid of a touch marring him; and I want to keep his character consistent with itself, and large and strong and tender, and yet a master. That’s my next puzzle. I am enough on not to hurry’ (L321)
Elizabeth Gaskell began to feel that the story was not good enough and not her own. She told Dickens:
‘I dare say I shall like my story, when I am a little further from it; at present I can only feel depressed about it, I meant it to have been so much better.’
Later on, she softened towards the novel realising that the time restraints and other pressures of writing for a serial might have in fact been useful to the story’s development:
‘Now I am not sure if, when the barrier gives way between 2 such characters as Mr Thornton and Margaret it would not go all smash in a moment, - and I don’t feel certain that I dislike the end as it now stands.’
Extracts from Elizabeth Gaskell by Jenny Uglow (Faber, 1993), p.366 - 368
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Why do Margaret’s parents allow her to shoulder such heavy burdens – her father’s crisis of faith and her mother’s illness – at such a young age?
- Why does Margaret not tell her mother and father about Mr Lennox and Mr Thornton’s proposals? Why does she have to wait to be asked directly by her father?
- ‘North and South explores themes that still seem strikingly modern’ Daily Mail. Do you think that the attitudes expressed in the novel about the north and south divide are relevant today?
- Why is Margaret prejudiced against the industrialists of the time? How important is social class to the novel?
- Who is the better Mother – Mrs Hale, Mrs Thornton or Mrs Shaw?
- The scene where Margaret stands between Mr Thornton and the striking workers is a turning point in the tale. What motivates Margaret’s to put herself in this vulnerable - both emotionally and physically - situation?
- Margaret is a strong female heroine. Do you think this is unusual in a Victorian novel? Why does Elizabeth Gaskell contrast Margaret so dramatically with the other girls of her age in the book for example Edith, Fanny and Bessy?
- The original title of the book was Margaret Hale and it was only under pressure from her publishers that Gaskell changed the title to North and South. Do you think this was the right decision to make? Do you think you would read the novel differently if it had its original title?
- Elizabeth Gaskell describes Mr Thornton as ‘large and strong and tender, and yet a master’. Do you agree with her description? Can you be tender and a master? Does Mr Thornton prove this?
- Was Margaret right to lie to the police officer? Do you think she should have told Mr Thornton the truth straight away?
- Look at Margaret’s relationship with the Higginses and compare it to Mr Thornton’s relationship to them. What are the differences and the similarities? Who gains the most from the connection – Margaret, Mr Thornton or the Higgins?
- Both Margaret and Thornton know that their families will not approve of the marriage. Are they right to marry? Can they be happy?
OTHER BOOKS BY ELIZABETH GASKELL
Mary Barton (1848)
Cranford (1851-3)
Ruth (1853)
North and South (1854-5)
Sylvia's Lovers (1863)
Cousin Phillis (1864)
Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story (1865)
The Moorland Cottage (1850)
The Old Nurse's Story (1852)
Lizzie Leigh (1855)
My Lady Ludlow (1859)
Round the Sofa (1859)
Lois the Witch (1861)
A Dark Night's Work (1863)
SHORT STORIES (partial)
Libbie Marsh's Three Eras (1847)
Christmas Storms and Sunshine (1848)
The Squire's Story (1853)
Half a Life-time Ago (1855)
An Accursed Race (1855)
The Poor Clare (1856)
"The Manchester Marriage" (1858), a chapter of A House to Let, co-written with Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Adelaide Anne Procter
The Half-brothers (1859)
The Grey Woman (1861)
NON-FICTION
The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)Hard Times ~ Charles Dickens
Tess of the d’Urbervilles ~ Thomas Hardy (link to reading guide)
The Mill on the Floss ~ George Eliot
Pride and Prejudice ~ Jane Austen
Elizabeth Gaskell ~ Jenny Uglow (Faber, 1993)
Also:
BBC series of North and South (2004) featured Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage.
The Gaskell Society
The Gaskell Web
Wikipedia
Pride and Prejudice
Elizabeth Bennet is young, attractive, independent and smart. The second of five daughters, her incisive outlook on nineteenth century English middle class society makes her a favourite with her father. On the contrary her mother, a highly frivolous and foolish woman whose obsession is to marry her five daughters, thinks her too clever for her own good. Jane, the eldest daughter, is the most good-natured and sensible of Elizabeth’s sisters, and a worthy confidante. In dire need of financial security, marriage seems to be, for Elizabeth and her sisters, the only escape.
The arrival of charming Mr Bingley and arrogant Mr Darcy in the neighbourhood promises great changes in all their lives. And with a regiment in a nearby town, the youngest daughters run wilder than ever.
This tale of friendship, rivalry, enmity and love is also an insightful and witty satire of family relations and society.
‘The best-loved book by our best-loved novelist’
Independent
‘Like Irvine Welsh, I am a great admirer of Jane Austen’
Alexander McCall Smith
‘The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste’
Virginia Woolf
‘The Mozart opera of novels and again
a transcendent union of structure and content
in which unhappy marriage is the reward for those
who show a weakness of character and lifelong happiness is
a province reserved only for those “who truly know themselves”’
Kate Atkinson
‘For those of us who suspect all the mysteries
of life are contained in the microcosm of the family,
that personal relationships prefigure all else, the work of Jane Austen
is the Rosetta Stone of literature’
Anna Quindlen
‘How could these novels ever seem remote…
the gaiety is unextinguished today, the irony has kept its bite,
the reasoning is still sweet, the sparkle undiminished,
as comedies they are irresistibly and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be’
Eudora Welty
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775 at the rectory in Steventon, a small village in north-east Hampshire. She was the seventh child and second daughter of the Rev. George Austen and his wife Cassandra. Just like Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Rev. Austen was not wealthy and could not have given much to his daughters to marry on.
Jane Austen was educated mainly at home although her and her sister Cassandra spent a year in the Abbey boarding school in Reading.
Jane was a keen reader and a fierce defender of the novel at a time when it was looked down upon. She is known to have declared that her and her family were ‘great novel readers, and not ashamed of being so.’
At the age of fourteen she wrote her first novel, Love and Freindship (sic.). She later wrote First Impressions (1796-1797), Elinor and Marianne (1797) and Northanger Abbey (1798-1799). At the time, First Impressions was rejected by Cadell.
Although she continued to write - she started The Watsons and Lady Susan - she did not complete another novel for over ten years after Northanger Abbey.
Jane settled in Bath in 1801 where she enjoyed balls and society. After her father’s death in 1805 however, the family moved to Clifton and then Southampton.
It is not until after she moved to Chawton in Hampshire in 1809 that Jane became prolific again, and between this time and her death she wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Most importantly, she revised Elinor and Marianne which was published at her own risk as Sense and Sensibility in 1811. This novel received good reviews and Austen earned £140 from the sales. Emboldened by this success, Austen revised First Impressions, which became Pride and Prejudice. It was published in 1813. Her novels were published anonymously, although her family knew of her authorship and this knowledge later spread.
In 1816, however, Austen became ill. It is believed she suffered from Addison’s disease. She died on July 18, 1817 and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.
There is no author interview with Jane Austen available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- The themes of pride and prejudice are discernable at different points through the novel. Which characters are proud and/or prejudiced? What are the consequences for them? What lessons do they learn?
- Pride and Prejudice is also a novel about marriage. Four weddings take place in the course of the novel: Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins, Lydia Bennet and Mr. Wickam, Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley and Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. How do these marriages differ and what can we conclude?
- What are the similarities and differences between the marriages of Lydia and Wickham and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet?
- Mr. Bennet appears at the beginning of the novel as a intelligent and amiable man. Does this perception change during the novel? If so, when and why?
- There are several instances where women are portrayed as fundamentally dependent on men and men’s fortune. The main example lies in the discussions and scenes relating to the entailment of Longbourn to Mr. Collins. In what other instances is this dependence described? Is it always in a negative light? How do different characters react to this dependence?
- Elizabeth Bennet is very independent for her times. During her confrontation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she declares ‘I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me” (p. 338). Are there any other references to women’s independence in this novel? If so, is independence always seen as something positive?
- An important feature of this novel is the interweaving of comedy, romance and satire. How is each of these elements important to the novel’s success and how does Austen manage juggling between these styles?
NOVELS
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1815)
Northanger Abbey (1817 – Posthumously)
Persuasion (1817 – Posthumously)
UNFINISHED WORKS
Lady Susan
The Watsons
Sanditon
Sense and Sensibility ~ Jane Austen
Jane Eyre ~ Charlotte Bronte - read our guide
Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Bronte
Great Expectations ~ Charles Dickens
Howard’s End ~ E.M. Forster
The Cranford Chronicles ~ Elizabeth Gaskell
Vanity Fair ~ William Makepeace Thackeray
Revolutionary Road
Set in 1955, Revolutionary Road tells the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living in the Connecticut suburbs with their two young children, Jennifer and Michael.
The book opens with April Wheeler’s reignited thespian ambitions being dashed as she performs in the local theatre group’s play. The play is a disaster and her hopes of escaping her tiresome life as a housewife disappear.
Frank is also frustrated with his life. He only took his mundane office job with The Knox Company, New York, to support April when she accidentally fell pregnant with their first child, Jennifer. All day he moves paper from one pile to another, and tries to not think about his missed chances in life. To cope with his failings he drinks too much and finds himself engaging in an affair with a co-worker, Maureen Grube.
When he arrives home on the night of his birthday, April has news. She has decided on a course of action to start an exciting new life: they will move to Paris where April will support the family while Frank thinks about how to fulfil his true potential – whatever that may be.
As they save and prepare for the journey. They spend time with their neighbours Shep and Milly Campbell and agree to befriend their real estate broker’s son who has had a mental breakdown.
As their departure date grows nearer so does the tension between the couple. So when April discovers she is pregnant and their plans are put on hold, the novel comes to a dramatic climax as April takes decisive, dangerous and, ultimately, tragic action that will effect all their lives.
‘The literary discovery of the year...
It's as brilliantly nuanced as Updike’s Rabbit sequence,
and as sad as anything by Fitzgerald’
Nick Hornby, Guardian Books of the Year
‘Here is more than fine writing;
here is what, added to fine writing,
makes a book come immediately,
intensely and brilliantly alive...a masterpiece’
Tennessee Williams
‘I hand out copies of Revolutionary Road
to anyone who will take them...
one of the most moving and exact portraits of
suburbia in all of American literature’
Observer
‘The Great Gatsby of my time...
One of the best books by a member of my generation’
Kurt Vonnegut
‘The best novel ever written about the death
of the American dream’
Kate Atkinson, Daily Telegraph
Born on 3rd February 1926 in Yonkers, New York, Richard Yates came from an unstable home, his parents divorced when he was three. During the Depression he, his sister and his mother, Ruth, moved continually from apartment to apartment.
Yates first became interested in journalism and writing while attending Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut. He graduated in 1944 and joined the army. He saw combat in France and Germany in the late 1940s; during his military service he caught pneumonia and damaged his lungs.
He never attended university instead he concentrated on his writing. In 1951, using a disability pension the Army had given him for his TB, he moved to Europe for several years with his first wife where he wrote stories. On returning to the United States in 1953, he worked as an advertising copywriter; he also began drinking heavily and suffered the first of several breakdowns. In 1959 he and his wife divorced, his wife winning custody of their two daughters.
His career as a novelist began in 1961 with the publication of Revolutionary Roadwhich was critically acclaimed and was nominated for the National Book Award. He published a further six novels and two collections of short stories, however he was never commercially successful and lived in rented apartments and basic conditions for most of his life.
He subsequently taught writing at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, Boston University (where his papers are archived), at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, and at the University of Southern California Master of Professional Writing Program. In 1962, he wrote the screenplay for a film adaptation of William Styron's Lie Down In Darkness and for a brief period in the late 60s he served as a speech writer for senator Robert Kennedy.
He had remarried in 1968, but in 1974 he divorced again, his second wife retaining custody of their daughter.
Yates died of complications from minor surgery in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama on 7th November 1992. It is assumed his lifelong alcoholism and chain smoking contributed to his premature death
An Interview with Richard Yates by DeWitt Henry & Geoffrey Clark, Winter 1972
From Ploughshares
In Revolutionary Road, was the ending thought out before you began?
Yes. I thought of that girl dying in that way, and then the whole problem was to construct a book that would justify that ending. And it wasn't easy.
When you first planned the book, did you have John Givings in there?
No, I didn't. He occurred to me as a character about midway through the writing of the book. I felt I needed somebody in there to point up or spell out the story at crucial moments, and I did know a young man very much like that at the time, a long-term patient in a mental hospital who had an uncannily keen and very articulate insight into other people's weaknesses, so I worked a fictionalized version of him into the book.
You really lambasted the suburbs.
I didn't mean to. The book was widely read as an anti-suburban novel, and that disappointed me. The Wheelers may have thought the suburbs were to blame for all their problems, but I meant it to be implicit in the text that that was their delusion, their problem, not mine.
Doesn't the title suggest an attack on The System?
I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the nineteen-fifties. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs - a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witch-hunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that - felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit - and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties.
You weren't knocking marriage?
Oh, of course not. That's another false interpretation too many people put on the book. And in a way Alfred Kazin was at least partially responsible for that, however inadvertently. The publishers sent the book to him in manuscript, and he wrote back a very nice letter that said in part - only in part - "This novel locates the American tragedy squarely on the field of marriage." So the publishers grabbed up that one quote out of context and plastered it all over the dust-jacket, in big red print - they thought it would "sell" - along with a cheap, vulgar illustration. And I let them do it, like an idiot, because I guess I thought they knew their business, but I've regretted it ever since. Oh, maybe it did help sell copies to people snooping around bookstores in search of an anti-marriage polemic or something, but I think it must have repelled and turned away a good many other, more intelligent readers. After all, who but a maniac or a God damn fool would sit down and write a novel attacking marriage? And who'd want to read such a novel? Don't misunderstand, I'm not blaming Kazin - I've always respected him as a critic and still do. It was my own damn fault, for letting them package the book that way. In any case, that was a most unfortunate, misleading blurb.
Still, your image of marriage in the book is hardly optimistic. All the families in time past or present, with the exception of the Campbells’ are broken, or they all result in abortions one way or another.
Abortions, yes. Everything gets aborted in the book. That was supposed to be the theme of the book. I remember when I was first working on it and feeling my way into it, somebody at a party asked me what I was writing a novel about, and I said I thought I was writing a novel about abortion. And the guy said what do you mean by that? And I said, it’s going to be built on a series of abortions, of all kinds - an aborted play, several aborted careers, any number of aborted ambitions and aborted plans and aborted dreams - all leading up to a real, physical abortion, and a death at the end. And maybe that's about as close to a real summation of the book as I've ever come.
And yet the Campbells seem to weather all those abortions.
Because somebody had to go on living in the story, right? Somebody had to come through with a kind of qualified hope at the end, and I meant it to be Shep Campbell. I meant his to be the one small voice of affirmation after the tragedy. But I guess "tragedy" is too lofty a word to use in talking about my own book - certainly it's a much-debased word, and a word I've always tended to throw around all too easily. "Calamity" might be more appropriate, or "downfall."
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
-
Did you find the novel comic, and if so why?
- How do the characters’ perspectives of who they are differ from reality?
- To what extent is this a novel about boredom?
- Frank repeatedly wonders what it means to be a man. Do you believe he will ever find out?
- ‘Frank and April regrettably harbor little affection for each other.’ Do you agree?
- Are April and Frank good parents?
- What is John Givings’ purpose in the novel?
- Discuss April’s suicide, her note and how it affects all the characters.
- Yates’ writing has been described as gentle yet brutal. What do you think is meant by this? How did the novel affect you?
Revolutionary Road (1961)
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (stories) (1962)
A Special Providence (1969)
Disturbing the Peace (1975)
The Easter Parade (1976)
A Good School (1978)
Liars in Love (stories) (1981)
Young Hearts Crying (1984)
Cold Spring Harbor (1986)
The Collected Stories Of Richard Yates (2001)
The Folded Leaf ~ William Maxwell (Vintage)
Slaughterhouse 5 ~ Kurt Vonnegut (Vintage)
The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (Penguin)
Appointment in Samarra ~ John O’Hara (Vintage)
Light Years ~ James Salter (Penguin)
Independence Day ~ Richard Ford (Vintage)
BUtterfield 8 ~ John O’Hara (Vintage)
The Richard Yates Archive
Boston Review
Wikipedia: Richard Yates
A website for Richard Yates
Slaughterhouse 5: The Children's Crusade A Dirty-Dance With Death
Moving backwards and forwards in time, Slaughterhouse 5 is narrated by Billy Pilgrim, a Second World War veteran who was captured by the Germans in the Ardennes offensive in 1944 and who witnessed the horrific firebombing of Dresden by the Allies. When the novel opens – in 1968 – Billy is a wealthy optometrist living in Ilium, New York State, with a wife and two children. It becomes clear during the course of the novel, however, that Billy has been in an air crash which has left him severely injured, and that his wife has died in a freak accident while rushing to his bedside.
Slaughterhouse 5 is a miraculously moving, bitter and funny story and the most original anti-war novel since Catch 22.
‘A marvellous excursion…the writing
is pungent,
the antics uproarious, the wit as sharp as a hypodermic needle’
Daily Telegraph
One
of the master alchemists of modern American fiction’
Sunday Times
‘An
extraordinary success.
It is a book we need to read and re-read…
Funny, compassionate and wise’
New York Times Book Review
‘A
work of keen literary artistry’
Joseph Heller
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, in the United States, in 1922 and studies biochemistry at Cornell University. Drafted into the US infantry in World War II, he was captured by German soldiers in 1944 and was working in Dresden in the underground meat locker of a slaughterhouse when the city was attacked and destroyed by United States and British bombers. He came out of hiding to find ‘135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked liked gingerbread men.’ The event profoundly affected his life and writing, and is the central concern of his most celebrated novel, Slaughterhouse.
In a course of his writing career Vonnegut’s work has ranged across many genres and has always been distinguished by its imaginative ability and by its profound concern with man’s inhuman behaviour towards his fellow man. Slaughterhouse 5 is also his most dramatic articulation of this message.
McSweeney’s, September 2002
Before speaking with you, I read over many of your books and came across one of the most heartbreaking paragraphs I've ever read in Timequake: "I was the baby of the family. Now I don't have anybody to show off for anymore."
Yeah. Where do you fit into in your family?
I'm the oldest. I have one younger brother.
You're certainly very different people. Chances are he's a helluva lot funnier than you are. The only way he could get attention at the dinner table is by being funny.
You have outlived your ancestors, and many of your colleagues in letters.
Yes, well, that's the reason that I don't want to be in New York any longer. I don't want to go to parties any more. There are no familiar faces anymore. You know, you go to a party and you hone in on the couple people you know. There are none of those people for me at parties any more. I've lost my sister, my brother, my editor, my publisher. It's a whole generation gone by. Old war buddies of mine, my colleagues, my family.
Joseph Heller, in 1999.
I took that one very hard.
You were one of the few people to walk out of Dresden. Now, some fifty years later, you're among the last men standing.
Every so often I run into someone on the street who announces to me that they are really a survivor. I mean, who the fuck isn't? If you're not dead, you're a survivor.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Despite being a work of fiction, Slaughterhouse 5 clearly has many
autobiographical elements to it – both Billy Pilgrim and Vonnegut himself,
for instance, were captured in the Ardennes in 1944. Is it possible to distinguish
fiction from reality in the novel?
- The central episode around which Slaughterhouse 5 turns is the firebombing
of Dresden. But is it right to simply call the novel and anti-war book? Is
Vonnegut trying to address other concerns in the novel as well?
- Why do you think the author introduces science fiction elements to the book?
How central and the books discussions about truth, time and war are Billy’s
experiences on Tralfamadore and his use of time travel?
- How would you describe the characterisation in Slaughterhouse 5?
Does Vonnegut spend much time describing his characters, and if not, what
use does he have for them?
- Although written about World War II, the novel was first published at the
height of the Vietnam War. Is this significant? Does Vonnegut draw any explicit
or implicit parallels anywhere within the book between the two wars?
- Both Kilgore Trout and Dr Rosewater appear in other Vonnegut novels. How would you judge the significance of each character to the telling of this particular story? Are they essential to the novel?
Player
Piano
The Sirens of Titan
Mother Night
Cat’s Cradle
God Bless You, Mr Rosewater
Welcome to the Monkey House
Happy Birthday, Wanda June
Breakfast
of Champions
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
Slapstick
Jailbird
Palm Sunday
Deadeye Dick
Galapagos
Bluebeard
Hocus Pocus
Fates Worse Than Death
Timequake
Bagombo Snuff Box
Mao II ~ Don DeLillo
V ~ Thomas Pynchon
Astrological Diary of God ~ Bo Fowler
Choke ~ Chuck Palahniuk
All Families Are Pschotic ~ Douglas Coupland
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Tess is an innocent young girl until the day she goes to visit her rich ‘relatives’, the D’Urbervilles, in hope that they might help her alleviate her own family’s poverty. Her encounter with her manipulative cousin, Alec, leads her onto a path that is beset with suffering and betrayal. When she falls in love with another man, Angel Clare, Tess sees a potential escape from her past, but only if she can tell him her shameful secret…
'Thomas Hardy’s thrilling story of seduction,
murder, cruelty and betrayal'
The Times
'Like the greatest characters in literature,
Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book
as a permanent citizen of the imagination…
Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting'
Irving Howe
'Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles
has a lush sensuality about the heat of summer
and the heat of lust which makes the gorgeousness
of Hardy's heroine and his country of Wessex
both seems utterly desirable as the tale of tragic fate unfolds'
The Times
Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840. His father was a stonemason, his mother an intelligent and well-read woman who encouraged his education. He was brought up near Dorchester and trained as an architect before attending Kings College, London. In 1868 his work took him to St Juliot’s church in Cornwall where he met his wife-to-be, Emma. His first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, was rejected by publishers but Desperate Remedies was published in 1871 and this was rapidly followed by Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). He also wrote many other novels, poems and short stories. Tess of the D’Urbervilles was published in 1891. His final novel was Jude the Obscure (1895). Hardy was awarded the Order of Merit in 1920 and the gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature in 1912. Despite the estrangement that had developed between himself and his wife, Emma’s death in 1912 came as a great shock to Hardy and many of his later poems explore his grief. He married his secretary in 1914 but remained devoted to Emma’s memory. Hardy died of pleurisy on 11 January 1928.
Background
Far from the Madding Crowd established Hardy’s name as a writer, but it was Tess of the D’Urbervilles that brought him financial success. But the book also raised issues which created substantial controversy amongst his Victorian readership.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles attacks the sexual hypocrisy which characterised English social morality of his time. Hardy’s subtitle ‘A Pure Woman’ invites the reader to reconsider preconceptions of morality which are based on strict codes of behaviour. Hardy’s suggestion that Tess could epitomise purity despite having lost her virginity out of wedlock and committed murder was shocking to many and caused widespread debate.
Hardy’s novel further challenges the Victorian status quo in championing the cause of women. Tess is presented as a victim of her times; she falls prey to the sexual double standard when Angel Clare refuses to accept her ‘confession’ although it is similar to his own. Equally unjust in Hardy’s view is the financial vulnerability faced by women, shown by Tess’ destitution following the failure of her marriage to Clare. It is a basic lack of funds that ultimately leads Tess to sacrifice morality and accept Alec D’Urberville’s assistance. Again, Hardy illustrates a double standard here; women are expected to be morally ‘pure’ but have almost no way of gaining the financial independence that could protect them from offers such as D’Urberville’s.
Bold statements about social class are also made in the novel. Hardy lived in a society where the increasing number of families with ‘new money’ was perceived as a real threat to the established aristocracy. His suggestion that Tess’ old family name was not only materially useless to her but actually brought about her downfall would have directly contradicted many of his more conservative readers’ views about the value of being of ‘ancient stock’.
Although Hardy does not romanticise nature – as the descriptions of Tess’ time at Flintcomb-Ashe show – he definitely presents natural ways as superior to those of the machine. This directly reflects the turmoil of post-industrial revolution Britain; while Hardy accepts that the world he lives in is industrialised and modern, the idyll he creates is agricultural and traditional. This mirrors a nation ill at ease with the frenetic rate of change brought about by the industrial age.There is no author interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Do you think the subtitle ‘A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented’ is an accurate description of Tess? Why does Hardy use this epithet to describe her and how does he challenge accepted conventions of the time in doing so?
- Hardy remarks that ‘Tess’ own people … are never tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic way ‘it was to be’: do you think that Tess is a victim of fate or is she ultimately in charge of of her destiny?
- Joan Durbeyfield more than twice advises the ‘tractable’ Tess on courses of action that prove disastrous for her. How responsible is she for Tess’ sufferings?
- The discovery of Tess’ ‘ancient blood’ is the catalyst for the series of tragic events that follow. Do you think that Hardy is presenting aristocracy as a poisonous force in society?
- Do you think that Tess was seduced or raped by Alec D’Urberville? Why do you think Hardy leaves this unclear?
- Is Angel Clare to blame for the way he reacted to Tess’ confession, or is he merely a product of his times? How is Hardy attacking Victorian sexual hypocrisy here?
- In what ways are Tess’ moral and practical decisions affected by her status as a woman, and not a ‘proper’ woman at that? How does Hardy present the constraints of womanhood throughout the novel?
- ‘There was not a tree within sight; there was not … a green pasture – nothing but fallow and turnips everywhere’: this description of the ‘starve-acre’ farm at Flintcomb-Ashe fully reflects the downturn in Tess’ fortunes and her emotional state at this point. Where else does Hardy use landscape to reflect the moods and situations of his characters, and do you find this effective?
- Was Tess morally justified in finally accepting Alec D’Urberville’s offer of financial help, given the benefits it brought her family?
- Hardy often presents a simple, uneducated life close to the rhythms of nature as being physically and even morally healthier. We are told that ‘Angel …preferred sermons in stones to sermons in churches and chapels on fine summer days’ and that the Talbothays milkmaids were ‘generous young souls’ due to having been brought up in ‘lonely country nooks’. In what ways could Hardy’s reverential attitude towards nature be seen as a reaction against the process of industrialisation?
- Was Tess justified in killing Alec D’Urberville? Does this alter your opinion of her as a ‘pure ‘ woman?
OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS HARDY
Desperate Remedies 1871
Under the Greenwood Tree 1872
A Pair of Blue Eyes 1873
Far from the Madding Crowd 1874
The Hand of Ethelberta 1876
The Return of the Native 1878
The Trumpet-Major 1880
A Laodicean 1881
Two in a Tower 1882
The Mayor of Casterbridge 1886
The Woodlanders 1887
The Well-Beloved 1892
Jude the Obscure 1895
Far from the Madding Crowd ~ Thomas Hardy
North and South ~ Elizabeth Gaskell
Lady Chatterley’s Lover ~ D.H.Lawrence
The Woman in White ~ Wilkie Collins
Dracula ~ Bram Stoker
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The story begins in fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri where Huck lives with a widow, Mrs. Watson, who tries to ‘sivilize’ the energetic boy. Huck’s father Pap is an abusive alcoholic, and when forced to choose between living with Pap or the widow, Huck chooses instead to fake his own death and run away. On his journey he encounters Jim, Mrs. Watson’s runaway slave and the two sail down the Mississippi river on a makeshift raft as Jim tries to reach the free states of the North. In stormy weather, Jim and Huck miss the exit to Cairo, Illinois where Jim could have found freedom, and the two become separated. Huck finds comfort for while with the Grangefords, a local wealthy family who are feuding with the Shepardsons. When the feud erupts into violence, Huck manages another narrow escape. He is reunited with Jim, and the two continue their journey on the raft.
Their solitude is interrupted when two con men, nicknamed the Duke and the Dauphin, board the raft. These men create a series of schemes to swindle the local townsfolk, including charging tickets to a made-up play ‘The Royal Nonesuch’ which is cobbled together from Shakespearean fragments, or by impersonating English aristocrats in order to swindle an inheritance away from its intended recipient. When the Duke ‘captures’ Jim to collect on the reward for finding a runaway slave, Huck finally decides that freeing Jim would not be stealing Mrs. Watson’s property and agrees to help him escape. Huck’s friend Tom Sawyer arrives and the two boys create an elaborate plan to free Jim. The plan goes awry when Tom is shot in the leg and Jim demands the boys abandon the plan to find a doctor to treat Tom. Tom’s Aunt arrives then, bringing the novel’s adventures to a conclusion as Huck discovers that his father and Mrs. Watson are dead, meaning that Jim is free and the pair can return home.
"All modern American literature comes from one book
by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn…
There was nothing before.
There has been nothing as good since"
Ernest Hemingway
"The quintessential American novel"
Guardian
Mark Twain is the pen name for Samuel Langhorn Clemens, a famous American satirist, humourist, writer, lecturer and speaker. He was born in Missouri in 1835, and his writing is influenced in style and content by the attitudes and local colour of the region. While much of his writing is humorous, Twain combines his humour with social criticism to create potent satire. Twain lived an eventful life, and worked at a variety of jobs, including as a steamboat pilot, journalist, printer and gold prospector before publishing his writing in the 1860’s and 1870’s.
His motley experiences as a steamboat pilot provided great material for his writing, not least of which the origins of his penname; ‘mark twain’ is a term used on steamboats to indicate that the water is two fathoms deep. Before writing novels, Twain worked as a journalist. Never a stranger to controversy, legend has it that while writing in Virginia City, Twain came across a rival journalist, who insisted on a duel. To avoid imprisonment for violation of the town's anti-duelling statute, Twain promptly fled to San Francisco, where he soon found work with various newspapers. He travelled extensively and composed many reflections on his travels.
Twain married Olivia Langdon, and they had three daughters during their 34 year relationship. Tragically, Twain outlived all three daughters, and these losses, combined with financial instability contributed to a depression that plagued his later years. In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’” Twain died the following year on April 21 in Redding, Connecticut.
Background
‘All modern American Literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. There was nothing before, there has been nothing as good since.’ Ernest Hemingway
Huckleberry Finn is one of Mark Twain’s most popular novels and a classic of American literature. One of the first novels to be written in local dialect, Huck’s adventure filled journey also functions as a critique on racism and the hypocrisy of the South.
Although Huckleberry Finn was written many years after the American Civil War, Twain chose to set it during the time of slavery to expose hypocritical and racist attitudes among white Southerners that still existed despite the legal abolishment of slavery. The ‘Jim Crow’ laws were a set of legal restrictions that encouraged segregation of the races, demonstrating that many Southerners remained locked into racist attitudes. Huckleberry Finn’s history has been one of great controversy. On publication many objected to its ‘tawdry language’, and the frequency of the word ‘nigger’ in the text has means there is constant controversy over the teaching of Huckleberry Finn in schools, and for the same reason it is one of the books most frequently banned in America; it has been removed from numerous public and school libraries. At the same time legions of fans defend the book’s obvious satire and clear anti-racist message.
Huckleberry Finn was first published in England by Chatto & Windus in 1884. The American edition published the same year had to be recalled due to an “obscene” illustration. Twain had commissioned an illustrator to produce engravings for this edition, and this illustrator mischievously slipped in an image of Uncle Silas in a state of what can only be described as ‘indecent exposure’. This edition was recalled and the offending illustration replaced, but the episode remains very true to Twain’s impish spirit.
Early reviews of Huckleberry Finn were far from favourable, as described by a British journalist in an interview with Mark Twain in 1886 while visiting England:
‘It is one of the smaller ironies of English literature that “Huckleberry Finn”, the most American of American books, was first published abroad; by the house of Chatto & Windus of England seventy-five years ago today: Dec. 6, 1884. It was finally issued here in early March, 1885. For a volume that has, in recent decades, been almost obscured by critiques, the first critical reactions ranged from silence to scorn. Most newspapers, including The [New York] Times, ignored the book. Those journals that reviewed it flayed it. New England led the chorus, but other parts of the country contributed their mite. The Concord Library banned the book, characterizing is as “the veriest trash.” The Boston Transcript thought the action of the Concord Library superfluous. After sampling an extract in The Century magazine, said that newspaper, “nobody wants to read it.” But it was The Springfield Republican that summed up the matter most austerely. “The trouble with Mr. Clemens”, said the S. R., “is that he has no reliable sense of propriety.” The only bright spot in the whole operation were the readers - 40,000 of them before publication. A few weeks later that figure had risen to 50,000.’
We can get a glimpse of Mark Twain’s levity (not to mention his attitude towards interviewers) in the following excerpt from Twain’s fictional account of ‘An Encounter with an Interviewer’:
The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added:
“Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you.”
“Come to what?”
“Interview you.”
“Ah! I see. Yes--yes. Um! Yes--yes.”
I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bit under a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been looking six or seven minutes I found I was obliged to refer to the young man. I said:
“How do you spell it?”
“Spell what?”
“Interview.”
“Oh, my goodness! what do you want to spell it for?”
“I don't want to spell it; I want to see what it means.”
“Well, this is astonishing, I must say. I can tell you what it means, if you--if you—“
“Oh, all right! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too.”
“In, in, ter, ter, inter—“
“Then you spell it with an h”
“Why certainly!”
“Oh, that is what took me so long.”
“Why, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with?”
“Well, I--I--hardly know. I had the Unabridged, and I was ciphering around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures. But it's a very old edition.”
“Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it in even the latest e--- My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you do not look as--as--intelligent as I had expected you would. No harm --I mean no harm at all.”
“Oh, don't mention it! It has often been said, and by people who would not flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite remarkable in that way. Yes--yes; they always speak of it with rapture.”
“I can easily imagine it. But about this interview. You know it is the custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious.”
“Indeed, I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting. What do you do it with?”
“Ah, well--well--well--this is disheartening. It ought to be done with a club in some cases; but customarily it consists in the interviewer asking questions and the interviewed answering them. It is all the rage now. Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the salient points of your public and private history?”
“Oh, with pleasure--with pleasure. I have a very bad memory, but I hope you will not mind that. That is to say, it is an irregular memory --singularly irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point. This is a great grief to me.”
“Oh, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can.”
“I will. I will put my whole mind on it.”
“Thanks. Are you ready to begin?”
“Ready.”
Q. How old are you?
A. Nineteen, in June.
Q. Indeed. I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where were you born?
A. In Missouri.
Q. When did you begin to write?
A. In 1836.
Q. Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now?
A. I don't know. It does seem curious, somehow.
Q. It does, indeed. Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you ever met?
A. Aaron Burr.
Q. But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteen years!
A. Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?
…
The interview below by a British journalist originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune July 9, 1886. It was later reprinted in the Washington Post on July 13, 1886, which is the source of this text and offers insight into Twain’s influence in England:
‘Americans feel Mark Twain to be the incarnation of their National spirit. His humour is all American; so, too, is the largeness of his charity and his indomitable common sense and the freshness of heart and feelings which lies beneath his show of cynicism. So, too, is his capacity for crusading, his spiritual hardiness, his idealising faith in women and democracy, his touch of misanthropy, the ferocity of his sarcasm. More than any man living has Mark Twain made the world laugh.’
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- ‘Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.’ How does this warning set the tone for the novel?
- ‘You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.’ Why is there so much deception in Huckleberry Finn?
- How does Twain’s use of dialect affect your reading experience?
- Why does Tom Sawyer keep secret for so long the news that Jim is a free man?
- Where do the characters in Huckleberry Finn learn their morality? How are traditional institutions of morality, ie. family, Church, called into question in the novel?
- What is the role of superstition in the book?
- Huckleberry Finn is often called the ‘Great American Novel’, and yet is also the fifth most frequently banned book in the United States. Why do you think Huckleberry Finn has been and remains, so controversial?
- What do you make of Twain’s parodies of popular romantic novels in Huckleberry Finn in view of the fact that he was a popular writer himself?
- Is humour the appropriate vehicle for conveying serious social messages? Is there a danger the message will be lost if readers don’t understand the satire?
Mark Twain was a prolific writer and essayist, here are some of his most popular works:
FICTION
The Guilded Age (1873)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
The Prince and the Pauper (1881)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1895)
Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)
NON-FICTION
Life on the Mississippi (1833)
Innocents Abroad (1869)
Roughing It (1872)
ESSAYS
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867)
How to Tell a Story
My Debut as a Literary Person
Vintage Classics Children’s Books
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll, London: Vintage, 2007.
Oliver Twist ~ Charles Dicken, London: Vintage, 2007.
To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Lee Harper, London: Vintage, 2007.
Gulliver’s Travels ~ Jonathan Swift, London: Vintage, 2007.
Robinson Crusoe ~ Daniel Defoe
The Wind in the Willows ~ Kenneth Grahame
The Just So Stories ~ Rudyard Kipling. With an Introduction by Philip Pullman.
Treasure Island ~ R.L. Stevenson
Resources with Twain interviews, quotations and articles
Early reviews and illustrations of Huckleberry Finn
All of Twain’s letters and extensive archival material
Virtual tour of Mark Twain’s house
The Age of Innocence
Set in 1870s New York, The Age of Innocence depicts a society that is intent on maintaining its own rigid stability. Newland Archer is the novel’s hero – he upholds and yet abhors Old New York’s stifling social norms. His primary occupation is that of a gentleman, his second, a curious and novel preoccupation to him, is that of a lawyer. When the novel opens he is happily anticipating his marriage to the sheltered and beautiful May Welland. His anticipation is however shattered by the arrival of May’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska. Ellen embodies and offers everything that Europe represented to New York at the time – an exotic, curious and possibly sinful reprieve from the stifling social order of New York society. Ellen has returned to her New York family after scandalously leaving a disastrous marriage to a Polish Count.
Ellen’s arrival disturbs Newland at first, because she could possibly taint his future family’s reputation, but he is quickly mesmerised by the elusive Countess. Newland Archer likes to think of himself as a progressive man and is therefore enthralled by everything Ellen Olenska embodies – her willingness to speak to the social outcasts, her flagrant disobedience of New York fashion and her independent thought. As Archer’s admiration for Ellen grows so do his doubts about his forthcoming marriage to May.
Eventually, Newland and May do marry, despite his overwhelming love for Ellen. Newland initially tries his best to forget about Ellen but fails to and later persuades her to become his mistress. Before they can consummate their relationship Ellen suddenly, and without warning, returns to Europe. Newland makes up his mind to abandon May and follow Ellen to Europe but May announces that she is pregnant, and that Ellen was told of it a few days before. Newland finally understands why Ellen returned to Europe and surrenders to a life as a husband to May and a father to her children.
Twenty-five years later, after May's death, Newland and his son, Dallas, visit Paris. Dallas, unknown to his father, arranges a visit to Ellen. Newland is understandably stunned at the prospect of seeing Ellen again and on arriving at her apartment, sends his son up alone, while he waits outside, watching her balcony. Newland thinks about going up and meeting her again, but ultimately decides that his memory of Ellen and their intense, unfulfilled love is more and decides to walk away without meeting her one last time – with his memory of her, and their love, intact.
‘America’s greatest woman novelist’
Sunday Times
‘Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security
and alertness which characterizes Mrs. Wharton and her tradition?’
E. M. Forster
‘Wharton’s dazzling skills as a stylist, creator of character,
ironical observer and unveiler of passionate,
thwarted emotions have earned her a devoted following’
Hermione Lee
‘Wharton evocatively records the high society of New York's gilded age’
Daily Mail
Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones to a wealthy New York family in 1862. Her family were well known socialites and it is believed that the expression ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ referred to Edith Wharton's parents, who were inimitably fashionable and often threw lavish parties for New York’s high society. Wharton was privileged to everything an upper-class upbringing promises: education, travel, high society soirees and the promise of marrying a good husband. She managed to see beyond the blinkers imposed on others in her situation, and began to question the social and moral codes her family and friends felt obliged to uphold. She published her first book at the age of sixteen and was immediately looked upon with suspicion by her peers – they regarded it a curious eccentricity. Wharton entered an unhappy marriage at the age of twenty-three to a man thirteen years her senior. Wharton moved to Paris in 1907 and eventually divorced her husband in 1913. During this time she continued to write – aided by her mentor Henry James. The central themes in The Age of Innocence undoubtedly mirror the deep concerns Wharton had about the social and moral conventions of old New York society. Unhappily married at an early age, Wharton faced, like Ellen Olenska, the temptations of adultery and the condemnation of divorce. As a writer, too, Wharton faced the criticisms of her class, who disdained the bohemian life of artists and writers. Wharton was based in Paris when the First World War broke out. She worked tirelessly as the head of the American Hostels for Refugees and wrote of her experiences in Fighting France. She was she was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour for her efforts during the war. She received an honorary doctorate from Yale University and died of a stroke at her home in France in 1937.
There is no author interview available.
Information about The Age Of Innocence
- The title of the book is an ironic commentary the outer, polished New York society Wharton inhabited
- The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize – making Edith Wharton the first woman to win the prize
- Martin Scorsese’s film of the book won an Oscar (and was nominated for four) in 1993
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Newland Archer likes to think of himself as a liberal, rational man – someone with a markedly different character to the rest of the blinkered society he inhabits. Do you agree with this?
- ‘Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience.’ Newland Archer always wanted to teach May how to think beyond the boundaries set up by her upbringing. Do you think that, in reality, it was Newland who was the innocent one, and not May?
- ‘There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.’ This is Newland’s sentiments towards May just after their marriage. Do you think that Newland’s attitude to his wife and to her intelligence changes throughout the course of the novel?
- Mrs Manson Mingott, the matriarch of New York society and all it embodies, often surprises the reader with her unorthodox views of the very society she embodies. At one stage she says: ‘No, No; not one of them wants to be different; they’re as scared of it as the small pox’. Today’s society is very different to that of the 19th-century, but essentially, do you think that Mrs Mingott’s sentiments are any less true now as they were then?
- Newland Archer is aware of the claustrophobic social order that constricts any liberated thought any of his peers my have. Do you think that Newland himself is ever able to penetrate the confines of New York’s social order?
- Do you think that Newland would have ever run away with Ellen, even if May had not become pregnant when he was about to leave her?
- Do you think that May deliberately manipulated Ellen into finally leaving New York, therefore guaranteeing that Newland would remain with her?
- Why do the people in New York fear Ellen Olenska and European culture?
- Were you shocked when Newland, with the knowledge that finally both he and Ellen Olenska are free to be together, decides against meeting Ellen in Paris – preferring to remember her and their love as it was 30 years earlier? Why do you think he did that?
- Is Newland Archer’s ending a happy one?
- At the end of the novel, Newland’s dire prophecy he made 3 decades earlier materializes when his son marries a ‘Beaufort bastard’. Do you think that the marriage between Fanny and Dallas atones for their fathers’ social and moral shortcomings?
The Reef
The House Of Mirth
Ethan Frome
Summer
Bunner Sisters
The Custom Of The Country
The Portrait of a Lady ~ Henry James - read the guide
Middlemarch ~ George Eliot - read the guide
Edith Wharton ~ Hermione Lee
The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary ~ Gustave Flaubert
A Room with a View ~ E. M. Forster
The End of the Affair ~ Graham Greene
SUGGESTED FILMS
The Age of Innocence (1993), directed by Martin Scorsese starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder
The Crying Of Lot 49
One day Oedipa Maas, a housewife from Kinneret, California receives a letter from a law firm telling her that her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity has died and named her the executor of his estate.
Keen to faithfully execute her duty, she travels to Pierce's hometown and is dragged into a spiralling detective story, led astray by various characters whose ambiguous clues send her in many different directions.
Is she going mad or is she victim of a practical joke? Or is she just on drugs? You decide!
'The most impressive thing about the book,
is the way that Mr. Pynchon has turned the
traditional detective story into the ultimate microcosm
in a completely unprecedented and unique way'
Barnes & Noble reader review
'An exuberant, off beat talent…
this strange writer indulges us to the point of
being wildly funny, but the comedy is as black
and turbulent as storm clouds'.
Independent on Sunday
Thomas Pynchon was born on Long Island, New York, in 1937. He served in the Navy and graduated from Cornell, after which he worked as a technical writer for Boeing Aircraft. During this time, he turned to fiction writing and published his first novel, V., in 1963, to rave reviews.
He followed up this novel three years later with The Crying of Lot 49, a short but extremely complex novel. In a sense, The Crying of Lot 49 was a type of dress rehearsal for his long novel that succeeded it, Gravity's Rainbow (1973), which won the National Book Award and is perhaps the best-known long novel to emerge after World War II.
Pynchon's fourth major novel was called Vineland (1990), and in 1997, he published his historical novel, Mason and Dixon. Through all of these books, with his use of surrealism and creation of vast, varied, and incredible conspiracy theories, Pynchon has remained one of the most original and important of American novelists.
The Crying of Lot 49 is thought by many to be Pynchon's best work. Others disagree, arguing that The Crying of Lot 49 is simply Pynchon's most accessible work, its short length and streamlined (for Pynchon) plot allowing the reader to follow along with less work than his longer novels require. But no matter where The Crying of Lot 49 stands within Pynchon's body of work, there is no doubt that in its humour, story, and deep insight into American culture and beyond, the book is an American landmark.
Unfortunately, Thomas Pynchon does not give interviews.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Thomas Pynchon deliberately wrote in a way that defied interpretation. How
and to what effect is the problem of interpretation focused on in The Crying
of Lot 49?
- Why does Pynchon leave Oedipa's quest unresolved?
- Discuss the importance of historic references in the novel.
- 'The Crying of Lot 49 does not have any evident plot'. Is this true?
- Consider Pynchon's use of names in the novel. Do they fit their characters?
If not, why not?
- There are many references to communication in the novel. Why do you think
communication is so important in The Crying of Lot 49?
- At one point in The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa begins to wonder if
someone is 'putting her on', or if she is going mad. Which do you think it
is?
- The reader never finds out who is the buyer of Lot 49. Who do you think
it could be?
- How does Oedipa change over the course of the novel? How does her social
situation change?
- Discuss the ending of the novel. Do you feel that there is any sense of
resolution?
Gravity's Rainbow 1973
V 1963
Slow Learner 1984
Vineland 1990
Mason & Dixon 1997
Against the Day - released December 2006
The New York Trilogy ~ Paul Auster
Slaughterhouse 5 ~ Kurt Vonnegut
Pale Fire ~ Vladimir Nabokov
The Big Sleep ~ Raymond Chandler
The End Of The Affair
In 1939, Sarah Miles, a wife of a civil servant, and Maurice Bendrix, a writer of some acclaim, meet at a party. Under the pretence of research for Bendrix’s new novel they arrange a dinner date. At the end of the meal they kiss and this begins their affair. As they discreetly meet in Bendrix’s room their love and fear is played out against the background of the World War II and the Blitz. Until one fateful day when a bomb explodes outside Bendrix’s flat on and Sarah, without explanation, ends the affair.
Two years later, Bendrix sees Sarah’s husband, Henry, on a dark rainy night on Clapham Common. Henry is in some distress over Sarah’s recent erratic behaviour and reveals to Bendrix that he is thinking of having Sarah followed by a private detective. Bendrix offers to organise it for Henry, who promptly realises what an absurd idea it is.
However driven by his growing obsession with Sarah, Bendrix hires a private detective, Parkis, to discover who Sarah’s current lover is. When Parkis obtains Sarah’s diary it exposes her love for Bendix and more importantly her struggle with her belief in God. The man that it was assumed she was having an affair with is a rationalist minister, Symthe, who is trying to convince Sarah that God does not exist. However his speeches have the opposite effect on Sarah and persuade her to convert to Catholism. Shortly after this she becomes very ill and dies suddenly, leaving Henry and Bendrix bound together by their grief and desire to discover what they really believe in.
‘One of the most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody’s language’
William Faulkner
‘This novel had a great effect on my life...
This is not a sentimental book, or one full of the kindness of God,
in that both the man and the woman suffer the pain of loss and feel the heat of hell.
This novel persuaded me to become a Catholic’
Beryl Bainbridge, Guardian
‘Devastating study of the collision of different
kinds of faith, betrayal and commitment’
The Times
‘Greene’s novel of illicit love captures perfectly the atmosphere
of rainy wartime London – try to read this in one sitting if you can’
Daily Express
‘In a class by himself…the ultimate chronicler of
twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety’
William Golding
List of characters
Maurice Bendrix – a writer, who has a love affair with Sarah Miles
Henry Miles – civil servant
Sarah Miles – Henry’s wife, Maurice’s lover
Mr Savage – owner of the private detective agency
Mr Parkis – private detective working on Maurice’s case
Lancelot Parkis – Parkis’ son who he is training to be a private detective
Richard Symthe – a rationalist minster
Mr Peter Waterbury – a reviewer
Sylvia Black – Waterbury’s mentee
Father Crompton – a catholic priest
Mrs Bertram – Sarah’s mother
Henry Graham Greene was born on October 2, 1904 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. He was the fourth of six children. His mother was Marion Raymond Greene, a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. His father, Charles Henry Greene, was headmaster of his high school, for which he was tormented by fellow pupils. After a number of unsuccessful suicide attempts he was sent to a therapist who encouraged him to write as a means of healing.
Greene went on to Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied Modern History. It was here that Greene gained experience as an editor at The Oxford Outlook; developed an interest in politics after joining the Communist Party; and honed his skills at writing, with one novel Anthony Sant complete before he graduated.
After graduating with a BA in 1925, Greene was employed as a subeditor at the Nottingham Journal after two abortive positions at other companies. He disliked Nottingham and later satirized its sleazy quarters in his novel Brighton Rock.
Greene moved on to a job as a subeditor at The Times in London. There he married Vivien Dayrell-Browning in October 1927 for whom he had converted to Catholicism. They had a daughter, Lucy Caroline, and a son Francis. After a number of years he gave up his much-loved job to become a full-time writer.
Greene began his world-renowned travelling in part to satisfy his lust for adventure, and in part to seek out material for his writing. A trip to Sweden gave him the inspiration for England Made Me. An exhausting 400-mile trek through the jungles of Liberia not only gave Greene a near brush with death, but provided fodder for Journey Without Maps. During World War II, he worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in Sierra Leone, which became the setting for The Heart of the Matter. His journey to Mexico to witness the religious purges in 1938 was described in The Lawless Roads. Greene's horror of this Catholic persecution also led him to write The Power and the Glory, arguably the best novel of his career. It was both acclaimed (being the Hawthornden Prize winner in 1941) and condemned (by the Vatican). The frenetic globetrotting to troubled areas of the world continued until Greene was physically unable to do so in his later years.
Greene’s financial success as an author enabled him to associate with many famous figures of his time: T.S. Eliot, Herbert Read, Evelyn Waugh, Alexander Korda, Ian Fleming and Noel Coward, among others. He had many extra-marital affairs, and confessed he was ‘a bad husband and a fickle lover’, although he never revealed his affairs in his two autobiographies. He separated from his wife in 1948 but they never divorced. Towards the end of his life, Greene lived in Vevey, Switzerland with his companion Yvonne Cloetta. He died there peacefully on April 3, 1991.
Background to the novel
The book is dedicated to C who was Graham Greene’s mistress Lady Catherine Walston, married to a millionaire Labour MP Harry Walton. They started their affair in 1946 and it continued until the late 1950s. Some speculate that this affair was the basis for The End of the Affair, though Graham Greene never confirmed this. This speculation is supported by parallels between Greene’s own life and the book - Greene’s house on Clapham Common Northside was bombed during the Blitz, echoing the scene from the novel.
Though Greene destroyed Catherine’s letters she kept his and there exists over 30 years of correspondence, between 1946 and 1978, which formed the basis of Norman Sherry’s theories about Greene and Catherine’s relationship in his biography of the author.
Adaptations of The End of the Affair
The End of the Affair has been made into two films. First, in 1955 starring Deborah Kerr as Sarah and Van Johnson as Bendrix. It was nominated for a BAFTA film award.
In 1999, the film was remade starring Julianne Moore as Sarah and Ralph Fiennes as Maurice. It was nominated for two Oscars.
It was also transformed into an opera in 2004 by the American composer and pianist Jake Heggie.
Extract from Ways of Escape, a book of personal essays by Graham Greene, pp.114-115
Many a time I regretted pursuing ‘I’ along his dismal road and contemplated beginning The End of the Affair all over again with Bendrix, my leading character, seen from outside in the third person. I had never previously had to struggle so hard to lend the narrative interest. For example how could I vary the all-important ‘tone’ when it was one character who was always commenting? The tone had been set on the first page by Bendrix — ‘This is a record of hate far more than of love’ — and I dreaded to see the whole book smoked dry like a fish with his hatred. Dickens had somehow miraculously varied his tone [in Great Expectations], but when I tried to analyse his success, I felt like a colourblind man trying intellectually to distinguish one colour from another. For my book there were two shades of the same colour — obsessive love and obsessive hate; Mr. Parkis, the private detective, and his boy were my attempt to introduce two more tones, the humorous and the pathetic.
…The story…which now began to itch at my mind — of a man who was to be driven and overwhelmed by the accumulation of natural coincidences, until he broke and began to accept the incredible — the possibility of a God. Alas! It was an intention I betrayed. There is much that I like in the book — it seems to me more simply and clearly written than its predecessors and ingeniously constructed to avoid the tedium of the time sequence (I had learned something from my continual rereading of that remarkable novel The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford), but until I reached the final part I did not realize the formidable problem I had set myself. Sarah, the chief character, was dead, the book should have continued at least as long after her death as before, and yet, like her lover, Bendrix, I found I had no great appetite to continue now she was gone beyond recall and only a philosophic theme was left behind. I begin to hurry to the end, and although, in the last part, there are scenes, especially those which express the growth of tenderness between Bendrix and Sarah’s husband, which seem to me successful enough, I realised too late how I had been cheating the reader… The incident of the atheist Smythe’s strawberry mark (apparently cured by Sarah after her death) should have had no place in the book; every so-called miracle, like the curing of Parkis’s boy, ought to have had a completely natural explanation. The coincidences should have continued over the years, battering the mind of Bendrix, forcing on him a reluctant doubt of his own atheism. The last pages would have remained much as they were written (indeed I very much like the last pages), but I had spurred myself too quickly to the end.
So it was that in a later edition I tried to return nearer to my original intention. Smythe’s strawberry mark gave place to a disease of the skin which might have had a nervous origin and be susceptible to faith healing.
…The End of the Affair was a greater success with readers than with critics. I felt such doubt of it that I sent the typescript to my friend Edward Sackville-West and asked his advice. Should I put the book in a drawer and forget it? He answered me frankly that he didn’t care for the novel but nonetheless I should publish — we ought to have the vitality of the Victorians who never hesitated to publish the bad as well as the good. So publish I did. I was much comforted by words of praise from William Faulkner, and I was later grateful for the two years’ practice I had had in the use of the first person or I might have been afraid to use it in The Quiet American, a novel which imperatively demanded it, and which is, technically at least, perhaps a more successful book.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- ‘A story has no beginning or ends’ (p.1). Do you agree with this statement in regards to the structure of The End of the Affair?
- Do you think that Sarah and Bendrix were in love or lust?
- Is Greene correct when he says that the book only has two tones: ‘obsessive love and obsessive hate’?
- ‘I write a story. How can you prove that the events in it never happened, that the characters aren’t real?’ (p.139) Do you think that book is based on Greene’s own experiences? Look at different aspects of the novel including:
- Bendrix, the author
- the bomb explosion
- Sarah’s decision to convert to Catholicism
- the location of the book, Clapham Common
- In Ways of Escape Greene laments of using the first person ‘I’ for The End of the Affair. Is he correct to think it may have been the wrong perspective to use? What benefits and disadvantages would the third person have bought to the novel? Which do you think is best to convey the emotional and religious struggle: first or third person narration?
- Sarah claims that she is ‘a bitch and a fake’. Does she hide her true self from everyone, including herself? Who do you think Sarah really is?
- Sarah and Bendrix use the image of an onion as a code word for their love and it also becomes a metaphor for their affair. Do you think this is a good metaphor for the novel? Look at the way Bendrix reveals the story of their affair in retrospect.
- Did Henry know about Sarah’s affairs? Or was he truly blind to her actions?
- ‘War had helped us in a good many ways, and that was how I had almost come to regard war as a rather disreputable and unreliable accomplice in my affair.’ (p.45) How important is the setting and timing of the affair? Is the war an accomplice or an enemy?
- a) Does Bendrix accept ‘the possibility of God’? Or does God remain a mystery to him?
b) Does Sarah really work through her feelings about God?
- Sarah sticks to two promises that she doesn’t fully believe in: her marriage and her promise to God that if he saved Bendrix she would leave him. Does it seem believable that she would stick so unwavering to both? Why does she do it?
- ‘I look forward to these evening walks of ours,’ Henry said.’ (p.160) What do you make of Bendrix and Henry’s relationship at the end of the novel? Is this the beginning of another kind of affair?
- ‘The film was not a good film, and at moments it was acutely painful to see situations that been so real to me twisted into the stock clichés of the screen.’ (p.32) Bendrix considers the adaptation of his book into a film. Most films rely on the action, the visual and conversation to drive the plot. Do you think that a book that examines inner turmoil can be turned into a successful film? If you and your reading group have time watch one of the film adaptations of The End of the Affair so you can discuss whether you prefer the book or the film adaptation.
NOVELS
Babbling April (1925)
The Man Within (1929)
The Name of Action (1930)
Rumour at Nightfall (1932)
Stamboul Train ( Orient Express ) (1932)
It's a Battlefield (1934)
England made Me (1935)
The Bear Fell Free (1935)
A Gun for Sale ( This Gun for Hire ) (1936)
Brighton Rock (1938) – see reading guide
The Confidential Agent (1939)
The Power and The Glory ( The Labyrinthine Ways ) (1940)
The Ministry of Fear (1943)
The Heart of the Matter (1948)
The Third Man (1950)
The End of the Affair (1951)
The Quiet American (1955)
Our Man in Havana (1958)
A Burnt-Out Case (1961)
A Sense of Reality (1963)
The Comedians (1966)
Travels with My Aunt (1969)
The Honorary Consul (1973)
The Human Factor (1978)
Dr. Fischer of Geneva, or The Bomb Party (1980)
Monsignor Quixote (1982)
Getting to Know the General (1985)
The Tenth Man (1985)
The Captain and the Enemy (1988)
SHORT STORIES
A Little Place Off the Edgware Road (1941)
All But Empty (1947)
Awful When You Think of It
Beauty
Chagrin in Three Parts
Cheap in August
The Destructors
Doctor Crombie
The End of the Party
The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen
May We Borrow Your Husband?
Mortmain
The Over-Night Bag
The Root of All Evil
A Shocking Accident
Two Gentle People
The Last Word and Other Stories
Collected Short Stories (1987)
TRAVEL
Journey without Maps (1936)
The Lawless Roads ( Another Mexico ) (1939)
In Search of a Character
Getting to Know the General
ESSAYS
Yours etc.
Reflections
Mornings in the Dark
Collected Essays
PLAYS
The Potting Shed (1957)
The Return Of A.J. Raffles (1975)
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A Sort of Life (1971)
Ways of Escape (1980)
Fragments of an Autobiography
A World of my Own
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
The Little Train
The Little Horse-Bus
The Little Steamroller
The Little Fire Engine
The Painted Veil ~ W. Somerset Maugham
The Easter Parade ~ Richard Yates
The Great Gatsby ~ F Scott Fitzgerald
Great Expectations ~ Charles Dickens
Under the Net ~ Iris Murdoch
On Chesil Beach ~ Ian McEwan
The Good Soldier ~ Ford Madox Ford
The Life of Graham Greene volumes 1 – 3 ~ Norman Sherry
An article from Daily Telegraph about Graham Greene’s love poems to mistress who inspired The End of the Affair
Wikipedia: Graham Greene
Wikipedia: The End of the Affair
Catherine Walston/Graham Greene papers
Greeneland: The World of Graham Greene
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Of all John Fowles' novels The French Lieutenant's Woman received the most universal acclaim and today holds a very special place in the canon of post-war English literature. From the god-like stance of the nineteenth-century novelist that he both assumes and gently mocks, to the last detail of dress, idiom and manners, his book is an immaculate recreation of Victorian England. Not only is it the epic love story of two people of insight and imagination seeking escape from the cant and tyranny of their age, The French Lieutenant's Woman is also a brilliantly sustained allegory of the decline of the twentieth-century passion for freedom.
'A brilliant success. It is a passionate piece of writing
as well as an immaculate example of storytelling'
Financial Times
'A splendid, lucid, profoundly satisfying work of art,
a book which I want almost immediately to read again'
New Statesman
'Brilliant - an artist of great imaginative power'
Sunday Times
'Compulsively readable'
Irish Times
John Fowles was born in Leighton-on-Sea, Essex in 1926, where he lived until the outbreak of the Second World War. He was educated at Bedford School and New College, Oxford, where he read French and German. After graduating he taught English at the University of Poitiers and then at the Anagyriou School at Spetses. He became a full-time writer in 1963.
His best-known fiction includes his first novel, The Collector (1963), the story of a young clerk, a butterfly collector, who kidnaps a young woman; The Magus (1966), set on a Greek island where a schoolteacher confronts a series of disturbing events; and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), a formally experimental novel that tells the tale of Victorian palaeontologist Charles Smithson and his involvement with the notorious and enigmatic Sarah Woodruff. The French Lieutenant's Woman won the Silver Pen Award and the WH Smith Literary Award and was adapted as a film in 1981 with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Fowles' other fiction includes Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1982) and A Maggot (1985).
John Fowles lives in Lyme Regis in Dorset on the south coast of England and
was for a period curator of the local museum. He is an avid collector of old
books and china and is a fascinated student of fossils. The Tree, published
in 1992, is partly a memoir of childhood and explores Fowles' enduring love
of nature. He has also published a Short History of Lyme Regis in 1982
and is the editor of Thomas Hardy's England (1984). His latest book,
The Journals: Volume 1 (2003), is the first volume of the journal he
began as a student at Oxford in the late 1940s and continued over the next half
century. John Fowles died in 2005.
Interview taken from LIDIA VIANU, Desperado Essay-Interviews, Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2006:
What is your favourite activity (writing included)?
I think very definitely studying and remembering nature; what we call natural history over here.
How do you feel about critics who try to interview you? Do you welcome/ tolerate/ hate attempts at making you explain what should actually be enjoyed and left at that (your work)?
I am grateful for their interest. I am certainly not against people like academics (or you) for their just curiosity.
What else beside fiction have you written? Poetry? Criticism? Drama?
I have tried to write poetry all my life and am indeed hoping to publish a new form I have only very recently evolved. I have written a certain amount of criticism, mostly not yet published. My most important other work concerns a diary I kept through most of my life. I hope that will say what I mean. It should come out next year.
What is your opinion on the film made after The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the change in perspective? How do you feel about the film made after The Collector, which totally ignores the best part of the book, Miranda’s diary, the necessary half of the scales, without which the novel loses its intensity?
I did, when younger, study the cinema a good deal, and thought about it. I certainly don’t feel it is effortlessly superior, especially in its French and Italian forms.
Which do you favour, book or film? What is the future of literature, in your opinion? Will people ever stop reading in favour of the screen?
I am highly suspicious of Hollywood and think most of the best cinema in Europe is French, German and Italian.
What question would you most like to be asked but have not yet been asked so far?
The only question is: Who am I? I’ve lived 74 years and still don’t begin to know.
What is it you most hate about interviews? What question is most hateful of all?
It’s generally the questions that give my ignorance the most scope to extend. Every answer should really begin: ‘I don’t know, but I suppose...’
I have guided dozens of graduation papers on your work at Bucharest University. Do you like the idea or would you like to stay away from academics?
I am honoured to have been so popular. Of course I like the idea, above all I try to be European. Academics are obviously very useful and I would hate to deny their potential importance – like you and this letter.
If a student came and asked you how your personal life was woven into your novels, what part reality played in your plots, would you tell him the truth?
I should try to tell him the truth, but I’m not sure that I could. Knowing who you are and what your faults are is the great problem for all of us writers.
How much of your life have you actually put in your books? What has really happened to you out of what you have written? Which novel is most autobiographical, if any?
I have tried to fit all my life in. I suppose the most autobiographical book changes in everything I write. I have already mentioned Mantissa. I think most writers must use the realities that life has brought them.
Is literature confession, imagination, game?
I think literature is half imagination and half game. One’s feeling alter, sometimes very greatly, from one creation to the next.
Is love interest (which Woolf so much hated but could not do without) crucial? You treat it with irony, but your reader usually does not. Do you welcome emotionally involved readers?
I wouldn’t say that I rely totally on love interest, although I do very much like emotionally involved readers.
What is your most ardent wish?
To be understood and to teach. I suppose in a way to sell the ethical aspect of my work.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- How does Charles's relationship with Sam anticipate the changes in social
balance which were to come with the new century and the First World War? Do
you agree with his 'astounding theory' that 'the lower orders were secretly
happier than the upper'?
- How do the characters' choices in the novel reflect the radical evolutionary
theories that shook the Victorian age? We are told that Charles is a passionate
Darwinist but also that he has misunderstood Darwin. How does Charles interpret
Darwin for his own benefit? What is the effect of setting Charles's fall in
a wider context?
- 'I live among people the world tells me are kind, pious, Christian people.
And they seem to me crueller than the cruellest heathens, stupider than the
stupidest animals. I cannot believe that the truth is so. That life is without
understanding or compassion.'
How does Fowles examine the theme of religious hypocrisy in the novel? Are there any characters that display true compassion in the novel? What do the characters' attitudes towards charity, immorality and death tell us about the role of religion in Victorian society? Why do you think Mrs Poulteney finds Sarah so threatening?
-
'You must not think she is like us men, able to reason clearly, examine her motives, understand why she behaves as she does. One must see her as being in a mist.'
Think about Dr Grogan's analysis of Sarah as a manipulative hysteric and how Fowles plays with the Victorian assumption that all women are irrational. Why does Sarah have such power over Charles? Do you think Sarah can be seen as an early feminist? - What is the effect of the author appearing as a character in his own novel?
Think about the different ways in which Fowles intrudes on the novel and the
various voices he adopts as narrator.
-
Look at the three alternative endings Fowles offers us. How does the author's offering of a choice of endings mirror what Sarah does to Charles in the novel? Do you find the choice of endings disturbing or liberating?
A Maggot
Daniel Martin
The Aristos
The Collector
The Ebony Tower
The Magus
The Tree
Wormholes
Possession ~ A.S. Byatt
Alias Grace ~ Margaret Atwood
Waterland ~ Graham Swift
History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters ~ Julian Barnes
Midnight's Children ~ Salman Rushdie
Kepler ~ John Banville
Ulverton ~ Adam Thorpe
The Sotweed Factor ~ John Barth
G. ~ John Berger
The Rites of Passage ~ William Golding
The Heart of Darkness: And Youth
Youth
Youth appears as a precursor to Heart of Darkness, and is the first story Conrad wrote to feature Charlie Marlow. In it, Marlow tells the story of his first beleaguered sea voyage as first mate, a position of responsibility he is eminently proud of. From Liverpool the crew sail down to Southampton, only to be docked immediately due to the aged ships leaky hull. In time they set off, bound for Bangkok and the exotic Asian tropics. Along the voyage Marlow remains the eternal optimist on board, revelling in his youth. The journey however is doomed to failure, with the crew abandoning close to their destination as their cargo of coal is set ablaze and engulfs the ship.
Heart of Darkness
As dusk settles on the Thames, five men sit on the deck of a pleasure ship. One of these men is Charlie Marlow, a seaman, who begins to recount in mesmerising tones the story of his journey into Africa as captain of a riverboat. With the help of a relative, Marlow takes a job with the Company, a business involved in trade on the Congo. He travels to Africa and then inland towards the Congo river, where he comments on the oppressive conditions and brutality prevalent in the Company stations. Along the route he notices the suffering of the local people, forced to work and cruelly treated by the European traders.
Marlow eventually arrives at his departure point, the Central station, only to find that his ship is badly damaged. While waiting for replacement parts Marlow hears about the enigmatic trader positioned upriver, a man named Kurtz, the subject of sinister rumours and outlandish claims. After a tense wait Marlow sets off into the dense interior, accompanied by a nervous crew. The silence of the jungle is broken only by the ominous sound of drumming. Life on the river is brutal and unknown threats lurk in the darkness. Marlow’s mission leads him into conflict with the others who haunt the forest. Navigating perilous waterways, an attack which leaves one man dead, and an impenetrable mist, the ship reaches Kurtz’s station.
The mysterious trader emerges from the forest, carried aloft by a group of natives. He is close to death, and is taken to his cabin, a wooden hut surrounded on all sides with human heads impaled on spikes. Marlow is able to bring Kurtz aboard the riverboat, and the ship is turned around to rapidly retrace its route downriver. His health rapidly failing Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a package including an expansive report on the local population. Soon after Kurtz dies, uttering his last words— ‘The horror! The horror!’ Marlow, overcome, also falls ill and barely survives, eventually returning to Europe.
This short but complex and often ambiguous story, a novel which ‘swells in the imagination’ has been the basis of several films and plays, and continues to provoke interpretation and discussion today.
‘One of the most compelling and influential works of English literature in the last century’ Independent
Background
Heart of Darkness was based on Conrad’s personal experiences in Africa. He had served as the captain of a Congo riverboat eight years before he wrote the novel. During the voyage he became ill and was forced to return to Europe.
Józef Teodor Konrad Nałecz Korzeniowski was born in the Ukraine on 3 December 1857. His parents were Polish and had both died in exile by the time Conrad was eleven. His uncle then became his guardian and looked after him in Krakow until he was sixteen when he went to sea and sailed on French and British ships. He was made British citizen in 1886 and changed his name to Joseph Conrad. In 1889 Conrad visited the Congo and his experiences there inspired Heart of Darkness. In 1894 he published his first novel, Almayer’s Folly and went on to write nineteen more as well as many short stories, essays and a memoir. In 1896 he married Jessie George and they later had two sons. Conrad died on 3 August 1924.
None available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
-
In what ways does Conrad explore the relations between Africa and Europe in Heart of Darkness?
-
To what extent do you think Heart of Darkness represents a criticism of Imperialism? What does the novel suggest about colonial enterprise?
-
How is darkness represented throughout the book? Does it’s meaning fluctuate? What is it used to symbolise?
-
What is the importance of rivers in the novel? What do they represent?
-
‘No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which I remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire’ What impact does the journey have on Marlow? Does he ever overcome the darkness?
-
Who is the true hero of the book, Marlow or Kurtz?
-
Examining the characters of Kurtz’s intended and his native mistress, explore Conrad’s representation of women in Heart of Darkness. How do they compare to the central male characters?
-
‘The last word he pronounced was — your name’
Why does Marlow lie to Kurtz’s fiancée about Kurtz’s last words? -
"He cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath, "The horror! The horror!"" To what horror does Kurtz allude in his dying sentence?
-
Explore the theme of youth in Conrad’s short story. What does it come to signify?
-
In what ways does Marlow’s character alter between Youth and Heart of Darkness? What could be the cause of these changes?
OTHER BOOKS BY JOSEPH CONRAD
1895 Almayer's Folly
1896 An Outcast of the Islands
1897 The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
1899 Heart of Darkness
1900 Lord Jim
1901 The Inheritors (with Ford Madox Ford)
1902 Typhoon (begun 1899)
1903 Romance (with Ford Madox Ford)
1904 Nostromo
1907 The Secret Sharer
1907 The Secret Agent
1911 Under Western Eyes
1912 Freya of the Seven Isles
1913 Chance
1915 Victory
1917 The Shadow Line
1919 The Arrow of Gold
1920 The Rescue
1923 The Nature of a Crime (with Ford Madox Ford)
1925 Suspense (unfinished, published posthumously)
Nine Nights ~ Bernardo Carvalho (Vintage, 2007)
Blood River ~ Tim Butcher (Chatto & Windus, 2007) – Blood River website
Conrad First: a digital archive of every newspaper and magazine in which the work of Joseph Conrad appeared between 1896 and 1935
Joseph Conrad page
The Heat Of The Day
Wartime London, where the ‘hot yellow sands of each afternoon’ bring little relief from the fears of the night before, and the dead – alive yesterday – still inhabit the city. A new intimacy evolves among those who have not fled, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella is part of this society. Living in strange rooms, she holds on to the past and weaves the present around Robert, her lover, and Roderick, her son.
Then she discovers that Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy and that Harrison, who is trailing Robert, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Slowly, the filmsy structures of Stella’s life begin to break into pieces around her.
‘I have long considered The Heat of the Day her masterpiece’
Rosamund Lehmann
‘Behind the delicate veil of her words,
a world tensely charged broods,
a world never static, but changing in light,
shadow and colour as it spins on its fatal course,
taking its victims with it towards some foreseen abyss.
Never has her verbal felicity been greater;
atmosphere, language, characters and plot
are woven together in an exquisite awareness’
Roe Macaulay
‘The first virtue of Miss Elizabeth Bowen is that
she startles us by sheer originality of mind and boldness of sensibility,
into seeking our world afresh…
Out of the plainest things – the drawing of a curtain –
she can make something electric and urgent’
V. S. Pritchett
Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer and landowner. She was educated at Downe House School in Kent. Her book Bowen's Court (1942) is the history of her family and their house in County Cork, and Seven Winters (1943) contains reminiscences of her Dublin childhood. In 1923 she married Alan Cameron, who held an appointment with the BBC and who died in 1952. She travelled a good deal, dividing most of her time between London and Bowen's Court, which she inherited.
Elizabeth Bowen is considered by many to be one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century. She was awarded the CBE in 1948, and received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1949 and from Oxford University in 1956. In the same year she was appointed Lacy Martin Donnelly Fellow at Bryn Mawr College in the United States. In 1965 she was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature. Elizabeth Bowen died in 1973.
There is no author interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- How important is it that the main events of the story coincide with the major events of the Second World War?
- What are your thoughts on the characters’ experience of living in wartime London?
- Why is the theme of allegiance to one’s country and one’s loved ones of such great importance to this story?
- Bowen is much concerned with the sense of place in her novels. What importance do the various houses have in this book?
- In what ways does Robert’s visit to Holme Dene parallel the dramatic scene in the restaurant between Stella, Harrison and Louie on the same night?
- The upstairs in Holme Dene ‘had been planned with a playful circumlocution – corridors, archways, recesses, half-landings, ledges, niches, and balustrades combined to fuddle any sense of direction and check, so far as possible, progress from room to room’ (p.256). How far do you think this is a metaphor for the life of intrigue which Robert, as a spy, lives and Harrison, as an investigator, follows?
- Do you consider the absence of men, such as fathers and brothers, in the novel as significant?
- Is the story humorous?
- What is the significance of the references to ghosts in the novel?
OTHER BOOKS BY ELIZABETH BOWEN
FICTION
Encounters
The Hotel
The Last September
Friends and Relations
To the North
The House in Paris
The Death of the Heart
The Shelbourne
A World of Love
The Little Girls
The Good Tiger
Eva Trout
NON-FICTION
Bowen's Court
Seven Winters
The Human Factor ~ Graham Greene
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ~ John Le Carré
The Old Country ~ Alan Bebbett
An Englishman Abroad ~ Alan Bebbett
The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. For eighty-four days, Santiago, an aged Cuban fisherman, has set out to sea and returned empty-handed. Confident that his unproductive streak will soon come to an end, Santiago resolves to sail out farther than usual the following day.
On the eighty-fifth day, he sails his skiff far beyond the island's shallow coastal waters and ventures into the Gulf Stream where a magnificent marlin takes the bait that Santiago has placed one hundred fathoms deep in the waters. For two days and two nights, Santiago battles with the elements above and beneath the sea's surface. On the third day the fish tires, and Santiago, sleep-deprived, aching, and nearly delirious, manages to pull the marlin in close enough to kill it with his harpoon.
Saddened by the death of his foe, but reinvigorated by his success, Santiago begins the voyage home with the marlin tied to the flank of his skiff. But soon, predators more deadly than Man latch on to the marlin's scent, and Santiago must use all his cunning and strength to battle the schools of sharks that crave his prize.
Hemingway's beautifully crafted novella explores the grace and grief of man's
challenge to the natural world and the heroism that leads to final glory.
'The best short story Hemingway has written …
no page of this beautiful master-work could have
been done better or differently'
Sunday Times
'It is unsurpassed in Hemingway's oeuvre.
Every word tells and there is not a word too many'
Anthony Burgess
'A quite wonderful example of narrative art.
The writing is as taut, and at the same time as lithe
and cunningly played out, as the line on
which the old man plays with the fish'
Guardian
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899. In the 1920s, he began to achieve fame as a chronicler of the disaffection felt by many American youth after World War One. His novels Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929) and the best-selling For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) established him as a dominant literary voice of his time.
The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952, won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it clinched the Nobel Prize for Hemingway in 1954. It was the last novel published in his lifetime. Despite the soberly life-affirming tone of the novella, Hemingway was, at the end of his life, more and more prone to debilitating bouts of depression. He committed suicide in 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho.
No author interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Ernest Hemingway's work is renowned for its glorification of machismo. But
in The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago fails to return the marlin to
his village in tact. Although he loses his battle with the sharks, the novella
ends with Santiago as a hero. What is his accomplishment?
-
On four separate occasions Hemingway invokes Christian and crucifixion symbolism in his descriptions of Santiago. See if you can identify all four occasions and discuss with your group Hemingway's purpose in portraying Santiago as a martyr.
- 'You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought.
You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when
he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to
kill him. Or is it more?'
-
How does Santiago's relationship with the marlin differ from his relationship with the sharks? Why is his attitude towards the two species so different?
-
There is a strong father/son bond between Santiago and Manolin, but it is often unclear which is the father and which is the son. In what way do Santiago and Manolin play these roles and when are they reversed?
-
'He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.'
-
Santiago dreams of the lions on the beach three times in the novel. What do they represent for him?
OTHER BOOKS BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises
Across the River and into the Trees
Death in the Afternoon
Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Green Hills of Africa
Men Without Women
Moveable Feast
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
To Have and Have Not
The Torrents of Spring
True at First Light
Winner Take Nothing
The Iceman Cometh ~ Eugene O'Neill
The Grapes of Wrath ~ John Steinbeck
In Cold Blood ~ Truman Capote
The Outsider ~ Richard Wright
The Portrait of a Lady
Widely regarded as Henry James’ masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) is a profound study of personal freedom, responsibility and sexuality set against the constraints of late-Victorian European society. As James himself put it, the novel is a tale of a young woman ‘affronting her destiny’. Like much of James’ fiction it also deals with the differences between the Old World and the New, and the experience of Americans in Europe.
Following the death of her father, Isabel Archer accompanies her aunt to England to stay with her cousins at their estate outside London. She is determined to live an independent life and, in the spirit of this endeavour, promptly turns down two marriage proposals from an American suitor and an eligible English aristocrat. Upon the death of her uncle she inherits a vast fortune, effectively enabling her to realise the independence of which she has always dreamed. However, during a trip to Florence she becomes engaged to the dilettante Gilbert Osmond, who seems to have nothing to recommend him but his exceptional taste and delicacy of manner. Scared by the passions of her former lovers, Osmond’s quietness attracts her. But fortune turns upon Isabel and the marriage is a very unhappy one. Osmond treats Isabel as a charming addition to his artfully created and contrived existence; she lacks the very independence she valued so highly. But when Isabel is given the possibility of freedom, she finds herself torn between her duty and her desires.
‘Henry James is as solitary in the history of the novel
as Shakespeare is in the history of poetry’
Graham Greene
‘The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in
giving one the sense of having met somebody far
too radiantly good for this world’
Rebecca West
‘Subtle and sophisticated and concerned with
psychological nuance and social acceptability’
Joanna Trollope
‘James is the master of making what is not
said the most important thing on the page’
Kate Atkinson
‘I read Portrait of a Lady by Henry James maybe once a year.
I just love the story. I love the pace of it’
Colm Toibin
‘He was a pioneer of the psychological novel’
Guardian
‘Fear stalks James's pages like grotesquerie in Dickens,
like testosterone in Hemingway, like magic in Angela Carter’
Independent on Sunday
Henry James was born in New York in 1843 into a wealthy and intellectual family. In his youth he travelled extensively in Europe and studied with tutors in Geneva, London, Paris, Bologna and Bonn. Aged nineteen James returned to America to enter the Harvard Law School, but soon gave up the law in favour of writing. He published his first short story, ‘A Tragedy of Errors’ in Atlantic Monthly in 1865. After a brief spell in Paris, James first moved to London and then later to Rye, in Sussex, where he lived until his death in 1916. He became a British citizen in 1915 to declare his loyalty to his adopted country and to protest against America’s refusal to enter the war on behalf of Britain. James was an acclaimed literary figure in his own lifetime and counted among his friends such luminaries as Robert Louis Stevenson, Edith Wharton and Joseph Conrad. As well as being a prolific novelist, he was also an astute critic, travel writer and biographer.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
There is no interview with Henry James available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Henry James opens The Portrait of a Lady calling it a ‘simple story’. What does he mean by this - is he merely being disingenuous?
- Henrietta Stackpole says that Isabel has ‘got new ideas over here’, referring to how she has changed her views and ideals since she left America. How does James juxtapose the ideas and morals of the Old and New Worlds?
- ‘I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all. I don’t wish to be a mere sheep in the flock.’ Is Isabel actually in a position to make her own decisions, or is it merely the illusion of choice?
- Many of James’ characters in this novel have grand ambitions: Isabel her desire for personal independence; Madame Merle her lust for success; Gilbert Osmond his need to be distinguished. What is James’ opinion of ambition?
- Why does Isabel marry a man who she herself claims is a ‘nonentity’?
- Much has been made about James’ decision to have Isabel return to Osmond at the end of the novel – some say it is anti-feminist, others say it is conforming to the conventions of the time. Discuss what would have happened if Isabel had not gone back, and how differently we would see the rest of the novel.
- The Portrait of a Lady hangs on the characterisation of the heroine Isabel Archer. What do you think of Isabel? Do you sympathise with her?
- Are Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle evil or merely selfish? Discuss in relation to characters in other books you have read.
- To what extent would you say The Portrait of a Lady is a tragedy?
- How relevant do you think the issues of this novel are for women today?
OTHER BOOKS BY HENRY JAMES
NOVELS
Watch and Ward (1871)
Eugene Pickering (1874)
Roderick Hudson (1875)
The American (1877)
The Europeans (1878)
An International Episode (1879)
The Diary of Man of Fifty (1879)
Daisy Miller (1879)
Confidence (1880)
Washington Square (1880)
The Princess Casamassima (1886)
The Bostonians (1886)
The Patagonia (1889)
The Tragic Muse (1890)
The Lesson of the Master (1892)
The Private Life (1893)
The Other House (1896)
The Spoils of Poynton (1897)
What Maisie Knew (1897)
The Awkward Age (1899)
A Little Tour in France (1900)
The Sacred Fount (1901)
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
The Aspern Papers (1908)
The Finer Grain (1910)
The Outcry (1911)
The Sense of the Past (unfinished, published posthumously in 1917)
The Ivory Tower (unfinished, published posthumously in 1917)
NOVELLAS AND STORIES
A Passionate Pilgrim (1871)
Madame de Mauves (1874)
Daisy Miller (1878)
A Bundle of Letters (1879)
The Author of Beltraffio (1884)
A London Life (1888)
The Pupil (1891)
The Real Thing (1892)
The Death of the Lion (1894)
The Coxon Fund (1894)
The Next Time (1895)
The Altar of the Dead (1895)
The Turn of the Screw (1898)
In the Cage (1898)
Europe (1899)
Paste (1899)
The Great Good Place (1900)
Mrs. Medwin (1900)
The Birthplace (1903)
The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
The Jolly Corner (1908)
PLAYS
Pyramus and Thisbe (1869)
Still Waters (1871)
A Change of Heart (1872)
Guy Domville (1895)
MEMOIR
A Small Boy and Others (1913)
Notes of a Son and Brother (1914)
The Middle Years (1917)
NON-FICTION AND CRITICISM
French Poets and Novelists (1875)
Hawthorne (1879)
A Little Tour in France (1884)
The Art of Fiction (1884)
Picture and Text (1893)
French Poets and Novelists (1878)
Partial Portraits (1888)
Essays in London and Elsewhere (1893)
William Wetmore Story and his friends (1903)
English Hours (1905)
The American Scene (1907)
Italian Hours (1909)
Notes on Novelists (1914)
Within the Rim and Other Essays (1918)
The Master (2004) ~ Colm Toibin: Booker-shortlisted novelisation of James’ life and in particular his years living in Rye. Sharply imagined and very vivid, it deals both with James’ complicated emotional life, and the process of writing.
Author, Author (2004) ~ David Lodge:
The Line of Beauty (2004) ~ Alan Hollinghurst: Booker-winning novel widely praised as Jamesian in its language; the central character is also writing a PhD on Henry James.
The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel (2006) ~ David Lodge
ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES
Henry James website
The Red House Mystery
THE BOOK
TO
JOHN VINE MILNE
MY DEAR FATHER,
Like all really nice people, you have a weakness for detective stories, and feel that there are not enough of them. So, after all that you have done for me, the least that I can do for you is to write you one. Here it is: with more gratitude and affection than I can well put down here.
A.A.M.
The Red House Mystery is set in a beautiful country house that belongs to bachelor Mark Ablett. With house party guests assembled, garrulous servants, a murder behind a locked door and a curious disappearance – the scene is set for a perfect Golden Age detective story.
At breakfast on the first day of the house party, Mark learns that his wayward brother from Australia will be making an unexpected visit to the Red House that very day. Mark sends his guests off to play a round of golf and prepares to meet his brother, Robert Ablett. Later on, Robert is seen approaching the Red House and shortly after that, the sultry silence of the summer’s afternoon is violently interrupted by a gunshot. Robert is found dead and Mark has gone missing…
Another interesting character makes an appearance at the Red House just after the gunshot is fired: the inimitable Antony Gillingham. He is a charismatic traveller and adventurer who is rich enough to please himself and move from profession to profession – able to apply himself to an any occupation that interests him. Antony ostensibly arrives to visit one of Mark Ablett’s house guests, Bill Beverley, but soon assumes the role of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and sets about solving the curious mystery of the murder of Robert and the disappearance of Mark Ablett.
The story is filled with eccentric characters, secret passages, hidden murder weapons and incriminating evidence, false trails and dead-ends, unrequited love, alcoholism, betrayal and duplicitous relationships. The final pages of the novel reveal not only the unlikely killer, but also the unlikely victim.
‘I love his writing’
P.G.Wodehouse
About detective fiction
The Red House Mystery was the first and last detective novel that A.A. Milne ever wrote. He set out to write the perfect murder mystery and produced a truly classic detective novel.
Detective fiction as a genre has its origins dating back as far as 1748 with the publication of Voltaire’s Zadig, but it is generally accepted that Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) really brought this genre of fiction to life. Poe created a murder mystery formula that has been successful ever since – the primary concern of the plot is getting at the truth, and the usual means of going about this is through a process combining intuitive logic, shrewd observation, and insightful inference. It is, however, Wilkie Collins’ Moonstone (1868) which has largely been credited with establishing the tenets of classic twentieth-century detective fiction. And these are:
- A country house as the scene of the crime
- An inside job
- A locked room murder scenario
- An amateur investigator
- A bungling local constabulary
- False suspects
- The least likely suspect is often the guilty party
- A reconstruction of the crime
- A final twist in the plot
Dramatis personae of The Red House Mystery
Mrs Stevens – Mark Ablett’s house keeper at the Red House
Audrey Stevens – The parlormaid
Elsie – The housemaid
Mark Ablett – Bachelor, patron of the arts and writer
Robert Ablett – Mark Ablett’s wayward brother
Mr Matthew Cayley – Mark Ablett’s cousin, secretary and beneficiary
Mr Bill Beverley – A guest in Mark Ablett’s home, Antony Gillingham’s friend and novice investigator
Antony Gillingham – Man of the world; good friend to Bill Beverley, and novice investigator
Major Rumbold – A guest in Mark Ablett’s home, and sometimes history writer
Miss Ruth Norris – A guest in Mark Ablett’s home, actress and sometimes golfer
Miss Betty Calladine – A guest in Mark Ablett’s home
Alan Alexander Milne was a prolific writer but is best known for his children’s writing, in particular, his creation of the Winnie-the-Pooh children’s stories. This success overshadowed all of his other work and his tremendous versatility as an author. Before the success of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne regularly contributed to the humour magazine, Punch, and wrote poetry, plays and novels – including The Red House Mystery.
In 1913 he married Dorothy de Sélincourt and in 1920, Christopher Robin Milne was born. In 1924 Milne wrote a collection of children’s poems When We Were Very Young and in 1925 he wrote Gallery of Children and other stories that became part of the Winnie-the-Pooh canon. As Christopher Robin grew older, Milne gave up writing for children – his primary source of inspiration having grown up.
The phenomenal success of Winnie-the-Pooh plagued Milne, whose main aim was to write whatever he pleased and who had support for each of the many, varied works he produced – until the publication and success of Winnie-the-Pooh. Milne wrote because he was passionate about the subject and form of his writing and is known to have exclaimed: ‘the only excuse which I have yet discovered for writing anything is that I want to write it; and I should be as proud to be delivered of a Telephone Directory con amore as I should be ashamed to create a Blank Verse Tragedy at the bidding of others.’
The success of Winnie-the-Pooh, in addition to eliminating Milne’s market for adult books, also wrecked havoc on his family life. His son, Christopher Robin, began to resent the attention that the stories brought him – feeling that his father exploited his childhood for monetary gain. Writing in his autobiography, Christopher Milne states: ‘It seemed to me almost that my father had got where he was by climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and left me nothing but empty fame’. He went on to criticise his father’s exploitation of him in two other books of poetry by his father, When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927), in particular criticising one of the poems, Vespers, by saying it was: ‘the one work that has brought me over the years more toe-curling, fist-clenching, lip-biting embarrassment than any other’.
Milne had a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 and finally died an invalid in 1956. After his death, his wife sold the rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh characters to Walt Disney. Royalties received from Walt Disney are paid to the Royal Literary Fund to provide income to the Fund’s fellowship scheme which places authors in British universities.
There is no author interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
Please note that the questions reveal the plot.
- ‘There was no point in looking for a difficult solution to the problem, when the easy solution had no flaw in it. But at the same time Birch would have preferred the difficult solution, simply because there was more credit attached to it.’ Why did Inspector Birch not think to formally identify the body found in the room or craft any alternative theories about the murder and Mark’s disappearance?
- The novel allows the reader scope to direct suspicion at a number of characters. Inspector Birch certainly suspects Antony Gillingham. Who did you suspect at first?
- Were you shocked to learn the true nature of the mystery at the end of the novel?
- Cayley’s crime was almost perfect – Mark Ablett would have almost certainly been the prime suspect, his reputation forever tarnished and his memory never mourned, in the case of Robert’s (his own) murder. Why do you think Cayley confesses to Antony so readily at the end of the novel?
- Did you pity Cayley? Do you think he was driven by love for Miss Calladine or by revenge for Mark?
- Bill Beverley plays the roll of the very naïve ‘Watson’ and Antony Gillingham the suave ‘Sherlock Holmes’. Do you think that the classic murder mystery would be complete, or as entertaining, without the ubiquitous Sherlock and Watson duo?
- The Red House Mystery was Milne’s first and last attempt at writing detective fiction – why do you think he chose never to write another crime novel, even though he had a passion for detective stories? Was it because of the success of Winnie-the-Pooh or because he felt he had conquered the detective fiction genre with The Red House Mystery?
- At various points in the novel, the narrator pauses and addresses the reader directly, for example when Antony Gillingham first appears in the story: ‘He is an important person to this story, so it is well we should know something about him before letting him loose in it’. Do you think this is Milne’s subtle acknowledgment that the story is ultimately a light-hearted piece of entertainment rather than an attempt to create a serious murder mystery with a water-tight plot and infallible characters?
- Detective fiction, including The Red House Mystery, has been criticised for having improbable plots and flat, predictable characters. Do you think that this is necessarily true?
Lovers in London,1905
Once on a Time, 1917
Mr. Pim, 1921
Two People, 1931
Four Days’ Wonder, 1933
Chlöe Marr, 1946
Peace With Honour, 1934
It’s Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer, 1939
War With Honour, 1940
Year In, Year Out, 1952
PUNCH ARTICLES
The Day's Play, 1910Once a Week, 1914
The Holiday Round, 1912
The Sunny Side, 1921
Those Were the Days, 1929
STORY COLLECTIONS FOR CHILDREN
Gallery of Children, 1925
Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926
The House at Pooh Corner,1928
The Moving Toyshop ~ Edmund Crispin
Love Lies Bleeding ~ Edmund Crispin
Holy Disorders ~ Edmund Crispin
Cargo Of Eagles ~ Margery Allingham
The Mind Readers ~ Margery Allingham
The Case Of The Late Pig ~ Margery Allingham
The Hound of the Baskervilles ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
The Red House Mystery in e-text
The Wikipedia entry
The Vintage Classic Crime website
The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter tells the story of Hester Prynne, a beautiful young woman living in an austere Puritan community in early 17th-century America – and an outcast.
The novel is framed by a prologue in which the narrator relates how he has found a cache of papers relating Hester Prynne, as well as a fragment of embroidered material. The novel purports to be the narrator’s fictional version of the true story behind that fragment, the scarlet letter of the title.
In the eyes of her neighbours Hester has committed an unforgivable sin. Everyone knows that her little daughter, Pearl, is the product of an illicit affair but no one knows the identity of Pearl’s father.
When Hester refuses to name him she brings more condemnation upon herself and the community forces her to wear a sign of her shame sewn onto her clothes: the scarlet letter ‘A’ for ‘Adulteress’.
As the story unfolds Hester’s tale intertwines with that of her sinister, estranged husband, who follows her to the community under an assumed name, and a gentle, neurotic priest who is eloquent on Hester’s behalf, but cannot save her from public shame, or himself from his own demons. Ultimately only Hester’s own strength can save her – and allow her to rise above the condemnation of the village.
‘A defiant adulteress; a community of hypocrites who force her to wear a scarlet letter A around her neck as a badge of her shame; an evil husband, secretly stoking the fires of their moral fervour until it reaches boiling point; and, finally, a stunning public confession’ Sunday Times
In making fiction out of the excesses of his Puritan ancestors,
Hawthorne anticipated the technique of a modern movie-director.
He was a master of crowd scenes
Financial Times
[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured,
for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy
Malcolm Cowley
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born Nathaniel Hathorne in 1804, in the town of Salem, Massachusetts (famous for its notorious witch trials, which took place in the late 17th century, slightly later than the timeframe for The Scarlet Letter). He was one of a long line of Puritans and was a descendent of one of the trial judges at the Salem with trials – some critics have suggested this unwelcome association may have been a factor in influencing him to change his name to Hawthorne after graduating.
His first published work was the novel Fanshawe, anonymously published in 1828, but his best-known novel The Scarlet Letter was not published until 1850. It was a huge success, although Hawthorne himself did not become rich from the sales. For much of his life worked as a measurer and surveyor – first in the Boston Custom House and later at Salem Custom House. He lost this appointment in 1848 due to political reasons, and later featured the Custom House in the prologue to The Scarlet Letter, along with unflattering references to local politicians.
Hawthorne continued to write after the publication of The Scarlet Letter, and in 1853 he was sent to Liverpool with his family as American consul. He and his family toured France and Italy before returning to the US in 1860.
Hawthorne died in his sleep in 1864 and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Massachussets.
There is no author interview available.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
Critics are divided over Hawthorne’s attitude to Hester’s affair, and whether the novel ultimately condemns or condones her actions.
What do you think Hawthorne’s views are? What are your own?-
Where Hawthorne does seem to uncritically hold Hester up for our admiration is in her steadfast refusal to name Pearl’s father. Why do you think this is? Do you share his admiration for this action?
- As noted in the biography section, Hawthorne changed his name in his early 20s, adding a W to the original Hathorne. Some critics have suggested this was to distance himself from famous Puritan ancestors, particularly one forebear who presided over the Salem Witch Trials. From your reading of the book, do you think this could be true? How does Hawthorne depict the Puritan community and their leaders?
- The priest in the story, Dimmesdale, is a figure of hypocrisy who preaches virtue from the pulpit and refuses to take his daughter’s hand in public – but pays a terrible personal price for his actions. What points do you think Hawthorne is trying to make about organised religion? How far is Dimmesdale responsible for his own actions and how much are the townsfolk responsible for forcing him into his position?
- The critic Kathryn Harrison has written that Hester is ‘the herald of the modern American heroine, a mother of such strength and stature that she towers over her progeny much as she does the citizens of Salem’. Do you agree?
- Because the novel is set before the time in which he is writing, Hawthorne deliberately uses an old-fashioned style with some archaic language. Do you find this effective or a distraction?
- ‘She saw again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home: a decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half-obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility.’
From The Scarlet Letter
Early in the novel Hawthorne hints that Hester is descended from an impoverished but formerly noble family in England. Later he suggests that Pearl may have returned to these roots by marrying into a wealthy European family, possibly also nobility. What role, more generally, does class play in the novel?
- How does Hawthorne describe the Scarlet Letter itself and in what different forms does it appear in the novel?
- ‘Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil.’
What role does the character of Hester’s estranged husband, Roger Chillingworth play? Do you think he is morally more degenerate than Hester and her lover, or do you have sympathy for his campaign of revenge? Do you think he redeems himself at all with his bequest to Pearl at the end of the story?
OTHER BOOKS BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Fanshawe
The House of Seven Gables
The Blithedale Romance
The Marble Faun
Tess of the D’Urbervilles ~ Thomas Hardy
The L-Shaped Room ~ Lynn Reid-Banks
Moby Dick ~ Herman Melville
Hawthorne in Salem – a site about his links with the town including pictures of the Custom House featured in the prologue
The Hawthorne Society – critical papers and news about the state of Hawthorne studies
A Hawthorne Crossword – mainly based on the Scarlet Letter but does refer to some of his other works
Hawthorne biography and critical notes on the Scarlet Letter
The Secret Agent: With an Introduction by Giles Foden
The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1907. It is one of Conrad’s few political novels. The story is set in London in 1886, and centres around Mr. Verloc, the secret agent of the title, and proprietor of a shop, 32 Brett Street, Soho, selling various bric-a-brac, including contraceptives, pornography and anarchist literature. Though a member of an anarchist cell, Verloc is in the employ of a foreign embassy, charged to report on anarchist activity, including the meetings that occur at the shop between Verloc and his friends, Comrade Ossipon, Michaelis, and a bomb expert known as ‘The Professor’. The group produce anarchist literature in the form of pamphlets entitled "F.P.", an abbreviation for ‘The Future of the Proletariat.’
The novel opens in Mr Verloc's home, situated behind and above the shop. He lives with his wife Winnie, her elderly mother, and brother Stevie, who has learning difficulties. Leaving Stevie in charge of the shop he departs to the foreign embassy, where he has been called for a meeting. Accustomed to delivering reports on the ineffectual activities of his friends, Verloc is alarmed to learn that he has a new contact at the embassy, Mr. Vladimir, First Secretary, who informs Verloc that his work to date is unsatisfactory, and that to redeem himself, he must organise a terrorist attack, suggested to be the destruction of Greenwich Observatory by a bomb explosion.
The narrative moves from Verloc to his friends, some time later. Comrade Ossipon meets the professor at a pub, where he tells him of a recent bomb blast at Greenwich Park, a seemingly accidental explosion killing the man who carried the device. The professor is shaken and alarmed, and leaves. On his way home he meets a policeman, none other than Chief Inspector Heat, a man known to investigate the group.
After a brief but tense conversation, we follow the Chief Inspector to a meeting with his superior, the Assistant Commissioner, where he reports on his investigation into the bomb blast. Heat shows him a scrap of cloth found at the scene, a label torn from the coat of the dead man with the address ‘32 Brett Street’ clearly legible. Though he assures him that he is in control of the investigation, the Assistant Commissioner is unconvinced, and after speaking to his superior, Sir Ethelred, decides to investigate the case personally.
The novel moves back in time to before the explosion. Mr. Verloc leaves for a business trip to the continent. When he returns, his wife implores her husband to spend more time with Stevie. Reticent at first, Verloc eventually agrees, and their walks become a habit. After a while, Verloc then tells his wife that he has taken Stevie to go and visit his friend Michaelis in the cottage where he is writing his book, and that Stevie would stay with him for a few days. He hands her an envelope containing their savings.
The next evening, Verloc arrives home soaking wet and shivering. As she positions him by the fire, the bell of the shop clangs: it is the Assistant Commissioner. Verloc leaves with him. Whiles the two are gone, Heat arrives at the shop. He tells Mrs. Verloc of the bomb blast, and shows her the address on the scrap of coat. Mrs. Verloc confirms that it was Stevie's overcoat, and that she had written the address. Verloc returns, and, seeing his wife in visible shock, realises that she knows about the bomb. He tries to reason with her, blaming the embassy, and, in the face of her continued silence lies on the couch. Imploring his wife to come to him, she rises, and grasping a carving knife from the kitchen table, stabs him once in the chest, killing him outright.
Following the stabbing, Winnie flees the shop with the intention of throwing herself in the river, but is overcome and faints in the street. Comrade Ossipon meets her on his way to the shop, and promises to help her escape. They board a train to Southampton, but at the last moment Ossipon jumps clear, taking with him the savings. The novel concludes as Ossipon meets the professor in a pub. He has a recent newspaper cutting, citing the mysterious disappearance of a female passenger on board a cross channel ferry.
Character list
Mr. Verloc: a secret agent and shop owner, selling contraceptives, pornography and anarchist literature in Brett Street, London.
Winnie: the wife of Mr. Verloc. She is younger than her husband
Winnie’s Mother: An elderly widow. Aware that she is a burden on her daugher and son-in-law, and to allow for their continued support of Stevie, she secretly arranges to move to an almshouse in the suburbs.
Stevie: the brother of Winnie Verloc. Stevie has learning difficulties and is very sensitive. Though able to help around the shop he is easily disturbed, and passes most of his time drawing circles on pieces of paper.
Chief Inspector Heat: a policeman who is dealing with the explosion at Greenwich. An astute man who uses a clue found at the scene of the crime to trace events back to Mr. Verloc's home.
The Assistant Commissioner: Inspector Heat’s superior. He has moved to London from overseas (presumably Africa) due to his wife’s health, a move he greatly regrets.He becomes personally involved in the case.
The Lady Patroness: A wealthy and influential aristocratic elderly lady, an acquaintance of the Assistant Commissioner’s wife, of Mr. Vladimir of the Foreign Embassy and supporter of Michaelis, providing the means for him to write his memoirs.
Sir Ethelred: the man to whom the Assistant Commissioner reports.
Mr. Vladimir: An employee of an embassy from a foreign country, strongly implied to be Russia.
Comrade Ossipon: a former medical student, friend of Mr. Verloc, and anarchist.
Michaelis: a friend of Mr. Verloc, and another anarchist.
The Professor: a bomb expert and friend of the anarchist group. A man dedicated to the anarchist cause, he constantly carries a packet of explosives in his jacket pocket in the event of his capture.
Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski was born in Berdychiv, Ukraine on 3 December 1857, to a patriotic Polish noble family. In 1861, his father, a writer and translator was exiled to Vologda in northern Russia for helping to organise the January uprising. Both his mother and father died in exile, leaving Conrad an orphan aged 11. His uncle then became his guardian and looked after him in Krakow until he was sixteen when he went to sea and sailed on French and British ships. He was made British citizen in 1886 and changed his name to Joseph Conrad. In 1889 Conrad visited the Congo and his experiences there inspired Heart of Darkness. In 1894 he published his first novel, Almayer’s Folly and went on to write nineteen more as well as many short stories, essays and a memoir. In 1896 he married Jessie George and they later had two sons. Conrad died on 3 August 1924.
There is no author interview available.
Background to the novel
Greenwich Bombing of 1894
The Secret Agent was inspired in part by a terrorist attack on Greenwich Observatory in 1894, possibly the first international terrorist incident in Britain. In the later half of the 19th century, a series of anarchist inspired terrorist attacks hit many European countries. One of the earliest was the bomb assassination of the Russian Tsar Alexander in 1881 which inspired anarchists to many other similar attacks on the rulers and aristocracy. By late 1893 anarchist terrorists were particularly active in France, culminating in the bombing of the Chamber of Deputies in Paris in December. Auguste Vaillant was convicted and executed for this crime in early February 1894, with a particularly futile 'reprisal' for the execution following close after when a bomb exploded in a Paris Cafe on February 12, 1894. Up until then, Britain remained unaffected by the anarchist campaign, although Irish Fenian bomb attacks had occurred in England as early as the 1860's.
On April 15th, 1894 at approximately 4.45pm, two members of the Greenwich Observatory staff were startled by the sound of a loud explosion nearby. Outside in the park they discovered debris and fragments of bone on the ground, and on a nearby path a man with a missing hand and a gaping hole in his stomach, who died later at the scene. Investigators discovered the man to be Martial Bourdin, a 26 year-old Frenchman and member of a foreign anarchist club in London, the Club Autonomie. The detonation of the bomb was put down to an accident, though Bourdin’s motives for targeting the Greenwich Observatory remain a mystery.
In the author note to The Secret Agent, Conrad recalls a discussion on the recent bombing in London with fellow author Ford Madox Ford, emphasising his horror and morbid curiosity in the case:
[...] we recalled the already old story of the attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory; a blood-stained inanity of so fatuous a kind that it was impossible to fathom its origin by any reasonable or even unreasonable process of thought. For perverse unreason has its own logical processes. But that outrage could not be laid hold of mentally in any sort of way, so that one remained faced by the fact of a man blown to bits for nothing even most remotely resembling an idea, anarchistic or other. As to the outer wall of the Observatory it did not show as much as the faintest crack. I pointed all this out to my friend who remained silent for a while and then remarked in his characteristically casual and omniscient manner: "Oh, that fellow was half an idiot. His sister committed suicide afterwards." These were absolutely the only words that passed between us [...].
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Consider the title of the novel. Who is the Secret Agent? Is the story a simple one? Why do you think Conrad has chosen this subtitle?
- Examine the relationship of Winnie and Mr. Verloc. Who do you think holds the upper hand in the relationship? To what extent do you think their marriage reflects typical Victorian attitudes towards women?
- Do you think the novel is more of a political, or family drama?
- Discuss the importance of politics in the novel. What does the Secret Agent tell us about prevailing political attitudes of the period?
- Examine Conrad’s use of forewarning in the novel. What effect does this have?
- Various characters become obsessed with phrases and sentences in the novel, for example the Chief Inspector and ‘unknown person’, Winnie’s ‘the drop given was fourteen feet’ and Ossipon’s ‘this act of madness or despair’. What effect does this repetition have?
- Consider the depiction of terrorism, and of the anarchists in the novel. What do you think was Conrad’s view of the anarchist movement at the time?
- The Secret Agent was written at a time when terrorist activity was increasing, and has been noted as one of the three works of literature most cited in the American media following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Consider the novel in light of recent global terrorist attacks. What comparisons can be drawn between the motives and responses to the attacks?
- To what extent do you think Verloc is culpable in the death of Stevie? Is his death justified?
- ‘the whole treatment of the tale - its inspiring indignation and underlying pity and contempt, prove my detachment from the squalor and sordidness which lie simply in the outward circumstances of the setting’ Consider the importance of the place in the novel. To what extent does it reinforce its themes? Do you agree with Conrad’s statement?
- ‘Mrs. Verloc's philosophical, almost disdainful incuriosity, the foundation of their accord in domestic life made it extremely difficult to get into contact with her, now this tragic necessity had arisen.’ Do you agree that Winnie and Mr. Verloc’s failure to communicate leads to the destruction of their relationship?
Almayer's Folly (1895)
An Outcast of the Islands (1896)
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897)
Heart of Darkness (1899)
Lord Jim (1900)
The Inheritors (with Ford Madox Ford) (1901)
Typhoon (1902 begun 1899)
Romance (with Ford Madox Ford) (1903)
Nostromo (1904)
The Secret Sharer (1907)
The Secret Agent (1907)
Under Western Eyes (1911)
Freya of the Seven Isles (1912)
Chance (1913)
Victory (1915)
The Shadow Line (19170
The Arrow of Gold (1919)
The Rescue (1920)
The Nature of a Crime (with Ford Madox Ford) (1923)
Suspense (unfinished, published posthumously) (1925)
A Study in Scarlet ~ Arthur Conan Doyle (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
The Murders in the Rue Morgue ~ Edgar Allan Poe
Great Expectaions ~ Charles Dickens
Incendiary ~ Chris Cleave
The Society's mission is to offer scholars, advanced students, and persons interested in the work and life of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) an opportunity to share in the study and appreciation of this writer of worldwide reputation
Joseph Conrad page at Literary Journal
Study Resources
On Winnie Verloc and late Victorian Gender
Popular Accounts of the Greenwich Bombing and Conrad’s Secret Agent
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories: The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, The Friends of the Friends and The Jolly Corner
The Turn of the Screw is one of the most famous and enduringly frightening ghost stories of all time. It was first published in 1898 and this very special Vintage edition is the only publication which includes James’s other ghost stories ‘The Romance of Certain Old Clothes’, ‘The Friends of the Friends’ and ‘The Jolly Corner’.
A nameless narrator recalls a Christmas Eve gathering at an old house where the guests attending listen to one another’s ghost stories. One of the guests, Douglas, awakes the interest of the other listeners when he gives them a short hint of a story he describes as ‘beyond everything’.
After introducing the main character - the governess - and explaining the reasons why she was looking after two children in an isolated country home, Douglas begins to read from a written record which he says was sent to him by a woman nearly twenty years ago. The story then shifts to the governess’s point of view as she narrates her strange experience.
To begin with, the two children Flora and Miles seem to be model pupils but gradually the governess starts to suspect that something is very wrong with them. As she sets out to uncover the corrupt secrets of the house, she becomes more and more convinced that something evil is watching her.
‘The Turn of the Screw is the most hopelessly evil story
that we have ever read in any literature,
ancient or modern’
Independent
‘We are afraid of something unnamed, of something, perhaps, in ourselves...
Henry James can still make us afraid of the dark’
Virginia Woolf
‘[James] is the most intelligent man of his generation’
T. S. Eliot
‘Henry James is as solitary in the history of the novel
as Shakespeare is in the history of poetry’
Graham Greene
‘A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale’
Oscar Wilde
‘It really does turn your blood cold’
Colm Tóibín
Henry James was born on 15 April 1843 in New York to a wealthy and intellectual family and as a youth travelled widely and studied in Europe. He briefly studied law at Harvard before he took up writing full-time. He also wrote novels, short stories, reviews, biographies, plays and travel books. After a brief period in Paris, James moved to London. He later settled in Rye in Sussex and became a British citizen in 1915. Henry James died on 28 February 1916.
James had written ghost stories before The Turn of the Screw. It was a popular form, especially in England, where, as the prologue to The Turn of the Screw suggests, gathering for the purpose of telling ghost stories was something of a Christmastide tradition.
Henry James’s first Interview published in the New York Times (21.3.1915) can be downloaded as a pdf.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- How does the phrase “the turn of the screw”, meaning an unexpected unfolding of events, apply to the governess’s tale?
- The governess’s letter to her employer is very important to Mrs. Grose and so important to Miles that he steals it. Why is this letter so significant?
- Before his heart stops, Miles shouts out, “Peter Quint—you devil!” Who is being named as the devil?
- Is The Turn of the Screw a ghost story or a psychological tale?
- Do you believe the governess’s version of events actually happened? Or does she imagine it?
- The Independent describes The Turn of the Screw as ‘the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read in any literature’. Do you agree?
- How does James create an atmosphere of suspense and fear in the novel?
OTHER BOOKS BY HENRY JAMES
NOVELS
Watch and Ward (1871)
Roderick Hudson (1875)
The American (1877)
The Europeans (1878)
Confidence (1879)
Washington Square (1880)
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
The Bostonians (1886)
The Princess Casamassima (1886)
The Reverberator (1888)
The Tragic Muse (1890)
The Other House (1896)
The Spoils of Poynton (1897)
What Maisie Knew (1897)
The Awkward Age (1899)
The Sacred Fount (1901)
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
The Whole Family (1908)
The Outcry (1911)
The Ivory Tower (posthumously 1917)
The Sense of the Past (posthumously 1917)
NOVELAS AND TALES
A Passionate Pilgrim (1871)
Madame de Mauves (1874)
Daisy Miller (1878)
A Bundle of Letters (1879)
The Author of Beltraffio (1884)
A London Life (1888)
The Pupil (1891)
The Real Thing (1892)
The Middle Years (1893)
The Death of the Lion (1894)
The Coxon Fund (1894)
The Next Time (1895)
The Altar of the Dead (1895)
In the Cage (1898)
Europe (1899)
Paste (1899)
The Great Good Place (1900)
Mrs. Medwin (1900)
The Birthplace (1903)
The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
The Jolly Corner (1908)
PLAYS
Theatricals (1894)
Theatricals: Second Series (1895)
Guy Domville (1895)
A Christmas Carol ~ Charles Dickens
The Vintage Book of Ghosts ~ Jenny Uglow ed.
Legend of Sleepy Hollow ~ Washington Irving
The Canterville Ghost ~ Oscar Wilde
Frankenstein ~ Mary Shelley - read our guide
The Woman in Black ~ Susan Hill - read our guide
The Woman in White ~ Wilkie Collins - read our guide
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ~ Robert Louis Stevenson - read our guide
Dracula ~ Bram Stoker - read our guide
The Gormenhast Trilogy ~ Meryyn Peake
The Best Ghost Stories (@ www.Gutenberg.org)
The Woman in White
Walter Hartright is walking on the road to Hampstead one night when he encounters a terrified woman, dressed entirely in white, and fleeing from some mysterious persecution.
Some weeks later he commences a new job in Cumbria, as drawing master to Marian and her sister Laura, living in quiet harmony with the sisters and their guardian until Laura’s marriage to Sir Percival Glyde.
Sir Percival is a man of many secrets – is one of them connected to the mystery of the woman in white? And what does his charming friend, Count Fosco have to do with it all? Time is running out as Marian and Walter have to turn detective to protect Laura from a fatal plot and unravel the mystery of the woman in white…
‘The most popular novel of the nineteenth century,
and still one of the best plots in English literature.’
Sarah Waters
‘A hypochondriac uncle, two girls who look identical,
a count with a penchant for mesmerism and vanilla bonbons,
a lunatic asylum, an evil husband...
What more could you want?’
Maggie O’Farrell
Wilkie Collins was born in Marylebone, London, on 8th January 1824, the son of the landscape painter William Collins. He left school at 17 and was apprenticed to a tea merchant, but left after five years and joined Lincoln’s Inn to study Law.
His first published book was a biography of his father. It came out in 1848 and was swiftly followed by his first novel, Antonina, in 1850. This was the beginning of a prolific and highly successful writing career during which he produced more than 30 books, of which the best-known are The Woman in White (1860)and The Moonstone (1868) often described as ‘the first true detective novel’, as well as more than 50 short stories and at least 15 plays.
In 1951 a formative event occurred when he met Charles Dickens, later to become his editor and publisher. Although Dickens was twelve years older than Collins and already an established and respected author when they met, the two men developed a close and lifelong friendship, dining and holidaying together, as well as collaborating professionally.
Collins’ personal life was, for the time, unconventional. He never married but had two significant mistresses, Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd. He lived with Caroline Graves on and off from 1858 until his death in 1889. In the mid-1860s he met Martha Rudd, who was 19 years old to his 40 years and probably a maid in his mother’s house at the time. Collins maintained both relationships in separate establishments, and had three children (two daughters, Marian and Harriet, and a son, William Charles) by Rudd, each of which he provided for in his will. His will also contains what has been called a ‘Laura Fairlie clause’ in an attempt to protect his daughters’ inheritance, should they marry. In it Collins states that each daughter's inheritance shall be ‘for her sole and separate use free and independent of any husband…she shall not have the power to deprive herself of the benefit thereof by anticipation’. This was designed to prevent his daughters assisting their future husbands with debts or giving up control of their fortune to him. In fact neither of Collins’ daughters ever married.
In later years Collins suffered with ‘rheumatic gout’ - a type of arthritis - and became addicted to the opium derivative laudanum which he relied upon to relieve the pain. He died on 23rd September 1889 and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.
Background to the novel
The inspiration for the famous opening scene of The Woman in White, where Walter Hartright meets the white-clad figure wandering on the road to Hampstead, is said to have been inspired by a real-life incident, experienced by Collins, in the company of his brother and the painter Millais. Here is the account given by Millais’ son, John Guille Millais, in his biography of his father, published in 1899.
It was a beautiful moonlight night in the summer time, and as the three friends walked along chatting gaily together, they were suddenly arrested by a piercing scream coming from the garden of a villa close at hand. It was evidently the cry of a woman in distress and while pausing to consider what they should do, the iron gate leading to the garden was dashed open, and from it came the figure of a young and very beautiful woman dressed in flowing white robes that shone in the moonlight. She seemed to float rather than to run in their direction, and, on coming up to the three young men, she paused for a moment in an attitude of supplication and terror. Then, suddenly seeming to recollect herself, she suddenly moved on and vanished in the shadows cast upon the road.
The story continues that Collins pursued her, and later told Millais that she had escaped from a villa in Regent's Park where she had been kept prisoner under ‘mesmeric influence’. According to some of Collins’ contemporaries this real life ‘woman in white’ was Caroline Graves, later to become his mistress. However the first published source for this anecdote is the Millais biography, published nearly 40 years after the incident when all the protagonists were dead, and although it is likely that Collins did meet Graves around this time, there seems to be no firm evidence that she was actually the real-life woman in white.
It is also thought that the plot of The Woman in White, although seemingly far-fetched, was based on a real-life inspiration - a sensational legal case from pre-Revolutionary France, recounted in Maurice Méjan's, involving the Marquise de Douhault. After her husband died an insane epileptic, she was drugged and incarcerated under a false identity in the Salpêtrière asylum, in Paris. Although she eventually escaped, her story did not end as happily as Laura Fairlie’s - she was unable to convince the courts of her identity, and when she died 'no one dared inscribe any name upon her tombstone' (637).
How I wrote "The Woman In White" by Wilkie Collins
Extracted from the essay How I Write My Books, first published in The Globe, 1887
My first proceeding is to get my central idea — the pivot on which the story turns.
The central idea of The Woman In White is the idea of a conspiracy in private life, in which circumstances are so handled as to rob a woman of her identity by confounding her with another woman, sufficiently like her in personal appearance to answer the wicked purpose. The destruction of her identity represents a first division of the story; the recovery of her identity marks a second division.
My central idea suggests some of my chief characters. A clever devil must conduct the conspiracy. Male devil? or female devil? The sort of wickedness wanted seems to be a man's wickedness. Perhaps a foreign man. Count Fosco faintly shows himself to me, before I know his name. I let him wait, and begin to think about the two women. They must be both innocent and both interesting. Lady Glyde dawns on me as one of the innocent victims. I try to discover the other — and fail. I try what a walk will do for me — and fail. I devote the evening to a new effort — and fail. Experience tells me to take no more trouble about it, and leave that other woman to come of her own accord. The next morning, before I have been awake in my bed for more than ten minutes, my perverse brains set to work without consulting me. Poor Anne Catherick comes into the room, and says: ‘Try me’.
I have got my idea; I have got three of my characters. What is there to do now? My next proceeding is to begin building up the story.
Here, my favourite three efforts must be encountered. First effort: to begin at the beginning. Second effort: to keep the story always advancing, without paying the smallest attention to the serial division in parts, or to the book publications in volumes. Third effort: to decide on the end. All this is done, as my father used to paint his skies in his famous sea-pieces, at one heat. As yet, I do not enter into details; I merely set up my landmarks. In doing this the main situations of the story present themselves; and, at the same time I see my characters in all sorts of new aspects. These discoveries lead me nearer and nearer to finding the right end. The end being decided on, I go back again to the beginning, and look at it with a new eye, and fail to be satisfied with it. I have yielded to the worst temptation that besets a novelist — the temptation to begin with a striking incident, without counting the cost in the shape of explanations that must, and will follow. These pests of fiction, to reader and writer alike, can only be eradicated in one way. I have already mentioned the way — to begin at the beginning. In the case of The Woman In White, I get back (as I vainly believe) to the true starting point of the story. I am now at liberty to set the new novel going; having, let me repeat, no more than an outline of story and characters before me, and leaving the details, in each case to the spur of the moment.
For a week, as well as I can remember, I work for the best part of every day, but not as happily as usual. An unpleasant sense of something wrong worries me. At the beginning of the second week, a disheartening discovery reveals itself. I have not found the right beginning of The Woman In White yet.
The scene of my opening chapters is in Cumberland. Miss Fairlie (afterwards Lady Glyde); Mr. Fairlie, with his irritable nerves and his art-treasures; Miss Halcombe (discovered suddenly, like Anne Catherick), are all waiting the arrival of the young drawing-master, Walter Hartright. No: this won't do. The person to be first introduced is Anne Catherick. She must be already a familiar figure to the reader, when the reader accompanies me to Cumberland. This is what must be done, but I don't see how to do it; no new idea comes to me; I and my manuscript have quarrelled, and don't speak to each other. One evening, I happen to read of a lunatic who has escaped from an asylum — a paragraph of a few lines only, in a newspaper. Instantly the idea comes to me of Walter Hartright's midnight meeting with Anne Catherick, escaped from the asylum. The Woman In White begins again; and nobody will ever be half as much interested in it now, as I am. From that moment, I have done with my miseries. For the next six months the pen goes on; it is work, hard work; but the harder the better, for this excellent reason: the work is its own exceeding great reward.
As an example of the gradual manner in which I reach the development of character, I may return for a moment to Fosco. The making him fat was an after-thought; his canaries and his white mice were found next; and the most valuable discovery of all, his admiration of Miss Halcombe, took its rise in a conviction that he would not be true to nature unless there was some weak point somewhere in his character.
My last difficulty tried me, after the story had been finished, and part of it had been set in proof for serial publication in All The Year Round. Neither I, nor any friend whom I consulted, could find the right title. Literally, at the eleventh hour, I thought of The Woman In White. In various quarters, this was declared to be a vile melodramatic title that would ruin the book. Among the very few friends who encouraged me, the first and foremost was Charles Dickens. ‘Are you too disappointed?’ I said to him. ‘Nothing of the sort, Wilkie! A better title there cannot be’.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
-
‘This the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.’ (p 3)
Do you think the opening sentence of The Woman in White is a fair or accurate summary of the novel? Why do you think Collins chose to frame the novel this way? Who do you think is the true heroine of the novel, Laura or Marian? Who do you find the more attractive character?
Who do you think is the worst villain, Sir Percival Glyde, Count Fosco, or Mr Fairlie?
‘ “After all that we three have suffered together”, she said, “there can be no parting between us till the last parting of all. My heart and my happiness, Walter, are with Laura and you.”’
The Woman in White, page 603
Some critics have described the end of the novel as almost a ménage à trois, and have compared it to Collins’ own unusual domestic setup at the end of his life. Do you agree with this characterisation of the relationship between Walter, Marian and Laura? Do you find it unusual as an ending?The Moonstone (1868) is frequently called ‘the first true detective novel’. Do you think The Woman in White also has elements of a detective novel?
The story is told through multiple viewpoints, with sections by both Walter and Marian, as well as their lawyer and Mrs Catherick. What is the effect of this and why do you think Collins chose to tell the story in this way?
‘Apart from my books—my life presents no events which have any claim to on the public interest, or on your attention.’ Wilkie Collins, 1862.
Do you think that knowing about an author’s life is useful or interesting when reading their novels, or should the text be allowed to stand alone? What does a knowledge of Collins’ life add to a reading of The Woman in White?
Wilkie Collins was extremely prolific and wrote almost 30 other books, as well as plays, essays and short stories. Today his best-known novels are:
No Name (1862)
Armadale (1866)
The Moonstone (1868)
However, see www.wilkie-collins.info for a more complete bibliography.
The Moonstone ~ Wilkie Collins (Vintage Classics)
Fingersmith ~ Sarah Waters (Virago)
The Woman in Black ~ Susan Hill (Vintage Classics)
Bleak House ~ Charles Dickens (Penguin Classics)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ~ Arthur Conan Doyle (Oxford World Classics), in particular the short story The Speckled Band.
The Wilki Collins site: Contains the text of his will and a fascinating chronological collection of photographs and drawings of Wilkie Collins.
A good short biography and details of his formative relationship with Charles Dickens.
An excellent longer biography, as well as details and plot summaries for his books and novels.
Titus Groan
As the first novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born: he stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle. Inside, events are predetermined by a complex ritual, lost in history, understood only by Sourdust, Lord of the Library. There are tears and strange laughter; fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings; dreams and violence and disenchantment contained within a labyrinth of stone.
The catalyst to change this arcane world of ritual is the seemingly minor rebellion of kitchen boy Steerpike. Abandoning his duties and escaping the slavery of the kitchen, he slowly insinuates himself into the life of the castle, setting in motion a series of events that threaten to overturn centuries of tradition. But can his quest for power withstand the rule of Titus Groan, the new (and seventy-seventh) Earl of Gormenghast? With the ‘Earling’ of the infant Titus marking the start of his ‘reign’ at the close of the novel, the power hangs in the balance…
"Mr Peake's first novel holds one with its glittering eye -
It has a genuine plot in the strictest sense,
and it persuades you to read on simply in order to know what will happen -
its gallery of characters is wonderful."
The Nation
"A gorgeous volcanic eruption -
A work of extraordinary imagination"
The New Yorker
Mervyn Peake was born in 1911 in Kuling, Central Southern China, where his father was a medical missionary. His education began in China and then continued at Eltham College in South East London, followed by the Croydon School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. Subsequently he became an artist, married the painter Maeve Gilmore in 1937 and had three children. During the Second World War he established a reputation as a gifted book illustrator for Ride a Cock Horse (1940), The Hunting of the Snark (1941), and The Rime of The Ancient Mariner (1943). Other books include Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland and Grimm's Household Tales (both 1946) and Treasure Island (1949). Titus Groan was published in 1946, followed in 1950 by Gormenghast. Among his other works are Shapes and Sounds (1941), Rhymes Without Reason (1944), Letters from a Lost Uncle (1948) and Mr Pye (1953). He also wrote a number of plays including The Wit to Woo (1957), which was met by critical failure. Titus Alone was published in 1959. Mervyn Peake died in 1968.
There is no interview with Mervyn Peake available.
Review:
‘A sumptuous, poetic epic that took its author 13 years to complete, the Gormenghast Trilogy is considered by some to have an equal or even greater degree of importance to the development of modern fantasy as Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. And though Tolkien today has set the formula from which the overwhelming majority of contemporary fantasy writers borrow or steal (hell, no sense in being coy about it), Mervyn Peake merits an undeniable position in the high-fantasy pantheon for this prodigious and masterful history of Castle Groan beside craggy Gormenghast Mountain.
Perhaps much of the reason that the Gormenghast Trilogy (up until a recent series of reprints and a TV miniseries revived interest in it) has been more obscure to today's fantasy readership than Tolkien is due to its unconventional narrative, plus its unrelenting darkness. In a genre that repeatedly delivers the message "Good Will Triumph Over Evil," this is a grim and grotesque tale indeed. There is nothing in Titus Groan in the way of a clear-cut hero, no brave Conan, no crafty Frodo out to save the world from the forces of evil, neatly encapsulated in the figure of a dark lord in his dark fortress or some similar silliness. In truth there are really no conventional "fantasy elements" in the tale at all, no magic, no elves or other mythic beasts; only the mythic setting earns the trilogy the label "fantasy" at all. Virtually all of the players in Titus Groan seem corrupted, drained of life and goodness in some way. In fact, Titus Groan can in many ways be seen not merely as a nightmarish fable, but as a sinister allegory of our own modern society. Then again, as many critics before me have said, this trilogy works so well on such a multiplicity of levels, that one could run through dozens of possible interpretations. That is its chief claim to greatness. Tolkien's will always be a great work of rousing, swashbuckling escapist adventure, but Peake's is the more real, the more visceral, the more darkly profound epic.
Yet if any of the above makes this sound like too depressing a tale to even bother with, don't you believe it. Peake delivers his cruelest barbs with a humor comparable to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde, and his prose is a wonder to behold, poetic without being stilted or affected. The premise of Titus Groan concerns the principal characters, their relationships to one another, and their reactions, both individually and as a group, to the birth of Titus, the heir to the throne of Groan and the 77th Earl of Gormenghast. From its opening chapter, though, futility seems the order of the day, as Peake scathingly attacks the rigidity of an overly soft and conventionalized society as a pointless beast perpetuating its own existence for nothing. The nearly city-sized castle is surrounded by a village of hovels whose inhabitants have no contact with those inside the castle except once a year, during a festival in which brightly painted carvings by the town's feuding craftsmen (the carvings seem the town's only artisanry or industry of any kind) are judged by the castle lord. The winner receives the dubious honor of being allowed to pace the castle walls, and the winning carving itself is shunted off to a room in the castle and never viewed again, except by a little old man who cares for them, who himself never leaves the room and is never seen.
Throughout, the theme of real things being forgotten and lost (entire wings of the castle are unused and falling into disrepair, and even some of their inhabitants are never seen) clashes with that of meaningless rituals repeated for their own sake. And within, there is precious little human closeness. Lord Sepulchrave, the reigning lord, and his wife, Gertrude, have no real relationship at all, he being blanketed by a pall of almost unrelieved melancholy (which finally becomes full fledged madness), and she an already delusional and pathetic creature who takes her only solace in the company of birds and a veritable army of white cats. Other characters are just as fragile, just as profoundly alone.
Yet out of the castle's darkness three characters do attempt to emerge. Fuschia, the introverted adolescent daughter of Sepulchrave and Gertrude, seeks first to withdraw into a world of her own dreams, poems and fantasies, then finally allows herself to be more open in her resentment of the senseless and interminably old traditions that have squeezed the life out of Gormenghast and Castle Groan. Keda, a young woman from the village brought into the castle as a wet nurse for Titus, finally leaves with a brave declaration entirely out of character with her surroundings: "I must have love." Yet even this desire is not without tragic consequences. But the most memorable player here is Steerpike, a youth who rises from a menial position in the castle to one of greater power and influence through the crassest and most brazen acts of manipulation and deception he can contrive. As Castle Groan becomes mired deeper and deeper in its moribund, rigid, and ineffectual tedium, Steerpike's sinister machinations hit everyone like a shock wave, with devastating consequences. Few fantasy writers have the ability to juggle readers' emotions with the dexterity of Peake.
Great fantasy can simply entertain, but great literature is that which not only entertains but explores, reflects, and illuminates our own lives. It's in this regard that the Gormenghast Trilogy takes its place not merely as a masterpiece of the literature of the imagination, but quite plainly as a masterpiece of literature...’
Thomas M. Wagner, Science Fiction & Fantasy Reviews
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Steerpike is a calculating villain and yet we see many of the events of the novel from his perspective. Does he have any redeeming features?
- Titus Groan is full of dysfunctional relationships, but there are a few notable exceptions. Identify these successful relationships and discuss why they work.
- Keda’s passive reaction to her lovers’ rivalry is almost cruel. Is she responsible for their deaths and do you think she could have averted this tragedy?
- While writing almost 200 years after the Gothic genre was established, Peake uses many Gothic conventions in his writing. What similarities are there between this and other gothic novels?
- The novel begins and ends with Rotcodd in the Hall of the Bright Carvings: ‘The Castle was breathing, and far below the Hall of the Bright Carvings all that was Gormenghast revolved.’ Why does Peake choose this structure?
- The world of Gormenghast is full of divisions – physically imposed by the castle walls; created by hierarchy; maintained by ritual. Do you think Peake intended this as a commentary on his own society?
- Is Titus Groan a precursor for the genre of magical realism?
- Peake creates unforgettable characters with a few telling details: which characters were most vivid for you?
ILLUSTRATIONS
Ride a Cock Horse (1940)
The Hunting of the Snark (1941)
The Rime of The Ancient Mariner (1943).
Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland (1946)
Grimm's Household Tales (1946)
Treasure Island (1949).
NOVELS
Titus Groan (1946)
Gormenghast (1950)
Titus Alone (1959)
Shapes and Sounds (1941)
Rhymes Without Reason (1944)
Letters from a Lost Uncle (1948)
Mr Pye (1953)
PLAYS
The Castle of Otranto ~ Horace Walpole
The Monk ~ Matthew Lewis
Tales of Mystery and Imagination ~ Edgar Allan Poe
The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales
The Séance ~ John Harwood
A Good and Happy Child ~ Justin Evans
Interview with Mervyn Peake’s son
Visit this linked website.
To Kill A Mockingbird
Set in the deep South of America in the 1930’s, To Kill a Mocking Bird is narrated by the young tomboy Scout. Prompted by their friend Dill, Scout and her brother Jem try to make the reclusive Boo Radley come out of hiding. This is one of their last summers of innocence as the events surrounding their father bring the whole town into conflict. When Atticus Finch is set the task of defending a black man for the rape of a white woman, he becomes the target of bigotry and ignorance. Not only do his children learn some difficult lessons about conscience, responsibility and justice but their very lives are put in peril.
‘Someone rare has written this very
fine novel, a writer with the liveliest
sense of life and the warmest, most
authentic humour. A touching book;
and so funny, so likeable’
Truman Capote
‘There is humour as well as tragedy
in this book, besides its faint note of
hope for human nature; and it is
delightfully written in the now familiar
Southern tradition’
Sunday Times
‘Her book is lifted...into the rare
company
of those that linger in the memory...’
Bookman
Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, a descendant of General Robert E. Lee. One of four children, Lee was a tomboy and voracious reader. Truman Capote was her next door neighbour and is generally believed to be the inspiration behind the character of Dill. Planning to emulate her father, who had been a lawyer in Monroeville, Lee studied law at the University of Alabama. In 1949 she went to New York to pursue a literary career. Although she wrote many short stories and essays, none were published until her agent encouraged her to develop one of the stories further. She gave up work as an airlines reservations clerk to complete the novel which was finally published in 1960.
Although To Kill A Mockingbird was immediately a great success, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, she has not published another novel.
Extract taken from Roy Newquist’s collection of interviews, Counterpoint, published in 1964 by Rand McNally
How would you define your own objectives as a writer?
Well, my objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse. I would like, however, to do one thing… I would like to leave some record of the kind of life that existed in a very small world. I hope to do this in several novels, to chronicle something that seems to be very quickly going down the drain. This is small-town middle-class southern life as opposed to the Gothic, as opposed to Tobacco Road, as opposed to plantation life.
As you know, the South is still made up of thousands of tiny towns. There is a very definite social pattern in these towns that fascinates me. I think it is a rich social pattern. I would simply like to put down all I know about this because I believe that there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing.
In other words all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- Much is made of Scout being a tomboy. How is female identity dealt with
in the novel?
- Jem says that there are four sets of people in the world but Scout disagrees.
What does the novel say about class, breeding and social standing in the deep
south of America in this period?
- “You never really understand a person…until you climb into his skin and
walk around in it.” How does Atticus’s advice resound throughout the book?
- Whilst certainly sympathetic to black people, is the novel also patronising
towards them? Are the black characters more stereotypical than the white?
- What does the scene in which Atticus shoots the mad dog tell us about him
(other than his being a good shot)? Does this episode mirror other events
in the novel?
- “It’s a sin to kill a Mockingbird." Which character or characters does the Mockingbird symbolise?
To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee's only novel.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ~ Maya Angelou
Cider With Rosie ~ Laurie Lee
Snow Falling on Cedars ~ David Guterson
A Capote Reader ~ Truman Capote
The Bluest Eye ~ Toni Morrison
To The Lighthouse
Using Virginia Woolf’s distinctive stream-of-consciousness approach, the narrative of To the Lighthouse wavers between members of the Ramsay family and their guests on two separate occasions, at their remote holiday house in the Isle of Skye. Flitting lightly over major events, the book focuses intensely on the internal life of the characters. The immediate experience of each moment, and the changing atmosphere between a group of human beings and within individual minds, are vividly explored. At the heart of the novel is the matriarch Mrs Ramsay, an enigmatic and saintly figure, to whom the others look for the achievement of the perfect, if temporary fulfilment that transcends the transient nature of day-to-day life.
"More beauty and penetrative characterization than can here be described resides within this book"
Rachel A. Taylor, review, Spectator, 1927
"[Woolf] and Sterne are both fantasists. They start with a little object, take a flutter from it, and settle on it again. They combine a humorous appreciation of the muddle of life with a keen sense of its beauty"
E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, 1927
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography, and sister of the artist Vanessa Bell. In 1912 she was married to the writer Leonard Woolf, and moved in advanced, bohemian circles for most of her life. An influential member of the Modernist movement, her contemporaries included T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence and Roger Fry. Besides founding the Hogarth Press with her husband in1917, Woolf was a prolific writer, a thinker and an essayist, author of the progressively feminist A Room of One’s Own. Having suffered from a series of mental breakdowns throughout her life, on the 28th of March 1941 she killed herself.
Contemporary Reviews of To the Lighthouse
Unsigned review, Times Literary Supplement—5 May 1927
In form To the Lighthouse is as elastic as a novel can be… while it depends almost on the passing of time, it expands or contracts the time-sense very freely…It is a book, with an ironical or wistful questioning of life and reality…the people in Mrs.Woolf’s book seem to be looking through each other at some farther question; and, although they interact vividly, they are not completely real…to know people in outline is one way of knowing them. And they are seen here in the way they are meant to be seen. But the result is that, while you know quite well the kind of people represented in the story, they lack something as individuals . . . A sad book in the main , with all its entertainment, it is one to return to.
Louis Kronenberger, review, New York Times—8 May 1927
To the Lighthouse . . .is a book of interrelationships among people, and though there are major and minor characters the major ones…[are] more truly the means for giving to the story its harmony and unity, its focal points. Those who reject To the Lighthouse as inferior to Mrs. Dalloway because it offers no one with half the memorable lucidity of Clarissa Dalloway must fail to perceive its larger and, artistically, more difficult aims. They must fail to notice the richer qualities of mind and imagination and emotion which Mrs. Woolf, perhaps not wanting them, omitted from Mrs. Dalloway…the story which opens brilliantly and carries on through a magnificent interlude ends with too little force and expressiveness. At any rate the rest of the book has its excellencies . . .Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational…Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical about her…It is, I think, in the superb interlude called ‘Time Passes’ that Mrs. Woolf reaches the most impressive height of the book . . . It is inferior to Mrs. Dalloway in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the magnitude of the aims themselves.
Arnold Bennet, review, Evening Standard—23 June 1927
I must say, despite my notorious grave reservations concerning Virginia Woolf, that the most original of the bunch is To the Lighthouse. It is the best book of hers that I know. Her character drawing has improved. Mrs. Ramsay almost amounts to a complete person. Unfortunately she goes and dies, and her decease cuts the book in two…The middle part, entitled ‘Time Passes’, shows a novel device to give the reader the impression of the passing of time…In my opinion it does not succeed. It is a short cut,
but a short cut that does not get you anywhere. I have heard a good deal about the wonders of Mrs. Woolf’s style. She sometimes discovers a truly brilliant simile…The form of her sentences is rather tryingly monotonous, and the distance between her nominatives and her verbs is steadily increasing. Still, To the Lighthouse has stuff in it strong enough to withstand quite a lot of adverse criticism.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
-
Which characters did you sympathise with?
-
What could the lighthouse represent?
-
What is the effect of Mrs Ramsay’s death, both on the other characters and the atmosphere of the book?
-
How do you react to the revelations in the section, Time Passes?
-
How is artistic ambition treated in various characters in the book?
-
What is the nature of Mrs Ramsay’s female power? In what ways is her evening meal similar and different to the artistic endeavours of those around her?
-
How much do working class characters come into the book? Is its middle-class focus a failing, or an accurate representation of the social world that the Ramsays live in?
-
Do the shifts in time and narrative focus create a feeling of restlessness? How does this reflect the way Woolf’s characters experience the world?
-
Does each character tend to find an icon or symbol of some sort, like James’ obsession with the lighthouse, or Mr Ramsay’s lines of verse? How does this affect our understanding of the characters?
-
How effectively do the different viewpoints co-exist within the novel?
NOVELS
The Voyage Out, 1915
Night and Day, 1919
Jacob's Room, 1922
Mrs. Dalloway, 1925
Orlando, 1928
The Waves, 1931
The Years, 1937
Between the Acts,1941
NON-FICTION
The Common Reader: First Series, 1925
A Room of One's Own, 1929
The Common Reader: Second Series, 1932
Three Guineas, 1938
Roger Fry: a Biography, 1940
Mrs Dalloway ~ Virginia Woolf
The Hours ~ Michael Cunningham
Dubliners ~ James Joyce
Howards End ~ E M Forster
The Waste Land ~T S Eliot
The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
The International Virginia Woolf Society
Touching The Void
In June 1995 Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed West Face of the remote 21, 000ft Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. They achieved the summit, but then disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into Base Camp, exhausted and frost-bitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead. For three days Simon wrestled with guilt as they prepared to return home. Then a cry in the night took them outside with torches, where they found Joe, badly injured, delirious, crawling through the snowstorm. Far from causing Joe's death, Simon had paradoxically saved his friend's life. What happened, and how they dealt with the psychological traumas that resulted when Simon was forced into the appalling decision to cut the rope, makes not only an epic of survival but a compelling testament of friendship.
"A brilliant, vivd, gripping, heart-stopping account
of their terrifying adventure... Superbly written"
Sunday Express
"One of the absolute classics of mountaineering...
a document of psychological, even philosophical witness of the rarest compulsion"
George Steiner, Sunday Times
"On every level it is an outstanding literary achievement"
Independent
Joe Simpson was born in Sheffield on 13 August 1960. He is a mountaineer, writer and motivational speaker. Touching the Void won the 1988 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and was made into an award-winning film in 2003. Simpson has undertaken climbs in Peru, Ecuador, Africa, India, Bolivia, Pakistan, Nepal and the European Alps, including several attempts on the North Face of the Eiger, detailed in his book The Beckoning Silence, which was made into a Channel 4 documentary in 2007. Now retired from climbing, Joe Simpson has homes in Sheffield and County Kerry.
Taken from No Ordinary Joe
High Risk or Hot Air? 09 August 2002
By Joe Simpson
Last year an unfortunate accident in a Swiss canyon claimed 21 lives. Sad but these things happen. It may have been avoidable and doubtless an enquiry will reveal whether this was the case. Appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that, if at all possible, that it doesn't happen again and that's how it should be.
That's it, I'm afraid. No more to be said. Life is inherently dangerous. People die in all manner of ways and for their close family it is a sad and emotional time. Yet that's not the way the media view it.
I wonder how many pointless hours have been wasted in TV and radio debates, how many tens of thousands of witless words written, every time a boxer has been killed or brain damaged, a skier buried in an avalanche, a racing driver killed in flames or a climber has so irresponsibly indulged in a grisly two thousand-foot death plummet. Does it matter? Really? We all die. When, why and how are of little consequence.
The fact that in this canyon accident the victims were taking part in what is perceived to be a 'high risk' activity is irrelevant. It was something that they chose willingly to do. Just because a great many other people wouldn't dream of taking such risks is no reason to condemn them for their adventurous spirit. They didn't want to die or suffer injury. They wanted that extra thrill, that surge of excitement that comes with exploring new territories.
They sought to challenge themselves; to see something different, maybe just to be a little different. For them life was enhanced by a touch of danger. It added a certain frisson. And that is their undeniable right. Their choice.
I have spent my entire adult life indulging in what others would call high risk sports. I have climbed at extreme levels on high mountains all over the world. I have also suffered near fatal accidents and great pain but, hey, it comes with the territory. I'm not complaining. I have qualified as a diver, gone bungee jumping, and qualified as a paragliding pilot. I am careful to train hard, to learn the skills and dangers of my chosen sports, and to take responsibility for myself.
I assiduously take out expensive insurance covering me for third-party liability claims, rescue, and medical expenses. I am not a burden on the state when unlucky enough to suffer an accident. Moreover, if I break my leg rock climbing I am just as entitled to NHS treatment as the Sunday morning footballer, the incompetent gardener, or the DIY expert who has just nailed his hand to the wall.
The real irony is that until three years ago I smoked more than twenty a day. I drink more than the recommended weekly limit as does everyone I know. These are the true high risk activities that will probably kill me. These, or driving to work in the morning.
Friends of mine have died in the mountains and I mourn their passing for the loss of their friendship and company; their laughter and their zest for living life to the full. I never once thought their lives wasted; never once questioned their right to challenge themselves. They saw a world that many of us never see and are poorer for not having seen it.
If fine wines, delicious food, the theatre, and a bit of gardening is your idea of a good life, well, bully for you. Sounds pretty good to me as well - some of the time. It is your right to live your life as you wish, but not to try and make others conform to you. You do not acquire the pompous and conceited privilege of condemning others just because they choose to live differently. That is simply ignorance and intolerance.
Rock climbing isn't dangerous per se. Just like crossing the road or driving a car it only becomes dangerous when you make a mistake. Yet climbing is perceived to be 'high risk' by those who have never tried their hand at it. These 'armchair' critics respond to an archetypal fear of heights innate to us all. Since they choose never to challenge this fear (and consequently have no idea what they are talking about) they assume the right to condemn those that climb as being irresponsible risk takers. They never look at the statistics and find out that angling, riding, and hill walking account for far more fatalities than climbing. God forbid! What would they think of the fatalities caused by accidents in the home?
Those thousands of people killed in household accidents every day are never treated thus. The hordes who die in DIY or gardening-related accidents are never roundly criticised for taking risks. There are no demands to close down the burgeoning chains of DIY stores and garden centres. For every gardener who has driven a fork through his foot or electrocuted himself on his hedge trimmer you will find an equivalent in a so-called 'high risk sport'. We are fallible, so accidents happen.
That people have died is very sad. That an ill-informed public will then, encouraged by press and media alike, contemptuously deride this 'irresponsible waste of life', this wanton foolishness, is all the sadder. What is it about so called 'high risk sports' that every now and then gets journalists and TV pundits so agitated?
Why can't we just acknowledge that what happened in Switzerland was just dreadfully sad. A bunch of people went out to have fun, to live life as they thought best, and they died. Why can't we celebrate their adventurous spirit and their desire to explore themselves and their world. Isn't that the essence of being human? Our curiosity, our sense of adventure and our delight in what life can offer has led to more ground-breaking advances in this century than any amount of studious conformity ever will.
Also read:
Legendary climber Joe Simpson – who famously escaped death in the Andes – tells Peter Stanford of the doomed expedition that tempted him back up a mountain
From Telegraph.co.uk, 22nd October 2007
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- ‘Was I here for pleasure or was it egotism?’ Simpson talks about the vicious circle of climbing, the fact that ‘it’s not long before you’re conjuring up another [climb]... a bit more ambitious, a bit more dangerous.’ Is this endless pursuit of danger and glory egotistical or admirable?
- What is Richard’s role in this series of events and why is his presence so important to both Joe and Simon?
- ‘I was lucky, or stupid, and got over my dread.’Joe had already had a near-death experience before the Siula Grande attempt, and yet this didn’t destroy his desire to climb. What does this reveal about his character and how do you think you would react in the same situation?
- Touching the Void was written 20 years ago and yet is still the benchmark all mountaineering literature is measured against. Why does the book have such enduring appeal?
- ‘There was something abrasive in his manner’ (Chris Bonnington, on meeting Joe). Does this indication that Joe Simpson might not be the easiest person to get on with make his account harder to relate to, or does it make his struggles all the more human?
- While Touching the Void is essentially a story of two men’s struggle to survive, there are also many moments when Simpson evokes the sheer exhilaration of climbing and his joy in the mountain environment. How does he make these moments vivid for the reader? Which moments stood out most vividly for you?
- Who do you think suffered most: Simon, dealing with grief at Joe’s supposed death and guilt that he may have done the wrong thing in cutting the rope; or Joe, struggling back to base camp with the agony of a broken leg and believing he might have been left for dead?
- What is the effect of the inclusion of Simon’s narrative from the moment that Joe breaks his leg?
- After the full story of the incident was revealed, there was some criticism within the climbing community of Simon Yates’ decision to cut the rope. Do you believe this criticism was justified or do you think Simon made the right decision?
- In a recent review of Touching the Void, a critic referred to the genre which includes mountain survival narratives as ‘Disaster Lit’. Is there something uncomfortably voyeuristic in reading about other people’s near-death experiences in this way, or do you think the appeal has more to do with witnessing human triumph over extreme adversity?
- The film of Touching the Void is a docudrama (part documentary, part reconstruction using actors). Do you think was the right approach to attempt to bring the film to life? If you have seen the film what similarities and differences can to see between the book and the film? Did you relate to one more than the other?
The Water People (a novel) (1992)
Storms of Silence (1996)
Touching the Void (1985)
This Game of Ghosts (1993)
Dark Shadows Falling (1997)
The Beckoning Silence (2003)
The White Spider ~ Heinrich Harrer
Into the Wild ~ Jon Krakauer
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know ~ Sir Ranulph Fiennes
Into Thin Air: Personal Account of the Everest Disaster ~ Jon Krakauer
Feet in the Clouds: A Story of Fell Running and Obsession ~ Richard Askwith
Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky
Centred around the pub, The Midnight Bell, on the Euston Road, Patrick Hamilton's remarkable trilogy exposes the life of ordinary people in London in the 1930's. The Midnight Bell - the first in the trilogy focuses upon the inner life of the barman, Bob, as he falls in love with Jenny, a West End prostitute. We see his descent into despair as he is continually let down by this shallow and scheming woman and loses all sense of any reality in the face of his obsession for her.
In the second book of the trilogy - The Siege of Pleasure - Jenny's story takes centre stage. The novel tells the story of how she became a prostitute in the first place. Initially working as a household servant, she spends an evening drinking in a pub with some shady characters who promise her a career as a model. Unable to resist, she drifts into prostitution.
The final volume of the trilogy (The Plains of Cement) tells the story of the barmaid Ella who works with Bob in The Midnight Bell and who is secretly in love with him. Ella is courted by one of the pubs customers, Mr Eccles who wishes to marry her. Whilst the marriage would free her from her life of toil and the class in which she is trapped, it would simultaneously bind her to a man she dislikes.
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is a brilliant exposé of
ordinary people leading lives of quiet desperation and struggling to find a
sense of purpose and place. This is a world where people pour out their passions,
hopes and despair in pubs and bars - a world of twenty thousand streets full
of cruelty and kindness, comedy and pathos, wasted dreams and lost desires.
'No other English writer has written so acutely about sexual
infatuation, embarrassment and self-delusion'
Time Out
'Bleak and brilliant…an authentic lost classic'
Guardian
'Hamilton is a master at reproducing the inflated talk of betrayed
lives'
Independent
'A marvellous novelist who's grossly neglected…I'm continually
amazed that
there's a kind of roll call of OK names from the 1930s,
sort of Auden, Isherwood, etc. But Hamilton is never on them and
he's a much better writer than any of them'
Doris Lessing, The Times
'Uniquely individual…He is the novelist of innocence, appallingly
vulnerable,
and of malevolence, coming out of some mysterious darkness of evil'
J.B. Priestley
'His greatest achievement was to portray, and to create, a vivid,
fantastic world of
comic horror, of rented accommodations and temporary refuges, lodging houses,
pubs,
cinemas and tea houses, where the lost, failed and forgotten meet and bore each
other and seek some respite.
It was also the world that, for much of his own life, he chose to inhabit'
Sean French, biographer of Patrick Hamilton
Born in Hassocks, Sussex in 1904, Patrick Hamilton was the youngest of three children. His parents, Ellen and Bernard Hamilton were published authors - Bernard had written historical books, Ellen two romantic novels. Hamilton was educated at Holland House School in Hove, Sussex, Colet Court in London, and Westminster School (1918-19). At the age of seventeen he began to work as an actor and assistant stage manager for Andrew Melville. He then changed his career and worked as a stenographer. He published his first novel Craven House in 1926 and within a few years established a wide readership for himself. His first theatrical success was Rope (1929) on which Alfred Hitchcock's film of the same name was based. Many novels followed, including Hangover Square, his trilogy of novels Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky and Slaves of Solitude, as well as radio dramas and plays, several of which were filmed, including Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. A celebrated 'bright young' novelist of the Twenties and Thirties, Hamilton was in tune with the times. Sadly, at the peak of his career in 1932, he was accidentally run over by a car, sustaining multiple fractures and requiring plastic surgery. The accident left him permanently disfigured and perhaps contributed to his later slide into alcoholism. Hamilton was married twice - to Lois Martin in 1930 and then to Ursula Stewart in 1953. He died on 23 September, 1962.
Statements from Patrick Hamilton
Taken from Patrick Hamilton: A Life by Sean French, Faber and Faber,
(1993)
On Childhood
'I was born in Hassocks, Sussex, and eternally grew up much as all boys do,
taking my surroundings for granted, but I always had a more or less vague notion
that I wanted something that my surroundings did not quite supply. While I lived
the life of an ordinary boy, a poetic yearning developed by degrees until, all
unconsciously as to how I reached that state of mind, I was sure that some day
I was going to be a great poet.'
(Interview in Boston Evening Transcript, 21 June 1930)
After School
'I did all sorts of things, anything I could get hold of; working for the army
and at the law. Had a sister who was on the stage and that led me into that
sort of life. Took perfectly rotten jobs in the theatre, nothing that amounted
to anything more than giving me barely enough money to live, but it did give
me a pretty clear knowledge of that class of people. Finally I decided there
wasn't anything in it for me. I must have more money, so I learned stenography
and typewriting by correspondence and got a job in the city. This would keep
me from starving while I was getting to be that great poet.'
(Interview in Boston Evening Transcript, 21 June 1930)
On Writing
'You know I have an idea that it's this writing business that is so tough. I suspect that it's something requiring infinitely more labour and pain than what the average person thinks of as 'work'. 'Work' to so many people is a question of sitting in an office, phoning, making contacts, getting ideas, chatting, overcoming difficulties, meeting new people, above all being stimulated by the presence and activities of others. There is no reason why work of this kind should not be pleasurable to anyone with a reasonably active mind. But working at writing it seems to me in comparison, is like hard labour in solitary - something to which even illness is preferable.'
On Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
'Lately I've been making the most extraordinary expeditions into Soho - mixing a great deal with the courtesans therein, and also the low life. I think I've got an idea for an extraordinary and really valuable novel. I daresay you know it's always been one of my leading ambitions to write about the life of servants - particularly female ones - and their oppressed hideous condition. And it's also been my ambition to write about harlots. I have two first rate novels with either of these subjects. Now my latest adventures have led me into remarkable social observations and enlightenments, and it's suddenly occurred to me that to write a novel which is both about servants and harlots (possibly the slow transformation of one into the other) would not only be ferociously good as a novel, but really sound work.'
'My present book is I think, streets ahead of what I've done before…there is only one theme of the HardycumConrad great novel - that is, that this is a bloody awful life, that we are none of us responsible for our own lives and actions, but merely in the hands of the gods, that Nature don't care a damn, but looks rather picturesque in not doing so, and that whether you're making love, being hanged or getting drunk, it's all a futile way of passing the time in the brief period allotted to us preceding death. It is the poet's business to put into words the universal wail of humanity at not being able to get everything it wants exactly when it wants it.'
On His Writing Style in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
'I have developed a lot of new theories about writing and style, the latter
having acquired a weird penchant for short sentences. Also I never now try to
get effects, except in comic writing. My maxim is to see, relate what you see,
and your effects will come. Vision and imagination are the things, and they
arise from stored observation. I work a good deal with the dash and colon, and
am not afraid of awkward rhythms. If your vision and feeling are clear, they
will transcend mere prose. Also I work with short chapters of about five pages
each, one after another - no sections.'
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- The three different volumes of Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
go over the same story from different points of view revealing the inner
lives of the characters. Discuss this method of storytelling and how it adds
to our enjoyment and understanding of each of the characters.
- Hamilton's novels end without any redemptive vision. He refuses to allow
his characters to have unrealistically happy endings. Discuss.
- The most distinctive feature of Hamilton's fiction are the Dickensian narrative
voice and dialogue. Discuss (you may wish to look at specific characters such
as Bob, Ella, Jenny and Mr Eccles).
- Hamilton's portrait of Jenny is not a sympathetic one, though it is not
moralising or judgemental either. Ella, however, is an attractive character.
She keeps her feet on the ground and shows herself to have moral integrity.
Compare and contrast the two women and Hamilton's moral standpoint towards
each.
-
'She had never seen so many desperate buses and blocked cars, and swarming people, in all her life. In all the teeming, roaring, grinding, belching, hooting, anxious-faced world of cement and wheels around her it really seemed as though things had gone too far. It seemed as though some climax had just been reached, that civilization was riding for a fall, that these were certainly the last days of London'
The characters Hamilton portrays are lost amidst a civilization riding out of control. Look at each individual story as a quest for Ella, Bob and Jenny to attempt to find something that will give their life a sense of inner meaning and purpose against the solitude and anonymity of the increasingly industrialised city in which they live. - Look at Hamilton's portrayal of Bob's slide into despair and obsession.
Is this a convincing depiction of someone falling in love? Could this have
worked as well had Hamilton not told the story from Bob's inner viewpoint?
OTHER BOOKS BY PATRICK HAMILTON
Monday Morning (1925)
Craven House (1926)
Twopence Coloured (1928)
The Midnight Bell (1929)
Rope (play) (1929) (film 1948, directed by Alfred Hitchcock)
The Procuration of Judea (play) (1930)
John Brown's Body (play) (1930)
The Siege of Pleasure (1932)
The Plains of Cement (1934)
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935) (trilogy: The Midnight Bell, The
Siege of Pleasure, The Plains of Cement) (BBC television series, 2005)
Money with Menaces (radioplay) (1937)
Gas Light (play) 1938 (film 1939 and film 1944)
Money With Menaces and To the Public Danger (play) (1939)
Impromptu in Moribundia (1939)
To the Public Danger (radioplay) (1939)
Hangover Square (1941) (film 1945)
This is Impossible (1941) (radioplay)
This is Impossible (1942)
The Duke in Darkness (play) (1942)
The Governess (play) (1946)
The Slaves of Solitude (1947
The West Pier (1952)
Caller Anonymous (radioplay) (1952)
Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse (1953)
The Man Upstairs (play) (1954)
Unknown Assailant (1955)
Miss Roach (radioplay from his novel The Slaves of Solitude) (1958)
Hangover Square (radioplay) (1965)
Patrick Hamilton ~ Sean French (1993)
Through a Glass Darkly: The Life of Patrick Hamilton ~ Nigel Jones (1992)
Twentieth Century Mystery and Crime Writers, ed ~ J.M. Reilly (1985)
The Light Went Out ~ B. Hamilton (1972)
Vintage Crime: Crime and Punishment & Ripley's Game
Crime and Punishment was first published in a journal, The Russian Messenger, in twelve monthly instalments in 1866, and later published as a novel. Along with Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, it is considered one of the most influential Russian novels of all time. Dostoevsky has been called the father of the psychological novel because of the depths to which his greatest novels are able to reach into the human psyche.
Crime and Punishment takes place during the course of two weeks in the steaming squalor of a summer in St Petersburg. It focuses on Raskolnikov, an impoverished student who formulates a plan to kill a miserly old moneylender, thereby ridding the world of her evil. Exhibiting some symptoms of megalomania, Raskolnikov thinks himself to be a gifted man, similar to Napoleon. He feels justified in his decision to murder, as he feels that he exists outside the moral constraints that affect ‘ordinary’ people. However, immediately after the crime, Raskolnikov becomes ill, and is tormented by memories of his actions, notably the unplanned death of the pawnbroker’s sister. The novel charts Raskolnikov’s mental anguish, every shifting hope, fear, doubt, each new pang that he experiences, and his latent desire to confess to the murders. The reader is subjected to almost unbearable tension as we get sucked into Raskolnikov’s self-created psychological and spiritual hell. Raskolnikov also tries to protect his sister, Dunya, from unworthy suitors and becomes embroiled in the fortunes of a destitute family, headed by a drunken ex-official, Marmeladov. Through the love of Marmeladov’s daughter, Sonya, a pious prostitute, Raskolnikov finds unexpected redemption.
Patricia Highsmith once told an interviewer that the only suspense writer she read was the master – Dostoevsky, over and over. The anti-hero of Crime and Punishment particularly fascinated her and haunted her writing. Her most famous character, the morally ambiguous multiple murderer Tom Ripley, was undoubtedly influenced by the character of Raskolnikov. Each writer recognises that life cannot be accounted for by any laws or with any logical consistency. The experience of reading both Crime and Punishment and Ripley’s Game is consequently terrifying. We are encouraged to identify with the central protagonists (each writer asks: Who among us has not attempted to impose our will on the natural order? Who among us indeed might not be capable of committing murder?) and in doing so, we recognise that the world is a dangerous place.
The character of Tom Ripley appears in five of Highsmith’s novels: The Talented Mr Ripley, Ripley Underground, Ripley’s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water. In Ripley’s Game (1974) Highsmith twins Tom Ripley with a first-time murderer, Jonathan Trevanny, a man who appears to be ‘the picture of decency and innocence’, and who gets ensnared in a murder plot by Ripley as revenge for snubbing him at a party. An acquaintance of Ripley’s named Reeves, a fixer with delusions of grandeur, has asked Ripley’s help in suggesting someone, an outsider, to do one or two simple Mafia murders, with the aim of throwing the Mafia out of Hamburg to protect the illegal gambling world for his own criminal interests. Tom picks on the unlikely figure of Trevanny, an English picture-framer who lives a quiet life with his French wife and young son in a small French town near the Ripleys. But Tom knows that Trevanny is suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia which is incurable and also that he is not rich and possibly worried about how he will provide for his family after his death.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow. The family was poor but their descent from seventeenth-century noblity entitled them to own land and serfs. Dostoevsky’s mother was loving and religious; his father, a doctor, tended towards alcoholism and violence, and his cruel behaviour towards the peasants on their small estate resulted in his murder when Fyodor was eighteen years old.
The second of eight children, Fyodor was particularly close to his younger sister whose unfortunate marriage may have inspired Dostoevsky’s portraits of both Dunya and Sonya. His older brother, Mikhail, shared Dostoevsky’s literary and journalistic interests as well as his early social ideals. Together they attended secondary schools in Moscow, then the military academy in St Petersburg, followed by service in the Russian Army.
Dostoevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846, and led the literary lion Victor Belinsky to proclaim him as the next Gogol. Dostoevsky’s entrance into St Petersburg literary society had begun. However, his later involvement with a circle of radical intellectual socialists led by Mikhail Petrashevsky brought him to the attention of the police. In 1849 he and the rest of the Petrashevsky group were arrested for subversion. Dostoevsky was imprisoned and then spent the next five years at hard labour in Siberia, where his acquaintance with the criminal community would provide him with the themes, plots and characters for many of his greatest works, including Crime and Punishment.
Dostoevsky returned to St Petersburg in 1859. The next decade was filled with emotional and physical turmoil. In 1864 the deaths of his wife, Maria, and his beloved brother caused extreme misery and drove him into financial ruin, as he assumed his brother’s debts. He also witnessed the dissolution of his literary journal and formed a disadvantageous relationship with an unscrupulous publisher. Yet the 1860s were also a period of great literary fervour, and in the 1866 publication of Crime and Punishment paved the way for a series of novels – including The Idiot, The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov – that both reclaimed his position in Russia’s pantheon of great living writers, and brought stability to his personal and financial affairs. He married his stenographer, Anna Grigorievna Snitkin, with whom he fathered four children, and established himself as a leading conservative who often spoke out against revolutionary activity. He died on 28 January 1881 and his funeral, attended by nearly 30,000 mourners, was a national event.
Like Dostoevsky, Patricia Highsmith also experienced pychological trauma in her life and these afflictions would later creep into her novels. She was born Mary Patricia Plangman in 1921 just outside Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in New York. Highsmith’s childhood years were grim, as indicated by her mother’s confession that she had once tried to abort her pregnancy by drinking turpentine. Highsmith’s parents divorced five months before she was born, and she grew up hating her stepfather. She also had a difficult love-hate relationship with her mother, which haunted her throughout her life.
She graduated from Columbia University, where she earned her BA, in 1942 and for the next six years, living in New York City and Mexico, she wrote numerous comic-book stories to earn a living. At the suggestion of Truman Capote, she rewrote her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), at the Yaddo Writer’s colony in New York. The terrifying tale caught the attention of Alfred Hitchcock, who, with Raymond Chandler, filmed it in 1951. This film catapulted Highsmith’s career and reputation. Soon she became known as a writer of ironic, disturbing psychological mysteries highlighted by stark, startling prose. Her five novels featuring the dashing forger-murderer Tom Ripley were hugely popular. She also wrote many short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humour.
A lesbian herself, Highsmith included homosexual overtones in many of her novels. The best example is The Price of Salt – rejected by her publishers, and especially controversial for its happy ending, theretofore unheard of in fiction concerning homosexuality – which centres on a lesbian relationship. It was eventually published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan in 1953.
A reclusive person, an alcoholic who never had a relationship that lasted for more than a few years, Highsmith spent much of her life alone. She moved permanently to Europe in 1963 and spent her final years in an isolated house in Locarno on the Swiss/Italian border. She died of leukaemia in Switzerland in 1995, aged seventy-four.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE BOOKS
‘To be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter – this is what life is, herein lies its task’ (The Brothers Karamazov). This passage was written immediately after Dostoevsky underwent the traumatic experience that Tsar Nicholas I ordered for several prisoners condemned to death for involvement in revolutionary activities – a mock execution in Semyonovsky Square, a staged performance so terrifyingly real that it induced insanity within one of Dostoevsky’s fellow prisoners and may have triggered in Dostoevsky an epileptic condition that would plague him throughout his life. The quote is evidence of the writer’s strength of character; he led a hard life – after several years of prison and army service, he experienced bleak poverty among the urban poor in Russia. It also exposes the significant flaw common in some of his characters and tragic heroes, including Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment: through despair, and weakness in the face of misfortune, they falter, and commit barbaric acts that render them unfit to operate within the context of humanity.
During his time in prison, Dostoevsky underwent something of a political conversion, rejecting the radical socialist positions that had led to his arrest in favour of a conservative concern for traditional values. His dismissal of leftist political thought is evident in Crime and Punishment. For instance, Raskolnikov’s crime is motivated, in part, by his theories about society. Lebezyatnikov, whose name is derived from the Russian word for ‘fawning’, is obsessed with the so-called new philosophies that raged through St Petersburg during the time that Dostoevsky was writing the novel. Luzhin, a mid-level government official, is continually afraid of being ‘exposed’ by ‘nihilists’.
Nihilism was a philosophical position developed in Russia in the 1850s and 60s, known for ‘negating more’, in the words of Lebezyatnikov. It rejected family and societal bonds and emotional and aesthetic concerns in favour of a strict materialism, or the idea that there is no ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ outside of the physical world. Linked to nihilism is utilitarianism, or the idea that moral decisions should be based on the rule of the greatest happiness for the largest number of people. Raskolnikov originally justifies the murder of Alyona on utilitarian grounds, claiming that a ‘louse’ has been removed from society. Whether or not the murder is actually a utilitarian act, Raskolnikov is certainly a nihilist; completely unsentimental for most of the novel, he cares nothing about the emotions of others. Similarly, he utterly disregards social conventions that run counter to the austere interactions that he desires with the world. However, at the end of the book, as Raskolnikov discovers love, he throws off his nihilism. Through this action, the novel condemns nihilism as empty.
In her 1966 book Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, Highsmith wrote that she found ‘the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial, for neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not’. American readers in the fifties and early sixties undoubtedly found that frank view rather difficult. Highsmith knew that right usually doesn’t beat wrong, and who could tell one from the other in such a corrupt, hypocritical world? Ripley is amorality personified, a snigger at American self delusion about what matters. If the triumph of the individual and the sanctimony of the self-made man are what Americans revere, Ripley gleefully profits from it.
Tom Ripley has come to stand as an allegorical figure for American imperialism. He is the self-effacing, well-mannered, charming American everyman who will, given half a chance, move into your country, your life and your mind, stealing your possessions along with your identity. There’s no escaping him, Highsmith seems to say, or American hegemony.
It is also interesting when reading Highsmith’s novels to remember that she was a lesbian and that at the time she was writing, female homosexuality could be found under the heading ‘Perversions of Affection and Interest’ in psychology books.
CRITICAL RECEPTION TO THE BOOKS
The critical reception of Crime and Punishment was enthusiastic, if a little stunned. There was much discussion about the novel’s overwhelming power – readers were shocked by Dostoevsky’s gruesome descriptions and enthralled by his use of dramatic tension. For more than a century, critics have argued about the book’s message: is it a political novel? a tale of morality? a psychological study? a religious epic? As always with great literature, interpretations are often more revealing of the critic than of the text. Whatever Dostoevsky’s purpose: in Raskolnikov Dostoevsky has created a man who is singular yet universal – someone with whom we can sympathise, empathise and pity – a compelling portrait of human suffering that will endure throughout the ages.
‘Dostoevsky is the only psychologist from
whom I have anything to learn’
Friedrich Nietzsche
‘Dostoevsky gives me more than
any scientist, more than Gauss’
Albert Einstein
‘Russia’s evil genius’
Maxim Gorky
‘Dostoevsky wrote of the unconscious as if it were conscious;
that is in reality the reason why his characters seem “pathological”,
while they are only visualised more clearly than any other figures in imaginative literature…
He was in the rank in which we set Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe’
Edwin Muir
Patricia Highsmith was a highly individual writer, unable to make concessions to market forces, pursuing a career unparalleled among contemporaries which often baffled readers and critics. Writing of psychopaths and killers, taking the reader into their minds and worlds, she tapped into the mystery genre, but pushed things to the very borders of expectation, civility and reason – even of humanity. Her work was deeply transgressive not only of received wisdom, prescribed behaviour and social attitudes, but also of conventional notions of fiction. Despite early recognition thanks to the Hitchcock film of Strangers on a Train, Highsmith was unappreciated in the United States for the entire length of her career. She achieved greater critical acclaim in Europe, where she lived for much of her adult life. In 1957 Highsmith won the coveted French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and in 1964 was awarded the Silver Dagger by the British Crime Writers Association. Recently there has been renewed interest in Highsmith’s work, thanks in part to Anthony Minghella’s film adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley in 1999 and she has finally gained recognition in the States – not only as a master of the suspense genre, but as a literary author of rare talent.
‘Ripley’s Game is beautifully written,
its attraction lying in the unpretentious simplicity
of the Highsmith prose both as it takes us through the seduction
of an ordinary decent man and
– which is what Ripley admirers will most enjoy –
the mental processes of a psychopathic anti-hero who ensnares him’
Anthony Price
‘Ripley’s Game reintroduces Tom Ripley,
with his charm, culture, mischief, weakness for money, and a true decency…
Highsmith constructs her plot with masterly finesse’
Daily Telegraph
‘To call Patricia Highsmith a thriller writer
is true but not the whole truth: her books have stylistic texture,
psychological depth, mesmeric readability’
Sunday Time
‘Patricia Highsmith is a writer who has created a world of her own
– a world claustrophobic and irrational which
we enter each time with a sense of personal danger’
Graham Greene
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky left three full notebooks of material pertinent to Crime and Punishment. These have been published under the title The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment, edited and translated by Edward Wasiolek. Dostoevsky began work on this novel in the summer of 1865.
In September Dostoevsky wrote a letter to M. N. Katkov, the editor of The Russian Messenger, attempting to persuade him to accept the novel and to publish it in his journal. To show Katkov that the new novel was suitable for publication in a conservative journal, Dostoevsky outlined its content and idea as follows:
The idea of the novel cannot, as far as I can see, contradict the tenor of your journal; in fact, the very opposite is true. The novel is a psychological account of a crime. A young man of middle-class origin who is living in dire need is expelled from the university. From superficial and weak thinking, having been influenced by certain ‘unfinished’ ideas in the air, he decides to get himself out of a difficult situation quickly by killing an old woman, a usurer and widow of a government servant. The old woman is crazy, deaf, sick, greedy, and evil. She charges scandalous rates of interest, devours the well-being of others, and, having reduced her younger sister to the state of a servant, oppresses her with work. She is good for nothing. ‘Why does she live?’ ‘Is she useful to anyone at all?’ These and other questions carry the young man’s mind astray. He decides to kill and rob her so as to make his mother, who is living in the provinces, happy; to save his sister from the libidinous importunities of the head of the estate where she is serving as a lady’s companion; and then to finish his studies, go abroad and be for the rest of his life honest, firm, and unflinching in fulfilling his humanitarian duty toward mankind. This would, according to him, ‘make up for the crime’, if one can call this act a crime, which is committed against an old, deaf, crazy, evil, sick woman, who does not know why she is living and who would perhaps die in a month anyway. Despite the fact that such crimes are usually done with great difficulty because criminals always leave rather obvious clues and leave much to chance, which almost always betrays them, he is able to commit his crime, completely by chance, quickly and successfully. After this, a month passes before events come to a definite climax. There is not, nor can there be, any suspicion of him. After the act the psychological process of the crime unfolds. Questions which he cannot resolve well up in the murderer; feelings he had not foreseen or suspected torment his heart. God’s truth and earthly law take their toll, and he feels forced at last to give himself up. He is forced even if it means dying in prison, so that he may once again be part of the people. The feeling of separation and isolation from mankind, nature, and the law of truth take their toll. The criminal decides to accept suffering so as to redeem his deed. But it is difficult for me to explain in full my thinking.Katkov accepted Crime and Punishment for publication in his journal. It was well received by the reading public and elevated Dostoevsky to the position of a leading Russian writer, despite a largely unfavourable reaction from the liberal press (which is proof that the popularity of the novel was very great indeed).
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith rarely gave interviews. ‘I only know it takes weeks to recover, as if one had been in a car accident,’ she wrote in 1967. ‘I think J. D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches.’ She was a lifelong diarist, however, and in these we learn that she fantasised that her neighbours had psychological problems and murderous personalities behind their facades of normality, a theme she would explore extensively in her novels. Highsmith discovered Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind at the age of eight and was immediately fascinated by his case studies of patients afflicted with various mental disorders like pyromania and schizophrenia.
She was hugely influenced by the writing of Dostoevsky. In Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, she wrote: ‘But the beauty of the suspense genre is that a writer can write profound thoughts and have some sections without physical action if he wishes to, because the framework is an essentially lively story. Crime and Punishment is a splendid example of this. In fact, I think most of Dostoevsky’s books would be called suspense books, were they being published today. But he would be asked to cut, because of production costs.’ Her thoughts on the nature of evil were influenced by Dostoevsky, as well as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
-
Graham Greene called Patricia Highsmith the ‘poet of apprehension’. Discuss the techniques Highsmith uses to disturb the reader in Ripley’s Game. We know that Highsmith referred to Dostoevsky as ‘the master of suspense’. How does Dostoevsky achieve and sustain the suspense in Crime and Punishment? What similarities and differences can you discern in the two writers’ methods?
Discuss Raskolnikov’s theory of the ordinary versus the extraordinary man. What is Dostoevsky’s attitude towards this theory? How can it be related to the character of Tom Ripley? Can you think of any modern-day examples of this theory put into practice?
The theme of acting runs throughout both novels. The relationship between murder and assuming a role, the subsequent need for concealment and deception, reality versus unreality, the sense of acting in front of a wider audience – discuss how the characters of Ripley, Trevanny and Raskolnikov all play a part. Who is the audience? There are lots of minor characters who also self-dramatise, particularly in Crime and Punishment – identify who they are and how their personal dramas affect the psychological drama as a whole.
Think about the environment of both novels. In Crime and Punishment, how does St Petersburg serve as a symbol of society and of Raskolnikov’s state of mind? Also think about the description of his apartment. In Ripley’s Game what does the depiction of Belle Ombre and Tom’s relationship with it tell us about his character? Consider Jonathan’s attitude towards his ‘Sherlock Holmes house’ versus his trips to Hamburg. What does Hamburg represent to Jonathan? Discuss the effect on Jonathan and the reader when the two worlds eventually collide.
Discuss the role of women in both novels in relation to morality. Compare the reactions of Simone, Dunya and Pulcheria when they discover the crime committed by their loved one. Do you think the women in the novels are well-rounded characters or stereotypes? Why do you think Dostoevsky chooses Sonya, a prostitute, to be Raskolnikov’s ultimate saviour?
What role does chance play in the development of both novels? In which scenes does coincidence figure heavily in the outcome? Does it affect the plausibility of the narrative? How does it affect the pacing?
Why do Raskolnikov and Trevanny both reject their families’ and friends’ attempts at solace and comfort? Why, when they are at their most loving, do they have feelings of hatred for them? What are Dostoevsky and Highsmith saying about guilt and conscience?
Does the fact that Raskolnikov never uses the money he stole from the pawnbroker make him less or more guilty? Why do you think he never recovers the stolen items or cash? Money is also a motivation for Jonathan Trevanny but how important is it? What other impulses motivate him to commit murder?
The name Raskolnikov derives from the Russian word raskolnik, meaning ‘schismatic’ or ‘divided’. Compare the characters of Raskolnikov and Ripley in terms of duality, pride and alienation from society. Does Razumikhin serve as Raskolnikov’s foil, Trevanny as Ripley’s? Are there any other characters in both novels who serve as foils?
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The theme of redemption through suffering is a guiding principle in Crime and Punishment. Discuss the use of Christian symbolism in the novel and the significance of the story of Lazarus. How does this shape our reading of the novel? In Ripley’s Game redemption is markedly absent. Why do you think this is? What effect does this have?
OTHER BOOKS BY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Poor People (1846)
The Insulted and Injured (1861)
The House of the Dead (1862)
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863)
Notes from Underground (1864)
The Gambler (1866)
The Idiot (1869)
The Possessed (1872)
Demons (1872)
A Writer’s Diary (1876)
The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Patricia Highsmith
NOVELS
Strangers on a Train (1950)
The Price of Salt (1953)
The Blunderer (1954)
Deep Water (1957)
A Game for the Living (1958)
This Sweet Sickness (1960)
The Two Faces of January (1961)
The Cry of the Owl (1962)
The Glass Cell (1964)
A Suspension of Mercy (1965)
Those Who Walk Away (1967)
The Tremor of Forgery (1969)
A Dog’s Ransom (1972)
Edith’s Diary (1977)
People Who Knock on the Door (1983)
Found in the Street (1987)
Small g: A summer idyll (1995)
OTHER TOM RIPLEY NOVELS
The Talented Mr Ripley (1955)
Ripley Under Ground (1970)
The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
Ripley Under Water (1992)
STORY COLLECTIONS
The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (2000)
Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (2002)
NON-FICTION
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966)
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING AND RELATED WORKS
F.M. Dostoevsky: Life, Work, and Criticism ~ Victor Terras
F.M. ~ Boris Akuninn
Metamorphosis ~ Franz Kafka
Match Point (film playing with themes in Crime and Punishment)
Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith ~ Andrew Wilson
Mystery and Suspense Writers, vol. 1 ~ ed., Robin W. Winks
The American Friend (film adapted from Ripley’s Game)
Ripley’s Game (film)
Vintage Fantasy: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Published in 1865 and one of the best-loved children’s stories of its time, Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has become a classic both for young audiences and for adults.It recounts the story of a little girl called Alice who decides to follow a talking white rabbit down a hole. Alice finds herself in a world where she must constantly change size in order to travel about, and nothing is as she expects it to be. In this world, replete with argumentative animals and live decks of cards, Alice’s poetry recitations come out all wrong, and social conventions are turned on their heads. Alice is surprised by each of the inhabitants of this strange world: the enigmatic Cheshire Cat, the guests at a mad tea party, and many others, all of whom are terrorised by the tyrannical Queen of Hearts. Just as she is being attacked by a pack of cards, Alice awakes and realises that some dead leaves have fallen on her and that it was all a dream.
Through the Looking-Glass (published in 1872) also enjoys a status as a classic for all audiences today. In this story, Alice is intrigued by the world on the other side of the mirror, where the writing goes the other way. One day the glass melts away beneath her fingers, and she is transported to Looking-Glass House. The pictures on the walls are alive and the chessmen are conversing. Alice soon becomes embroiled in a gigantic game of chess and is promised that she will be made queen at the end of the game. Her senses of space and distance are challenged as paths lead in unexpected directions and landscapes merge without warning. Alice encounters bizarre characters, including figures from nursery rhymes, who refuse to heed her warnings about their fates, such as the quarrelsome Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Humpty-Dumpty, along with other strange beings. Alice finds her way to the end of the game, but her celebratory tea party descends into chaos. Once again Alice awakes from a dream, but is unsure of whether she dreamt the Red King or the Red King dreamt her.
In Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (published in 1995) Toru Okada lives with his wife and their cat in a pleasant Tokyo neighbourhood. Having just resigned from his job and hoping to find a new direction, he has plenty of spare of time on his hands. Then he begins to receive obscene phone calls from an unknown woman during the day. When their cat goes missing, Toru’s world becomes decidedly bizarre. He encounters a strange cast of characters, among them morbid teenager May Kasahara, the peculiar Malta Kano with her red vinyl hat, and Malta’s sister Creta, who is a prostitute of the mind. Additionally, he is drawn to a well on a supposedly cursed piece of abandoned property.
When Kumiko, Toru’s wife, leaves him without explanation, his quest to find her and discover the secrets of her past begins. He suspects her disappearance is linked to his powerful, cold-hearted brother-in-law, Noburu Wataya. Another character enters his life: Lieutenant Mayima, whose experiences in Manchuko and in World War II leave his life devoid of meaning. His life becomes closely intertwined with the stories of the people he meets. Remembering an allusion to water made by a friendly psychic, Mr Honda, Toru climbs down into the well and becomes trapped there. He enters another world that he had dreamt vividly but hadn’t been able to access. On his return from the well he discovers a bluish mark on his face, which will not come off. A woman accosts him, asking if he needs money, and he begins working for a mysterious agency, run by Nutmeg Akasaka and her son Cinnamon, which ‘heals’ the female Tokyo elite. This enables him to gain possession of the cursed property and unblock the well, which had been purchased by a property agency. His brother-in-law learns of his new situation and sends an assistant to threaten him; Toru resists. He spends much time in the well, and is later able to penetrate this world and regain contact with Kumiko.
Although they were first published more than a hundred years apart, there is much common ground between The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and the Alice books. The protagonists of both The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland begin their journeys in search of animals and encounter much more than they ever would have imagined. The quests in all three books, are ill-defined at the outset and seem to be directed by others, making the fates of the protagonists appear to be beyond their control. However, they begin to adapt to their surroundings and shape the events happening in their lives. The protagonists’ interactions with the characters that they meet challenge their perception of the world around them and their understanding of themselves. In all three books, self-discovery is an integral if unintentional part of the journey.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and the Alice books deal with alternate realities and the protagonists’ reactions to the obliteration of all their points of reference. Toru Okada is forced to deal with outsiders invading his home and his subconscious; all the forms of politeness that Alice has dutifully learned are suddenly of little use to her. The characters both initially crave a sense of normality, the definition of which becomes less and less stable as time passes. The authors’ attention to the subtleties of social interaction creates a distinctive portrait of their respective societies and underlines the theme of identity and the place of individuals within communities.
Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson at the Old Parsonage in Daresbury, Cheshire, on 27 January 1832. He was the third of eleven children born to Frances Jane and the Reverend Charles Dodgson. The family moved to Croft, Yorkshire in 1843. The young Dodgson wrote Useful and Instructive Poetry, a ‘family magazine’, at the age of thirteen. After Richmond School, Yorkshire, and Rugby, Dodgson was educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he resided for all of his adult life. He obtained a first class in his mathematics finals, was made Senior Student and from 1855 to 1881worked as a lecturer in mathematics. He took up photography in 1856 and was later recognised as one of the most talented amateur photographers of his time. Dodgson was also an ordained deacon but never took orders, due to a debilitating stammer, which was said to diminish when he spoke with children. A number of Dodgson’s pamphlets and academic texts were published under his own name, but he is most widely known for his fictional works, published under his pseudonym. Dodgson died 14 January 1898 at ‘The Chestnuts’, Guildford. A collection of his poetry appeared later that year, as well as the official biography, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, written by his nephew. His works have influenced countless artists. At least nine adaptations of the Alice stories have appeared on screen.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and also lived in Osaka and Kobe in childhood. An only child, his parents had met while they were both teaching Japanese literature. He studied theatre arts and film at Waseda University, where he met his wife, Yoko Takahashi. They were married in 1971 and in 1974 opened Peter Cat, their basement jazz club. In 1978, while at a baseball game, Murakami suddenly realised that he could write a novel; his first, Hear the Wind Sing,was published in 1979. His fame as a novelist took off with the publication of Norwegian Wood in 1987 (translated into English in 2000). The couple lived in Europe, 1986–9, and then in the United States, 1991–5. At various points during this time Murakami was a visiting scholar at Princeton University, Una’s Lecturer in the Humanities at the University of California at Berkeley and writer-in-residence at Tufts University. He has received many awards, among them the Noma Literary Newcomer’s Prize for A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Tanizaki Literary Prize for Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Yomiuri Literary Prize for The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995) and the Kuwabara Takeo Prize for Underground (1999). Murakami has also translated works from English into Japanese by such authors as J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote and Raymond Carver.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE BOOKS
Originally spontaneously composed and related to Alice Liddell and her two sisters on a picnic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (originally entitled Alice’s Adventures Underground)was first published in 1865. Carroll wrote down the outline on the train home, and later expanded and edited some of the stories to create the book. He tested the manuscript on the children of the writer George MacDonald and received their seal of approval. John Tenniel agreed to illustrate the text, and his images were an important addition to the book. Carroll referred to ‘a sort of sequel to Alice’ in a letter to his publishers in 1866; this idea became Through the Looking-Glass (originally entitled Behind the Looking-Glass). The book was first published in 1872 and incorporated some of the stories Carroll had invented over the years for the Liddell children.
As the Duchess says in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, ‘Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it’ (Chapter 9): Victorian society was rigidly hierarchical, but the upper and middle classes were becoming more concerned with social issues such as malnourishment and poor labour conditions. The Industrial Revolution in the mid-nineteenth century had instigated an enduring interest in technology and inventions, and heralded a period of great social change. Carroll himself campaigned for electoral reform, taking up the issues of extending the voting franchise and redistributing the seats in the House of Commons.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was published in 1995 in Japan. In the same year the Kobe earthquake claimed the lives of over 5,500 people, injured 26,000 and cost the economy an estimated $200 billion. Two months later, twelve people were killed and over fifty seriously injured, when members of a religious cult called Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on the Tokyo underground in five coordinated attacks. Murakami returned to Japan later in 1995, and after interviewing victims and perpetrators of the sarin attack, his book Underground appeared in Japan in 1997 and the English translation in 2000. In the latter half of the decade, the country went into recession – the Japanese yen lost half its value between 1995 and 1998.
Murakami highlighted an important contemporary issue in an interview with Laura Miller of Salon. When asked the question ‘Are you afraid of fascism or something like that?’ Murakami replied,‘Fascism is not the right word – nationalism and revisionism. They’re saying there was no Nanking Massacre and no trouble with comfort women [Chinese and Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army]. They’re remaking history. That’s very dangerous. I went to Manchuria a couple of years ago and visited some villages. The villagers told me, “Japanese soldiers massacred four or five dozen people here.” They showed me the mass grave – it’s still there. It’s shocking and nobody can deny the fact, but they are doing it. We can go forward, but we have to remember the past. We don’t have to be tied by the past, but we have to remember it – that’s different.’ (Salon website)
CRITICAL RECEPTION TO THE BOOKS
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was not an immediate success, perhaps in part due to its mixed reviews. The Times said it ‘may be best described as an excellent piece of nonsense’ (26 December 1865).
‘Too extravagantly absurd to produce more diversion
than disappointment and irritation. The reader looks in vain for
any immediate reason why Alice should have dreamt such a dream
or for any very edifying result arising from it’
Illustrated Times, 16 December 1865
‘This is the book for little folks, and big folks who
take it home to their little folks will find themselves reading more
than they intended, and laughing more than they had any right to expect’
Spectator, 23 December 1865
However, it had sold 29,000 copies by the time Through the Looking-Glass was published. The second book was also not well loved by the critics but became a classic nonetheless. The novelist Henry Kingsley called it ‘the finest book since Martin Chuzzlewit’. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was shown to be one of the favourite children’s books in a survey in 1898 and had already entered the cultural consciousness. It was banned in China on religious grounds in 1931.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is one of Murakami’s most famous works and sales have topped 155,000 in the UK alone.
‘A significant advance in Murakami’s art . . .
a bold and generous book....
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle includes an almost
Joycean range of literary forms: flashbacks, dreams, letters,
newspaper stories
and transcripts of Internet chats.
And no matter how fantastical the events it describes may be,
the straight-ahead storytelling never loses its propulsive force’
New York Times Book Review
‘A stunning work of art . . . that bears no comparisons’
New York Observer
‘Murakami writes of contemporary Japan,
urban alienation and journeys of self-discovery,
and in this book he combines recollections of
the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations
into a powerful and impressionistic work’
Independent
Lewis Carroll
In response to a question about The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll replied:
I’m afraid I didn’t mean anything but nonsense! Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I’m very glad to accept as the meaning of the book. (Taken from A Selection of Letters of Lewis Carroll to his Child-Friends, ed. Evelyn M. Hatch (1933), p. 243.)
Haruki Murakami
Are you always surprised by what happens in the story, almost as if you were reading it yourself, or do you know where it’s going after a certain point?
I have no idea. I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories. It’s very exciting when you don’t know what’s going to happen next. The same thing happens to me when I’m writing. It’s fun.
This book also feels more Japanese. Some of your other books seem, to Western readers, as if the characters could be Western.
Really?
Yes. Perhaps because your characters are so fond of Western culture. It doesn't feel, reading them, that the story is happening in Japan – but that's the impression of a Western reader. This book, however, definitely feels more focused on Japan. Why did you decide to do that?
That's because I was living in the States! I was here from 1991 to 1995, which was when I was writing this book. That’s the reason why I was looking at my own country and my own people. When I was writing my other books, in Japan, I just wanted to escape. Once I got out of my country, I was wondering: What am I? What am I as a writer? I’m writing books in Japanese, so that means I’m a Japanese writer, so what is my identity? I was thinking about that all the time when I was here.
I think that’s one of the reasons I wrote about the war. In a way we were lost, the Japanese. We have been working so hard since just after the war. We were getting rich. We reached a certain stage, but after reaching it, we asked ourselves: Where are we going? What are we doing? It’s a sense of loss. Also I guess I am looking for some reason or cause to write. It isn’t easy to explain. It's too hard for me.
Do [other Japanese writers] have a problem with what you write?
I love pop culture – the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism. I like horror films, Stephen King, Raymond Chandler, detective stories. I don't want to write those things. What I want to do is use those structures, not the content. I like to put my content in that structure. That's my way, my style. So both of those kinds of writers don't like me. Entertainment writers don't like me, and serious literature people don't like me. I'm kind of in-between, doing a new kind of thing. That's why I couldn't find my position in Japan for many years. But I'm feeling that things are changing drastically. I'm gaining more territory. I have had my very loyal readers in these 15 years or so. They're buying my books, and they're on my side. The writers and critics are not on my side.
[Raymond Carver] is a very realistic writer.
Yes, very realistic. But the subconscious is very important to me as a writer. I don’t read much Jung, but what he writes has some similarity with my writing. To me the subconscious is terra incognita. I don’t want to analyze it, but Jung and those people, psychiatrists, are always analyzing dreams and the significance of everything. I don’t want to do that. I just take it as a whole. Maybe that’s kind of weird, but I’m feeling like I can do the right thing with that weirdness. Sometimes it’s very dangerous to handle that. You remember that scene in the mysterious hotel? I like the story of Orpheus, his descending, and this is based on that. The world of death and you enter there at your own risk. I think that I am a writer, and I can do that. I am taking my own risk. I have confidence that I can do it.
Taken from Laura Miller’s interview with Haruki Murakami in Salon, December 16 1997
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
- The Alice books and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle both deal with other worlds or realities. This is traditionally seen as the domain of fantasy and fairy tale, but also of horror. Do you feel there is a distinct division between these categories? What other genres could the Alice books and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle fit into?
- The protagonists of the works are faced with unexpected situations, where the patterns of social behaviour they have learned in their respective cultures are not necessarily applicable. How do they cope with this? How far do you think the works reflect the cultural concerns of the societies and times in which they were written? Why do you think the books appeal to readers outside of these cultural perimeters?
- Murakami uses different literary forms, such as letters, newspaper articles and email conversations, each of which is presented differently on the page. The Alice books contain illustrations by John Tenniel and also play with the textual layout. What effect does this use of form have on your understanding and experience of reading the texts?
- In all three works, the protagonists meet a series of characters with a story to relate. In The Wind-up Bird Chronicle Toru’s first-person narrative is interspersed with oral history and dialogue as well as a few passages from other points of view. In the Alice books, the third-person narrative includes poems recited by the creatures Alice meets. Why do you think that the authors chose to structure their books in this way and chose these uses of perspective? Discuss the authors’ use of storytelling both as a theme and as a technique. How important are these other lives which are woven into the story and what effect to they have on the protagonists?
- Alice is a child, and the Alice books were published as children’s stories. In The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Toru meets teenager May Kasahara and a boy hears the cry of the wind-up bird in the night. How important is childhood in the novels? Toru himself is trying to decide what to do with his life after quitting his job, and in all three works the protagonists’ identities are being constantly challenged as they encounter new people on their journeys. What effect does this have on the main characters? How far do you consider these tales to be ones of self-discovery?
- Both the Alice books and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle have funny moments; in fact, the former were often classed as nonsense books. Are there any similarities in the use of humour in the books? How important is humour in the works? The Alice books are sometimes viewed as satirical. How far do you agree with this? How would you describe the overall tone or tones of these works?
- Many of the twists and turns of the storylines surprise the protagonists, and at times their journeys seem to have no clear purpose. To what extent are the characters in control of the events that involve them? Toru’s consciousness is accessed by Creta Kano, and the creatures Alice meets think she not they are strange. Do you see the theme of insanity as important in the works? Alice only sees part of Wonderland and Looking-Glass House and grounds and has no map. Toru’s access to the mysterious hotel is restricted. What effect does this partial revelation have on the protagonists and on the reader?
- Only a few characters are aware of the wind-up bird in Murakami’s novel, and Toru’s first quest is a search for a missing cat. In the Alice books Alice has her own cats and meets several other animals. What role do animals play in the novels? Do you think they are symbolic?
- Murakami includes historical details in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and in Through the Looking-Glass Carroll introduces characters from nursery rhymes familiar to the children of the time. Why do you think the authors chose to introduce these ‘facts’ from the world outside of the book? ‘Everything was intertwined, with the complexity of a three-dimensional puzzle – a puzzle in which truth was not necessarily fact and fact was not necessarily truth’ (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, p. 527). Discuss the interplay of fact, puzzles and truth in the works. How do they relate to the concept of reality in the novels? Do the protagonists’ perceptions of reality change during the novels? Does the reader’s perception of reality in the context of the novel change?
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ends by Alice waking up to realise she has dreamt her adventures. At the end of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Toru still believes the mysterious underworld, accessible only from the well, to be real. The position of Through the Looking-Glass is somewhere between the two, with Alice’s meditation on characters dreaming each other up. Do you find the endings of these works satisfactory? How do they affect your overall picture and comprehension of the works?
Lewis Carroll
FICTION
The Hunting of the Snark (1876)
Sylvie and Bruno (1889)
The Nursery Alice (1890)
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893)
POETRY
Phantasmagoria, and Other Poems (1869)
Three Sunsets, and Other Poems (1898)
NON-FICTION
The Fifth Book of Euclid Treated Algebraically (1858)
A Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry (1860)
Notes by an Oxford Chiel (1874)
Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879)
Symbolic Logic, Part I (1896)
SELECTED OTHER WORKS
Doublets: A Word –Puzzle (1879)
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)
The Principles of Parliamentary Representation (1884)
A Tangled Tale (1885) [maths puzzles in form of short stories]
The Game of Logic (1887)
Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing (1890)
Haruki Murakami
FICTION
Hear the Wind Sing (Japan 1979, not available in English)
Pinball 1973 (Japan 1980, not available in English)
A Wild Sheep Chase (Japan 1982, UK 2000)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Japan 1985, UK 2001)
Norwegian Wood (Japan 1987, UK 2000)
Dance Dance Dance (Japan 1988, UK 2002)
South of the Border, West of the Sun (Japan 1992, UK 1999)
The Elephant Vanishes (Japan 1993, UK 2001)
Sputnik Sweetheart (Japan 1999, UK 2001)
after the quake (Japan 2001, UK 2002)
Kafka on the Shore (Japan 2002, UK 2005)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Japan 2005, UK 2006)
After Dark (Japan 2006, UK 2007)
NON-FICTION
Portraits in Jazz 1 and 2 (Japan 1997 and 2001, not available in English)
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (Japan 1997, 1998, UK 2002)
EDITED
Birthday Stories Selected and Introduced by Haruki Murakami (UK 2004)
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING AND RELATED WORKS
Coraline ~ Neil Gaiman
The Owl and the Pussycat ~ Edward Lear
The Diaries of Lewis Carroll ~ Roger Lancelyn Green
Murakami and the Music of Words ~ by Jay Rubin
Salvador Dali’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland
The His Dark Materials Trilogy ~ Philip Pullman (books and theatre adaptation) Metropolis (film)
The Others (film)
Pan’s Labyrinth (film)
Vintage Fear: The Complete Fairy Tales & The Bloody Chamber
The first volume of the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), complete with scholarly annotations by the brothers, was published in 1812: the seventh, or final, edition was published in 1857. The volume contained stories that the Grimms had collected during their research into folklore – a gifted romantic writer and friend, Clemens Brentano, knowing the Grimms' expertise in this area, had sought their assistance in gathering tales and the Grimms responded by selecting tales from old books, and asking for help in finding others from friends and acquaintances. As Brentano proved unreliable and seemed unlikely to publish his work as planned, the Grimms decided to publish themselves: the original edition contained 156 tales, but by the time of the last edition this had grown to 211, many of which came from literary sources or were sent to the brothers by informants. This collection comprises everything from well-known tales, such as ‘Puss-in-Boots’ and ‘Rose Red’, to those containing gruesome elements that may shock readers (and which were hastily edited out of later versions by other fairy-tale collectors). The collection includes an introduction by Jack Zipes, whose intelligent and informative analysis of the brothers and their work finally places these stories in their true context.
The Bloody Chamber (1979) is an anthology of short stories loosely based on fairy or folk tales. The short stories included in the collection (with the name of the fairy story that they are based on in brackets) are as follows; ‘The Bloody Chamber’ (‘Bluebeard’); ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’ (‘Beauty and the Beast’); ‘The Tiger's Bride’ (‘Beauty and the Beast’); ‘Puss-in-Boots’ (‘Puss-in-Boots’); ‘The Erl-King’ (an adaptation of the Erlking in folklore); ‘The Snow Child’ (‘Snow White’); ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ (‘Sleeping Beauty’); ‘The Werewolf’(‘Little Red Riding Hood’); ‘The Company of Wolves’ (‘Little Red Riding Hood’); and ‘Wolf-Alice’, which is not based on a fairy tale but explores the journey towards personal subjectivity and self-awareness from the perspective of a feral child. Angela Carter argued that her tales were new stories, rather than retellings of existing tales and disputed her American publisher's description of them as 'adult' fairy tales, explaining that she had instead extracted 'the latent content from the traditional stories and [used] it as the beginnings of new stories'.
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm were born in 1785 and 1786, respectively, in Hanau near Frankfurt. They were educated at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kassel and both later read law at the University of Marburg. The brothers travelled widely throughout Germany and other countries, performing field research for their linguistic work, which involved trying to find patterns in how the vowels and consonants which made up specific words changed over time. To determine these patterns, they needed to hear many different examples of authentic speech by various speakers of different ages and in different regions. The brothers eventually discovered that one of the easiest ways to convince older local residents to give them lengthy examples of their natural speech was to ask the residents to tell them their favourite stories. As the brothers recorded the style of speech of the speaker for their research they also recorded the various stories that they were told, and eventually published them. The stories became immensely popular, and were widely reprinted. The brothers are now most widely known for these collections of stories, which were essentially an unexpected byproduct of the linguistic research which was their primary goal. Wilhelm died in 1859; his elder brother Jacob died in 1863. They are both buried in the St Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in Schöneberg, Berlin.
Angela Carter was born in 1940 in Sussex but was evacuated to South Yorkshire, to live with her grandmother. She read English at Bristol University and her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965, followed by The Magic Toyshop in 1967, which went on to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. After winning the Somerset Maugham Award for Several Perceptions (1968)she used the money to leave her first husband – although she retained his surname – and travelled to Japan, where she lived for two years. She then explored the United States, Asia and Europe – the latter helped by her fluency in two European languages, French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer-in-residence at various universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide and the University of East Anglia. In 1977 she married again, to her second husband Mark Pearce. She wrote a further four novels, together with three collections of short stories, two works of non-fiction and a volume of collected writings. Angela Carter died in 1992.
Neither the Grimm Brothers, nor Angela Carter achieved true recognition during their lifetimes – the Grimms’ fairy tales only became popular after their deaths whilst Carter surprisingly never won a major book award such as the Man Booker Prize during her lifetime. They shared an interest in the oral storytelling tradition and both the Grimms and Carter travelled to explore their passion and learn more about language and storytelling traditions, and the influences of a variety of countries can be seen in all of their works.
Interestingly, both the Grimms and Carter had difficult childhoods: Carter battled with anorexia that she developed as a result of low self-esteem, while the father of the Grimm brothers died suddenly when Jacob was eleven and Wilhelm only ten, leaving their mother to raise them, and their four siblings, with little financial support: both brothers were forced to obtain a special dispensation to study law because their social standing was not enough to qualify them.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE BOOKS
Contrary to modern belief, the Grimms did not collect the majority of their tales by visiting peasants in the countryside – their primary method was to invite storytellers to their house and listen to spoken versions of the tales. Most of the storytellers at this time were educated young women from the middle classes or the aristocracy who often related tales they had heard from their nursemaids, governesses and servants. In fact, many of the Grimm tales had their roots in France, rather than Germany, as one of the Grimms’ main sources of tales, the Hassenpflug family, were of Huguenot ancestry and spoke French at home. In addition to these tales, the Grimms also took stories directly from books and journals and edited them to their tastes.
The Bloody Chamber was published in 1979 – a year characterised by strong women. Margaret Thatcher had just been appointed Britain's first female prime minister, and Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore won the Booker Prize, while Patty Hearst was released from prison after her sentence was commuted by the then US president, Jimmy Carter. Angela Carter's work caused shockwaves when it was published and continues to do so even now. One of the central stories, ‘The Company of Wolves’, grew into a feature film by Neil Jordan, described by the Guardian as 'a hyperreal, enticing nightmare' and regarded as a classic by both critics and audiences.
CRITICAL RECEPTION TO THE BOOKS
The Grimms' collection, Children's and Household Tales, was not an immediate success in Germany – a collection by one of the country’s leading writers, Ludwig Bechstein, called Deutsches Märchenbuch (The German Book of Fairy Tales) was more popular. But by the 1870s the Grimms' tales has been incorporated into the teaching curriculum in Prussia and other German principalities, and they were also included in primers and anthologies for children throughout the Western world. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Children's and Household Tales was second only to the Bible as a best-seller in Germany, and it has continued to hold this position. The tales have been equally popular among academics, and various schools of thought have sought to analyse and interpret the success of the Grimms' tales while teachers have often been drawn, not to the motifs, but to the moral lessons and the role models portrayed in the stories.
'One of my favourite books as a child was Grimms’ Fairy Tales,
the unexpurgated version – the one with the red-hot shoes'
Margaret Atwood
The Bloody Chamber won the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize and proved to be Carter's most successful work, igniting interest in the previously oblivious United States where she then went on to lecture, and ultimately to teach at Brown University between 1980 and 1981. Thirteen years after its publication there were more requests for PhD funding on Angela Carter than on the whole of the eighteenth century.
'Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality'
Ian McEwan
'Demonstrates Angela Carter's narrative gift
at its most mocking and seductive'
Observer
'She can glide from ancient to modern, from darkness to luminosity,
from depravity to comedy without any hint of strain and without
losing the elusive power of the original tales'
The Times
Grimm Brothers
Nearly all my labours have been devoted, either directly or indirectly, to the investigation of our earlier language, poetry and laws. These studies may have appeared to many, and may still appear, useless; to me they have always seemed a noble and earnest task, definitely and inseparably connected with our common fatherland, and calculated to foster the love of it. My principle has always been in these investigations to under-value nothing, but to utilize the small for the illustration of the great, the popular tradition for the elucidation of the written monuments.
Taken from Jacob Grimm’s autobiography, which he wrote towards the end of his life
Angela Carter
The stories in The Bloody Chamber are very firmly grounded in the Indo-European popular tradition, even in the way they look. A friend of mine has just done a collection of literary fairy tales from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, things like the original Beauty and the Beast’, which is in fact from the oral tradition. There's this long history in Europe of taking elements from the oral tradition and making them into very elaborate literary conventions, but all the elements in that particular piece, The Bloody Chamber, are very lush.
I was looking at it again last week. I read from it for the first time in ages the other night, and I thought, this is pretty cholesterol-rich because of the fact that they all take place in invented landscapes. Some of the landscapes are reinvented ones. ‘The Bloody Chamber’ story itself is set quite firmly in the Mont Saint Michel, which is this castle on an island off the coast of Brittany; and a lot of the most exotic landscapes in it, the Italian landscapes, were quite legit. ‘The Tiger's Bride’ landscape, admittedly, is touristic, but it's one of the palaces in Mantua that has the most wonderful jewels, and that city is set in the Po Valley, which is very flat and very far out, so in the summer you can imagine the mist rolling over. The landscapes there [in The Bloody Chamber] are quite real. Even the werewolf stories are set in some horror-filled invented landscapes, but there's more a kind of down-to-earthness in those stories.
Taken from the Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XIV, no. 3. interview by Anna Katsavos
STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION
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The Bloody Chamber includes two reworkings of both ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. Discuss the differences between Carter's and the Grimms' tales, and between Carter’s two versions. Why do you think she twice chose to do two adaptations of the same tale?
Discuss the different portrayals of women and sexuality in both sets of tales: is it true to say that Carter is more sympathetic towards women and their desires? Do the Grimms acknowledge female desire?
Carter’s modern retellings are, with the exception of ‘The Snow Child’, substantially longer than the original Grimm versions – how has she chosen to lengthen each tale, and what effect has this had upon the story? Why do you think ‘The Snow Child’ is so much shorter than the other tales in her collection?
Many of the Grimms’ tales appear to have clear moral messages for their audience – do you think that Carter’s tales have messages for their readers? What personal qualities do the Grimm brothers most appear to revere?
In her reworking of ‘Bluebeard’ why does Carter choose to have her heroine rescued by her mother, rather than her brothers as in the original Grimm tale? What difference does this make to the tale and to your perception of the heroine?
Discuss the symbolism of flowers in the tales, with particular reference to Carter's ‘The Snow Child’ and the Grimms’ ‘The Rose’.
‘Puss-in-Boots’ and ‘Bluebeard’ were both excluded from the Grimms' original edition but they have become two of the most well-known fairy tales – w hy do you think they were originally excluded, and what qualities have led to them becoming so popular?
In the Grimms' tales animals are often turned back into humans once a spell has been broken, while in Carter's tales it is often humans that are transformed into beasts. Discuss the reasons for this reversal – w hat is Carter implying about human nature? How different are the beasts in each set of stories?
Discuss the nature of fear in these tales – are the women in Carter's tales in fear of those around them, or of their own natures? What do the characters in the Grimms' tales fear most?
Consider the role of religion in each of the tales, with particular reference to ‘The Pink Flower’, ‘The Jew in the Thornbush’ and ‘Wolf-Alice’.
Angela Carter
The Magic Toyshop (1967)
Love (1971)
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972)
Expletives Deleted (1974)
The Passion of New Eve (1977)
Black Venus (1980)
Nights at the Circus (1984)
Wise Children (1991)
Burning Your Boats (1995)
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING AND RELATED WORKS
Good Bones and Simple Murders ~ Margaret Atwood
The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye ~ A.S Byatt
The Book of Blood ~ Vicki Feaver
Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children's Literature ~ Alison Lurie
Flesh and the Mirror: Essays on the Art of Angela Carter ~ ed. Lorna Sage
A Midsummer Night’s Dream ~ William Shakespeare
The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World ~ Jack Zipes
The Brothers Grimm (film)
The Company of Wolves (film)
Vintage Love: Middlemarch & Possession
Published in 1871 and set in the 1830s, George Eliot’s Middlemarch weaves a complex web of relationships between the inhabitants of the eponymous fictional English town. The central character is the beautiful and serious-minded Dorothea Brooke, who is determined to use her spirit and talents to the good of others. To the surprise and concern of her family, she rejects the local landowner Sir James Chettam as a suitor in favour of Edward Casaubon, a middle-aged clergyman engaged in writing a ‘Key to all Mythologies’. Dorothea hopes to assist in his research, but is disillusioned when she sees his selfish and pedantic attitude to his work. She is sustained through this loveless marriage by her friendship with Will Ladislaw, Casaubon’s good-natured young cousin, who is trying to find his way in the world. Casaubon becomes jealous of their relationship and adds a codicil to his will whereby Dorothea forfeits her fortune if she marries Ladislaw. Meanwhile, through her charity work, Dorothea is introduced to Tertius Lydgate, an ambitious doctor with plans to found a hospital in Middlemarch. He is thwarted in this endeavour when he falls in love with pretty but self-centred Rosamond Vincy, who sees him as ‘a man who would be delightful to enslave’ and whose extravagances and social climbing put him in debt to the banker, Bulstrode. We also follow the fortunes of Rosamond’s brother Fred, unsuitably destined to be a clergyman, who gradually reforms his ways and establishes his independence in order to marry his childhood sweetheart, Mary Garth. After Casaubon dies Dorothea and Ladislaw at last confess their love for one another and Dorothea sacrifices her inheritance in order to marry him.
Possession (published in 1990), A.S. Byatt’s tale of passion and obsession – literary and romantic – spans two centuries and charts two love affairs. Roland Michell, a young academic researching the work of the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, discovers drafts of a letter from Ash to an unknown woman hidden inside a book at the London Library. Their tone is so urgent and compelling that Roland resolves to personally investigate their significance. A suspicion that the mystery addressee was another poet, Christabel LaMotte, leads him to visit a fellow academic, the beautiful but chilly Maud Bailey, at Lincoln University. Through a chance encounter and a poetic clue they discover a sheaf of correspondence between the poets, hidden by Christabel in a doll’s bed, and together they embark on a literary detective adventure. As Maud and Roland delve deeper, the story of the romance between Ash and LaMotte begins to unfold and they follow in their footsteps to Whitby, where the poets shared a passionate few weeks in each other’s company before ending their affair for ever – Ash returning to his wife, the pregnant Christabel seeking sanctuary with her uncle in Brittany. The quest becomes more urgent as Roland and Maud’s academic rivals begin to follow the trail, and the story becomes darker, with the suicide of Christabel’s companion, Blanche Glover, and the poets’ attempts to seek solace in spiritualism. The adventure draws Maud and Roland together and in the final chapters we glimpse the possibility of their future happiness. In the postscript the narrator intervenes to provide the missing piece in the literary puzzle by describing a brief but all-important encounter between Ash and his young daughter.
These complex and richly plotted novels, both dealing with themes of romance, marriage and personal freedom, contain some fascinating parallels. Eliot and Byatt concern themselves with the nature and limitations of academic study: Casaubon, in his misguided search for the key to all mythologies, is mirrored by the academics in Possession – Beatrice Nest, with her endless card indexes and inability to complete her research, and Cropper and his obsessive acquisitiveness. Each novel shows that a truth and a good exist beyond that which can be uncovered through scholarship; Dorothea finds it through her relationship with Ladislaw, Roland with Maud, and the final coda in Possession reveals the most important fact of the story – Ash’s meeting with his daughter – which would never have been brought to light through academic research. The novels are both interesting to read from a feminist perspective. Blanche and Christabel fail in their attempt to forge an independent existence as unmarried women in Possession, and feminists have criticised Eliot for making Dorothea bow to convention by marrying Ladislaw, rather than to do what she did in real life: forge her own career and openly live with a man she could not marry. The structures of the two novels are also comparable: Byatt and Eliot spin complex webs of allusion and draw parallels between their characters, and both employ epigraphs to illuminate their work.
Mary Anne Evans was born in Warwickshire in 1819. Her childhood was not entirely happy, but she was very close to her brother, Isaac, a relationship she later portrayed in her novel The Mill on the Floss. Desperate for love and affection, but insecure about her plain appearance, she embarked on a series of relationships with unsuitable older men. She moved to London in 1851 to work on the Westminster Review as an assistant editor, reviewing numerous books and coming into contact with the intellectual elite of the era. She fell in love with George Henry Lewes, estranged from his wife but unable to divorce her, and made the decision to live as his mistress. The partnership lasted twenty-four years and was a very happy one – Evans regarded herself as morally married and insisted on being called ‘Mrs Lewes’. She caused much speculation when she adopted the pen name George Eliot in order to protect her identity and avoid the problem of her marital status, but by the time Middlemarch was published she was widely understood to be the author. Lewes died in 1878 and she married her friend John Cross, twenty years her junior, in May 1888. She died in the December of the same year.
A.S. Byatt was born in Sheffield in 1936. She read English at Newnham College, Cambridge, and began her career as an academic, teaching English literature. It is easy to see the influence of this background in her writing, with its richly allusive and referential style and her fascination with cataloguing, ordering and analysing her material. Her first novel, The Shadow of the Sun, was published in 1964. She became a full-time writer in 1983 and won the Booker Prize for Possession in 1990. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1999.
Eliot and Byatt both have scholarly backgrounds and their novels are self-consciously intellectual. Eliot worked as a literary critic at the Westminster Review, and Byatt continues to publish works of criticism. Their acute literary awareness is much in evidence in both novels, exemplified by their complex allusions and use of epigrams.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE BOOKS
Middlemarch is set in the years immediately preceding the first Reform Bill. Eliot shows the plight of the poor through Dorothea’s eyes and contrasts the Tory attitudes of Chettam with the growing demand for reform represented (perhaps rather hypocritically) by Mr Brooke and (more convincingly) by Ladislaw, who in the last chapter becomes a Member of Parliament. Eliot was born six months after Queen Victoria and while typically Victorian in many ways, she was startlingly modern in others. She was prepared to sacrifice her reputation for a relationship with Lewes, in an era in which any hint of sexual impropriety in a woman alienated her from society. Yet she did not see any point in women having the vote, and advocated their education as enabling them to become intelligent wives and mothers, rather than as a way to paid employment. Eliot was also influenced by developments in scientific thought – scientific conceits permeate her writing – particularly by Darwin’s On the Origins of Species, which was instrumental in the Victorian crisis of faith.
A. S. Byatt also writes about the Victorian period in telling the story of Ash and LaMotte, recreating its repressive atmosphere in the difficulties encountered by Christabel and Maud in their attempts to live as independent women; the moral crisis faced by Christabel and Ash in the desire to consummate their relationship; in Christabel’s denial of her pregnancy; in Ellen Ash’s stoic devotion to her husband. Yet, unlike Eliot, she writes about the era from the outside, with a fresh, post-feminist perspective. She is equally concerned with modern critical theory and contemporary ideas of ‘self’, writing pastiches of feminist criticism. Perhaps, too, she questions how much things have really moved on: Maud tells Roland that she keeps her blonde hair covered because she was once hissed at during a conference, where it was assumed that she had dyed it to make herself attractive to men; Bea