Clarissa - May Post

I am shocked to say that I'm not only finished with the May reading of Clarissa, but I've actually already read some of the June entries! Do not take this to mean I'm enjoying myself though. I still want to bring Richardson's editor back from the dead and beat him with the bulky tome until he dies again. It's just so frustrating because I feel like there are kernels of a compelling story hidden beneath layers and layers of verbosity and repetitive letters.
I like where Richardson seems to be going. Women had it rough in the eighteenth century. If you were fortunate enough to be born to a gentleman, you would be completely controlled by him until he sells you off to whichever man makes the most business/political sense. Then you get to be controlled by him until one of you dies. If he dies, you might be able to be independent if you're lucky, but it's likely your estate will be entailed and given to a male relative. They might let you stay there. Or, you may have to marry again and repeat the process, or return home to your father, or go to a brother or another male relative, or maybe a sister or cousin and help with their children.
And if you're poor? Well, you get to work yourself to the bone, have a brood of children you can't afford, and spend most of your time caring for some richer person's family instead of your own.
But back to Clarissa. In the May letters, we see her life after she runs away with Lovelace and regrets her decision, not that she really decided to runaway, it just sort of happened. Now she's stuck because her virtue is destroyed because everyone assumes she's slept with Lovelace, even though she hasn't. She must marry him now or be alone forever, and she has no where else to go. However, she's realized she doesn't want to marry him and is hoping for a way out. 
Despite my complaints, I do think the story picked up steam this month when I look back at it, but it took nearly 200 pages to share what I summarized in a paragraph...and it's still going into June. June is the month with the most pages, so I'm hoping it picks up more. Then we start the downward slide with each month having fewer and fewer pages. I plan on finishing in October as November and December have only 16 and 6 pages according to JoAnn's reading schedule (I'm reading it on my Nook so I'm not positive how many pages are in my edition) and I'd rather just get it over with. If you want to the other crazy participants who are trying to make their way through Clarissa, check out JoAnn's page (although I think there are only about 5 or 6 of us left!).

Clarissa - Feb Post

Terri at Tip of the Iceberg and JoAnn at Lakeside Musing are co-hosting a Clarissa readalong if you want to join in - there's plenty of time to catch up!

The reading so far for Clarissa has been deceptively light. I'm afraid this is going to mean some heavy hitting months later in the year! That's one disadvantage to reading this on my Nook - I can't flip around easily to see how long each section is. Plus, the free public domain version I downloaded is in separate volumes, which is nice when looking at the smaller page count for each, but is again deceptive since that's only for one of nine volumes!

As for the actual letters, there wasn't much to read in February, but I think that did add to the story. Clarissa is blocked from sending or receiving letters to her friend and must find an alternate way to do so, and letter delivery would be slower then, so that adds to the realism of the reading the story this way.

One thing this month's letters made me question is how reliable a narrator is Clarissa? This is always an issue with epistolary novels. Do we believe everything our letter writers tell us? Is Clarissa's perspective true, or only true in her eyes? Is her family justified or even acting as horribly as she says, or is she writing them to be worse than they are because she's unhappy? We're told again and again of Clarissa's virtues, but that comes from her best friend. From having read Pamela, also by Richardson, I'm guessing that he wants us to take Clarissa's perspective at face value and believe her, but I tend to be more like Henry Fielding, who wrote a parady of Pamela, and want to think about what was more likely to be the case. This is probably why I prefer Fielding's writing to Richardson's, but oh well. Maybe after finishing Clarissa I will finally read Tom Jones!

Clarissa Update

I started reading Clarissa last year and found myself zipping through the pages on my Nook without really following the story. After nearly 200 pages, I realized I had no idea what was going on, so I stopped reading. This is one of the downsides of e-readers, for me. I'm so used to skimming when reading online that I tend to read that way on my Nook as well - I'm having to break that habit. It's also frustrating that I can't just skip back through the pages to wherever I started dropping off and read more carefully. So, I'm trying again with a year-long readalong. I think reading the letters on the dates they are addressed is helping me read more slowly and carefully. I've just finished the January letters and got the answers to the things that were confusing me. Whew! I'm actually a little sad that the next letter isn't until Feb. 20!

Terri at Tip of the Iceberg and JoAnn at Lakeside Musing are co-hosting the readalong if you want to join in!

Gulliver's Travels Part Four

We're at the end of our Gulliver's Travels read-a-long hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. If you missed out of the rest of the discussion, you can read about part one, part two, and part three before checking out part four below.

In part four, Gulliver travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms, who rational, talking horses. There is a mutiny on Gulliver's boat and the men decide to become pirates, but first they must get rid of Gulliver. When he first arrives on land, he meets the Yahoos, who are barbaric humans. He recognizes that they are human-like, but doesn't see himself as of the same species as them. When he meets the Houyhnhms, he imagines that the people who domesticated and trained these creatures must be infinitely rational and wise and can't wait to meet them. He soon discovers that there are no such humans, and the Houyhnhnms are the rulers here.

Here again Gulliver trades stories with the creatures he meets, telling them about England and they sharing their culture with him. The Houyhnhnms can't believe he's actually a rational creature capable of learning, much in the way that we would be shocked to discover a talking, rational horse. The Houynhnms are purely rational - no emotions rule their lands. They have no wars, no real problems except for the a occasional Yahoo, and they live to think. At first, this land seems wonderful, I always start wanting to live in such a place, a place without drama and stress. But as Gulliver continues living there, we discover there's also no love and true joy either. Gulliver doesn't see that and continues wanting to be a Houyhnhnm, but as a reader, we see that Swift isn't advocating for a strictly rational society. Would we really want to live in a world with arranged marriages made solely for the purpose of breeding the best children? To have strictly two children, and if another couple loses one of there kids and aren't able to conceive, to give your child to them and then have another for yourself? To have no real emotional attachment to anyone? Sometimes, such as after losing a loved one, we may be tempted to think that life would be better that way, but do I really wish I had never loved so that I might never feel pain?

Although most readers probably come to see that they wouldn't really want that kind of life, Gulliver does, and goes a little crazy upon finally returning home. He converses with his horses for at least four hours a day and can't stand to be too close to other humans, even his family. Clearly Swift isn't promoting that! Again, I think he's promoting moderation. Society needs a lot more rational thought, but at the same time you can't swing to far and remove common human decency and love from the equation. A purely rational focus can lead to things such as believing it's okay to kill people who are physically or mentally handicapped or simply people who aren't contributing enough to society.

Lest you think that part four is entirely heavy, there were a few quite funny bits. Swift really rails against lawyers and doctors in this section. About lawyers, he says their job is to argue that white is black and black is white. He provides an example of a neighbor who tries to lay claim to one of his cows. Gulliver says he can't argue that the cow is rightfully is and that the neighbor has no claim because the lawyers and judges would never go for that, so he must either pay the neighbor's lawyer to lose the case or argue that the cow actually belongs to the neighbor and that Gulliver wants to take it from him! He also says that once they've twisted something once, it's a precedent and is therefore easy to do in the future.

One last thing I found interesting about the Houyhnhnms is that they educate their males and females the same, and could not understand why we would not do so. "And my Master thought it monstrous in us to give the Females a difference Kind of Education from the Males, except in some Articles of D
Domestic Management; whereby, as he truly observed, one Half of our Natives were good for nothing but bringing Children into the World: And to trust the Care of their Children to such useless Animals, he said was yet a greater Instance of Brutality." Well said.

I hope you enjoyed reading along. I may have to start doing multiple posts for larger books. It made it easier to delve into everything I wanted to discuss instead of leaving half of the things out so as to not have never-ending posts. Of course, that would require more time, so that may not happen. We'll see!

P.S. If you subscribe to this blog in a RSS feed, I'm sorry if you got a nearly blank post earlier today. I was creating a few templates for upcoming posts and accidentally hit "publish post" instead of "save now." Look for the actual post on the Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence soon! Thank you!

Gulliver's Travels Part Three

Okay, I'm just a day late this time for part three of the Gulliver's Travels read-a-long hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. I'm slowly catching up, but I've been bombarded with e-mails from former co-workers and friends about my job change and have had lots of fun things to do like take a drug test and preparing for the new job. But it was quite nice to take a break a rejoin Gulliver on his travels.

A lot of critics talk about about how part three doesn't fit with the rest of the book and is sort of seen as a problem section. It is different from the others, but I love this part. All of the other three sections focus on a specific group of people. In part three, Gulliver travels to several different places and meets a variety of different people groups. I remember being enthralled with this section the first time I read because I had no idea what would happen next. I also feel like some of the things in this chapter are really creative. Flying islands, people trying to turn excrement into food (again with the crudeness!), immortals, visits to the dead, there's a little something for everyone.

Everything about the island of Laputa vividly stuck in my mind from the first time I read it. I think that's partly because I could identify with the people there while at the same time identifying with Swift's satire of them. The people there are highly intelligent and focused. They prefer to spend their time in thought, to the point that they forget about more practical matters. They have to have flappers to hit their ears when they need to listen and their mouths when they need to speak. They get so focused on their thoughts that they forget to interact with people. As someone who sometimes does that, I thought that section was hilarious because it was so familiar! But at the same time, I realize that's really sad, and quickly grew frustrated with them as they can't focus on anything practical. I hate it when people can't bring things back to practical matters at some point, and they were actually rather irrational. Their houses were falling apart and they couldn't grow food. I think Swift is partly saying here that everything needs to be done in moderation. Anything pursued to the point of everything else falling apart can't be good.

Also, the image of the flying island being able to crash down on the lands below to end any rebellions the people were plotting was quite striking. As I mentioned in the discussion on part one, this signified Swift's views on how England treated Ireland at the time.

I also like reading about the crazy experiments the Royal Academy was doing in Lagado. I thought all of the experiments were funny, like the one I mentioned earlier about attempting to turn excrement back into food, trying to turn ice into gunpowder, and building houses from the roof down. The absurdity of it all was amusing. But then I read that the Royal Society in Britain was doing similar types of research! Swift was mocking this reliance on experiments that clearly don't make any sense.

Finally, I enjoyed reading about the Struldbrugs and Gulliver's reaction to them. I've never wanted to have immortal life, and have never understood the desire in others. It was interesting to watch Gulliver go from excitement at the thought of meeting such educated and wise people to seeing the tragedy that is their lives. By the end, he actually wants to take a few back to England to use a reason for why we should not fear death.

I'll leave it at that and hope that some of these stories have inspired you to give Gulliver's Travels a try if you haven't read it before.

Gulliver's Travels Part Two

Well, it's almost time for part 3 of theGulliver's Travels read-a-long hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey and I'm just now writing about part one. I've had a crazy time personally, with both my husband and I looking for and accepting new jobs. I just turned in my resignation today and ugh, is that not a fun thing to do. I'm very excited about my new job though. However, all of the job searching, applying, interviewing, portfolio preparing, and stress has put a big dent into both my reading and blogging time. I hope to be a little more consistent soon, although settling into a new job will probably eat into some of that time too, especially since I will now have a longer commute. I'll be working downtown though, so I'm actually excited about that transition.

Anyway, on to Gulliver's Travels. Part two has Gulliver travelling to Brobdingnang, the land of the giants. It's a foil to the first part, so Gulliver goes from feeling like a giant to feeling like a Honey I Shrunk the Kids tiny person. It's interesting because he never changes, but others' perspective of him changes, which leads to a change in his own perspective.

The scene that always sticks with me from this section is rather crude. Gulliver is describing on of the giant women. He describes seeing a woman breast feeding with her six foot breast. Seeing the breast was so disgusting to him because he could see all of the imperfections and it just looked monstrous. I think it sticks with you because it's such a vivid image, and it's unexpected. Gulliver then goes on to say that it makes him think about his normal English ladies, and how they appeal beautiful because they are proportionate to him and therefore he can't spot all the tiny flaws in their skin for example, whereas the giants skin looks completely uneven, spotted with holes, and they smell gross. He then reflects on the fact that he found the Lillputians to be infinitely beautiful, probably because they were so small compared to him he couldn't see any flaws clearly. It's all about perspective. That also applies to how people treat him, with the Lilliputians viewing him as a weapon and the Brobdingnagians thinking he's a circus sideshow.

My favorite part of this section, however, is more political. Gulliver describes the politics and history of England, proud and boastful of his magnificent empire. The king of Brobdingnag thinks is laughable, at first because of his size and then because of his descriptions. After describing everything, Gulliver expects the king to be impressed, but instead he has several great quotes, including this one: "You have clearly proved that Ignorance, Idleness, and Vice are the proper Ingredients for qualifying a Legislator. That Laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose Interest and Abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them."

Um, how perfectly does that describe modern day America? America was still a colony at the time Swift wrote, and yet he nails it right on the head. Those are statements that are unfortunately true throughout history, through (probably) every country. Even those this is a negative example, this is one of the things I love most about reading. It's seeing how similar we are all, regardless of time and place. I also love reading about our differences, but the examples of sameness reminds me that we're all people. The Irish and English, the Protestants and the Catholics, the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians, they're all people.

Gulliver's Travels Part 1

I'm very excited about part one of the Gulliver's Travels read-a-long hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. Gulliver's Travels is one of my all-time favorite books. I first read it in college, then again while working on my Master's. At that time, I actually decided to focus on it and some of Swift's political writings for my thesis and did a done of research, but then decided to just do the test option instead of a thesis since I'd already written an undergrad thesis. I haven't read it since then, so I thought it would be nice to reread it while not in research mode.

If you haven't read it before, part 1 is the part you're probably familiar with anyway. It features Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians, the little people who think he's a giant. What surprised me so much the first time I read this is that it's not a kid's book at all, so it's weird to me that the story somehow has been turned in that. If that's your perception of Gulliver's Travels, you need to read the actual book. It's a satire about politics and while their are many references to early eighteenth century politics and relations between Ireland and England, many of the overall comments are relevant today.

As Gulliver watches these tiny people fight over things such as the proper way to break an egg or the height of their shoe, he laughs at them and their wars and power struggles and basks in his own superiority. But Swift wants us to think about how we're like the little people. I'm sure God sometimes can't believe the stupid things we humans fight about and laughs at our power struggles when He is clearly so much more powerful than we could ever hope to be.

He also notes that essentially the Lilliputians and Blefuscans are the same, and it's silly that they're fighting each other and trying to take over the other. The same thing was happening with Ireland and England at the time. Swift was born to English parents but was raised in Ireland, so he was right in the middle of the fighting and was a case in point that the English had no right to try to take over the Irish or feel superior to them in anyway. Then of course even within Ireland you had religious fighting between the Catholics and the Protestants, causing yet more problems.

And yet Swift didn't just sit by and suggest everyone sing kumbaya. He wrote highly satirical and offensive pamphlets, letters, and essays to stir up the Irish to throw off the shackles of the English and for the English to realize they should leave the Irish alone. He wanted to get people to the point where they could all leave each other alone. I think this is something a lot of pacifists miss. They tend to think that if they stop fighting, others will stop too. And while that may work in some instances, in many, it doesn't. Trying to get terrorists to stop fighting by leaving them alone doesn't work. Both parties have to be willing to stop before this works. I think that's what Swift was trying to do with this section. I think he demonstrated this when he had Gulliver lift all of the enemy ships of Blefuscu out of the water, showing them they didn't have the power to overtake Lilliput. Then when the emperor of Lilliput wanted to take that opportunity to turn Blefuscu into basically a province of Lilliput, Gulliver convinces him otherwise and helps orchestrate a peace agreement between the two.

I'm probably making this sound rather boring, aren't I? Well, Gulliver's Travels is quite funny. Even when you miss some of the references to things of the time period, there are plenty of things you will get. And Gulliver pees on her Imperial Majesty's palace to put out a fire. That's pretty funny. And gross and crude. Apparently dirty and body fluid related humor just never go out of style. There's also the part made famous in the kid's version, with the tiny people tying the giant Gulliver down, which is pretty funny. And parts 2, 3, and 4 all see Gulliver traveling to new and exciting places, so make sure to follow along for the rest of the read-a-long or check out the book for yourself. For more thoughts on part 1, remember to go to A Literary Odyssey.