Emma's Anniversary

“I do so wonder, Miss Woodhouse, that you should not be married, or going to be married—so charming as you are.”
“My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry. I must find other people charming—one other person at least.”

I had to chuckle at that, since it so wittily expresses how single women feel sometimes. It’s just one of many clever, timeless, spot-on statements that appear frequently throughout Emma, the last novel that Jane Austen saw published. She died a year and a half later. It was published in December 1815; I read Emma this year in honor of its 200th anniversary.

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Although Sense and Sensibility is my favorite, I think Emma may be her best novel. It certainly is her most mature work. She was older and more experienced when she wrote it than when she wrote all her other completed novels save Persuasion; and Persuasion, published posthumously, did not have the benefit of her final edit. Emma is symmetrical and tightly plotted. Every circumstance and character is tied off in probably the most satisfying ending of her novels (the others tend to finish too quickly for us romantics). The major characters, from Emma to Miss Bates, are so realistic and well drawn you can know them like real people; none of them are the least bit unbelievable or caricature-ish. Their dialogue sparkles. Emma’s character development is probably the most detailed of all Jane Austen’s heroines. The setting of Highbury is a living portrait of a small English village.

I seldom reread books, but I plan to always reread Jane Austen’s novels. This was my second time reading Emma. Just a few things I would like to draw attention to that I especially enjoyed this time around:

- Emma and Mr. Knightley’s delightful relationship and repartee: “Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know—in a joke—it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another.” Their conversations are some of the best in all of Jane Austen’s works!

- The cohesiveness of the plot: Perhaps more than any other of Miss Austen’s novels, marriage is the driving plot of Emma. It opens with a wedding and ends with a wedding; a wedding shakes up Emma Woodhouse’s world in the beginning, and rectifies it at the conclusion. Emma’s character arc is bound to it—marriage removes her best friend and former governess, Mrs. Weston, causing her to commandeer Harriet Smith, a graduate of the local girls’ school, as a new constant companion. Matchmaking becomes her hobby as she tries to manage Harriet’s marital prospects. Marriage between her sister and Mr. Knightley’s brother defines Emma’s and Mr. Knightley’s friendship and blinds them to their own feelings for each other. Marriage, or the desire of marriage, brings three new characters to Highbury—Jane Fairfax, Frank Churchill, and Augusta Elton. One of Emma’s most prominent wishes is that she not marry, and one of her father’s most defining characteristics is that he dislikes marriage because it changes things. By the end of the book, we have met no less than six married or soon-to-be married couples, and most of them are the major characters. Only two other major characters are unmarried, Mr. Woodhouse and Miss Bates. Marriage, proposals, engagements, and romantic speculation propel the story. And at the end, marriage between the right pairs puts the world aright again.

- The beautiful theme: While marriage is the driving plot, the take-away theme seems to be truth. I’m indebted to Peter J. Leithart and his book Miniatures and Morals for pointing this out (highly recommended for all Jane Austen fans!). Mr. Knightley, the epitome of a truthful man (he won’t even tolerate any equivocation, but always speaks and acts decisively), is the only man who is right for Emma. Only when there is truth in all the characters’ dealings with each other is the story ready for conclusion. The biggest plot developments hinge on cleared-up misunderstandings (such as those that concern Mr. Elton, Harriet, and Emma; Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax; and Emma, Mr. Knightley, and Harriet). Although marriage propels Emma’s character arc, her growth is measured by the amount of truth she tells, learns, and recognizes about herself. She is ready for marriage when truth triumphs in her life. Takeaway point: Truth is essential for a happy marriage and really, for any wholesome relationship.

I know this is sort of an unconventional review, but I’ll end properly: Not only is Emma humorous and well written, it’s full of insight and rich character studies. It’s a novel that has lived two hundred years without losing any of its freshness or power. It will surprise and delight you with every read!  

What do you think of Emma?

Cranford: A Life Well Lived

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Last month I read the story one of my favorite movies is based off: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. As I sank into the quaint nineteenth-century English country village, I felt like I was drinking warm tea. It’s probably one of the coziest reads in existence! I even read part of it while I was sick, and it was very comforting.

It’s darling. The ladies who make up the main cast have their quirks that may color them with a shade of silliness, but who of us doesn’t own a quirk that throws some people off? Cranford is dominated by the “Amazons” because most of the principal residents are spinsters or widows. There are the Jenkyns sisters, imperious Deborah and gentle Matty; feisty busybody Miss Pole; the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson, sluggish but aristocratically connected; her friendly, unpretentious cousin Lady Glenmire; kind, unassuming Mrs. Forrester; and a host of other women who come and go in the episodic chapters, like Mrs. Fitz-Adam and Miss Betty Barker. Young Mary Smith, a friend of the Jenkyns sisters, is their frequent houseguest and the narrator. Mary, being an outsider, is the perfect individual to describe Cranford life.

Since the ladies are so insulated in their own little village, they’ve forged the rules of polite Cranford society. Some of the comedy and tension of the book is how they go about following those rules:

(Deborah Jenkyns instructing her guest Mary Smith)
“Our friends have sent to inquire how you are after your journey to-night, my dear” (fifteen miles in a gentleman’s carriage); “they will give you some rest to-morrow, but the next day, I have no doubt they will call; so be at liberty after twelve—from twelve to three are our calling hours.”
Then, after they had called—
“It is the third day; I daresay your mamma has told you, my dear, never to let more than three days elapse between receiving a call and returning it; and also, that you are never to stay longer than a quarter of an hour.”
“But am I to look at my watch? How am I to find out when a quarter of an hour has passed?”
“You must keep thinking about the time, my dear, and not allow yourself to forget it in conversation.”

The book isn’t exactly a novel; the chapters are more like sequential episodes. Most of them have their own story arc. Mrs. Gaskell originally published them in Charles Dickens’s magazine, Household Words, from 1851 to 1853, and only after finishing did she compile them as one volume.

Although all the characters are delightful, I would say the stars of the story are 1) Miss Matty Jenkyns and 2) Miss Pole. Miss Pole brought me the most laughs with her fiery, sometimes foolish, know-it-all-ness:

“She took me so by surprise, I had nothing to say. I wish I had thought of something very sharp and sarcastic; I daresay I shall tonight.” (Miss Pole after she was offended by Mrs. Jamieson)

(Miss Pole trying to learn a magic trick through reading a book) Miss Pole only read the more zealously….“Ah! I see; I comprehend perfectly. A represents the ball. Put A between B and D—no! between C and F, and turn the second joint of the third finger of your left hand over the wrist of your right H. Very clear indeed! My dear Mrs. Forester, conjuring and witchcraft is a mere affair of the alphabet. Do let me read you this one passage?”

Miss Pole may be Cranford’s comic relief, but Miss Matty is its heart. She is gentle, humble, and always considers others better than herself (Philippians 2:3). Her timidity, which sometimes keeps her from doing things she’s capable of, was a little frustrating to me at times, but no one could be perturbed with Miss Matty for long. Through her quiet, steady, principled, unconscious influence, she is a solid rock to her friends. When a misfortune strikes, they rally around her.

“See, Mary, how a good, innocent life makes friends all around.” (Mary Smith’s father when he hears how the Cranford ladies mean to help Miss Matty)

“It was really very pleasant to see how her unselfishness and simple sense of justice called out the same good qualities in others. She never seemed to think any one would impose upon her, because she would be so grieved to do it to them…. People would have felt as much ashamed of presuming on her good faith as they would have done on that of a child. But my father says ‘such simplicity might be very well in Cranford, but would never do in the world.’” (Mary of Miss Matty)

“We all love Miss Matty, and I somehow think we are all of us better when she is near us.” (Mary)

In the end, I think Miss Matty has much to teach readers. Although she’s hardly been out of her village and her experiences are limited, she has influence over her circle and has earned their undying respect. That’s within every individual’s power, no matter how young, secluded, or impoverished we are. God wants all human beings to be touched, and if, like Miss Matty, we can only touch a few of them, we are doing what God has called us to do.

Cranford did an excellent job of showing this truth through an entertaining and endearing narrative, without moralizing. Everyone needs encouragement to live graciously with their neighbors, and reading a book like this is a very effective treatment!

Have you ever read Cranford or seen the wonderful Masterpiece Theatre adaptation? What did you think?

Book Review: Idylls of the King

Who hasn’t heard of King Arthur? Chances are you’ve probably even just read or watched something weaved from his lore. I just finished the book that’s arguably responsible for all of that—when Idylls of the King emerged in nineteenth-century England, it resurrected Arthurian intrigue, never to slacken again.

To start off my year in the right direction of one of my goals (that of reading more classics than I did in 2015), I began Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s great but relatively brief work on January 1. Idylls of the King is a compilation of narrative poems about King Arthur and his companions, based off Sir Thomas Malory’s seminal Le Morte d’Arthur of the fifteenth century. Tennyson published the first poems, “Enid,” “Vivien,” “Elaine,” and “Guinevere” in 1859, and seven more in the years following until the last one, “Balin and Balan,” came out in 1885.   

Lancelot and Elaine - Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

 
You may be like me and a bit confused about what “idyll” means:

literary piece about charming rural life: a short work in verse or prose, a painting, or a piece of music depicting simple pastoral or rural scenes and the life of country folk, often in an idealized way
(Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)

So there you are. These idylls certainly did paint life in an idealized, pastoral form: knights were mighty, ladies were beautiful, nature was splendid, so on and so forth. It was fun to read the Victorian sentimentality, not only about idealized beauty, but the melodrama and over-the-top tragic deaths. Well, obviously fun isn’t the right word…but I had to read with a touch of amusement or it’d be too depressing. As it was, I was surprised that so many of the stories were tragedies. Camelot was supposedly a magically wonderful place, but more was said about it crumbling than about the good things that happened there. Guinevere and Lancelot’s love affair was touched on in almost every poem, and you’ll discover its implications if you read to the end of the Idylls. Quite sad. Idylls really depicted human imperfection and the tragedies that result from it. Nevertheless, “Guinevere,” the poem where Arthur confronts his queen, was one of my favorites, because of its profound portrayal of forgiveness and repentance. But my other favorite was “Gareth and Lynette,” one of the rare happy stories, and certainly the most lighthearted.

Queen Guinevere's Maying - John Collier. Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons)

Here is a list of the idylls:
The Coming of Arthur
The Round Table:
   Gareth and Lynette
   The Marriage of Geraint
   Geraint and Enid  [formerly one poem called Enid]
   Balin and Balan
   Merlin and Vivien
   Lancelot and Elaine
   The Holy Grail
   Pelleas and Ettarre
   The Last Tournament
   Guinevere
The Passing of Arthur

I really enjoyed the Idylls. It had been on my to-read list for a while. Though it took me several pages to get into it, like most writing styles, I just had to get used to it—and then I loved it. The verses are beautiful. Poetry can give a writer an excuse to say things in a flowery, lyrical way, and no one minds because it’s poetry. The story and clarity are not as important as the shape of the lines. And while it may not be the most artistic or profound verse in existence, I was still often delighted by the new ways Tennyson’s writing phrased or imagined something:

“See here, my child, how fresh the colours look,
How fast they hold, like colors of a shell
That keeps the wear and polish of the wave.”
~*~
“And then
Stream’d thro’ my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colors leaping on the wall”

“The Passing of Arthur,” at the very end, had me reading almost all of it aloud to myself. I’m not typically a poetry person, but Idylls captured me tightly enough to pant over it like poetry enthusiasts pant over their favorite poems. 

"La Mort d'Arthur" - James Archer. Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons)

My favorite character was Arthur, but he was too busy respectably ruling Camelot to have adventures like his knights, so he didn’t show up a lot in most of the stories. But I did enjoy “The Passing of Arthur” quite a bit because we finally got an endearing, vulnerable description of him, a splendid, wounded lion quiet and still enough for us to study him.

Sometimes ambiguous endings are the most powerful. The question at the end of the end makes me tingle: Did King Arthur really die? Is he coming back? When his country needs him most, will he reappear?

Have you ever read The Idylls of the King? What is your favorite Arthur retelling?

Because My Thoughts Are Too Scattered

Yes, as I was saying, because my thoughts are too scattered among this, that, and the other thing (mainly because I have been well behaved and have been concentrating on my WIP), this is another one of those “what’s up” posts that hopefully will contain a couple of interesting tidbits for you.

• This is the link to my Read-to-Win video answering the question, “What is your favorite genre?” and this is the link to this week’s video, where I show a talent I have besides writing … if you have ever wanted to see me perform a martial arts form, it’s in this video. (I loved the other authors’ talents so far and can’t wait to see the others!)
• This Saturday stay tuned for a special announcement!
• For any writer going through a season of silence, this article by Sarah Clarkson beautifully expresses the emotions involved and why it turns out to be a good thing. 

                                  

• Lastly, have any of you ever read Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone? I just finished it today. It’s one of those long, complex Victorian novels I love to immerse myself in … but this one is also judiciously mixed with the detective novel genre (it’s been called the earliest detective novel, though Wilkie Collins had no intention of fathering a new genre). “Civilized” Victorian society is haunted by the romance of India in this intricately webbed novel that will keep you guessing till the very end! (Provided you haven’t seen the movie first.)

Book Review: Alice in Wonderland

“Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!”

Maybe what Alice said of the Jabberwocky poem in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland isn’t entirely accurate for my experience reading this book and its sequel Through the Looking Glass, but it’s cute to start out articles with quotes.

Arthur Rackham's illustration - wikimedia commons

This was another children’s classic that I visited this year for the first time, quite different from Heidi … but still about a little girl. Although I understand why some have reservations toward it, I wanted to see what it was like for myself and so tried to come at it with no preconceptions; and I enjoyed it for the most part. To me, it read like a dream you would have in the middle of the night, a long, unbroken dream that you don’t remember when you wake up but would read very much like Alice’s experiences if you could write it down. It was quirky and made me laugh, because dreams morph nonsensically from one thing to another and yet still maintain a sort of plot, just like these two books. In dreams, people say things that don’t make sense, and objects and issues that you ponder in your waking hours often appear, albeit in surprising forms. Alice in Wonderland was like that. Childhood’s imaginative ramblings play a big role in the plot—cards and flowers and chess pieces could talk and have adventures—as did mixed-up school lessons, in history, grammar, and the like, At times the nonsense got to be a little too much for me, but then came amusing wordplay and logical (or illogical!) reasoning to save my good opinion.

The quotes you can take from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) were one of my favorite parts; these books seem made for snipping out phrases and sentences that put a different spin on a variety of topics. One of my first exposures, long before I read Lewis Carroll’s classics, was this quote on my Wordly Wise vocabulary workbook:

“‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’”
(Appropriate for a vocabulary book, no? She’s talking to Humpty Dumpty about his misuse of words—he thinks a word “means just what [he] choose[s] it to mean—neither more nor less.”)

Here are some others I enjoyed:

“‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ [asked Alice.]
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.” (So true!)

“Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.” - The Duchess 
(I find this to be true, and even good advice for living! It makes you contemplate the choices you make daily.)

“I don’t see how he can ever finish it, if he doesn’t begin.” - Alice, of the Mock Turtle 
(Good advice for procrastinators, especially for writers, since Alice was waiting for him to begin a story)

“‘Begin at the beginning,’” the King said, gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’” 
(Works for my brain, but granted, there are writers and other creative individuals who must do things differently)

“Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!” - Alice, of the Jabberwocky poem 
(I can say the same of several poems I have read)

Have you ever read Alice in Wonderland? What do you think of it? Too weird for your tastes, or delightfully peculiar?

A Heidi Life

Today is a very special blogging day … because it is the 200th post on my blog! Two hundred? How did I get that far? What did I write about? I especially wonder that on weeks when I have no clue what I’m going to write, which happens more often than I’d like to admit. But it just so happens I have an idea this week … which I came up with on Monday (I usually come up with my blog post ideas a day in advance … though sometimes it’s the selfsame day … yep, I’m a procrastinator ….)

I read Heidi for the first time in April. While I think I would have been more captivated with it as a young girl, I found plenty of things to enjoy now. Heidi, a little girl, comes to live with her bitter, hermit-like grandfather in the Swiss Alps above the village of Dorfli. Because of her sweetness, she gradually melts his heart into repentance for his angry, standoffish ways. Others come to depend on Heidi for companionship—Peter the goat-herder and his blind, lonely grandmother. But then Heidi’s aunt Dete takes her away to Frankfurt to be the companion to a wealthy invalid girl, Klara, who has everything but happiness and health. Her governess/nurse/housekeeper Fraulein Rottenmeier doesn’t appreciate Heidi, but she is the one in charge when Klara’s widowed father is away, thus causing Heidi some grief. Two very distinct sets of people, miles apart, love and need this little beam of sunshine named Heidi … but what does Heidi need? Will she ever go home to the mountains she pines for? And how can she help all of her friends and loved ones at once?

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Heidi’s mountain home seems to embody the simple and idyllic way of life, one that many (especially we dreamy types) wish we had. Living on a quiet mountain away from the bustle, though within walking distance of a village for occasional stimulation. Few possessions, only what is needed for convenient living. Wholesome, simple food, requiring little preparation, and healthful mountain air. Breathtaking beauty every time you look outside your window. Whole days spent doing nothing but exploring nature, rejoicing in it, and watching some goats. Lots of stillness for prayer, reading, and whatever creative pursuits are yours. Ministering to those who love you and need you nearby.

Something like this is what I imagine as being in store for God’s people when the Messiah reigns in the new heavens and the new earth, when all creation shall be at peace (Isaiah 11:6-9, 65:17-25; Micah 4:4; etc.). And while it would be lovely to have it now, we aren’t necessarily promised that (John 16:33; Psalm 73; Romans 5:1-5; etc.). In fact, what makes Heidi’s idyllic mountain home so satisfying and rewarding is that she returns to it after she perseveres through an unpleasant sojourn in the city. We have work to do for our Lord and Savior and shouldn’t strive to make our earthly life a paradise at the expense of our real tasks.

So while we can’t expect a Heidi-like, perfect existence in the here and now, I think we can use the spirit in which she lived her life as inspiration to make our sojourn on this earth more in line with God’s ideals, thus making it easier for us to serve Him. Things like living our lives for others’ sakes and helping those in need. Simplifying—discovering, like Heidi did, the truly essential things in life and concentrating on them. (I read Heidi during a time when I was sorting through clutter, and the contrast between her life and mine, how she had to spend very little time taking care of physical stuff, was more than a little convicting.)

I love it when a book speaks to my life! What fictional book have you read recently that impacted your life? And if you’ve read Heidi, what did you think of it?

Book Review: Paradise Lost

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John Milton’s epic Christian poem Paradise Lost had been taking up space in the back of my mind for about five years, enticing me to read it, but I didn’t respond until last summer. Published in 1667, it’s the greatest work of its kind and, like Don Quixote, Pilgrim’s Progress, and Shakespeare, one of those mountains that define the landscape of Western literature. I knew it would be an elevating read and enlightening to see for myself what the three hundred forty years of hype was all about. I started it in one anthology, then found the complete thing in a book of John Milton’s poems at a maze-like bookshop in Hay-on-Wye, Wales/England. I bought the volume, my own darling book from England, and promptly took several more months to read the great work.

Telling the story of the inception of all things, starting before time began, Paradise Lost imagines Satan’s rebellion, God’s judgment, the world’s creation, and mankind’s fall into sin. Milton wanted to write a biblical epic in the style of the ancient Greek classics and fittingly chose the creation of the world as his subject. It was published seven years after Charles II restored the English monarchy. Before then, the Puritans, under the Cromwells, had governed England in the Commonwealth. Milton was a staunch Puritan and his worldview permeates his epic, including a censure of monarchy, but apparently the Royalists were tolerant and he didn’t land in jail for it.

To be honest, I am not much into poetry. I admire people who love and quote it, but reading and therefore loving and remembering it isn’t easy for me. (If I read more, no doubt I would reverse that, but if it were easier for me, I would read more … so you see, it’s a vicious cycle.) Poetry that doesn’t rhyme, like Paradise Lost, is even harder. But, by alternating great concentration and self-permission to skim, I made it through the difficult bits and enjoyed the entire twelve books.

According to the book Realms of Gold by Leland Ryken, Milton purposefully wrote the first part of the poem, which focuses mainly on Satan and his fellow rebellious angels, in a grandiose, harder-to-understand style with many allusions to Greek mythology. This gives readers a feeling of discomfort and a repellant awe for Satan. So no wonder the first half had me crawling through at a snail’s pace! (I’d thought there might be something wrong with my intelligence.) On the other hand, Milton wrote the sections about God the Father, God the Son, Paradise, Adam, and Eve in an airier, more flowing style with simpler words, beautiful images, and allusions to biblical ideas. No wonder I thoroughly enjoyed those parts. Book VII was my absolute favorite, where the angel Raphael describes the six days of Creation to Adam. So much gorgeous imagery! Several times (throughout the poem) I was reading along and found that Milton had woven in Bible verses from the King James translation almost word for word. For example, in Book VII:

“And saw that it was good, and said, ‘Let th’ Earth
Put forth the verdant grass, herb yielding seed,
And fruit-tree yielding fruit after her kind,
Whose seed is in herself upon the Earth!’
He scarce had said when the bare Earth, till then
Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned,
Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad
Her universal face with pleasant green;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flowered,
Opening their various colours, and made gay
Her bosom, smelling sweet; …”

Seeing how effortlessly the words of the Bible flow into a poem reminded me how beautiful is the Bible’s expression, no matter the language.

I don’t have time or space for further analysis, but I heartily recommend reading Paradise Lost for yourself one day (or should I say one half-year) so that you can enjoy this God-honoring, mind-enriching poetry!

Have you ever read Paradise Lost? Do you have a favorite poet or a great appreciation for poetry?