Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe.

''He told me, I might judge of the Happiness of this State, by the one thing, viz. That this was the State of Life which all other People envied, that Kings have frequently lamented the miserable Consequence of being born to great things, and wish'd they had been placed in the Middle of the two Extremes, between the Mean and the Great; that the wise Man gave his Testimony to this as the just Standard of true Felicity, when he prayed to have neither Poverty or Riches.'' 

I'm not sure if I actually enjoyed this book, at times it really felt like I wasn't but at the same time I read it quickly, I became engrossed in characters and so interested in the plot progression. I DON'T KNOW ANY MORE. I complained about Crusoe the whole way through the book but still willed him on and hoped for him. Defoe has basically bullied me into supporting someone I really don't like, very underhand of him. 

In all seriousness Crusoe is not a particularly lovable person, he is obnoxious, self pitying (although this is slightly understandable), he is racist (although that is in context), he has an inflated vision of his own intellect and importance AND he kills things CONSTANTLY I mean he is on his own on an Island for 23 years but can he really not find any other way to entertain himself? Okay, after writing down the reasons I have taken a dislike to him I am feeling rather petty. But he still annoys me.

In all honesty I think the book took an interesting look into the mental distress that follows long term isolation. The stress comes very close to destroying Crusoe before he saves Friday who becomes his servant, project and companion. I found Crusoe's turn to religion particularly interesting, he found passages in his bible that sustained his hope in eventual rescue throughout his 28 year exile and this discovery of hope made a marked difference to his everyday life. You can understand the importance of hope in an otherwise bleak situation and how positively this effects his ability to survive and sustain himself in a reasonably sane state. 

To be honest, despite my apparently slightly unreasonable dislike of the main character this novel impressed me. Even if I entirely based my respect upon the appreciation that it is widely recognised as beginning popularity of the genre of realistic fiction, however, I find myself liking it for more than simply its innovation. In terms of style it flows well, the language is beautific in places and despite his other (perhaps imagined, I am not sure I trust my own judgement at this stage) faults, Robinson pays homage to the beauty of his island.

In conclusion, I have no conclusion. I have no idea what to think, this novel has confused me to the point of not even knowing whether I like it or not. Utterly inconclusive. Might have to change degree course, it may have traumatised me that much.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft.

'I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves'

The above quote I chose because I felt I should start positively on a book I was looking forward to reading so much, you know, that book by one of the first 'feminists' that was so revolutionary and wonderful and everything that is right with the progression of intellectualism. That, I have discovered to my alarm, is not this book. I am afraid here you are going to have to forgive me ignoring the historical context one could use to justify this self satisfied essay on reasons that women cannot raise themselves above their 'natural physical weakness'; using her incredibly limited world view Wollstonecraft (we are not even on first name terms any more) has successfully managed to make me indignant.

Wollstonecraft maintains that education is a large portion of that which separated men from women in her time period,  I agree with her there. However, she refuses to admit any conceivable virtue could lie within the sphere of her sex naturally and that all that is called 'feminine' is inherently valueless, weak and insipid. Whilst I understand that the upper class examples of our sex in her time were not the strongest of examples of strong women by modern standards there were still plenty women in the middle and working classes that far out did her example when it came to strength of character, determination to better themselves and confidence.

The one thing missing being their education. Illiteracy was the lot of the majority, the public school system had not yet come into place so the places of learning were still dominated by those who had both the money and time to use them. Whilst it is acknowledged fleetingly that the vast majority of women did not have access to any form of education it did not stop Wollstonecraft from questioning women's ability to learn without becoming vain sycophants without opinions as if these were vices solely within the realm of women and that men couldn't be equally vain and sycophantic. 'My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.' Ignoring of course the lack of resources and time for the vast majority of women and the women who did support themselves. Yeah, ignore all that.

She has cut me to the quick! She attacks women for their perceived weakness and seems to hold a hatred of her own sex and a desire to focus of strengths and instead of recognising some virtues from members of her sex she merely suggests that women need to be more like men and the ultimate goal women are striving towards is to be 'useful'.

IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY. I think I am going to have to leave this here, calm down, reread the more reasonable bits. Hopefully it will be less bile stirring next time round. You never know. 

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys.

'So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.'

'Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?'

How could I resist this book? Despite earlier in this series of posts realising that I actually do like the novel 'Jane Eyre', my dislike for the characters in it remains. And here an opportunity for further derision and reasons to dislike Mr Rochester, or at least a character that I and must readers of this book have assumed is Mr Rochester as it is meant to be a re-imagining of 'Jane Eyre', however, the character is never actually named. The sense of self and the development of self is something that this novel explores and does very well. I identified with all the characters, they felt real. I could see their motivations, their underlying insecurities, and despite sporadic information that is often placed out time you come to see the characters as being truly multi faceted.

The novel is mostly set in Jamaica and follows the early life of Antoinette, or Bertha as we later come to know her, and the events leading up to her marriage to the nameless character that I am going to continue calling Mr Rochester. The novel explores the psychological damage of growing up isolated, hated by the local population, and without a strong parental figure. We see Antoinette's mother slowly be driven in to madness and her reaction when she eventually finds out about her mother's state. We see Antoinette and Mr Rochester's start of marriage, a marriage for money that Antoinette's family as well as Mr Rochester's push her into. In Mr. Rochester we see a young man, scared of the local population, unable to understand their motivations and eventually scared of his wife. We see Antoinette fall in love and we see the tragedy that come after. This novel is moving in a way that I didn't think I would find it. I expected to be angry at Mr. Rochester, I expected to be indignant for Antoinette, I did not expect to pity both of them so thoroughly. 

The true tragedy of this novel is that we know what is going to happen, very few people who will go into reading this book with our some foreknowledge of the inevitable result, and yet we see a glimmer of happiness, they look like they are in love. Rhys gives us the smallest amount of hope, enough to keep us emotionally invested in the outcome and then destroys any hope of happiness through increasingly complicated tangles made worse by both the mains characters as well as those further out. The worst part of the misery that follows it the lack of one person the blame it on, all contribute to furthering the mess. If Jane and Mr. Rochester were destined to be together then Antoinette and Mr. Rochester were destiny's collateral.

This novel's chilling ending left me bereft, I genuinely felt like I lost something when reading this novel, an ability to completely believe in happy endings without a victim somewhere in the process perhaps. I would definitely read this again but it left me mournful.

I will have to see how heavily this has affected my dearly held positive opinion of 'Jane Eyre'.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce.

'His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her grave-clothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable'

I started reading this book ready, anticipating even, disliking it. Having previously read enough Joyce to realise that the was no way (absolutely no way) I could ever enjoy any of his books it was quite a surprise when I enjoyed this one. Stephen Dedalus, a moniker Joyce himself adopted early on in his writing career, fascinated me. I had been told next to nothing about the style and plot of this book before I started reading so I was surprised when it developed into a reasonably familiar 'bildungsroman' (or coming of age story) where we follow the development of a boy growing up in Ireland. Through childish eyes we see Irish politics, which I will not pretend to know anything about, the dynamics of a family and the development of religious thought in a child. 

Religion is a key theme throughout the novel, coming from a Catholic background the Church is a major institution in his live providing the centre from which he draws all his experience. If the novel is limited in any way it in the inability Stephen has to draw away from the Church, it is what defines him throughout, even when he decides on atheism he still defines himself in opposition the his previous self. It consumes his every thought, he is fascinated with his interaction with God and actually atheism would be an incorrect label for his condition by the end of the text. God always exists to him but he eventually decides he can't follow him and turns away, his belief in God is firm throughout but how well he follows him is sporadic and varies massively from going out of his way at the age of sixteen to sin (Lust mainly) to swinging back to a life of piety where he punishes himself heavily for imagined slights and sins and actually considers becoming a priest. 

The truly interesting thing about this novel, that I found baffling throughout, is why I found it so compelling. Stephen is not a likeable character, in fact I think he is deliberately presented as obnoxious. He is aloof and steadily derides the intellect of those around him, placing himself above his family, his friends and his teachers. He considers himself destined for great things but does not seem to expend effort towards anything external to his thoughts. He is so inwardly focused that he forgets to actually live. He spends time thinking about the moral implications rather than ever acting upon his own feelings. The linguistic theme of the novel is detachment and he repeatedly distances himself from himself, not allowing him to ever truly be an empathetic character. And yet, despite all this I became emotionally involved in his outcomes, despairing of his often seemingly idiotic choices and lack of any likeable personality traits or even really a personality at all.

Despite very little happening, despite a large proportion of the book being devoted to religious philosophy, I really enjoyed this book and will probably read it again. If I can work out why exactly this is I will be happy.

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood.



'There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.'

Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale'  is an attempt by Atwood to shock. She draws together threads of superstitions and traditions and uses enough genuine societal belief to create a world that is shocking, upsetting and all to ready to imagine coming to fruit. Atwood's aim is to push at our cement views about civilisation and how civilised we are, she calls into question whether or not we are advanced, whether we've moved on from the misogynistic episodes of the past or whether we are merely waiting for a reason to go back. With this novel Atwood successfully questions human nature.

Another key tenant of our existence that Atwood questions is how our individual and collective identities are formed. How easy influenced are we? Are we as individual as we would like to believe? If, when push came to shove, our core beliefs were challenged, would we rebel understanding that the consequences would quite possibly be dire or would we, like Offred the protagonist of the novel, attempt to adapt and forget our previously held beliefs?

In the novel we follow Offred as she works her way through this new world, managing her previous life experience and slowly editing out the unhelpful or detrimental memories. Offering us only tenuous glimpses of her life, excluding such detail as her name and events actually leading up to this world wide change. This tenuous addition and omission of detail serves to titillate the reader with unknowns. The unknown becomes an entity driving everything within the narrative. It drives Offred's secrecy and her inability to confide in anyone, it shown through the daughter and her whereabouts, it is shown through our lack of insight into how the society came into existence. It is shown most of all through the ending, we are left bereft as a character we have analysed and interpreted throughout her progression is left with an unknown ending.

'The Handmaid's Tale' is truly tragic in more ways in more ways than one. It questions the small ideas and attitudes we take for granted and swells them and takes them to such an extreme that they become scary and different and very sinister. Atwood causes us to look at the assumptions we make daily, especially about gender, and question their validity, their origin and most of all their effect.

We Need To Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

'Before you condemn me utterly, I beg you to understand just how hard I’d been trying to be a good mother.'

'We need to talk about Kevin' is one of my favourite books and I will never tire of talking about it. It is essentially about a teenager who commits an atrocity and his mother. It is written in the form of letters from the mother to her estranged Husband, whilst this reminds us that the narrator is not completely reliable it also adds a level of personality and emotion to an event that is sadly common in our society.

The key theme I felt was explored was the debate of nature vs. nurture. The struggle throughout is to decide if Kevin was born to commit his crime and his mother was right to treat him warily or if his mother's lack of love and conviction that he was somehow disturbed was the contributing factor instead.

In a society increasingly concerned with issues such as post-natal depression and estrangement within the home which have failed to reach the public forum previously. The novel is written is such a way as to bring these issues to the forefront whilst still allowing us to draw our own opinions. In order to feel sympathy for the protagonist we need to reform our cultural formed ideas about motherhood and the duties of a mother to a child. It challenges the emotive topic of motherly love and questions the impact of its absence on a child.

The book also covers the issue of isolation, particularly the isolation of suburbia and the stay at home mum. Eva becomes completely isolated through first quitting her job, the activity from which she derives her sense of self, and being outcast to a house which has no personality in a neighbourhood where she has no friends to look after a child she does not, or will not love. She is effectively removed from her ability to have a sense of self, everything she previously valued and relied on is taken away unthinkingly by her Husband.

I will not ruin the twist that makes the entire book so much more chilling, but the isolation of Eva towards the end of the book is made even worse by her alienation from all parts of her family apart from her mother whom she eventually accepts as an ally. This reversal of the usual relationship between them drives home the true damage to her life after the lawsuit and the 'event'.  

This boo is a stark portrait of the remains of a family coping in the wake of a tramatic event and the truly impersonal nature of the suburbs, their deadening effect and the removal of peronality in an eotionally isolating vacuum. The emotion of parenthood is removed and what is left behind is the reality of how much people give up for children and the pressure of the mother to have the required emotional connection to her child.

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

'Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould Me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?' (Paradise Lost, Milton)

Frankenstein is a book about morals, specifically the morals of creation. Victor Frankenstein creates the monster in a rush of scientific discovery and fails to consider the responsibility that follows the creation of life or sentience. The repercussions of this lack of forethought are vast as Victor is unable to deal with the monster effectively, he alienates his creation and eventually helps cause it to turn to evil.

The main thinking point I took from the novel was the issue of humanity and when something becomes human and which qualities are valued as humanising. In the novel the reason Frankenstein's experiment is referred to as a monster is his appearance rather than his more humanising aspects. There is no distinction made between Frankenstein and the creature in terms of their speech and the monster shows an instinct for kindness both in his treatment of the DeLacey family and his rescue of the drowning girl, both of these acts are repelled and condemned due to his aggressively ugly countenance. At the beginning he is intelligent, gentle, kind and obsessed with approval by any party but particularly approval from his father figure, his creator, Victor Frankenstein. This well meaning, misunderstood creature is destroyed by the aggressive dislike he is shown by all who meet him. The monster then turns into a creature whose one focus is to have a companion, due to his father figures disgust with him he instead asks for a wife to accompany him and provide him with someone he can love and receive love from, something he has only ever observed as an outsider and something he craves above anything. Frankenstein denies him love for the second time when he refuses to make Frankenstein a wife and this is what truly pushes Frankenstein over the edge and into evil. 

To me Frankenstein became a tragedy about a man who has a fully functioning intellect but a childlike attitude to emotion. I found him an intensely sympathetic character, a teenager asking why he was created, demanding someone take responsibility for his creation.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.

'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.'

Lolita, possibly an interesting choice for any read. The only thing most people know about Lolita is that it is about a paedophile. Whilst this is true it is, nevertheless a good read. Fascinating and yet repellent. It challenges the reader's morality with a well spoken, unassuming older man and an abrasive apparently seductive 12 year old. When reading it is hard to feel entirely unsympathetic with the protagonist Humbert Humbert. He appeals to the audience with a flawed narrative of his feelings for, and eventual abandonment by, Lolita. 

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Lolita is the reception. Nabokov found it hard to find any publisher for the novel and after it was banned from his own country he finally published it for the first time in France. It mainly found repute in literary circles but was widely condemned as porn. Possibly due to this reputation Lolita began to be seen as an 'underground' text and soon the French government was asked to ban it by the British government due to the importation levels of Lolita. Lolita remains to this day banned in a lot of educational institutes and is derided as perverted by a great many of the general public.

I read the book to early to understand the repercussions of the text, I secreted it away from the 6th form only section of the school library at 13 and was unaware of the furore surrounding it. I'd like to think this gave me a completely open mind to the issues raised by the book. However, my ignorance was such that I wasn't aware enough of the issues raised to form or reform any opinions. I read the narrative as absolute truth and, too young to give a critical reading, I believed everything Humbert Humbert said and grew to dislike the character Lolita for running away and breaking the 'Hero's' heart. The wrong viewpoint as I have come to discover upon a second reading. My knowledge of the issue of paedophilia has almost completely tarred Humbert, almost being the operative word. A little sympathy remains despite the strong feelings against Humbert and his feelings for Lolita. This book makes you question your assumptions, makes you think about your motivation and consider changing your opinions.

It is a challenging book and it challenges the reader to think about why they hold opinions and the empathy they can have for people even if they think they are completely wrong.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

I am a self confessed Jane Eyre hater. My A-level class despaired of the intense hatred I had of this book. As far as I was concerned it is a book where the heroine is a strange of mix of passion and meekness that do not mix properly. Jane came across as almost bipolar with some of her personality traits juddering to a stop or failing to materialise at key moments. She claimed strength of character but her attempts to stand up for herself were inadequate and badly timed and only served to push her further into problems.

I also took offence from Mr. Rochester who I found to be a detestable example of the 'Byronic' Hero and one a refuse on principle to like. He is arrogant, erratic, shows no consideration for anyone else's feelings and of course, imprisons his previous wife in a tower. In fact I was cheering on Bertha for most of the book hoping she would stop the endless moping of both the main characters. 

The book frustrated me.

And then I read it again, this time without my class attempting to brow beat me into loving it and I realised that it is in fact less detestable then I had up until that point assumed. Shocking! I found myself actually rooting for the union between Mr Rochester and Jane Eyre. Imagine my surprise when I realised that I had actually come to like Jane! My opinion on Mr. Rochester remains just about the same, if a little more sympathetic. But Jane! I have started to appreciate just how strong she was to run away from Rochester in the end, she had finally found a measure of happiness but she was willing to throw it away to maintain her moral integrity.  Her treatment of the Reeds was saintly and I am sure I could not match it, her ability to persevere despite everything going wrong is spectacular. 

Now you may think that I have gone from the extreme of hate to love completely and can now admit no fault to Jane's character but as much as I would like to wholly love a character I am afraid there is something I still cannot reconcile. Her lack of sentiments throughout is astounding, she withholds feelings to such an extent that it is hard to understand where they come from. Whilst this suppression of emotion may have been impressed on her as a child, her continued ignorance of her own feelings leads her into more trouble that out.

So at last I have come to like Jane Eyre, in the book form at least. I cannot truly link the book with any of the film adaptations I've seen where the tendency seems to be to romanticise the text unnecessarily to the point where the characters are unrecognisable and then I do not like them again and will have to learn all over again how to like the various Jane Eyre presented. 

Now I have only to start liking Wuthering Heights and I will have reconciled myself to the Bronte sisters.

Hello!

And so it has come to be that I have started the medium through which I will bore all or any readers with my opinions on a variety of books. Good luck wading through the dross for any posts of merit! I'm sure I will be a repeat offender against the gods of grammar and spelling, neither of which I am good at (disappointing for an English student) and many of my opinions will be unfounded or in some way ridiculous. I am sure all will forgiven on the plea of youthful folly and pretension.

And so starts the blogging.