Les Miserables

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I picked up the unabridged Les Miserables late last month, daunted by reports of Hugo's endless harangues, but determined that if I was going to read this thing, I was going to make it worth my while.  After all, the abridged version is only 200 pages shorter; what's a couple hundred pages?  (We'll ignore the fact that the abridged is in a completely different, probably much less weighty format.)  So, trudging a bit at the start, I began.

Last week I finished the book.  Objectively it didn't take me so very long; in fact, I read it faster than I did The Count of Monte Cristo last year.  But I confess, it felt at times as though the end would never come.  The sheer amount of wordage Hugo uses in detailing things that have almost no impact on the plot is by no means exaggerated.  He starts out the book by introducing the bishop who sets Jean Valjean on the path of morality, admits on the very first page that the following accounts have no immediate importance, and then launches into a 50+ page novella of the bishop's life.  "M'gawk!" I say, profoundly.  Such passages crop up frequently and on a variety of subjects: the battle of Waterloo and the history and purpose of convents are just two subjects that get significant page-time.  And Rachel Heffington, the Ink Pen Authoress, remarked that only Hugo could leave the reader wondering whether Marius dies in order to detail the entire history of Parisian sewers.

"Lean" is by no means the adjective to describe Hugo's style.

In reading the classics, I've learned that getting used to large chunks of dialogue-less narrative is simply a matter of survival.  What bothered me far more than Hugo's verbosity was his sad ignorance in regard to spiritual matters.  Not that this was unexpected: without making him any less culpable, it is accurate to say that he was a product of his environment.  Deism rather than Christianity was the rule of the day, as even a glance over the pages of Les Miserables will show.  Thus, while he speaks of God and even, at times, Jesus Christ, everything is flavored by his philosophy: God appears as an unknowable cosmic Power, existing in every emotion or object that is "good"; Jesus Christ is afforded no higher place than that of a "good" man.  Morality, not redemption, is to be found in the characters of the bishop and of Jean Valjean; good works and not God lead to heaven.  Again, this is present in many if not most of the classics, although I found it particularly prevalent in Hugo and his contemporary Dumas.

At this point, you're probably thinking that I must not have liked the story.  In fact, this wasn't the case at all; I have a strange ability to pick things apart and criticize, and still end by enjoying the whole.  Such was the result with Les Miserables, for despite my irritation with the two matters mentioned above, there were other things that thoroughly caught my interest and won my appreciation.  Being a character-driven writer myself, I was naturally delighted by Hugo's rich cast: in his tying together of the threads of many different lives, he's like a French Charles Dickens.  (Except that it would be Dickens who was an English Victor Hugo.)  Characters come from all over France and from all walks of life: Jean Valjean, the convict-turned-"saint"; Fantine, the miserable prostitute, and her daughter Cosette; Javert, the relentless hound of a police inspector; Marius Pontmercy, a dreamer; Enjolras, the visionary leader of a band of republicans; Thernardier, a certifiable creep; Eponine and Gavroche, Thernardier's children.  These are the main players, who emerge complete from the pages.

In fact, although Jean Valjean is a nuanced character, he is hardly even the main character for the majority of the novel.  After the infamous "hump" in the story, in which Hugo tells in painful detail all about him, Marius is the primary narrator; Gavroche, a young boy living on the streets of Paris, also gets a fair share of this page-time.  In this section Jean Valjean moves to the background, seen through other characters' eyes, until Hugo returns to him after the fall of the barricades. 

Of the good characters, I think I would class Enjolras as my favorite.  He is something of an odd choice, as he doesn't play as major a role as Marius or Cosette or Gavroche; but I still liked him and found him an intriguing character, because he is so very cold and unapproachable.  (I seem to like unapproachable, as evidenced by my liking for Uncas in The Last of the Mohicans.)  As for Jean Valjean, while I sympathized with him in a detached way, his character never fully grabbed me.  Perhaps because he had a tendency to lie down and be a doormat, and I always want to grab character-doormats and shake them.  Marius and Cosette - well, I like a good romance as much as the next gal, but I confess I had a strong to desire to knock their heads together and tell them to wake up and smell the gunpowder.

Among the villains, there were really only two of any importance: Thernardier and Javert.  The former was an excellent sneak, I must say, but it was Javert who caught my interest.  He was the perfect villain for a hero like Jean Valjean, a phenomenal villain on any level.  For he was the sort of character who seems at first like a hero: dedicated, scrupulous, upright, just, even humble.  Oddly enough, as I read, Micah 6:8 often sprang to mind; Javert did justice and walked humbly (although not with His God - it would going much, much too far to say that).  But in all that, he wasn't a hero, because he never learned mercy.  This vein through his character made his struggle with Jean Valjean all the more fascinating, and his ending the more apt.

In the end, taking the book as a whole, I did enjoy Les Miserables.  The characters and the plot, woven together until they really can't be looked at separately, were enough to hold me to the pages from laborious start to depressed-but-exultant finish.  But if you read it for yourself, don't anticipate a happy ending.

Pieces of Eight

I didn't read Robert Louis Stevenson when I was a child, save for his poetry. I remember picking up my brother's copy of Treasure Island, determined to read it just to say I had; that resolution didn't last long. I can still recall confused ideas of pirates and blood and spots and a boy and money and maybe an inn and a mother - which I consider quite an accomplishment, as that sums up nearly the whole of the first chapter or two (which is as far as I got). But I was under the impression that the book was terrifying and gory and would have me cowering in fright, so I gave it up.

Thus went my first ill-fated foray into Stevenson's works. I didn't try again until last year, when in a fit of obstinacy and desperation I picked up The Master of Ballantrae - obstinacy because my sister-in-law, a wonderful judge of literature, had said she didn't like the book; desperation because it was one of those times where none of my books looked appealing, and I wanted something different.

I'll confess that I wouldn't advise others to begin their education in Stevenson by reading Ballantrae: it's a very odd sort of story. I liked it for the author's writing style and for the voice of the narrator, but the characters were nearly all hateful and nothing very riveting happened except one duel. And yet for some strange reason, I came out of it wanting to read more of Stevenson. (Maybe that was more of the obstinacy.) So last month I read Treasure Island, and now I'm reading Kidnapped, and Stevenson is fast becoming one of my favorite authors.

"...he seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen,
like a man playing spillikins."

- g. k. chesterton

So Chesterton described Stevenson's writing, and I can't help agreeing. His style is much blunter than, say, Dickens', but at the same time, it never wavers: it always remains constant. He always has that perfect word on the end of his pen. Sometimes I'll come out of the story to look at the writing itself, and I wonder if Stevenson ever had to sit there and stare at his paper until he could grasp the word he wanted, or if they always simply came to him. I'm sure they didn't, but in the finished product it is easy to wonder.

Another thing I have found interesting in reading these three books is the fact that all of them are written in first person, and yet the "voices" differ between them. In The Master of Ballantrae the narrator is an older man, so that is understandable; but in both Treasure Island and Kidnapped the protagonists are boys just becoming men, and I expected that the latter would have much the same tone as the former. Not so. They are each unique, each distinctly Jim Hawkins and David Balfour. Perhaps this is due to David's Scottish brogue compared to Jim's smoother English; perhaps it is because of the differences between the characters themselves. I admire it either way, and though I have never written a first-person novel, I hope that even my third-person narration pulls this off.

When I was first reading The Master of Ballantrae, I noticed that in some ways Stevenson's writing seems to resemble my own (although, of course, far better). I could hardly lay a finger to the reason, but that was the feeling I got; something about his style particularly speaks to me. Thus the reading can be a little frustrating, as I see elements that he captures superbly and that I want to understand and learn from: his balance of narrative and dialogue, in particular. I believe that in general he has more of the former (which is different from my writing, where I tend toward the latter), and yet I never find it heavy or want to skim - a temptation even when I read Dickens, grand as he is. That is something I admire and would wish to incorporate into my writing.

These, then, are my rambles concerning Robert Louis Stevenson.

A Comparison

I am a Jane Austen fan.

I always feel very typical and oh-so girlish when I make that confession; it's like saying that pink is my favorite color or that getting a new pair of shoes is a form of therapy (neither of which is true for me). Every girl seems to like Jane Austen. But I figure that the poor lady couldn't help that, and so, popular or not, I am a Jane Austen fan. Her novels are my comfort books. I read them when I'm feeling blue, and just seeing them on my shelf is cheery. Jane Austen and tea are synonymous for "comfort."

Elizabeth Gaskell, on the other hand, is a different matter. A contemporary of Dickens, writing in the mid-1800s when Britain was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, Gaskell dealt with much harsher subjects than Austen. She also seemed to have a thing with killing characters; I think it made her happy. So many people died in her novel North and South that I came out on the other side very blue indeed, and even the lighter Wives and Daughters had its share of gloom. Light and comfortable her novels are not, and neither are the movies based on her works, particularly the grand miniseries North & South.

Whence, then, the comparison between the two authoresses? Actually, I don't mean to compare them at all. It would be like comparing tea and black coffee; the differences are so vast, where would you even begin? No, I mean to compare two of their characters who are in some ways remarkably similar. If you know about Gaskell and Austen, you have probably guessed which ones I mean. And you would be right: I am going to be cliche for the second time in one post and compare

fitzwilliam darcy and john thornton

The former is more famous than the latter, as Austen is more famous than Gaskell. Fair enough, I suppose, since Austen proceeded Gaskell by about forty years. Yet their two heroes have similarities that stand out even at a glance: dark and brooding types with the same sort of unwilling attraction to the heroine. Each is his own character, however, and they deserve a good look to see where their comparisons end.

mr. darcy

It is impossible to stay that Mr. Darcy is cliche, because he really began the cliche of darkly handsome heroes who have passionate hearts under their arrogance. In addition to that, he has more depth than such a simple generalization could give him: as he says himself, he was given good principles and then left to follow them in pride and conceit; he is selfish and arrogant at his core, and over the course of the story these things change. Yet even early on, he has his good points. He is an affectionate brother to Georgianna and a good, albeit meddling, friend to Bingley, and I consider it proof of his self-control that he was able to show respect to his extremely annoying aunt. He also has his weaknesses, being in his own eyes "unqualified to recommend himself to strangers." (Apparently Georgianna didn't get all the shyness in the family.)

mr. thornton

John Thornton is a more complex character than Fitzwilliam Darcy. Thornton was practically born into hard circumstances: schooled by a stern mother after his father's suicide, put in the position of "man of the house" at an early age. To me, one of the most significant things about his character was the fact that he worked, not merely to provide for himself and his family, but to pay off his father's debts and start afresh. That right there is a mark of courage.

At a relatively early age, Thornton manages to start his own cotton mill - and with his father's history looming over him, he will fight to keep it running. He is certainly biased against the workers and whatever kindness he shows them is rather self-serving; it takes Margaret to change that, as it took Elizabeth to change Darcy. (That seems to be a necessary component of romance novels.)

Of these two, Mr. Darcy is perhaps the grander. His witty comebacks are a riot, and the way Elizabeth slights him and Wickham drags his name through the mud for half the novel is painful for me to read. Yes, Darcy is certainly a favorite. What would the world be without him and Elizabeth Bennet and Pride and Prejudice?

Yet, all in all, I believe that Mr. Thornton is the better man. Despite his faults, he speaks more to an ideal: he works hard, honors his mother, provides for his family, and in time also learns charity in his dealings with the mill workers. I do not mean to read into the novel more than Gaskell, a Unitarian, meant to be there; but I come away from the story seeing at least these biblical values in Thornton, and they are what make me consider him the better character. In a sense, he is more real than Mr. Darcy.

Both characters fit their stories. Pride and Prejudice is light, whimsical, jaunty, while North and South is more gritty and realistic, and the same goes for their heroes (although I wouldn't exactly call Darcy "jaunty"). Mr. Darcy would no more fit in Milton than Mr. Thornton would fit in Pemberley.

...but that would make for an interesting story.

A Bit O' The Classics - The Robe

I'm not quite sure whether or not The Robe counts as a classic, as it is no longer as popular as it once was; but it was a big hit when it was published in 1942 and had a movie made of it in 1953, so I suppose I can get away with stashing it in my Classics file. At any rate, the cloth-bound copy residing on my shelf certainly looks like a classic.

My feelings about The Robe are mixed, somewhat as though the "real" story was good, but Lloyd C. Douglas "messed it up" when transferring it into writing; as though the characters and events were real, but Douglas added things that muddied the waters. Naturally the entire novel is his intellectual property and there was no "real" story for him to ruin, but it is a credit to his writing that his characters are so real to me that they seem to exist separately from the author himself. On the other hand, of course, there is the disappointing fact that I wish I could separate them.

The line upon which my like and dislike are divided is that between the writing and the theme. Since I have already detailed what I disliked about the latter in my Goodreads review (which has spoilers) and on Squeaky Clean Reviews (which I strove to keep spoiler-free), and because I do not feel like going back through the shallow theology, I will simply stick with a discussion of Douglas' writing and the characteristics that made it stand out.

The characters were my first love of the novel, beginning right about at page three when Marcellus Gallio showed up and quadrupling on whatever page Demetrius appeared. Douglas did an excellent job of cementing the characters of both these main characters upon their arrival. We first see Marcellus through his sister Lucia's eyes as he relates to her an amusing (for him) anecdote about a banquet he attended the night before, and immediately the reader gets a picture of a carefree Roman Tribune; with this former-Marcellus as a comparison, the Marcellus who, after putting Jesus to death and winning His robe chapters later, is a broken man who cries out at intervals, "Were you there?" stands out in wonderful contrast.

Marcellus' Corinthian slave, Demetrius, is another sort of character entirely. He was bought by the Gallio family years ago to be Marcellus' manservant when the Romans brought him as a captive to Rome, and though the Gallio's good treatment of him has made him loyal to them, he privately longs for freedom and resents the army that made him a slave. He is taciturn and rigidly formal, as Douglas shows in Demetrius' first scene, with feelings displayed far more in action than words. His loyalty to Marcellus and his desire for freedom come to a wonderfully-written head after the crucifixion of Christ, when Demetrius is given the chance to escape and must decide between that and staying with a half-crazed master.

The history was very well presented, and I was especially interested by Douglas' portrayal of life in Palestine from a Roman's perspective. His depiction of Caligula was, perhaps, a little overdone, since it is thought that he was a fairly good emperor during his first two years, but it was refreshing to see how much research Douglas did on facets of Roman culture during that time.

Then there was the writing itself, the style of which was quite interesting. I particularly enjoyed Douglas' use of interesting verbs for dialogue tags; while he did not scorn "said," which such a lovely verb, he also speckled his conversations with words like "drawled." As the middle section of the novel is mostly made up of conversation, Douglas did well to employ other verbs so as not to beat the Said to death; these sorts of words (when not overdone, and also when used in conjunction with characters who would indeed speak like that) make dialogue pop.

(For a full review of The Robe with all its pros and cons, check either Goodreads or Squeaky Clean Reviews.)

John H. Watson, M.D.

Watson is underrated. Perhaps understandably so; after all, compared to the brilliant Holmes, Watson is hardly remarkable. But, then again, no one in Conan Doyle's novels is very remarkable when examined in the light of Sherlock Holmes (a fact of which that detective is keenly aware). Watson never fails to be startled by the minutiae of his friend's deductions, but is not quick enough to pick up on them himself, and his frequent inability to guess at the trail of Holmes' thoughts leaves many readers to conclude that he is a dunce.

Not so. Watson is no idiot, as he shows in The Hound of the Baskervilles, where he spends most of the book attempting to solve a mystery on his own; rather, he is the perfect foil for the eccentric genius of Sherlock Holmes. Whereas Holmes' talents lie in the realms of careful planning, plotting, and not a little deception, Watson is a man of action, generally ready with a pistol in his pocket to help his friend out of a tight spot. If not brilliant, he is brave, and never one to back out when the danger is high. His job is to fire at pygmies, throw smoke bombs inside rooms through open windows, and, most importantly, to do everything without asking questions or questioning Holmes' methods. As Holmes himself remarks in Hound, it is in the hour of action in which he turns to Watson for aid - and it is in the hour of action that Watson excels.

Holmes: "And when I raise my hand - so - you will throw into the room what I give you to throw, and will, at the same time, raise the cry of fire. You quite follow me?"
Watson: "Entirely.... I am to remain neutral, to get near the window, to watch you, and at the signal to throw in this object, then to raise the cry of fire, and to wait you at the corner of the street."
Holmes: "Precisely."
Watson: "Then you may entirely rely on me."

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia.)

Another point that is often missed is that only a character like Watson could be written as a loyal friend of a man like Sherlock Holmes. If Watson were as brilliant as Holmes, it would be unreasonable to think that the two would be friends, for their talents would lie in the same areas, they would clash, and it would ultimately diminish from the grandeur of Conan Doyle's masterpiece: Sherlock Holmes.

Watson is most important, however, in his capacity as a filter between Holmes and the reader. While readers may be disgusted with Watson for not always "catching on," this only shows that they don't realize how very much in the dark they would be if there were no character in the story to whom Holmes explained his logic. There are only two other options: first, that there be no explanation at all; or second, that Holmes' thought processes would be explained in narrative form rather than in dialogue. The first would alienate readers by making Holmes into an unapproachable, and incomprehensible, character, as, without an explanation of his conclusions, Conan Doyle's detective would seem absurd. Indeed, many of Holmes' seemingly random conclusions do seem absurd until he has languidly explained them to Watson.

As for the second, this means would make the prose tedious and parenthetical. Something along the lines of, "'You took the train back from the country this morning,' said Holmes. He knew this from the little splotch of mud on the threshold, which was not one of the five hundred samples known in the city of London and which naturally indicated that he had been out in the country. 'And you were late.' This, of course, came from the fact that the mud was rounded into the shape of the flat of Watson's shoe, which indicated that he had been sprinting." It is so much nicer to set out this information in dialogue form, rather than having the author feed it to the reader in such a way as to indicate the former's assumption that the latter is an idiot.

Instead of burdening his stories with either of these options, Conan Doyle created the character of John H. Watson, M.D. As an intrepid friend, supporting character, intelligent sidekick, and narrator of Holmes' cases, he remains a classic and oft-overlooked figure in the familiar mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.

(Maker of graphic unknown.)

A Bit O' The Classics - Sherlock Holmes

Years ago I read one of the more famous Sherlock Holmes mysteries, The Sign of Four, and attempted to read a few others, but was put off by the main character's egotism and could not manage it. Over the past months, however, I have watched almost all of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes adaptions, including the Adventures, the Casebook, the Return, and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Something about Brett's portrayal of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic detective had me hooked, and I hastily bought both Bantam Classics volumes of The Complete Novels and Stories of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes is a character that most people either love or hate; there is not often a middle ground (except, of course, for those who haven't read any of Conan Doyle's detective works at all). Hating him would be perfectly understandable, judging from his cool arrogance, his occasional petulance, and his scorn for those without minds like his own. He goes through highs and lows like a roller-coaster, spending his days, when he is without a case, either sulking with his long-stemmed pipe or sprawled out on the sofa in a daze, probably narcotic-induced. He apparently has little regard for anyone. He lives, generally speaking, in his own little world.

With a description like that, it seems a wonder that anyone likes him. Yet the fact that people do means that there is something more to Holmes than this, or that Conan Doyle managed to write such an egotistical character with charm. In reading Holmes, I found it was both.

This is not to say that anything in my description of Holmes is wrong; he is, by turns, arrogant, petulant, and scornful, and no mistake. But he is not merely all these things, else he would not have become nearly as popular as he did. For one thing, though his arrogance can be a little grating, one does at least have to concede that he is not conceited without reason; he is not like Inspector Lestrade, who preens over having solved a crime, while nabbing the wrong fellow. He is a genius, and keenly aware of the fact. However, Holmes is not without his failures, and not above being disgusted with himself when he overlooks a clue or finds himself (as he does, albeit rarely) stumped. There is a limit to his conceit.

"'Watson,' said he, 'if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper "Norbury" in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.'" (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Yellow Face.)

As for his petulance during times when he is without a case, the very childishness that on the one hand can make his behavior irritating can also make it endearing. Holmes is very much like a child in some respects - quick either to fling himself wholeheartedly into work, or to give up all pretense of labor; ascending rapidly to the pinnacle of delight, and plunging again two seconds later into Anne Shirley's "Depths of Despair." These wild mood swings are amusing to watch, and it is always satisfying to watch him bound back out of his dejection with the arrival of a new, challenging case.

His scorn for Scotland Yard is also understandable, as Conan Doyle surrounds him with inspectors like Gregson and Lestrade, who are occasionally effective, usually blundering, and always looking down their noses at Holmes' "methods" until the last minute. Coming to Holmes is always their last resort, and though he always manages to solve the case for them, they then kindly inform him that they will "make something of him yet." Yet Holmes is generally good-natured about allowing them to take the credit for problems he has solved, and rarely asks for more than the enjoyment a case provides for him.

Besides these points, Conan Doyle's major weapon for making Sherlock Holmes likable is the fact that the story is told, not from the detective's point of view, but through the first-person narration of Dr. Watson. However, Watson deserves a post of his very own, so I will enlarge on that later.

Jane Austen's Villains

Jane Austen's novels are fairly fluffy, light reads, and naturally they do not have "villains" as The Lord of the Rings has villains. Most of them do, however, have antagonists - because stories rarely work without them. Having read all of her novels, including her incredibly absurd and highly amusing "Minor Works," I found the differences in her antagonists quite interesting to note; all are smooth-talkers, but their actions and level of villainy differ from one novel to another quite refreshingly.

Pride & Prejudice: Pride and Prejudice boasts Jane Austen's most famous villain in Mr. George Wickham, the unscrupulous officer who charms everyone with his looks and winning ways. He is slippery and conniving - the sort of man most people think of when they think of Austen's antagonists. This is often the first of Austen's novels that people read, so it sets the precedent that if a man seems too good to be true, he will turn out to be the villain.

Sense & Sensibility: Sense and Sensibility (written before Pride and Prejudice) has a similar "antagonist" to Austen's more popular novel. Mr. Willoughby, the charming "suitor" of flighty, romantic Marianne Dashwood, is the quintessential knight in shining armor and fills the role of the tall, dark, and handsome hero that Wickham does in Pride and Prejudice. But though he does resemble Mr. Wickham (Austen seems to have had something against W's), he also has some unique facets. He is a much more tragic sort of character, first of all, and is meant to evoke as much pity as he does anger in the reader - though I confess, I didn't feel particularly sorry for him in the end. Secondly, the story is from Elinor Dashwood's perspective, and since she is less blinded by Willoughby's charms than the rest of her family, he comes across in a different manner than the all-deceiving Wickham.

Emma: This cheery novel does not have a Wickham-like villain, and, indeed, really does not have an antagonist at all, unless it be Emma herself and her matchmaking. It does, however, have the interesting figure Frank Churchill, who especially interested and annoyed me with his selfish, unpredictable ways. I did not know the storyline when first I watched the 1995, Kate Beckinsale production (I read the book after having watched the movie), and so I couldn't be sure how Frank would turn out by the end of it. I found him one of the more interesting Austen antagonists because of that, and also because, selfish though his deception was, he had an understandable reason for his actions that made it almost possible to forgive him.

Persuasion: Persuasion, even more so than Emma, lacked a real villain. In my opinion, the worst antagonist was also the hero - Captain Wentworth, with his offended pride and way of nursing his wrongs. However, that all worked out all right in the end and Wentworth seems to be popular among Janites, so I will say no more.

Northanger Abbey: This novel, different from all of Austen's other works in many regards, shares a feature with Mansfield Park in having two antagonists, brother and sister John and Isabelle Thorpe. John, a friend of the heroine's brother, is anything but the smooth weasel that George Wickham is; he is rough and unlikeable, suited to deceive heroine Catherine Morland, in view of her rather silly, uncritical nature. He is an irritating character, and the fact that he has a chance of winning Catherine's affection makes him more so.

Isabelle, on the other hand, is more subtle and sweet, and thus more poisonous in her influence on Catherine. She is also rather a crude, unladylike character, though, just as her brother is no gentleman. Despite how different they are from the villains of Austen's other works, they are still a thoroughly unlikeable a pair.

Mansfield Park: I left Mansfield Park for last, it having perhaps the most unique style of all of Austen's works, for all its being disliked by many fans of the other novels. It has the brother-sister pair of antagonists that posthumously-published Northanger Abbey does, but Henry and Mary Crawford are far more insidious than the Thorpes. Henry is gentlemanly, though he seems to be more of the Frank Churchill type than the dashing Wickham or Willoughby, and while heroine Fanny Price remains in the dark as to his nature, the reader is aware almost from his entrance into the story that he is unscrupulous. When bent on winning Fanny, Henry's pleasant nature is all the more nerve-wracking for the reader because of Fanny's usual submissiveness and how oblivious the man is whom she truly loves, Edmund Bertram.

But in reading Jane Austen's novels, I thought her best antagonist was Mary Crawford. Mary is everything that Fanny Price is not - charming, vivacious, witty, and also devious, selfish, and unkind - and that mix of charms and vices is one of the best things to have in any villain. She is intriguing in her vivacity, but also hateful in her cruelty; amusing in her wit, but worrisome in her scheming. I have heard others say that they actually liked her better than Fanny, but I found the makeup of her character only served to make her a more stunning antagonist and set her apart from the ranks of Austen's other "villains."

Jane Eyre vs. The Secret Garden

At first glance, two books like Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden seem to have nothing in common. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is the prototype of a Gothic romance - dark, brooding, and suspenseful - while Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden is a children's story, full of light and vivid colours. And it is true: they have almost nothing in common. The only feature they share is the setting, the haunting, beautiful wilderness of Britain, and yet it could easily be said that that very landscape is a major factor in making the two books such polar opposites.

In the black-and-grey story of Jane Eyre, many of the scenes take place in some level of darkness, either at night or on stormy days. Since the story is set in a secluded part of England where it rains a good part of every season, the wilderness enhances the Gothic feel of the novel and lends it an eerie atmosphere; the dark stone walls and passages of Thornfield Hall would not have been half as sinister without the added effect of the weather and landscape outside. Bronte emphasized in her novel the haunting allure of Britain's moorlands, which set the perfect backdrop for Jane Eyre's story.

"I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that." (Jane Eyre - Chapter 28.)

The Secret Garden, on the other hand, displays the opposite feature of the moors. While the frequent storms and rains do give the landscape a shadowy feel, they also mean that when the sun does shine, the scenery is turned into an amazingly beautiful, otherworldly place. Whereas Charlotte Bronte depicts black moors with stormy grey skies above, Frances Hodgson Burnett shows a rolling landscape of greens, yellows, purples, and whites beneath a clear blue sky. It is this sort of loveliness that characterizes her story and makes it magical, providing not only a background, but a vital part of the story as the beauty of the Yorkshire moors changes the main character altogether.

"'Look at the moor! Look at the moor!'
"The rainstorm had ended and the grey mist and clouds had been swept away in the night by the wind. The wind itself had ceased and a brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland. Never, never had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue. In India skies were hot a blazing; this was a deep cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the waters of some lovely bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high in the arched blueness floated small clouds of snow-white fleece. The far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of gloomy purple-black or awful dreary grey." (The Secret Garden - The Key of the Garden.)

While the moors are perhaps one of the most vivid examples of the powers of a landscape, there are few places that do not display this sort of change from one day to another, or from one season to the next. Deserts, for instance, are seen as flat stretches of sand, sand, sand, and more sand, but on that rare day when rain does fall, the entire landscape changes as plants burst into momentary flower. The endless terrain, rock formations, and blue skies of the Badlands of the Midwestern United States have a lonely appeal that goes beyond the dry, monotonous way they are generally seen. (Or so they say; I fail to see it, myself...) These sorts of stereotype-reversals can be interesting to see used in writing, and to use in our own; the depiction of a single landscape can alter drastically, depending merely on whether the story is a Jane Eyre or a Secret Garden.

A Bit O' The Classics - Emma

Emma isn't my favorite Austen novel, nor my least favorite; it ranks somewhere in the ever-shifting middle, below Pride & Prejudice and Mansfield Park, and possibly below Sense & Sensibility. However, all of Austen's novels are enjoyable, each for different reasons - Pride & Prejudice for its vivacity and wit; Mansfield Park for the sweetness of its heroine and the story's mellow tone; Sense & Sensibility for the drama, theme, and contrasting characters of Elinor and Marianne; Persuasion for its touch of melancholy; Northanger Abbey for its sprightly, somewhat off-the-wall humor; and Emma for its own hilarity.

There are plenty of other things about Emma that make it enjoyable, such as Mr. Knightley's (pardon the pun) chivalrous character, the twist Austen gives to the romances, and the sheer number of errors that Emma Woodhouse brings about in her attempt to be a matchmaker for her friends. But one of the most interesting points about the novel, I found, was that Jane Austen managed to have such a bratty, spoiled character...and yet make her so likable as well. Surprisingly few people dislike the book, whereas one would think that Emma's inconsiderate nature and harebrained schemes would turn people off. Some modern authors have attempted to have such characters, either with the thought of redeeming them in the end, or merely with the hope of crafting something different from the usual sympathetic character; but generally speaking, these efforts fall flat where Austen's Emma Woodhouse did not.

Several reasons can be found for why Jane Austen succeeded where others cannot, the first and most broad-brush of which is that she was a classic writer and managed to get away with things that the little people cannot. However, not only is this a very depressing and irksome reason, but even if a book is a classic, readers are unlikely to enjoy a bratty main character unless the author does a remarkable job in pulling it off. (An example of this for Austen would be that, classic or no, most Austen fans put Mansfield Park at the bottom of their list because they feel that Fanny Price is a doormat.)

A better reason why readers like Emma Woodhouse is that Jane Austen did not make her wholly snobbish and selfish. Emma is shown as a generally kind and goodhearted young woman whose virtues are sometimes hidden under the fact that she is spoiled and that she has a somewhat wild streak of fun in her nature which often leads her to act before she thinks. Austen does not merely show her in her faults, such as ridiculing the interminable Miss Bates; she also shows Emma's gentler side as she regrets her harsh words, when she watches over her father, and in her affection for Mr. Knightley. An author simply cannot have a character with irritating faults without making amends in other places, or they will alienate readers.

Another, and perhaps greater, reason for Emma's likability is the way Austen contrasts her actions with Mr. Knightley's and has him play the role of guardian and corrector, rebuking Emma and showing her the errors of her ways. These reprimands are gentled by the revelation that Mr. Knightley is and has been in love with Emma, and their fruitfulness throughout reveals Emma's growing character. On the other hand, a last minute change of heart on the part of a character who has been annoying for the entirety of the novel does not work, as it is unbelievable and leaves no room for growth or time for the character to redeem himself.

A Bit O' The Classics - Cooper

I admit to being more familiar with, and more fond of, British classics than American ones. America is young enough that many of its famous works are heavily flavored with post-modernism and can be quite dark and hopeless, like Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. However, a little while ago I was forced to read James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. I waded through the first couple of chapters with an effort, struggling onward through Cooper's often laborious descriptions because I had to and because my father had enjoyed the novel. It looked like it was shaping up to be just one more example of how American classics are inferior to British - but then the action started. And I was absolutely caught up in it.

I love a great many books, but there are few that have actually made me tremble by the end, and Last of the Mohicans was one of those. I laughed at some parts and cried at others, and I didn't get over the ending for a couple days; I still get a tight feeling in my chest when I think about it. I refuse to see the movie, knowing that I will either rant about all the things they altered or sob uncontrollably for a week over the drama, or perhaps both. Looked at simply from the perspective of a reader, the novel was beautiful and poignant.

However, it also offers a wealth of interesting points for the writer that leaped out at me while I read it and afterward. Cooper packed an unusual amount of power into his novel, whether he realized it or not, and the effect, especially as seen in the character Uncas, is startling. The events are seen through the eyes of the officer Heyward, who is appointed by Colonel Munro to watch over his daughters, Cora and Alice; but the main character is of course Natty Bumppo, known for the entirety of the story simply as Hawkeye. The young Mohican Uncas has very few lines in the story, less even than his father, Chingachgook. Yet for all that Hawkeye and Heyward are so much in the spotlight, Uncas is perhaps the most powerful, sympathetic, and fascinating character of the entire cast. It was what happened to him that mattered most to me while I read the novel, and even Hawkeye, though a wonderful character himself, seemed to fade into the background.

The ways Cooper managed to bring this about were surprisingly simple. First of all, he wisely showed the story from the viewpoint of Heyward rather than Hawkeye or Uncas himself. Seeing it from Uncas' perspective would have absolutely ruined the magnificence and mystery of his character, while seeing it from Hawkeye's would have made himself less impressive. In essence, Heyward was expendable and not meant to hold the same interest for readers as Hawkeye and Uncas; and, too, the savageness of the American frontier and of the villain Magua were made more horrible as witnessed by a young, inexperienced officer.

Secondly, Uncas' very silence went far to emphasize his character. A person who talks a great deal simply cannot be as impressive as one who speaks little - think Mr. Darcy versus Mr. Bingley. Cooper showed who Uncas was through his actions and the few short sentences he spoke, and it was these things that made him the hero of The Last of the Mohicans.

"My child!" said Munro, speaking quickly and wildly; "give me my child!"

"Uncas will try," was the short and touching answer.