Book Review: Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue

This fascinating non-fiction book examines the representation of desire between woman in literature in six section: 'Travesties', 'Inseparables', 'Rivals', 'Monsters', 'Detection' and 'Out'. While it's full of detail and so will please any scholars interested in the subject, Inseparable is also an easy, sometimes amusing, read for non-academics. Donoghue infuses her non-fiction analysis with the same edge of humour that I enjoy so much in her fiction. Though, for me, this subject could never be dry and boring, she ensures it isn't so.

The 'Travesties' section looks at cross-dressing within texts from 990 onwards, including brief discussions on Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish and Theophile Gautier amongst others. It examines the recurring depictions of 'The Female Bridegroom' and 'The Male Amazon' in a chapter that looks at the causes and consequences of cross-dressing and its heyday in the drama of the seventeeth century.

'Inseparables' begins with the Biblical account of Ruth and Naomi and covers the representation of love based on similarity. As this is one of my areas of interest, I perhaps found this chapter the most interesting, particularly the discussion on Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. It also highlighted some works I want to read, both for pleasure and study - as every chapter did.

'Rivals' is a fascinating analysis of what happens when a woman and man compete for the same love. It starts with Sappho and goes through Shakespeare, Richardson and some rather brilliant-sounding French texts before moving on to discuss what happens when the rivalry bubbles over. It examined some texts I was already familiar with, such as The Rainbow and The Fox, but, again, the ones I found most intriguing were the ones I've yet to read, most notably The Bostonians.

Perhaps the chapter on 'Monsters' contains the themes most familiar to observers of fiction about desire between women. It's interesting to see the texts these stereotypes stemmed from then we take a short tour through Dickens, Hardy and others. This is quite an uncomfortable chapter, though I particularly liked the section on ghost stories.

The fifth chapter on 'Detection' provided me with plenty of books I want to read somewhere down the line. Again, desire between women is a theme pretty familiar to readers of the crime genre and it looks at writers including Ruth Rendell, Agatha Christie and P.D. James. Given my sensation fiction roots, I was also pleased to see a discussion of The Woman in White in this chapter followed by an examination of two novels by Sarah Waters.

'Out', the final chapter, looks at the 'awakening' motif in texts from George Moore onwards. It's a nice shift in tone from the other chapters, looking at declared love instead of coded texts, but it also highlights the complexities of modern life. There's a section here on 'first love' which covers several texts I was already familiar with and, once more, a number of works mentioned in this chapter are now begging to be read.

Ultimately, Emma Donoghue has written a book that is both informative and fascinating. Her subject knowledge is exemplary and her style engaging. I've already referred back to Inseparable for academic work and I have no doubt I'll be doing that again fairly frequently. Highly recommended!

Downloading Classics onto Kindle

I went on a bit of a splurge the other night. Conscious that I'm spending three weeks in Birmingham, I went onto Amazon and downloading a heap of free classics for my Kindle, which is one of the best presents I've ever received. Unfortunately, those added to what I already have on there have equated to something of a mountain. So if anyone has any suggestions for which of the following long list I should read I'd be grateful! These are all books I haven't read before, illustrating some gigantic holes in my education. (List in no particular order!)

1. Felix Holt - George Eliot
2. The Lost Girl - D.H. Lawrence 
3. The Cloister and the Hearth - Charles Reade
4. The Return - Walter de la Mare
5. Witch Stories - Eliza Lynn Linton
6. The Ghost Pirates - William Hope Hodgson
7. A Lady of Quality - Frances Hodgson Burnett
8. Mathilda - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
9. Camilla - Fanny Burney
10. The Innocence of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
11. The Wisdom of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
12. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
13. The Europeans - Henry James
14. Evelina - Fanny Burney
15. A Sicilian Romance - Ann Radcliffe
16. Dombey and Son - Charles Dickens
17. Washington Square - Henry James
18. Moon and Sixpence - W. Somerset Maugham 
19. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens 
20. King Solomon's Mines - Henry Rider Haggard
21. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
22. Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
23. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
24. Persuasion - Jane Austen
25. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
26. Verner's Pride - Ellen Wood
27. The Odd Women - George Gissing
28. New Grub Street - George Gissing
29. Ruth - Elizabeth Gaskell
30. The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet - Burton E. Stevenson
31. The Angel of Terror - Edgar Wallace
32. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab - Fergus Hume
33. The Bartlett Mystery - Louis Tracy
34. The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault - Charles Perrault
35. The Leavenworth Case - Anna Katharine Green
36. The Virginians - William Thackeray
37. The Man - Bram Stoker
38. Lair of the White Worm - Bram Stoker
39. Two on a Tower - Thomas Hardy
40. Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy
41. The Trumpet-Major - Thomas Hardy
42. The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid - Thomas Hardy
43. A Pair of Blue Eyes - Thomas Hardy
44. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
45. The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy
46. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
47. The Professor - Charlotte Bronte
48. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
49. Villette - Charlotte Bronte
50. Antonina - Wilkie Collins
51. A Rogue's Life - Wilkie Collins
52. The New Magdalen - Wilkie Collins
53. The Two Destinies - Wilkie Collins
54. The Fallen Leaves - Wilkie Collins
55. The Black Robe - Wilkie Collins
56. Heart and Science - Wilkie Collins
57. "I Say No" - Wilkie Collins
58. The Evil Genius - Wilkie Collins
59. Guilty River - Wilkie Collins
60. The Legacy of Cain - Wilkie Collins
61. Blind Love - Wilkie Collins
62. Les Miserable - Victor Hugo
63. The Lovels of Arden - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
64. Birds of Prey - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
65. Henry Dunbar - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
66. John Marchmont's Legacy - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
67. Fenton's Quest - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
68. Charlotte's Inheritance - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
69. Run to Earth - Mary Elizabeth Braddon 

Book Review: Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

This was my third foray into Hardy's fiction following Tess of the d'Urbervilles (read for A-Levels) and The Mayor of Casterbridge (review here). Far from the Madding Crowd tells the story of Gabriel Oak, a shepherd, and the young woman he admires, Bathsheba Everdene. While at the beginning of the novel Oak is fairly prosperous and Bathsheba forced to live with her aunt, in a reversal typical of Hardy, Oak soon finds himself reduced in status and ends up working for Bathsheba who has inherited her uncle's farm in Weatherby. He still carries a torch for her but recognises she's far above him and uninterested. They become friends and, meanwhile, another farmer, Boldwood, falls deeply in love with Bathsheba. As she's contemplating her answer to his proposal, she encounters a dashing soldier, Sergeant Troy, who she's immediately attracted to. Troy has previously been involved with one of Bathsheba's maids who fled the town but only Boldwood and Oak know this.

I have to say, Hardy's descriptions of nature (and man against nature) are almost unsurpassed. There are a few scenes of particular merit which linger in my mind. Firstly, the scene where Oak stops to help when he sees a fire in the distance and, ultimately, proves his merit to all around. Secondly, the thunderstorm where Oak and Bathsheba battle to save the crops is remarkably written. Evocative and subtle, developing the relationship between the two alongside the more urgent task. Finally, the moment where a grave is almost washed away is beautiful, although I won't say more about that in case I ruin the plot for anyone. However, while I enjoyed much of Hardy's descriptions of place and activity throughout the novel, I must admit that the random conversations between Bathsheba's farm hands became a little tedious. Probably designed for a little light relief, some of them provided it but some meandered off in odd directions and never quite make it back. The moment Oak gets irritated with them for their digressions mirrored how I'd been feeling throughout the book!

Although I read the first half of this one slowly, I whizzed through the second half. A combination of unexpected character developments pushed me onto the end. I will say, though, that once these developments take place, there is only one real possibility for the final pages. Still, knowing that didn't make me enjoy the book less.

Gabriel Oak is an excellent character. Whilst loyal, he also has pride and a stubborn streak to match Bathsheba's. His quiet devotion to her throughout the novel, alongside all the wonderful descriptions, is probably why I enjoyed this one as much as I did. 

A Classics Challenge: December Wrap Up

Well, I technically failed this challenge, reading only six classics throughout the year when the target was a minimum of seven. I think we'll blame this on Charles Dickens since the challenge ended up being 'The Charles Dickens Classics Challenge With Two Other Books Thrown In'. So what books did I manage to read as part of the challenge?

• I started off in January with Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (review here, prompt post here). 
• In February I took a hiatus from all other books to indulge in Bleak House which is by far my favourite Dickens novel (review here, prompt post here).
• I think Bleak House exhausted me. I came back to the challenge in July with another Dickens book - The Old Curiosity Shop (review here, prompt post here).
• In August I stepped away from Dickens for the first time and read Jane Austen's Emma (review here, prompt post here).
• In September I moved onto Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (review here, prompt post here).
• Finally, my December read - actually started with all good intentions back in October - was another Dickens novel, Little Dorrit (review here).

Four Dickens, one Austen and one Hardy. Not too shabby for the year, especially when you look at the lengths of Bleak House and Little Dorrit. Of course, there were some books I listed on my original challenge post that didn't get a look in: Mary Barton (Gaskell), The Mill on the Floss (Eliot), A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Sterne). That's a shame for them but, honestly, this year deserved to be dedicated to Dickens. 

If I had to pick favourites I'd say it's a tie between Bleak House and Emma. I loved the depth of the former and the humour of the latter. Two very different texts but enjoyable for different reasons. That said, I didn't dislike any of these books. If I had to pick my least favourite it would probably be Oliver Twist but that's just because I enjoyed all of the others immensely. 

I'd like to thank November's Autumn for hosting this challenge and making me push myself a little. It's been great fun and I'd urge you to go read some of the other wrap-up posts listed over here to see what other people have been reading this year. 

A Classics Challenge: September Prompt

This was by far the most difficult of all the prompts so far this year: "This month's prompt is to select a piece of music that you feel reflects the book. Modern, classical, jazz, anything, it doesn't have to be from the period of the novel but share what it is about the piece that echoes the novel in someway." Now, I read The Mayor of Casterbridge, a novel so complex that I couldn't think of a single song that bore much relation to it (reviewed here). However, then I had a thought.

Quite a few years ago Carla Bruni (now Mrs Sarkozy) released an album that performed quite badly in the charts. I was one of the ones who bought a copy, mainly because the premise intrigued me: poems by greats such as Christina Rossetti and W.H. Auden set to music. So it was to this album I finally turned, in the belief that I might find a suitable song. I was right. This is 'Promises Like Pie Crust' by Christina Rossetti, poem first then video of the song at the bottom.



Promise me no promises, 
So will I not promise you: 
Keep we both our liberties, 
Never false and never true: 
Let us hold the die uncast, 
Free to come as free to go: 
For I cannot know your past, 
And of mine what can you know? 

You, so warm, may once have been 
Warmer towards another one: 
I, so cold, may once have seen 
Sunlight, once have felt the sun: 
Who shall show us if it was 
Thus indeed in time of old? 
Fades the image from the glass, 
And the fortune is not told. 

If you promised, you might grieve 
For lost liberty again: 
If I promised, I believe 
I should fret to break the chain. 
Let us be the friends we were, 
Nothing more but nothing less: 
Many thrive on frugal fare 
Who would perish of excess.

Book Review: The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Published in 1886, The Mayor of Casterbridge offers a very sensational premise: while drunk, Michael Henchard sells his wife and child to a passing sailor. Afterwards, he regrets his actions, gives up alcohol for twenty one years, and tries to locate them but can't find them. He proceeds to the town of Casterbridge where he works very hard to rise up to be mayor of the town. But when his 'widowed' wife Susan returns with his grown-up daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, he is compelled to do the right thing and marry her. However, this involves letting down another woman he had hopes of marrying, Lucetta. Intertwined with all this is his new assistant, Donald Farfrae, a man Elizabeth-Jane has taken a shine to. What ensues is a tangled web of deceit, love and retribution.

This is such a complex book with more twists and turns than I can count. Hardy draws on the conventions of the sensation writers he read earlier in his career but adds logic and psychological analysis to what could have been simply a book of events. Hardy's representation of Henchard as a man struggling to master guilt, jealousy and the desire for revenge throughout the book is a powerful one. Henchard is a complex character, but one the reader understands. This is less true for Donald Farfrae, first Henchard's friend then his bitter rival, but Farfrae is not the focus of the book. As for the female characters, Elizabeth-Jane is something of an insipid paragon of virtue, blindly submitting when the man she loves demonstrates an attraction for someone else. Susan and Lucetta are distinctly unmemorable but the array of incidental characters are fascinating enough.

Perhaps the main strength of this novel is the description that Hardy employs so well in many of his novels. Much of his description is necessary, relating to the plot or character, although there are a few superfluous passages. His eye for detail certainly adds realism to the story of the over-stretched mayor, almost bringing the reader into Casterbridge itself. The Roman roots of the town are expertly exploited, particularly in the Amphitheatre, the site of Henchard's first meeting with his long-lost wife in chapter eleven.

What impressed me about this book was that the preamble was actually kept to a minimum. Time could easily have been wasted examining the 'lost' years of Susan and Elizabeth-Jane's lives but Hardy sprinkles necessary details in as the story progresses. There is much more involved in this novel than the blurb suggests and it surprises and fascinates throughout. I regret leaving this spine to bleach on my bookshelf for seven years but I think the pleasure of reading was worth the wait.

Surprising Discoveries in the Early Hours

This story needs a little scene setting. I'm going away for a few days to visit a friend and, naturally, the most important choice I'll make is what books to take with me. I'd already settled on Claire Tomalin's biography of Charles Dickens but I wanted a novel to go along with it. I seem to be drowning in everything but novels at the moment but I was determined nonetheless.

I switched off my computer just before two o'clock in the morning and sat looking at my oldest bookshelf (mostly dusty university books I rarely look at) then I shuffled closer. I wondered if my copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy was behind that scary looking letter from HMRC. It was. Now, although the novel is on my list for the Classic Challenge I'm participating in this year I haven't quite got round to it (probably because it was hidden behind that scary letter). Decision suddenly made, I plucked The Mayor of Casterbridge from the shelf. All clean and unruffled except... Hmm. There was something squeezed in between the last page and the back cover. Very odd for a book I've never read since I bought it five years ago.

A little examination revealed three worn pages of an exercise book with barely legible handwriting on them. My grandfather's handwriting. The odd thing is that he never touched this book and that the notes relate not to The Mayor of Casterbridge but The Return of the Native, which we don't have a copy of. The only logical answer is that I found the notes in another book when I was sorting through his collection and deciding which books I wanted to keep and the only Thomas Hardy novel I had in reach was The Mayor of Casterbridge. I'm just surprised I forgot doing it.

It's strange. In more dismal moments I forget that I have actually got a tradition of academia in my family. While my grandfather didn't climb as far up the ladder as I'm attempting to, he maintained a genuine interest in literature up until the end of his life. That's something that's vital, I think. If you don't have a real passion for your subject then you have no place working for your doctorate in it. Actually, I'd go further than that - if you're not passionate about your subject you have little hope of gaining your doctorate. You need a certain level of enthusiasm to get you over the speed bumps that research constantly throws up.

I've never read The Return of the Native but having taken a look at these notes then I want to. There's a particular paragraph that strikes me which is either borrowed from a critic or is his own:

"Though the descriptions are uncommonly good, the movement is uncommonly slow, the personages are uncommonly uninteresting, the action is uncommonly poor, the conclusion is uncommonly flat."

Is that an accurate description of the novel?! I'll definitely have to read it and find out. Oh, and on the back of one of the pages was this sketch, something that surprised me:

Reading Challenge: A Classics Challenge

I came across this excellent challenge for 2012 hosted by November's Autumn. Read seven words of classic literature in the year (only three of which may be re-reads) and visit the blog every month for a prompt to write about (although I'm certain I'll be writing a review alongside that). Find about about the challenge here.

The classics I'm going to read are nothing to do with my PhD but have all been gathering dust on my bookshelves for quite some time. Here's the list:

1. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
2. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
3. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
4. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
5. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne
6. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
7. The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy

The list is subject to change. I'm starting with Bleak House but that could take me most of the year! It looks to be a fun challenge, reading some of the books I really feel I should've read already. The only one I'm not really looking forward to is The Mill on the Floss - I've tried to get into that on several occasions and failed miserably. That one may disappear from the list!

Book Review: Women Who Did ed. Angelique Richardson

The full title of this collection is Women Who Did: Stories by Men and Women 1890-1914. The individual stories by authors such as Katherine Mansfield, Thomas Hardy and Kate Chopin examine the 'new woman', the turn of the century female who was beginning to demand and expect equality with men. The introduction by Angelique Richardson is well worth a read as it sets up the context nicely. There are also short biographical notes at the end of the book for the twenty-five authors included.

Most - if not all - of the stories in this collection can be described as exquisite. Even the satirical 'She-Notes' by Borgia Smudgiton (Owen Seaman) was charming because of, rather than instead of, its satire. Many of the stories have a didactic tone and the occasional lighter moments offset that quite nicely. Some of the stories I'd encountered in other collections but as a whole they point to one huge shift in the way women viewed themselves and were viewed by others.

I didn't dislike any one particular story but there were some I enjoyed more than others. 'The Yellow Drawing Room' by Mona Caird tells of a woman who has painted a room this disgusting shade of yellow but is nevertheless attractive to the male narrator who wants to marry her and change her. He courts her sister to make her jealous, something which the object of his affections could never forgive him for. A couple of the stories deal with race and the 'taint' of black blood. The most striking of these for me was 'Desiree's Baby' by Kate Chopin. A man rejects his wife on the basis of their baby obviously having a black ancestor, prompting her to walk into a river with her son. Thomas Hardy's 'An Imaginative Woman' was a story I was already familiar with but fitted into the collection perfectly. It tells of a aspiring female poet who develops an attachment to a man she has never met and the grief this causes both her and, later, her family. George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne) supplies several stories, my favourite being 'Virgin Soil' where a young married woman condemns her mother for hiding from her the truth about married life.

My absolute favourites from the collection are two of the shortest. Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour' tells of the reaction of a woman when learning of her husband's death. It was so potent that it stayed with me long after I'd finished the two pages it covered. My second favourite was Katherine Mansfield's 'Leves Amores', primarily because of the lesbian content and Mansfield's intense use of imagery, despite the small space in which to do so. I'd read this before, in relation to Claire Tomalin's biography of Mansfield, but included in this collection it certainly had a new resonance for me.

The most famous piece included in this book is probably Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. I have to say, that story never bores me. To be honest, I think that sums up my view of this entire collection - none of the stories bored me and all I would want to read again.

The twenty-five authors included in this book are: Mona Caird, Willa Cather, Kate Chopin, Gertrude Colmore, Mary Samuel Daniel, Ella D'Arcy, Rudolph Dircks, George Egerton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, George Gissing, Sarah Grand, Thomas Hardy, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Katherine Mansfield, Alice Meynell, George Moore, Clarence Rook, Saki, Olive Schreiner, Evelyn Sharp, Borgia Smudgiton, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and Zitkala-Sa.