486. Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater

History: Marius the Epicurean: his sensations and ideas is an historical and philosophical novel by Walter Pater (his only completed full-length fiction), written between 1881 and 1884, published in 1885 and set in A.D. 161-177, in the Rome of the Antonines. It explores the intellectual development of its protagonist, a young Roman of integrity, in his pursuit of a congenial religion or philosophy at a time of change and uncertainty that Pater likened to his own era. The narration is third-person, slanted from Marius's point of view, added to which are various interpolated discourses, ranging from adaptations of classical and early Christian writings to Marius’s diary and authorial comment.
Plot: Marius, a sensitive only child of a patrician family, growing up near Luna in rural Etruria, is impressed by the traditions and rituals of the ancestral religion of the Lares, by his natural surroundings, and by a boyhood visit to a sanctuary of Aesculapius.
His childhood ends with the death of his mother (he had early lost his father) and with his departure for boarding school in Pisae. As a youth he is befriended by and falls under the influence of a brilliant, hedonistic older boy, Flavianus, who awakens in him a love of literature (the two read with delight the story of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius, and Pater in due course makes Flavian, who is "an ardent student of words, of the literary art", the author of the Pervigilium Veneris).
Flavian falls ill during the Festival of Isis and Marius tends him during his long death-agony. Grown to manhood, Marius now embraces the philosophy of the 'flux' of Heraclitus and the Epicureanism of Aristippus. He journeys to Rome (A.D. 166), encountering by chance on the way a blithesome young knight, Cornelius, who becomes a friend. Marius explores Rome in awe and is appointed amanuensis to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius's Meditations on Stoicism and on Plato, and the public lectures of the rhetorician Fronto, open Marius' eyes to the narrowness of Epicureanism. Aurelius's indifference, however, to the cruelty to animals in the amphitheatre, and later to the torments inflicted on people there, causes Marius to question the values of Stoicism.
Disillusioned with Rome and the imperial court, puzzled by the source of Cornelius's serenity, still Epicurean by temperament but seeking a more satisfying life-philosophy, Marius makes repeated visits alone to the Campagna and Alban Hills, on one occasion experiencing in the Sabine Hills a sort of spiritual "epiphany" on a perfect day of peace and beauty.
Later he is taken by Cornelius to a household in the Campagna centered on a charismatic young widow, Cecilia, where prevails an atmosphere of peace and love, gradually revealing itself as a new religion with liturgy and rituals that appeal aesthetically and emotionally to Marius. The sense of purposeful community there, set against the persecution of Christians by the authorities and the competing philosophical systems in Rome, contributes to Marius' mood of isolation and emotional failure.
Overshadowed by thoughts of mortality he revisits home and pays his respects to the family dead, burying their funerary urns, and sets out again for Rome in Cornelius's company. On the way the two are arrested as part of a sweep of suspected Christians. It emerges that only one of the young men is of this sect, and Marius, unbeknown to Cornelius, makes their captors believe it is he. Cornelius is set free, deceived into thinking that Marius will follow shortly. The latter endures hardship and exhaustion as he journeys captive towards Rome, falls ill, and dying is abandoned by his captors. "Had there been one to listen just then," Pater comments, "there would have come, from the very depth of his desolation, an eloquent utterance at last, on the irony of men's fates, on the singular accidents of life and death."
Marius is tended in his last days by some poor country people, secret believers who ironically take him to be one of their own. Though he has shown little interest in the doctrines of the new faith and dies more or less in ignorance of them, he is nevertheless, Pater implies, "a soul naturally Christian” and he finds peace in his final hours as he reviews his life.
Review: Marius the Epicurean explores a theme central to Pater's thinking: the importance to the adult personality of formative childhood experiences. In addition, conscious of his growing influence and aware that he had been misconstrued as amoral, Pater set about clarifying his published ideas. Pater is careful in the novel to distinguish between 'hedonism', as usually understood, and Marius's cerebral, ascetic version of Epicureanism. Marius' quest exemplifies Pater's dictum that we should "be for ever testing new opinions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy":
Thus the novel elaborates Pater's ideal of the aesthetic life – a life based on αίσθησις, perception – and his theory of the stimulating effect of the pursuit of sensation and insight as an ideal in itself. Centrally, Marius dedicates much time, and Pater much space, to examining the Meditations and character of Marcus Aurelius, who was warmly admired in the 19th century as a paragon of intellectual and moral virtue (by Niebuhr, Matthew Arnold, Renan, George Long and many others), but whose Stoicism Marius ultimately finds too bleak and lacking in compassion.
The appeal of religion – whether ancestral paganism or primitive Christianity – is another major theme of the novel. Indeed the novel's opening and closing episodes betray Pater's continuing nostalgia for the atmosphere, ritual and community of the religious faith he himself had lost. Michael Levey, a biographer and editor of Pater, writes: "Pater is able to depict an early, pure Christianity, not yet sectarian, authoritarian, or established, which offers Marius a vision which is ideal because untarnished." Early Christianity, Pater notes, "had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling and pagan custom ... So much of what Marius had valued most in the old world seemed to be under renewal and further promotion". Marius, however, having outgrown his childhood piety, dies before he has engaged intellectually with the doctrines of the new faith. He remains essentially Epicurean: "For still, in a shadowy world, his deeper wisdom had ever been, with a sense of economy, with a jealous estimate of gain and loss, to use life, not as the means to some problematic end, but, as far as might be, from dying hour to dying hour, an end in itself – a kind of music, all-sufficing to the duly trained ear, even as it died out on the air." His epiphany in the Sabine Hills, where he sensed a "divine companion" and the existence of a Platonic "Eternal Reason" or Cosmic Mind, is not a prelude to religious faith. Readers may feel that Pater makes it hard for them to believe that Marius, with his acute, probing, restless mind, would have embraced Christian doctrines if he had examined them. Instead the novel remains open-ended, leaving us with a provisional ideal of 'aesthetic humanism'.
Opening Line: “As, in the triumph of Christianity, the old religion lingered latest in the country, and died out at last as but paganism—the religion of the villagers, before the advance of the Christian Church; so, in an earlier century, it was in places remote from town-life that the older and purer forms of paganism itself had survived the longest.”
Closing Line: “Surely evil was a real thing, and the wise man wanting in the sense of it, where, not to have been, by instinctive election, on the right side, was to have failed in life.”
Quotes: "Liberty of soul, freedom from all partial doctrine which does but relieve one element of our experience at the cost of another, freedom from all embarrassment alike of regret for the past and calculation for the future: this would be but the preliminary to the real business of education – insight, insight through culture into all that the present moment holds in trust for us, as we stand so briefly in its presence."
Rating: Could not read.

485. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce

History:  Finnegans Wake is a work of comic fiction by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's death, Finnegans Wake was Joyce's final work.
Plot:   The entire work is cyclical in nature: the last sentence—a fragment—recirculates to the beginning sentence: "a way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." Joyce himself revealed that the book "ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence." The introductory chapter (I.1) establishes the book's setting as "Howth Castle and Environs", and introduces Dublin hod carrier "Finnegan", who falls to his death from a ladder while constructing a wall. Finnegan's wife Annie puts out his corpse as a meal spread for the mourners at his wake, but he vanishes before they can eat him. A series of episodic vignettes follows, loosely related to the dead Finnegan, most commonly referred to as "The Willingdone Museyroom", "Mutt and Jute", and "The Prankquean". At the chapter's close a fight breaks out, whiskey splashes on Finnegan's corpse, and “the dead Finnegan rises from his coffin bawling for whiskey and his mourners put him back to rest”, persuading him that he is better off where he is. The chapter ends with the image of the HCE character sailing into Dublin Bay to take a central role in the story.
I.2 opens with an account of "Harold or Humphrey" Chimpden receiving the nickname "Earwicker" from the Sailor King, who encounters him attempting to catch earwigs with an inverted flowerpot on a stick while manning a tollgate through which the King is passing. This name helps Chimpden, now known by his initials HCE, to rise to prominence in Dublin society as "Here Comes Everybody". He is then brought low by a rumor that begins to spread across Dublin, apparently concerning a sexual trespass involving two girls in the Phoenix Park, although details of HCE's transgression change with each retelling of events.
Chapters I.2 through I.4 follow the progress of this rumor, starting with HCE's encounter with "a cad with a pipe" in Phoenix Park. The cad greets HCE in Gaelic and asks the time, but HCE misunderstands the question as an accusation, and incriminates himself by denying rumours the cad has not yet heard. These rumours quickly spread across Dublin, gathering momentum until they are turned into a song penned by the character Hosty called "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly". As a result, HCE goes into hiding, where he is besieged at the closed gate of his pub by a visiting American looking for drink after hours. However HCE remains silent – not responding to the accusations or verbal abuse – dreams, is buried in a coffin at the bottom of Lough Neagh, and is finally brought to trial, under the name Festy King. He is eventually freed, and goes once more into hiding. An important piece of evidence during the trial – a letter about HCE written by his wife ALP – is called for so that it can be examined in closer detail.
ALP's Letter becomes the focal point as it is analysed in detail in I.5. This letter was dictated by ALP to her son Shem, a writer, and entrusted to her other son Shaun, a postman, for delivery. The letter never reaches its intended destination, ending up in a midden heap where it is unearthed by a hen named Biddy. Chapter I.6 digresses from the narrative in order to present the main and minor characters in more detail, in the form of twelve riddles and answers.
In the final two chapters of Book I we learn more about the letter's writer Shem the Penman (I.7) and its original author, his mother ALP (I.8). The Shem chapter consists of "Shaun's character assassination of his brother Shem", describing the hermetic artist as a forger and a "sham", before "Shem is protected by his mother [ALP], who appears at the end to come and defend her son." The following chapter concerning Shem's mother, known as "Anna Livia Plurabelle", is interwoven with thousands of river names from all over the globe, and is widely considered the book's most celebrated passage. The chapter was described by Joyce in 1924 as "a chattering dialogue across the river by two washerwomen who as night falls become a tree and a stone." These two washerwomen gossip about ALP's response to the allegations laid against her husband HCE, as they wash clothes in the Liffey. ALP is said to have written a letter declaring herself tired of her mate. Their gossip then digresses to her youthful affairs and sexual encounters, before returning to the publication of HCE's guilt in the morning newspaper, and his wife's revenge on his enemies: borrowing a "mailsack" from her son Shaun the Post, she delivers presents to her 111 children. At the chapter's close the washerwomen try to pick up the thread of the story, but their conversation is increasingly difficult as they are on opposite sides of the widening Liffey, and it is getting dark. Finally, as they turn into a tree and a stone, they ask to be told a Tale of Shem or Shaun.
While Book I of Finnegans Wake deals mostly with the parents HCE and ALP, Book II shifts that focus onto their children, Shem, Shaun and Issy.
II.1 opens with a pantomime programme, which outlines, in relatively clear language, the identities and attributes of the book's main characters. The chapter then concerns a guessing game among the children, in which Shem is challenged three times to guess by "gazework" the colour which the girls have chosen. Unable to answer due to his poor eyesight, Shem goes into exile in disgrace, and Shaun wins the affection of the girls. Finally HCE emerges from the pub and in a thunder-like voice calls the children inside.
Chapter II.2 follows Shem, Shaun and Issy studying upstairs in the pub, after having been called inside in the previous chapter. The chapter depicts "[Shem] coaching [Shaun] how to do Euclid Bk I, 1", structured as "a reproduction of a schoolboys' (and schoolgirls') old classbook complete with marginalia by the twins, who change sides at half time, and footnotes by the girl (who doesn't)". Once Shem (here called Dolph) has helped Shaun (here called Kev) to draw the Euclid diagram, the latter realises that he has drawn a diagram of ALP's genitalia, and "Kev finally realises the significance of the triangles [..and..] strikes Dolph." After this "Dolph forgives Kev" and the children are given "[e]ssay assignments on 52 famous men." The chapter ends with the children's "nightletter" to HCE and ALP, in which they are "apparently united in a desire to overcome their parents."
II.3 moves to HCE working in the pub below the studying children. As HCE serves his customers, two narratives are broadcast via the bar's radio and television sets, namely "The Norwegian Captain and the Tailor's Daughter", and "How Buckley Shot the Russian General". The first portrays HCE as a Norwegian Captain succumbing to domestication through his marriage to the Tailor's Daughter. The latter, told by Shem and Shaun ciphers Butt and Taff, casts HCE as a Russian General who is shot by the soldier Buckley. Earwicker has been absent throughout the latter tale, having been summoned upstairs by ALP. He returns and is reviled by his customers, who see Buckley's shooting of the General as symbolic of Shem and Shaun's supplanting their father. This condemnation of his character forces HCE to deliver a general confession of his crimes, including an incestuous desire for young girls. Finally a policeman arrives to send the drunken customers home, the pub is closed up, and the customers disappear singing into the night as a drunken HCE, clearing up the bar and swallowing the dregs of the glasses left behind, morphs into ancient Irish high king Rory O'Connor, and passes out.
II.4, ostensibly portraying the drunken and sleeping Earwicker's dream, chronicles the spying of four old men (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) on Tristan and Iseult's journey. The short chapter portrays "an old man like King Mark being rejected and abandoned by young lovers who sail off into a future without him", while the four old men observe Tristan and Isolde, and offer four intertwining commentaries on the lovers and themselves which are "always repeating themselves".
Book III concerns itself almost exclusively with Shaun, in his role as postman, having to deliver ALP's letter, which was referred to in Book 1, but never seen.
III.1 opens with the Four Masters' ass narrating how he thought, as he was "dropping asleep", he had heard and seen an apparition of Shaun the Post. As a result Shaun re-awakens, and, floating down the Liffey in a barrel, is posed 14 questions concerning the significance and content of the letter he is carrying. However, Shaun, "apprehensive about being slighted, is on his guard, and the placating narrators never get a straight answer out of him." Shaun's answers focus on his own boastful personality and his admonishment of the letter's author – his artist brother Shem. After the inquisition Shaun loses his balance and the barrel in which he has been floating careens over and he rolls backwards out of the narrator's earshot, before disappearing completely from view.
In III.2 Shaun re-appears as "Jaunty Jaun" and delivers a lengthy sermon to his sister Issy, and her 28 schoolmates from St. Brigid's School. Throughout this book Shaun is continually regressing, changing from an old man to an overgrown baby lying on his back, and eventually, in III.3, into a vessel through which the voice of HCE speaks again by means of a spiritual medium. This leads to HCE's defence of his life in the passage "Haveth Childers Everywhere". Book III ends in the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Porter as they attempt to copulate while their children, Jerry, Kevin and Isobel Porter, are sleeping down the hall and the dawn is rising outside (III.4). Jerry awakes from a nightmare of a scary father figure, and Mrs. Porter interrupts the coitus to go comfort him with the words "You were dreamend, dear. The pawdrag? The fawthrig? Shoe! Hear are no phanthares in the room at all, avikkeen. No bad bold faathern, dear one." She returns to bed, and the rooster crows at the conclusion of their coitus at the Book's culmination.
Book IV consists of only one chapter, which, like the book's opening chapter, is mostly composed of a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes. After an opening call for dawn to break, the remainder of the chapter consists of the vignettes "Saint Kevin", "Berkely and Patrick" and "The Revered Letter". ALP is given the final word, as the book closes on a version of her Letter and her final long monologue, in which she tries to wake her sleeping husband, declaring "Rise up, man of the hooths, you have slept so long!", and remembers a walk they once took, and hopes for its re-occurrence. At the close of her monologue, ALP – as the river Liffey – disappears at dawn into the ocean. The book's last words are a fragment, but they can be turned into a complete sentence by attaching them to the words that start the book:
A way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Review: Mr Joyce's Finnegans Wake, parts of which have been published as "Work in Progress", does not admit of review. In 20 years' time, with sufficient study and with the aid of the commentary that will doubtless arise, one might be ready for an attempt to appraise it.
The work is not written in English, or in any other language, as language is commonly known. I can detect words made up out of some eight or nine languages, but this must be only a part of the equipment employed. This polyglot element is only a minor difficulty, for Mr Joyce is using language in a new way.
A random example will illustrate: "Margaritomancy! Hyacinthous pervinciveness! Flowers. A cloud. But Bruto and Cassio are ware only of trifid tongues the whispered wilfulness ('tis demonal!) and shadows shadows multiplicating (il folsoletto nel falsoletto col fazzolotto dal fuzzolezzo), totients quotients, they tackle their quarrel."
The easiest way to deal with the book would be to become "clever" and satirical or to write off Mr Joyce's latest volume as the work of a charlatan. But the author is obviously not a charlatan, but an artist of very considerable proportions. I prefer to suspend judgment. If I had had to review Blake's Prophetic Books when they first appeared I would have been forced to a similar decision.
What Mr Joyce is attempting, I imagine, is to employ language as a new medium, breaking down all grammatical usages, all time space values, all ordinary conceptions of context. Compared with this, Ulysses is a first-form primer. In this volume the theme is the language and the language the theme, and a language where every association of sound and free association is exploited. In one of the more lucid passages Mr Joyce appears to be discussing language: "has any usual sort of ornery josser, flat-chested, fortyish, faintly flatulent and given to ratiocination... ever looked sufficiently longly at a quite everyday looking stamped addressed envelope?"
What, it may be asked, is the book about? That, I imagine, is a question which Mr Joyce would not admit. This book is nothing apart from its form, and one might as easily describe in words the theme of a Beethoven symphony.
The clearest object in time in the book is the Liffey, Anna Livia, Dublin's legendary stream, and the most continuous character is HC Earwicker, "Here Comes Everybody": the Liffey as the moment in time and space, and everything, everybody, all time as the terms of reference, back to Adam or Humpty Dumpty, but never away from Dublin.
This seems the suggestion of the musical half-sentence with which the work begins: "River run, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."
Who, it may be asked, was Finnegan? Again, I should have been unable to tell, unaided, from Mr Joyce's book. But I gather that there is an Irish story of a contractor who fell and was stretched out for dead. When his friends toasted him he rose at the word "whiskey" and drank with them. In a book where all is considered, this legend, too, has its relevance.
One concluding note. Mr Joyce in a parody of Jung and Freud ("Tung-Toyd") mentioned "Schizo-phrenia". One might imagine that Mr Joyce had used his great powers deliberately to show the language of a schizophrenic mind. He alone could explain his book and, I suppose, he alone review it.
Opening Line: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castel and Environs.”
Closing Line: “A way a lone a lost a loved a long the”
Quotes: “I am a worker, a tombstone mason, anxious to pleace averyburies and jully glad when Christmas comes his once ayear.”
“In the name of the former and of the latter and of their holocaust. Allmen.”
Rating: Did not read

484. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson

 History: Samuel Johnson wrote the piece to help support his seriously ill mother with an intended completion date of January 22, 1759 (the eve of his mother's death). The book was first published in April 1759 in England. The first American edition followed in 1768.The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, often abbreviated to Rasselas, is an apologue about happiness.

While the story is thematically similar to Candide by Voltaire — both concern young men traveling in the company of honored teachers, encountering and examining human suffering in an attempt to determine the root of happiness — their root concerns are distinctly different. Voltaire was very directly satirizing the widely-read philosophical work by Gottfried Leibniz, particularly the Theodicee, in which Leibniz asserts that the world, no matter how we may perceive it, is necessarily the "best of all possible worlds", whereas the question Rasselas confronts most directly is whether or not humanity is essentially capable of attaining happiness. Writing as a devout Christian, Johnson makes through his characters no blanket attacks on the viability of a religious response to this question, as Voltaire does, and while the story is in places light and humorous, it is not a piece of satire, as is Candide.
Plot: The plot is simple in the extreme. Rasselas, son of the King of Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia), is shut up in a beautiful valley, “till the order of succession should call him to the throne.” He grows weary of the factitious entertainments of the place, and after much brooding escapes with his sister Nekayah, her attendant Pekuah and his poet-friend Imlac. They are to see the world and search for happiness, but after some sojourn in Egypt, where they frequent various classes of society and undergo a few mild adventures, they perceive the futility of their search and abruptly return to Abyssinia.
Local color is almost nonexistent and episodic elements, e.g. the story of Imlac and that of the mad astronomer, abound. There is little of incident, no love-making, with few endeavors to charm the fancy, and with but slight recognition of the claims of sentiment.
Review: Johnson brings together a wide variety of his favorite themes in this brief book, as he follows a small band of travelers as they interact with the world around them.
"Rasselas" of the title is a prince who has led a sheltered life in the Happy Valley. Over time he becomes discontented with always being contented, and decides to escape his boredom by leaving. He is led by his guide Imlac, a court counselor and poet; accompanying them is Rasselas's sister and her maid.
Rasselas's goal is to make a "choice of life," something he has great difficulty doing once outside the confines of the Happy Valley. Repeatedly, the quartet encounters arguments and counterarguments for one way of life or another. Ultimately, they realize that it's not what they choose to do in this life that matters, as long as it doesn't impede on their after-life. That is the major conclusion they reach, in a final chapter which Johnson calls "The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded."
The book and its writing is fairly simple, and could be read by anyone in high school. Unlike a lot of Johnson's essays, the syntax is not tangled, and it is easy to get through. However, while the writing is fairly simple (Hemingway some times comes to my mind!), the themes are big. And a young reader must be patient: what sounds like a final opinion on one page frequently gets an "on the other hand" on the next.
This is important, because some of the lines which characters speak are easily taken out of context, and misintepreted. A reader who is not careful may find a line which seems to resonate, and draw the wrong conclusion. Here are two examples: at one point, Imlac (Rasselas's guide) says to Rasselas, "Human life is everywhere a condition in which there is much to be endured and little to be enjoyed." Pretty pessimistic! But in its proper context, Imlac has only cautioned Rasselas against envying the Europeans. In another instance, "The Artist" (no, not the one with the glyph!) tells Rasselas, "Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first oversome." How *wonderful* for the office bulletin board! But then (on the other hand) The Artist puts on a pair of man-made wings and takes a belly flop into a lake.
This book is chock full of aphorisims like these two, and that is part of its appeal. But they are deceptive in isolation, and should be considered as part of the book as a whole.
Opening Line: Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia.
Closing Line: They deliberated a while what was to be done, and resolved, when the inundation should cease, to return to Abissinia.
Quotes: "We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself."
Rating: did not read

483. Agnes Grey – Anne Bronte

 

History: This is the debut novel of English author Anne Brontë, first published in December 1847. The youngest of the three literary Brontë sisters, Anne was the first to die, within only two years of the publication of Agnes Grey and one year of the publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Like her sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre, it addresses what the precarious position of governess entailed and how it affected a young woman. Brontë depicts in detail the isolation inherent in a governess's life, as an educated – but by necessity not too educated – woman trapped in an awkward halfway world between the classes. The governess is not a servant, but nor is she on the same social level as her employers, the very fact of her needing to take a job underlining that division.
Agnes Grey is also an autobiographical novel with strong parallels between its events and Anne's own life as a governess; indeed, according to Charlotte Brontë, the story of Agnes largely stemmed from Anne's own experiences as a governess. Like Agnes, "dear, gentle" Anne was the youngest child of a poor clergyman. In April 1839, she took up a position as a governess with the Ingham family of Blake Hall, Mirfield, in Yorkshire, about 20 miles away from Haworth, to whom the Bloomfields bear some resemblance. One of the most memorable scenes from the novel, in which Agnes kills a group of birds to save them from being tortured by Tom Bloomfield, was taken from an actual incident. In December 1839, Anne, similarly to Agnes, was dismissed.
Anne found a post at Thorp Green, Little Ouseburn, near York, around 70 miles away, just as Agnes' second position is further from home, with older pupils—Lydia Robinson, 15. Elizabeth, 13, and Mary, 12. There was also a son, Edmund, who was eight when Anne began working there in the spring of 1840. Anne's brother Branwell became his tutor in January 1843. The fictional Murrays of Horton Lodge echo the Robinsons; similarly to the "dashing" Mrs. Murray, who "certainly required neither rouge nor padding to add to her charms", Mrs. Lydia Robinson was a handsome woman of 40 when Anne came to Thorp Green.
Stevie Davies remarks that Agnes Grey could likewise be called a "Protestant spiritual autobiography". Firstly, the book retains a sober tone and Agnes also displays a very strong Puritan personality reflected in her name. Agnes is derived from the Greek for chaste, hagne, and Grey is commonly associated with "Quakers and quietists to express radical dissociation from gaudy worldiness".
Plot: Agnes Grey’s father, Richard Gray, was a clergyman, and her mother Alice, was from a wealthy family, who disinherited her when she refused to yield to her father and marry a man from her own social circle. Of the six children that Richard Grey and his wife had, only two, Agnes and Mary about five years older, survived beyond infancy and early childhood.
Mrs Grey loved her husband and family, and was very devoted to them. She never missed the luxuries that she gave up because she was loved and very happy. Richard Grey on the other hand felt guilty for what his wife had given up for him and was always seeking ways to make up for it which led to the family’s financial ruin. A friend who was a successful merchant suggested a way for Grey to double his private property. “The small patrimony was speedily sold, and the whole of its price was deposited in the hands of the friendly merchant; who as promptly proceeded to ship his cargo and prepare for his voyage.”
While the merchant was away, because of the expected windfall, Grey spent like there was no tomorrow even though his wife cautioned him. As luck would have it, the merchant perished along with the cargo. Agnes looked at their situation, thought of ways that she could help her family financially, but she kept most of her ideas to herself, fearing they would think her frivolous.
Grey responded in a human way and was bitter and disappointed, even though as a clergy, we would expect him to respond in a more God-like way. “My mother thought only of consoling my father, and paying our debts and retrenching our expenditure by every available means; but my father was completely overwhelmed by the calamity: health, strength, and spirits sank beneath the blow, and he never wholly recovered them. In vain my mother strove to cheer him, by appealing to his piety, to his courage, to his affection for herself and us…”
Agnes approached her mother with her idea of becoming a governess knowing that if she could convince her mother, she would advocate on her behalf to get her father’s support. Agnes was qualified to be a governess because she was very educated. Her parents homeschooled her, and except for Latin which her father taught her, her mother was in charge of her education. After securing her parents approval, her mother sent out discreet enquires to secure a governess position for her. One of Agnes’ aunt recommended a family who she thought would be suitable. Agnes set off for the first time away from home. Agnes found herself working for a cold and cruel family. The children were not disciplined and they ran wild. The previous governess tried to discipline them and was demoted to being in the nursery. The little boy Tom would torture/kill animals for the fun of it because that’s what his father and uncle did.
None of the children listened to her. They knew how to play the game because they behaved when they were in the presence of their father because he was very stern. And the mother was very indulgent. Though Agnes was away from home and missed her family dearly, she remembered the way she was brought up and behaved in that manner. She was far too tolerant. The children’s behaviour deteriorated and the parents blamed it on Agnes, discharging her close to a year after they had hired her.
Agnes’ family welcomed her home and she remained there for a few months but was determined to try again. She was not convinced that all families would be like the previous one. Once again, Agnes convinced her mother to assist her in finding another governess position. This time, her mother recommended that they place an ad with their terms – she included what she was qualified to teach: music, singing, drawing, French, Latin and German.
This time Agnes was hired by the family of Mr. Murray, of Horton Lodge, which was even farther away from home. The family was more affluent than the previous one. And the children were older. The children were very difficult, but better than the previous ones. The boys were sent to school and the girls were home schooled.
Agnes remained with them for a few years and you see Matilda (14 years) and Rosalie (16) growing up. Mrs. Murray instructed Agnes to use the title Mister and Master when addressing the children.
When Rosalie got to the age when she was being wooed, she would string the men along and made them think that she cared for them. It was actually quite cruel and she had fun doing it. The only man who didn’t bend to her will was Mr. Weston, the vicar’s assistant. Agnes liked Mr. Weston and she thought he had an interest in her. Matilda and Rosalie would conspire so that Agnes wouldn’t run into Weston and they would tell tales about her.
Mrs Murray accepted a suitor who was wealthy for her daughter, though there were rumours that he wasn’t a nice person. Rosalie married Sir Thomas Ashby for status and for wealth, and it turned out that shortly after they had been married, she grew to detest him. Life could very well be paying her back for the cruelty she had shown to her other suitors for stringing them along.
Richard Grey died, so Agnes went home to stay with her mom, since Mary had married. Alice Grey did not want to be a burden to any of her children, she wanted her independence. She and Agnes founded a school, they worked very well together and the institution did well. But Agnes’ heart ached because she had fallen in love with Weston. Fate was kind to her and they were subsequently reconnected.
Review: The strength of Agnes Grey lies in its characterizations of Victorian country society and the people who inhabit it. Their materialism, which reaches its apex here in the unhappily married Rosalie Murray; their wanton wastefulness; their view of nature as subservient to the whims of man; and their hypocrisy and recasting of God into man’s image are the easily recognized precursors to many 20th-century attitudes. Despite its faults and facile ending, Agnes Grey is a tiny but honest glimpse into the Victorian world that preceded ours.
Opening Line: “All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.”
Closing Line: “And now I think I have said sufficient.”
Quotes: “It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.”
Rating: Okay

482. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis

History: This book was first published in 1953. The novel has been the subject of a great deal of controversy due to its subject matter, and appears regularly on lists of banned books. The central thesis of the book is that Jesus, while free from sin, was still subject to fear, doubt, depression, reluctance, and lust. Kazantzakis argues in the novel's preface that by facing and conquering all of man's weaknesses, Jesus struggled to do God's will, without ever giving in to the temptations of the flesh. The novel thus powerfully advances the argument that, had Jesus succumbed to any such temptation, especially the opportunity to save himself from the cross, his life would have held no more significance than that of any benign philosopher. In this sense, the novel can be viewed as thoroughly orthodox and traditionalist in its attitude to Jesus's role as redeemer.
Plot: Jesus is the son of Joseph the carpenter, as told in the Biblical version, but with a twist. The imagery of a carpenter can be vague...they can make furniture and the like, but in this case, Jesus' work was for the Romans...with his woodwork Jewish messiahs would be crucified....and his neighbors resented him for this. Jesus is a man on the fringe of his society; while having a normal childhood, when he comes to the age of manhood (12-14 years old) he goes to nearby Capernaum to be married to a girl named Mary, but the moment he approaches her he is overcome with a seizure-like experience......Jesus becomes a near outcast carpenter and Mary becomes a harlot.....
The Last Temptation of Christ is an unorthodox portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth battling with the responsibilities of being the Messiah. Hanging from the cross, he dreams of what his life could have been and—realizing the consequences for humanity—completes his mission by dying triumphantly.
Jesus wants not to accept the fate of being God's Messiah. He conquers all sins except fear. He builds crosses on which the Romans execute would-be Messiahs, hoping that God will give up on him but regularly feels God pick him up by the head with vulture-like talons and continue recruiting. Reviled at the Zealot's crucifixion, Jesus leaves home for a desert monastery but arrives too late for Abbot Joachim to interpret his dreams. Judas Iscariot, a blacksmith and Zealot tasked with assassinating Jesus, lets him live until they can see whether he is the Messiah. Jesus leaves, retaining the white robe.
Jesus, as portrayed by this book, has desires, has weaknesses, and longs for peace and quiet, financial stability, and the touch of a woman. Jesus as painted by this book is in no position to be the Savior and God that multitudes of humankind believe him to be. In the end, Kazantzakis still lets Jesus die and accomplish everything that was destined for him, but not without presenting alternate episodes of his life, presenting an alternative scenario of what may have been the outcome should Jesus give in to temptation.
Another thing this book has tried to do is to rationalize the events around Jesus' life. For example, where the Bible talks about Jesus walking on water in order to save his disciples from drowning, Kazantzakis tells it as a very vivid dream by Peter. This is Kazantzakis' way of explaining what would otherwise be an impossible feat given what we know about physics.
Perhaps, the most disturbing scene involves the climax, in which Jesus, at the brink of crucifixion, is whisked away, and taken away from Golgotha. He then comes into the house of sisters Mary and Martha, and takes both of them as wives. Mary and Martha both have plenty of children, and Jesus continues his trade as a carpenter. Jesus, Mary, and Martha all age, until they get a visit from a bunch of old men, who turn out to be Jesus' former disciples. The disciples all call Jesus a coward and a traitor, blaming Jesus for their lost investment, since they were persuaded to leave their possessions and follow Jesus during their prime. The scene ends dramatically, until it is revealed that all of those are visions and dreams that Jesus saw in the split second before he shouts "It is accomplished!" and dies.
Jesus' final moments while being crucified..... Jesus passes out, and when he opens his eyes he is somewhere else......he has somehow survived being sacrificed...and he finds himself in sexual ecstasy with Mary Magdelene and, following this, he is married to two women, he is father to a child, and living comfortably...... Jesus' peace is broken, however, when his disciples show up and chastize him for not being crucified: for disappearing off the cross.......
In that moment Jesus realizes that he has made a grave error........he feels the sting of betrayal towards his followers......and then tastes something bitter in his mouth.... The world around him, his wives, his disciples yelling at him, all vanishes and becomes darkness.......and as Jesus' focus reemerges he realizes that he is still being crucified.....he had only passed out, and had suffered the "Last Temptation"....and had overcome...
Review: Kazantazakis was excommunicated for this piece of literature...and it is banned in many markets around the world..... But I have found that this is because the story is largely misunderstood.....and many who perpetuate the claims against it. The Last Temptation of Christ is a fictional exploration of the life of one of history's most intriguing figures, Jesus Christ. This is not revisionist history, merely an author's viewpoint on how the Son of the Carpenter may have lived his life. It should be taken as a novel, and not a reinterpretation of the scriptures.Nikos Kazantzakis presents Jesus as very human, a man struggling to ignore the voice of God while making the crosses that the Romans use for crucifiction execution. The people around him think he is mad, and at first the story is frustrating as the reader wants the character to show some guts and follow his destiny. Of course, what a destiny this turned out to be.
Opening Line: “A cool heavenly breeze took possession of him.”
Closing Line: “And it was as though he had said: Everything has begun.”
Quotes: “Truly, everything in this world depended on time. Time ripened all. If you had time, you succeeded in working the human mud internally and turning it into spirit. Then you did not fear death. If you did not have time, you perished.”
“Great things happen when God mixes with man.”
Rating: Difficult but realistic, philosophical.

481. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey

History: This book was published in 1964. While One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) was arguably the more famous of the two novels, many critics consider Sometimes a Great Notion Kesey's magnum opus.
The novel uses the technique of having multiple characters speak sequentially in the first person, with no announcement that the first-person speaker has changed. A first reading can be confusing, but subsequent readings reveal that Kesey always provides a clue, quickly referring to the previously-presumed first character in the third person. This technique allows Kesey to weave an intricate braid of characters who reveal their motives in depth to the reader, but do not communicate well with each other.
Kesey took the title from the song “Goodnight, Irene”, popularized by Leadbelly:
Sometimes I lives in the country
Sometimes I lives in town
Sometimes I haves a great notion
To jump into the river an’ drown
Plot: The story centers on the Stamper family, a hard-headed logging clan in the fictional town of Wakonda, Oregon. The union loggers in the town of Wakonda go on strike in demand of the same pay for shorter hours in response to the decreasing need for labor due to the introduction of the chainsaw. The Stamper family, however, owns and operates a company without unions and decides to not only continue work, but to supply the regionally owned mill with all the lumber the laborers would have supplied had the strike not occurred.
This decision, and the surrounding details of the decision, are deeply explored in this multilayered historical background and relationship study—especially in its examination of the following characters: Henry Stamper, the old and half-crazed patriarch whose motto "Never Give A Inch!" has defined the nature of the family and its dynamic with the town; Hank, the oldest son of Henry whose strong will and personality make him a leader but his subtle insecurities and desires threaten the stability of his family; Leland, the younger son of Henry and half brother of Hank, whose constant weaknesses and the nature of his intellect led him away from the family to the East Coast, but whose eccentric behavior and desire for revenge against Hank lead him back to Oregon; and Viv, whose love for her husband Hank fades quickly when she begins to realize her true place in the Stamper household.
The family house itself manifests the physical stubbornness of the Stamper family; as the nearby river widens slowly and causes erosion, all the other houses on the river have either been consumed or wrecked by the waters or moved away from the current, except the Stamper house, which stands on a precarious peninsula struggling to maintain every inch of land with the help of an arsenal of boards, sand bags, cables, and other miscellaneous items brandished by Henry Stamper in his fight against the encroaching river.
Review: Often called the "quintessential Oregon novel," Sometimes a Great Notion bears remarkable similarity to our fabled Beaver State winters: seemingly sprawling and unending at first, characterized by incessant rain, somewhat disorienting until you become acclimated, yet ultimately compelling, fecund, and, dare I say, necessary. Ken Kesey is perhaps Oregon's most famous adopted son, known best, of course, for his debut novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the time he spent with the Merry Pranksters. Not only is Sometimes a Great Notion Kesey's masterwork (Bartleby : Moby-Dick :: Cuckoo's Nest : Notion), it very well may encapsulate the American ethic and landscape as well as any other novel of its era.
Concerned with the ongoing timber strike in the fictional coastal range town of Wakonda, Sometimes a Great Notion revolves around the very proud and unyielding Stamper family, who decide to continue logging despite the acrimony and pleading of their neighbors. Literally teeming with symbolic imagery, the novel engenders some conflicted loyalties in the reader, as even the most reprehensible behavior on the part of some of the characters manages to elicit our sympathies. Kesey's unique prose structure, rich in style and nuance, stands in stark contrast to the inability of most of the characters to openly express themselves, their desires, and their feelings. One could easily make the case that this book is mainly about the labor struggle or encroaching modernity or the timber industry or Oregon itself; but, at its roots, it seems to be about the underlying and driving motivations that characterize the complexity of interpersonal relationships. While propelled by some of the basest of human emotions — hubris, stubbornness, revenge, jealousy, envy — Sometimes a Great Notion is also marked by some of the noblest: love, loyalty, camaraderie, and kindness.
This is quite the rewarding work, and lovers of all types of fiction will undoubtedly find many things remarkable about this epic novel. Kesey's masterpiece deserves its place amidst the canon of great American novels, yet is rarely mentioned in the same breath as some of the more widely accepted classics.
Opening Line: “Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range… come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge in the Wakonda Auga River…”
Closing Line: “Hee! Jenny says triumphantly, lifting the mud hemmed garment on over her head.”
Quotes: “The past is funny ... it never seems to let things lie, finished. It never seems to stay in place as it should.”
“The raw materials of reality without the glue of time are materials adrift and reality is as meaningless as the balsa parts of a model airplane scattered to the wind.”
Rating: I could not get it. Did not finish.

480. A Sentimental Journey – Lawrence Sterne

History: This book was written and first published in 1768, In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his travels from a sentimental point of view. 

The novel was extremely popular and influential and helped establish travel writing as the dominant genre of the second half of the 18th century. Unlike prior travel accounts which stressed classical learning and objective non-personal points of view, A Sentimental Journey emphasized the subjective discussions of personal taste and sentiments, of manners and morals over classical learning. Throughout the 1770s female travel writers began publishing significant numbers of sentimental travel accounts. Sentiment also became a favorite style among those expressing non-mainstream views including political radicalism.
Because Sterne died before he could finish the novel, his long time friend John Hall-Stevenson (who is also identified with the name Eugenius in the novel) wrote a continuation. It is titled Yorick's Sentimental Journey Continued: To Which Is Prefixed Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. Sterne.
Plot: Yorick's journey starts in Calais, where he meets a monk who begs for donations to his convent. Yorick initially refuses to give him anything, but later regrets his decision. He and the monk exchange their snuff-boxes. He buys a chaise to continue his journey. The next town he visits is Montreuil, where he hires a servant to accompany him on his journey, a young man named La Fleur.
During his stay in Paris, Yorick is informed that the police inquired for his passport at his hotel. Without a passport at a time when England is at war with France (Sterne traveled to Paris in January 1762, before the Seven Years' War ended), he risks imprisonment in the Bastille. Yorick decides to travel to Versailles where he visits the Count de B**** to acquire a passport. When Yorick notices the count reads Hamlet, he points with his finger at Yorick's name, mentioning that he is Yorick. The count mistakes him for the king's jester and quickly procures him a passport. Yorick fails in his attempt to correct the count, and remains satisfied with receiving his passport so quickly.
Yorick returns to Paris, and continues his voyage to Italy after staying in Paris for a few more days. Along the way he decides to visit Maria – who was introduced in Sterne's previous novel, Tristram Shandy – in Moulin. Maria's mother tells Yorick that Maria has been struck with grief since her husband died. Yorick consoles Maria, and then leaves.
After having passed Lyon during his journey, Yorick spends the night in a roadside inn. Because there is only one bedroom, he is forced to share the room with a lady and her chamber-maid ("fille de chambre"). When Yorick can't sleep and accidentally breaks his promise to remain silent during the night, an altercation with the lady ensues. During the confusion, Yorick accidentally grabs hold of something belonging to the chamber-maid. The last line is: "when I stretch'd out my hand I caught hold of the fille de chambre's...End of vol II". The sentence is open to interpretation. You can say the last word is omitted, or that he stretched out his hand, and caught hers (this would be grammatically correct). Another interpretation is to incorporate 'End of Vol. II' into the sentence, so that he grabs the Fille de Chambre's 'End
Review: Sterne is best known for his Rabelaisian tour-de-force Tristam Shandy, a novel which I had the "pleasure" to struggle through for the best part of a year back in 2008. Shandy is a sprawling, discursive comic masterpiece which has more in common with novels of the 20th century then those which followed it in the 19th. But Sterne also wrote another, minor, classic, A Sentimental Journey. First published in 1768, six months before the author's death, A Sentimental Journey was one of the first "novels of sentiment and sensibility" a genre which rose and fell by the turn of the 19th century, but one which would have a decisive impact on the Brontean/Austen wave of fiction which would define the 19th century.
Sterne's A Sentimental Journey was published three years before Henry MacKenzie's The Man of Feeling. Man of Feeling was in instant hit, selling out within two months and being reprinted six time in the following decade. Both novels echo the on-going debate in 18th century about the impact of modernity on the nature of man. As G.J. Barker-Benfield persuasively argued in his book, The Culture of Sensibility, "popular novels written by men in the 1760s and 1770s were preoccupied with the meanings of sensibility for manhood...and the ambiguity we now tend to read into the novels of Laurence Stern or Mackenzie reflects this contemporary ambivalence."
Regardless of how one interprets the underlying debate OR the role of the "novels of sentiment" in the 18th century, it's clear that these tales had an audience. Of course, in light of the rise of female novelists in the 19th century, I am left wondering who was buying all the copies of MacKenzie's The Man of Feeling. Was it men, interested in getting a fix on their identity in a rapidly changing world? Or was it largely women, interested in men who were depicted behaving in a traditionally "feminine" manner?
Sterne's Sentimental Journey is a clear way-station on the way to MacKenzie's mincing, sobbing Man of Feeling. Unlike MacKenzie, Sterne is a comic genius, and his book is filled with episodes of satire and wit that are sorely missing in Man of Feeling. There is also an element of bawdiness in A Sentimental Journey that is so clearly an element of Sterne's Rabelaisian style- something lacking in MacKenzie, let alone the oft humorless novels of sentiment that were published after the turn of the century. Blame the Victorians, or don't, it matters little.
However it's clear to me that the "Sentimental Man" was a cultural trend with all the complexity and force of later trends like Rock and roll, and it's interesting because it was one of the FIRST such modern trends whose influence was reflected in a contemporary art form that was ITSELF just rounding into form (the novel.) For that reason it's worth thinking about, because by learning about people then, we can learn about ourselves now.
Opening Line: “They order, said I, this matter better in France. - You have been in France? said my gentleman, turning quick upon me, with the most civil triumph in the world.”
Closing Line: “So that when I stretch’d out my hand I caught hold of the fille de chambre’s –“
Quotes: “I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took to be that of a child, which complained: ‘it could not get out,’ …and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung up in a little cage. I stood looking at the bird, and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering towards the side which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity—‘I can’t get out,’ said the starling. God help thee!—said I—but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned the cage about to get at the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces… The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it…—I fear, poor creature, said I, I cannot set thee at liberty.—‘No,’ said the starling; ‘I can’t get out—I can’t get out.’ I vow I never had any affections more tenderly awaked…”
Rating: No Opinion.