Dombey and Son: “I have nothing else to sustain me when I despise myself”

I almost quit on Dombey and Son, around page 425 or so. It is a transitional novel (according to my friend Himadri, the Dickens expert): Florence Dombey is insipid (Dickens clearly learnt and improved himself when he later created Amy Dorrit and Esther Summerson); Walter Gay is a blank; the supporting characters are forgettable, lacking the vitality of the ones in Bleak House or David Copperfield; there are some deeply moving passages but some passages drag; and the highlight (up till that point of the novel) is little Paul.  

But I’m glad I read on, because Dickens gives us some magnificent scenes, such as the scenes between Edith and her mother Mrs Skewton, between Mrs Chick and Miss Lucretia Tox, between Edith and Florence before the wedding—who says Dickens can’t write women? For those of you who have not read the novel, or read it long ago and don’t remember, here’s a quick summary: Mr Paul Dombey is a rich man, a cold man, who doesn’t care for his first wife and doesn’t notice his daughter Florence, as he only wants a son; his first wife dies after giving birth to little Paul; Miss Tox takes advantage of her close friendship with Mr Dombey’s sister, Mrs Chick, and tries to insert herself into his circle, trying to ensnare him; but on a trip after the death of his little son, Mr Dombey is ensnared by someone else, and marries the beautiful but penniless Edith. 

The confrontation between Edith and Mrs Skewton is one of the greatest scenes in the novel. We have seen them for some time, but now we see them for what they truly are: a mercenary, calculating mother who has raised her daughter for the sole purpose of catching a rich man, and a proud daughter, full of self-loathing and painful awareness of the sordid transaction now taking place. 

““You might have been well married,” said her mother, “twenty times at least, Edith, if you had given encouragement enough.”

“No! Who takes me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be,” she answered, raising her head, and trembling in her energy of shame and stormy pride, “shall take me, as this man does, with no art of mine put forth to lure him. He sees me at the auction, and he thinks it well to buy me. Let him! When he came to view me—perhaps to bid—he required to see the roll of my accomplishments. I gave it to him. When he would have me show one of them, to justify his purchase to his men, I require of him to say which he demands, and I exhibit it. I will do no more. He makes the purchase of his own will, and with his own sense of its worth, and the power of his money; and I hope it may never disappoint him. I have not vaunted and pressed the bargain; neither have you, so far as I have been able to prevent you.”” (ch.27) 

What a scene. The quote from the headline comes from the same conversation. Dickens is extremely good at depicting resentful and broken women—we see it in Great Expectations, in Little Dorrit—we see it here. Compared to Mrs Skewton, Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet is much more likeable.  

The second confrontation is even better, when Edith tells Mrs Skewton not to corrupt Florence. When Dickens first introduces Edith, she’s a proud, genteel woman, weary of it all. Slowly he removes the layers: she has been taught and forced to catch a rich man to lift herself and her mother out of destitution; she has been degraded and corrupted, “fallen too low, by degrees, to take a new course”; but she’s aware, and has the conscience not to let her wicked mother destroy an innocent soul. 

I also love the scene where Mrs Chick tells her friend Miss Tox about her brother’s upcoming marriage. 

“Miss Tox left her seat in a hurry, and returned to her plants; clipping among the stems and leaves, with as little favour as a barber working at so many pauper heads of hair.” (ch.29) 

Who says Dickens cannot write women? This is one of those things I keep coming across over and over again on the internet, but people seem to repeat it without examining it, without thinking much about it. 

Look at Miss Tox at the wedding: 

“Miss Tox emerges from behind the cherubim’s leg, when all is quiet, and comes slowly down from the gallery. Miss Tox’s eyes are red, and her pocket-handkerchief is damp. She is wounded, but not exasperated, and she hopes they may be happy. She quite admits to herself the beauty of the bride, and her own comparatively feeble and faded attractions; but the stately image of Mr Dombey in his lilac waistcoat, and his fawn-coloured pantaloons, is present to her mind, and Miss Tox weeps afresh, behind her veil, on her way home to Princess’s Place.” (ch.31) 

Miss Tox previously didn’t create a strong impression—here, just a few lines give her life, get us to feel compassion and pity for her. 

Especially magnificent in these chapters is the depiction of Edith during the “courtship”, during the preparation for the wedding, and at the wedding: she doesn’t love Mr Dombey but doesn’t care; this is what she’s made for; she’s so full of self-loathing and contempt that she’s indifferent to it all. Next to her, Austen’s Charlotte Lucas is tame.  

My 10 favourite literary works

A list of the 10 literary works I think about, or revisit, most often: 

• The Iliad 
• The Odyssey 
• King Lear 
• Othello 
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets 
• Don Quixote 
• War and Peace
• Anna Karenina 
• Moby-Dick 
• Mansfield Park

This looks quite basic, does it? But the central figures of my personal canon do happen to be Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, so I can’t pretend they’re not, just to avoid being called pretentious. 

I refuse to choose between the Iliad and the Odyssey, the same way I refuse to choose between War and Peace and Anna Karenina. 

2 epic poems, 2 plays, 1 sonnet sequence, 5 novels (4 of which are over 700 pages). 2 in ancient Greek, 5 in the English language (4 English and 1 American), 1 in Spanish, 2 in Russian. 2 from the 8th century BC, 4 from the 17th century, 4 from the 19th century. All Western. 9 written by men.

If you have been reading my blog and/or my tweets, I’m sure I’ve been annoying enough about these works for any choices to be a surprise. Maybe the Sonnets, as I don’t blog about them, but I do revisit them often—there’s a Shakespeare sonnet for every mood (I went out yesterday and on the way home thought of Sonnet 34—guess what happened). The only surprises, I guess, are the exclusions of Greek tragedies (couldn’t pick one) and Chekhov’s stories (what do you do with short stories on such a list?)—a longer list of my personal canon would include Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, The Tale of Genji, all of Shakespeare, Molière, the (dirty) poems of Hồ Xuân Hương, Tom Jones, Hong lou meng (better known as Dream of the Red Chamber or Story of the Stone), Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens, John Keats, Madame Bovary, The Brothers Karamazov, the plays of Henrik Ibsen (especially The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm), the short stories of Akutagawa, the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, The Metamorphosis (Kafka), Invisible Man, Lolita, Pnin, the poems of Hàn Mặc Tử (especially Đau thương), etc. 

The only thing that bothers me, which is perhaps irrational, is that my literary tastes are strongly Western. I am Vietnamese, I can read well two languages (my Norwegian isn’t on the same level), I spent years promoting East Asian classics, but in the end, my favourite 18th century novel is still Tom Jones, not Hong lou meng; my favourite female writer is still Jane Austen, not Murasaki Shikibu; the central figures of my personal canon are still Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, not Nguyễn Du… Japanese cinema may be the one I know and love the best after English-language cinema, but in literature, my tastes are markedly Western. 

Does this mean I have lost my roots? Mất gốc? (The Vietnamese phrase carries much harsher overtones). 

I suppose the main thing is that I’m most fascinated by human nature and the human mind, and most interested in characters, which is probably also why I much prefer the Greeks to the Romans (you probably have noticed, with horror, the absence of Virgil and Ovid on my personal canon). Generally, Japanese writers—at least the ones I have read—don’t seem to explore the complexities and contradictions and irrationalities of people as we see in Western literature. Their characters are more opaque, even impressionistic; on the one hand, Japanese novels convey that sense of human mystery, the sense that we can never truly know another human being, which I like; but on the other hand, the characters also feel less alive, and don’t leave deep impressions on my mind like Akhilleus, Cleopatra, or Andrei Bolkonsky. The characters in Hong lou meng in comparison are alive, especially Shi Xiangyun (Sử Tương Vân) and Weng Xifeng (Vương Hy Phượng), but they don’t have the depth and complexity of Elektra, Hamlet, or Anna Karenina, and frankly I think Cao Xueqin takes a lot more pages to give life to a character (which Shakespeare can do in five words: “I was adored once too”). 

I’m also not much of a poetry person, despite liking the little I have read of Donne, Keats, Bùi Giáng, etc. I have The Oxford Book of English Verse, and lately have been slowly getting through The Oxford Book of Sonnets, trying to be less of a philistine, but unfortunately still have a strong taste for narratives and characters. My favourite poet (restricting to only those I can read in the original) is therefore a dramatic poet (and before you ask, I read Shakespeare’s sonnets as dramatic monologues, not autobiographical pieces). 

(If I were pretentious, as some people might call me, I would pretend to love poetry, but I acknowledge my failing).  

My tastes are also predominantly classic. When I first got into literature properly, I was mostly reading the 20th century, then slowly went further back, and further back. Over the years, those 20th century novels for some reason haven’t had a lasting impression, haven’t been part of my mental furniture—I barely remember much of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Toni Morrison. But it’s not just because I read them in my late teens and early 20s, not just because I read them before finding my favourite writers—since my discovery of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and others, I have read and enjoyed modern books only for them to have caused nothing but a few ripples in my mind—I haven’t found myself thinking about Muriel Spark, R. K. Narayan, or Soseki, for example. Even Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which I read only last September and considered highly, has left no imprints. Shouldn’t they resonate more, being more recent? But they don’t, and I don’t know why. My favourite 20th century writer right now is possibly Primo Levi, but that’s non-fiction. 

It’s curious which works of literature speak to us and haunt our minds. 

Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides

1/ Ah, the beginning of it all! Menelaus and Agamemnon are on the way to Troy to retrieve Helen and sack Troy, but their ships are stuck, due to lack of winds. A prophet says Agamemnon has to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis (which to me doesn’t make sense, because Helen is Menelaus’s wife and they have a daughter, hello?). The whole play is about the characters struggling with themselves and arguing with each other, and in the end, Iphigenia willingly goes to the altar, doing it for Greece. 

I wish I could claim to have come up with it myself, but I’m stealing the idea from Tom (Wuthering Expectations) that this is the trolley problem: save Iphigenia, or kill her and save many? The irony of course is that Iphigenia is sacrificed, Agamemnon is later killed by his wife Clytemnestra, who is then killed in revenge by Orestes (and in Euripides’s play, Electra); perhaps we can also argue that the sacrifice of Iphigenia allows the Akhaians to travel to Troy and leads to all the deaths in the 10-year war.

But this is why I have a problem with the ending. In the Introduction of my copy, Philip Vellacott says that Euripides died before finishing the play and the ending was written by someone else. I know Euripides himself had written a play called Iphigenia in Tauris, but the irony is that Iphigenia chooses to sacrifice herself to help Greece only for her death to lead to so much suffering and deaths—where is the tragedy, and the irony, if she is replaced with a deer and just whisked off to Tauris? On a personal level, I don’t want young and innocent Iphigenia to die; but for the purpose of the drama—with the way things have been built up—she has to die, so the rescue at the end just feels farcical.    

2/ As I wrote in the previous blog post, I may complain about the beginnings and/ or the endings in the plays of Euripides—this man is odd—but his middles are generally brilliant. The struggle in Agamemnon, the argument between him and Menelaus, the scene between Clytemnestra and Achilles (Akhilleus), Clytemnestra’s confrontation of her husband, the resolution of Iphigenia, etc—all these conflicts make for great drama—we just have one brilliant scene after another (until that farcical ending). 

(I usually write Akhilleus, but I’m using the spellings in Philip Vellacott’s translation). 

“MENELAUS […] Besides, compassion moves me for the unhappy girl, 

Remembering she is of one blood with me, and faces 

Death at an altar for the sake of my false wife. 

What, after all, is Helen to her?” 

(translated by Philip Vellacott) 

The whole thing of course is ridiculous, just like the war(s) going on as Euripides was writing the play. I suppose Euripides is simply fascinated by all the reasoning—and sophistry—that leads to the sacrifice of Iphigenia and the Trojan War. 

“CHORUS […] Where now can the clear face of goodness, 

Where can virtue itself live by its own strength?—

When ruthless disregard holds power, 

When men, forgetting they are mortal, 

Tread down goodness and ignore it, 

When lawlessness overrules law, 

When the terror of God no longer draws men together 

Trembling at the reward of wickedness?” 

Euripides is clearly in a dark, bitter mood. 

This is funny though: 

“ACHILLES […] I’ve said all this, not out of eagerness to marry 

Your daughter—thousands of girls pursue me all the time; 

But King Agamemnon has insulted me.” 

Duh.

3/ Let’s look at the moment Iphigenia decides to accept her face and sacrifice herself. 

“IPHIGENIA […] The power of all Hellas now looks to me; 

All lies in my hand—the sailing of the fleet, capture of Troy, 

And the future safety of Greek wives from barbarous attacks; 

No more forcible abductions from our happy homes, when once 

Paris has been made to pay the price of death for Helen’s rape. 

All this great deliverance I shall win by dying, and my name 

Will be blessed and celebrated as one who set Hellas free…” 

How selfless and noble for a young girl to sacrifice herself for Greece.

“IPHIGENIA […] And if Artemis has laid a claim 

On my body, who am I, a mortal, to oppose a god? 

This I cannot do. To Hellas, then, I dedicate myself. 

Sacrifice me; take and plunder Troy. For me, your victory 

Shall be children, marriage—for all time my glorious monument. 

Greeks were born to rule barbarians, mother, not barbarians 

To rule Greeks. They are slaves by nature; we have freedom in our blood.” 

This is quite disturbing, yes? I don’t think this is me looking at it with modern eyes—Euripides has depicted the perspective, the suffering of the Trojans—he would find this problematic. 

Having now read 13 of his plays, I still find Euripides strange and hard to grasp—I prefer Sophocles—but Euripides is always fascinating and thought-provoking, and often makes me feel uneasy. 

Orestes by Euripides

1/ It would have been quite interesting, I suppose, to read Orestes immediately after the Oresteia and the two Electra plays—I just couldn’t get hold of a copy at the time. Oh well. 

One thing I’ve noticed is that Euripides may create plays about the same people, but the plays are not necessarily related. His Electra and Orestes are fairly consistent, though in Orestes there’s no reference to the fact that Electra has got married (per Aegisthus’s order), but Euripides has a play called Helen in which Helen never goes to Troy—it’s just a phantom. The Helen and Menelaus in Orestes, and the Helen and Menelaus in Helen are completely different characters. 

2/ Euripides’s Orestes is very different from Eumenides, the last part of the Oresteia. At the risk of being reductive, I think we can say the central idea of Aeschylus’s trilogy is that violence begets violence and at some point the cycle of violence has to get cut—the plot of Eumenides is about whether Orestes can be forgiven or forever haunted by the Furies, and the debate boils down to whether a son owes more to the father or to the mother, whether the duty and desire to avenge his father can outweigh the crime of killing his mother. I’m not entirely sure what the central idea of Euripides’s play is—perhaps there isn’t one—what we have is a rather bitter, nihilist, and messy play in which violence piles upon violence, the characters turn increasingly monstrous, and then Apollo appears to provide a resolution that doesn’t resolve anything. I often feel Euripides is best in the middle: his beginnings often have some long and awkward exposition and his endings often have some awkward deus ex machina, but the middles are (usually) brilliant. 

What is wrong with Pylades? And Electra?  

And what kind of sick joke is it that Apollo makes Orestes marry Hermione? 

3/ There are many great passages in the play: 

“CHORUS […] O Zeus, listen! 

What mercy is there? 

Pitiful son, what is this agony, 

This blood-hunt, this persecution? 

There is a fiend of vengeance 

That drowns your life in tears, 

Sinks your house in your mother’s blood, 

Destroys your mind with madness. 

I mourn, I groan, I grieve. 

The greatest happiness is not permanent

In the world of men; 

But the storms of God rise against it, 

Like a light sailing-ship they shatter it, 

Terrors and disasters roll around it, 

Till crashing waves close over death…” 

(translated by Philip Vellacott)

4/ I can see why people say Euripides is more realistic and modern than the other ancient Greeks. 

“MENELAUS Ye gods! What am I looking at? Some ghost from hell? 

ORESTES You are right; terror and pain make me a living corpse.

MENELAUS This savage look, this mattered hair—I’m sorry for you. 

ORESTES What you describe is outward; my torments are real.

MENELAUS Your eyes are glazed with horror; your look frightens me. 

ORESTES I no longer exist; only my name is left.” 

Unlike Eumenides, in Orestes, we don’t see the Furies onstage—we only see Orestes’s madness. 

Euripides depicts Orestes committing the worst of sins—matricide—but gets us to understand him. He writes the scene of Orestes and Menelaus and gets us to empathise with Orestes’s anger and sense of betrayal, but at the same time we also understand why, after 10 years of war, Menelaus doesn’t want more conflict and bloodshed. 

Compared to the Oresteia, the plays of Euripides are less mythic: the human beings are more active, the gods are less involved. 

In Electra, it’s almost as though there’s no oracle from Apollo: we see Orestes and Electra talk about killing Clytemnestra; we see Electra urge her brother to carry on with the plan when he hesitates, like Lady Macbeth taunts and urges Macbeth; Electra also takes part in the killing, unlike the Electra of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

In Orestes, the gods don’t appear till the very end; the whole play is driven by humans; Orestes and Electra first turn to others, asking for help or intervention, as they’re facing punishment; then Pylades comes up with the idea of killing Helen and becoming heroes, celebrated for killing the woman everyone hates, rather than just known as the murderers of Clytemnestra; and Electra comes up with the plan to hold Hermione hostage as a way of bargaining with Orestes; there doesn’t seem to be any hint of the existence of the gods till the very last scene. 

And when Apollo does appear, Euripides makes one think why the gods haven’t intervened earlier and prevented all the bloodshed.

Metamorphoses: “nothing retains its form”

Detail from the title page of Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished by G.S. London, 1626.

1/ It’s a good idea to read Ovid after having read the Greeks: Ovid sometimes skips over details, expecting one to know Greek/ Roman mythology and literature; he sometimes fills in the gaps. For example, Ovid’s story of the debate between Ajax and Odysseus about who deserves to get the arms of Achilles is interesting because I’m acquainted with Odysseus from Homer and have also read Aias (or Ajax) and Philoctetes by Sophocles—neither Homer nor Sophocles depicts that scene (in the surviving texts)—so in a sense, Ovid fills in that gap. He also gives us the perspective of one of Odysseus’s companions whom Circe turns into pigs, which we don’t get from Homer. 

Moreover, as he creates Metamorphoses after the Aeneid, he writes about both the Akhaians and the Trojans, moving from Achilles, Ajax, and Odysseus to Hecuba and Aeneas, though he glosses over the story of Dido (the best part of Virgil’s poem). Funnily enough, Polyphemus, the cyclops that Odysseus tricks and blinds (which leads to his 10 years of suffering), has his own story here: an unrequited love for a nymph called Galatea. 

2/ In Metamorphoses, there are a couple of characters who would now be considered trans. If we leave aside Tiresias, the seer who transforms from a man into a woman for several years then back into a man, we have two female characters who transform into men: Iphis, raised as a boy because of her father’s sexism, falls in love with a woman, wishes to become a man, and has her wish granted; Caenis gets raped, and asks to be transformed into a man, known as Caeneus. This might offend some of you, but one thing I find interesting is that these two characters match two types of trans men (women identifying as men) that I often come across (online and in real life): tomboy lesbians who think they should be men because they’re attracted to women and think they don’t fit into the idea of femininity; and woman who reject womanhood and identify as trans (or non-binary) after experiencing sexual abuse. 

That said, I shouldn’t let contemporary politics ruin Metamorphoses. This is mythology, and we have some cool scenes of Caeneus fighting rapey centaurs.

3/ In most cases, Ovid “reduces” the characters we have encountered in the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid—naturally, because of length—but he expands on the character of Circe: jilted by Glaucus because he loves Scylla, she turns Scylla into a sea monster; rejected by Picus because he loves Anens, she transforms him into a bird. Circe in the Odyssey is to be pitied. Here she is more powerful. Here she is vengeful and malicious. 

But then she’s not that different from the Greek/ Roman gods, is she? Metamorphoses is mainly about the lust of men and the jealousy of women. 

I like this image of Anens: 

“Tiber was last to see her; tired and worn, 

With grief and journeying; she laid her head 

By his long riverside, and there, in tears, 

Breathed weak faint words in cadences of woe, 

As dying swans may sing their funeral hymns; 

Until at last, her fragile frame dissolved

In misery, she wasted all away

And slowly vanished into empty air.” 

(Book 14) 

(translated by A. D. Melville) 

4/ In Metamorphoses, the transformations are generally of the gods putting on disguises, or human beings getting turned into things, bodies of water, trees, animals, the other sex, or gods. The oddest transformation is when the Trojan ships are transformed into sea nymphs. 

“… And one wind’s strength 

The fostering Mother called in aid to break 

The hempen hawsers of the Trojan fleet, 

And on their beam ends drove the ships to sea

And sank them. Timbers softened and the wood 

Was changed to flesh; the curved prows turned to heads,

The oars to toes and swimming legs; the sides 

Remained as sides; the heel that underlay 

The centre of the ship became a spine. 

The rigging soft sleek hair, the yards were arms, 

The colour sea-blue still; and in the waves

They used to fear they play their girlish games, 

Nymphs of the sea, born on the granite hills, 

Now natives of the soft sea-deeps, untouched 

By memories of their birthplace…” 

(ibid.)

This is weird. This is unlike any other metamorphosis in the poem. 

5/ In Book 15 (the final book), Ovid has a section called “The Doctrines of Pythagoras”, which is perhaps the finest part of the poem. 

“… In all creation 

Nothing endures, all is in endless flux, 

Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing by. 

And time itself glides on in ceaseless flow, 

A rolling stream—and streams can never stay, 

Nor lightfoot hours. As wave is driven by wave 

And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead, 

So time flies on and follows, flies and follows, 

Always, for ever new. What was before

Is left behind, what never was is now: 

And every passing moment is renewed.” 

You can see why Ovid is fascinated by transformations. You can see why Metamorphoses speaks to Shakespeare. 14 books are about mythology and legend, and the final book is about life, about change as the nature of life: seasons come and go, people age and die, nations rise and fall, animals transform their shapes, and out of corpses, new forms of life are born. 

6/ Now that I’ve finished reading Metamorphoses, I’m going to say I still prefer the Greeks to the Romans, though perhaps in the case of Ovid (and Virgil), much is lost in translation. As I wrote before, because Ovid moves from one myth to another, there’s no sense of forward movement and it’s sometimes frustrating. But I did love some parts of the book, it’s a brilliant collection of stories, and it’s good to read Ovid, to know one of the important ancient writers, and to see his influence on Shakespeare—not only obvious references as one finds in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Twelfth Night, but Shakespeare’s fascination with metamorphosis in general—every single Shakespeare play has some sort of disguise, acting, or transformation. 

I’m going to have to read How the Classics Made Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate. 

Dombey and Son: “the golden water would be dancing on the wall”

1/ Dickens’s novels are always full of interesting images and unusual similes. 

“Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although a disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about a good deal to keep it bright.” (ch.3) 

I’m just poking at Dombey and Son, and pointing at random passages I like. 

“It being a part of Mrs Pipchin’s system not to encourage a child’s mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of a violent and stunning character: the hero—a naughty boy—seldom, in the mildest catastrophe, being finished off anything less than a lion, or a bear.” (ch.8) 

2/ I don’t think Dombey and Son has expansive and elaborate motifs as we see in Bleak House or Little Dorrit—the main motif is the iciness of Mr Dombey—but sometimes Dickens does extend his metaphors.  

“… In fact, Doctor Blimber’s establishment was a great hot-house, in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew before their time. Mental green-peas were produced at Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones too) were common at untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of bushes, under Doctor Blimber’s cultivation. Every description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs of boys, under the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at all. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other.” (ch.11) 

He extends it: 

“… one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an excessively large head (the oldest of the ten who had “gone through” everything), suddenly left off blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere stalk.” (ibid.) 

And: 

“In short, however high and false the temperature at which the Doctor kept his hothouse, the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helping hand at the bellows, and to stir the fire.” (ch.12) 

3/ Some of you might complain that the rest of this blog post is full of spoilers, though I would argue that it’s quite obvious from the very beginning, when Mr Dombey talks about his hopes and anticipations, that his Dombey and Son is going to lose the Son.

When little Paul is dying, he watches the light on the wall:

“When the sunbeams struck into his room through the rustling blinds, and quivered on the opposite wall like golden water, he knew that evening was coming on, and that the sky was red and beautiful. As the reflection died away, and a gloom went creeping up the wall, he watched it deepen, deepen, deepen, into night.” (ch.16) 

Dickens repeats the image:  

“Thus, the flush of the day, in its heat and light, would gradually decline; and again the golden water would be dancing on the wall.” (ibid.)

And repeats it: 

“How many times the golden water danced upon the wall; how many nights the dark, dark river rolled towards the sea in spite of him; Paul never counted, never sought to know. If their kindness, or his sense of it, could have increased, they were more kind, and he more grateful every day; but whether they were many days or few, appeared of little moment now, to the gentle boy.” (ibid.) 

Sadness pervades Dombey and Son. Dickens writes about the loneliness of Florence and Paul—their father doesn’t want a daughter and doesn’t see Florence, but he also doesn’t see Paul, because his vision of a son is of an adult son working in his firm in the future, not of a child—there are many moving passages in the book as the sister and brother cling to the nurse and to each other, having lost their mother and getting no affection from their father, and it’s especially moving when Florence loses the only remaining family member who loves her. 

As Mr Dombey gets shut up in his room after Paul’s death, not seeing Florence and not letting her reach him, she watches the light on the wall: 

“It was not very long before the golden water, dancing on the wall, in the old place, at the old serene time, had her calm eye fixed upon it as it ebbed away. It was not very long before that room again knew her, often; sitting there alone, as patient and as mild as when she had watched beside the little bed. When any sharp sense of its being empty smote upon her, she could kneel beside it, and pray GOD—it was the pouring out of her full heart—to let one angel love her and remember her.” (ch.18) 

That image of the light dancing is, in Florence’s mind, associated with little Paul and his last days, and it comes back later when she imagines herself dying and receiving some love for her father at last. 

“The golden water she remembered on the wall, appeared to Florence, in the light of such reflections, only as a current flowing on to rest, and to a region where the dear ones, gone before, were waiting, hand in hand; and often when she looked upon the darker river rippling at her feet, she thought with awful wonder, but not terror, of that river which her brother had so often said was bearing him away.” (ch.24) 

What makes a good screen adaptation?

I have seen 7 screen adaptations of Anna Karenina. That probably tells you I’m a bit mad. But as a lover of literature and cinema, I’m also fascinated by adaptations—what makes a good one? 

Let’s start with Anna Karenina. Among the 7 versions I have seen, the best is without doubt the 1977 series by the BBC, with Nicola Pagett. We all know filmmakers have to make cuts, we all know filmmakers have to simplify the story, but the problem with most adaptations of Anna Karenina is that they don’t convey the complexity of the characters—Karenin in early adaptations tends to be portrayed as a monster whereas Karenin in some later adaptations is portrayed more sympathetically, with Anna and Vronsky presented as shallow and selfish—the 1977 series is the only one which depicts the complexity and self-contradictions and multiple facets of Anna, Karenin, and Vronsky; the only one which reminds me of the qualities for which I love Tolstoy’s novel. 

If we talk about War and Peace, Bondarchuk’s film series from 1966-1967 is popular, but I would argue that it only focuses on the epic-ness of the book. It is technically spectacular but shallow and hollow, stripping the story of depth and complexity, removing Tolstoy’s philosophical and religious ideas, reducing Pierre’s search for meaning, simplifying the “thinking characters” (Pierre and Andrei), paying little attention to emotional conflicts between characters, etc. The 1972 series by the BBC, though imperfect, shows a much better understanding of Tolstoy’s characters and ideas, and respect for the text. 

This doesn’t mean I think only faithful adaptations are worthwhile, doesn’t mean I think filmmakers have to be slaves to the sources. When I complain about film adaptations, people sometimes accuse me of being a purist, but I’m not. I find it fascinating when a classic story is moved to a different setting, a different culture: the story of Dangerous Liaisons for instance is moved from 18th century France to feudal Korea in Untold Scandal, and modern-day America in Cruel Intentions; Fingersmith, set in the Victorian era, is adapted into South Korean film The Handmaiden. 

Sometimes it doesn’t work quite well: Bride and Prejudice does a few clever things, moving the story of Pride and Prejudice to modern-day India and making Mr Darcy American, and it’s fun enough, but it doesn’t have the sense of urgency of Jane Austen’s novel, either in the sisters getting married or in the Wickham sub-plot; the Mrs Bennet character is therefore just vulgar and annoying; and Lalita (the equivalent of Elizabeth Bennet) comes across as nationalistic and more confrontational than witty, which gets tiresome after a while. But sometimes it works wonders: in Ran and Arashi ga oka, Kurosawa and Yoshida take King Lear and Wuthering Heights respectively as a starting point, and create something different, something very Japanese, something that stands on their own. As I wrote in a recent blog post about Wuthering Heights, Arashi ga oka is its own thing—Onimaru is not Heathcliff; Kinu is not Catherine; Hidemaru is not Hindley; Mitsuhiko is not Edgar Linton; Tae is not Isabella; Yoshimaru is not Hareton; young Kinu is not Cathy—the characters can be mapped onto Emily Bronte’s characters but they are different and their relationships are different. And yet it captures the violence, savagery, eroticism, and strangeness of Emily Bronte’s novel, which the supposedly faithful adaptations of Wuthering Heights don’t do, as most adaptations only focus on the love story, reduce the malice and brutality, and often cut the second generation.

A similar example is Clueless: loosely based on Emma and set in an American high school, it is its own thing, loved by both Jane Austen’s fans and people who have no idea it’s inspired by a 19th century novel; yet at the same time, Amy Heckerling captures the essence of Austen’s novel much better than some supposedly faithful adaptations do. What I mean is that Emma might be snobbish, she might misperceive everything, she might make a mess of people’s lives, but she means well and wants to do good and has self-reflection—we also see this in Cher in Clueless, whereas Anya Taylor-Joy and especially Gwyneth Paltrow portray Emma as bitchy, catty, even two-faced, nothing like Austen’s character. 

The trouble is that most screen adaptations are not faithful adaptations which take the text seriously and show great understanding of the source story (such as the 1995 Pride and Prejudice); but they are also not interesting adaptations which take the novel as a starting point and become their own work of art (such as Jan Švankmajer’s Alice). Most adaptations are usually somewhere in the middle. 

Take for example the 2005 Pride and Prejudice: it doesn’t transcend its source material and become its own thing; what we have instead is a film which focuses on the attraction and romance but neglects the theme of pride and prejudice, and the development of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy; Matthew Macfadyen’s Darcy doesn’t show much change throughout the story; and Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth often behaves out of character (can you imagine Jane Austen’s Elizabeth eavesdropping on her family members then bursting in on them? Or watching Georgina behind a door then running away like an intruder, with no manners? Or snatching a letter from her father’s hand?).

Or, take the 1999 Mansfield Park: it takes liberties but doesn’t become an original work of art; it’s just an awkward adaptation by someone who doesn’t accept Fanny Price as written by Jane Austen and turns her into something else, and has her accepting Henry Crawford at first, going against the text.

The 2022 Persuasion also seems to be an odd thing that is neither approach: perhaps I shouldn’t comment as I haven’t seen the whole film, but from what I have seen, it is neither a faithful adaptation, depicting the Regency era, nor an independent film with the story moved to the modern era; instead, Carrie Cracknell has characters of different skin colours wearing Regency costumes but speaking modern slang, and changes the character of Anne Elliot beyond recognition (it is perhaps aimed at the audience of Bridgerton).

And this is something lots of people don’t seem to understand: whenever someone criticises a film adaptation for misrepresenting or betraying the text, some people just say fidelity is unimportant and the film is its own work of art, but most of the time it isn’t—most of the time it doesn’t have enough strengths and originality, most of the time it doesn’t transcend its source material—all we’ve got is just a poor film that doesn’t quite transfer a great work of art onto the screen. 

10 favourite adaptations of literary works (in chronological order): 

• Rebecca (1940) 
• The Innocents (1961), from The Turn of the Screw 
• Tom Jones (1963) 
• Woman in the Dunes (1964) 
• Anna Karenina (1977) 
• Ran (1985), from King Lear 
• Arashi ga oka (1988), from Wuthering Heights 
• Alice (1988), from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 
• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Pride and Prejudice (1995) 

2009 series and 1988 film—the most interesting Wuthering Heights adaptation is Japanese

I don’t know what possessed me, but yesterday I saw two different adaptations of Wuthering Heights: Arashi ga oka (1988) from Japan, and the 2009 TV series featuring Tom Hardy. 

There isn’t much to say about the 2009 series. There are changes. One of the main changes is that they remove the character of Lockwood and change the structure, starting with the removal of Linton Heathcliff to Wuthering Heights, and young Cathy’s first meeting with Heathcliff, which means that we see the revenge on the second generation before knowing who they are and how they relate to each other. Could that be an interesting choice? Perhaps, but I don’t think it works very well. 

Another fault is what I see as a carelessness about the ages of the characters: the introduction of Catherine to the Lintons and the incident of the bulldog should take place in their early teens, we see them differently when they are adults; we need to see time pass between Catherine’s introduction to the Lintons and the marriage proposal, to see Heathcliff find Catherine slowly drifting apart from him; the series also doesn’t mark very well the 17-year gap, as the characters barely look any older.

The worst change is the ending with Heathcliff—I shall be a good girl and not spoil it for those who want to see the series, but I’m sure you would agree. But overall, it’s quite a forgettable adaptation: the series makes more explicit the incest idea but does nothing with it; Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley have more chemistry than Kay Adshead and Ken Hutchison (in the otherwise commendable 1978 series), but as we see in most adaptations, much brutality is removed, Catherine is defanged, and it doesn’t have the strangeness and savagery of the novel.

Arashi ga oka has a much more interesting approach. As Kurosawa creates Throne of Blood out of Macbeth and Ran out of King Lear, Yoshishige Yoshida takes Emily Bronte’s novel as a starting point and creates something different, something very Japanese. In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff’s method of revenge hinges on 18th century English property, inheritance, and marriage laws; all this has to change when Yoshida adapts the story for feudal Japan. The characters are different—Onimaru is not Heathcliff; Kinu is not Catherine; Hidemaru is not Hindley; Mitsuhiko is not Edgar Linton; Tae is not Isabella; Yoshimaru is not Hareton; young Kinu is not Cathy—the characters can be mapped onto Emily Bronte’s characters but they are different and their relationships are different. For instance, Kinu marries Mitsuhiko not because marrying Onimaru would bring her disgrace and she wants to be rich, but because, according to custom, she would have to become a priestess and leave the mountain, and marrying him is her only way to escape that fate. The relationship between Kinu and Mitsuhiko is therefore changed, and Onimaru’s method of revenge is not the same. 

One may complain that Kinu (the equivalent of Catherine) is defanged and she doesn’t quite match the wildness and savagery of Onimaru, but as I said, Yoshida only uses Wuthering Heights as a starting point and creates a work of art of his own. Arashi ga oka is very Japanese—even the acting seems to bear the influence of Noh theatre. And yet, when I think about it, Arashi ga oka has the violence, savagery, eroticism, and strangeness of the novel; and Onimaru has the brutishness, ferocity, and viciousness of Heathcliff; he even seems demonic. 

I can see why many people think Arashi ga oka is the best adaptation of Wuthering Heights. If you want a faithful adaptation, this won’t be for you. But if you want a film that stands on its own and at the same time does capture the strangeness, brutality, and eroticism of Emily Bronte’s novel, this is the film to watch. There is something elemental about it. 

I will also add that Arashi ga oka is very visually striking and well-framed. Even if you don’t like the film as a whole, you would love the cinematography. 

Strongly recommend.

Wuthering Heights (1978) and the difficulty of adapting Emily Bronte’s novel

Anyone who loves Wuthering Heights has long recognised the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of adapting it (properly) for the screen. There is something about it that resists adaptation. My friend Himadri says “There seems something so wild & elemental in the novel. And as soon as you flesh it out with actors and with real locations, it all comes down to earth with a bump. There’s a sense of terror running through the novel that no adaptation seems able to capture.” 

Since the Laurence Olivier – Merle Oberon film in 1939, filmmakers have had a long tradition of reducing the savagery and brutality, cutting away the second half, and turning Wuthering Heights into a romance. Over and over again, I have come across people who come to Wuthering Heights expecting a passionate love story, clearly because of pop culture and all these film adaptations, and getting shocked by the emotional violence and the detestable characters in the book. So I came to the 1978 TV series with great expectations, having read that it’s the most faithful to the novel, and noticed that it’s made by the BBC one year after they gave us the best adaptation of Anna Karenina (Caroline Langrishe, who plays Kitty in Anna Karenina, here plays Isabella).

As it turns out, the 1978 has the opposite problem: the cruelty is there, the violence is there, the hate is there—but where is the love, the passion? I don’t see the chemistry, the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff. The problem is not Kay Adshead, who I think is the best Catherine I’ve seen—she depicts the selfishness, the wayward personality and fiery temper of Catherine, but she also has charm—you can see why Heathcliff is obsessed with her and you can see why Edgar Linton is drawn to her wild, intense personality. But Ken Hutchison is not quite Heathcliff. He rants, he screams, but I don’t quite see the passion from inside. I don’t see any chemistry between him and Catherine. I don’t see what Catherine and Isabella see in him. Wuthering Heights may be a story of abuse and hate, but the love story between Heathcliff and Catherine is important—even if it’s a tortured, obsessive, and destructive kind of love that destroys everything in its path, there is love—we need to see that love, that passion between Heathcliff and Catherine, and I think the series doesn’t show that. And it’s not just Catherine. To put it perhaps a bit crudely, Heathcliff should be hot—he is savage, vengeful, a monster even, but he should be hot—Catherine may think “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same”, but Isabella doesn’t have that and we must understand why she is attracted to him, against reason, against Catherine’s warning, against Edgar’s protest. 

But this is why it’s so hard, if not impossible, to adapt Wuthering Heights: filmmakers usually reduce the ruthlessness and viciousness so that Heathcliff can be a romantic figure; the 1978 series swings too far the other way.

As for the rest of the cast, I like Maria Swailes as the young Catherine Earnshaw, David Robb as Edgar, and Caroline Langrishe as Isabella; Pat Heywood is a different interpretation of Nelly Dean, playing her as a good, reliable housekeeper (not quite my interpretation), but she is very good; the only one I really don’t like, apart from Ken Hutchison as Heathcliff, is Richard Kay as Mr Lockwood, who has a melodramatic way of acting that takes me out of the story. 

Is this worth watching? I think it is. You might disagree with my views on Ken Hutchison’s performance, and this is an adaptation that takes seriously the dark and brutal side of the characters. 

Bàn về AI trong truyền thông và nghệ thuật

Đăng lại phỏng vấn trên Tạp chí Thế Kỷ Mới (Song Chi thực hiện).



Tạp chí Thế Kỷ Mới: Chị nghĩ gì về sự ra đời và phát triển của AI trong đời sống xã hội con người?

Hải Di Nguyễn:

AI có mặt tốt lẫn mặt xấu. Thích hay không thích, tôi cho rằng ai cũng có thể thấy AI đang phát triển rất nhanh, và trong một số khía cạnh, xã hội đang không biết làm gì để đối phó những mặt xấu và nguy hiểm của AI. Luật pháp luôn phải chạy sau.

TCTKM: Bây giờ xin được khoanh vùng trong lĩnh vực báo chí và sáng tác, chị nghĩ gì về chuyện sử dụng AI trong lĩnh vực báo chí, sáng tác, kể cả văn chương, âm nhạc, hội họa, phim ảnh…? Và kể cả dịch thuật nữa, thưa chị?

Hải Di Nguyễn:

Trước tiên, AI có nghĩa rất rộng: AI dùng trong nghiên cứu, y khoa (như đọc X-ray, chẩn đoán bệnh, phẫu thuật…), công nghệ (như xe hơi tự lái), vũ khí (như hệ thống drone), v.v…

Dạng AI mọi người thường dùng, và chủ đề của câu hỏi này, là generative AI—là dạng trí tuệ nhân tạo học từ một dữ liệu khổng lồ rồi từ đó tạo nội dung mới như văn bản, hình ảnh, video, âm nhạc, âm thanh, code, v.v.

Quan điểm của tôi khá rõ ràng: nếu bạn dùng AI để tạo bài viết, tranh, hình ảnh, video, bài hát… bạn không phải là tác giả/ nghệ sĩ. Ngay cả khi bạn viết prompt rất chi tiết, bạn cũng chỉ tương tự một commissioner—đó vẫn là sản phẩm của máy tính, bạn muốn nhảy vào đứng tên. Những người bênh vực “AI art” thường so sánh với nhiếp ảnh, vì nhiếp ảnh là giơ máy chụp cái sẵn có, không như hội họa, nhưng đó là cách nhìn rất sai về nhiếp ảnh: nhiếp ảnh gia vẫn quyết định góc máy, khuôn hình, bố cục, khoảng cách, chiều sâu, ánh sáng, v.v.

Cá nhân tôi cũng không có nhu cầu đọc sách, xem phim, nghe nhạc… của AI. AI chỉ có thể tạo “tác phẩm” từ dữ liệu có sẵn—đi xa hơn có thể nói là ăn cắp—nó không sống, không có kinh nghiệm, không có cảm xúc… Người nghệ sĩ có thể chịu ảnh hưởng và lấy nguồn cảm hứng từ những tác phẩm và nghệ sĩ khác, nhưng vẫn có cái riêng: có kinh nghiệm riêng, góc nhìn riêng, cảm xúc riêng, yêu ghét riêng, ám ảnh riêng… Đó là chưa kể, khi đọc sách, tôi không chỉ quan tâm tới câu chuyện và nhân vật mà cũng chú ý giọng văn và vision của tác giả.

Nhưng nói một cách đơn giản, nếu bạn không thèm bỏ công viết, tại sao tôi phải bỏ công đọc?

TCTKM: Dù muốn dù không, chúng ta cũng không ngăn cản được “làn sóng” phát triển của AI, giống như với điện thoại thông minh hay mạng xã hội trước đây. Vậy theo chị sử dụng AI như thế nào thì có thể chấp nhận được, hoặc hoàn toàn không thể chấp nhận được?

Hải Di Nguyễn:

Theo tôi, AI có thể dùng, thậm chí nên dùng, khi nó là công cụ, tiết kiệm thời gian, không dùng để sáng tác hay để “suy nghĩ” thay người. Chẳng hạn, nếu bạn phỏng vấn ai đó bằng video, tại sao phải tốn vài tiếng đồng hồ chép xuống nếu có thể dùng AI? Nếu bạn chụp hoặc scan một tờ giấy chi chít chữ, việc gì phải ngồi xuống tự tay viết lại nếu có thể dùng AI?

Nhưng ngoài chuyện sáng tác như đã nói, tôi cũng cho rằng chúng ta không nên để AI “suy nghĩ” thay người. Nhiều sinh viên để ChatGPT viết essay, chả thấy gì quan trọng, nhưng viết không chỉ là viết, viết cũng là nghĩ, là sắp xếp lập luận, là xem xét lỗ hổng và phản ví dụ, là cân nhắc góc nhìn khác… Đôi khi tôi đổi suy nghĩ khi đang viết.

Lắm lúc trên Twitter, tôi thấy một số người càng lúc càng phụ thuộc AI, phụ thuộc máy móc, thậm chí dùng ChatGPT cho những thứ cần để tâm, để hồn vào đó như note cảm ơn, diễn văn đám cưới, v.v. Tôi từng đọc một bài báo về một chàng trai yêu AI chatbot, sau đó tự tử vì mất “bạn gái AI”, nhưng câu chuyện có cái kết càng kinh khủng hơn nữa: ông bố sau đó viết cáo phó cho cậu con trai bằng ChatGPT!

Ngay cả khi dùng AI làm công cụ, tôi cũng cho rằng chúng ta không nên phụ thuộc quá nhiều. Quen dùng máy tính, không những viết chữ xấu mà không đọc được chữ viết tay trong tài liệu cũ. Quen GPS và Google Maps, không còn khả năng xác định hướng hay nhớ đường. Quen ChatGPT…

Ngoài ra tôi vẫn ưu tiên dùng các công cụ tìm kiếm thông tin, thay vì đặt câu hỏi cho ChatGPT. Nhiều ví dụ cho thấy AI có thể tổng hợp thông tin sai, hoặc đưa câu trả lời vớ vẩn do trích từ Reddit, hoặc “mê sảng”, hoặc dẫn nguồn không tồn tại.

TCTKM: Với kinh nghiệm của chị, làm thế nào để kiểm tra được một bài báo hay một tác phẩm nào đó là có sự hỗ trợ của AI hoặc hoàn toàn do AI tạo ra? Và bây giờ thì AI còn có thể chưa hơn được con người hoặc vẫn có thể còn nhận ra được, nhưng trong tương lai 5, 10 năm nữa thì sao?

Hải Di Nguyễn:

Ở đây, có thể tạm chia ra thành bài viết và hình ảnh.

Với bài viết, chúng ta có thể sử dụng một số công cụ như ZeroGPT, Quillbot, Humanize AI… Không hẳn đúng mọi trường hợp và cũng không thể hoàn toàn chắc chắn, nhưng thông thường bài viết của AI vẫn phần nào nhận ra được: có thể trôi chảy, có thể lý lẽ, nhưng vẫn thiếu cái giọng, cái hồn. Người ta hay nói một trong những dấu hiệu bài do AI viết là dấu em dash, nhưng chẳng đúng—bản thân tôi nhiều năm nay đã thích em dash—nhưng có một số cấu trúc câu, kiểu câu… AI hay dùng. Không rõ trong tiếng Việt thế nào vì tôi chủ yếu đọc sách và dùng mạng tiếng Anh, nhưng AI tiếng Anh rất thích viết kiểu câu “It’s not X—it’s Y”.

Với hình ảnh, có thể dùng những công cụ như SynthID (của Google), ZeroGPT, isitai.com… kết hợp với reverse image search (google bằng hình). Ngoài ra, vì AI hiện nay chưa hoàn hảo, có thể nhìn bằng mắt thường: tay, chân (đặc biệt số ngón tay), chữ trong hình, background, bóng và hướng sáng… Hình và video bằng AI thường cũng quá “láng”, quá hoàn hảo, không thấy texture.

TCTKM: Chị hình dung thế nào về báo chí, truyền thông, văn học nghệ thuật trong 10, 15 năm nữa với cái đà phát triển của AI như hiện nay?

Hải Di Nguyễn:

Với đà phát triển của AI hiện nay, đặc biệt khi không những mọi công ty mà (gần như) mọi quốc gia đều đang tranh nhau phát triển AI, rất khó biết được chuyện gì sẽ xảy ra.

Trong nghệ thuật, AI sẽ không bao giờ có một Shakespeare, Tolstoy, hay Rembrandt, nhưng không phải ai cũng là Shakespeare, Tolstoy, hay Rembrandt. Nhiều người sẽ bị thay thế, không thể cạnh tranh. Nhiều người sẽ mất việc. Đặc biệt trong những lĩnh vực như digital art, đồ họa, minh họa, v.v…

Những nhà văn viết những thể loại giải trí như thriller, lãng mạn… không có văn chương nhiều và có lượng fan lớn đã và sẽ tiếp tục biến AI thành cái máy bơm tiền, nhưng tôi cho là AI sẽ dần dần giết chết mảng tự xuất bản (self-publishing) vì độc giả muốn sách của người thật viết và có người thật biên tập.

AI sẽ thay đổi nghệ thuật, cũng như sự xuất hiện của nhiếp ảnh làm thay đổi hội họa, dù đổi thế nào tôi không biết. Nhưng tôi dự đoán, sẽ có một counter-movement: thời đại ebook, người ta vẫn mua sách giấy; thời đại streaming, người ta vẫn mua DVD, CD, vinyl; thời đại smartphone và mạng xã hội, một số người quyết định bỏ hết và quay về với “điện thoại cục gạch”; khi AI phát triển, cũng sẽ có những người hướng về những cái cũ, những cái truyền thống đơn sơ phản AI…

TCTKM: Trở lại với câu hỏi chung: những điểm tích cực, tiêu cực của AI trong đời sống xã hội con người? Liệu chúng ta có nên bi quan, lo lắng hay nên mừng rỡ?

Hải Di Nguyễn:

Nói về AI nói chung, chúng ta có thể lạc quan về thành tựu và khả năng của AI trong công nghệ, y tế…

Riêng về generative AI, tôi cảm thấy rất khó lạc quan, vì những điều đã nói và những vấn đề khác như deepfake, tin giả, tuyên truyền, lừa đảo… Xã hội sẽ ra sao nếu tới một lúc nào đó, chúng ta không thể biết đâu là thật, đâu là giả—nhìn giả, tưởng là thật—nhìn thật, nghi là giả? Đặc biệt khi nhiều người càng lúc càng phụ thuộc vào AI và để đầu óc nhũn dần đi?

Song Chi (thực hiện)

Wuthering Heights: what race is Heathcliff?

As my previous blog post was about race and “diverse casting” in period dramas, let’s talk about Heathcliff: what is his race/ ethnicity?

This is how Heathcliff is described by Mr Lockwood, a stranger and the first narrator of Wuthering Heights: 

“He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose.” (ch.1)

When Heathcliff returns after a three years’ absence, Nelly Dean also describes him as having “dark face and hair” (ch.10). The word “gipsy” appears 6 times throughout the novel—said by Mr Lockwood, Mrs Earnshaw, Hindley, Mrs Linton, Joseph, and Edgar Linton—6 different characters. Some of these characters however also use different terms throughout the story. 

In one scene, to cheer up little Heathcliff, Nelly Dean says: 

““A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,” I continued, “if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we’ve done washing, and combing, and sulking—tell me whether you don’t think yourself rather handsome? I’ll tell you, I do. You’re fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a little farmer!”” (ch.7) 

I have come across some readers who naively think this means Heathcliff is half Indian half Chinese, but all this means is that Nelly Dean—and therefore we—cannot tell Heathcliff’s parentage and origin. It might mean that she doesn’t know what Indian and Chinese people look like (who look too different to be mixed up); or we can read that speech as Nelly Dean babbling some nonsense to cheer up an upset child. 

Emily Bronte complicates matters. Mrs Linton for example says: 

“I declare he is that strange acquisition my late neighbour made, in his journey to Liverpool—a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway.” (ch.6) 

The term “Lascar” is used for sailors from India or South Asia. 

All these different terms mean that Heathcliff is racially ambiguous, and that it’s Emily Bronte’s intention that his ethnicity is uncertain—the main point is that he is clearly an outsider—he is an outside force that brings destruction upon the Earnshaw family (and the Linton family) and harmony is restored only when he’s gone. I don’t think Heathcliff is simply a white guy with darker skin and dark hair, like Italian or Spanish; but I also don’t think he’s black, as depicted in the 2011 film, because he would be called a “mulatto” and there would be no ambiguity. My guess is that Heathcliff is mixed race—his father is Mr Earnshaw and his mother is either “Gypsy” or Indian. If we look at the cast of the 2026 film, Heathcliff in my head would not look like Jacob Elordi but perhaps more like Shazad Latif, an actor of mixed English, Scottish, and Pakistani descent, who for some odd reason is cast as the pale and blond Edgar Linton. 

I would say though that Heathcliff’s racial ambiguity is important and Emily Bronte can maintain and emphasise the uncertainty because this is a novel—a screen adaptation has to commit to one interpretation or another—I personally think Heathcliff is mixed race. 

What do you think? 

The Other Bennet Sister and “diverse casting”

In my previous blog post about the TV series The Other Bennet Sister, I wrote about all the changes made to the characters of Pride and Prejudice, and the resulting loss of subtlety and complexity. Now I’d like to address the racial aspect of the series. 

In The Other Bennet Sister, Mary is the black sheep, the one bullied or at least neglected by everyone else in the family, the one assumed to have no prospects. The optician’s son however takes an interest in her, and asks her to dance with him at the ball, so she does, and she dances with him twice. Charlotte Lucas then tells Mary to be careful: two dances imply liking; the third time is going to be remarked upon. Then Mrs Bennet appears and, displaying a cruelty and harshness not seen in Jane Austen’s character, tells Mary not to dance with or speak to him any longer, as he’s an optician’s son, and an association with someone in trade would ruin the prospects of her sisters. 

The remarkable part here is that we can all see that he’s Indian, but nobody mentions his race, as though class is the only barrier. 

From what I can see, there are other non-white characters in the rest of the series, and this is something we see again and again: Netflix and the BBC and Channel 4 and ITV and other companies randomly cast black and brown people in adaptations of 19th century novels and other period dramas. This has gone on for years and seems to have become standard practice. And I have always disliked it. Why do you assume that I need to see someone “looking like me” represented on the screen? Why do you assume that I need to share the same race or ethnicity as a fictional character in order to find them relatable? Why do you assume that I would relate to a character just because we have the same race? What do I have in common with, for example, the characters in Crazy Rich Asians? Why would I want to see actors of the same ethnicity as me randomly cast in adaptations of classic European novels, like Hong Chau playing Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights? Do we not have our own stories? Do we not have our own classics? Do production companies not understand how insulting this is? 

More importantly, “diverse casting” in period dramas is a whitewashing of history, as though 19th century Britain had been a colourblind society, as though people of all races back then had been equal, as though racism had never existed. If someone grows up watching these films and TV series—every single one has black and brown people as middle-class and upper-class characters, on equal footing with white characters—that person is going to have a very distorted understanding of the past. Bridgerton may have the excuse that it’s a fantasy world, but what excuses does The Other Bennet Sister have? 

I’m going to note too that this is very different from casting in Shakespeare. My favourite King Lear production has a black Lear (Don Warrington). My favourite version of Coriolanus has a black Coriolanus (David Oyelowo). Shakespeare’s plays are full of artifice—race-bending is no big deal as long as it doesn’t draw attention to itself and the play is taken seriously. But film and TV are supposedly more naturalistic; if it doesn’t present itself as a fantasy world as Bridgerton does (which I have never watched), it would be taken to be meant to be realistic; and the depiction of Britain in the late 18th, early 19th century as a colourblind society is unrealistic. I would even say that the erasure of the racial prejudice of the past—erasure of the experiences of victims of racism—is a racist lie. 

Unfortunately I seem to be the only one having these opinions. 

Why I stopped watching The Other Bennet Sister

With apologies to Aled, my former classmate who’s in the cast.  

When I first heard there was going to be a TV adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister, a Pride and Prejudice spin-off, I already had apprehensions: it’s about Mary, the most boring of the Bennet sisters. This is how Jane Austen describes her: 

“… After a song or two, and before [Elizabeth] could reply to the entreaties of several that she would sing again, she was eagerly succeeded at the instrument by her sister Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached. Elizabeth, easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well…” (ch.6) 

But Janice Hadlow wrote a novel focusing on her, so I thought maybe something interesting could be done about the character of Mary: she’s the only plain one in the family; she’s the odd one out between two pairs of sisters (Jane – Elizabeth and Kitty – Lydia). 

In the end, I only watched 2 (out of 10 episodes). The Other Bennet Sister, I think, has 3 main problems. 

First of all, in Pride and Prejudice, Mary’s not only plain and boring, but also conceited, priggish, and rather oblivious; in the series The Other Bennet Sister (I haven’t read the book), Mary is bookish, socially awkward, more likeable than Jane Austen’s character, and constantly bullied by her own family. At the beginning, it feels as though they want to turn her into Fanny Price. Almost everyone in the series—at least in the first 2 episodes—is mean-spirited: everyone makes fun of Mary; Mrs Bennet treats her cruelly and constantly puts her down; Caroline Bingley mocks her before others, in a way that a genteel woman would not; Charlotte Lucas, now her friend instead of Elizabeth’s, becomes two-faced and “steals” Mr Collins behind her back; even Elizabeth, who in Jane Austen’s novel only looks at Mr Bennet when Mary embarrasses herself in public, now insensitively says to Mr Bennet “Papa, this has gone too far, and if you don’t step in, I will” when Mary can see her. All these characters are changed beyond recognition. Even if we pretend that The Other Bennet Sister is its own universe and separate from Pride and Prejudice—ignoring that the series passes over most plot points of Jane Austen’s novel, expecting the audience to be familiar with the story—the changes are terrible because they make the characters one-dimensional and extremely unpleasant. Elizabeth, described several times as quick-witted, here displays no wit. 

As the characters are all one-dimensional—Mrs Bennet especially is not only annoying but cruel and obnoxious—the series feels one-note. Perhaps it’s going to improve from the third episode, but I’m not interested enough to continue. 

Not only so, the series constantly gets on my nerves as it’s written by people—native speakers—who don’t know proper English. The Other Bennet Sister portrays Mary Bennet as an awkward, pedantic girl who corrects a guy during a dance for saying “less” when he should say “fewer”, and yet Mary says “My mother is concerned for my sisters and I.” These errors take me out of the story. 

(I’m not even going to talk about the racial aspect of the casting). 

Now some of you might say I should not dismiss a whole series after watching only 1/5 of it and perhaps it would get better, but I’m going to say that the first 2 episodes (at least) are very crude and very silly. Not a fan. 

Wuthering Heights: “people can have many cousins and of all sorts”

One of the funny things Emily Bronte does in Wuthering Heights is that, instead of writing from the third-person point of view, she creates two first-person narrators and the first one—Mr Lockwood—knows nothing and makes the wrong assumptions about everyone and everything he sees. 

““And who is that Earnshaw: Hareton Earnshaw, who lives with Mr Heathcliff? Are they relations?”

“No; he is the late Mrs Linton’s nephew.”

“The young lady’s cousin, then?”

“Yes; and her husband was her cousin also: one on the mother’s, the other on the father’s side: Heathcliff married Mr Linton’s sister.”” (ch.4) 

That must be confusing to a first-time reader. It probably doesn’t help that we have a Heathcliff; an Edgar Linton; a Linton Heathcliff; a Catherine Earnshaw (called Cathy by Heathcliff), who becomes Mrs Catherine Linton; a Catherine Linton (generally called Cathy), who later becomes Mrs Catherine Heathcliff then Mrs Catherine Earnshaw; etc. Let’s shuffle the names for a laugh, why not. 

Nicole of Bibliographing had a very good blog post, years ago, about the circling of the names. But right now, I’d like to focus on the relations between the characters—the cousins. 

““Softly, Miss,” answered the addressed. “You’ll lose nothing by being civil. Though Mr Hareton, there, be not the master’s son, he’s your cousin: and I was never hired to serve you.”

“He my cousin!” cried Cathy, with a scornful laugh.

“Yes, indeed,” responded her reprover.

“Oh, Ellen! don’t let them say such things,” she pursued in great trouble. “Papa is gone to fetch my cousin from London: my cousin is a gentleman’s son. That my—” she stopped, and wept outright; upset at the bare notion of relationship with such a clown.

“Hush, hush!” I whispered; “people can have many cousins and of all sorts, Miss Cathy, without being any the worse for it; only they needn’t keep their company, if they be disagreeable and bad.”

“He’s not—he’s not my cousin, Ellen!” she went on, gathering fresh grief from reflection, and flinging herself into my arms for refuge from the idea.” (ch.18) 

For consistency, I have been referring to the elder Catherine as Catherine, and her daughter as Cathy. 

Look at it: Cathy gets married twice; the first time to Linton Heathcliff, her father’s nephew; the second time to Hareton Earnshaw, her mother’s nephew. First cousins both times! (though perhaps less gross than Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram in Mansfield Park—if we look at it with modern eyes—as they didn’t grow up together). 

Everything is even more disturbing if we consider the possibility that Heathcliff and Catherine are half-siblings. Consider the facts. One day Mr Earnshaw announces he’s going to Liverpool—for what? he doesn’t say, or at least Nelly Dean only says the time is the beginning of harvest—and comes home 3 days later with a boy.  

“… a tale of his seeing it starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb, in the streets of Liverpool, where he picked it up and inquired for its owner. Not a soul knew to whom it belonged, he said; and his money and time being both limited, he thought it better to take it home with him at once, than run into vain expenses there: because he was determined he would not leave it as he found it. Well, the conclusion was, that my mistress grumbled herself calm; and Mr Earnshaw told me to wash it, and give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children.” (ch.4) 

I think we can all be sure that there were many “starving, and houseless” kids on the streets of Liverpool at the time—why does Mr Earnshaw bring home this one?  

“He took to Heathcliff strangely, believing all he said (for that matter, he said precious little, and generally the truth), and petting him up far above Cathy, who was too mischievous and wayward for a favourite.

So, from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house; and at Mrs Earnshaw’s death, which happened in less than two years after, the young master had learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent’s affections and his privileges; and he grew bitter with brooding over these injuries.” (ibid.)

This is very different from the case of Tom Jones, found in the house of Squire Allworthy as a baby. It’s also difficult to explain the partiality Mr Earnshaw has for Heathcliff—Nelly uses the words “favourite” and “partiality”—as Heathcliff doesn’t quite have the charisma, the lovable qualities of Tom Jones. 

If Heathcliff is indeed Mr Earnshaw’s illegitimate child, which I think is highly possible, Wuthering Heights is a story of incest, of love between half-siblings. As Catherine says: 

“… Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” (ch.9) 

Maybe you think that because you and he have the same father, Catherine! 

And if this is the case, Cathy and Linton would be even closer than first cousins, sharing three grandparents! 

Crazy book.