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 !

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The Phantom as The Red Death — illustration from Castaigne

This week-end was near perfect: Chris and I went to Kentucky with our friends B and G, going from Bourbon distillery to horse racetrack (where I bet on the darkest horse I could find, in honor of The Black Stallion – and won!), from city to nature, and from activity to long breaks at the motel. I finished the Phantom of the Opera just before we went to visit the Lexington Cemetery, a peaceful place of nostalgic beauty. Its atmosphere is perhaps one of the reasons that the Phantom finally settled into my mind as a tragic figure rather than the monster he also is. There were interesting parallels to Frankenstein, in the “if only his creator – or men – had been a little more merciful”…  (“peut-être l’eût-il été [un ange] tout à fait si Dieu l’avait vêtu de beauté au lieu de l’habiller de pourriture” — “), though in Leroux’s work there seem to be a greater fascination for the links between pain and genius, where Shelley seemed to have less sympathy for her creation.

The novel is both simple in its dynamics (a love triangle, a mystery to be solved) and ornate in its details; it mixes tragic romance with comedy, murder mystery and tragedy. It however never felt disorienting or labored thanks to fast facing, frequent comedic touches and what impressed me most – Leroux’s complicity with his readers. He shamelessly cultivates it by not only addressing them directly, but also including them in spirited mockery of some characters such as Mme Giry or the extremely secondary “juge d’instruction Faure”. How infinitely wiser, smarter, and better informed we feel! And how I wish Gaston was one of my friends, or even better, a coworker with whom to grab coffee and make fun of everyone else. Knowing full well, of course, that he’s probably had a few laughs at your expense too.

The story itself is that of the mysterious events that happened at the Opera between the time a director is found murdered and that a diva disappears with a viscount. The diva is Christine Daae, a young woman whose least secret is how her voice miraculously became more beautiful than any other; the viscount is Raoul, who loves her with all the stubborn passion of a man who cannot imagine anything beyond him; in-between them stands the long shadow of the Phantom, a creature of many talents and macabre taste who lives under the Opera. I must confess to liking him much better than that brute of Raoul (who is initially depicted as naïve, childish man, and who, like a rotten kid, throws jealous tantrums at the slightest provocation). The Phantom himself borders on the homicidal, and acts with a staggering mix of greed and disdain for others, but with such grandeur and such style that it takes incredible efforts to remember that this guy is a murderer and a torturer… I’m afraid I failed at it most of the time, and kept wishing for his triumph.

All in all, the Phantom was just delightful. Everything felt just right, down to the varied and colorful characters, down to the unrealistically sarcastic dialogue (“D. – Vous êtes superstitieux ? R. – Non, monsieur, je suis croyant” — “are you supersticious?” “No sir, I believe in God”). Leroux stops at nothing to entertain, not even at lifting lines almost straight out of Victor Hugo (“C’était l’heure tranquille où les machinistes vont boire”, “The peaceful hour where thirsty stage managers pass” switching the original lions with a more urban type of beast). Works for me.

Oh, and that ends my participation in the R.I.P. Challenge IV, I think, as I prepare to immerse myself in Proust for a few weeks!

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!

“Henceforward, your wishes will be accurately fulfilled, but at the expense of your life. The compass of your days, visible in that skin, will contract according to the strength and number of your desires, from the least to the most extravagant.” (all translations lifted from project Gutenberg’s online edition).

It must be the Eugénie effect — no sooner had I finished putting together my reading list for the RIP IV Challenge that I began reading La peau de chagrin, hungry for more Balzac. I know I read it as a child, but could not remember anything except the story’s basic premises and how much I love the French title (unfortunately translated either by The Magic Skin or The Wild Ass’s Skin in English – “Chagrin” has a double meaning in French, one shagreen – a rough, exotic type of leather that emphasizes the skin’s natural grain - the other grief, the French word chagrin being derived from shagreen via the sensation of the material’s roughness). Very poetic, and not giving away the true nature of the skin.

This famous skin comes to Raphaël de Valentin in a scene evocative of other literary pacts with the devil. His heart broken by the courtesan Feodora, his meager fortune dissipated in desesperate debauchery, the young man is on his way to throwing himself in the Seine when he stops in a curiosity shop to wait for the cover of the night. There, he is offered the talisman by an old man who sternly warns him against accepting it, explaining that for every wishes it grants, it will shrink, and so will Raphaël’s life.

The young man jokingly wishes for a feast and for wealth; however, he does not believe in the skin, and still intends to commit suicide. Leaving the shop, he runs into a few friends who have been looking for him all over Paris: Raphaël has been chosen to head a new magazine, and the launch party is about to start. The festivities are wild, and at their close, Raphaël miraculously finds out that he has inherited a fortune. His two wishes are granted. The skin has shrunk. Doubt is no longer possible.

From this moment, Raphaël’s motivations change drastically: he no longer wishes to obtain the love of his cruel mistress, he no longer tries to prove his genius, and most of all – he passionately wants to live. Is it because live is so much worthier when one is rich, is it the newly-perceived reality of death, is it a change wrought by the skin? The story does not explain, content with showing a rich Raphaël now living a life sheltered of any desire in a semi-retreat from the world. Love however will reach out to him again in the form of Pauline, the angelic girl Raphaël could not bring himself to love when they were both poor. Now also become fabulously rich, Pauline captures Raphaël’s heart. The two lovers are happy for a while, but passion soon means the end for Raphaël, who dies in the arms of his love.

While I choose this story for the fantastic element, the supernatural is not what will stay with me. There’s indeed a central mystical element, and it stubbornly resists scientific explanation: the skin is at some point brought by Raphaël to famous scientists, but they fail to understand anything about it. Later, the doctors who examine Raphaël also fail him – but their failure is a more familiar one (they come across as learned charlatans Molière would be proud of). Balzac even leaves the dubitative reader a way to deny the supernatural entirely: Raphaël falls asleep just before the skin is given to him, making it a possibility that everything that follows is a dream. Much as in a dream, echoes of his former life are woven through the rest of the narrative: a small example is that of a fanciful prediction made by Pauline’s mother, which is realized to T; a more significant one is that the whole question at stake in Raphaël’s life with the magic skin is that of the will – precisely the subject on which he had written his philosophy masterpiece. That would furthermore explain his otherwise mysterious change of life goals after obtaining the skin.

Also substracting from the skin’s interest is its unimpressive appearance and lack of “special effects”. Balzac is an author with incredible descriptive abilities, and he revels in them: his light touch with the skin has to be deliberate. It comes across a pure narrative device, the touch of a writer still learning his craft.

What does come across with incredible force is the fascination of the material world: the accumulation of exotic objects in the shop, the banquet scene, the tiny details of Raphaël’s life as a rich men are just fascinating. They can at times get overwhelming, but the sensuality of things through Balzac’s eyes has incredible power. It also stands in stark contrast to this Hemingway-esque observation at the beginning of the book: “Où trouverez-vous, dans l’océan des littératures, un livre surnageant qui puisse lutter de génie avec ces lignes: Hier, à quatre heures, une jeune femme s’est jetée dans la Seine du haut du Pont-des-Arts.” (Where will you find a work of genius floating above the seas of literature that can compare with this paragraph: “Yesterday, at four o’clock, a young woman threw herself into the Seine from the Pont des Arts.”) Brevity is not what Balzac made his name with – and from me, that is not a complaint!

(and since we’re on the subject of the fantastic: for the francophones out there, Les nouveaux chemins de la connaissance on France Culture has a recent podcast on anguish in Maupassant. The guest speaker seems to overventilate with excitement at several points in the show, but aside from this minor complaint, it is well worth listening to.)

“the abominable education of this world where, in an evening, more crimes are committed in thoughts, in words than the Law punishes, where soundbites murder the highest ideas, where one is only considered as strong as he sees clearly; and there, seeing clearly means believing in nothing, neither feelings nor men, nor even events” (quick and dirty translation)

Eugénie Grandet by Danielle Scarpa Kos

With perhaps the exception of Thomas Hardy, I am unfamiliar with non-French authors as preoccupied with questions of class and the major social changes of the 18th and 19th century as the holy trilogy of Flaubert, Zola and Balzac. Of these, Zola was long my favorite, probably because of his more easily understood idealism; re-reading Eugénie Grandet, however, was a great occasion to let Balzac grow on me – the elegance of his writing, the delicate irony married to acuity of observation (“ce combat secret… occupait passionnément les diverses sociétés de Saumur” – “this secret battle… engrossed the diverse societies of Saumur“), the neatness of the book structure where every scene felt necessary.

There are very few characters to like here: le père Grandet, the formidable shadow hovering over the entire book, is probably the most detestable of all. A devoted miser, he has built a huge fortune on ruthless cunning, breaches of trust and tireless exploitation of his fellow humans. For all this he is enormously admired in his home town of Saumur. The man lives like a pauper with his wife, his daughter Eugénie and his maid Nanon, an outcast he opportunistically rescued. Some vague reasons are provided for his greed: a destitute childhood, a predator’s taste for victory in business matters – but most of all, the picture is that of a man obsessed beyond reason or understanding, for whom is impossible to feel sorry.

Grandet has only one child, his daughter Eugénie, whose prospects attract suitors whose only charms are money and ambition. She herself is quite oblivious to all things romantic, until one day her cousin Charles is sent to spend some time in Saumur. They fall in love. Alas, the true motive for Charles’s visit is that his father, on the verge of bankruptcy, has sent him away while he commits an “honorable suicide”. Grandet arranges to have his nephew sent to the colonies to try and remake his fortune – and to keep this poor suitor away from his daughter. Charles gone, life goes back to its mean routine, with Grandet descending ever more into avarice while Eugénie endlessly waits for her lover’s return.

It will be years before Charles comes back to France. By then he has become the Grandet he was always meant to be, a selfish, obdurate man who dismisses his past promises to contract a marriage he thinks more advantageous. Eugénie discovers the truth at the same time she learns that the disgraceful bankrupcy is still looming. She decides to settle her cousin’s debts and resigning herself to a loveless, sexless marriage to one of her suitors. The rest of her life will be spent in quiet resignation, first at the sideof her callous husband, then as an even-richer widow.  While she will do some good with her immense fortune, she will remain a prisoner to it to the end – isolated from every true feeling and living in the barren existence that is all she has ever known.

Quite peculiar to Balzac is his extremely harsh indictment of individuals. Society, place, circumstances – these are understood to play a role in the human tragi-comedy, but Balzac’s cynicism is unmissable. Individuals are despicable and society heinous; this is made worse by the growing fascination with money he denounces, but he doesn’t see human barbarity as either new or receding. The only admirable characters, individuals touched by a true idea of religion, are represented by Eugénie and her mother; they are frankly so angelic as to lack nerve. Nanon is an exception, the only other character who is overall positive despite some flaws – and my favorite in the book, with her obstinacy to make the best of life and her readiness to compromise for it.

I recently wrote of starting a Jane Austen book full of questions, only to end up oblivious to anything but the story one third of the way into the book. With Bartleby, it was the opposite: questions started to overwhelm me at the end.

The story is told from the point of view of an unnamed Lawyer, a man of experience who professes to look for tranquility foremost in life. His stated intent is curiously at odd with reality: out of three clerks in his employ, one (Turkey) is irate every morning, the second (Nippers) incensed in the afternoon, and the third (Ginger Nut) a rather distracted young boy. The situation and the way the Lawyer describes it make it clear that behind pompous manners and an appearance of respectable bourgeois greed lies a generous heart kept in check just enough to fit in the Wall Street society, with an innate sympathy for his misfit employees. The Lawyer keeps finding reasons to “excuse” his not firing his employees, a behavior the reader could see as either weakness or kindness; because of the story of a few charitable acts, I decided for the second, but reading comments on amazon.com, I might be in the minority.

Yet I was touched by the decency of the character, and not surprised that when he needed to hire a fourth clerk and Bartleby presented himself looking “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn” – he should be engaged on the spot. But where the other clerks regularly erupt (against their copyist lives?) and move on, Bartleby soon starts resisting fulltime. He starts by refusing to read aloud his work, debuting the famous phrase – “I would prefer not to” – which soon will come to characterize his entire behavior, including the most basic of his work duty, copying. The man also settles at the Lawyer’s office. The occupation is discrete but firm; the Lawyer is refused entrance when he stops by out of business hours.

After some struggle, the Lawyer comes to accept Bartleby’s unexplainable conduct, and probably would have let him stay forever in his chambers where every window opens on a wall, were it not for social pressure. His patience for lunacy threatens his reputation, maybe ultimately his business, and the Lawyer is not foolish (or strong enough) to dismiss the concern. He tries to dismiss Bartleby, but when the later resists; his reserves of “fight” exhausted, the Lawyer decides to flee to new offices, leaving Bartleby behind.

Even then, the Lawyer doesn’t really desert Bartleby: when the office’s new occupant has him arrested and sent to the Tombs, the Lawyer traces him and attempts to make his life there more comfortable, notably by buying Bartleby food privileges. But ever refusing, Bartleby has ceased to eat whatsoever. He dies, probably of starvation, eyes wide open on another wall.

My confusion (mostly at Bartleby’s behavior) was not allayed by a “potential explanation” the Lawyer offers (that Bartleby had been a clerk in the office of the Letter of the Deads, opening for the administration the last missives of the now-defunct, and that this dreadful occupation might have damaged him in some way). Some further reading however helped. Two interpretations in particular seemed illuminating, “Bartleby as criticism of the then-emerging office life”, and “Bartleby as a mirror of Melville’s depression at the time of writing”. It seems to me that the presence of other angry clerks and of a judgmental society of lawyers might give credence to the first. The second, richer interpretation is based on the fact that when Melville wrote Bartleby, he was at a difficult time professionally. After a number of successful adventure books, he was encountering harsh criticism and low sales for books dearer to him (including Moby Dick). Bartleby represents the temptation to curl up in a corner and just stop –stop writing first, then stop living. The Lawyer would be another aspect of the writer – the well-educated, well-adjusted man with an unexplainable sympathy for the quirks of mankind, the one whose tolerance might (or not)have enabled Bartleby’s refusals. The absurdity of the story might reflect the one Melville would have felt in his own life; in that sense, the story would be interesting to confront to Kafka’s work.

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!

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.

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.