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fictionadventurer · 20 days ago

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2024 Victober Wrap-Up

I spent October almost exclusively reading Victorian works. Mostly short stories and novellas, a couple of novels, one play. I even read several things I had planned to read (with several more surprise impulse reads).

The Rector by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Premise: The first short story in the Carlingford Chronicles. After fifteen years as a fellow at a university, a man takes on his first assignment as a parish priest, and learns he may not be as prepared for the work as he thought. My Thoughts: The beginning was rough, but as soon as the rector comes on the scene, it becomes surprisingly lovely. It reminds me just a bit of Elizabeth Goudge in how compassionately it explores the spiritual journey of a middle-aged man struggling to discover his true vocation.

The Executor by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Premise: The second short story in the Carlingford Chronicles, about man who becomes executor of a will that deprives a poor family of the inheritance they'd expected. My Thoughts: It's pretty dry and forgettable, though there are a couple sweet moments of the romance. Mostly useful as backstory for the next book.

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

Premise: A woman threatens to destroy the career of a morally-upright politician by revealing a secret about his past. My Thoughts: This play is about politics and a moral dilemma. Of course I loved it. I was surprised at how earnest (pun not intended) Wilde sometimes was about the material, while still throwing in a lot of characteristic humor.

The Doctor's Family by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Premise: Third story in the Carlingford Chronicles series. A novella about a doctor whose drunken brother returns from Australia trailed by his wife, children, and the wife's take-charge sister, whose devotion to the family interferes with her blossoming romance with the doctor. My Thoughts: Nettie is a fun character, but the story is so repetitive, with the same stupid obstacles coming up over and over, that it got very frustrating. The doctor did not deserve her.

The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Premise: A practical country doctor falls in love with a dreamy young girl whose expectations about life are shaped by the novels she reads. My Thoughts: I read the first few chapters, and I still love Braddon's style and her characters (especially the one who's a sensation novelist!) but I just couldn't motivate myself to keep going with it when there were so many other books fighting for my attention. I do plan to finish it.

A Dark Night's Work by Elizabeth Gaskell

Premise: It's a novella by Elizabeth Gaskell. What more do you need to know? My Thoughts: I wish I'd gone into this story blind, because knowing the twist that drives the story made the beginning much more stressful than it should have been. I really struggled through the first part of the story, but after about the halfway point, things started coming together, and I was riveted. I loved the characters (or loved to hate them). This features another of Gaskell's heavily flawed but loving fathers plus some sweet love stories and deliciously thorny plot twists. Not my favorite Gaskell, but a good read.

The Making of a Marchioness (alternately, Emily Fox-Seton) by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Premise: A penniless upper-class woman who has resigned herself to a life of singleness unexpectedly attracts the attention of a widower with a title. My Thoughts: In a month where I was feeling not-very-cheerful, the cheerful Emily was such a delight. Burnett always has such a wonderful blend of the romantic and the practical--the world can be beautiful and wondrous, but also has its sorrows and mundane concerns. Emily's situation is explored with a depth that means the story never feels like fluffy wish-fulfillment. The presentation of the Indian characters is very exoticized (even as the characters themselves are actively trying not to be racist) and melodrama gets just a bit over-the-top, but overall it was a sweet little book that makes me want to seek out some of Burnett's other adult novels.

A House to Let by Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Adelaide Ann Proctor

Premise: An elderly spinster moves to London and becomes desperate to learn why a house across the street never gets rented out. The framing story is written by Collins and Dickens, with short stories by Gaskell and Dickens and poems by Proctor inserted in between. My Thoughts: The framing story gives us one of Collins' delightfully vivid first-person narrators. Gaskell's story, "A Manchester Marriage", is far and away the best short story I've read by her, featuring excellent characters, a sweet love story, a heartwarming story about caring for a disabled child, a tragic twist, and one of the funniest proposal scenes I've ever read; this is now one of my favorite Gaskell stories and a highlight of my month. The Dickens story is kind of amusing in its weirdness, but not something I'd ever need to read again. The poems by Proctor were...there. The mini stories don't blend in well with the wider narrative, and the ending doesn't live up to my hopes for the beginning. Overall, a three-star (sometimes two-star) read with a five-star story by Gaskell.

Enoch Arden by Alfred Tennyson

Premise: A blank-verse story about a woman who marries a sailor and the troubles that result. My Thoughts: After I found an old pamphlet version of this poem sitting in a collection of handouts in a church, I just had go to my car and read the poem online. It's surprisingly readable, and a good story, but sad. (I still have no idea why it was in a church display).

Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy

Premise: A young Jewish man returns to London after a trip abroad and must choose between a burgeoning political career and his love for a poor woman. My Thoughts: This short book cemented Amy Levy as one of my favorite Victorian authors. While I was struggling through the wordy style of two of the later books on this list, her breezy, underwritten style was such a delight. She portrays family relationships with so much warmth and wit, and her style sometimes leaves me marveling at how she writes scenes exactly the way I would have written them. Judith was a marvelous character--I loved her family situation, her romance troubles, the internal journey she goes on. The religious element was surprisingly relatable, because it turns out this book isn't about Jewishness specifically (though there's a lot of cultural stuff in the first half of the book), but about secularism vs. tradition, and how cultures and people fail when they worship success and ignore intangibles. I've been thinking about certain scenes (the ballroom scene! the scene with her father! the callback at the ending!) ever since I finished. When I read these obscure old books, I almost never walk away thinking it deserves to be a classic. This deserves to be a classic.

A Struggle for Fame by Charlotte Riddell

Premise: Follows the different careers of a young man and young woman who leave Ireland to try to make it as writers in 1850s London. My Thoughts: A struggle to read. I loved the characters, the story, and the lovely descriptive passages. I was fascinated by the exploration of the Irish experience in England, and all the info about the Victorian publishing industry. But the writing style was so indirect that I was mentally diagramming sentences just to figure out what Riddell was saying half the time. The kind of book that I liked better when I wasn't reading it than when I was. Glad to have pushed through and finished it--the two stories came together in a lovely way.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Premise: A scientist builds a time machine and travels to a far future where humanity has massively changed. My Thoughts: Wells' ideas about human nature and how humanity will evolve are complete nonsense from a Christian perspective, of course, but as a story, I thought this was pretty good. Very imaginative and engaging, with some excellent sense-of-wonder scenes. Having mostly consumed time travel stories that take a fantasy approach, it was fun to see the characters discussing the concept scientifically. The maybe-romance weirded me out, but it made for a final line that almost made me cry from how beautiful it was.

No Name by Wilkie Collins

Premise: After their parents die, two sisters learn they have no legal right to their inheritance, and one sister plots to get it back. My Thoughts: The first section might be my favorite thing I've read by Collins. It's such a warm, loving domestic atmosphere with complex and sympathetic characters and one of the best sister relationships I've read. After the two sisters separate, it got less compelling. The narration distances us from the main character's POV, the writing style becomes ridiculously wordy (where he could say, for example, "she opened a window", he'll explain how she walked to the window, looked outside, considered opening it, walked away, walked back, put her hand on the sill, lifted the sash, etc.), and the villains are unpleasant to spend time with. But there are also some very fun characters, and I do love a good con, so I kept pushing through. The final section returned to that domestic atmosphere I loved from the first section, and it tied together so well that I am very fond of the book as a whole. There's something special about a sensation novel that gets you thinking, not about how contrived the author's plot twists are, but about the beauty of God's providence.

#victober #books #elizabeth gaskell #wilkie collins #charles dickens #amy levy #frances hodgson burnett #margaret oliphant #mary elizabeth braddon #charlotte riddell #h.g. wells #monthly reading lists

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fivekrystalpetals · 2 years ago

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Glen, Children of Misfortune, Juries and the Baskervilles

[When I say Glen, I am referring all Glens- past and present: Levi, Oswald, Gil and Leo. Hella lot of lore is here that I wanna write about ;-; so I might divide this into different posts let's see. Also fair warning: I might criticize Oswald's actions-past and present- a bit, since I love looking at characters from an unbiased pov. Also, maybe some characters' past actions in order to point to their character development so that too.]

[ Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ]

4] Oswald and Lacie

Truth be told, Oswald has always been “passive”. He doesn’t know what he really wants. He had already been training to become the next Glen (ref: Part 1) and it was drilled into his mind that he was to cast Lacie into the Abyss right from the beginning. He doesn’t question this rule.

Not even when Lacie hints that the purpose of the existence of a Child of Ill-Omen might not be what it is said to be (Retrace 101):

And his answer to this theory of hers is:

You are not crazy. If that’s the answer you came to, it is doubtlessly the truth for you.

That’s… that’s not the right response to it!!!

“The truth for you,” he says, basically responding: “Oh if what you say makes you happy, then so be it. But the truth is different.” (No! It is not!)

Why won’t he grasp at straws to save her if he loved her and cared about her? Why won’t he even try to research the possible truth of her words? Why won’t he at least make an attempt to stop the needless execution of his dear sister? Lacie has grown up beside him; what great ‘threat’ did she cause to the condition of the Abyss in all those years she was alive? But he doesn’t dare question any of it; he simply, quietly, “passively” goes ahead with what was asked of him.

[Whereas, in Retrace 91/92, it’s proven Lacie had been right all along. Nothing like Child of “Ill-Omen” exists and all of those lies had been set down as “rules” for the Juries’ selfish purposes.]

Again, I’d also, well not exactly excuse him, but, as Oz and Break say, there is always the chance that he couldn’t have known the truth about the Child of Ill-Omen. Not until after Lacie had died and perhaps, during his short stint as Glen, he must have come to realize that the Jury had more to do with this affair than met the eye, the reason why he brought along Vincent to the final Gate in the last Arc.

Okay, but this aside, his response to her every word is always so... resigned?

See, Retrace 72:

Why does Lacie have to be the one to do this? She is the sinner here, your prisoner due to be executed in five days; why would you ask something like this of her? If Oswald truly wanted Lacie to survive, he should have been the one to tell Jack everything and ask him to take her away with him if he can't protect her anymore. But he keeps quiet.

(He does regret this, in Retrace 101.)

I chose being the head of Baskervilles over being Lacie's older brother. And yet I did not drive Jack away, even after I realized how twisted he had become.

He is ruthless in some places, soft in some. Like if he was ruthless to Lacie, he'd have been the same to Jack as well. The reason he was not, because that was the only way he could be soft on himself and lessen his own guilt.

Continuing from there, (Retrace 73), Lacie is the one to apologize for being "too harsh on him" and then goes on to tell how she has never regretted being born with red eyes or living in this world. "I love this world," she says.

Okay, this is a panel of so many contradictions, you know. Oswald says Lacie is strong, but she disagrees and says she is "ten times more cynical than other people."

Both of them are wrong.

Lacie was neither strong nor cynical. She was scared. Yes, scared. Terrified. Lacie was terrified of dying, of being cast into the Abyss, so terrified that she woke herself up from nightmares of their first day at the Baskerville estate, of learning her fate from the Jury and Glen...

....just mere days before her execution: (Retrace 67/68)

I am going off a tangent to do a quick character analysis of Lacie (I will do a longer one later, but just this one aspect of her characterization) that both Oswald and Jack had the wrong impression of Lacie. Oswald assumed her to be so strong that she could shoulder the burden of loneliness and death all by herself. He assumed she didn't want to live any longer, that she had already seen so much and experienced all that the world has to offer that she no longer had any more worldly desires. In short, he saw her as some sort of motherly saint.

As for Jack, she is his Dream Girl to put it simply. At the most depressing and most vulnerable point of his life, when he chanced to meet such a vibrant girl like Lacie, he latched onto her for his life, absorbed every word she uttered, learnt the song she sang once on a whim and sang nothing but that for the next eight years. The casual advice she gave him as a turbulent, rebellious and frivolous teenager... okay, but, let's be real here. Lacie was simply spouting whatever came to her mouth atm in the name of 'advice'. She was passing time till her brother apologized to her and she'd be brought back home. She most probably didn't think Jack, being one of a kind, would accept her words so literally that he obeys them verbatim, even if he was disgusted by what he was forcing himself to do. He put her on a sky high pedestal that he was scared to even touch her lest she loses her "magic" in his mind. That's also the reason why he never questions her lie (her lie about the Succession Ceremony) because he was scared whatever image he had of her might shatter if he pressed on. (Yeah, I gotta write a longer post about Jack's and Lacie's relationship, bc it's one of the most fucked-up yet tragic, most hollow yet sincere relationships if ever there was one)

I guess, of all people, as sad as it is, only Levi got to see her at her most vulnerable? (Retrace 68):

Neither Oswald nor Jack have seen her like this—a scared girl, full of loneliness and regrets of not being able to live longer. And yet, when Levi casually mentions about her death in another five days, she grins as if she's looking forward to it. Which, in reality, is just a mask to cover her terror.

Why I am saying this is—as context for Oswald's line "I shall be lonely if you disappear" and her midnight walk later to the tree where the three of them used to hang out. Lacie says big things like I love this world, I love the Abyss, even when Levi asked her to assist his 'experiment', her only query was if the Abyss won't be lonely anymore,,, but she doesn't let her own loneliness or regrets to surface. She bottles up all of it. Why? Because she has to be strong for Oswald and pretend like she is taking all of this in stride to lessen his guilt.

Whereas Oswald does not ask her if she is alright. If she is lonely. If she is scared of being cast into the Abyss. If she wants to run away.

(In fact, if you see the hug, it's Lacie who is hugging Oswald in a comforting, motherly hug as if he's in greater need of comfort than her, because, of course, she must be completely, totally at terms with her Fate, right?)

In that regard, I am sure Jack would definitely have inquired after her if only he didn't place her on an otherworldly pedestal and realized things might go wrong with his Dream Girl too. Moreover and most importantly, Jack was kept in dark about most things connected to the Baskervilles and he had also promised not to dig too much if he was only allowed to meet Lacie. So I won't blame him for not pressing when she lied. He must have assumed it's Something Baskerville Ritual, not that it'd be something that'd directly affect his Lacie.

But Oswald is her big brother. Oswald knows everything about the Baskervilles. He is going to become the next Glen. Yet... he does nothing, asks nothing. Almost like Oswald had long given her up for dead. Like he can't do anything for her anymore whereas she is still alive and chatting right there with him.

He is always thinking of the days after she'd be gone, and never ever gives any thought to their present.

Remember Rufus Barma's words from Retrace 86 and I must agree:

You speak as if you've already given up.

Exactly. As I said in Part 1 of this long essay, Oswald was the full-fledged Glen when he cast Lacie into the Abyss. With the title of Glen, even if he simply brushes aside the rules and sets new ones for his reign, who could possibly question him? He had five black-winged chains of the Abyss in his possession. The Juries might protest,, but if Lacie is there, they can't do anything. They are scared of the Child of Misfortune.

Even Leo points this out correctly:

He is always waiting for someone with a stronger will to come help him out of problems he needs to solve on his own.

In his penultimate appearance, he finally, finally, takes a decision and drops his sword. He decides to not kill his sister a second time. And, immediately, people who have always cared for him (if only he ever gave them a chance) gather around him to assure him that he had done well, done enough.

Well, tl;dr, what I am trying to say is that Oswald should have stuck firmly to his decision whatever it was. If he had cast Lacie into the Abyss, then he should have dealt with the consequences appropriately. If he had stopped her execution, then he should have been strong enough to face off the Juries. Whatever his decision, he should have been thorough with it instead of being half-hearted, passive and resigned about everything.

Ending this loooong essay (;_;) on a funny yet interesting note (this omake from Vol. 19) which presents the kind of Oswald I actually wanted to see. The premise might be absurd but he, for once, drops his air of resignation and faces off the Glen himself for his sister, going to the extent of dropping formality and addressing him by his name lol

[ Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ]

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