Multiple Reading Personalities

Et oui, j’ai lu en français un livre écrit en anglais… Certes cela va à l’encontre de tous mes principes (ou du moins à l’encontre du principe de lire dans leur langue d’origine les livres écrits dans une langue que je parle, CQFD), mais la raison en est toute simple : ce livre m’a été offert comme cadeau de départ de France par un ami, a voyagé dans mes bagages pour New York il y a quatre ans (quatre ans!), puis m’a suivi de Manhattan à Brooklyn, et de Brooklyn en Indiana. Je n’avais pas du tout envie de le lire, aucune idée de ce dont il s’agissait, et la gravure à connotation religieuse qui l’illustrait me faisait craindre le pire dans l’ésotérisme bidon.

Je ne l’avais cependant pas oublié, notamment grâce aux merveilleuses étagères à l’entrée de notre logis actuel, assez vastes pour que TOUTE notre collection de livres (ou presque) puisse s’étaler reliures visibles, et non plus en doubles rangs d’oignon comme à New York. Il m’a en revanche fallu lire plusieurs fois son titre au fil de mes lectures sur les romans noirs de l’Angleterre au tournant du XIXe pour que je m’aperçoive que c’était cela, que je cachais parmi mes bouquins : rien de moins que l’une des œuvres “majeures” de cette mineure “gothic lit” dont Ann Radcliffe fut la star absolue, la faiseuse de best-seller, le nom par lequel tout est arrivé… mais dont Lewis fut un des artisans majeurs (et un des gros succès de vente, lui aussi). Il paraît d’ailleurs que Le Moine a inspiré L’Italien, le dernier roman publié (hors une poignée d’apocryphes) par Radcliffe ; j’en reparlerai sûrement lorsque j’aurais lu ce dernier !

Revenons cependant pour l’heure à notre moine, frère Ambrosio, un capucin dont la piété et les oraisons fougueuses font l’admiration du tout-Madrid. Il est présenté comme une sorte d’idole des femmes, le dernier confesseur à la mode, le Brad Pitt de l’homélie, à la fois passionné, beau et vertueux. Abandonné à un couvent depuis sa plus tendre enfance, Ambrosio est né en effet avec toutes les qualités qui auraient pu en faire un parfait gentilhomme. Du fait de sa réclusion, il n’a cependant jamais affronté aucune vraie tentation, et manque de compassion pour les faiblesses des autres. Avec l’adulation de belles et riches jeunes femmes et la flatterie constante de l’opinion publique, il se trouve devoir pour la première fois livrer bataille à deux démons, l’orgueil et la concupiscence.

En parallèle progresse l’histoire d’Antonia, une de ces parangons de perfection typique des héroïnes du genre : sa grande beauté va sans dire, mais elle est également d’une bonté si immodérée que je vais me permettre de faire une entorse à la charité chrétienne et d’appeler une bécasse une bécasse, cultivée sans connaître le mal (visiblement Lewis se rendait bien compte du problème, puisqu’il a recours à des explications savoureusement ironiques du type “sa maman lui faisait lire la Bible, mais dans une version qu’elle avait entièrement recopiée à la main pour en purger les torrents d’immondices qui s’y déversent” — ce qu’il dit bien mieux, appelant notamment la Bible “le livre qui trop souvent enseigne les premières leçons du vice, et donne l’alarme aux passions encore endormies“). Bref, Antonia est plus une fonction narrative qu’un personnage à proprement parler, et en tant que telle elle remplit parfaitement son rôle : éveiller l’amour d’un “Don de” prêt à s’abaisser jusqu’à elle et à l’épouser, veiller sur la santé vacillante de sa digne mère, susciter le désir interdit d’Ambrosio, et ensuite, pleurer, crier et s’évanouir à répétition alors que les événements se précipitent autour d’elle.

Difficile sans révéler toute l’histoire de vous dire comment la magie et le merveilleux s’invitent dans le roman, mais puisque nous sommes en roman “gothic*”, il faut bien qu’il y ait du fantastique, et il ne manque pas. Il a même la supériorité énorme sur celui de Radcliffe de ne pas s’excuser, d’être franc et sans explication (d’où le terme de merveilleux plus approprié que celui de fantastique), et dans sa critique sociale (notamment son anticléricalisme). Bien sûr, l’histoire reste conventionnelle, et la subtilité n’est pas vraiment de mise (on est loin de James et de Turn of the Screw), mais j’ai également trouvé une puissance fantasmatique remarquable. Puisque mon principal point de référence est Udolpho, donc Radcliffe, je dois dire que je me demande dans quelle mesure le sexe de l’auteur joue sur cette capacité à évoquer la puissance du désir charnel et du goût du pouvoir, que ce soit à cause du dicible ou du connaissable. Il se peut bien sûr que la froideur de Radcliffe soit personnelle, mais c’est un point que je voudrais garder à l’esprit pour des lectures ultérieures. J’aurais volontiers rajouté James à l’équation ici aussi (lui va encore plus loin, car chez lui le désir semble compris et intégré à la trame même du texte d’une façon incroyablement perceptive pour quelqu’un écrivant avant Freud), mais Turn of the Screw date de la toute fin du siècle, ce qui fausse la comparaison.

Fantastique et merveilleux version XIXe sont au programme cette année — ma dissertation de master 1 devrait porter sur un sujet qui me permettra d’y revenir. Depuis le temps que je promets du surnaturel sur le bandeau de ce blog !

“As her sight glanced again upon the grave, she could not forbear enquiring, for whom it was prepared. He took his eyes from the torch, and fixed them upon her face without speaking.”

Strike 3 for the R.I.P. Challenge! The most authentic gothic novel in my reading list, The Mysteries of Udolpho is book-ended by scenes of simple happiness in the Gascony house of the Saint-Aubert family; in between these, much travel, much adversity and many preposterous twists and turns sprawl on the pages of Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 novel. There’s good fun to be had in dark castles and secret passages, among mysterious voices and ghostly apparitions, but there’s also a quantity of unnecessary devices and digressions. If a modern editor were to travel back in time and inform Radcliffe that more is not always better – and if she also decided to put in a good word for consistency in point of view – I believe I would be a perfectly content reader.

When we first meet Emily Saint-Aubert, she seems to have the perfect life: loving and wise parents, a comfortable house with a well-stocked library, a lovely park. Emily is her parents’ only surviving child, having lost two brothers a few years back (an information given by Radcliffe with amusing  offhand brutality:  after describing a charming pastoral scene, she mentions that Emily’s father’s “first interruptions to the happiness […] since his retirement were occasioned by the death of his two sons”). This last is an example of unnecessary information. Nobody in the novel cares, neither therefore does the reader, and the fact has no bearing on the plot. Why bother?

The first seven chapters are similarly protracted, and I frankly felt that they belonged to the back-story, or at the very least should have been summarized in one chapter. In jest, Emily’s parents both die, leaving her in an embarrassed financial situation, and she meets a young man, Valancourt, whom she is attracted to. That’s it for the plot – the rest is all description of nature, gay peasant dances (I kid you not) and philosophical musings. One of these asides was about Emily’s education, in particular about teaching her to govern her sensitivity (Emily’s father teaches her that “sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions” and illustrates his point with the example of “persons [who] turn from the distressed […] because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated”). This type of moral education, so obvious until the 19^th century, seems to have gone out of fashion with the emergence of the ideas of “teaching by example”, “letting children become themselves”, and probably with the idea that human beings are born good (merci Rousseau!). I for one feel that I would have benefited to be taught what to do with excessive sensitivity – or with laziness, vanity, discouragement, etc. – but I’m not sure how other modern readers would enjoy these passages.

So back to the action: it picks up when the now-orphaned Emily is assigned to the care of her aunt, Mme Cheron. A silly, insensitive woman who delights in having power over others, she immediately indulges her petty impulses by coming between Emily and Valancourt. She also marries an Italian nobleman of suspicious character, and takes Emily away to Italy. There, amid enemies sly or brutal, Emily will have to fight for her virtue and her happiness in settings ranging from magnificent Venice palazzi to a ruined gothic fortress in the Apennines (and more – it is the rare chapter that doesn’t involve some change of setting). Bucolic promenades finally give way to treason and supernatural apparitions. The story from this point on is convoluted and coincidental to the point of absurdity, but with such lavish imagination, the only way to not enjoy oneself is to be impervious to the genre entirely. Of course, in the end, reason (if not probability) and courage will prevail, the worthy will be rewarded and villains will be punished.

I think it might read Radcliffe again in the future, but with a slightly different approach. As a writer, she is able of surgical wit, especially when criticizing fashionable society (for instance: “Madame Clairval, though a woman of fashion, was far less advanced than her friend in the art of deriving satisfaction from distinction and admiration, rather than from conscience”, or “the party continued to converse, and, as far as civility would permit, to torture each other by mutual boasts”); this ability to encapsulate realms of meaning in a short sentence sometimes even shines through without irony, an even rarer gift (for instance, when talking about the process of falling in love, she mentions “the danger of sympathy and silence”). She is unfortunately also inclined to great enthusiasm and lengthy descriptions for all things nature and heroines “full of timid sweetness” – not my cup of tea. I might just skip these passages in the future, as I skipped a majority of the poetry - editing as I read, in a way.

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

Peacock Plumes by Erik Veland

Re-reading my notes on Pride and Prejudice almost a month after they were written, I was amused to see how faithfully they reflected my experience with reading Jane Austen: a great many early remarks, both laudatory (Such sharp wit! Such ability to sum up a scene in a few well-chosen details!) and annoyed (Disjointed structure! Unnecessary intrusion of the writer’s opinion!)… Then, about a third of the way into the story, notes stop. I was so fully taken in I forgot to think about what I was reading.

Yet I did not love Elizabeth Bennet: while I thought she was a great character, I’m not sure I would like her very much as a person. The second in a family of five daughters, Elizabeth is her father’s favorite – a quick-witted girl with a judgmental/ gossipy/ cynical streak. Her older sister, Jane, seems the traditional model of female perfection: selfless, beautiful, loving and naïve. The three younger sisters appear as counterpoints to this onslaught of qualities: one of them, Mary, is typecast as the plain-looking girl who tries to compensate her lack of looks through culture, and comes out looking ridiculous; the other two, Kitty and Lydia, are two brainless girls maniacally addicted to fun. The family is rounded up with a nice-but-weak paternal figure and a mother who is the prototypical Austen airhead married woman (like Mary Musgrove in Persuasion, Mrs. Bennet is self-centered, intellectually limited and crassly manipulative).

As if such a family wasn’t enough of a liability, the Bennet girls’ marriage prospects are also limited by their lack of financial expectations, their father’s estate being entailed to their nearest male relative. Mrs Bennet, for all her shortcomings, seems more aware than anyone else of the real danger of poverty the situation places her daughters in, and is intent on marrying them as well and as fast as possible.

An opportunity seems to present itself for Jane when Mr. Bingley, a rich gentleman, rents the nearby estate of Netherfield. An attachment immediately begins between the two of them; unfortunately, Bingley’s two sisters and his friend Darcy, afraid that the match would be unfavorable, separate the two lovers by attracting Bingley to London and convincing him that Jane has no true attachment to him.

Elizabeth meanwhile has conceived a strong dislike for Darcy: not only did he disdain her at a ball, he is also believed to have wronged Mr. Wickham, a militia officer she is fond of, and she suspects his interference between Jane and Bingley. Of course she will slowly discover that he was (mostly) innocent, and he will realize his attraction to her; and when they both have overcome their ‘pride and prejudices’, they will end up together and help Bingley and Jane reunite.

The interwoven love stories at the heart of the book are illuminated by a number of secondary plots, such as the loveless marriage of Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte Lucas to a boorish clergyman, the reckless elopement of Lydia and Wickham or the depiction of the frozen life of Lady Catherine, Darcy’s aunt eaten alive by birth pride. These snippets inform the heroines’ choices and provide a counterpoint to their mostly good decisions. They point directly to Austen’s vision of the necessity to balance heart and head in matters of sentiments; Austen’s almost cruel wit keeps the whole from feeling preachy. The only character that really left me feeling uneasy was Mary, afflicted with intellectual pretensions but little true intelligence or sensitivity. In the grand tradition of Moliere’s femmes savantes, her efforts at self-improvements only seemed to make her a worse person. No political correction here, no belief that self-improvement is accessible to all but to the already gifted: as Austen puts it, there is “in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil — a natural defect which not even the best education can overcome”, a cynicism I don’t quite know what to make of.

A theme I will keep an eye on in my future Austen readings!

“Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong – we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down! We’ll close in and beat and beat and beat –!”

Lord of the Flies was a re-read for me (“duh!”, thinks the American reader, “you read it at school!” — well no, because for one reason or another, it has not gone over to French culture as a “must-read”, more as a secondary choice most people have probably never heard of; but its influence in American pop culture is so pervasive, I heard about it one way or another a few years ago. It’s been love since).

Of course, it’s also the stuff nightmares are made of. The bastion of the “bad guys” – or rather, where the boys retreat when the “lord of the flies” (devil) takes over their psyche – is called Castle Rock. I’m no Stephen King scholar, but it seems fitting that it would be the heart of darkness in King’s books (which a quick wikipedia check just confirmed is an intentional homage on his part).

The story in itself is quite simple: a group of schoolboys gets stranded on a desert island during an unnamed war. The island offers plenty to eat (lots of fruits, some fish, an indigenous race of pigs), the weather is forgiving, and there even is a promontory on which to keep a fire to call for help. Surely, as the officer who will ultimately rescue the boys states, “a pack of British boys” would be “able to put on a good show” there?

Well, of course not – and the reason is exactly that we are talking about a “pack” much more than we are talking about a society. The annoying intellectual of the band, Piggy, tries to force the other boys to create one, with rules, a parliament and a project (rescue): the respect he gains for it is manifest in his nickname, and all he gets for it is death. The good intentions of the early days, championed by a truly civilized boy named Ralph, are rapidly forgotten: the lack of personal consequences for disobeying the rules (no grown-ups, a forgiving nature), a power-hunger and demagogic rival to Ralph’s authority (Jack) and the fear of unnamed monsters will soon bring chaos to island. Three boys will ultimately die: Piggy, first mocked, then stolen from, and finally executed; Simon, a boy who seems to embody the spiritual much in the way that Piggy embodies the intellectual (just as Piggy has his weaknesses – pedantry, physical laziness and self-importance, Simon has his  – trances resembling epilepsy, inability to communicate, shyness – but he sees through the illusion of the monster); and a third, unnamed little boy with a mark on his face who is so forgotten at the end that even Ralph will not mention him when telling the officer how many boys died on the island.

The two main reasons I love this book are the terrifying ring of truth of the story and the sharpness of the writing. The starting situation has been treated, over and over again, in an idealized boy-scout manner for young boys dreaming of adventures and independence; Golding tells us what would happen if we were really left unchecked (note that his view of human nature is even more pessimistic in that he doesn’t seem to consider that we get civilized as we age: the older boys are the ones waging war on the island, and beyond it the world of adults is at war too). One of my cousins evoked The Drifting Classroom, a Japanese manga, as pushing the cruelty much farther, making Golding look tame by comparison. I have ordered the first two volumes in the series so I can judge for myself, but I’ve noticed that they are labeled as “horror”, meaning that I expect them indeed to push things further, but probably not to have the same horrifying feel of reality.

The writing I mentioned as just lovely: no verbosity, every sentence feels tight and necessary – yet there is no dryness to it. Too often I find the modern paradigm of “cutting the fat” to lead in less gifted writers to books dessicated as beef jerky, all nerve and no depth(1). None of this here: Golding uses ample narrative ellipsis (doesn’t tell us every single detail of every day, which can sometimes make the descent into savagery feel rushed), but takes the time to work in scenes of intense sensory flavor and symbolic potency. I’m not sure why his other books are not as famous as Lord of the Flies, but I will certainly put more on my reading list!

(1) note: I love beef jerky, and yes it can be argued that good beef jerky has depth of flavor. But that’s the simile that came to mind, so there! :)

“We are not a boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment’s inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.”

Anne Elliott is past her prime, and nobody cares. 8 years ago, she turned down a marriage proposal from Wentworth on the advice of her good friend Lady Russell. This was a rare slip in judgment from both women, brought on by Wentworth’s impecuniousness. Since then Anne has come to realize that he is the only man she’ll ever want to marry, and Wentworth has made his fortune, but the broken engagement stands like an unforgivable offense between them. When Wentworth starts looking for a wife, he looks everywhere but at Anne, who seems headed for heartache.

A lot will indeed try to interpose between Anne and Wentworth: first two pretty sisters, the Musgrove girls, take a fancy in Wentworth and pique his interest. Austen will dispose of one (Henrietta) by reminding her to a truer flame, and of the other (Louisa) by showing that her apparently steadfast temper, so seductive to Wentworth, is in fact closer to obstinacy. Then it is Anne’s turn to be courted, first by Bentwick, a widower who will ultimately be matched to Louisa, then more significantly by her cousin, Mr Elliott. Despite Mr Elliott’s social graces, Anne is weary of his smoothness, and specifically of his lack of “warmth”. She will learn through an acquaintance how perceptive that is of her: Mr Elliott is an amoral man primarily interested in securing by marriage the baronet title of Anne’s father.

While Anne is overall surrounded by good people, her family is far from palatable: her father is vapid and shallow; her oldest sister Elizabeth (also unmarried, but never called a spinster, probably because of her position as the eldest daughter and of her beauty?) is his female counterpart; her youngest sister Mary is a nightmare of a selfish, whining woman; and all of them being callow and silly cannot but feel that they have nothing in common with Anne, and treat her at best as a utility. Family ties are further abused by a preference given by Elizabeth to Mrs Clay, a vulgar woman, over her own sister, and by the way Mary treats her children, whom she overindulge by weakness rather than fondness. There’s however hope beyond the Elliott’s family circle: the Musgrove sisters are always affectionate and supportive of one another; similarly, Wentworth and his sister not only display fondness for one another, they are also able to converse intelligently. All in all however, Austen seems dispatches family love with her usual comic wit, and constantly reminds her reader than a family is no better than its members.

The choices everyone (especially women) has to make, and where they fall on a scale of hardheadedness to inconstancy, is another key theme. Anne has not always been perfect: she let herself be persuaded to abandon Wentworth when it was a treason of both him and herself. However, she learns from it. Other women serve to illustrate the dangers of less moderate choices, but Austen seems to pay lip-service to the dangers of excessive pliability (as illustrated by Henrietta, almost talked out of a match with a long-loved cousin). Contrast to that Louisa Musgrove and her childish obstinacy which will cost her an almost-deadly fall; Mary Elliott, whose stubbornness is resented by all; Elizabeth Elliott, dazzled by her own importance and never accommodating reality. Each of these characters gets much more “wordtime” – and is mocked with much more passion – than poor Henrietta.

It makes little doubt that Austen values adaptability over persistence in most cases, making sure to point out the difference with submissiveness through the character of Mrs Smith (“here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven.”)

This calls of course for a more active role of women, a partial empowerment embodied by Mrs Croft (Wentworth’s sister, childless, married for love instead of money and a true companion and equal to her husband) – and Austen is clear this will be to the benefit of both sexes. This might not be feminism yet, but a view of women that lets them become adults instead of society’s toy is nothing to complain about.

“I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware!” (the monster)
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.“ (Frankenstein)

Illustration by Abigail Larson

I needed two quotes instead of one for what I liked in Frankenstein – its saving grace – was its duality. Is Victor Frankenstein a victim and his creation purely a “fiend” – or might Victor not be the real monster, and his creation the martyr?

Brought up in a loving Swiss family, Victor is an imaginative teen with a passionate intellect vulnerable to the wildest scientific theories. Despite his reclusive nature, Victor prepares to leave family to study at the university of Ingolstadt when he suffers his first misfortune: the death of his mother. Another shock waits for him in Germany, where he learns that the philosophers and naturalists he has been studying passionately (alchemists and mystics such as Paracelsus) are widely discredited. He decides to study physics and chemistry, quickly mastering these two disciplines.

In his studies, Victor stumbles upon “the secret of life” – and of course decides to test it. Assembling a semblance of a human being in his laboratory, he finally imparts it with life after months of grueling labor, only to feel a disgust of his creation so overwhelming he flees it in blind terror. When he finally returns to his laboratory, the creature is nowhere to be seen. Victor falls into a long delirious illness, nursed by his childhood friend Clerval.

From there, the tale descends into horror: Victor only finds his strength back to lose it again and again. He recovers from his illness to return home and find his youngest brother murdered and a family protégée falsely accused. Victor knows the real culprit is his monster, but cannot prove it. The creature seeks him out, eager to tell him the story from his point view, the rejection by all men including his creator, the accident that led to the murder of Victor’s brother, his solitude and his thirst for company. The monster offers a deal: if Victor creates him a companion, he will disappear forever. Victor accepts, and travels to England to seek out some scientists who can help him build his second creation (apparently, he forgot the trick). A fit of thinking however makes him realize that he’s putting the rest of humanity at risk by unleashing a second fiend upon it, and he destroys his labor. In revenge, the creature kills Clerval, and promises to destroy all that remains of Victor’s happiness on the night of his wedding.

Unable to imagine that this would be a threat against his fiancée, Victor decides to marry her as fast as possible, so he can once more confront – and maybe even this time fight – his monster. Alas! The fiend kills Elizabeth and Victor’s father, ravaged by grief, soon follows into the tomb. Creator and creature then start a chase that will lead them to the North Pole, where Victor dies without having been able to undo his deed. At his deathbed, the creature expresses his remorse, and departs to immolate himself in the wilderness, therefore erasing all his traces.

There are weaknesses aplenty in the book, and they are difficult to overlook: gaping plot holes, characters displaying limited mental abilities (despite his unparalleled brilliance, Victor rarely thinks ahead, and when he does his nerves betray him, or the book would end up much sooner), unrealistic exposition devices (someone writing in a letter: “you know that…” and then proceeding to explain in details what his correspondent knows) and an exaltation sometimes bordering on silliness… Yet this was the work of an author barely 18-year old! Her vivid imagination and enthusiasm are not the last of the charms of the book.

The main interest, however, is the mystery of the monster: are we to believe its account of itself, and feel the cruelty of its fate, or are we to embrace the point of view of the main narrator, Frankenstein, and feel his instinctive hatred for his creation? Perhaps from the weakness of the narration, I could not like Victor at all – found him to be a self-absorbed, timorous prick – and therefore had to side entirely with the monster. I had to share Mary Shelley’s reservations about human nature and its destructiveness, though I would not espouse her view of nature as the healer of it.