WRAP-UP POST: BACK TO THE CLASSICS CHALLENGE 2015

I had a huge reading slump in April/May of this year and consequently it was a bit of a struggle for me to finish this challenge hosted by Karen at the blog Books and Chocolate…but then that is why it is called a challenge, right?  However, I was ultimately able to read 12 books for all 12 categories with less than a week to spare! And despite my readers’ block earlier this year, I really did have a ball reading for the challenge and look forward to participating in the 2016 one as well.

I shamelessly used this challenge to further my adventures  in the Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope by reading Framley Parsonage for A 19th Century Classic, the fourth book in the series, which I adored, as I do most Trollope.  Also at the top of my favorites list is One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, which I read as my choice for a Classic Novella; this book was just exquisite.  I also loved Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple, my option for A Forgotten Classic.  Whipple writes in such a smooth way, it keeps me turning the pages.  And I can’t forget Lucia’s Progress  by E.F. Benson  which I read as my Humorous or Satirical Classic.  I adore the Mapp and Lucia series; the books often make me laugh out loud, which is rare.

The biggest surprise in the 2015 challenge for me was the play, Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde which I read for the category of A Classic Play. This was the one I was looking forward to the least and it turned out to be not only one of the easier reads, but also one of the most fun and entertaining of the 12!

I liked, but didn’t love Armadale by Wilkie Collins which I read for the category of Classic with a Person's Name in the Title, but I read this right in the middle of my slumpiest time, so had I been in a better headspace, I might have appreciated it more.  I also liked but didn’t love American Notes by Charles Dickens which was the title I chose for a Non-Fiction Classic.  I know that the trip chronicled by Dickens was specifically used in Martin Chuzzlewit, which is the first Dickens novel I read and one of my favorites. However, I think ultimately I prefer Dicken’s fiction. 

I definitely think I would have appreciated Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Little Princess more as a child. This was my pick for the category of Classic Children's Book. It was a little hard to look past some of the book’s more dated aspects regarding race and class. As a kid, I would have seen only the Cinderella storyline.

East Lynne was my choice for Classic by a Woman Author and while it didn’t live up to my expectations, I did enjoy it once I let it be what it was, which was very, very melodramatic!

My choice for a 20th Century Classic was Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara which I found hard going, but since it is also on the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels in English of the 20^th century, it was one that I had to cross of my list anyway.

Lastly, while I didn’t really enjoy either the Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliff which was my choice for  a Very Long Classic Novel or Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse which I chose for my Classic in Translation, as much as I had hoped, I don’t regret reading either book.  In particular I am glad to have read the Radcliff book if only because of its reference in Northanger Abbey. In fact, I probably should re-read Northanger Abbey to get the full effect now!

I am super pleased that a wopping nine of the books I read came from my shelves; for the other three, two were borrowed from the library and only one was purchased specifically for the challenge!

AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION

 

Whew, I got this one read just under the wire! Charles Dickens’ American Notes for General Circulation was the title I chose to complete the Non-Fiction Classic category and the 12^th and final book that I finished for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate, thereby completing all 12 categories.

 

I was particularly interested in reading American Notes, an account of Dickens’ visit to the U.S. in 1942, because Martin Chuzzelwit was the first novel of his that I read and it particularly contains a large section which was inspired by this journey. I was, however, also really surprised to see that Dickens’ tours of some U.S. prisons also must have inspired at least some of Dr. Manette’s incarceration in the Bastille and the repercussions of such experience in A Tale of Two Cities.

 

As a sort of time capsule, I found much of American Notes to be intriguing. For example, I appreciated the occasional linguistic differences that Dickens noticed between U.S. and UK English (I find that sort of thing fascinating) such as the all-purpose American usage of the verb “to fix” and making it a noun, as in “fixings” and the use of “Yes Sir” in a variety of meanings depending on context and intonation (similar to “whatever” in current usage). I also really was astounded by the sheer difficulty travel that faced anyone in the mid-1800s. What an undertaking! Sometimes one journey from one city to another was comprised of boat, coach and rail!  And there is a section where Dickens is in Ohio going between Columbus and Cincinnati and he extols the fact that the road is paved (after a fashion) allowing for a rate of travel of 6 miles per hour. Can you imagine? An able-bodied human can walk at a rate of 3-4 miles per hour! So for 6 miles per hour to be considered “good” astounds me!  

 

I admit that I didn’t find American Notes for General Circulation as satisfying as a Dickens’ novel. A lot of readers accuse the author of being “too wordy” which I don’t mind in a novel with a plot, but it did show a bit in this book. Also I found it a little uneven, humorous and satirical in some parts but then sermonizing and didactic in others.  Famously American Notes engendered quite a bit of controversy and ill-feeling on this site of the Atlantic at the time it was published. However, as an American reading this over 150 years later, I don’t feel that Dickens’ was particularly unfair or even mean-spirited in his critiques of the U.S. A lot of what he found distasteful: the obsession with money, regardless of whether it is earned honestly or not, the obsession with partisan politics, etc. has not changed much in the intervening century and a half. I wonder too if the book would have engendered quite the hostile U.S. reaction were it not for the last two chapters, the first of which excoriates the practice of slavery and the second which particularly takes a shot at the libelous press and the love of lucre over the welfare of others.

 

The picture above is from the Penguin Classic Edition that I read from. It was wonderfully annotated and has an excellent introduction by Patricia Ingham. My Dickens collection is a mix of Penguin and Modern Library paperbacks, but I think I prefer the Penguin editions because of the annotations.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Of the 11 works I have read thus far for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the block Books and Chocolate, this has got to be my least favorite. This was for the Classic in Translation category.

I am not a fan of allegory and Siddhartha reminded me of books like The Alchemist or Jonathon Livingston Seagull; books I fail to appreciate. I was thinking at first it is a book I should have perhaps read when I was younger, like On the Road, but I am not sure if I would have really liked this any better at 25 than at 50.

This is the story of Siddhartha, who tries on a variety of lifestyles (Brahmanism, Asceticism, Buddhism, Capitalism, Hedonism, etc.), takes each mode of living and experiencing the world to their limits and then ultimately rejects them to follow his own path. My take away from this slim book was that there is no substitute for actually living something; listening to a lecture on a concept on or being preached a hypothesis is not enough for one to internalize the idea. Ironically, I think that this might be why this book doesn’t work for me; I think I would need to experience the concepts it propounds first before I can say “aha, I get it”.

The edition I read of Siddhartha is well under 200 pages, but took me forever to read in English. I also have the German original which I am still plodding my way through now. The sentence structure is fairly simple (it reads a bit like scripture), but a lot of the vocabulary is well beyond my personal lexicon. I am still interested in reading more from Hesse, however, before I give up on him. I do want to try The Glass Bead Game and I have a copy of Narcissus and Goldmund someplace.

Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde

The category of Classic Play from Books and Chocolate's BACK TO THE CLASSICS CHALLENGE 2015 was the one I was least looking forward to. I hadn’t read a play since high school and I had this idea that plays are meant to be performed and watched and not read in the way one would read a novel. I chose Lady Windermere’s Fan because I had never read any Wilde before, although I have seen the movie version of The Importance of Being Ernest. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with my choice and I enjoyed reading this play very much.

Lady Windermere’s Fan is a dramedy of manners about the Victorian double standard for women regarding infidelity within marriage. I know that Wilde is known for his bon mots and quips and I thought the dialogue in this paly was snappy and delightful. The play opens with the young and very conservative Lady Windermere rebuffing a would be lover Lord Darlington’s flirtatious advances. Later, she is confronted with what she believes to be proof that her husband is having an affair which so addles her and upsets her world view that she actually considers throwing her reputation, her marriage and her child out the window and running off with the besotted Lord Darlington.

I found it interesting that this is the third work from the Victorian era that I have read this year concerning the contradictory views on adultery. The other two works were He Knew He Was Right by Trollope and East Lynne by Ellen Wood and were much more serious in tone, particularly East Lynne. The Wilde play was also much more direct and obvious about pointing out the hypocrisy of the situation. I know that this play has been filmed at least once and I would like to check it out or, better yet, see an actual live stage production someday. I am also interested in reading more from Wilde. I know he wrote a lot, across a lot of mediums, so there is a lot of good stuff for me to delve into when the mood strikes!

EAST LYNNE by Ellen Wood

I think I might be laboring under the misconception that I love Victorian era literature. The more I read, the more I am coming to believe that I may just love Dickens and Trollope.

I was annoyed throughout most of the first half of East Lynne because the author heavily foreshadowed EVERY plot point. This is not unique to Victorian literature, of course. I also realize that this does not bother some readers; I know that people go to see Shakespeare tragedies performed even though they are fully acquainted with the knowledge of who dies at the end; however, when I read a new-to-me book, I LIKE TO BE SURPRISED. I was a little heartened when a murder mystery storyline was introduced, but then I figured out who the murderer was in about two pages …*sigh*.  I also found it obnoxious that in order for this tragic novel to work, the characters had to be completely OBTUSE and never tell anyone the truth, until it is too late, of course.

I did enjoy the second half more; I still knew which way the train of tragedy was chugging, but I was along for the ride by then and Ellen Wood had stopped telegraphing every move and got a little nutty it a sort of fun, soap opera like-way with characters showing up in disguise, some serious teeth-gnashing and self-recrimination and a wonderfully over the top deathbed scene.

East Lynne is considered a sensation novel, which means that people read it in the 1800s for its scandalous, scurrilous nature. I imagine Victorians read sensation novels in the same way one might now read true crime or harder edged fictional crime novels; the reader can address and “enjoy” their fears in a safe setting.  The back of the Oxford Words Classics paperback edition that I read (pictured above) suggests that East Lynne can viewed as specifically tackling Victorian ethical unease vis-à-vis divorce and adultery.  Personally, however, I found Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon or He Knew He was Right by Anthony Trollope to be better dramatizations of the difficulties that many women faced in the Victorian Era in terms of divorce laws, marriage rights and child custody.

This title was my choice for the “Classic Written by a Woman” in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate. If you like high melodrama with lots of foreshadowing, this might be the book for you, but for my tastes, it was a bit too much.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

The Mysteries of Udolpho (the beautiful Penguin paperback edition I read pictured above came in at 875 pages), was my choice for the “Very Long Classic” in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate. At first, I found this book very, very tedious.  There are ENDLESS descriptions of scenery, much of which makes the heroine, Emily, (a) cry and then (b) spontaneously compose a sonnet inspired by such landscape. These poems (sometimes pages long) are also included in the novel. 

Eventually, however, I just gave in to the silliness of it all and found it almost unintentionally funny after that. I lost count of the times our Emily fainted and/or burst into tears. It is definitely worth the experience of reading this title if you want to know the kind of books Jane Austen was mocking in Northanger Abbey as this title is one of the grandmothers of all gothic romances and was apparently very popular in its time.

The story is impossible to synopsize, so much happens to Emily St. Aubert., a young upper class woman who grew up in genteel poverty despite her father’s aristocratic background (the story is set in the late 1500s, but you would never know it except for the fact that this is stated in the first sentence of the first chapter).  Suffice it to say that there are plenty of castles and mansions with secret staircases, hidden rooms, ghostly sightings, there are mustache twirling villains and hidden agendas galore, which include forced marriages, stolen inheritances and other common misunderstandings.

Normally I prefer to read annotated versions of Victorian novels. However, this edition was published in the Pocket Penguin Classics Victorian bestsellers series and they do not have any notes or introduction. Which is just as well, I suppose, since this would have made the book even longer!  I am not sad to have read it, but I think it is safe to declare that I will never read any Ann Radcliffe again!

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE by Anthony Trollope

Framley Parsonage is book four in the Barsetshire Chronicles and it was my pick for the 19th century classic in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate.  I have read the previous three novels in the Chronicles (naturally) and Framley Parsonage is similar to those preceding books in that it skewers the excess and/or abuse of power in the Church of England while also portraying a romance (or two).   There are  also a few reoccurring characters from the series that pop up in this title; such as the delightfully obnoxious Proudie family (introduced in the second book, Barchester Towers) and the rich but common Miss Dunstable (from the third book, Dr. Thorne).

However, the main story of Framley Parsonage mostly concerns itself with newly introduced characters who (unsurprisingly) live in the village of Framley.  These characters are the widowed Lady Lufton of Framley Court, her grown son Ludovic, the current Lord Lufton and Ludovic’s childhood friend Mark Robarts, who is the vicar of the eponymous parsonage and Lady Lufton’s protégé.  Mark is happily married to Fanny, a love match engineered by Lady Lufton and within the first few chapters, his younger, unmarried sister Lucy comes to live with the couple in the parsonage.

 

In the beginning, it is clear that Lady Lufton, while amiable and well-meaning, controls the lives of both her son and Mark Robarts.  The plot thickens when both young men begin to chaff under her control. Mark, who grew up decidedly middle class, yearns to hobnob with the upper classes, hopefully thereby bettering his prospects both professionally and socially. Lord Lufton, meanwhile, wants to marry whom he pleases, in spite of his mother’s matchmaking.

The sin of pride as experienced in multiple ways is what really moves the various story lines: Lady Lufton’s pride in her son which threatens to estrange her from him, Mark’s sister Lucy Robarts’ pride that would keep her from the man she loves, Mark Robarts pride which prevents him from asking for help when his ambition threatens to ruin him, or the struggling neighboring vicar, Mr. Crawley’s pride which will not allow him to accept charity despite the desperate need of his wife and children, etc.

I look forward the finishing of this series in the next year or so and then moving on to the Palliser series novels.  I am no expert on Victorian fiction, but of those authors I have read from this era thus far, Trollope is right up there with Dickens as my absolute favorite.  I love in particular his gentle humor and his well-rounded characters.  The edition I read (pictured above) is from a hard cover set published by Oxford University Press in 1989 which I stole borrowed from my father.  I hope he got them cheap since the first book had messed up annotations and the third book was missing about 50 pages (an obvious mis-print). But this title was in perfect condition.