Random thoughts on The Awakening

1/ Unlike Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina and Effi Briest, falling in love with another man, for Edna Pontellier, is linked with an awakening.
2/ The realisation that Edna's a human being, an individual, that she wants independence.
3/ The realisation that she now no longer cares about social conventions, and wants to live for herself.
4/ It sets her free, makes her feel more alive.
5/ To live, to go for a walk, to look, to listen, to feel, to smell, to taste, to absorb everything that life can offer, to paint, to love, to give, to yearn for more.
6/ Except that it doesn't set her free. Only Edna's mind is free. Her being is tied and trapped by conventions and duties and social expectations.
7/ Arobin can't make her happy. Edna may be, in a sense, physical, but doesn't have the vanity of Emma Bovary to be content with his flattery and caresses.
8/ Robert Lebrun might not make her happy either. He doesn't have the courage to stand up for love and defy society. I'm afraid he doesn't even understand her.
9/ But even if he did, Edna would still be trapped.
10/ She's doomed, defeated. Or is her death a rebirth?





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Kate Chopin's work is full of symbolism: sleep, the sea, swimming, image of children, the lady in black, the lovers, birds, serpents... 
I wonder if there's any meaning behind the bonbons. The word appears 9 times.


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From chapter 6, when Edna has her awakening:

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace."

From the last chapter, some time before the final moment:

"The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water.
[...] 
The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace."

(my emphasis) 


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Who is the man standing naked "beside a desolate rock on the seashore" in chapter 9? 


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Does anyone wonder about the colour white in The Awakening? 

"[Madame Lebrun] was a fresh, pretty woman, clad always in white with elbow sleeves." 

"[Mr Pontellier] fixed his gaze upon a white sunshade that was advancing at snail’s pace from the beach." 

"One would not have wanted [Adele's] white neck a mite less full or her beautiful arms more slender. Never were hands more exquisite than hers, and it was a joy to look at them when she threaded her needle or adjusted her gold thimble to her taper middle finger as she sewed away on the little night-drawers or fashioned a bodice or a bib." 

"[Edna] stood watching the fair woman walk down the long line of galleries with the grace and majesty which queens are sometimes supposed to possess. Her little ones ran to meet her. Two of them clung about her white skirts, the third she took from its nurse and with a thousand endearments bore it along in her own fond, encircling arms. Though, as everybody well knew, the doctor had forbidden her to lift so much as a pin!" 

"The two women went away one morning to the beach together, arm in arm, under the huge white sunshade." 

"She wore a cool muslin that morning—white, with a waving vertical line of brown running through it; also a white linen collar and the big straw hat which she had taken from the peg outside the door. The hat rested any way on her yellow-brown hair, that waved a little, was heavy, and clung close to her head.
Madame Ratignolle, more careful of her complexion, had twined a gauze veil about her head. She wore dogskin gloves, with gauntlets that protected her wrists. She was dressed in pure white, with a fluffiness of ruffles that became her. The draperies and fluttering things which she wore suited her rich, luxuriant beauty as a greater severity of line could not have done." 

"Edna Pontellier, casting her eyes about, had finally kept them at rest upon the sea. The day was clear and carried the gaze out as far as the blue sky went; there were a few white clouds suspended idly over the horizon. A lateen sail was visible in the direction of Cat Island, and others to the south seemed almost motionless in the far distance." 

"She thrust a bare, white arm from the curtain which shielded her open door, and received the cup from his hands." 

"Some one had gathered orange and lemon branches, and with these fashioned graceful festoons between. The dark green of the branches stood out and glistened against the white muslin curtains which draped the windows, and which puffed, floated, and flapped at the capricious will of a stiff breeze that swept up from the Gulf." 

"At an early hour in the evening the Farival twins were prevailed upon to play the piano. They were girls of fourteen, always clad in the Virgin’s colors, blue and white, having been dedicated to the Blessed Virgin at their baptism." 

"The people walked in little groups toward the beach. They talked and laughed; some of them sang. There was a band playing down at Klein’s hotel, and the strains reached them faintly, tempered by the distance. There were strange, rare odors abroad—a tangle of the sea smell and of weeds and damp, new-plowed earth, mingled with the heavy perfume of a field of white blossoms somewhere near. But the night sat lightly upon the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the mystery and the softness of sleep.
Most of them walked into the water as though into a native element. The sea was quiet now, and swelled lazily in broad billows that melted into one another and did not break except upon the beach in little foamy crests that coiled back like slow, white serpents." 

"She had been walking alone with her arms hanging limp, letting her white skirts trail along the dewy path." 

"Will you get my white shawl which I left on the window-sill over at the house?" 

"The whole place was immaculately clean, and the big, four-posted bed, snow-white, invited one to repose. It stood in a small side room which looked out across a narrow grass plot toward the shed, where there was a disabled boat lying keel upward.
[...]
Edna, left alone in the little side room, loosened her clothes, removing the greater part of them. She bathed her face, her neck and arms in the basin that stood between the windows. She took off her shoes and stockings and stretched herself in the very center of the high, white bed..." 

"Edna bit a piece from the brown loaf, tearing it with her strong, white teeth." 

"The youngster was in his long white nightgown, that kept tripping him up as Madame Ratignolle led him along by the hand." 

"Edna had returned late from her bath, had dressed in some haste, and her face was flushed. Her head, set off by her dainty white gown, suggested a rich, rare blossom." 

"The house was painted a dazzling white; the outside shutters, or jalousies, were green." 

"A maid, in white fluted cap, offered the callers liqueur, coffee, or chocolate, as they might desire." 

"She stood on the front veranda as he quitted the house, and absently picked a few sprays of jessamine that grew upon a trellis near by. She inhaled the odor of the blossoms and thrust them into the bosom of her white morning gown." 

"The tan of the seashore had left her face, and her forehead was smooth, white, and polished beneath her heavy, yellow-brown hair."

"Madame Ratignolle looked more beautiful than ever there at home, in a neglige which left her arms almost wholly bare and exposed the rich, melting curves of her white throat." 

"[Madame Lebrun] was still clad in white, according to her custom of the summer." 

"[The Colonel's] hair and mustache were white and silky, emphasizing the rugged bronze of his face." 

"She touched his hand as she scanned the red cicatrice on the inside of his white wrist." 

"But Mrs. Highcamp had one more touch to add to the picture. She took from the back of her chair a white silken scarf, with which she had covered her shoulders in the early part of the evening. She draped it across the boy in graceful folds, and in a way to conceal his black, conventional evening dress. He did not seem to mind what she did to him, only smiled, showing a faint gleam of white teeth, while he continued to gaze with narrowing eyes at the light through his glass of champagne." 

"'I’ve been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle; the quiet, grassy street of the Cheniere; the old fort at Grande Terre...'" 

(that is spoken by Robert, then Edna says something similar) 

"Edna ate her breakfast only half dressed. The maid brought her a delicious printed scrawl from Raoul, expressing his love, asking her to send him some bonbons, and telling her they had found that morning ten tiny white pigs all lying in a row beside Lidie’s big white pig."  

"His face grew a little white." 

"Madame Ratignolle was in the salon, whither she had strayed in her suffering impatience. She sat on the sofa, clad in an ample white peignoir, holding a handkerchief tight in her hand with a nervous clutch. Her face was drawn and pinched, her sweet blue eyes haggard and unnatural. All her beautiful hair had been drawn back and plaited. It lay in a long braid on the sofa pillow, coiled like a golden serpent. The nurse, a comfortable looking Griffe woman in white apron and cap, was urging her to return to her bedroom.
[...]  The woman was possessed of a cheerful nature, and refused to take any situation too seriously, especially a situation with which she was so familiar. She urged Madame to have courage and patience. But Madame only set her teeth hard into her under lip, and Edna saw the sweat gather in beads on her white forehead..." 

"All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water." 

"The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke." 

The word "white" appears 43 times (my emphasis). 

The narrator of The Awakening

After Effi Briest, I'm reading another work that also deals with adultery- The Awakening. 

As Tom at Wuthering Expectations has just written about the different layers of meaning in Kate Chopin's work (here and here), I don't expect to get much out of my 1st reading, and probably won't write much. 

I'm just going to poke at it. 

Like this line in chapter 8: 

"Robert went over and seated himself on the broad sill of 1 of the dormer windows. He took a book from his pocket and began energetically to read it, judging by the precision and frequency with which he turned the leaves." 

This is Kate Chopin's style- she reports and describes everything without comment; the narrator doesn't intrude. But that sentence is interesting, like the narrator isn't omniscient and doesn't know the character but only stands there and observes. 

Now look at this line in chapter 9: 

"It was growing late, and there was a general disposition to disband. But someone, perhaps it was Robert, thought of a bath at that mystic hour and under that mystic moon." 

What do you think of that sentence? 

Effi Briest, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary (3)

5/ I’ve finished reading Effi Briest.
My view on Fontane’s writing, up till the last chapters, remained unchanged: his tendency to refrain so much, to stop when he should be going further and digging deeper, reduces the drama, the emotional impact of the story. Too steady, he avoids dramatic scenes and can’t quite depict the emotional turmoil and pain and strong emotions as Tolstoy can. Too detached, his style doesn’t have the pervading sadness of Flaubert’s.
Then something happened in the last chapters. I close Effi Briest with deep sadness. Somehow, in some way, Fontane makes me care for her, as though for a real person. In How Fiction Works, James Wood writes something like Isabel Archer is rather vague as a character, she becomes real by Henry James’s genuine and deep interest in her. Perhaps that’s the way with Effi. The story is so haunting because Effi is so young and suffers so much, and because even in the end she dies believing she did wrong and deserved what she got.

6/ The bit about Roswitha is a subtle touch, making Effi’s parents’ behaviour a lot more heartless and harder to sympathise with.  
7/ This is perhaps the saddest line in Effi Briest, about Innstetten: 

“There was a lot of good in his nature, and he was as noble as anyone can be who lacks the real capacity for love.” 

No. Saddest are these words Effi says in her deathbed: 

“… you said I was still so young. And of course I am still young. But it doesn’t matter. In the good old days Innstetten used to read to me in the evenings; he had very good books, and 1 of them had a story about someone who had been called away from a festive dinner, and the next day asked what had happened after he left. And the answer was ‘Oh, all sorts of things, but really you didn’t miss anything.’ You see Mamma, these words stuck in my mind—it doesn’t matter much if you are called away from the table a little early.”

What can be more heartbreaking than that? 

Fontane doesn’t write much, but the resignation in those lines is poignant.

Effi Briest, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary (2)

3/ Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Effi Briest are often classed together as adultery novels. But that’s misleading. 
Only Anna Karenina is really about adultery. I mean the Anna strand, pretending the Levin strand doesn’t exist. The novel as a whole, if it’s forgivable to simplistically identify a unifying theme for a something as rich, broad and complex as Anna Karenina, is about the search for happiness and the meaning of life, and 2 kinds of love. 
Madame Bovary depicts adultery—Emma has not 1 but 2 affairs, but committing adultery is only a conventional way to rise above the conventional. The novel is really a depiction of, and attack on, philistinism. Emma, Rodolphe, Leon and Homais are all philistines. 
Effi Briest isn’t really about adultery either. There’s hardly an affair, even. Fontane’s decision to keep it to a minimum might be an artistic choice to leave everything to the reader’s imagination, or a personal evasion of a difficult task, but now I start to think that by making it subtle to the point of being easily missed, Fontane wants to stress that it’s a minor thing, insignificant and devoid of meaning, nothing to dwell upon, and thus, Innstetten’s overreaction to the discovery appears ridiculous and even laughable, if it were not so tragic. 
Effi Briest is more about the bad marriage (how ill-suited Innstetten and Effi are, especially considering that he used to be in love with her mother, which is rather creepy), and about society and the absurd ideas about morality and honour. 

4/ In the introduction to Effi Briest, Helen Chambers draws our attention to the title: 

“… Flaubert’s title Madame Bovary suggests that the problem, the central concern is the marriage, the turning of Emma into the wife of someone whose bovine name proclaims his character. The marriage fails to satisfy her, but equally she fails to assert a separate valid identity as Emma. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina articulates the conflict inherent in the simultaneous existence of the private individual Anna, who experiences true love and passion, and the social role as Karenin’s wife. Effi Briest is quite another matter. Effi’s problem is that she cannot complete the socially required metamorphosis from Fraulein von Briest to Frau von Innstetten, for this would entail a denial of her self, her natural, playful exuberance, the self-confident magnetic personality we see in the games in the garden on the 1 hand, and on the other her risk-loving nature, the propensity to let herself be carried away, her desire for the out of the ordinary, her unpredictability. As her mother says, she is ‘altogether a very odd mixture’. That she remains Effi Briest at the end of the noel, a fact explicitly asserted by her instructions for the wording on her gravestone, is a sign that although she has succumbed physically in the draining conflict with the rigid forms of society she has managed to hold on to her own inner integrity, she has not lost her self. She has not been sacrificed like Anna to a grand passion. Her affair with Crampas was not a crucial emotional experience, it was merely a symptom of her need to preserve some area of freedom and spontaneity; nor has she been sacrificed like Emma to romantic notions and an egocentric personality. She has been sacrificed—and the motif of sacrifice runs through the narrative from the gooseberry skins’ watery grave at the beginning to the sacrificial stones by Lake Hertha and beyond (Chapter 24)—to a set of conventions which Wullersdorf and Innstetten recognize as empty ‘this cult of honour of ours is idolatry’, without being able to extricate themselves from the power of ‘that social something which tyrannizes us’ (Chapter 27), but she has not relinquished her irreducible sense of her own independent identity. That she finds her way back to being Effi Briest—a unique, beautiful name free of its aristocratic ‘von’, its social indicator, in her chosen, natural setting in the garden of her youth is an assertion of a triumph of a kind. It is an ambiguous one, for she has not survived to grow into mature adulthood, but the fact of her death constitutes an accusation levelled at a society whose warped logic it has exposed.” 

Effi Briest is, in some ways, closer to Madame Bovary than to Anna Karenina. Stylistically, like Flaubert, Fontane stands outside and describes happenings and actions, like a camera, whereas Tolstoy describes scenes but constantly slips into the character’s mind. Thematically, whilst Anna and Vronsky do love each other, Effi and Emma both suffer from ennui, and in both cases, their affairs aren’t about love. 

The chief difference is that Effi is a free spirit and suffers in her marriage with a man who tries to stifle her, whereas Emma mistakes her own sentimentality for a romantic and passionate nature, suffers from delusions, and causes her own downfall.  

Effi Briest, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary

1/ France had Madame Bovary, Russia had Anna Karenina, Germany had Effi Briest. 
However, if Flaubert dissects his Emma and contemptuously puts on display all of her sentimentalism, shallowness and philistinism, and Tolstoy can now and then be harsh towards his Anna, Theodor Fontane openly loves his heroine. Effi therefore is a lot more likeable, even lovable. Anna and Emma we can see clearly, thoroughly, but they're characters that evoke lots of strong emotions, characters that readers, at least I, have to struggle with, on a personal level. With Effi, it's different. Fontane writes of her innocence and rich imagination, of her vivacity and love of life, of her free spirit, and above all, of her youth- she's still a half-child; then he writes of her loneliness, fear, doubt, and pain, making us love her and care for her as though for a real person. 

2/ Effi Briest is a rather well-rounded character. However, like Emma at Bookaroundthecorner and Himadri/ Argumentativeoldgit, I have a problem with the novel: Fontane always refrains and leaves things unwritten. Not all writers spell out everything. Jane Austen writes enough. Flaubert keeps it subtle. Henry James prefers to hint, and suggest. I myself have praised Henry James's subtlety: the jumps in The Portrait of a Lady (and 2nd post) and the things that are left unsaid, as well as defending the ellipses in the novel as not simply "disguising a deficiency". But Fontane refrains too much. It's not just that the sex in Effi Briest isn't described, which is fine (even if the 1st time the affair's consummated is easy to miss), but the whole affair isn't there, and most importantly, Fontane keeps Effi at arm's length instead of bringing her close to the readers and entering her mind, and except for a few small observations now and then such as Effi blushing when Crampas appears or her husband vaguely noticing something different or Effi overreacting to Roswitha's familiarity with Kruse, he withholds from us her thoughts and feelings. That reduces the emotional impact. 
At the moment, I'm on chapter 21, when Innstetten has just been promoted and Effi's about to go to Berlin to find an apartment. Hopefully Fontane would describe more once her life takes a tragic turn. 

Effi Briest: the Chinaman

I have this habit: when reading bad marriage classic novels or adultery classic novels (the word “classic” is to indicate that most people know the plot or have some vague ideas about it), I often look for the signs, the hints, the foreshadowing devices, and wonder “Would I know what’s going to happen, if I didn’t know the plot?”.

In the case of Effi Briest, we may actually play a drinking game, like, have a drink whenever there’s some foreshadowing- it's all over the place. 

But then, what’s up with the sounds upstairs and the Chinaman? 

Listen to Effi:

“‘There was a very strange noise coming from above me, not loud but very penetrating. At first it sounded as if long dresses were sweeping over the floorboards, I was so worked up I thought several times I could see satin shoes. It was as if there was dancing up there, but all very quiet.’”

Later, she tells Innstetten:

“‘And then the gallery upstairs with those long curtains that brush over the floor.’
‘But what do you know about that, Effi?’”

That is chapter 7.

In chapter 9, alone as her husband’s away for work, Effi has a nightmare and thinks she sees the Chinaman rushing past her bed.

Now look at this conversation between Innstetten and Johanna in chapter 10:

“‘What happened with your mistress? Friedrich tells me something happened and you slept over there.’

‘Yes sir. Her ladyship rang 3 times, quite quickly, all at once, so I thought there must be something amiss. And so there was. She must have had a dream, or maybe it was the other thing.’
‘What other thing?’

‘Oh, you know sir.’…”

It’s like there’s something going on, and Innstetten doesn’t want Effi to know. Like a madwoman in the attic.

Later, when they talk:

“… ‘There you are, a dream, a hallucination. And I suppose Johanna told you about the wedding up there.’

‘No.’

‘So much the better.’…”

I understand, the point is to show that:

1/ Effi has a rich imagination, like the heroine in Northanger Abbey.

2/ She is lonely and bored, and there’s something eerie about the place that works on her like the yellow wallpaper.

3/ Innstetten disregards her feelings, and only cares about his own career and reputation—which says something about his character.  

And yet at the moment Effi Briest looks so much like a gothic novel, like it can go in 100 directions but Fontane chooses the mundane adultery plot.

Speaking of the Chinaman, do you understand the story Innstetten tells Effi? He’s a servant in the house of someone called Thomsen. 1 day, Thomson’s granddaughter Nina is married off to a captain, and after the wedding she’s gone. 2 weeks later, the Chinaman dies. Like Innstetten’s hinting, without saying clearly, that there’s some connection between Nina’s disappearance and the Chinaman’s death, but what’s the connection?

The translation is by Hugh Robbison and Helen Chambers. 

Author questions

I'm bored, so I'm just going to ask a bunch of questions about writers. These are for Fred and Tom and Tim and Mudpuddle and Himadri and Dai and Anne and Caroline and Nicrap and Miguel and anyone that visits this blog.
Mostly for fun.

1/ Who are your favourite writers?
2/ Who were your favourite writers when you were a teenager? Which of them do you still like?
3/ Which writers have most influenced you?
4/ Which writers do you wish had not influenced you?
5/ Which writers are you embarrassed you used to like?
6/ Which writers did you not expect to like, but did? 
7/ Which writers do you think you will still read, and like, for the rest of your life?
8/ Who are your favourite prose stylists? Or your favourite writers on the sentence level?
9/ Who are your favourite writers of characters?
10/ Which writers, alive or dead, would you invite to dinner?
11/ Which writers, alive or dead, would you like to know personally? And think you could be friends with?
12/ Do you personally know any published author?
13/ Which writers do you like/ admire but generally avoid, for some reason?
14/ Which writers do you like as critics/ essayists but not as novelists?
15/ Which writers have changed you as a reader?
16/ Who do you think are overrated?
17/ Who do you think are underrated and should be more widely read?
18/ Who do you think are the best living writers? 
19/ Which writers do you go to for comfort?
20/ Which writers do you go to for mere amusement?
21/ Who are the greatest writers that you don't personally like/ that you just don't warm to?
22/ Which writers do you hate/ strongly dislike?
23/ Which writers are you prejudiced against?
24/ Which writers do you feel you should have read by now?
25/ Which writers from your country would you recommend to a foreigner?
26/ Which writers do you recommend to everyone? Every serious reader?
27/ Which writers do you wish you could write like?
28/ What is your favourite language to read in? 
29/ Which foreign-language writers make you wish to learn their language in order to read them in the original? 
30/ Who is the best writer you've just discovered recently? 

My answers in 2017.

My answers in 2021. 

Daniel Day-Lewis on Cecil Vyse

My obsession with Daniel Day-Lewis, I suppose, may sometimes be quite ridiculous, but look at how adorable he is in this interview:


There's also a clip- 1 of the best scenes in A Room with a View. 
Perhaps I have always been indifferent to the Lucy-George romance because my attention's always on Cecil Vyse. 

Another young woman, another Italy trip, another boring man

What am I reading, after A Room with a View? Effi Briest. 
I attempted to read Effi Briest in Norwegian in 2015, and before putting it down to read Dracula, wrote about foreshadowing and "love" in 3 languages. 
Now I pick it up again, this time in English, and am enjoying it very much. 




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1/ In the 1st chapter, Theodor Fontane lays out the most important stuff: Effi Briest (her youth, childlikeness, vivacity), Geert von Innstetten (a man who once courted her mother), the Briests, and foreshadowing for the tragedy later in the story. 
2/ Geert's "enthusiasm for art": what does that make Geert sound like? Cecil Vyse. Does having an enthusiasm for art mean being deficient in human feelings? 
3/ Maybe I only say that to feel better about my own ignorance about art. 
4/ Childlike, vivacious... Look at this quote by Frau von Briest: 

"For soft and accommodating as she is, there's something reckless in her that will risk anything." 

That I like. 
5/ Now and then Effi reminds me of Natasha. Tolstoy's Natasha. 
6/ I like Effi. Who doesn't? She's so likeable. 
7/ Effi Briest is sometimes dreamy, and dislikes boredom. Like Emma Bovary. But compare how Fontane writes about her to how Flaubert depicts Emma. 

A riff on love and A Room with a View

1/ This is a romance novel. 

2/ A love story in which our heroine has to learn and grow, in order to understand herself, and understand love. 

3/ What does that sound like? Jane Austen. 

4/ Our heroine Lucy is silly. Like me. 

5/ Lucy mistakenly thinks she loves Cecil. 

6/ Cecil mistakenly thinks he loves her. 

7/ A blogger friend of mine ponders "Is it my imagination or is Beebe implying that Cecil is homosexual?". No, Cecil isn't gay. Not everyone has their other half somewhere waiting to be found, I suspect there are people who can never love, and people who can never be loved. Cecil probably belongs to the 1st group.  

8/ What are Cecil's problems? He's self-important, snobbish, pompous, judgemental, uptight, forever disdainful, and intolerable to be with. 

9/ Proper, but too proper; intellectual, but too intellectual; he lacks flexibility, and spontaneity, he lacks a sense of fun; people can't be themselves around him. 

10/ That is what George sees. Lucy doesn't. She vaguely feels it, but doesn't see it clearly till he tells her. 

11/ Biggest flaw: Cecil sees and judges people based on intellect and sophistication. He doesn't feel. 

12/ Or he does feel, but what he feels is the admiration or even the ecstatic bliss of an intellectual, an art lover, a virtuoso, towards a painting, a piece of music, which is how he feels about Lucy. Not human feelings. 

13/ Definitely not passion. Look at how he kisses. 

14/ I wonder how Cecil acts in bed. Would he politely, properly ask for permission? 

15/ Because he's up there, with his standards, and looking down on others, he can't know anyone intimately. 

16/ Especially not a woman, George says. Because Cecil has his own ideas about how a woman should act. Women are the other sex, almost like another species, he wants to control them, and therefore can't understand them. 

17/ An ideal bachelor. 

18/ What about George Emerson? 

19/ "He is already part of you. Though you fly to Greece, and never see him again, or forget his very name, George will work in your thoughts till you die. It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal." 

How is it love? How is it eternal? How, when come to think of it, Lucy and George barely know each other? 

20/ 1 thing unites them: an incident, a moment, a connection. 

21/ Another: a longing, a desire to be free, to be unbound, to learn, to grow. 

22/ Is that enough? Maybe it is. 

23/ (Sometimes I wonder if George sees Cecil even better than he sees Lucy). 

24/ Tom wrote a few years ago: "Normally I have no stake in anyone liking or not liking a book – so many personal peculiarities go into “liking” and “loving” – but not liking A Room with a View seems like an error of some sort. A miscategorization. The book is so enormously likable." 

But I don't. I don't dislike it. I just don't particularly like it. 

25/ Should I write a post titled "On not liking an enormously likeable book"? 

26/ The reason is perhaps George. He's rather vague, more like a type than an individual, except in 2 scenes when he has a long speech, after the murder, and when he confesses his feelings and tries to persuade Lucy to break off the engagement.

27/ Or the love story between him and Lucy. They barely know each other, I said. 

28/ (Or I prefer to read about tempestuous/ toxic relationships, like Anna Karenina's, like Emma Bovary's, or Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff). 

29/ Or Julian Sands. Let's put the blame on Julian Sands. 

30/ My favourite character would be Cecil Vyse. Not because I like him as a person- oh the unbearable Cecil. But because of how real he feels. 

31/ Another is Charlotte Bartlett, someone who can exist perfectly in the background of a Jane Austen novel. A marvellous creation. 

32/ I suppose I have a thing for annoying, intolerable characters. 

33/ How does Miss Bartlett love, you think?