blossomingbooks

[blossomingbooks]

I have to say... It’s almost refreshing to read a book I didn't like. I spend so much time within the bubble of the literary canon, I guess I forgot that reading could be unpleasant.

For starters, after watching the 2012 HBO series Girls and reading this book, I've come to the conclusion that the New Yorker really is the worst type of person. The narrator has no redeemable qualities; she is not even slightly interesting as a decadent anti-hero, she's just... devoid of personality. Joris Karl Huysmans' À rebours did it first in 1884 and did it better by portraying the ennui of 19th century bourgeoisie.  

On the other hand, this narrative is such a poor attempt at portraying depression as sheer cruelty that it's almost offensive to anyone with mental illness. Not to mention the trivial treatment of psychiatric medicine... But since that is the main point of the narrative, I can understand its literal and literary abuse.

The writing style is another issue. One assumes that a contemporary author will be easy to read, and indeed it does have simple writing. However, and I've seen other people expressing this, it's somehow also excruciating to read... Maybe because of how mundane it is, how utterly boring every minute of her decadent routine is. Maybe it is supposed to make the reader as sleepy as the protagonist... Having been published two years before the global pandemic, I wonder if the experience of being locked at home in quarantine contributed to the book’s popularity.

However, just when the narrative seems to be culminating into an interesting unfolding, it reveals a low trick up its sleeve: that last one-page chapter. An insensitive and shallow (yet another) appropriation of the 9/11 narrative for shock effect and for striking a chord on the reader's pathos... And for what? It feels like the story couldn't hold itself together, so it tried to grasp something at the last minute. Its presumptuous artistic epiphany was not enough; neither was the protagonist’s project of rest and relaxation nor Moshfegh’s attempt at reviving a decadent aesthetic in the 21st century.

#bookstagram #books and flowers #flowers and books #books #book #flowers #literature #blossoming books #american lit #american literature #ottessa moshfegh #my year of rest and relaxation

[blossomingbooks]

My friend gifted me and @photograph_and_read this book a while ago because it was her favorite. Since we had both been meaning to read it for so long, we decided to finally go for it together and let me tell you... I wasn't expecting to read this so avidly!

The only thing I knew about Circe was what I had read in the "Odyssey" (mainly her relationship with Odysseus). But Madeline Miller goes much further, telling her whole story, from the marriage of her parents, titan Helios (the Sun) and the naiad Perse, to her life after Odysseus leaves her island. We follow her coming of age, both as a woman and as a witch; we feel her loneliness, her sorrows, her rage. Miller gives her a voice and a motivation behind her myth of turning men into pigs — which was the hardest, most harrowing part to read in the whole novel, but followed by a very rewarding chapter.

I really enjoyed Miller's writing. It feels intimate enough to create an empathic rapport with the first-person narrator, while also being very lyrical, establishing from the beginning the tone of a divine/mythological theme. As a Greek mythology enthusiast, it was exciting to read about so many familiar figures intertwined with Circe's narrative, like Daedalus and Icarus (whose outcome destroyed me even though I obviously knew what was coming), Ariadne, the Minotaur, Medea, and so on. Miller did an excellent job in grabbing different myths and texts and weaving them together. The only part I had no idea about was the post-Odyssey narrative, and I was glad to found out that only the final chapters had a bit more of creative freedom (which is understandable since most myths don't have a resolution). I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending, although it does make sense and I'm glad she left it open-ended.

Feminist retellings of classical stories always draw my attention, but I feel like the character of Circe is an extremely special one, having been the first witch known in Western literature. It was delightful to go through her self-discovery journey with her, with all the spells, herbs, love affairs and sorrows it comprised. I'm definitely even more curious about the Miller's famous "The Song of Achilles" than I already was!

#circe #madeline miller #bookstagram #books and flowers #flowers and books #books #book #flowers #literature #blossoming books #american lit

[blossomingbooks]

Ever since I wrote my masters' dissertation on Lemony Snicket I've been wanting to read something by Roald Dahl, since he was such an influence for Daniel Handler. And, because my childhood weekends were spent rewatching the 2005 film adaptation of his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) — which I've been revisiting, alongside with the 1971 version, in view of the release of Wonka —, it seemed just right to start with this one.

Having these film adaptations as references, it's hard not to go into a comparative analysis, but I do want to go over some points because reading the original text gave me a new appreciation for the film that was so dear for me in childhood. Although the 1971 adaptation is widely beloved and even taken a lot as the canonic reference of the Wonka universe, it must be said that Tim Burton's version is much more considerate of the original source — starting with the title itself, which focuses on Charlie and not on the character of Willy Wonka. Roald Dahl himself didn't appreciate the first adaptation, which is understandable considering that — with the exception of some chilling moments such as "The Wondrous Boat Ride", recited by Gene Wilder word for word with a delivery that borders the psychopathic — most of the film has a very wholesome tone. The book, although clearly written for children with a very accessible and childish writing style, has some deeply dark humor undertones. A key example of this are the musical numbers, which are also much more well adapted in the 2005 version. Although "Oompa loompa doompety doo" became an iconic reference in our collective memory, the songs from the 1971 film are much simpler and loosely-based on the text; on the other hand, Roald Dahl is actually credited as a writer in Danny Elfman's 2005 soundtrack, which uses many verses from the songs written in the books.

On the other hand, the downside of only getting a Roald Dahl book in 2023 is that I accidently read an expurgated version of his work... This feels particularly wrong after learning that Dahl himself warned his publishers before dying against "so much as change a single comma in one of my books". Moreover, it doesn't seem like he was completely insensitive, taking into account his own 1973 revision which changed the ethnicity of the Oompa Loompas (who previously recalled African slaves a bit too much). In my opinion, this type of revision is understandable and very valid, however, what happened with Puffin Books last year seems a bit too extreme: they removed words like "fat", "mad", "crazy" and "queer", references to toy guns and to corporal punishment. Even if some of those concepts might be used in an offensive and problematic way, I can't see this kind of censorship as very useful, since all it does is whitewash the work, devoiding the reader of critical thinking and counter-productively absolving the author of his wrongdoings. I understand that it gets trickier considering the younger target audience, but I personally can't help but feel like I've been deprived of something by having read this version.

#charlie and the chocolate factory #willy wonka #willy wonka and the chocolate factory #roald dahl #puffin books #book #books #bookstagram #books and flowers #flowers and books #flowers #literature #blossoming books #english lit #english literature

[blossomingbooks]

Nothing really happens in this novel. Apart from one death that is central to the narrative and moves not things, but the state of things along, To the Lighthouse is mainly a patch of stream of consciousness from different points of view. And even this “big event” of this character’s death is merely mentioned, out of nowhere, with no further explanation. Woolf doesn’t care about what happens, only about how something feels. She spends these 200 pages painting a portrait of a bucolic bourgeois scene on the Isle of Skye in the 1910s, with a very faint hue of the First World War happening in the background — “contemplation was unendurable; the mirror was broken. (...) The war, people said, had revived their interest in poetry”. 

Woolf paints a picture, just like her Lily Briscoe does for 10 years. This character’s artistic musings seem to embody Woolf’s own: the act of composition, be it of Briscoe’s painting, or of the novel itself, is more important than the final product. The mental process prevails over action: “Some notion was in both of them about the ineffectiveness of action, the supremacy of thought”, she writes. 

“Where to begin?--that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; (...) Still the risk must be run; the mark made.” 

This was my first Woolf novel; so far, I had only read A Room of One’s Own (1929) and her short story “The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection” (1929). I found that her fictional writing is much more complex than her essayistic one, requiring at first a bit of an effort to get acclimated to her abundant use of semicolons and of interior monologue. However, thematically, I was able to find here and there bits of each of these works I previously knew:  

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf critics academia, pointing out its underlying misogyny and invents an abstract sister for Shakespeare, demonstrating how, if the latter had been a woman, she would’ve never had the success that he had as a man. In this novel, these critiques are subtly hinted at here and there: a character states to Lily that “women can’t paint, women can’t write”. Another character asks, “If Shakespeare had never existed (...) would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men?” and affirms that “the very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.”  

The novel also hints at her short story “The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection”, which describes an empty room reflected in a mirror. Both works express a kind of spatial melancholy, painting a scene which brings subjectivity to mundane objects: “how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned” (from To the Lighthouse). In both, houses and spaces become characters. The novel is divided into three parts: “The Window”, “Time Passes”, “The Lighthouse”. In the second part, the house itself becomes the abandoned protagonist, as we follow it through the years, empty.  

But the passages that stuck with me the most are from the first part, relating to the character of Mrs Ramsay, a mother of eight: “So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent”. While Lily Briscoe represents Woolf’s artistic vision and a feminist denial of female stereotypes, and while Mrs Ramsay stands on the complete opposite side of this, she does however represent in her resignation the female condition in its most subtle anguishes: “They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions”; “Again she felt (...) the sterility of men, for if she did not do it nobody would do it”. What I also really appreciated was the age of these female characters, since literary representation (specially up until Modernism, one could argue), tends to be drawn to younger women and girls. Woolf, on the other hand, gives voice to the atemporal feelings of mature womanhood: Mrs Ramsay’s age isn’t specified, but we can infer she is a middle-aged woman, while Lily starts the novel at 34 and, by the end of her artistic meditations, she is 44 years old. 

Throughout the narrative pervades a consistent inherent longing for things one cannot have: a moment, a father’s approval, a presence, the lighthouse. Considered to be her most autobiographical novel, To the Lighthouse is inspired by Woolf’s family and their holiday house, which explains the pervasive atmosphere of nostalgia for something the reader doesn’t quite understand. Written like an impressionist painting, it feels like a fragment of memory. At the end, the characters disappear, but the feeling lingers: “‘you’ and ‘I’ and ‘she’ pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but not words, not paint.” 

#bookstagram #books and flowers #flowers and books #books #book #flowers #literature #blossoming books #virginia woolf #to the lighthouse #british literature #english literature #english lit #a room of one's own

[blossomingbooks]

"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will."

🌼

I don't usually review short stories but this one shook me to the core... I feel like Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been living in the back of my mind forever; I always knew I had to come around to read "The Yellow Wallpaper", although I had no idea what it was about. Now that I did... this might be one of my favorite short stories I've ever read. Written in a first-person journaling style, we follow the mental workings of a young mother who is taken by her husband to an old mansion for the summer in order to restore her "temporary nervous depression — a sightly hysterical tendency". What the reader gradually realizes is postpartum depression (which Gilman herself had dealt with) is dismissed — as the physical and mental health of women usually is — for hysterics. Here the "madwoman in the attic" trope used by Charlotte Bronte and popularized by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar comes to play in an extremely self-aware fashion. The reader accompanies the protagonist through her growing obsession with the horrid yellow wallpaper of the room to which she is confined, representing the maddening patriarchal restriction of women. One must read between the lines while watching her plunge into madness first-hand. This becomes harder to do by the ending, where her voice becomes intrinsecally merged with that of another entity, to a point where we no longer know who she is nor what exactly is going on. To quote our protagonist herself: "You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream" — reading this story feels exactly like what unravelling the wallpaper feels to her.

There's a delicious atmospheric eerieness to this story which made me think of its cinematographic potential, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the following short story on this small anthology, "The Rocking Chair", had it too. This one turns more towards a ghostly theme, but keeps the feminist undertones. Also in first-person, this time of a man, the story follows two young journalists who rent a place where they see a golden-haired woman in a rocking chair on the balcony. The woman is only ever seen far-away, disappearing whenever they enter the house. They consequently become more and more obsessed with this mysterious unreachable being, to a point where they start to turn on each other: "Better a nightmare than a contradiction; a vampire than a quarrel!".

The last one of this three-story compilation, "Old Water", doesn't carry a supernatural theme or a horror atmosphere unlike its precedents, being mainly a satyrical take on blind male ideation. A male poet becomes fascinated with a very practical, sporty and cynical young woman, who is very much his opposite: "I don't like those foolish old stories about people who never did anything useful, and hadn't an idea in their heads except being in love and killing somebody! They had no sense, and no courage, and no decency!". Seeing her as a dumb little fool who hasn't been "awakened" to the beautiful things in life, he makes it his goal to do that himself, to the point of it becoming a dangerous obsession (just like with the journalists in the previous story). The way Gilman satyrizes the patriarchal behavior disguised by poetic sensitivity found in most narratives of the time is something that feels almost contemporary. One thing I very much appreciated in all of these stories is that she never puts her female characters in positions of defeat; each ending is a different kind of triumph over male disregard, condescendence or possessive desire.

All in all, Gilman might have just become one of my favorite writers. If only her progressive feminist ideas informed her very much racist views on eugenics...

#bookstagram #books and flowers #flowers and books #books #book #flowers #literature #blossoming books #american lit #american literature

[blossomingbooks]

"A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. (...) Who knows who might be the target of the well read man?"

📚

"Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents."

🔥

I had read Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles many years ago and I remember being surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I wasn't much into science fiction at the time so I wasn't really expecting to like it, but it fascinated me how lyrical his writing was in a genre that's usually so practical and mechanical. Since then, I've been meaning to read his most famous novel, and finally this summer I picked it up. "It was a pleasure to burn", it stars, slowly taking you through a post-atomic dystopian society in such a fluid manner that you feel you might just have stumbled upon it. 

The pertinence of the book-burning society represented in Fahrenheit 451 might be questionable in light of today's world: we now have e-readers, as well as easily accessible knowledge stored virtually. To many people, the burning of physical books might not mean the same thing that it meant back in the 50s. However, the description of a society deeply controlled by technology and mass media is so familiar, that some parts of the narrative's world-building seem almost banal to a 21st century reader: housewives living for their televisive entertainment; the small radio devices called Seashells (which are really just government controlled airpods); "parlor walls" which, according to François Truffaut's 1966 film adaptation, are just the flat screen televisions we have nowadays. Luckily for us, though, Bradbury unwarily answered this question in the novel itself: "No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget."

More than a dystopian sci-fi novel, this is Bradbury's loving homage to books. There aren't as many political or existential implications as there usually are in dystopian novels; instead, there is a deep sociological critique and a very personal tribute to literature. The most interesting thing for me and probably also the most frightening is how banally this society came to be: there wasn't a singled out authoritarian voice as you would see in the typical dystopia; there wasn't a coup or anything of the sort, society merely stopped, gradually, caring about knowledge and books to the point where they became undesirable, unfamiliar and thus... dangerous to their ignorant bliss. Reading Captain Beatty's monologue on the history of their society felt like reading about our own: "Things began to have mass. (...) And because they had mass, they became simpler, (...) Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending (...) The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. (...) There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick".

All in all, Fahrenheit 451 was quite the incandescent reading. The novel went by very fast, like a spark; it felt like I took a glimpse into that universe and shortly after it was gone. I'm not sure if I wanted the book to be bigger, but it definitely left me feeling like I wanted to know more, to explore deeper into how that society came to be, how the exiled book-lovers lived on the outskirts of town and what happened to the delightful character of Clarisse, who eerily kicks off the narrative but quickly disappears... Although, in this particular case, ignorance seems to be, indeed, bliss.

#bookstagram #books and flowers #flowers and books #books #book #flowers #literature #blossoming books #ray bradbury #fahrenheit 451 #the martian chronicles #Bradbury #dystopia #dystopian literature #Scifi

[blossomingbooks]

"(...) ‘there doesn’t seem to be no need for no one to be contrary when there’s flowers an’ such like, an’ such lots o’ friendly wild things runnin’ about makin’ homes for themselves, or buildin’ nests an’ singin’ an’ whistling, does there?’"

🥀🪴⚘️🌿

I can’t pinpoint the moment when I first heard about The Secret Garden. I remember seeing a picture of it (don’t even remember if it was from the 1993 film or something else) somewhere in my childhood and it lived quietly in the back of my mind ever since. Then at some point during my teens I decided to watch the film adaptation to know what it was about; and since then the need to read the book has never left me. I’ve had this beautiful Special Puffin Classics edition on my shelf for too long and for some reason, it was this summer when I finally felt like I had to pick it up and put the other book I had started reading on hold.

I absolutely love how the narrative begins with such a gothic feel to it, which is quite unusual in a children’s novel. There are some eerie mysteries surrounding Misselthwaite Manor, reminiscent of Charlotte Brontë or even Ann Radcliffe. But this is not the 19th century; this is the beginning of the 20th century, and the gothic narrative devices are only used in order to shine the light on childhoods filled with darkness. Spoiled and sulky, recently orphaned Mary Lennox arrives in Yorkshire (whose accent the author makes sure to transcribe to the page) to unearth things she never knew of before — beauty, friendship and even magic. Along with moor-child Dickon and her sickly cousin Colin, she brings a secret garden back to life, while simultaneously so are their spirits revived: “Slowly — slowly — for no reason that he knew of — he was ‘coming alive’ with the garden”. The juxtaposition between the flowers and greens growing and both the psychological and physical growth of the children is heart-warming, and a clear influence of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s interest in Christian Science (which believed that illness is a mental rather than a physical disorder), as well as Spiritualism and Theosophy:

"One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts — just mere thoughts — are as powerful as electric batteries — as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live."

But I would go so far as to interpret this narrative as pantheist, being so devoted to nature in its core, with protagonists who even see it as magic: “Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people”. The novel mentions the church and even includes a doxology, but it surprisingly never defines itself as a narrative of christian morals, leaving the door of the garden open in an almost agnostic approach (“How can we know the exact names of everything?”). In this way, Burnett lets the characters, as well as the readers, attach the magic of nature to whatever they might feel is right for them: “Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it — an’ call it what tha’ likes.”

#bookstagram #books and flowers #flowers and books #books #book #flowers #literature #blossoming books #frances hodgson burnett #the secret garden #english lit #english literature #yorkshire #mary lennox

[blossomingbooks]

“Era inutile, nulla eguagliava il sapore di vita che è nei libri.”

Calvino è stato il primo autore che mi ha introdotto alla letteratura italiana. Il primo libro che ho letto in italiano è stato il suo Il castello dei destini incrociati (1969). Dunque, sono entusiasta di ritornaci quasi dieci anni dopo.

Gli amori difficili (1970) non è proprio quello che mi aspettavo. Avevo questa idea di Calvino come uno scrittore del fantastico a causa del mio primo rapporto con lui. Questa raccolta di racconti, invece, è più realistica, ironica e critica rispetto al gioco combinatorio del Castello. Mi sembrava di star leggendo un altro autore, come se stessi scoprendo un’altra versione di Calvino – prova della sua ecletticità. Sebbene sia stata pubblicata dopo, i racconti che compongono questa opera sono stati scritti tutti prima, fra il 1949 e il 1967.

I brevi racconti che compongono la prima parte del libro, chiamata proprio “Gli amori difficili”, si leggono benissimo e hanno una forma scorrevole. Fanno parte del periodo “figurativo” di Calvino e presentano un umore sottile che anche se qualche volta funziona, altre volte non riesce a toccare la superficie della lettura. Questo problema, per me, culmina nell’ultimo e più grande racconto dell’opera, “La nuvola di smog”, che insieme a “La formica argentina” compone la seconda parte del libro, “La vita difficile”.

“Gli amori difficili”, cui titoli cominciano sempre con “L’avventura”, non sono proprio amori ma le difficoltà delle relazioni e delle “avventure” quotidiane: sia un rapporto tattile che non riesce nemmeno ad essere relazione (come vediamo nella banalissima “Aventura di un soldato”); sia il rapporto tra una bagnante e il suo corpo desnudo vicino a una spiaggia affollata; sia la relazione di una coppia che lavora in turni lavorativi opposti; sia la relazione tra un fotografo e i suoi oggetti o addirittura il rapporto casuale tra una bagnante e un lettore che non vuole relazionarsi con niente che non sia il suo libro.

Questi due ultimi racconti sono quelli che mi sono piaciuti di più. In “L’avventura di un fotografo”, Calvino riflette sul fenomeno fotografico (che in quell’epoca si era appena sviluppata per scopi privati) in un modo così familiare per il lettore del XXI secolo, che sembra prevedere il rapporto della società contemporanea con la tecnologia dei telefonini e delle reti sociali. Siamo “quelli che inseguono la vita che sfugge, un cacciatore dell’inafferrabile, come gli scattatori d’istantanee”. È affascinante vedere come, già negli anni 50, “il gusto della foto spontanea naturale colta dal vivo uccide la spontaneità, allontana il presente” e “la vita che vivete per fotografarla è già in partenza commemorazione di se stessa”. In queste citazioni, potete già vedere come questo racconto si legge quasi come un saggio filosofico sull’immagine.

Inoltre, “L’avventura di un lettore” è un esercizio metaletterario poiché ha come tema centrale la lettura stessa: un uomo, leggendo in spiaggia, ha un conflitto interiore su approcciare una bagnante chi dimostra interesse o restare nella sua beatitudine silenziosa. Questo conflitto tra la vita sociale e il nostro mondo interiore è probabilmente una esperienza universale per tutti gli avidi lettori. Impaurito dall’idea di dover interrompere la lettura e “dello sforzo d’attenzione che sempre richiede il far conoscenza anche superficialmente con una persona”, lui decide che “non c’era altra storia, altra attesa possibile oltre a quella che aveva lasciato in sospeso tra le pagine dov’era il segnalibro, e tutto il resto era un intervallo vuoto.”

“L’avventura di una bagnante”, invece, è uno dei racconti che non mi sono piaciuti. Qui, Calvino cerca di riflettere sul rapporto di una donna con il suo proprio corpo, portandoci qualche punti interessanti che tuttavia non esprimono la vera esperienza femminile. Parla anche della relazione tra le donne come se fossero private di “bontà solidale e spontanea”, un’idea un po’ patriarcale e per niente rappresentativa della realtà. L’altro racconto che non mi è piaciuto molto, “La nuvola di smog”, è il più grande della raccolta e appartiene alla seconda parte del libro, “La vita difficile”. Sebbene abbia idee interessanti sulla vita contemporanea nelle città postindustriali, sembra di tentar fare delle osservazioni critiche su troppi argomenti (dall’inquinamento alle rivendicazioni sindacali) eppure lasciandoli incompiuti.

Insomma, questa raccolta di Calvino mi ha generato dei sentimenti contrastanti; pur aver adempiuto le mie necessità linguistiche, non tutti i racconti mi hanno soddisfatto letterariamente.

#letteratura #letteratura italiana #calvino #italo calvino #literature #italian literature #flowers and books #books and flowers #books #book #bookstagram #blossoming books #flowers #libro #libri #fiore #fiori #gli amori difficili

[blossomingbooks]

Com a célebre frase “No dia seguinte ninguém morreu”, As Intermitências da Morte começa já de forma autoexplicativa. Como seria de esperar de Saramago, a premissa da narrativa é algo insólito: um certo dia, a morte deixa de chegar aos habitantes de um certo país.

A primeira metade da obra foca-se no contexto sociológico e consequências socioeconómicas deste acontecimento inesperado. Com o seu típico tom irónico, Saramago aproveita para bordar o texto com a precisão de um alfinete crítico cuja linha passa ora pela política, ora pela religião. Por um lado, a primeira esteve sempre omnipresente na sua obra, sendo o autor conhecido militante do Partido Comunista Português. Os seus temas, por mais particulares que possam ser, incluem sempre uma profunda preocupação com o povo, e n’As Intermitências da Morte não é diferente: “aquela estúpida pergunta com que as classes sociais chamadas superiores têm a descarada sobranceria de provocar as que estão por baixo”, escreve ele: “Você sabe com quem está a falar”? Com esta e outras alfinetadas, Saramago expõe manobras políticas tais como “o conhecido impulso de recomendar tranquilidade às pessoas a propósito de tudo e de nada, de as manter sossegadas no redil seja como for, esse tropismo que nós políticos, em particular se são governo, se tornou numa segunda natureza, para não dizer automatismo, movimento mecânico”.

Por outro lado, ateísta e profundamente crítico da Igreja Católica, Saramago expõe também a grande hipocrisia da religião, que nesta narrativa cai por terra com a pausa inesperada das mortes: “sem morte não há ressurreição, e sem ressurreição não há igreja”; “as religiões, todas elas, por mais voltas que lhes dermos, não têm outra justificação para existir que não seja a morte, precisam dela como do pão para a boca”. O autor também interrelaciona política com religião enquanto instrumentos de preservação da ignorância popular: “A nossa outra especialidade, além da balística, tem sido neutralizar, pela fé, o espírito curioso”, diz um religioso.

Já a segunda metade da obra muda drasticamente de foco: passa a seguir a personagem da própria “morte” de forma intimista, quase humana, explorando os seus pensamentos e emoções. O que começara por ser uma análise sociológica passa a um estudo psicológico que vai culminar numa história de amor. Assim como o revisionismo histórico d’O Memorial do Convento tem como desfecho o amor entre Baltasar e Blimunda, também a história entre a morte e o violoncelista acontece por causa e consequência de ninguém morrer. Este aspeto cíclico da narrativa é reforçado pela última frase da obra, sendo exatamente a mesma com a qual começa — dando assim a ideia de que a narrativa não só acaba como começa ali, num ciclo sem fim.

Esta, “embora certa, inverídica história sobre as intermitências da morte” é, também, uma obra profundamente existencial, tendo em conta a dificuldade humana de lidar com o conceito de morte. Ao dar-se conta das consequências burocráticas do tão desejado “viver para sempre”, o leitor é obrigado a olhar para o conceito com outra perspetiva. “Se não voltarmos a morrer não temos futuro” e “antes a morte que tal sorte”, são as conclusões a que chega a sociedade retratada na narrativa: “Porque se os seres humanos não morressem tudo passaria a ser permitido, E isso seria mau, perguntou o filósofo velho, Tanto como não permitir nada.”

Saramago consegue criar um equilíbrio surpreendente tanto entre o social e o pessoal, como entre o realismo e o fantasioso — “juntássemos novas irrealidades à congénita irrealidade da fábula”, escreve o autor num momento metaficcional. Apesar da sua obra conter muita crítica sociopolítica, tem sempre como pano de fundo uma premissa quase fantástica, como é o caso do país onde já ninguém morre ou da passarola. O mesmo equilíbrio está presente na sua linguagem: um estilo de escrita acessível, quase rudimentar por ter um andamento que remete à oralidade, mas ao mesmo tempo pontuado por um vocabulário sutilmente erudito.

Entre o existencial, o sociopolítico e o intimista, As Intermitências da Morte é uma leitura fluida, estimulante e definitivamente indispensável no panorama da obra de Saramago.

#books and flowers #flowers and books #books #book #bookstagram #josé saramago #Saramago #As Intermitências da morte #Literatura #Literatura portuguesa #Livros

[blossomingbooks]

“Where were they going? What strange feminine secrets did they share in that last gay fateful hour?” (76)

💐

The first contact I had with the narrative of Picnic at Hanging Rock was on a summer solstice, through Peter Weir’s 1975 film. Years later, on another summer solstice, I finally started reading Joan Lindsay’s novel. It was “a shimmering summer morning warm and still” (7), just like in the first page. The Hanging Rock, with its “prehistoric architecture of wind and water” (29), accompanied me throughout the heat of the season; it’s mysteries fascinating me as if for the first time.

For me, the beauty of Picnic at Hanging Rock is in its enigma - not only the enigma in its narrative, but also in its genre. It has elements of a detective story, of horror, of philosophical fiction... and it has the potential to be any of those things. “The College was already being talked about as haunted (...) ‘they’ were saying in the village that strange lights had been seen moving about the College grounds after dark” (143) - this, for example, could well be a passage from a gothic narrative, as well as the nightmarish scene where Irma visits the schoolgirls for the last time and they turn on her, as if possessed. There’s nothing more horrifying than the unknown, and in Picnic at Hanging Rock we never fully know. On the other hand, Lindsay’s philosophical obsession with the concept of time is present throughout the whole book: “There is no single instant on this spinning globe that is not, for millions of individuals, immeasurable by ordinary standards of time: a fragment of eternity forever unrelated to the calendar or the striking clock.” (120). In fact, both the clocks of Mr. Hussey and Miss McCraw stop near the Hanging Rock, as if the place was literally timeless - an idea further developed in Chapter Eighteenth, the “conclusion” to the story cut by the editors and published posthumously with Lindsay’s consent. But even this “revelation” perpetuates the eeriness of the story, and upon reading it one becomes even more intrigued than before.

Miranda, described by Mademoiselle de Poitiers as “a Botticelli angel” and compared to a swan by Michael’s imagination, is more of a symbol than an actual person. She represents the whole mystery, the “feminine secrets” which intrigue Michael so much, compelling him to follow them at the Hanging Rock. He keeps having dreams and nightmares about them for weeks afterwards, until his intuition allows him to find Irma. His perception is that of a foreigner - a british young man in a feminine australian landscape -, thus his fascination. With his rigid background, he’s compelled by the freedom and naturalness of those girls (especially taking into account the homoromantic undertones between him and Albert). An easy interpretation would be an infatuation with Miranda, but to me it’s much more clear that he longs to be Miranda, in all the complexities that this desire implies. The one who is clearly infatuated with Miranda is Sara Waybourne, with her own parallel tragic story (hinted at by the hydrangeas in this picture). It’s hard for me to believe in the author’s unawareness about all these queer undertones in a story published in 1967.

In a deeper analysis, it’s a narrative about social constraint and how each character escapes it. Miranda’s free spirit allows her to escape the constrained reality of womanhood imposed by the boarding school environment, and that freedom allures Michael and his longing to break free from the expectations of his gender and social position. Sara Waybourne too escapes constraint, but through a much more drastic way (though it’s still unclear in the book if through suicide or homocide). Even time itself, Lindsay’s main conceptual theme, is unconstrained at the Hanging Rock, creating a mysterious warp which goes beyond human understanding.

All in all, reading the original book only made me fall more in love with Peter Weir’s 1975 film adaptation, which captures the essence of the narrative in a way I never felt with any other cinematographic translation of literature. Even minor addictions such as the following Poe poem only emphasize the eeriness of the story, since in both book and film “all that we see or seem / is but a dream within a dream”...

#literature #australian literature #book #books #flowers and books #books and flowers #bookstagram #picnic at hanging rock #joan lindsay #peter weir

[blossomingbooks]

“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises"

Reading Shakespeare, to me, is always a delight. His use of words, rhythmically playing with language even in his most prosaic texts, creates famous aphorisms which are always fun to find while reading the original text for the first time. “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here” and "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" are just some examples I found in his The Tempest.

I had no idea of the subject of this specific play before reading it. My first encounter with it was the back-cover blurb, which described the character of Caliban as a "monster" who is eventually "tamed". This seemed more and more strange to me throughout my reading; I couldn't see how Caliban was a monster, and why on earth, being a slave, he needed to be tamed.

It didn't take me long to see, through Caliban's own speech, how representative of colonization this narrative arc was: "This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother, Which thou tak’st from me. When thou cam’st first, Thou strok’st me and made much of me, wouldst give me Water with berries in ’t, and teach me how To name the bigger light and how the less, That burn by day and night. And then I loved thee, And showed thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle, The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile. Cursed be I that did so!"

Now, I'd love to believe that Shakespeare wrote this as a conscious criticism towards the imperialist society he lived in, but no author, socially aware about this subject, would "tame" his outraged colonized character, having him suddenly change his behavior at the end, replacing it for complete submission:

"Prospero: As you look / To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.

Caliban: Ay, that I will, and I’ll be wise hereafter / And seek for grace."

It's much more likely for an English playwright, writing for a British audience during the Colonial Era, to display the values and points of view of the colonizer. Still, it's interesting to encounter these unintended critical reflections on colonialism in the literature of its own time. However, if you're looking for a great post-colonial re-visioned take of the play, I highly recommend Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête (1969), which has been translated to English. Césaire is one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature, which aimed at raising and cultivating "Black consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora.

Notwithstanding this particular interpretation, I did enjoy the play - specially the magical wedding scene, performed by Iris, Ceres and Juno and entertained by the dancing nymphs. With a beautiful imagery, accompanied by some exquisite poetry, it clears the tempestuous air of vengeance and outrage which sets the narrative.

Combining fairy-world aspects of A Midsummer's Night Dream with a glimpse of Romeo and Juliet-like romance and some treasonous plot lines common to his most heavy dramatic plays (such as Hamlet and Othello), The Tempest brings a fresh balance between Shakespeare's humor and his tragic side.

#shakespeare #william shakespeare #the tempest #prospero #ariel #caliban #play #theater #theatre #book #books #books and flowers #flowers and books #flowers #daisies #bookstagram #bookish

[blossomingbooks]

He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. 

I started reading this at the beginning of quarantine, and I admit it was hard at first to read a dystopian novel when I felt I was entering a very dystopian reality myself. A few weeks afterwards, though, when I had calmed myself down and the situation wasn’t as nerve-wracking as in the beginning, I picked it up again and suddenly I couldn’t put it down. It gripped my attention more than I had expected it to. 

At first, I was confused. I’d always had this pre-assumption that 1984 was a novel about a totalitarian right-wing dictatorship; imagine my surprise seeing the characters calling each other “comrade” and capitalists being defined in children’s history textbooks as “fat, ugly men with wicked faces”. I thought to myself: wait, aren’t those supposed to be left-wing behaviours? So, this is a left-condemning dystopia, after all? Wasn’t George Orwell a leftist, though? I was clearly very confused, which made me keep reading frantically in order to reach a better understanding of it. 

The truth is, as with every dystopian piece of literature, its content is very misleading. A misinformed and superficial reading may pave the way to anti-left arguments, when in reality, Orwell was a democratic socialist. Written in a post second world war, cold war context (“The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods”, it says in chapter 2 of part III), 1984 is simply about anti-totalitarianism - whatever form totalitarianism may take. In this fictional case, it goes by the name of Ingsoc, or English Socialism: “It had always been assumed that if the capitalist class were expropriated, Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the capitalists had been expropriated.” It’s a society that extrapolates socialist ideologies, just like it has happened with many of the left totalitarian regimes in History. 

The concept of History itself is also very subverted in the narrative: the Party reconstructs historical narratives by endorsing the idea of mutability of the past: 

“But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed— if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.” (chapter III, part I)

Through the denial of objective reality, they implant this concept called doublethink. This draws a thin line between History and fiction, since both are essentially linguistic constructions. Doublethink could be, then, in a deeper level of interpretation, a metaphor for fiction itself:

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them (...) That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.” (idem)

The names of the Ministries themselves require the use of doublethink: “the Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war”; “the Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order”, is basically a palace of torture; the Ministry of Plenty concerns itself with economic affairs which are never “plenty” and the Ministry of Truth, where facts are “produced” and History adjusted according to the needs of the Party.

Doublethink is a word from the official language called Newspeak. On the “Appendix” at the end of the book, we get a more thorough explanation of Newspeak and its grammar, according to its “final, perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary”. This demonstrates the linguistic relevance in the totalitarian society of 1984: language is used as a tool for control, it is the filter through which an individual sees the world. There is no signified without a signifier; reality exists insomuch as it can be named and thought upon: “There would be many crimes and errors which it would be beyond his power to commit, simply because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable.” The reduction of vocabulary, which is the main goal of Newspeak is, inherently, a reduction of reality and, consequently, of thought: “Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought”, making, in fact, “all other modes of thought impossible”.

Upon picking this book I had, of course, a very political expectation of it; and although it is very political, it surprised me for its deep philosophical tone, which I believe to be the main essence of the novel. Ultimately, it’s not as much about the condition of society as it is about the human condition overall. The way an individual sees the world (filtered through his linguistic capacities), the legitimisation of recorded History, the role of memory and the mind games played by the Party on Part III... It feels almost like an essay; Orwell writes in a very self-explanatory way, asking questions and trying to answer them.

Ultimately, it’s very meta-fictional, since it does everything that’s forbidden in the narrative: it makes us reflect upon our own freedoms and human rights, question totalitarianism and understand both fiction and reality through an extended vocabulary and, consequently, ways of thinking.  

#George orwell #1984 #nineteen eighty four #orwellian #dystopia #dystopian #dystopian literature #english literature #english lit #books #flowers #books and flowers #book and flower #flower and book #flowers and books #carnation #carnations #bookstagram #blossoming books

[blossomingbooks]

Since everyone is confined in “a room of one’s own” right now (or at least everyone should be), this month’s blossoming book is by none other than the amazing Virginia Woolf!

Based on two papers read by Woolf in October’s 1928 (the same date of Orlando’s publication) when asked to speak about “women and fiction”, A Room of One’s Own is a genius essay on the role of the female author throughout the history of literature. Reflecting on women’s need for financial independence and intellectual freedom, Virginia Woolf starts off with a partially fictional account of a day walking through some college grounds. When trying to enter a library, she’s forbidden, because “ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction”.

Woolf uses fictional devices throughout the book in order to argue her point because, according to her, “fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact” and, using “all the liberties and licences of a novelist”, she’s more able to express her point successfully. This technique has also been employed earlier by authors from different areas, as analysed by Will Tattersdill in his book Science, Fiction, and the Fin-de-Siècle Periodical Press (2016):

“Narrative is, in both, a kind of authority source, and both are (...) ultimately pieces of writing which capitalise upon fiction in order to advance a specific view about the location of truth”

Fiction is, then, a more effective way to persuade readers, and in Woolf’s argument it works even more perfectly because her argument is about fiction. She, a female writer, uses fiction in order to analyse the role of female writers in fiction. There’s no more effective way to explain the absence of female writers in history by speculating about “Shakespere’s sister” and, through this fictional account, to bring the reader closer to the reality of historical women and how their lack of resources forbade them to become sucessful writers. 

This echoes Tattersdill’s point that “fact and fiction need not necessarily be at odds”; and, indeed, Woolf famously defends that in order to write fiction, “a woman must have money and a room of her own” - which is to be understood as financial independece and general emancipation. I could go on and on about how ahead of her times she was in this piece and analyse different parts of it, but I believe that her writing speaks much for itself; and so I highly reccomend you to read it, so you can delight in her words and ideas in their purest form.

#virginia woolf #a room of one's own #bloomsbury #books and flowers #flowers and books #books #book #english literature #female literature #gender studies #literature #female writers #flowers #pink flowers

[blossomingbooks]

🌼 I’d had this book sitting on my bedside ledge shelf for years, mostly because the cover was so lovely, but also because every Christmas I had the intention to read it - and every Christmas I ended up not reading it, either because college studies wouldn’t allow me, or because parallel readings got in the way. Last year, upon hearing about Greta Gerwig’s new film adaptation, I decided I couldn’t postpone it any longer; and thus, on Christmas day, I started.

I was already acquainted with the characters from the 90s adaptation I used to love when I was younger, but upon coming back to the story in its purest form, I met each of them in a new, more complex light. The coming-of-age genre was always one of my favorites, so one focused on 19th century girlhood and the different ways each of them “come of age” was even more appealing to me. Plus, each of them is relevantly flawed, which makes this narrative of “little women” (who in a patriarchal society are brought up to be perfectly good in an idolized way) refreshing, therefore resonating the more with young female readers. As a matter of fact, Meg (although the oldest and wisest) can be pretty vain and jealous, while Jo has to deal with her anger issues and Amy starts off as a spoiled little brat. Even Beth, with all her purity and good heart, must learn to open up and trust others.

Alcott writes this realistic account of feminity from a deeply personal point of view, as proved by a passage in her journal from May 1868: “Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters; but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it.” The way she’s able to step in the depths of girlhood even though she “never liked girls or knew many” is remarkable, while at the same time explains how autobiographical is Jo’s character. Like her, Alcott’s goal was to support herself and her family through her writing. As Regina Barreca says in the Introduction for this Signet Classics edition, with “a fierce sense of independence”, Alcott refused to follow the two obvious paths for women at the time: marriage and teaching (x). She tried to do the same with Jo: “Girls ask me who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life”, she writes. “I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please any one”.

But the core of the story for me is exactly Jo and Laurie’s relationship. Not because of the romantic light in which her public at the time saw it, but exactly because of her refusal to bind them in a traditional heteronormative romance. In my opinion, they are one of the best literary representations of platonic soulmates. I’m aware that I’m using very contemporary terms to analyse a 19th century novel, but I take this liberty with Alcott since she was a woman extremely ahead of her time. In fact, according to Susan Straight in the Afterword for this same edition, she was “a staunch supporter of women’s right and education, an enemy of corsets and a proponent of marriage as companionship, not a romantic and impractical love union” (506).

Laurie, the only main male character of this female-driven narrative, has a very feminine name for starters, while Jo shortens her name to seem more boyish. In this sense, their first interaction is very pertinent:

‘(...) thank you, Mr. Laurence. But I am not Miss March, I’m only Jo,’ returned the young lady. 

‘I’m not Mr. Laurence, I’m only Laurie.’ 

‘Laurie Laurence, what an odd name.’ 

‘My first name is Theodore, but I don’t like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead.’ 

‘I hate my name, too, so sentimental! I wish every one would say Jo instead of Josephine.’

Their androgyny acts as a mirror-image to each other, and they instantly connect. They first meet while hiding from a party inside a curtained recess, and then end up dancing away from everybody in the hall. Jo finds in Laurie the boy she always wanted to be, while Laurie seeks in her a liberation from his self-confinement. She is also his doorway for the March family, where he acquires the feminine figures that had been missing in his life thus far. That’s why they work so well as kindred spirits, while romance would be an unnecessary plot device. As Laurie himself tells Jo after mistaking his love for her as a romantic one:

“I never shall stop loving you, but the love is altered, and I have learned to see that it is better as it is. Amy and you changed places in my heart, that’s all. I think it was meant to be so, and would have come about naturally, if I had waited”

For me, Jo was clearly from the beginning an aromantic character, thus why I don’t really enjoy her ending with Mr. Bhaer. Greta’s turn in her film adaptation is delightful, and it gives us a deeper understanding of Alcott’s initial intentions for the story:

DASHWOOD: So, who does she marry? 

JO: No one. She doesn’t marry either of them. 

DASHWOOD: No. No, no, no, that won’t work at all. 

JO: She says the whole book that she doesn’t want to marry. 

DASHWOOD: WHO CARES! Girls want to see women MARRIED. Not CONSISTENT. 

JO: It isn’t the right ending. 

DASHWOOD: The right ending is the one that sells. 

Jo thinks. Dashwood pounces. DASHWOOD (CONT'D): If you end your delightful book with your heroine a spinster, no one will buy it. It won’t be worth printing. 

Jo shifts. She considers. JO: I suppose marriage has always been an economic proposition. Even in fiction. 

DASHWOOD: It’s romance! 

JO: It’s mercenary. 

DASHWOOD: Just end it that way, will you? 

JO: Fine.

Many argue that, by canonically marrying Mr. Bhaer and having his children, while at the same time opening her school, Jo is “the first American literary heroine to ‘have it all’, both love and career” (Christine Doyle). But I think that would be more the goal of someone like Amy, whose main desire is, throughout the whole novel, to be an artist, and who also ends up marrying Laurie. Jo is a different person who, in my opinion, isn’t made for marriage; not with the character I defend to be her soulmate, neither with the character whom I allow she may have an attraction for - but wouldn’t go as far as to marry. Of course, that is my “contemporary” point of view, but it’s a point of view that I believe many women already felt in patriarchal 19th century society, only didn’t have the tools to express or the freedom to engage in. And that’s why Greta’s new take on this classic tale is so relevant and refreshing, paying tribute to Alcott’s legacy, life and literature in every way.

#Little women #louisa may alcott #greta gerwig #signet classics #classics #literature #American literature #coming of age #jo march #the march family #meg march #amy march #beth march #Laurie #saoirse Ronan #Florence Pugh #timothee chalamet #books #book #books and flowers #flowers and books #flowers #white flowers #bookstagram

[blossomingbooks]

“Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone” 🏵 This was my fourth Jane Austen; I always thought it would be Sense and Sensibility or Mansfield Park, but this English literature class I took last semester made me go for Northanger Abbey instead. I enjoyed it quite more than I was expecting and possibly more than if I had read it outside of an academic context. The background I got from studying The Mysteries of Udolpho beforehand was very useful, since the whole premise is about a young girl obsessed with gothic stories. While reading this Ann Radcliffe romance throughout the novel, Catherine sees the world through the gothic clichés her predefined interpretation of reality. Austen’s novel establishes a dialogue with Radcliffe’s in the sense that the gothic imagery acts as a way of escapism for the constricted female role in society. These clichés, so thoroughly explored in Udolpho, are questioned in Austen’s novel. I wrote an essay for class titled “Northanger Abbey: Austen’s semiotic ‘mocktale’ of female literary escapism through the Gothic”. In it I defend how Austen not only mocks the gothic genre through this novel, but also goes beyond that by analysing the genre’s role on female semiotics of the 19th century. With a cyclical narrative arc, this is in a way a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age tale in which Catherine becomes a woman by experiencing real life first hand, beyond her Gothic books which perpetuated the patriarchal limitations of women at the time. Woman’s escape through fiction, mostly gothic, was highly indicative of her denigrated role in society:

“(...) history, real solemn history (…) I cannot be interested in. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths, their thoughts and designs — the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.” (Austen, 78)

As David Blair defends in the Introduction to this Wordsworth Classics edition, history is a “male form of narrative. It is the history of men written by men” (xvii), while Gothic novels are generally written by women, about women - they are able to see themselves in it, fighting patriarchal confinement through hyperbolized symbolic versions. It’s a form of personal and social catharsis. Gothic imagery therefore acts as a semiotic device for a female understanding of the world, while also acting as a disguise for the horrors of real life - more subtly in Udolpho, while more explicitly in Northanger Abbey. The quotidian becomes scarier than the supernatural; the real horror in the gothic genre is, therefore, the aspects which it symbolizes about real life.

#Book #Books #flowers #books and flowers #flowers and Books #bookstagram #Jane Austen #Austen #northanger Abbey #sense and sensibility #mansfield park #the mysteries of udolpho #ann radcliffe #gothic novel #gothic #gothic genre #gothic literature #literature #19th century #19th century literature #literary review #female author #female writer

[blossomingbooks]

🌼 Jane Eyre left me very conflicted. This novel is many things, and it does many things; as I was warned by Maggie O’Farrell in the introduction for this edition, “it eludes definition”. I enjoyed Charlotte Bronte’s writing from the beginning and it looked like a very promising read; the main character showed so much potential, and what could be better than what seemed to me like a gothic version of an Austen-like novel? The first 600 pages of this 650-page narrative were, indeed, quite delightful. One of the main reasons I always liked literature so much is because through it I can figure myself out. Jane Eyre was self-revealing in ways I did not expect it to be. There are so many aspects of her character, especially at a young age, that are interesting to analyse. Her traumatic childhood and her feeling of inadequacy, which are essential to her strength of character, made me resonate with her from the beginning. Plus, I approached this novel hoping to find in it some emotional maturity - which, for most of it, I did. It seemed to me a very feminist novel, and indeed some of Jane’s beliefs and quotes are strong proofs of that: “Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more priviledged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” However, the ending frustrated me deeply - I won’t say it’s antifeminist, but for me it goes against her character development and what I thought the whole point of this story was. The epilogue is disturbingly utopic in a traditional way - yes, I’m reading it in a 21st century light, but I honestly felt like the book could’ve ended when she left Mr. Rochester. A bittersweet open ending with the promise of freedom and emotional strength - the poetic uncertainty of it would make more sense to me than the way in which it actually ends. Or maybe it could’ve ended in the wholesome household of the Rivers - Jane finally getting the family and resonance of mind she never did before. But the actual ending, to me, makes the whole narrative shallow and all her progress of character, in vain. Some scholars do defend that it was a good ending in the sense that she only ended up with him after some balance between their characters, like this opinion from an essay in The Guardain: “(…) key to her marriage with Rochester is the fact that she has become his equal, financially and in terms of social standing. She can take him on her own terms. It’s an intellectual choice as much as an emotional surrender.” And yet, the last pages are so underwhelming, the conclusion of her narrative so traditional that one does not feel satisfied by this witty interpretation. Her longing for freedom and independence is only obtained through monetary means; she never really goes off to see the world. The urge that drove her since we met her at 10 years old is never satisfied and the release she looked for so many times, by escaping Gateshead, Lowood and Thornfield, seems unobtained. An interesting (though at times harsh) read is Virginia Woolf’s essay on Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, part of her book The Common Reader. In it she defends that Charlotte Bronte has “an overpowering personality”, with an “untamed ferocity perpetually at war with the accepted order of things which makes (her) desire to create instantly rather than to observe patiently”. This “narrow”, “self-centred and self-limited” vision is clearly impressed upon her main character: “The drawbacks of being Jane Eyre are not far to seek. Always to be a governess and always to be in love is a serious limitation in a world which is full, after all, of people who are neither one nor the other.” For me, she is more than a governess in love. For me, this isn’t - or shouldn’t be - a love story. The title of the book itself is her name - not a witty metaphor for a romance between two people, like her sister Emily or Jane Austen do in their titles. This is a coming of age tale about a plain, misunderstood orphan longing to break the confines of her existence - and the brooding antihero she falls in love with should be just a stop along the way, not the final destination.

#Jane eyre #charlotte bronte #brontes #mr. Rochester #books #flowers #books and flowers #flowers and books #bookstagram

[blossomingbooks]

Holiday greetings, blossoming beauties! 🌲 The semester is over and that means I'm back to wrap up my year in books. I've been busy with this English literature class I've been taking, which had the Gothic as it's main theme. This made me really excited because it was a genre I was very interested in but not much knowledgeable about (except for a few dark Romantics from the US). We started off with The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, a book I had never heard of and yet it was apparently one of the first gothic novels. I had only heard of its author - I’ve actually had "The Italian" sitting at home for a while since a friend gave it to me, but haven’t got to it yet (though I’m definitely more curious now). Udolpho was an important starting point to understand the following Gothic novels by female authors we were going to study: Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey. These two break away from the classic Gothic, so it was very important to get acquainted with Udolpho first. It has the basics: "boring" beginning where nothing out of the ordinary happens for chapters; then a ominous male character kidnaps a damsel in distress to a castle far away, hidden from the world, where she hears stories of ghosts and finds objects belonging to his dead wife - all in a very dramatic Italian setting. I won't be making an actual literary analysis on this one because we only focused on the one third of the novel that showcases more vividly the Gothic genre; and it doesn't feel right to analyse a book I haven't read in its entirety. Just wanted to introduce the theme of the next few posts, so stay tuned! 🤗

#books #flowers and books #books and flowers #flowers #white flowers #the mysteries of udolpho #ann radcliffe #gothic #gothic literature #english literature #english lit #lit #bookstagram