So maybe I'm not quite as enamoured with our collection after yesterday, when a friend came to the front desk while I was working and asked for something interesting to read, and catalogue searches for Girl With a Pearl Earring and The Scarlet Pimpernel both came back void (The Princess Bride, however, popped right up). Still, nothing can eradicate the joy and satisfaction that the 19th century British literature section has brought me these past few months, as I've stolen chapters out of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in a corner on the third floor.
I love Anne Brontë. She is so grounded, so accessible. Just look at this precious exchange between her hero and heroine:
"Why have they left you alone?" I asked.
"It is I who left them," was the smiling rejoinder. "I was wearied to death with small talk--nothing wears me out like that. I cannot imagine how they can go on as they do."
I could not help smiling at the serious depth of her wonderment.
"Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking," pursued she, "and so never to pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse? . . . I kept up my attention on this occasion as long as I could, but when my powers were exhausted I stole away to seek a few minutes' repose in this quiet walk. I hate talking when there is no exchange of ideas or sentiments, and no good given or received."
The story is an appropriately convoluted one of imprudent marriages and the resulting emotional tragedy. Brontë explores one's duty and responsibility, especially in light of poor choices. Her heroine ministers as best she can to her husband, dying of complications of alcoholism:
"Think of the goodness of God, and you cannot but be grieved to have offended Him."
"What is God--I cannot see Him or hear Him?--God is only an idea."
"God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness--and LOVE; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties--if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to heaven even in His glorified body, in whom the fulness of the Godhead shines."
All the ends--moral, romantic, theological--are eventually tied up nicely in the compulsory Brontëan style. It was wonderful, and I'm sad it's over. Now, it's on to Love and Freindship (that's right; I said Freindship) by Jane Austen.
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3 comments:
First of all, congratualtions editor!!!!! Excellent accomplishment my dear Watson.
PLEASE enlighten us and tell us why she spells friendship that way!
By the way....So, .....So, ......So I .....No redundancy there HEE HEE caught you!
Oh KA KA. I had a typo in my last comment.
Well, Austen wrote it when she was 14 and accidentally misspelled it.
I actually use "so" deliberately, or at least, consciously, after reading Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. In his introduction, Heaney describes the Irish influence on his usage of English and how that affected his interpretation:
"Conventional renderings of hwæt, the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with ‘lo’, ‘hark’, ‘behold’, ‘attend’ and – more colloquially – ‘listen’ being some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullion-speak, the particle ‘so’ came naturally to the rescue, because in that idiom ‘so’ operates as an expression that obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, ‘so’ it was:
So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns."
I felt that if Heaney could begin the first English epic with "so," I could certainly begin my blog posts with it.
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