Where Angels Fear to Tread

by E.M. Forster
this edition Buccaneer Books, 1976
184 pages

E.M. Forster continues to intrigue me. When the film Howard's End came out a looong time ago, I fell in love with it. I watched it over and over because I thought there was some deep meaning to it that I just couldn't understand. I was determined to "get it," so I read the book. While I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, I still didn't feel that I "got it" until I finally did some research on it. I learned that Forster wrote the novel in response to an article he had read which asked, "Who shall inherit Britain?" Basically, during Forster's lifetime the economic balance in Britain, which had been so delicately maintained for centuries, was in peril. Who would inherit Britain: the upper class who had ruled for generations, or the lower class who were rising in number and buying power? If you pay attention to how Howard's End ends, you'll see what Forster thought the answer was (hint: who lives at Howard's End at the end?).

All this is really a long introduction to how I got involved with E.M. Forster. I also read A Room With a View after loving the film; while I didn't like that novel as much as Howard's End, I did like it enough to give Forster one more try. So, while browsing for a book at the library two weeks ago, I ended up with Where Angels Fear to Tread, and, after reading it, here is where I stand on Forster now: while his novels (in my opinion) have really deep sociological meaning, they are also incredibly lyrical and reader-friendly. He may use the long Henry James sentence here and there, but he relies more on dialogue and short meaningful sentences to set a strong tone of romance and human wishy-washiness that really appeals to me. I've noticed that his characters will often say one thing and then do something else, and while that is partly a satire on the encrusted manners of English upper-class, I also find it to be a pretty fair representation of the way we all function in life. Hasn't your husband ever said, "I'll do the dishes tonight," and then fallen asleep on the couch during the Lakers game without even turning the water on? Mine has. Haven't you ever said, "I'm going to stop eating french fries because they always give me a stomach-ache" and then ordered them for dinner on Thursday night? I have. Well, so do Forster's characters.

Where Angels Fear to Tread has a very original plot: a wealthy English widow is sent to Italy by her prudish disapproving in-laws who want to get her out of the way so that they can raise her daughter "properly." She falls in love with a poor young Italian and marries him largely to spite her in-laws, but it is not a happy marriage and she dies in childbirth. Ultimately, the in-laws try to intervene and take the child born of the marriage to raise him "properly" with his half-sister, but tragedy ensues. And yet, the novel does not end tragically. In true Forster style, the ending left me thinking, "What? I don't get it. What does he mean by all this?" So I had to look at the title, and I think partly the theme is about romance. Not just love, but that Latin romance about passion and the emotions. The uptight English suppose themselves to be angels of mercy to their granddaughter/niece and then the half-Italian baby, but they fear to tread on the Latin passions at play in Italy. Those who do give into the passions just get their lives ruined. I also thought, though, that there was a theme about the nature of the parent-child relationship. Every person in the novel has a sticky, troublesome relationship with either their parent or their child. All of the trauma is brought about by either domineering parents or rebellious children. So I also think that that precious parent-child relationship is one that angels themselves would not tamper with, even though it can be so evidently flawed. When the wealthy English family does try to tamper with the parent-child relationship, it leads to the tragedy of the novel.

After reading this, I've decided that I want to finish reading all of Forster's novels. I love that his novels are so readable and have good literary aesthetics, but they are also deep and leave me thinking about the meaning when I have finished reading. I'm not going to just read them all right away, but I definitely have a mind to work him in whenever I am looking for something to read. It shouldn't be hard - it looks like there are only three other novels: A Passage to India, The Longest Journey, and Maurice.

Cranford

by Elizabeth Gaskell
this edition: Penguin Books 2008
187 pages

If you loved the Masterpiece Theater presentation of Cranford on PBS, you will love this book. While the miniseries was drawn from several of Gaskell's books, many of the main characters play a role in the novel Cranford, as you can see in the lovely picture of Miss Mattie Jenkyns on the cover.

Cranford is not a plot-based novel; in fact, there is not much of a plot at all. It is more a collection of observations of the women of Cranford with some delightful "vignettes" (okay, I'm borrowing that word from the cover) to tie them all together. The narrator is Mary Smith, but we don't learn much about her except that she has her "own individual small econom[y]." She writes, "I am not above owning that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if anyone cuts the string of a parcel, instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold." Well, as I said, we don't learn much more about Mary because she focuses her writing on capturing glimpses of the idosyncratic female residents of Cranford.

I could probably write a two- or three-page list of funny lines from the book, but I think what I'd like to do instead is extol Miss Mattie Jenkyns. I am so pleased that she graces the cover of the novel, because by the end of the novel we realize that Miss Mattie is truly the star, the sweet honey that holds the story together. I am trying not to be too biased because Dame Judi Dench (whom I adore - have you seen her in "As Time Goes By"? beautiful lady!) portrays her in the miniseries. But I do think she was wonderfully cast, and the Judi Dench is appropriately concealed in the layers of fabric, ribbons and bows to sweetly portray little Miss Mattie. I was so heartbroken that Miss Mattie did not ever have the chance to marry her true love. She would have made such a selfless and kind wife and mother. She is so thoughtful, considerate, circumspect and humble that I cannot imagine any egocentric fool not acknowledging her pristine spirit. All this and the novel is not too saccharine-sweet because Gaskell fills it with such good warm humor and a little bit of tragedy. It is just a perfect balance that makes it a delight to read. One other bonus: it's not very long, and it reads quickly, so if you need a good pick-me-up read, I would strongly recommend this one!

I also wanted to say that in previous posts I have complained about the impressionist approach to portraying characters. In truth, this novel is a bit impressionistic because it is narrated in first person by a narrator who could not possibly give us all the deep dark psychological explorations of characters that is the hallmark of Victorian literature I love. Well, I hope I am not biased towards this novel simply because it is Victorian, but I actually really enjoyed the impressionist approach here and felt that I did have great insight into the makeup of the several characters portrayed. As I said, it's a little bit of a light read, not your typical heavy and dark Victorian novel, but I found it utterly refreshing and enjoyable.

Cold Comfort Farm

Author: Stella Gibbons
First published: 1932
This edition: Penguin Books, 2006
pages: 233

I checked this book out of the library at the same time as Vile Bodies. The two were written around the same time, and I had the same hang-up with both books, which was that I could not relate to the characters. I must confess that my favorite type of novel is the long Victorian novel full of deep character analysis, in which I the reader am intimately aware of every fluctatuation of thought that inspires every action of the main character(s). Vile Bodies and Cold Comfort Farm were written around the same period as each other by members of the same society, and in my opinion they were both influenced by impressionistic ideals, in which little glimpses of the characters are given for the reader to draw his own conclusions about the character. Well, here are my conclusions about Flora Poste, the main character of Cold Comfort Farm.

I see Flora Poste as a twin for Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse. Just as Emma is self-absorbed, assigns herself "projects" wherein she meddles in others' lives, and ultimately realizes she loves the man who has been there all along waiting for her, so is Flora Poste self-absorbed, ridiculously meddlesome in others' lives, and slow to realize she loves her long-time friend. Jane Austen (rather famously) explained when she started writing Emma, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like," and it seems that perhaps Gibbons had the same thought when she created Flora Poste. Well, I actually like Emma Woodhouse (especially as portrayed by Romola Garai!), and I also find Flora Poste tolerable.

Lynne Truss explains in the introduction that Cold Comfort Farm was intended as a parody of the rural novels of Mary Webb, of whom I have never heard. Since I am not familiar with the subject of the parody, some of the humor is lost on me. However, that is not to say that the book doesn't tickle my funny bone in plenty of places. All in all, I enjoyed reading it, but I probably would not read it again, and if somebody asked if I would recommend it, I would say, "Watch the movie instead." Really, Kate Beckinsale turns Flora Poste into a charming, winsome little thing and I "got" the humor a lot better in the movie. Sorry if that makes me a lame English major, but it's true. :)

Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh

c1930, this edition from Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 1999

I have wanted to read this book for a long time, ever since I read A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh in a post-WWI lit class I took for my Master's. I loved reading A Handful of Dust, which was cleverly funny and kept a smile on my face throughout, even though it is definitely a dark comedy. For instance, there is a whole section of the book called "Hard Cheese on Tony," and I was so tickled by that title that I smiled through the whole section. I distinctly remember another member of the class being surprised when I asked the instructor if all of Waugh's books were this "funny," because she did not think the book was funny at all.

Well, fast-forward to two weeks ago when I finally checked out Vile Bodies at the library. I don't know if I wasn't in the right mood, or what, but this book, of which the New York Times claimed, "It might shock you, but it will make you laugh," did not do either for me. In the bio on Waugh inside the cover, an article from Time is quoted: "In fifteen novels of cunning construction and lapidary eloquence, Evelyn Waugh developed a wickedly hilarious yet fundamentally religious assault on a century that, in his opinion, had ripped up the nourishing taproot of tradition and let wither all the dear things of the world." It's pretty clear what Waugh is assaulting in this book - the young aristocrats in 1930s London who have nothing more to show for their existence than a nightly succession of drinking parties and meaningless conversation. The plot follows a group of wealthy, non-working twentysomethings from party to party. Two members of the crowd actually write their own gossip columns for different newspapers recounting the nightly exploits of this much-watched group of losers. It reminded me of young Hollywood "starlets" and how there is a constant watch on who is wearing what and who is dating whom. While the Younger Generation parties, the older crowd has a fancy dinner party where, "the topic of the Younger Generation spread through the company like a yawn. Royalty remarked on their absence and those happy mothers who had even one docile daughter in tow swelled with pride and commiseration. 'I'm told they're having another of their parties,' said Mrs. Mouse, 'in an aeroplane this time.' 'In an aeroplane? How very extraordinary.' 'Of course, I never hear a word from Mary, but her maid told my maid...'" (By the way, this is Mary's mother speaking, and Mary, unknown to her mother, is having a fling with the Maharajah of Pukkapore which is all the talk at this aeroplane party.)

I love to identify where titles come from, and here is the source of the title for this book: (Adam, the main character, is at a party with his girlfriend, Nina, and says,) "'Oh, Nina, what a lot of parties.' (...Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St. John's Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris -- all that succession and repetition of massed humanity...Those vile bodies...)." As you can see, Evelyn Waugh can clearly write.

So what is my problem with this book? I know exactly what it is...as I was reading the book I felt completely and utterly that none of the characters was real. That was the thought I kept having - there is no depth or human urgency to their lives, no emotion or feeling in their relationships, no conscience nor consciousness in their decisions. Like Adam thinks, they are nothing more than vile bodies. As I've gone back through the book, though, looking for quotes for this blog, I've seen that that is a theme of the novel, and now I'm dying to write a paper on it (this is where my neurotic English major kicks in!). So here's how I would lay out my paper: I would start with the quote Waugh uses to begin the novel, from Alice Through the Looking Glass: "'Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.' 'A very slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!' .... 'If I wasn't real," Alice said -- half laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous -- I shouldn't be able to cry.' 'I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt." Okay, you can already see the theme introduced here, with Alice's claim of being real and Tweedledum's accusation that she may not be. Then throughout the book many of the characters go by multiple names or identities, making it hard to decipher which is their "true"identity, which is real. Also, many of the characters in the book are confused about other characters' identities. For instance, There is an ex-Prime Minister who moves with this young crowd, and there is a constant discussion going on about whether he is still the Prime Minister or not. Also, Adam goes several times to visit Nina's father to talk to him about marrying Nina, and every time he goes there is great confusion about who Adam is and Nina's father always operates under the assumption that Adam is somebody other than who he really is. Ultimately, Nina and Adam go to stay with her father over the Christmas holiday, and the entire time Nina's father thinks that Adam is her husband, which he isn't.

Oh, now I'm dying to write a paper about this, and now I'm falling in love with the book! I could be an English student my whole life. If I wrote a paper now, who would read it?

First book review - The Member of the Wedding

I'm torn between the option to approach my new book blog as a place to brush up on my critical-theoretical-analytical skills and practice good writing techniques as I always coach my students to do, or the option to use my new book blog to write pure reading responses. While my brain wants to keep it academic, the truth of my life right now is that I am a work-at-home mom to a beautiful nearly-nine-month-old baby boy who demands so much time and attention that I don't really have more time for this blog than I can spare to jot a few lines in response to the books I manage to squeeze in to naptimes and after bedtime. In fact, I'm trying to keep him entertained in his high chair while I write this and he has just let me know that "ignoring baby" time is up. So hopefully I'll be back to finish my reading response to The Member of the Wedding, which I finished about fifteen minutes ago, just as naptime was coming to its cheery conclusion.

next day...

Baby is down for a nap, so I'll try to finish this post and then do what I should really be doing, which is grading papers. I have always wanted to read The Member of the Wedding because it was on my high school reading list when I was a junior. I picked it up at the library a couple of weeks ago when I couldn't find some of the young adult books I had on my list to read during the Dewey 24-hour readathon, which I wanted to do even though I did not have a blog at the time. The story is sort of a cross between To Kill a Mockingbird and the movie My Girl. It is about a 12-year-old girl named Frankie whose mother died giving birth to her and who has been raised by her father who has no idea how to raise a daughter. She is very precocious and scheming and entertains herself by writing "shows" that she forces her 6-year-old (boy) cousin to enact under the arbor in her backyard. This novel takes place over about a 48-hour period from the time she finds out her brother, on leave from the war, is getting married to the evening after the wedding.

Before finding out her brother is getting married, Frankie is lost and lonely, her best friend having just moved out of state and the other girls in town having formed a club and not invited her. The moment she finds out about the wedding, she attaches all of her adolescent emotions and imaginations to the wedding; she convinces herself that she is a third member of the wedding, and repeats to herself of her brother and his fiance, "They are the we of me." This idea of "we" is further discussed: "Yesterday, and all the twelve years of her life, she had only been Frankie. She was an I person who had to walk around and do things by herself. All other people had a we to claim, all other except her. When Berenice said we, she meant Honey and Big Mama, her lodge, or her church. The we of her father was the store. All members of clubs have a we to belong to and talk about." So for 48 blissful hours Frankie thinks she finally has her we -her brother and future sister-in-law. In the end, of course, they go on their honeymoon and she is not invited.

I can't say that I loved this book. Carson McCullers is known for her writing style, and it is lyrical, lilting, and enjoyable to read. The problem I had was that I could not relate to Frankie. She is very selfish and odd in a way that puts me off. The largest section of the book is a recounting of her escapades in town on the day before the wedding when she goes shopping for a new dress. She goes up to strangers and tells them that she is going to be part of the wedding and go on the honeymoon and never come back to this town. This was so odd and unnatural to me (that a 12-year-old would be telling perfect strangers this and believing it herself) that I could not relate to it. Also, not to give anything away, but as I discussed earlier the whole thing Frankie is looking for is a we to belong to, and there are two people who embrace and love her as we but she does not want them. In the end, something terrible happens, but the last line says that "with an instant shock of happiness, she heard the ringing of the bell" telling her that her new friend, the one who finally makes her part of a we is here to play. I was just really sad that she never recognized the other people who wanted her to be part of their we.

I love to make note of lovely lines, things I wish I could write, and I found this gem in The Member of the Wedding: "It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see. The world was too far away, and there was no way any more that she could be included."

I think this would be a fun book to read for a book club, because I would love to hear other perspectives on Frankie: I would love for somebody to give me a reason to love her.