tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post3340244184575633893..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: A Dorrit miscellaney, with rambling, backtracking, and a well-marked and necessary spoiler alertAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-48566945582609876032014-12-16T08:15:22.377-06:002014-12-16T08:15:22.377-06:00The third one is especially good. I have mixed fe...The third one is especially good. I have mixed feelings about the "Dude Watching" cartoon - reinforces some bad reading - but that is not Beaton's fault.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-28417713842402505222014-12-15T22:59:32.412-06:002014-12-15T22:59:32.412-06:00The third one on this set (scroll down a bit) offe...The third one on this set (scroll down a bit) offers a very interesting take on the source of Dickens' heroines' personalities. http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=268<br /><br />As for Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights, I learned most of the little I know by reading these three interpretations:<br />http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202<br />http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=263<br />http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=329<br /><br />(By the way, Time magazine named Hark a Vagrant! as one of the top ten best books of 2011, and you can see why: so much insight packed in so little space)<br />Cleanthesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15363416290397892659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-2115741474867293752012-01-14T16:13:40.235-06:002012-01-14T16:13:40.235-06:00Séamus, I love the idea that Heathcliff is an Iris...Séamus, I love the idea that Heathcliff is an Irish famine demon set lose on the moors. Her obsess with graves and death, though, predates <i>WH</i> and the Irish famine by many years.<br /><br />Nana - thanks - I am just following the imaginative lead of Dickens.<br /><br />Lyndsay - the credit for that joke goes to <i>ma femme</i>, actually. Is it encouraging to say that the beginning of <i>NN</i> is the best part of the novel? I meant that to be encouraging.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-47128786647495649882012-01-14T15:01:25.745-06:002012-01-14T15:01:25.745-06:00I love your discussion on the 'prison' iss...I love your discussion on the 'prison' issue. I like how you took it: social, spiritual, physical etc.ImageNationshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06021414643103601330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-37104499928002834062012-01-14T09:18:15.574-06:002012-01-14T09:18:15.574-06:00Oh God, you're doing so well with Dickens, whe...Oh God, you're doing so well with Dickens, whereas I can't bear to start Nicholas Nickleby. I bow down to you, sir.<br /><br />I'd also like to nominate for something for that Dorrit the Explorrit gag. Chuckle.Celeste85https://www.blogger.com/profile/05575580291868960322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-4584106656252007542012-01-14T02:41:29.187-06:002012-01-14T02:41:29.187-06:00In part, I think the issue was avoided out of fear...In part, I think the issue was avoided out of fear. The numbers of Irish were extremely large - a million passed through Liverpool in the 1840's and I guess it was a political tinder box.<br />I note you are very interested in <b>Wuthering Heights</b> - a novel written by a second generation Irish woman with lots of Irish relatives (Emily Prunty) during the height of the famine in Ireland with Heathcliff clearly one of the famine refugees. Is it any wonder that she was obsessed with graves and death? However this influence on the book is rarely discussed.Séamus Dugganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00574186409184247059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-25075717130242904592012-01-13T21:23:00.682-06:002012-01-13T21:23:00.682-06:00I would like to think it was the latter, avoidance...I would like to think it was the latter, avoidance, but I would not want to bet on it.<br /><br />I suppose this is a question that could be answered somewhere in Dickens's travel writing or journalism.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-25637820166184083962012-01-13T18:31:46.428-06:002012-01-13T18:31:46.428-06:00Well, anti-Irish sentiment ran pretty high in Engl...Well, anti-Irish sentiment ran pretty high in England at the time. In much of the journalism of the time they were seen as little more than animals. Right up until the 1980's the reputation of the Irish was pretty low in England. Perhaps Dickens subscribed to the view or perhaps he saw it as an issue better avoided.Séamus Dugganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00574186409184247059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-88968760823857033022012-01-13T17:19:56.009-06:002012-01-13T17:19:56.009-06:00Séamus, get your Dickens reading in now. By the e...Séamus, get your Dickens reading in now. By the end of this bicentennial year, we'll all be sick of him!<br /><br />I know what you mean about that fresh impression - the Dickens World (I'm reading a book of that title) is so strong.<br /><br />I had not noticed it myself, but that Irish Times article is right - Irish characters and topics are weirdly absent from Dickens World. I wonder why?Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-8012303066341845222012-01-13T15:20:33.148-06:002012-01-13T15:20:33.148-06:00I'm starting to feel like I have to re-enter t...I'm starting to feel like I have to re-enter the world of Dickens at some point this year. I read almost all of his books as a teenager (nix <b>Dombey</b>, <b>Nicholas Nickleby</b> & <b>Martin Chuzzlewit</b>) but have never gone back, in part, because the impression remains fresh, if not the detail. Particularly <b>Great Expectations</b> and <b>David Copperfield</b>.<br />You might be interested in this article in an Irish paper recently about the lack of the Irish in Dickens. Slum is an Irish word that entered the English language in London in the early to mid nineteenth century - you would have thought they would have been all over his books. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0107/1224309920765.htmlSéamus Dugganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00574186409184247059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-31400461795585650142012-01-13T12:28:06.028-06:002012-01-13T12:28:06.028-06:00Your professor was right about Dombey and Son. It...Your professor was right about <i>Dombey and Son</i>. It's the hinge work. And I agree with your idea about structure. I would just suggest that <i>Little Dorrit</i> is in fact written along the same principles of thematic and imagistic complexity as <i>Bleak House</i>. The structure is built from the imagery. Some of the incidents are likely improvised, but this time within a well-considered structure.<br /><br />The point about Little Nell has merit, too. Litte Dorrit is, actually, not so much like Little Nell at all, but it takes a couple hundred pages to reach that conclusion. She at first <i>seems</i> a lot like Little Nell. As he often does in the later novels, Dickens deepens and complicates earlier ideas and characters.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-21790325941827339462012-01-13T09:14:57.480-06:002012-01-13T09:14:57.480-06:00It's been too many years since I last read Dic...It's been too many years since I last read Dickens, so I've enjoyed this recent set of posts on Little Dorrit. I like your questions about this novel is the least established of his later work. <br /><br />I wonder if it's because Little Dorrit is closer in nature to his earlier work. Until today, I'd been reading your posts thinking Little Dorrit was from the first half of Dicken's career. The professor who taught the Dickens class I took in graduate school argued that his work could be divided into two schools just about halfway through Dombey and Son when he is said to have made his first plot outline prior to writing.<br /><br />Little Dorrit, going from memory of it now for the most part, strikes me as closer to the more improvisational feel of his early books than to the much more structured nature of his last few novels. These days, the more structured novels are the ones that stand in critical favor.<br /><br />I suspect Little Dorrit reminds people of Little Nell too much. Little Nell is out of favor now-a-days.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06906212382849291562noreply@blogger.com