Category: victorian fiction

A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens

I know other people may have mentioned this previously, but A CHRISTMAS CAROL is really a fantastic novel.

First, there is the linguistic vigour, which just kills me. Here is Scrooge’s house:

They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten its way out again.

Here is Scrooge’s assessment of his house:

Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.

Then there is the comedy. Here’s Bob Cratchit:

Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.

And here’s Scrooge’s response to the ghost of his old partner Marley, denying its existence:

You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than the grave about you, whatever you are!

But overall I think it is the warm-hearted morality that makes this book remarkable. Here is a lovely image of Bob Cratchit going home on Christmas Eve, after a miserable day at Scrooge’s offices:

The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk . . went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman’s-bluff.

Here’s the ghosts Scrooge sees through the window

Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.

Not mentioning any names, but I love this idea, a partner to my general hope that there is a hell so certain people now in power can burn it.
And then of course there is the wonderful change to Scrooge, that gives this novel a sense of completion and closure rare in fiction. Here he is Christmas morning:

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don’t dance while you are at it.

I’d heard before that Dickens ‘invented Christmas, but I never quite believed it till this book inspired me to do a bit of googling. It’s strange to think now, but apparently Christmas was beginning to be forgotten as a holiday before he put his giant Victorian energy to it. It is to him we owe the idea of a snowy Christmas (the first eight years of his life were white Christmases), to him we owe the idea of turkey, of Christmas pudding, of goodwill to all men.

Seriously, he should have organised to get a percentage on all of the above, which is now regularly sold to us. He’d be minting it.

THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS by Anthony Trollope

It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies – which were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two, – that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself. We will tell the story of Lizzie Greystock from the beginning, but we will not dwell over it at great length, as we might do if we loved her.

This is the beginning of THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS, which I find to be quite charming,and absolutely vintage Trollope. It is all total lies of course – we do dwell on Lizzie’s story at great length, not just because Trollope can’t do anything except at great length, but also because really he loves a bad girl, as do we all.

Lizzie is a fabulous bad girl. She marries Lord Eustace even though (or perhaps because) she knows he is very frail and soon to die. As the widowed Lady Eustace she claims to have been given as a gift by her husband, a diamond necklace worth ten thousand pounds. His family say this is a family heirloom, and thus not hers to keep, and so begins protracted legal wrangling in the midst of which the necklace is stolen. Cue drama! I won’t give the rest away, as it’s a fun and unpredictable plot.

Lizzie is helped throughout by her cousin, Frank Greystock. Frank is in love with a governess called Lucy Morris, and is engaged to her, but slowly comes under Lizzie’s spell, and stops seeing or writing to his fiance. Eventually he comes back to his sense and Doormat, sorry, I mean Lucy, accepts him back without a murmur.

This is the third book of the Palliser series (the previous ones are here and here) and as always with Trollope this book has an exciting plot, fun characters, a gently comic narrative voice, and the fun of meeting characters from the other novels. I loved this description of Conservatives, who feel always that Britain is on the verge of ruin:

And yet to them old England is of all countries in the world the best to lie in, and is not the less comfortable because of the changes that have been made. These people are ready to grumble at every boon conferred on them, and yet to enjoy every boon. They know, too, their privileges, and, after a fashion, understand their position. It is picturesque, and it pleases them. To have been always in the right and yet always on the losing side; always being ruined, always under persecution from a wild spirit of republican-demagogism, – and yet never to lose anything, not even position or public esteem, is pleasant enough. A huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no palpable harm, is the happiest possession a man can have.

It’s the TeaPartiers to a T.

AGNES GRAY by Anne Bronte

Based on AGNES GRAY I am forced to conclude that poor Anne was the untalented Bronte.

I had high hopes initially, as AGNES begins very much in the vein of the quality Bronte novel: lone governess, new location, lots of likely looking young men. Excellent.

Anne herself worked as a governess, and god, it shows. This book might well be titled GOVERNESS TELLS ALL. Or HOW I HATED BEING A GOVERNESS. Or maybe, THESE VICTORIAN KIDS ARE ALL BRATS.

The first third of the book is spent with one family of badly behaved children, and constitutes Agnes (ie Anne) explaining how poor parenting creates a horrible home environment. She then leaves this house, and it is never referred to again, and has no bearing on the rest of the novel at all. In her next home, the children are also badly behaved, but somewhat less so. She makes the whole situation worse by seeming to have a point of policy whereby she never, for any reason, expresses her actual feelings to anyone. Thus, she spends all her time seething, and no time at all attempting to honestly resolve her difficulties. It’s a textbook case of building your own prison, by means of your own wilful silence, and makes it hard to care what happens to Agnes.

She is introduced to the local rector, and after speaking to him three times (two of these about the weather) she falls madly in love with him. Eventually, but by then you are so bored you just don’t care, they get together.

Here’s him asking her to go to the shore with him, so he can propose. Hold on to your hats, ladies, this guy knows how to work it:

“I see by those light clouds in the west, there will be a brilliant sunset, and we shall be in time to witness its effect upon the sea, at the most moderate rate of progression.”

Nuff said.

PHINEAS FINN by Anthony Trollope

The only thing better than a giant Victorian novel is a series of giant Victorian novels, and that’s what Trollope has graciously given the world in his Palliser series.

I read the first one earlier this year (here), and decided to start on this one, the second in the series, when my real life was all getting to be too much for me. It’s like an 800 page holiday. (Perhaps I should rename this blog A Page A Day Keeps The Psychosis Away?)

Phineas Finn is sent to London by his father, an Irish doctor, to become a lawyer. He’s not much of a student, but is handsome and fun, and somehow, in a triumph of social skills and appearance over probability, finds himself standing for parliament. This is crazy, as at that time parliament did not pay a wage, and was thus usually the preserve of the independently wealthy. Phineas decides to take the risk, and is fairly successful, eventually securing a government post that pays a wage. On the way, he falls in and out of love with a Lady Laura, and a Miss Violet, but eventually returns to his first love, Mary, at home in Ireland. Unfortunately Mary has no money, and when Phineas feels he has to give up his government post as he can no longer vote with the government on the subject of Irish tenant rights, he has to give up London and return to Ireland to try at last and make a career as a lawyer.

As always with Trollope, this is an engaging and complex story, and you come to care for Phineas and relate to the painful maturing process of his twenties. This is the more so because you know you have four novels to go, in which Phineas will reappear in various ways, probably right up to old age. One of the delights of this second novel is in fact meeting again characters frm the first one, and even one character from Trollope’s Barchester novels, a series I read in those dark and miserable days before this blog.

I found the multiple love affairs a bit unlikely, and the politics sometimes a drag, but I would say I was most entertained for at least 700 of the 800 pages. I leave you with a little bit of unexpected Trollopian wisdom on, of all things, comparing British and American politics:

It is not so in the United States. There the same political enmity exists, but the political enmity produces private hatred. The leaders of parties there really mean what they say when they abuse each other, and are in earnest when they talk as though they were about to tear other limb from limb.

If only the Tea Party were reading Trollope!

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD by Thomas Hardy

I’ve been having some trouble sleeping so am often awake from 3 am for a bit, and was the other night. At some point one does have to read FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, and I guess this was my point.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD tells the story of one Gabriel Oak, a shepherd who has managed to take out a loan to get his own flock and some land. He asks a local young lady, Bathsheba, to marry him. She refuses. Some time after this his young dog in an excess of zeal keeps chasing the sheep till he forces them over a cliff.

George’s son (the dog) had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o’clock that same day – another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

Gabriel is thus destitute again, as all his investment, the fruit of ten years work, is wiped out. This all happens before page 33. I was not surprised. I know very well not to trust Hardy, his books are hectic. He will crush you soon as look at you. I learnt this from reading JUDE THE OBSCURE, and I won’t give away the plot, but suffice to say, don’t get too attached to the children.

Anyway, Bathsheba has inherited a farm, and employs Gabriel, much to his chagrin. She marries a certain Sgt Troy who is irritatingly obviously going to be trouble, and he is, eventually faking his own death after his pregnant ex-girlfriend appears and dies of starvation on the doorstep. When he resurrects himself Bathsheba’s new boyfriend shoots him dead, and goes to jail himself. Enter Gabriel, and a happy ending.

So a story not lacking in drama, much of it stupid. However it was entertaining, and there is a supporting cast of yokels which is hilariously well written. Also, Hardy as a philosopher has much to say that is of interest – I enjoyed this, on Gabriel after his loss:

He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. . . . . There was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of aman, is the basis of his sublimity if it does not. And thus the abasement had been exultation, and the loss gain.

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? By Anthony Trollope

This is the first novel I have read on my new Kindle. I feel weird about it. I am, proudly, a late adopter of technology, and here I am leaping in to the e-book.

I didn’t have much choice. I have moved to Kenya, where there are not really a great many bookstores or libraries, and I felt a probably unhealthy degree of fear at the prospect of running out of things to read. Let’s be serious, we definitely don’t want to be left to our own thoughts.

So I bought a Kindle and it’s already got ten books on it, and took up no space at all in my luggage.

This is a good thing, as Trollope’s CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? is an impressive 900+ pages. Stephen King apparently christened it CAN YOU POSSIBLY FINISH IT?, while contemporary critics called it CAN YOU STAND HER?

These people are all mean. It’s a pretty good book. It’s the first in Trollope’s Palliser series. Regular readers may remember how much I loved his Barchester books (here, here, here, and here), and I’m all ready to begin with the Pallisers. How I love Victorian fiction! How I love books that are free for the Kindle! I leave you to decide which is the stronger motivation for this new Trollope kick.

The HER that you may or may not FORGIVE is Alice Vavasor. She broke off her engagement to her cousin George when he cheated on her, and got engaged to another man, John Grey. She then got spooked about him, and broke up with him, getting engaged again to her cousin, and then eventually going back to John Grey. This sounds like a month in the life of the average sixteen year old, but I guess was a bigger deal in the nineteenth century. There are two parallel stories, a comic one about Alice’s aunt, who is wealthy and has two middle-aged suitors, and a more serious one about Lady Glencora, Alice’s friend, a wealthy young woman who has been forced to marry a man she does not love, and seriously considers leaving.

The book is almost melodramatic in tone, with cousin George going mad as the book goes on, and attempting murder; Lady Glencora’s lover considering suicide; and Alice just slutting it up left and right. It is in that way very different from the Barchester novels, but is similar to them in Trollope’s easy, fun prose, psychological insight, strong character development, and involving storytelling.

I’m being flip about the slutting. What I found most engaging actually about this book was Alice’s struggle to determine what she wants of life. She gets spooked about John Grey because she suddenly fears she will be unhappy at his country home, and might be happier as a politician’s wife, with her cousin George in London. She has a really hard struggle within herself as to what she actually wants or needs from her life, and I think most of us can relate to that.

She eventually, once she thinks she has lost it, realises that the quiet and prosaic life is her real choice. Comments Trollope:

“All her misery had been brought about by this scornful superiority to the ordinary pursuits of the world, – this looking down upon humanity.”