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kvotheunkvothe · 6 years ago

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What the Fuck Am I Reading: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

So this is the first and only book I’ve read by Anne Brontë. I’ve read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and had heard Anne’s books aren’t very good. Well, I’m happy to report that whoever told me that is a goddamn liar. I’d rank this at least on the same tier as Jane Eyre (my previous Brontë favorite), if not higher. Not only is it well-written, but hot damn is it raw. The basic premise is about a lady with a young son who previously had an absolutely terrible marriage learning to love and trust again. And Anne does not shy away from describing just how shitty her husband was. In some ways I think I’m glad I came across this book somewhat later, so I have more life experience just to appreciate this book. But on the other hand, I can’t believe I slept on it for so long. I have a lot to say about this, so buckle up.

Let’s start with Gilbert Markham, the new love interest whose POV bookends the narrative. He’s the one who introduces the reader to the titular tenant, the widow Mrs. Helen Graham. Gilbert is a bit excitable, but he has a good heart. He’s hardworking and honest and he refuses to listen to idle rumors. He starts off a little offput about the new tenant of Wildfell Hall because she’s pretty forthright and standoffish, but eventually he’s head over heels for her. And it’s pretty adorable how he tries so desperately to get to know her. He’s sweet with her kid, he’s interested in her paintings, and he’s basically always trying to find ways to spend time with her. As I said, however, he’s a bit excitable: after shooting down all kinds of people idle gossiping that it’s suspicious that the widow’s young son looks a bit like her landlord (Lawrence), he also kind of knocks Lawrence off of his horse. Finally, Mrs. Graham tells him she just can’t be with him, and she gives him her diary to explain why.

And oh boy does it explain things. So her prior husband was just... the biggest shit. He was a heel. A cad. An absolute self-centered fuckboy. She had known he didn’t run with a good crowd before marriage, but she was hopeful she could be a good influence. But this asshole and his shitty friends just appear to delight in vice. He goes off for months at a time--which eventually becomes something of a mercy--just living it up with his bachelor friends, and then he finally comes home sick as a dog for her to nurse back to health. He’s not really physically abusive: he beats his dogs and once threw a book at the dog that also hit Helen (which pleased him), but mostly it’s emotional, verbal, and economic abuse. He actually calls her a slut at one point. I couldn’t fucking believe my eyes--this book was written in the mid-1800s, and this is a good Christian woman being called a slut by her own husband, in her own home, because he didn’t like being told to stop drinking like a fish. Like, I don’t doubt people were just as shitty back then, but I’ve never read a book from the time that is so explicit about it. He ends up having an affair, and when she literally catches him in the act (IN THEIR OWN HOME), he just acts petulant and just whines that she wants to separate (he refuses, and is pissy she’s like “well, we’re going to live as strangers in this house, then”). The husband’s little side-piece emotionally blackmails her into not telling the other wronged spouse (who is a good dude), because the truth would devastate him. The husband’s “friends” are also all pieces of shit. They all get together, pour liquor down the young son’s throat, and teach him to disrespect his mother. Another of her husband’s “friends” keeps trying to get under her skirts, no matter how many times she rebuffs him, reasoning that he can “save” her from her marriage and that since her husband’s cheating on her, she might as well. One time he physically won’t let her go, and when all the other men convene on the scene, her husband starts calling her vile names and insinuating that she’s the adulterer in their relationship. She has to rely on the shitty “friend” to admit she’s never given in to his advances. At a certain point, Helen feels like she’s just fucking had enough, and she starts painting like crazy to sell off enough that she can make an escape with her boy. Of course her husband finds out, steals all her money, and basically laughs at her. God he made my blood boil. I wish every fucker who claims to want to go back to the “good old days” when women were financially dependent on their husbands, didn’t divorce, and lived “good Christian lives” could read this book and see just how fucking few resources women used to have when they were trapped with monsters.

Spoilers for the rest of the book because I want to talk in some detail: So, essentially, the husband wasn’t actually dead this whole time. Surprise, surprise. The breaking point came when the shitlord hired a “governess” to look after the kid, over Helen’s objections. When she finally had proof she was there to be the husband’s mistress, Helen has just had it. She escapes with her little boy and takes refuge with her brother, Lawrence (which is why her little boy looks a little like him and why they had such a close relationship that created all that gossip). Shortly after Helen gives Gilbert her diary, she makes him promise not to see her again so as not to tempt her to break her vows. However, he is allowed to write to her in another 6 months. He’s devastated, but agrees. Then she leaves suddenly because her shitty husband has taken extremely ill. Gilbert reads about her nursing the shithead husband through letters she sends to Lawrence. Eventually, luckily, he does actually die. Gilbert’s in something of a bind, though: he doesn’t want to write to her immediately, both because the six months aren’t quite up and because he doesn’t want to be a vulture. But then she goes back to live with her aunt, and he doesn’t have the address and is too nervous to ask her brother for it (recall he kind of knocked Lawrence off his horse, and he gets the impression Lawrence wouldn’t really favor the match--also, okay,this is hilarious: at one point when he’s at Lawrence’s sickbed pining after Helen he’s like, “Lawrence’s slender white fingers are so much like hers!”--like, omg, Gilbert, no, it’s no wonder Lawrence isn’t your biggest fan). Because Helen doesn’t write to him, he kind of assumes she’s uninterested. But when he hears gossip she might be getting married to the shitty “friend” who kept harassing her when she was married, he pretty much drops everything to rush over and basically do a church-house confession of love. Luckily, it wasn’t actually her getting married. But he’s kind of like, “well, hell, I might as well track her down, then.” So after checking at her late husband’s house--learning both her aunt’s address and that she inherited her husband’s whole estate--he sets off to find her. When he’s nearly to his destination, the other passengers tell him, “oh, by the way, all these lands we’re passing through belong to some widow lady, whose uncle also died.” By the time he gets to her aunt’s house--now technically Helen’s house by her uncle’s will--he’s like “oh no wonder she didn’t write, she is SO out of my league and rich, now, I’d just be a bother” and he almost turns right back around, except he’s spotted and invited in. Their reunion is kind of adorable. Like, she ends up plucking this winter rose and saying, “it’s a little battered by the elements, but you can have it,” and he’s kind of hesitating when trying to think of the best thing to say. So she throws it out the window, like “okay, fine, but just so you know, that was kind of a metaphor for my life,” and he’s like, “NO, I UNDERSTOOD THAT, WAIT” and literally jumps out the window after it. So they work things out, and set a date, and Gilbert of course loves her little boy like he was his own, and I guess they live happily ever after. Spoilers end.

So, why was this such a good book? Well, of course it was well-written, but I think also it’s mostly because it was so unflinching. It was an emotional journey, reading about Helen’s life ambitions being slowly ground down, only to find some hope afterwards. It’s a bit preachy at times, since Helen basically only had her religion to sustain her over a number of traumatic years. But it’s also got some fairly progressive ideas about gender equality and the dangers of letting men have so much control over their wives and children. Gilbert’s chapters provided some much-needed levity to a fairly serious topic. Helen’s quite level-headed, so it was amusing as hell when you get to Gilbert and he’s throwing himself over hedges and bounding over hills and taking off on wild carriage rides. He also tells people off when they’re just being gossips and busybodies. His first impression of Helen is that he thinks she thinks he’s like an impudent puppy--and like, is she wrong?

Ultimately, I loved this book. If you have the time, I highly recommend it.

#what the fuck am I reading #the tenant of wildfell hall #anne bronte #book review

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years ago

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5 Harsh Truths That Will Make You Less Of A Jerk

Humanity is principally defined by its is no way to seize the obvious. So, let me ask you this TAGEND

What is the most obviously wrong shit that beings feel on a daily basis that — wait for it — you too believe ?

I’m talking about something that you know on an intellectual level is incorrect, but five minutes after being reminded of it, you forget again. If you can’t think about one, well, I gamble I can. And it comes back to burn you in the proverbial ass method more frequently than you think …

# 5. We Are Privately Sure Everyone Feels The Same Pleasure And Pain

When you’re a toddler, you acquire everyone and everything in your world are similar to you. That’s why you used to think your thrust animals get lonely if you didn’t play with them and that your parents would love your cartoons if they would just give them an opportunity. It’s a normal chapter of a kid’s proliferation and as this much smarter guy points out, we never certainly germinate out of it.

I mean, you probably recollect being a boy and hearing an amazing new song that shaped you want to punch-dance through a brick wall … and then you played it for a couple sidekicks and they just got that gross look on their faces. You know, the watch of nervously pretending to enjoy something loathsome? What follows is more awkward three minutes of your life, during which you find yourself going steadily angrier( “Why are they claiming not to like it? ” ). But eventually, you grow up and realize that not everyone likes the same things.

Years afterwards, you get the flu but ability through production anyway, rather than miss season. Then, a co-worker catches it and takes three sick daytimes. You roll your eyes and announce him a pussy, automatically assuming that the two of you two are find exactly the same indications, but that one of you was tougher.

The obvious concept you’ll be missing is that standing is at least as subjective as music. Hell, discipline even is indicated that redheads tend to feel more ache than everyone else, due to a genetic quirk. It appears that it’s the same for women, due to how pain signals are communicated to the girl intelligence. Meanwhile, people from colder parts of the world literally stop feeling the cold the method the rest of us do. Some beings almost never appear fear — not due to firmnes, but due to a collapse of certain types of contacts in the intelligence( they’re called sociopaths ). All of the hotshots that motivate us to haunt specific actions and avoid others actually feel totally different from person to person.

She can snow angel for hours on end, but needs an ER trip and three months of rehab after a snowball engage .

You’ll shrug and say, “Of course, everyone known to be, you turdthinker, ” but five minutes after reading such articles, you’ll act in a way that substantiates you don’t. I’ve had fit acquaintances get annoyed with me when I say I’ve never experienced the “runner’s high” euphoria that comes with hard exercise. They say it’s because I’m not pushing myself hard enough, while science says some people are just physically incapable of appearing it. So, are my friends fit because they’re more dedicated than I am, or do they just enjoy the “high” of employ? They clearly want the former to be true. My thin acquaintances don’t like to admit that there’s a hormone that moves you starving and that some people simply have more of it.

That’s because formerly you accept the idea that it rightfully would feel completely different to live inside another person’s form, everything changes. After all, at what point can you safely accuse person for, well, anything?

# 4. We Don’t Realize The Battle Inside

I know what you’re saying. I ever know. “Oh, so you’re one of those buttholes who say nothing is anybody’s blame, because those poor souls are helpless to refuse their caprices? So, when somebody tortures a child to fatality, we’re supposed to give him a hug and say he couldn’t used to help? Is that it, butthole? You are the hole of a butt.”

No! You altogether are defined by how good of a position you do opposing your pernicious exhorts and overcoming hurting. Maturation is an issue of getting better at it; success is an issue of mastering it. Beating back the urge to procrastinate, to cease, to be lazy … that’s how you reach the top, child! Buy my notebook !

But …

You know that person at the part who’s ever furious? He blew up last month because soul lost an invoice. Last Christmas, he lost his shit because he thought somebody stole his lunch out of the fridge. You check him throw his outbursts and marvel at how immature he is. After all, you get angry, very, but you ensure it! Hell, you’ve had people plagiarize your lunch tons of periods, and you’ve never kicked a trashcan so difficult that it left a dent and realise the secretary cry.

Sure, you’ve fantasized about shitting in the culprit’s yogurt and blaming it on the apprentice, but you’ve never actually done it .

However, here’s the thing: From your outcome, he’s “always” angry. From his culminate, he’s had two blowups spread across several months and, in between those incidents, he successfully resisted the recommend to explode 162 experiences . His anger urges come more frequently than yours, and he experiences them more strongly. For him, every “normal” day is the result of a hard-won duel … but, you merely see when he loses. He find himself as the hero of his own life, battered and bruised by his personal demons. You envision him as a ridiculous manchild who loves to discover himself yell. You detest his unstable, feelings ass.

Or, you witness the space your depressed sidekick goes residence from operate and immediately clangs on the sofa, refusing to go out or do anything recreation. You dislike the acces she merely … affords up and refuses to even talking here it. Invisible to you is the merciless attempt she exerted precisely to make it through wreak. So, you get annoyed. Or, you find your marriage “feel like i m cheating on” you. You didn’t investigate all of the dozens of hours he had the exhort and fought. You merely encounter the moment he lastly demonstrated in. And you want to fucking kill him for it.

Basically half of all country music jobs are started this way .

And because you exclusively established up in the consequences of the these combats, they believe your grumbles to be the equivalent of some bureaucrats intimidating Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character after the events of Predator . “Why did you blow up a whole jungle, asshole? Your whole gang is dead, and it’s your flaw! No, I don’t want to hear your apologizes! Whose arm is this? “

“Fuck the chopper, your ass is getting to the unemployment path! ”

# 3. … But We’ll Usually Forgive Ourselves For The Same Failure

Here’s a question I bet you’ve never stopped to ask: Why is it an insult to allege officers of adoration doughnuts? Or to joke about how black people affection fried chicken or watermelon?

And simply clearly stated, those are reviles( in the U.S ., at the least ). If a officer plucks you over and you tell him, “Hey, you know the doughnut shop shuts at 8 p. m ., you better move, ” you know you’re pee-pee him off. If a grey buster moves up to groupings of black people standing on a street corner and says, “What, did somebody sag a barrel of fried chicken? ” he knows he’s trying to start a fight.

One that’ll end with him complaining online that nobody but him has a sense of humor anymore . But, why is it an offend? It’s not like the behaviour itself is vile — right now, there’s some grey buster sitting in a Popeyes Chicken restaurant snickering to his friends because a group of pitch-black guys trodden in. “Ha, how did I know they’d be here! I potted they’d rioting if this neighbourhood closed down! ” — literally taunting their desire of fried chicken through a sip of fried chicken. Well, what you’re find is a ritual we all go through in order to reassure ourselves. “Theres” two steps to it TAGEND

For the first, imagine a group of friends sitting around and sharing embarrassing fibs. As many of you know, during filming of the TV present Nashville , I was accidentally captured in the backdrop of a shot urinating into a fountain. So, I will tell that storey among friends, because I know someone else will immediately try to top it( “One age, ” says John, “I was pissing in the lavatory during a White House tour, and the president strolled in and I inadvertently turned around and pissed on him! I think some of it got in his lip! ” ). The aim is to reassure each other that our lives are screwed up in exactly the same way.

“For the record, John wholly plagiarized that storey from me.”

But, then comes the second largest part of the ritual, in which we’ll jest at somebody else’s screw-ups in a completely unforgiving and mean-spirited room, strictly to reassure ourselves that their failures aren’t like ours. “My family went to India a couple of years ago. All of the streets reek like piss! Merely a disgusting people — they’re like swine! “

This is why I invested my first got a couple of decades of life stimulating gay laughs with my small-town peers. For a cluster of guys scared of what their hormones were doing to them( “they can never know I jerked off to a Sports Illustrated article about beach volleyball! ” ), it was very reassuring to sit around and say, “Man, are you able dream going turned on by buster laughingstock ? ” It’s the same reason we would laugh at a friend’s messy copulation legends( “So, then I wake up and roll over — I’m like, I don’t even know this chick! She looked like fucking Richard Belzer! “) and then immediately talking here what worthless sluts those cheerleaders are. The theme? Our uncontrollable compulsions are lighthearted recreation, theirs are a signaling of weakness and degeneracy.

“Can you believe Richard Belzer just takes these pics that guys like us is likely to be masturbate to? God, what a Hollywood closet case.”

Thus, the “fried chicken” gags. The consequence is that, where my consumption of deep-fried chicken is just a ordinary buster gobbling an incredibly favourite American bowl, their uptake is due to a atrocious cultural failure to control their pushes. It shifts them into cartoonish gluttons, with no more self-control than pups. It’s the same reason my high school gay parodies often implied that homosexuals are ravenous rapists who can’t control their immorality( “When you’re in the cupboard chamber with Kevin, don’t deflect over for the soap! ” ).

But, in addition to causing us to be dicks to other people, this double standard too symbolizes …

# 2. You’re Constantly Getting Blindsided By Your Own Weaknesses

There’s this thing everybody does the first time they have to sit down and write up a budget. They’ll plan everything down to the penny — the really smart ones will even set aside some fund for disaster gondola restores and those sorts of things. But, they are able to also completely fail to plan for one important category TAGEND

Fucking up.

I’m talking about the weekend when you’re so depressed that you only buy a shitload of day-old grocery store donuts and eat all of them yourself. I’m talking about the eBay auction you acquire thanks to a drunken late-night offer, or the expensive talent bought for a special a person who has you detect doesn’t looks just like you back, or the dumb impulse buys you’ll inevitably become when you’re get over the breakup and want some kind of shining spot in their own lives( maybe it’ll be a puppy next time !).

“I’m not going to name you, so I’ll feel less guilty when you have to be returned.”

“Well, I precisely won’t do those happenings, ” you’ll say, “now that I have a fund! ” See, Future You goes tagged with the same ludicrous belief we make about strangers: All motivations can easily be overcome with a little effort. Future You won’t oblige dumb purchases to deaden desolate moods! That shit is what Old You did — from here on out, it’s smooth sailing!

And when you start dating mortal new, you never envisage, “This will be a good person to handle my alternating irritation outbursts and emotional cold spells six months after now! ” You’ll instead suppose yourself being awesome and stable, eternally. And when job opportunities comes up to take on a second place, one that would eliminate both sleep and your social life? “No problem! Future Me doesn’t get sleepy or lonely! Future Me is a robot that works with absolute precision and reliability! “

“Ho Hos from the vending machine are the only Christmas dinner I need tonight.”

Oh, sure, there are parties out there who run the opposite room, who joke about how they’re precisely a loser destined to wind up old and drunkard. But, frequently, the precise reasonablenes they’re down is because they’re repeatedly disappointed by how they screw up in the same roads again and again. Their own weaknesses continue to astonish them, since they are refuse to be realistic about how strong the desires are by comparison. Here’s a relevant time for those of you who want a brief YouTube snap TAGEND

It’s hard-handed, if not impossible, to make peace with the fact that we are always going to fuck up on occasion. And, at health risks of going taken out of situation, I’ve got to say that this has really facilitated me realize Satan.

That concept of a tempter who can work from inside your very mind, offering up short-term gratifications in exchange for long-term destruction … it prepares feel. I don’t mean as a literal being, but as a course to facilitate step outside yourself in those critical time. You get an urge and you stop to say, “Is this the devil, tempting me? ” It realise you suspicious of your short-term indulgings — the starvation, the rage, the selfishness — all that shit that will devastates your relationships and health in the long run. When someone else screws up, you can see them as a fellow casualty of the Dark Lord himself, deserving of sympathy.

But, you know, there’s a intellect Christians still cheat on their spouses and booze themselves to fatality. All they were required to do is change the focus to other people and keep it there( “Gays are just heterosexuals who’ve been invited into sin by the Devil! ” ). Hey, be talking about which …

# 1. We Give Clueless, Bullshit Solutions … And Then Get Angry When They Don’t Work

That last thing is probably the most perfect portrait of what I’m talking about in this article. Why do Christians seem so obsessed with homosexuality? Why have they decided lesbian marriage is the one issue capable of exterminating the light of the righteous from the universe eternally?

Because it’s the ultimate exam of the “Everyone knows the same temptations” fallacy.

If you sit down a cluster of anxious and tired people and start proclaiming to them about their fragilities( desire, gluttony, petty savagery, adultery ), you get lots of vexed folks altering uncomfortably in the pews. But, when you take that same mob and preach against lures they never find, if you rail against the “gay agenda” and Muslims and the depravity of Hollywood, now you get some ovations and “Amens” flowing your room. “Let us all congratulate ourselves for not succumbing to the push to change our sexual orientation or transformed into Islam! We are truly badass fighters of goodnes! “

“Like Jesus before me, I genuinely have the eye of the beast! ”

And obligate no mistake, having grown up in an evangelical church, up until my 20 s I knew exactly how to solve the lesbian wedding act: Simply give them the same rights as everyone else. And by that, I signify the right to marry the opposite fornication. I swear it built appreciation at the time and, because you presumably did not just start reading the clause right here, you already know why. Everyone, I was told, is actually a heterosexual — God said so. Thus, “gay” people simply have a funny fetish for the same fornication that they can get over with a bit tradition. If you’d told me that my homophobia was itself the result of my own bad caprices( including an overdeveloped gumption of disgust that’s common to social reactionaries ), I’d have gazed at you like you’d precisely puckered your cheeks and realized one steady fart noise. ” My behavior isn’t due to uncontrollable impulses! I’m a fully functional human being, with a person, who constitutes moral selects! “

And if you’d told me that not only is what they’re doing not immoral, but that if I swopped organizations with them, I’d be just as gay , if not more so? Hopeless. For me, at the time, the implications would have been shattering.

You’d have gotten a similar mind from me considering anyone outside my own group, in fact. If you’d driven me through the projects, I’d have calmly explained that if I was born there, I’d get a part-time job, save up some money, and move the hell out! I stepped around every day patting myself on the back for overcoming counsels I didn’t even detect, to make myself feel right about the ones I was giving in to on a daily basis. My years of asshole know-how are probably why I’m so fascinated with the Internet’s fat-hating obsession today. I return it up a lot, and it’s because each time some clueless 20 time old-fashioned says, “Losing weight is simple: It’s calories in, calories out! All you need is a little self-respect! ” I smile and nod and think, “Yep, that was me! I thought that same condescending bullshit! “

Spoiler: I was incorrect .

But, I attest that even experts acquire the same damned mistake, and always will. Pick any theme. Like the obesity stuff — we’ll listen a new possibility every month about whether fighting obesity is about cutting carbs, or paunch, or sugar, or precisely dismissing it all and cutting calories. They rarely seem to factor in the only thing that really subjects: which diet doesn’t leave you starving. Because if you’re getting pummeled with emptines insists, you will succumb. This is why exercise doesn’t induce you lose weight — exercise ignites calories but also clears you hungrier. And exactly 100 percentage of humans have a doorstep at which they no longer have the force to repel an exhort. I don’t care who you are — if the president himself got thirsty enough, he’d be begging John to pee-pee in his lip. It’s science.

It would also be a great style to choose who in the field really wants to be president .

Or what about violation? Statistically, if you grew up under certain circumstances, you’re far more likely to turn into war criminals. Now, cue the anecdotes: “Well, I grew up in the rough part of city, and I never so much as got a rushing ticket! ” See, because their impulse to commit crimes is surely no more powerful than ours, and our clean register is, hence, proof that we’re Gandhi. So, why lift a finger to improve those Ferguson “thugs” change “peoples lives”? None helped us! Better to retain a handgun under the couch and imagine about filming them when they break in.

“Well now, wait a second, ” you say, “that simply draws us back to the blame question that “youve never” got around to reacting. If we can’t genuinely know how hard individual pushed the motive to do the shitty happening he only did, then how do we know when it’s okay to call him an asshole ? “

Hmmm. Good subject. Here’s someone babying a minuscule owl.

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