:: jane austen & fanny price, ultimately ::

one thing I hadn't foreseen when I really started my whole webseries-junkie thing was how much they would actually make me read. (disclaimer: I do not say that watching a classic-derived webseries will make a non-reader read, nor would I recommend that method. like, so no way. and of course, I would never, ever, ever recommend watching instead of reading.)
   but for me, knowing and loving the classics that people modernize and film makes them that much more amazing when I watch the series. these are great characters, with great stories to tell, and they've lasted, beloved, for the exact reason people want to make a modern version: it has a truth that lasts through time.

   anyway, since the series always drags out when I'm following it real time, I end up forgetting little plot twists or wanting to know "was that in the book?" and I learned my lesson from emma -- you can't just skim to find the part you want. I started by skimming and got bogged down repeatedly: by parts I didn't remember, parts I loved and wanted to read again, and overall got lost in the book and couldn't find what I was looking for. I ended up reading straight through and loving it all over again. so when I sat down last week (FIRST WEEK OF FREEDOM HOLLA) to read my long-neglected mansfield park, I sat down to read straight through -- and I did. and it was delightful.

   I think I've only read mansfield once or twice before. I remember thinking jane austen was getting a little too tired in this one, because it was super-predictable without the sparkle of character that her other (similarly predictable) books had. and she also seemed to tire of the story all of a sudden, like, SPOILERS "hijinx, misunderstandings, long sad look from fanny, totally unrealistic clueless reaction from edmund, bla bla bla, detail detail detail...... and then they fell in love and got married and yay the end." END SPOILERS expecting this, I was pleasantly surprised to realize the depth of character that fanny (in particular) develops over the course of the story. the ending wasn't nearly so brushy-off as I'd remembered and there was one passage in particular that I found adorable and had missed my other peruses-through. (more on that later.)

  everyone of course knows jane austen is a classic author; we were all assigned pride & prejudice in high school, right? but I suppose I had never thought about what exactly made her works classics. having just finished thomas foster's how to read literature like a professor, I've been viciously looking for deeper meanings and symbols, and it was this passage that really struck me -- I don't think of older authors as being so subtle and yet so blatant. here, somehow, the depth seemed almost modern, or at least not the witty-&-light-social-commentary I stereotype her.
   and of course the more I thought about it, the more things occurred to me, so I ended up considering austen's whole social agenda here and I touched on that below, as well. I have never been a very organized writer. obviously.

(to catch you up: basically all the main characters are at sotherton, the rushworth's family property, for a day of hard partying [lol jk]. fanny price, edmund bertram, and mary crawford have split from the rest of the group -- "the rest" being maria and julia bertram, mr. rushworth, and henry crawford -- to take a walk through the woods. julia gets stuck talking to mr. rushworth's obnoxious mother; meanwhile, fanny gets tired and edmund and mary promise to be back soon, but they want to explore a little farther [to resolve a rather flirtatious debate]. she's left waiting on a bench for a long time, when the other part of the group [maria, mr. rushworth, and HC] show up. they want to go through a locked gate to another part of rushworth's property; he leaves to get the key. maria and henry have a conversation. I'm going to assume your familiarity with the relationships and dynamics between the characters.)

Miss Bertram began again. "You seemed to enjoy your drive here very much this morning. I was glad to see you so well entertained. You and Julia were laughing the whole way."
   "Were we? Yes, I believe we were; but I have not the least recollection at what. Oh! I believe I was relating to her some ridiculous stories of an old Irish groom of my uncle's. Your sister loves to laugh."
   "You think her more light-hearted than I am."
   "More easily amused," he replied, "consequently you know," smiling, "better company. I could not have hoped to entertain you with Irish anecdotes during a ten miles' drive."
   "Naturally, I believe, I am as lively as Julia, but I have more to think of now."
   "You have undoubtedly -- and there are situations in which very high spirits would denote insensibility. Your prospects, however, are too fair to justify want of spirits. You have a very smiling scene before you."
   "Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally I conclude. Yes, certainly, the sun shines and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. I cannot get out, as the starling said." As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate; he followed her. "Mr. Rushworth is so long in fetching this key!"
   "And for all the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth's authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited."
   "Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way and I will. Mr. Rushworth will be here in a moment you know -- we shall not be out of sight."
   "Or if we are, Miss Price will be so good as to tell him, that he will find us near that knoll, the grove of oak on the knoll."
   Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong, could not help making an effort to prevent it. "You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram," she cried, "you will certainly hurt yourself against those spikes -- you will tear your gown -- you will be in danger of slipping into the Ha-Ha. You had better not go."
   Her cousin was safe on the other side, while these words were spoken, and smiling with all the good-humour of success she said, "Thank you, my dear Fanny, but I and my gown are alive and well, and so goodbye."

in light of what happens later in the story, I was astounded at the parallels. just a few sentences later, julia shows up alone, frustrated at being left behind, and follows the two around the gate, another suggestive incident (yates, anyone?).

(note, there will be PLOT SPOILERS in abundance below. you've been warned.)

I don't think this passage needs much explanation, but I am going to explain anyway point out some things I found interesting.
   this is a blatant foreshadowing of maria's affair/elopement with henry later on. mr. rushworth (I keep wanting to call him rory x)) shows up very soon after this passage with the key -- the key, the enabler for the freedom that maria wanted, if only she'd waited. would it have been as sweet to her? of course not: maria wants the popularity and power that comes with being rich and beautiful, but she doesn't want the side affects of the path she's choosing -- in other words, marriage, and to mr. rushworth. she wouldn't ever have waited for his key, because what she wants is freedom to do what she wants (she's just like henry that way). it's not the gate itself, nor is it even marriage, but the societal rules for what a woman is supposed to be and how she is to behave that maria wants to avoid.  
 
   this incident also proves fanny's judgment in disliking henry. throughout the story, she doesn't like what she sees in him, but she can't ever come up with a solid example; because it's all like this. fanny "[feels] all this to be wrong" but can't quite put her finger on it, because they aren't really doing anything wrong, exactly, but it's the underlying principles (or lack of them) that she senses. and of course when they actually run away together -- bypassing the now-figurative gate of marriage and sex and fidelity and socially accepted boundaries -- they are doing something wrong, and fanny's earlier doubts are proved correct. though maria ends "alive and well," perhaps her gown had trouble, when her reputation is unsalvageable by the end of the book.
   nor does it need much highlighting that maria is banished from society, while henry... nothing. henry's punishment "should in a just measure attend his share of the offence [sic]," austen points out, but comments that "in this world, the penalty is less equal than could be wished;" henry receives no real societal censure. this double standard probably had implications for austen's writing: men of course could publish things, but single women? that wasn't so acceptable.
   in a way, I think austen pitied maria. she is in a box, unable to be anything other than a woman under her father or a woman under her husband. she goes about getting out of that box the wrong way, but that doesn't make her situation less difficult. austen also found another way, but I imagine it wasn't easy for her, either.

   though maria scorns fanny's prudish, fearful notions, it is that exact prudence that keeps fanny herself from falling when henry starts paying attention to her. fanny, on this other hand, doesn't do anything 'exciting' and may be considered a doormat, because she waits. she waits for edmund to come back; she waits for him to return her horse; she waits for him to ask her, to tell her, to talk to her, to help her; she waits to be invited, waits to be told what to do... but fanny is not afraid to speak up for what she believes is right (evidenced here in a small way).
   whether fanny's pale quietness is your style or not, you can't argue that her waiting doesn't eventually gets her what she wants. by the end, fanny price has come into her own: recognized as virtuous, beautiful, worthy, she outstrips all the other females of the story as a paragon of all that's good -- worth more, even, than edmund, a man, who was blinded by love as fanny was not. edmund becomes fanny's key (as writing became jane austen's?) and this quiet heroine proves her strength, by waiting, in eventually becoming more: more desirable, more respected, more happy than the other, more boisterous females. perhaps even than the other males.
    I think jane austen has made her point.      

:: and what happened after (chs. 52-53) ::

truth be told, the last two chapters of oliver twist seem like an epilogue to me. the wrap-up is really in the few chapters before (see last post. I have reasons for my titles), and these last two are just and-here's-what-happened-to-everyone-after-they-calmed-down-a-little.
 
chapter fifty-two is called "the jew's last night alive"; well, um, yeah. that pretty well sums it up.
   I know it could seem like why do we care what happened to fagin at his trial? he's going to die for his crimes, and that's good, but so what? I also know I was going to try to read this as if it were my first time; but you know, that's so hard and I kept seeing new things in the book all because it was my second time through. ...sooooo, knowing the essentials of the chapter meant I could focus more on the writing (which is amazing and descriptive and powerful and I loved it!). it really brings together the themes of dark versus light that -- I realized -- have been there throughout the book.
   yes: the 'darkness as death/life and goodness as light' idea is painfully obvious and I would look smart and literary if I picked something a little more subtle. life/death, light/dark... original, right? this isn't one of those 'universal' themes you find in, like, every good book, you know? you've never read any other books with those themes going on, have you? *coughcough heartofdarkness lordoftherings crimeandpunishment coughcough* nope! didn't think so!
   however, universal doesn't have to mean trite and clichéd and stupid; I mean, it's universal, so we can all obviously relate in some way, or such international writers wouldn't pick up on it by themselves (polish joseph conrad, english j.r.r. tolkien, russian fyodor dostoevsky). 
   
   some very general outworkings of this theme that I noticed: 
   most of the evil that occurs is done under the cover of darkness. when sikes kills nancy, he tries to get away from the light -- "[The sun] lighted up the room where the murdered woman lay. It did. He tried to shut it out, bit it would stream in. If the sight had been a ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now, in all that brilliant light!" oliver, when recovering from his injury at the housebreaking, recoups in the spring and summer; all things are "glad and flourishing" and the countryside is "steeped in sunshine". now, fagin is condemned to death, and he both longs for and dreads the light: longs, because the dark is oppressive, evil -- but the light means he is all the closer to death.

        To be hanged by the neck, till he was dead -- that was the end. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead. As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold; some of them through his means. They rose up, in such quick succession, that he could hardly count them. ... Some of them might have inhabited that very cell -- sat upon that very spot. It was very dark; why didn't they bring a light? The cell had been built for many years. Scores of men must have passed their last hours there. It was like sitting in a vault strewed with dead bodies -- the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces that he knew, even beneath that hideous veil -- Light, light! ... [several pages omitted] ... Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude had already assembled; the windows were filled with people, smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, and joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the centre of it all -- the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.

chapter fifty-three: in which everyone lives happily ever after but the bad guys. hooray!
   one note on charley bates's new leaf: I was all for him when he tries to turn sikes in. if I don't think about it too hard, it doesn't seem utterly sudden, unexpected, and out of character (quite as it would be if it were the artful, or something).
   and everyone else is exactly what you'd think. 

        It is a standing and very favourite joke, for Mr. Brownlow to rally [Mr. Grimwig] on his old prophecy concerning Oliver, and to remind him of the night on which they sat, with the watch between them, waiting his return; but Mr. Grimwig contends that he was right in the main, and, in proof thereof, remarks that Oliver did not come back, after all: which always calls forth a laugh on his side, and increases his good humor.

so we come to the last pages of oliver twist. 

        I have said that they were truly happy; and without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.  

:: on reading well ::

I have been thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know).

        I mainly read fiction. most of it old and "classic," but it's still fiction. that's not to say that fiction is useless or can't be good or won't teach you anything worthwhile about life (I think there is great benefit in reading [good] fiction. that is why I do it); but there is so much non-fiction out there that I haven't read, merely because... well, I'm lazy. I think about what I've already read, and I'm complacent. I feel sort of above other people who "don't like to read" or "think dickens is too complicated" and I'm like, oh yeah, do you want me analyze that passage for you? (pride is a separate problem of mine, which I do not feel I need to go into at this moment.)

        

        anyway, these amazing non-fiction books that I haven't read -- because they sound boring or I just don't want to -- are wide horizons that I have not explored, and I'm pretty undereducated in that (huge) category. I definitely had to read other-than-fiction in school, but I never pursued it farther, and I think I need to push myself in that direction. reading more non-fiction will develop the diligence and perseverance I sorely lack; it will make me a rounder person; and it will further educate me. I mean, I'm already intrigued by malcolm gladwell, so it can't all be that bad. 

        these are things I've been thinking about the past few weeks, really feeling the need to branch out a little, and then reading walden I found this. (have I mentioned I really like thoreau?)

A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; -- and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the "little reading," and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins [sic]. 

         THIS IS TRUE. I've actually noticed how some books make my thoughts expand, how I connect more the more I read, and it really has affected how I perceive the world. this is why I love reading. I love the intellectual exchange in my head, between the author and the characters and me: how it makes me consider myself, my life, draw on their (albeit imaginary) experience, live somewhat vicariously through them, and get a different perspective on living. so how much am I missing by ignoring whole genres of books where the author speaks directly to me without the facade of characters? I think I like walden because of thoreau's thought process and reasoning; so I've deprived myself of stretching and exercising my mind because I am just too lazy to exert myself. (I immediately recall my psych book on the brain: "use it or lose it." what have I done!) 

        lately I've fallen in love with learning ("what 12th grade taught me" you might say), and this just inspired me to learn more. seriously, who ever regretted gaining knowledge, insight into the world and the human condition? has anyone ever said, "I wish I'd spent less time learning and more time entertaining myself"?

        I want to expand my reading material and enrich my mind: process and think and grow. 

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

sure, that means it's work. but I think you get out of it what you put into it. 

:: a passage discussion - in which I discuss a passage ::

you know the code that every kid thinks he came up with, and then discovers how, actually, everyone else thought of it, too -- "a=1, b=2," and so forth? well, I think it was originally shakespeare who came up with that, but he wasn't sure it would work. "2b, or not?... 2b... *frustrated sigh* that is the question." 
     all right. haha. probably, though, everyone who natively speaks english – and a few who don’t – would recognize shakespeare's most famous soliloquy’s famous opening words.
     go on. guess. 
     oh right. you’re a literature nut, too.

     today I’m going to air my doctorate in shakespeare (hahahaha‼ that made me laugh really hard‼!). honestly, I could easily come out of this looking dumb and painfully obvious. but it’s shakespeare, peoples, and it’s hamlet, so I think it’s worth it. nor am I going to point out his amazingness (we must be subtle about these things). 

to be or not to be, that is the question…

     *if you really don’t know the story of hamlet, prince of denmark, shame on you should go read it. if that just isn’t possible (i.e. you are a blind, deaf, mute person) you probably won't get it. oh well.* 

     at this point in the play, hamlet is debating -- die, or live? he asks, “whether ‘tis nobler in the mind, to suffer” or “to take arms against a sea of troubles”; in other words, is it better  -- basically -- to writhe through life in torment under the fusillage of troubles it showers on you, or -- basically -- to kill yourself in and because of those troubles?
    he first decides it would be better to die, to just forego his tribulations and end it all. death is nothing but sleep – “and by ‘a sleep’ to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”. when we die, he says, we merely rest in peace, unbeset by those “thousand natural shocks” that all people commonly bear. isn’t that the perfect solution, then -- the “consummation devoutly to be wish’d”? -- but wait, there’s more!
     *aside! (<theater pun, hahaha! ahem.) hamlet -- if you have ever, are, or will read(ing) the play --, prince of denmark, is a serious recapitulator. he decides. he rethinks. he changes his mind. it’s kind of his downfall, I guess, b…ut this isn’t about the play or even hamlet himself, and I’m getting kind of off-track.*
     “To die, to sleep,” he repeats. it strikes him differently this time. “To sleep – perchance to dream!” aye. there’s the rub. if the allegory is continued, sleep contains dreams; nightmares. this gives him pause. is it wise to die, to go into the unknown? 
     men choose to live long for even small material reward -- “the respect that makes calamity of so long life” -- because who would want to live and suffer so much (here follows a long list of bad things you could encounter in life: aging, 'thralldom', humiliation, rejection, etc. etc.) for nothing? “Who would fardels bear” (fardel: burden, load) “to grunt and sweat under a weary life…?” -- oh, don’t you just love the words? don’t you feel like you’re sweaty and exhausted from a hard day’s work just reading it? -- and he’s right. if life is nothing but toil, why not quit…
     “…but that the dread of something after death”. 
     the truth is, we don’t know what happens when we die.
     take that back. that’s not really the truth. being a christian, I do know what happens when we die, and if you’re curious what I believe, I am more than happy to tell you. but here, it’s hamlet who doesn’t know where we go when we die, and he’s afraid. you can go to Death, “that undiscovered country”, but you can’t return. ((vocabulary enrichment time‼ go look up ‘bourn’ if you don’t already know what it means. 15 my-vocab-rocks points for you! yes, this means you should have the soliloquy open next to you, reading this and that parallel-ly.)) 
      this dilemma, namely ‘live in toil and trouble fire burn and cauldron bubble’ vs. ‘die uncertain of what happens next’, “puzzles the will”; it’s confusing; you aren’t sure what you want to do. and often, he (perhaps ruefully?) states, this confusedness makes us rather live with the known than go to the unknown: “makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.”
      he knows he’s an over-thinker. he suspects himself of cowardice; with his rethinking, second-guessing, and back-pedaling he's convinced himself to live. disgustedly, he says, “Thus” – all this ridiculous, cross-purposed thinking – “conscience does make cowards of us all”. 
      I’ll sum up what he ends with. we are so scared of what comes after death that we convince ourselves to live and don’t do what we are supposed to do: make up our mind and follow it, pick decisively and emphatically. in this sickly way, we miss opportunities … becoming dull, sedentary beings who can’t even act.
      now I’ll let hamlet finish. ((…and thanks for reading!)) 

Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus, the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o’er with a pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith* and moment, 
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

*I’ve also heard ‘pitch’. but my edition says ‘pith’. so that’s what I’m going with.