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 !

“aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre s’appliquer au petit pavillon (…); et avec la maison, la ville, depuis le matin jusqu’au soir et par tous les temps”

“immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion (…); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers” (translation found here)

The first volume of In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way, is composed of three long chapters to which I reacted fairly differently. I came relatively unprepared to Proust: I had read the second part of Swann’s Way, Un amour de Swann (Swann in Love) in my early twenties, and blasphemously, I had been neither awed not befuddled by it. I found it to be a much easier read than I had been led to believe; at the same time, its genius didn’t leap out at me.

Missed connection.

The first part of Swann’s Way – Combray — deals with the summer months the unnamed narrator, then a child, spent with his family away from Paris in his aunt’s house in the village of Combray. This first chapter, which contains the madeleine anecdote (in which the narrator regains the emotional memory of his childhood when tasting the same type of cookie he used to get as child), simply blew me away. Proust starts with a longish, slightly nauseating account of the child’s bedtime ritual. I say slightly nauseating because the drama of it, the great question is: will Maman come kiss me goodnight? His longing for her struck me as both disturbingly amorous (and he does, indeed, compare his desire to the one Swann experienced when in love with a courtesan) and heart-wrenching in the loneliness it betrays. This detailed and intense memory is all that subsists in his memory of his summers in Combray; it is like a point of light, like the flame of a candle in darkness. Other memories can be accessed; but they are rational, affectless and dry, facts more than feelings.

 That is, until he tastes a madeleine dipped in tea, and all of it comes flooding back. Proust obviously was proud of his idea to compare this process to a Japanese paper unfolding into wonderful shapes when dropped in water, but I saw it as flows of light (which is why I chose the quote above): first there’s is darkness, against which the one illuminated room of the narrator shines brightly; then the door is opened, and light starts cascading down the stairs, rushing through the entire house, seeping through the door and window frames into the streets, pushing them open to crash over the village and into the nearby fields. It’s a magical feeling of dawn lighting up an entire world and then holding it into the light to sparkle and be examined; once in a while, a bold ray of light even reaches out further than Combray and extends all the way to Paris or Balbec, in Normandy. It really is breathtaking, but Proust doesn’t stop there: in the world he just created, which at first seems to be mostly a world of things and places, he starts dropping characters. They’re initially introduced mostly through their social connections to the narrator’s family (the old family friend, the faithful servant, etc); their best traits are revealed, they all seem pleasant and lovable — what we are told probably is what is openly said about them (the one exception in all this pleasantness is the early mention of Swann’s “unsuitable” wife — but is it really a negative when it tickles the narrator’s fancy so much?). Then Proust starts mentioning a few things his family didn’t know about their acquaintances – Swann’s worldly connections, Legrandin’s reputation as a writer. At first it is all very positive; but then we ineluctably progress to the darker sides of the characters, Françoise’s (the maid) brutality against the other servants, Legrandin’s snobbery, aunt Léonie’s ridiculousness… This gives depth to the conflict that Proust seems to be introducing as a central point of the Search: a desire to go both Swann’s way (the side of arts, freedom, easy women…) and Guermantes’ way (the side of respectability, history and religion). He shows how the narrator’s family cannot imagine both sides could ever coexist: an uncle is forever rejected when Swann meets an actress at his hotel, a friend who idly insinuates that aunt Leonie “lived the life” is banned from the house, and Swann himself is only accepted as long as  he keeps his distasteful wife and daughter under wraps. With so much interdict to recommend her, how could our narrator not fall in love at first sight with Swann’s daughter, Gilberte? That is exactly what happens at the end of Combray.

Don’t worry — I will move much faster through the last two parts of Swann’s Way! The second part is Swann in Love. It felt like a more traditional story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Set years before Combray, it tells rather exhaustively the love story between Swann and a woman, Odette de Crecy, who is in every way not right for him. “Love” could, and I think should be taken sarcastically here: while Odette might have had a crush on Swann for a week or too, it is obvious she rapidly outgrows it in favor of a more solid feeling of greed for his money and his connections. As for Swann, he develops an obsession for the woman despite her not being his “type” physically, intellectually or emotionally (amusingly, Proust seems to find overcoming a lack of physical attraction much more surprising than the other two). Swann’s love is what used to be called un amour de tête (love from the brain), in opposition to un amour de coeur (love from the heart); he is in love with an image he created for himself out of a Botticelli painting, a music phrase and a good dose of laziness. From such charming beginnings, Swan and Odette’s affair slowly descends into an elegant sort of abjection. I’m sure my reading is totally unorthodox, but since the character study was a little overwrought for me, what this ended up feeling like was — a mystery. I kept focusing on one question: is Odette the “unsuitable” woman Swann ends up marrying? Pure rooting interest (against, of course) kept me turning pages. Perversely, Proust leads his reader all the way to the death of Swann’s interest for Odette — without ever answering the question.

The answer, however, is contained in the last part of Swann’s Way, Place Names: The Name. This third part is much shorter, and truncated by Proust for publishing purposes, which is shockingly perceptible in the abruptness with which it ends. The writing is lovely, starting with long musings on everything there is in the name of a place, all the colors and smells and ideas a few syllables can convey… And yet, how deceptive names are, being both less than and besides the reality of a place. This idea of one being driven by illusions, led astray by one’s imagination of the world (names here, image in the case of Odette in the previous chapter) rather than by the world itself, is immediately illustrated again in the young love of the narrator for Swann’s daughter Gilberte. The passion is built on wind, and the narrator is never happier with Gilberte as when she is away. She is after all only a vivacious, friendly girl of flesh and blood, not her friendship with his beloved writer Bergotte, not her beautiful mother with her sinful past (we meet the mother, but in case you haven’t read the book — I’ll keep her name to myself), not a theatre play with a famous actress: and it is really these things the narrator is in love with.

Woo, that was some note! I’m afraid it’s not really adapted to a blog, but I wanted to put some ideas down before going to explore this website dedicated to reading Proust.

” Une goutte, rien qu’une petite goutte rouge, un rubis au bout de mon aiguille !… Puisque tu m’aimes encore, il ne faut pas que je meure… ”
“A drop, just a small little red drop, a ruby on the point of my needle! … Since you still love me, I cannot die…” (homemade translation)

Munch, Love and Pain

At the core of La Morte Amoureuse is the vision of Clarimonde, a light burning so bright it can never be looked at directly. Whoever dares to, like the narrator Romuald, risks never seeing anything else again. Various elements in the story show the impossibility of facing Clarimonde, most notably the chronology: the story is told by Romuald years after the facts; and at its most intense, their relation only ever happened in vivid dreams.

The warning against looking at Clarimonde can also be taken literally: the first time Romuald sees her, he is a young priest in the middle of being ordained. The moment his eyes fall on her, darkness engulfs everything – but her. Closing his eyes does not help: Clarimonde’s image just shines through his eyelids. From this moment on, Romuald is obsessed with her. He, who had never conceived greater happiness than being a priest, wants to renounce everything for her. He however proceeds mechanically with the ceremony, and soon after he is sent away to his new parish. His confessor, Sérapion, appears to suspect something and mentions Clarimonde as an immoral courtesan, exhorting Romuald to surmount his weakness.

Despite, or maybe because of the simplicity of his new life, Romuald cannot forget his obsession. One night, he is called to administer last rites to a woman – Clarimonde. He arrives too late to do anything for her soul – but as for her dead body, he calls it back to life with a kiss. Overcome by emotion, he loses consciousness.

When he wakes up, three days have passed and he is back in his priory. Soon after, his second life begins: a priest during the day, he dreams each night of an alternate life, in which he and Clarimonde have run away to Venice, and live a life of love and pleasures. After some time, Clarimonde starts to wither away, until Romuald accidently cuts his finger in her presence. Clarimonde is attracted to the blood and drinks a few drops of it, which restores her health. Soon after, Romuald realizes that she has taken to giving him a somniferous drink every evening so she can drink a few drops of his blood – but she is very careful never to exhaust him.

In Romuald’s day life however, things are coming to their denouement: Sérapion compels him to accompany to the tomb of Clarimonde. They exhume the perfectly preserved body and splash it with holy water, causing it to disintegrate immediately. She comes in a last dream  to say goodbye to Romuald and predict that he will miss her – as of course he does for the rest of his life.

A couple of passage reminded me of the Snow White myth (especially when Clarimonde is woken up with a kiss), but contrary to Neil Gaiman’s vampiric retelling (Snow, Glass, Apples), whether or not this story is that of an evil vampire remains open for discussion. Clarimonde might be evil: she is, after all, renowned for her extreme immorality, feeds on blood, and even before her death presented some disturbing characteristics, such as a skin “cold as a snake’s”. Her love however is incontestable: she is protective, faithful and generous to Romuald. Her physical beauty, sensual and overpowering, is described by Gautier with perceptible delight – and the glamour of it is never lifted, contrary to what usually happens to monsters in early vampire stories. In comparison, her adversary Sérapion represents a Church cold and hard as stones, and words such as “occult” and “sacrilege” are attached to some of his acts. It could be an effect of the charm Romuald is under – or it could be a vision of the Catholic religion as barren and against nature.

And this is R.I.P. IV Challenge book #2!

“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.

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

I was extraordinarily confused, when discussing Orwell and Huxley with my husband a few weeks ago, to realize that I had somehow mentally concatenated 1984 and Brave New World into a single horrendous story. This is the reason why keeping this blog is so important: my memory, much as that of the 1984 characters, appears to be very flexible – though I do not require a Ministry of Truth and doublethink to achieve that suppleness.

1984, then: a world divided between three warring powers (Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia) and a society split between the vast masses of the proletariat (“the proles”) and the ruling bureaucracy of the Party. The hapless party members are under constant surveillance, every deviancy ruthlessly punished, none harder than mind crimes. Under Big Brother, the ultimate transgression is independent thought.

An employee of the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith is part of the huge administration in charge of constantly readjusting any documentation of the past to obliterate any Party failings. All day, he rewrites newspapers that are then reprinted to replace the originals. While he enjoys the minutiae of his job, revolt is growing in his heart, but he is too terrified to act on it… And where to begin when even your sleep is being watched?

Winston starts with a diary – a transgression made possible by a suspicious find (the paper diary, found in a prole shop) and a suspiciously favorable disposition of his apartment (which has an alcove hidden from the eye of the telescreen). From there conspiracy reaches out to him: first a colleague, Julia, initiates an affair with him, and then the Underground (the mythical resistance, which existence remains a question) reaches out to him via O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party. There are touching moments of a man waking back up to himself as long-forgotten memories of his family come back to him, as his body’s constant soreness fades – but of course, as Winston always knew, his escapade soon ends in the caves of the Ministry of Love. There, he is “re-educated”: physically and psychologically tortured until his broken spirit comes to accept the Party’s doctrine as true.

Re-reading 1984, I was just as awed as I remembered being at first read by the completeness of Orwell’s vision. The precision of it, the well-chosen details give it utter reality, and the philosophical erudition of the writer supplies intellectual conviction. Yet, much like Winston before his conversion, I couldn’t help but feel that the Party could not forever endure, no matter how sophisticated the sophisms defending it. Orwell convincingly warns of the dangers of totalitarian collectivism if it was ever cut from its humanitarian roots – dangers we have seen realized in the former USSR (and some manifestations of which we have come to see realized in our very own vision of a “meritocratic” democracy); he is slightly less convincing in his belief than perfect cynicism would somehow be less soluble in human nature than perfect idealism. Yet the danger is here, in our economic life if not in political bureaucracy. I can think of a dozen examples in my own corporate experience of doublethink, of Inner Party corruption and taste for power/ money, of minor vexations, of disgruntled employees enjoying the tasks if not the goals, and ignoring the later to focus on the firsts, of rewriting the past without seeming to notice. In fact, as I type this, I become more and more troubled by the analogies.

I wonder if and how Orwell would write this book today.