The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton

Or, Newland Archer is a Douche.

Okay, I made that up, but it does pretty accurately reflect my thoughts for much of the time I was reading Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winner. Not that it's not a good book. It is! Just probably not if you need to "like" the protagonist. It's worth reading even just for the descriptions of New York in the 1870s. It's a completely different world than Manhattan today.

I had heard that book referred to as "The House of Mirth-lite," but I have to disagree. True, there's much less focus on the dirty, gritty aspects of the dangers involved with falling to the underclass, but that really isn't the point in The Age of Innocence. There is still plenty of biting commentary on the hypocrisy of the aristocracy.

Newland Archer is the biggest hypocrite of them all. He is firmly planted in the upper-middle echelon of New York Society. He innately understands how to navigate all of the social minefields, and he has always managed to do so. He has decided that now the time has come to put away childish pursuits of unsuitable women and settle down with a proper wife.

Young, beautiful, sheltered May Welland is his intended bride. He looks forward to developing her mind and thoughts to coincide with his, away from her parents. That is, of course, until her slightly older cousin, Ellen Olenska, enters the scene from Europe, where she has left behind a bad marriage to a rich Polish Count.

So Newland wants this very respectable bride to be his very respectable wife in very respectable society. He wants to train her to think for herself, not be so naive, and leave to influence of her parents' house to be under his constant instruction. But. Whenever she thinks for herself he's annoyed. When she does what her society-obsessed parents want he's bored. When she puts off his physical advances (as she's expected to) he's enticed by the maybe-soon-to-be-divorced Countess. The Countess who is May's cousin, who has "experience", who goes to shocking parties, who hangs out with a married Jewish guy, who is inappropriately familiar with her maid. AND HE DOESN'T LIKE ANY OF THOSE THINGS.

Newland Archer is a douche.

I mean, I get it. He's a product of his society, blah, blah, blah. His society is constrictive and hypocritical and stifling. One one hand, he likes all the lovely parts, on the other, he longs for freedom. Before he can break away, and be the non-conformist he thinks he wants to be, he has to decide if that life of threadbare coats and small quarters in the unfashionable part of town, being talked about by his former friends as a disgrace to his mother, is what he really wants.

Enough about him. I want to talk about May. She is pretty badass. I mean, everyone kinda shuffles her aside and doesn't pay her much attention, but she is using her time off stage to pull some major strings. She knows the dangers to a young woman in her position - the scandal it would cause should she be jilted. The only way for her to keep her place in society is to marry well. She's not going down without a fight.

Here's to May Welland. This should be the cover of all the copies of this book:

The Classics Club: September Meme

September's task, courtesy of The Classics Club, is to "pick a classic someone else in the club has read from our big review list. Link to their review and offer a quote from their post describing their reaction to the book. What about their post makes you excited to read that classic in particular?"

I need all the excitement I can get as I gear up to read Rebecca. Jillian's review provided that spark:

In those last eighty or so pages I felt the dark curl of London shadowing the pages, the rain of a 1930s night beating the panes of the glass in sheets. The sense of doom that one cannot help but feel watching Maxim — well, I can’t say what he is doing without ruining it for others!

I'm so afraid this book will be tedious, but Jillian's over-the-top-enthusiasm reminds me not to take this - or any other venerable "classic" - quite so seriously.

Classics Giveaway Winners Announced!

Gold medal US Olympic Soccer Team. Hey, you're a winner, too!

Last week I posted a classics giveaway, and today I'm announcing the winners. Thanks for everyone who participated. Go classics readers! Winners, be on the lookout for an email so you can send me your mailing address.

Melisa won Bleak House
Jenna won Things Fall Apart
Beth won A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Jillian won The Painted Veil
Reading Pleasure won Anna Karenina
Bex won The Bell Jar
Allie won Rabbit, Run (it probably helped that she was the only won who wanted it!)

A Classics Giveaway

I'm currently participating in a couple classics reading challenges. One is just this year, and one is a longer term project.

Books!

I noticed that many of the participants have chosen the same books, and some of those books are ones that I've read, and are currently sitting on my shelves, taking up space for new things I could be reading. That means one thing - a giveaway!

Get your choice of the following books:

• The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham
• Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
• Bleak House, Charles Dickens
• Rabbit, Run, John Updike
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

Here's what you have to do:
Comment on this post, telling me which book you'd like AND telling me how to contact you should you win.

Here's what you can do: earn extra entries by following me on twitter and/or tweeting about the giveaway.

Simple.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Favorite Classic

Over at The Classics Club blog (which is an outgrowth of Jillian's Classics Club idea and project), there is a monthly discussion question related, of course, to classic literature. This month the participants are asked:

What is your favorite classic book? Why?

I may have mentioned before that I hate choosing favorites. And a favorite classic? That's made even more difficult because I tend to further subdivide "classics" into other, more manageable categories - English, American, modern, ancient, world lit - how to choose?

So my choice is more like "a" favorite classic. And I'm going with Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

It was one of four books I had to read the summer before 11th grade AP English. It was the first book that I remember really struggling with - what was all this nonsense going on? I don't get it! Them, at some point, it just clicked, and I was in love. I felt like I was let in on a little secret, one that you had to work for. That was the first time that happened with a book, but not the last. Others since then have been Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

What books have made you feel that way? 

The Mill on the Floss: A Victorian Celebration

Hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey

The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot

Wow. For awhile there I was afraid I wasn't going to finish a single Victorian novel before the end of A Victorian Celebration. Saturday I buckled down and knocked out the last 100 pages of The Mill on the Floss.

The Tulliver family owns the titular mill on the Floss, a river running along the fictional town of St. Ogg's, England. Mr. Tulliver is prone to either bad luck or poor decision making, depending on who one would ask. Of course, this leads to the downfall of his family and the loss of the mill. It is up to his son Tom to restore the family honor and position.

Did this live up to the perfection of Middlemarch? Not quite. I found the beginning difficult to trudge through. As children, Maggie and Tom Tulliver were quite unbearable. It was only after they grew into adolescents that I could read about them for more than twenty pages at a time. Even then, Tom was such a bore. I did feel badly for him, as he was under tremendous pressure, but still - what a jerk!

My heart broke for Maggie. Not the child Maggie, but the young woman. While her brother could work hard and bring honor to the family, the most she could hope for was to not be a burden. This exchange, during an argument between the siblings, laid out the central conflict so directly:

"Because you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can do something in the world."
"Then, if you can do nothing, submit to those who can."*

Maggie's choices, and those of any young woman of that time, were severely limited. She tries to do what is right, but she cannot help choosing what she feels is right in her heart instead of what Society would insist upon. There is a brilliant chapter quite late in the book where Eliot has Society weigh in on Maggie's options.

As I read, I wondered how much of this book was autobiographical. I have read that it was based in part on George Eliot's childhood, but how much was adult Maggie like George (or Mary Anne)? Eliot had a rather unusual relationship status of a woman of her time and status. I always thought of her as a trailblazer, but reading Maggie's struggles and heartbreak made me wonder how Eliot really felt about her love life. I usually hesitate to find too many parallels between an author's life and their work, but it's difficult to refrain from doing so in this case. Sorry if this is a bit obscure - I just don't want to give away too much for those who haven't read this yet!

I'm glad that I still have more of Eliot's work to read (and probably reread). The next one I tackle will probably be Daniel Deronda.

Do you have a favorite Eliot novel? Which one?

*Of course, we see that even Tom's power has its limits in the end.

Ceremony

Ceremony

Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silko

Ceremony, roughly, is the story of Tayo, a former WWII soldier of mixed white and Laguna ancestry, trying to readjust to civilian life. Like many of the other former soldiers, he turns to alcohol to drown his troubles. Compounding the stresses of returning from war is the fact that he's never fully fit in at home to begin with. His mother is the black sheep of the family, having produced living evidence of sleeping with a white man.

His grandmother feels a native healer may be able to save Tayo, but some in the family think Tayo is unworthy to receive such help because of his mixed bloodlines. Eventually, Tayo does meet up with Betonie, a healer, also of mixed ancestry. Betonie leads Tayo through a series of ceremonies intended to cure his depression and lift the effects of the war.

This is not the easiest book to read. Past and present blend, reality and imaginings blend together in ways that reflect Tayo's fractured thinking. As he pushes forward, attempting to find relief, you begin to see life itself as a ceremony, to be improvised and adapted as needed. Ceremony rewards you with remarkably beautiful, vivid passages such as this:

He found flowers that had no bees, and gathered yellow pollen gently with a small blue feather from Josiah's pouch; he imitated the gentleness of the bees as they brushed their sticky-haired feet and bellies softly against the flowers.

I am so glad that I finally read this book. I've heard about it as one of the classics of Native American writing, and it certainly deserves that recognition.

Want more like this? Try:

• Toni Morrison, Sula. A black soldier returns from World War I to his small hometown in Ohio. His method of coping is alternatively spooky, humorous, and tragic.
• Heinrich Böll, Billiards at Half-Past Nine. A German family deals with their role in World War II.
• Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees. Most Hemingway books deal with war or its aftermath in some way, but this one is memorable for Colonel Cantwell's intense struggle to reclaim life and happiness even as he knows he is facing imminent death.

The Rover: A Classic Play

Oroonoko, The Rover
and Other Works

The Rover
Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn was quite the interesting individual. She was a spy for the Charles II, but when he wouldn't pay her, she turned to writing to make a living. One of her best known works is the play The Rover. The play is set in Carnival time in  Naples, Italy, in the mid 1600's.

The plot is pretty simple. Guys and gals were masks, there's flirtation and confusion, and perhaps some falling in love. Simple, see?

I chose to read The Rover for the 2012 Back to the Classics Challenge for the "Classic Play" category. I'm really glad for the push to read this, as I'm not someone who reads a lot of dramatic works. I think the key to my enjoyment here was that I just read slowly and tried to "see" the play being acted out in my mind's eye.

I say "enjoyment" because I did enjoy this, but I'm not raving over it. Here are some pros and cons (minor spoilers ahead):

The Stuff I Didn't Like So Much:

Rape-y dudes:

"I begin to suspect something; and 'twould anger us vilely to be trussed up for a rape upon a maid of quality, when we only believe we ruffle a harlot." 

Eww. Especially when they're "rewarded" in the end. Yes, I know the attitudes are largely a reflection of the times. I don't care.

I wish there was a bit more going on than just a bunch of people running around in masks, getting confused about who everyone else was and trying to sleep with one another. This is probably an unfair criticism, because for what it was it was a fun read. The silly plot does make it approachable, even when it is difficult to keep all the characters straight.

The Stuff I Liked:

It opens with women alone on stage! And one of them, supposedly destined to spend the rest of her life in a nunnery, is wanting to find someone to get it on with (did I mention I like rebellious women?)

It's funny! Even though this is an old play, it's easy to pick up on the witty dialogue.

Want more like this? Try:

• A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare. It's got that "magical" quality, the idea that women's choices are limited to a suitable marriage or life as a nun.
• People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks. One of the sections deals with Venice in the 1600s, during Carnival time. Very cool picture of that time and place.
• The Importance of Being Ernest, Oscar Wilde. Another fun, funny, approachable play that everyone should read. 

Second Selection from a Year of Feminist Classics

The Book of the City of Ladies

The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pizan

I know I'm posting my thoughts on this book well after the other Year of Feminist Classics readers. I really struggled to finish this, and have further struggled with writing up a review of it.

No doubt, this is an important text. It's certainly "pro-woman" in the sense that de Pizan is defending women from pretty vile attacks by other writers. However, I'm thankful that feminism has come a long way since the 1400s.

For example, there's a heavy emphasis on virginity and equating "virtue" with virginity. At the same time, there is an implicit recognition that young people, regardless of gender, are typically sexual beings. See the following passage:

"This lady (Minerva) was not only extraordinarily intelligent but also supremely chaste, remaining a virgin all her life. It was because of her exemplary chastity that the poets claimed in their fables that she struggled long and hard with Vulcan, the god of fire, but finally overcame and defeated him. This story can be interpreted to mean that she conquered the passions and desires of the flesh which so vigorously assail the body when one is young."

There were times when her arguments sounded depressingly familiar:

"Yet there are still those men who go around claiming that women know nothing of any worth. It's also a common way to mock someone for saying something foolish by telling them they're thinking like a woman."

Poster from 2012 movie Think Like a Man

How much has society really progressed when in 2012 we have a movie based on Steve Harvey's book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man?

Why is "woman" still a slur? Why are women still considered less-than? It's disheartening at times to really think about these issues.

While The Book of the City of Ladies may be interested in dismantling gender based privilege (although that's certainly debatable), it is very interested in propping up other systems of oppression, such as heterosexism, classism, racism, Christian privilege, gender essentialism - you get the idea. Only certain women should get the benefit of the doubt, should be considered as fully human as their male counterparts.

The last portion of the book was particularly difficult to complete. It's basically a list of a bunch of early female Christian martyrs who died horrifically. Far from serving as example of how to live my life as a proper woman, it made me thankful that my family left Catholicism shortly after I was born, so these stories didn't give me nightmares when I was a young child!

At the end of the day, I'm glad I read this. It's probably the oldest book I've ever read in it's entirety, so that's something :-) Just not exactly a "fun" read.

The Classics Club

Jillian over at A Room of One's Own has started this little (ha) project called The Classics Club. (***Update: now at The Classics Club Blog***)  I've decided to join at the lowest level - 50 books in 5 years. Most of my choices are novels, but there are a couple plays and some nonfiction. She encourages everyone to give themselves a prize at the halfway or endpoint, but the only thing I'm thinking I'll do is contemplate a long bubble bath. I'll probably need it!

Goal Date: March 9th, 2017(!)
Most looking forward to:  Lady Susan, Jane Austen. I actually am not much of an Austen fan, but this one sounds really interesting.
Most scared to attempt:  The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov. The Russians scare me.

Here's my list:
I've reordered this list grouped roughly by date after Amy commented that my list skewed towards modern classics. I noticed a bit, but not completely, so I thought I'd look up the publication dates just for curiosity.  So yeah - it definitely skews modern, although I'd argue that anything pre-1950 should probably be separated out from anything more recent. But whatever! There's always these kinds of discussions when it comes to choosing "classics."

The Ancients

• The Iliad, Homer (8th century BCE)
• The Odyssey, Homer (8th century (BCE)
• Metamorphoses, Ovid (CE 8) 

Pretty Darn Old

• The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan (1405) 
• The Rover, Aphra Behn (1677) 
• Lady Susan, Jane Austen (1794, posthumous pub. 1871)  

1800s

• Belinda, Maria Edgeworth (1801) 
• Mathilda, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1820, posthumous pub. 1959)  
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (1847) 
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë (1848)  
• Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Sojourner Truth (1850) 
• Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell (1851) 
• Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
• The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot (1860)  
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs (1861)
• Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1892)  

 1900s

• Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington (1901) 
• The Golden Bowl, Henry James (1904) 
• The Scarlet Pimpernel, Emmuska Orczy (1905)
• The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Dubois (1903)
• The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920) 
• An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser (1925) 
• In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway (1925) 
• Orlando, Virginia Woolf (1928)
• A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf (1929)
• Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway (1932) 
• Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (1938) 
• The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (1944, posthumous pub. 1947) 
• Black Boy, Richard Wright (1945) 
• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (1952)
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953)
• Palace of Desire, Naguib Mahfouz (1957)
• Sugar Street, Naguib Mahfouz (1957)
• Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
• Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (1962)
• A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (1960?, posthumous pub. 1964) 
• Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway (1951, posthumous pub. 1970) 
• The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway (1961, posthumous pub. 1986)  
• The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov (1966) 
• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (1970)
• The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest J. Gaines (1971) 
• Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison (1977)
• Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko (1977) 
• If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino (1979)
• Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie (1981) 
• Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1985)
• Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987) 
• The Color Purple, Alice Walker (1982)
• The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) 

Pretty New, but hey, it's Gabriel García Márquez: 

• Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Gabriel García Márquez (2004)