The BBC’s 100 greatest British novels, and some top 5

What’s up with me and lists these days? I don’t know. Getting listless, I guess. But once in a while, I think it’s good to look at some lists and see the holes in one’s reading. 

The premise: “What does the rest of the world see as the greatest British novels?” 

I use a strikethrough for the books I have read. The tick is when I have seen a screen adaptation. 

100. The Code of the Woosters (PG Wodehouse, 1938)

99. There but for the (Ali Smith, 2011)

98. Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry,1947)

97. The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis, 1949-1954) ✔

96. Memoirs of a Survivor (Doris Lessing, 1974)

95. The Buddha of Suburbia (Hanif Kureishi, 1990)

94. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (James Hogg, 1824)

93. Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954) ✔

92. Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons, 1932) ✔

91. The Forsyte Saga (John Galsworthy, 1922)

90. The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins, 1859)

89. The Horse’s Mouth (Joyce Cary, 1944)

88. The Death of the Heart (Elizabeth Bowen, 1938)

87. The Old Wives’ Tale (Arnold Bennett,1908)

86. A Legacy (Sybille Bedford, 1956)

85. Regeneration Trilogy (Pat Barker, 1991-1995)

84. Scoop (Evelyn Waugh, 1938)

83. Barchester Towers (Anthony Trollope, 1857)

82. The Patrick Melrose Novels (Edward St Aubyn, 1992-2012)

81. The Jewel in the Crown (Paul Scott, 1966)

80. Excellent Women (Barbara Pym, 1952)

79. His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman, 1995-2000)

78. A House for Mr Biswas (VS Naipaul, 1961)

77. Of Human Bondage (W Somerset Maugham, 1915)

76. Small Island (Andrea Levy, 2004)

75. Women in Love (DH Lawrence, 1920)

74. The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)

73. The Blue Flower (Penelope Fitzgerald, 1995)

72. The Heart of the Matter (Graham Greene, 1948)

71. Old Filth (Jane Gardam, 2004)

70. Daniel Deronda (George Eliot, 1876)

69. Nostromo (Joseph Conrad, 1904)

68. A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess, 1962) ✔

67. Crash (JG  Ballard 1973)

66. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811) ✔

65. Orlando (Virginia Woolf, 1928) ✔

64. The Way We Live Now (Anthony Trollope, 1875)

63. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark, 1961) ✔

62. Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)

61. The Sea, The Sea (Iris Murdoch, 1978)

60. Sons and Lovers (DH Lawrence, 1913)

59. The Line of Beauty (Alan Hollinghurst, 2004)

58. Loving (Henry Green, 1945)

57. Parade’s End (Ford Madox Ford, 1924-1928)

56. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson, 1985)

55. Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726)

54. NW (Zadie Smith, 2012)

53. Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966)

52. New Grub Street (George Gissing, 1891)

51. Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)

50. A Passage to India (EM Forster, 1924)

49. Possession (AS Byatt, 1990)

48. Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis, 1954)

47. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne, 1759)

46. Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie, 1981)

45. The Little Stranger  (Sarah Waters, 2009)

44. Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel, 2009)

43. The Swimming Pool Library (Alan Hollinghurst, 1988)

42. Brighton Rock (Graham Greene, 1938)

41. Dombey and Son (Charles Dickens, 1848)

40. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865) ✔

39.  The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes, 2011)

38. The Passion (Jeanette Winterson, 1987)

37. Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh, 1928)

36. A Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell, 1951-1975)

35. Remainder (Tom McCarthy, 2005)

34. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005) ✔

33. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame, 1908)

32. A Room with a View (EM Forster, 1908) ✔

31. The End of the Affair (Graham Greene, 1951) ✔

30. Moll Flanders (Daniel Defoe, 1722)

29. Brick Lane (Monica Ali, 2003)

28. Villette (Charlotte Brontë, 1853)

27. Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe, 1719)

26. The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien, 1954) ✔

25. White Teeth (Zadie Smith, 2000)

24. The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing, 1962)

23. Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy, 1895) ✔

22. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (Henry Fielding, 1749)

21. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899)

20. Persuasion (Jane Austen, 1817) ✔

19. Emma (Jane Austen, 1815) ✔

18. Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989) 

17. Howards End (EM Forster, 1910) ✔

16. The Waves (Virginia Woolf, 1931)

15. Atonement (Ian McEwan, 2001)

14. Clarissa (Samuel Richardson,1748)

13. The Good Soldier (Ford Madox Ford, 1915)

12. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)

11. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813) ✔

10. Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848)

9. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)

8. David Copperfield (Charles Dickens, 1850) ✔

7. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847) ✔

6. Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1853)

5. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847) ✔

4. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens, 1861) ✔

3. Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf, 1925)

2. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf, 1927)

1. Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874) ✔

Just about a quarter. But I don’t really feel much guilt, as many titles here are recent and therefore of little interest to me.  

If I were to name the 5 greatest British novels, I would probably say: 

• Bleak House 
• Wuthering Heights 
• Middlemarch 
• Emma 
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (as one book—yes, I’m cheating) 

These are all 19th century novels, I know, that’s my century. Perhaps my picks will be different when I have read Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy—we’ll see. But my choice for the greatest British novel, contrary to consensus, would be Bleak House. I know people praise Middlemarch for its psychological insight, rightly so, but my vote goes to Bleak House for its language, for its metaphors and motifs and patterns, for its multiple strands of stories and the two narrators, for its large canvas and intricate plot—Bleak House is, in my opinion, more inventive and artistically more interesting than Middlemarch. 

As we’re here, I might as well name my choices for 5 greatest Russian novels:

• Anna Karenina 
• War and Peace 
• The Brothers Karamazov 
• Dead Souls 
• The Gift 

The last one is subject to change— I haven’t read Eugene Onegin, I haven’t read Demons, I haven’t read Oblomov, I haven’t read The Master and Margarita, I haven’t read Platonov, I haven’t read Andrei Bely, etc.—we’ll see. But the two Tolstoy novels and The Brothers Karamazov are going to stay there. 

I haven’t read enough to talk about French novels, so here are my 5 greatest American novels: 

• Moby Dick 
• Lolita 
• Invisible Man
• The Sound and the Fury 
• The Age of Innocence 

This is an uncertain list, at least the last two. Moby Dick however is one of the three novels with which I’m most obsessed, and my pick for the Great American Novel. Planning to sail again with Ishmael this year. Lolita and Invisible Man are both great. For the last spot, on a different day, I might swap The Age of Innocence for The Portrait of a Lady, or The Scarlet Letter. But also, there are quite a few important American novels I haven’t read. 

Give me your top 5. We’re talking about greatest novels, not favourites. 

Also tell me about other countries too. 5 greatest Indian novels. Spanish. Italian. French. Japanese. Chinese. Whatever.  

What turns me on

That got your attention, didn’t it? This blog post is, unfortunately, not about sex, but about what I look for when reading, what I value and consider important in literature. 

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ve probably noticed that I’m interested in details. Not themes, not big ideas, not messages, but details. Some readers only care about the story, some are more interested in structure and the overall shape of a literary work, I myself pay attention to details: descriptions, images, metaphors, motifs, some subtle gestures or moments of things left unsaid—like the glances in Persuasion, light in The House of Mirth, things left unsaid in The Age of Innocence, the asparagus in In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way, or the ship motif in Bleak House. I don’t like novels of ideas, moralism, preaching, and spoon-feeding, and don’t particularly like intrusive narrators. All that is the influence of Nabokov. 

But am I an aesthete? Not really, no. Between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, I prefer Tolstoy (and see myself as a Tolstoy person), but between Tolstoy and Flaubert, or Tolstoy and Proust, or Tolstoy and Nabokov, I’d still pick Tolstoy. I do care about the writing and dislike bland prose (such as Stoner or Sally Rooney), and do love the prose of Melville or Proust or Edith Wharton or R. L. Stevenson, but to me style isn’t everything. I don’t enjoy style and language and wordplay just for the sake of style and language and wordplay; I don’t love metaphors just for the sake of metaphors; to some readers, style alone brings pleasure, style is all, but I’m more interested in what it conveys. 

I’m interested in characters, and the author’s vision. I don’t mean that I identify with characters—characters don’t have to be relatable or likable or strong or sympathetic—but over time, the books that have stayed with me and meant the most to me are the ones with complex, memorable characters. Characters are the reason, over a year later, Hong lou meng has come to mean more to me than The Tale of Genji. 

Generally speaking, my preference is for multifaceted, psychologically complex characters, characters who are full of contradictions, characters who feel like flesh and blood. That’s why my favourite novelist is Tolstoy, as he can inhabit his characters’ minds and depict the minute changes in their consciousness better than anyone else.

But I do love Dickens’s characters. Many readers complain that Dickens only creates caricatures, two-dimensional characters, but first of all, Dickens does create well-rounded characters (such as Esther Summerson, Lady Dedlock, and Sir Leicester in Bleak House), and more importantly, his two-dimensional characters are brilliant creations with a vivid existence within the world of his books. It is not a failure, but a different approach to characters. The Dickensian caricatures are too striking, too vivid, too individualised to be mere types—Harold Skimpole, for example, is not a type, the way that Monsieur Grandet in Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet is a type (a miser). 

Questions about identity don’t interest me. I don’t read in order to find myself in books (don’t I have enough of myself in my non-reading time?), and don’t need characters to be the same sex, race, nationality, or whatever in order to relate to them. Nor do I necessarily relate to characters who supposedly belong to the same group—this shouldn’t have to be said, but we’re living in a backward age. I’m also not a fan of the Strong Female Character trope, which is tedious and has been done to death.

Rather than identify with characters, I identify with the authors (or try to). The author’s vision is important. I don’t like Elfriede Jelinek or Joyce Carol Oates, for example, for the same reason I don’t like Lars von Trier in cinema: I don’t share their dark, hopelessly bleak view of life and human nature. I don’t get along with Balzac, or at least the author of Eugénie Grandet, because he is cynical and to me, a cynical view of humanity is not a deep view of humanity. I love writers who say yes to life, to borrow Joseph Epstein’s phrase; writers who give me glimpses of beauty when I don’t find it in life. I love writers who see people as complex individuals, not just types or members of a group or products of their environment. 

It’s because of vision (not just style) that I think more highly of, and feel closer to, Jane Austen than George Eliot. I can see that many readers see George Eliot as deeper, larger, and more intellectual, but to me, George Eliot is moralistic and her ethics are built around the central idea of sympathy, whereas Jane Austen’s ethics are more sophisticated—she deals with different moral values and principles, as well as different shades and degrees of the same values, and focuses on introspection, self-understanding, and balance. George Eliot’s greatness is easier to see, Jane Austen is more subtle. 

It’s because of vision that I now prefer Shakespeare to Tolstoy, even though in many ways I have been shaped by Tolstoy. If I have to name Tolstoy’s main fault, it wouldn’t be didacticism, because he’s not as didactic or preachy as people often claim; and it wouldn’t be misogyny, because the artist in him always triumphs over the sexist, and I think Tolstoy is the greatest at writing female characters. Tolstoy’s main problem (which is not in Shakespeare) is his complex and troubled relationship with sex, his unhealthy view of sex, which occasionally gets in the way and interferes with his writing, and in this case, I don’t think the artist in him triumphs.

Having said that, I place Shakespeare and Tolstoy at the top, above everyone else. You may disagree—different readers may value different things in literature. I personally place Shakespeare and Tolstoy at the top because of their depth and breadth, because of their deep understanding of human behaviour and the wide range of characters that they depict, because of their ability to see and understand and depict very different points of view, because of their compassion. That is the quality I value most highly.  

Literature lovers and book bloggers, join in the discussion! Perhaps write your own blog posts (and share the links below). What do you look for when you read? What is important? What do you most value? 

Rereading Anna Karenina: Parts 1 and 2

1/ I have been rereading Anna Karenina but not written a word, because of writer’s block. 

8 years since I first read the novel, 8 years since I was introduced to Tolstoy, I still think he’s the greatest of novelists. As I reread Anna Karenina, I can’t help thinking that apart from Tolstoy, Cao Xueqin is the only novelist who creates that kind of seamless and natural flow, as the story moves from one scene to the next, from one group of characters to another—there seems to be no plot and each character seems to have a life of their own, independent of the author. When reading other authors, you may notice a structure, a pattern, a plot, and you may see that character and action serve the plot—not so with Tolstoy and Cao Xueqin—even the most minor characters seem to have a life of their own. However, Cao Xueqin is mostly comparable to Tolstoy in his scope, wide range of characters, and compassionate view of humanity; Hong lou meng doesn’t have the same psychological depth and complexity. 

With Tolstoy, nothing escapes his eyes, he notices the slightest movements and subtlest changes in expression. He’s better than anyone at depicting a character’s conflicted feelings and self-contradictions. Just follow Anna’s conflicted thoughts as she’s on the train returning to St Petersburg after she has fallen for Vronsky in Moscow, and the changed way she now sees her husband; or watch the scene where Kitty and Dolly are arguing and Kitty, in a fit of temper, says something that would wound her sister the most and she immediately regrets it; or read the scene of Karenin battling with himself after he notices for the first time that there’s something indecorous about Anna and Vronsky, and knows that he needs to talk to his wife but doesn’t know what to say. 

It is wonderful.

As I reread the novel, I’ve also realised that complaints about his didacticism and his opinionated narrator are very much exaggerated. Tolstoy is no George Eliot. He is much subtler. One example is the conversation between Oblonsky and Levin somewhere at the beginning of the novel: Tolstoy depicts 2 very different people, 2 opposite points of view, and presents them as they are. Throughout Anna Karenina, Tolstoy shows different perspectives and depicts his characters with compassion and sympathy—I don’t deny that once in a while, the author takes an unnecessary dig at something, but it is rare—Tolstoy depicts conflicting perspectives, almost like voices and counter-voices in Shakespeare, and shows so many different sides and aspects to each character that they are, in a sense, beyond his control and judgment. A useful comparison is with George Eliot: you can see who she approves or disapproves of, and can roughly divide her characters into 2 groups (selfless or selfish); it is much harder to do so with Tolstoy’s characters. 

2/ This is an interesting passage: 

“Levin felt that in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, his brother Nikolay was no more in the wrong than those people who despised him, despite all the depravity of his life. It was not his fault that he had been born with his unruly character and a mind that was constrained by something.” (P.1, ch.24)

The translation is by Rosamund Bartlett (last time was the translation by Aylmer and Louise Maude). 

Here’s another great passage, about Karenin:

“Alexey Alexandrovich was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very nonsensical and incomprehensible because it was life itself. Alexey Alexandrovich had spent his entire life living and working in official spheres which had to do with the reflections of life. And every time he had bumped into life itself he had shied away from it. He was now experiencing a feeling similar to that which would be felt by someone who, calmly crossing a bridge over a precipice, suddenly discovers that this bridge has been taken down, revealing an abyss. This abyss was life itself, while the bridge was the artificial life Alexey Alexandrovich had been leading. For the first time conjectures occurred to him about the possibility of his wife falling in love with somebody, and he was horrified by the idea.” (P.2, ch.8) 

And:

“Here, looking at her bureau, with the malachite blotter and a note she had begun sitting on top of it, his thoughts suddenly changed. He began to think about her, and about what she was thinking and feeling. For the first time he conjured up a vivid picture of her personal life, her thoughts and her desires, but the idea that she could and should have her own private life was so alarming to him that he hastened to drive it away. This was the abyss he was afraid of peering into. Putting himself into the thoughts and feelings of another person was a mental activity alien to Alexey Alexandrovich.” (ibid.) 

This is brilliant, utterly brilliant. Reading Tolstoy makes me, upon putting down the book, notice things and see people differently. 

3/ Here is something I didn’t notice or didn’t remember last time—the scene where Karenin confronts Anna for the first time: 

“She looked at him so ingenuously and merrily that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her would have been unable to notice anything unnatural, either in the sound or the meaning of her words. But it meant a great deal to him, knowing her as he did—knowing that she would always notice whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual and ask the reason why, knowing that she would immediately share with him all her joys, amusements, and sorrows—to see now that she did not want to notice his state of mind, or say a single word about herself. He saw that the recesses of her soul, which had been open to him before, were now closed to him.” (P.2, ch.9) 

Does this mean that they have an “acceptable”, albeit passionless, marriage? Or is it merely Karenin’s illusion? 

4/ One of the things I’ve always loved in Tolstoy’s works is the joy of life: 

“…right on Thomas Sunday, in the evening, the fog lifted, the clouds dispersed into fleecy wisps, the sky cleared, and real spring arrived. The following morning a bright sun rose and quickly devoured the thin layer of ice coating the waters, and everywhere the warm air shimmered as it was suffused with the steam rising from the worn earth.” (P.2, ch.12) 

And:

“If Levin was happy in the cattle-pens and in the farmyard, he became happier still in the open country. Swaying rhythmically along with the ambling pace of his trusty little horse, drinking in the warm, fresh scent of the snow and air as he rode through the wood, over soft, fast-disappearing snow that was covered with tracks, he rejoiced in every one of his trees, with their swelling buds and the moss reviving on their bark.” (P.2, ch.13) 

I love the way Tolstoy always conveys an exuberance, a sheer joy for life. I love that he loves life, in spite of everything. 

5/ A few times in the novel, when Anna’s on the train back to St Petersburg, or when Levin’s sitting at home reading a book about heat and getting distracted by other thoughts, Tolstoy uses a technique like stream of consciousness, as the characters’ thoughts get muddled and jump from one thing to another. War and Peace and Anna Karenina make most novels before them and around the same time as them feel old-fashioned and constrained by convention; so far I haven’t read anything modern that have that effect on Tolstoy’s novels, but perhaps we’ll see, I still have to read Joyce and Proust. 

It’s not only about techniques, however—Tolstoy’s greatness mainly lies in his understanding of human nature and human behaviour. At this, I think Shakespeare and Tolstoy are far ahead of everyone else. 

Take the sequence in Part 2 when Oblonsky comes to visit Levin in the country. Over the past months, Levin has been trying to bury his memories of Kitty after the rejection. Oblonsky, jovial and tactful, doesn’t mention her name; they eat and talk and go hunting together; Levin also doesn’t ask about her. At some point, they talk about country life and Oblonsky says Levin is a lucky man.

“‘Maybe it’s because I enjoy what I have, and don’t grieve over what I don’t have,’ said Levin, remembering Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyich understood and cast a glance at him, but said nothing.

Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing with his usual tact that he was reluctant to talk about the Shcherbatskys, and for not saying anything about them; but Levin did now want to find out about the matter tormenting him, except he did not have the courage to raise the subject.” (P.2, ch.14)

Levin asks his friend how things are going, they talk about Oblonsky, then return to hunting and talking about birds. They have a great time together, catching a few woodcocks, it gradually gets dark and they start heading home.  

“They were now standing about fifteen paces from one another. ‘Stiva!’ said Levin suddenly out of the blue. ‘How come you won’t tell me whether your sister-in-law has got married yet, or when she will be?’

Levin felt so secure and calm that he thought no answer could possibly upset him. But he certainly did not expect what Stepan Arkadyich said in reply.” (P.2, ch.15) 

Levin is shocked to learn that Kitty is very ill and sent abroad, and that everyone fears for her life. Another writer would probably continue with the conversation and let Oblonsky tell more about Kitty’s suffering, but Tolstoy doesn’t: the 2 men suddenly hear a shrill whistle and both seize their guns and shoot at the bird. Later on the way home, they talk more about Kitty:

“…although he would have been ashamed to admit it, he was pleased by what he found out. He was pleased that there was still hope, and even more pleased that the person who had made him suffer so much was suffering herself. But when Stepan Arkadyich began to discuss the causes of Kitty’s illness, and mentioned Vronsky’s name, Levin cut him short…” (P.2, ch.16) 

Tolstoy’s characters feel so real, so relatable because they have conflicted feelings and sometimes have ugly feelings, as we all do. They also feel so real because they do things they themselves don’t understand. Here Levin cuts Oblonsky short, saying that he has no interest, and starts asking about the wood that Oblonsky has come to the country to sell. The story now moves onto Oblonsky’s bad deal with Ryabinin about the wood, Levin’s argument and intervention, etc. Levin is in bad mood for a while because of the stupid sale, but underneath the surface, the news of Kitty is gradually having an effect on him. It all seems mundane and ordinary but the chapters are so wonderful because Tolstoy is writing about 2 things happening at the same time: the action on the surface, and the struggle in Levin’s mind. 

“‘It’s wonderful how they make this soap,’ he said, examining and unwrapping a fragrant bar of soap which Agafya Mikhailovna had put out for his guest, but which Oblonsky had not used. ‘Just look, it’s a real work of art.’

‘Yes, everything’s brought to such a state of perfection nowadays,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, with a moist-eyed and blissful yawn. ‘Theatres, for instance, and those entertainment … ah—ah—ah!’ he yawned. ‘Electric light everywhere* … ah—ah—ah!’

‘Yes, electric light,’ said Levin. ‘Yes. Well, where’s Vronsky these days?’ he asked suddenly, putting down the soap.” (P.2, ch.17) 

It’s just brilliant. And that’s where Tolstoy’s power lies: he lets the characters’ lives slowly unfold, and everything happens so naturally that it doesn’t seem to be serving a plot.

6/ The greatest scene in Part 1 is the ball—this is the scene that changes everything for Anna, Vronsky, and Kitty. Tolstoy focuses on Kitty’s perspective, and it is so wonderful that one cannot help wondering how Tolstoy could understand so well the excitement, the hopes, the disappointment, the heartbreak, the pain and humiliation of an 18-year-old girl. 

In Part 2, the greatest scene is the horse race. It is magnificent, Tolstoy’s writing is cinematic—like a montage. He first describes the scene all from Vronsky’s point of view, then switches to Karenin, goes back in time, describes Karenin’s meeting with Anna before the race, then moves to Anna at the race and switches between her watching Vronsky and Karenin watching her. Everything flows in a perfectly natural way. Why do we need film adaptations of Anna Karenina? Tolstoy can create montage and lively scenes like a film, but a film cannot give us access to the characters’ thoughts as Tolstoy does. 

7/ In the chapters of Kitty in Germany, Tolstoy seems to bring some of himself into her characterisation—like the author, Kitty aspires to be good, to forget pleasures and vanity, to do her duties and live for others, only to realise that she cannot do it, as it would only lead to hypocrisy and deceit. Tolstoy is a master because he shows that, through her meetings with Varenka, Kitty gets a glimpse of a very different life and becomes calmer and more mature, but she does not turn into a completely different person. She cannot change who she is. 

I have to continue to see what I think, but right now I seem to like Kitty more than I did last time.   

2 kinds of big novels

I’m going to get it out of the way by saying that Moby Dick doesn’t fit into this way of dividing big novels, because Moby Dick is more than a novel—it is 3 books put together (a novel, a whale encyclopaedia, and a philosophical book), and the story is only a small part of the book. 
Some recent articles and posts about big novels have made me think about them and storytelling, and I’ve come to the conclusion that big novels can be roughly divided into 2 types. 
The 1st type is the multiple-strand novel, which is essentially several novels put together. An example is Anna Karenina, in which we have the Anna strand and the Levin strand. Some characters belong to both sets of characters, such as Kitty or Oblonsky, but the Anna plot and the Levin plot are separate. 
Middlemarch is similar, which has 3 main plots: Dorothea- Casaubon, Lydgate- Rosamond, and Fred-Mary. Again, they sometimes intersect, but each of these plots can function as a novel on its own, even though the Fred-Mary one is thinner in comparison. Daniel Deronda is a better example, in which the Gwendolen Harleth plot and the Daniel Deronda plot only touch. 
Little Dorrit is less clear, but once I wrote that there were 4 strands of story in it: the Marshalsea prison, the Clennams, the bureaucrats, and the Marseilles prisoners. The line is more blurred, compared to Anna Karenina or Daniel Deronda, and Arthur Clennam connects all 4 plots, but they are separate—the world of the Clennams is distinct from the world of the Marshalsea prisoners and the Dorrit family, for instance, and the plot of the Marseilles prisoners is the one that stands out the most. 
Now look at War and Peace, it is different. It is the 2nd type, the one-big-story novel. War and Peace has 5 families and about 500-600 characters—they are all inter-connected and their lives are intertwined. Some readers speak of the War part and the Peace part, but they are just separate by location and action—they are not separate in the sense that they could be different books put together, especially if we look at characters such as Andrei and Nikolai. Andrei and Nikolai are not points of intersection of different strands the way Arthur Clennam is in Little Dorrit—their lives unfold in both the War part and the Peace part. 
A better example is The Tale of Genji, which is longer than War and Peace but tells a single story of Genji with his women and children. I’ve been told that about 2/3 or 3/4 through the book, Genji would die and the author would move on to tell the story of his children, but that would be a continuation. The entire book tells a single story—there are about 400 characters in the book but most of them relate to Genji one way or another. At least till he dies, Genji is always the central character, even if Murasaki Shikibu switches between perspectives. 
I think the 2nd type is harder to write. With the 1st type, you’re essentially writing 2 or several novels at the same time—you have to move back and forth between the plots, but generally speaking you’re focusing on one set of characters at a time. In contrast, when you write the one-big-story novel, the characters are not divided into different sets and you have to juggle with everyone at the same time. In The Tale of Genji for instance, Murasaki Shikibu must have full control over her 400 characters—what they’re doing, where they’re living, how old they are, when they move from one residence to another or how they move from serving one person to another, and so on. She has to keep track of passing time, age, seasons, festivals, amount of mourning time after a loved one dies, etc. and has to keep track of everyone’s age and changing titles as well as their relationships with each other. 
There may be some works that are hard to categorise, but I think big novels can be roughly divided into these 2 types.
What do you think?

Reading women

1/ As I said earlier, I intended to read more women this year.    
My favourite writers who are female have been, for a few years, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte. Recently I’ve added Edith Wharton. 
In the past, there were a few other female writers I liked a lot, such as Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Isabel Allende, etc. but overtime, their works no longer have the same impact (though I intend to reread, or read more of, Toni Morrison, and see what happens). 
At the moment, my favourite writers are Jane Austen, Lev Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Gustave Flaubert, Vladimir Nabokov, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte. 

2/ I’ve just realised something interesting.  
My favourite period for literature is the 19th century. When it comes to Russian literature, I’ve read a large part of Tolstoy’s fictional works (except Resurrection, which I didn’t finish, the plays, and some short stories), and some of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol, Leskov, Lermontov, but not a single work by a female writer. 
When it comes to 19th century British literature, however, I’ve realised that my reading of women is not bad at all: I’ve read Jane Austen’s 6 novels plus Lady Susan and the unfinished The Watsons and Sanditon, 3 George Eliot novels (Adam Bede, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, not to mention about 1/3 of The Mill on the Floss), 6 out of 7 Bronte novels (Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, Anne’s Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, and probably some other works I can’t think of at the moment. 
In fact, I seem to know the women better than the men—I’ve only read a few Dickens books, a few Wilkie Collins books, a few Stevenson books, etc. and none by Thackeray, Trollope, or Hardy. 
This hasn’t been a conscious desire to read more women, but a combination of interest in classic works (especially Frankenstein and Middlemarch), assigned reading (such as Shirley and Daniel Deronda), and a tendency to read more works by the same author (especially if I like the author).   
Now that I’ve written it down, I realise the holes in my knowledge of Victorian literature—I should actually read more Dickens, and check out Hardy, Trollope, and Thackeray. 

3/ Does this mean that British literature has more great/ celebrated female writers than others, at least in the 19th century? 

4/ I do think people should read widely and diversify their reading. 
However, as I’ve said many times before, I have problems with much of the talk about literature and diversity. 
- The most important thing, when we’re talking about literature, is quality—literary merit, genius, greatness. The other day, I saw someone complain about James Wood’s list of great literary works (in some book) that only a small percentage were by women. People say the same thing when attacking the Western canon.  
I mean, forget about contemporary literature, think about the history of literature and see how many women were writing, and how many women were at the top. There is no doubt that in history, women were seen as inferior and didn’t get the same opportunities as men, and didn’t have “a room of their own” (to use Woolf’s phrase), but that’s exactly why most classic works were written by men.
The only way to have a much higher percentage of books by women on such lists is to include contemporary or more recent works, which haven’t been tested by time, or to replace great works by men with less good works by women just to have more women, which is an anti-artistic, philistine approach.
- People should read widely, but should also read deeply. To me personally, I place much more emphasis on reading deeply, which is why I read slowly, read multiple books by the same author, reread books, and never rush to read a certain number of books per year. 
- I wonder if the people who attack the Western canon and say that books by dead white male authors are irrelevant to people of colour realise that by the same (asinine) logic, books by writers of colour are irrelevant to white people.
- I have noticed that a lot of people who loudly push for diversity in reading don’t seem to realise that other countries exist—they read books by non-white writers in Western countries or non-white writers who write in English, ignoring foreign/ translated books.   
Some others don’t seem to realise that other countries have classics—they mostly read contemporary literature, which includes translated literature, but not translated classics, and also rarely read English classics outside school, which suggests that they dislike the Western canon more because they don’t enjoy classics. 
- There is nothing wrong with reading mainly classics. Some people, including me, prefer to focus on works that have stood the test of time. 
See some of my blog posts on related subjects: 
A call for humility in approaching classic literature. 
The idea of relevance and relatableness in the arts. 
A riff on “dead white men”. 
Long novels and the Stockholm syndrome theory. 
I should repeat: I do think people should read widely, and diversify their reading. This is also a note to myself. 

5/ This is embarrassing, because I’ve read so little, but if I have to compile a list of classic novels by women that I think everyone should read, here it is:
- Jane Austen: Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice. 
- Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence. 
- George Eliot: Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda. 
- Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre. 
- Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights. 
- Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 
- Mary Shelley: Frankenstein.
These are the books I recommend, not only to those who are interested in reading books by women, but to anyone who is serious about literature.

Ethics in Persuasion and the Jane Austen myths

Many people often foolishly think Jane Austen’s a romance author—the mother of chicklit. Indeed all her 6 novels follow the marriage plot, and if we’re talking about the bare plot, they all have the same one (a heroine, a hero, some obstacles, a female rival, a foil to the hero), but there are a lot more things going on and the novels are all different. The idea of plot is meaningless as the history of literature also boils down to a handful of different plots, used over and over again.
Some other people mistakenly think she’s chiefly concerned with manners. That appears to be true, as her novels are seen as comedy of manners—but what Jane Austen’s chiefly concerned with is not manners but the mind, the character, the moral principles underneath the manners. She’s interested in ethics. She uses the marriage plot to write about ethics, about self-deception and misunderstanding, about moral education and mental growth.    
Jane Austen’s ethics, in my opinion, are more sophisticated than both George Eliot’s and Edith Wharton’s. 
George Eliot’s ethics are built around the central idea of sympathy—people should love and sympathise with others, and shouldn’t be selfish. 
Edith Wharton’s main concern seems to be the conflict between society and individual—in The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country, her ethics are mainly to do with self-respect and dignity; whilst in The Age of Innocence, her ethics are about self-respect and the sense of duty. 
These 3 writers all have different strengths, and they’re all great, so I’m not putting down George Eliot and Edith Wharton in order to champion Jane Austen. I’m comparing the ethical aspect of their works. When I say Jane Austen’s ethics are more sophisticated, I mean they’re not built around a central idea—she deals with different moral values or principles, as well as different shades and different degrees of the same moral value. 
An example is the concept of pride in Persuasion. In the book, the word “proud” appears 8 times in Persuasion, “pride” 18 times. In my blog post about Anne Elliot’s personality, I wrote that Jane Austen made a distinction between bad pride (arrogance, self-satisfaction, self-importance), as in Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Mary, and good pride (self-respect, confidence), as in Anne. 
However, there’s a 3rd kind of pride in Persuasion (this is the problem of blogging before finishing reading): Frederick Wentworth’s pride. His attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove at the beginning are, in his words, “the attempts of angry pride”. 

“… There he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost; and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.” (Ch.23) 

Later, he admits that a few years ago, in a better position, he was too proud to ask Anne again. His pride is in the sense of a wounded ego. 
Also in Persuasion, Jane Austen writes about the different shades of the concept of resolution. Frederick Wentworth initially sees Anne as lacking resolution. 

“She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. It had been the effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity.” (Ch.7) 

He says to Louisa:

“"... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm…"” (Ch.10) 

Throughout the novel, he’s the one who has to grow and learn:  

“There, he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.” (Ch.23) 

Some people are more attracted to an openly resolute character, but Jane Austen reminds us that there’s a difference between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will. 
Jane Austen’s idea can be seen clearly in Mansfield Park. Yesterday I saw someone say that she didn’t like Fanny Price because she’s not defiant. I’ve also seen lots of people call Fanny passive, or remark that she’s characterised by negation (whatever that means). Such misreadings are due to a shallow understanding of Jane Austen and a juvenile idea of resolution. There is nothing passive about holding fast to your principles, standing by your own belief and judgment, and resisting pressures from different sides. Fanny is defiant—just not in a noisy way. In fact, she’s more defiant than all of Jane Austen’s heroines. Her resolution is the steadiness of principle, and the resolution of a collected mind. 
In Persuasion, Anne Elliot is similar—her personal respect for her father and her sense of duty to her don’t allow her to defy him openly, but she has her own set of values, and refuses either to flatter Lady Dalrymple or to drop her friendship with Mrs Smith, of whom her father disapproves. 

There’s something else I find interesting. Frederick Wentworth fears that Lady Russell, who years ago persuaded Anne to reject him, would now persuade her to marry William Walter Elliot. It is true that she does try, but Anne tells him the difference: 

“"... If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it was to duty, but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty violated."” (ibid.) 

The novel examines the moral dangers of persuasion, but Jane Austen makes a distinction between persuasion on the side of safety, and on the side of risk. Lady Russell’s advice to decline Wentworth’s proposal did break their hearts, but at the time it’s sound advice. He comes back now a captain, with lots of money, but we can’t say that he would have achieved all that if Anne had accepted him. Perhaps he had the potential and ambition in him, or perhaps the rejection drove him to prove himself—we don’t know. Anne herself thinks Lady Russell wasn’t wrong, and she wasn’t wrong to reject him. 
But her friend’s attempt to persuade her to accept William Walter Elliot is altogether a different sort of persuasion.  
More can be said about Persuasion and Jane Austen’s other works, but I think that’s enough for now. It’s her misfortune that her novels can be enjoyed on a superficial level. Contrary to general perception, Jane Austen’s much more sophisticated, ethically and artistically.

Edith Wharton and other writers

I have written before about the similarities and differences between Edith Wharton and Jane Austen, so there’s no need to write again. The gist of it is that I love and admire them both for their acute perception and deep understanding of people, their sharp tongue, irony, and wry humour, and for their vividly drawn characters, but they have different styles, approaches, themes, and concerns, which is a good thing. 
If anyone asks, I’d say I prefer Jane Austen, which is to be expected because I discovered her several years ago and have read all her works, including the incomplete works, just not the juvenilia. She’s also the author that I feel closest to my heart (even though Tolstoy’s a greater writer), because of her views on relationships, and her ideas about balance, moderation, self-awareness, and the different virtues. However, that’s my personal taste, I get it if someone else prefers Wharton.    
In terms of psychological insight, I think Wharton is comparable to George Eliot, and both of them are interested in moral choice, except that Wharton’s novels don’t have an intrusive narrator and a moralising tone. Some critics have said Wharton’s very harsh on her female characters, but so is George Eliot on the female characters she disapproves of—just look at her stabs at Celia Brooke and Rosamond Vincy. I can’t help trying to imagine Undine Spragg under George Eliot’s pen. 
The main difference between these 2 writers is that, even though both deal with moral choice, George Eliot’s interested in sympathy (selflessness vs selfishness), kindness/ philanthropy, and human connection, Edith Wharton’s more concerned with dignity and self-respect. George Eliot focuses on the relations between people, Wharton concentrates on the conflict between the individual and society, exploring ideas about freedom vs conventions, human needs/ passions vs social duties, and so on. 
As I have written several times before, George Eliot is a writer I respect immensely but always struggle with. Readers who can get along well with her would probably find her more philosophical, and in a way, larger than Wharton. My aesthetics is heavily influenced by Tolstoy, Flaubert, and Nabokov, so I personally dislike the intrusive narrator, especially when I feel she is spoon-feeding readers something that could be suggested or hinted (here and here). It is easy to see why I prefer and think more highly of Wharton as an artist. 
Now, what about Edith Wharton and Henry James? So far, I have deliberately avoided mentioning James or making any comparison, because I have read lots of articles and essays in which the author writes at length about how James is superior and how Wharton doesn’t do certain things he does. This is something I don’t understand, because if they love James so much, why do they write about Wharton at all?  
I also take issues with it when someone sees her as a lesser James, or [insert adjective] James, because to me, she’s not [anything] James, she’s Edith Wharton. 
Whilst it is true that he’s her mentor, they both write about the American upper class, and they both tell a single story in each novel (instead of several strands of stories as Tolstoy and George Eliot do), they are very different. 
Look at this passage from Edmund Wilson: 

“Her work was then the desperate product of a pressure of maladjustments; and it very soon took a direction totally different from that of Henry James, as a lesser disciple of whom she is sometimes pointlessly listed. James's interests were predominantly esthetic: He is never a passionate social prophet; and only rarely—as in The Ivory Tower, which seems in turn to have derived from Mrs. Wharton—does he satirize plutocratic America. But a passionate social prophet is precisely what Edith Wharton became. At her strongest and most characteristic, she is a brilliant example of the writer who relieves an emotional strain by denouncing his generation.” (full essay) 

(Notice how Wilson has to say she’s a lesser disciple?)
Here is a fairer comparison, from Marilyn French: 

“It is true that they were personally close and perhaps had similar sensibilities, and that they were looking at the same world. But James, a man, emphasized the individual within society; he had a strong sense of legitimacy that strengthened and colored what he created, Wharton was far more aware of the power of the environment over the individual, of the sapping of energy caused by a sense of illegitimacy, and of the impossibility of getting beyond the bodily and social consequences of sex. James’s genius was linguistic and psychological; Wharton’s was sociological and psychological. Without seeming to diminish James—who cannot be diminished—one must separate the two authors and focus on Wharton’s excellences. She has a wider scope; she is more interested in the particular experience of women; and she had a profounder sense of constriction.” (full essay)

Comparison is not necessarily a problem, but critics usually pair Edith Wharton with, and compare her to, Henry James, in order to diminish and denigrate her, which is not only pointless but also foolish, because they’re different. 
Personally I prefer Wharton. It might be too early to say, because I’m reading the 3rd Wharton novel, and from James have only read The Portrait of a Lady, Washington Square, The Turn of the Screw, and some short works including “Daisy Miller”. However, my impression so far is that I admire James but can’t warm to him. Wharton’s also interested in nuance and subtlety, but she’s more direct, more energetic, and not so vague.  
Her characters are also more vivid. Lately I’ve been thinking about The Portrait of a Lady—a novel I struggled with at the beginning and came to appreciate. I finished it, thinking it’s a great book and particularly admiring the way James writes about silence and things left unsaid. But having finished reading, I find myself rarely thinking about it afterwards (the way I often think about Anna Karenina, Mansfield Park, or Madame Bovary), and a few years later, barely remember anything beyond the general plot. My memory of the book is all muddled up, and all the characters, including Isabel Archer, are very vague to me. It’s not about time, as Anna Karenina or Nastasha Rostova is still vivid to me, for instance, but about the book, as I remember thinking the characters are never not vague, I just came to accept it as I learnt to appreciate the other strengths and qualities of James’s book. Their motives are never clear, but even their character is not very clear. 
The vagueness is the point of The Portrait of a Lady—Isabel Archer is always behind some kind of screen, we never come to understand her or see her clearly, the same way the men in the story never fully understand her. Within the book, it works—we wonder what she would do next, then wonder why she does what she does, but never get a clear answer. The same argument can be made for Washington Square—it’s about the battle of minds, and a lot hinges on other characters predicting Catherine’s actions and guessing her motives.   
But somehow I like Washington Square (my preference is probably a controversial opinion), while The Portrait of a Lady becomes very abstract to me. The vagueness of the characters in The Portrait of a Lady works for the novel and what James was doing, but to me, it seems to work in an abstract sense—the vagueness becomes a hindrance to me appreciating the book in the long run, as I forget the book and can’t see any of the characters.
I don’t expect to forget Lily Bart and Undine Spragg. 
The more I write about Henry James, the clearer it appears to me how different they are. 
I also think Edith Wharton’s more visual. To quote from Marilyn French again: 

“Wharton had an intense visual awareness, especially of nature—a sensitivity she shares with many of her characters. She had an intense visual awareness of interiors as well. […] She was able to conjure an entire way of life with a few concrete details.    
[…] Wharton’s visual apprehension included people as well as things. She noted vividly postures, gestures, manners of speech, manners of walk, the tilt of a head, the way someone held a handkerchief. She paid attention to clothes, but also to the way they were worn. She knew that surfaces reveal values, that the depiction of significant details creates the texture of a life, and that the deepest beliefs of a person or a culture are perceptible in that texture.” 

As a writer, James is more psychological and metaphorical than visual. Wharton doesn’t go as far as Flaubert, but she’s more visual than James, her writing is more sensuous. I have written before about the use of light in The House of Mirth, for instance. This is another reason I prefer Wharton. 
Most importantly, The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and now The Age of Innocence have affected me a lot more strongly than anything I’ve read from James.
Edith Wharton’s not a lesser Henry James. She’s Edith Wharton. And she should be recognised for her own excellences.

Idle musings on male and female writers

As I read about the relationship between a charming, dominating woman and a naïve, inexperienced younger man in My Cousin Rachel, I can’t help idly wondering: what if the stories by Daphne du Maurier, Edith Wharton, or Jane Austen had been written by a man? 
Whilst the differences between men and women are sometimes exaggerated (like the idea that men can’t write women, for example), men and women are certainly different, biologically and socially, especially if we’re talking about the 19th century and early 20th century, when women don’t have equal rights.  
I’m not talking about a difference in prose or style. I don’t really believe in the idea of masculine prose vs feminine prose, certainly not the idea that by looking at a few sentences, you can tell if the author is a man or a woman.    
In terms of scope, there are male writers who work on a small canvas, focus on one strand of story, and pay attention to every detail and nuance, such as Henry James or Flaubert, just as there are female writers such as Jane Austen or Edith Wharton; and if some male writers such as Tolstoy or Dickens work on a larger canvas and tell multiple strands of stories, so does George Eliot. 
The difference I’m talking about is that books by women have a woman’s perspective, and a woman’s sensibilities, especially when we’re talking about the context of the 19th century and early 20th century, when women have less freedom, fewer rights, and fewer options. It’s hard to explain what I mean by “a woman’s sensibilities”, but I can see that in the works of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, etc. there is more sympathy for women, and more comment on gender inequality and women’s limited options. Even when there is a deeply unpleasant character, such as the shallow, selfish Rosamond Vincy in Middlemarch or the ignorant, frivolous, and opportunistic Undine Spragg in The Custom of the Country, the authors still let us see that, as a woman, they have limited options and narrow experience, and the men who love them, Lydgate and Ralph Marvell respectively, have a narrow, mistaken view of women and share the blame in their conflicts.   
There’s something else. In The Custom of the Country, the protagonist Undine Spragg is very ignorant, but she has social instinct and is extremely good at playing the game and using marriages to her advantage—she chews Ralph up and spits him out, then uses other men in the same way, and always gets what she wants. Now I’m reading Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel, in which a naïve, inexperienced man with a sheltered experience falls prey to an older woman and gets manipulated.  
I can’t help wondering, what if the stories of The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, Middlemarch, Mansfield Park, My Cousin Rachel, or Jane Eyre had been written by a male writer—say, Tolstoy, Dickens, or Flaubert? 
Also, how do you define a woman’s sensibilities?

Undine- Ralph Marvell marriage and the custom of the country

The Undine- Ralph Marvell marriage very much reminds me of the Lydgate- Rosamond marriage in Middlemarch. The similarities are probably deliberate. In both cases, the man is a decent man but has a narrow, mistaken view on women; he marries a beautiful woman he idealises, but at the same time also looks down on her; she turns out to be selfish, shallow, and incompatible with him, and because he treats her like a child and keeps things from her, she doesn’t understand anything and brings him to his ruin. 
Another strong similarity between Rosamond Vincy and Undine Spragg is that both of them never think they’re wrong. They’re incapable of recognising and acknowledging their own fault—there’s always someone else to blame. 
Chapter 15 of The Custom of the Country has an interesting discussion between Laura Fairford (Ralph Marvell’s sister) and her friend Charles Bowen. 

“He paused. "The fact that the average American looks down on his wife."
Mrs. Fairford was up with a spring. "If that's where paradox lands you!"
Bowen mildly stood his ground. "Well—doesn't he prove it? How much does he let her share in the real business of life? How much does he rely on her judgment and help in the conduct of serious affairs? Take Ralph for instance—you say his wife's extravagance forces him to work too hard; but that's not what's wrong. It's normal for a man to work hard for a woman—what's abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it."
"To tell Undine? She'd be bored to death if he did!"
"Just so; she'd even feel aggrieved. But why? Because it's against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man's again—I don't mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven't we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don't take enough interest in them."” 

Note the appearance of the book’s title (my emphasis).
Blah blah blah, then: 

“"Yes; and the most indifferent: there's the point. The 'slaving's' no argument against the indifference. To slave for women is part of the old American tradition; lots of people give their lives for dogmas they've ceased to believe in. Then again, in this country the passion for making money has preceded the knowing how to spend it, and the American man lavishes his fortune on his wife because he doesn't know what else to do with it."
[…] Bowen paused to light another cigarette, and then took up his theme. "Isn't that the key to our easy divorces? If we cared for women in the old barbarous possessive way do you suppose we'd give them up as readily as we do? The real paradox is the fact that the men who make, materially, the biggest sacrifices for their women, should do least for them ideally and romantically. And what's the result—how do the women avenge themselves? All my sympathy's with them, poor deluded dears, when I see their fallacious little attempt to trick out the leavings tossed them by the preoccupied male—the money and the motors and the clothes—and pretend to themselves and each other that THAT'S what really constitutes life! Oh, I know what you're going to say—it's less and less of a pretense with them, I grant you; they're more and more succumbing to the force of the suggestion; but here and there I fancy there's one who still sees through the humbug, and knows that money and motors and clothes are simply the big bribe she's paid for keeping out of some man's way!"” 

(The discussion is longer, but I’ve kept a large part of it). 
Is this Edith Wharton’s view? I don’t remember Charles Bowen ever opening his mouth before. If this is Wharton’s way of commenting on the marriage and the American way, it is subtler than, you know, George Eliot.  
In a way, it’s true. Undine is mercenary, but she doesn’t think about money in itself, but about comfort, luxury, extravagance, and distinction. She doesn’t understand the value of money, and doesn’t care where it comes from—all she cares about is getting “the best”. That is the way Mr Spragg raises her: 

“All his life, and at ever-diminishing intervals, Mr. Spragg had been called on by his womenkind to "see what he could do"; and the seeing had almost always resulted as they wished. Undine did not have to send back her ring, and in her state of trance-like happiness she hardly asked by what means her path had been smoothed, but merely accepted her mother's assurance that "father had fixed everything all right."” (Ch.10) 

It is, in fact, the way Mr Spragg treats his wife as well as his daughter. 

“He had been "seeing" now for an arduous fortnight; and the strain on his vision had resulted in a state of tension such as he had not undergone since the epic days of the Pure Water Move at Apex. It was not his habit to impart his fears to Mrs. Spragg and Undine, and they continued the bridal preparations, secure in their invariable experience that, once "father" had been convinced of the impossibility of evading their demands, he might be trusted to satisfy them by means with which his womenkind need not concern themselves.” (ibid.) 

Both Mrs Spragg and Undine have no understanding of money and the difficulty in getting it, so when Undine wants something, they gang up on him. 
Look at the scene where she asks him to get her an opera box. 

“Mr. Spragg's brow remained unrelenting.
"Do you know what a box costs?"
"No; but I s'pose you do," Undine returned with unconscious flippancy.
"I do. That's the trouble. Why won't seats do you?"
"Mabel could buy seats for herself."” (Ch.4) 

She doesn’t care how much it costs—she wants it, and she will get it. 

“"A parterre box costs a hundred and twenty-five dollars a night," saidMr. Spragg, transferring a toothpick to his waistcoat pocket.
"I only want it once."” (ibid.) 

But even when she knows the cost, she doesn’t know what it means. The amount is abstract and meaningless to someone who never works and never handles money. This is an important scene because it says everything you need to know about Undine, and also explains why she is the way she is—her family spoil her rotten.

“Undine hated "scenes": she was essentially peace-loving, and would have preferred to live on terms of unbroken harmony with her parents. But she could not help it if they were unreasonable. Ever since she could remember there had been "fusses" about money; yet she and her mother had always got what they wanted, apparently without lasting detriment to the family fortunes. It was therefore natural to conclude that there were ample funds to draw upon, and that Mr. Spragg's occasional resistances were merely due to an imperfect understanding of what constituted the necessities of life.” (ibid.)  

It is no wonder that later on when Ralph and Undine are in Europe and need to return home for lack of funds, she neither wants to sail within the week and lose her fun, nor wants to leave later in an uncomfortable slow boat. She has to have it both ways, she has to have the best, and Ralph yields as he can’t make her understand. 
There is no doubt that Ralph is the victim in the marriage and Undine is an opportunistic, selfish, and manipulative woman, incapable of empathy and self-reflection. It’s understandable as well that Ralph looks down on her—after all, she is shallow, ignorant, and a philistine, having no sensibilities for art, literature, music, or nature. Undine not only has no principle but also lacks a sense of self—she is hollow and imitative. 
But Edith Wharton also forces the readers to see another aspect of their marriage—Ralph looks down on Undine, and does nothing to help her improve herself nor engage her in “the business of life”. 

“[Mrs Shallum] saw at once Undine's value as a factor in her scheme, and the two formed an alliance on which Ralph refrained from shedding the cold light of depreciation. It was a point of honour with him not to seem to disdain any of Undine's amusements […] With her quick perceptions and adaptabilities she would soon learn to care more about the quality of the reflecting surface; and meanwhile no criticism of his should mar her pleasure.” (Ch.12) 

And: 

“Undine's moods still infected him, and when she was happy he felt an answering lightness. Even when her amusements were too primitive to be shared he could enjoy their reflection in her face. Only, as he looked back, he was struck by the evanescence, the lack of substance, in their moments of sympathy, and by the permanent marks left by each breach between them. Yet he still fancied that some day the balance might be reversed, and that as she acquired a finer sense of values the depths in her would find a voice.” (Ch.13) 

He naively thinks she can change, but does nothing to help her change. Just once he takes her to a play, which she’s too ignorant to appreciate, so afterwards he goes to the theatre alone and leaves her to do her things. 
Now look at it from Undine’s point of view: 

“[Mr Popple’s] conversation struck her as intellectual, and his eagerness to have her share his thoughts was in flattering contrast to Ralph's growing tendency to keep his to himself. Popple's homage seemed the, subtlest proof of what Ralph could have made of her if he had "really understood" her. It was but another step to ascribe all her past mistakes to the lack of such understanding; and the satisfaction derived from this thought had once impelled her to tell the artist that he alone knew how to rouse her 'higher self.'” (Ch.14) 

This doesn’t justify her selfishness and lack of empathy (she forgets her own son’s birthday!), but Wharton makes us consider the marriage from a different point of view. Let’s go back to Ralph before the proposal: 

“The clearness with which he judged the girl and himself seemed the surest proof that his feeling was more than a surface thrill. He was not blind to her crudity and her limitations, but they were a part of her grace and her persuasion. Diverse et ondoyante—so he had seen her from the first. But was not that merely the sign of a quicker response to the world's manifold appeal? […] the girl's very sensitiveness to new impressions, combined with her obvious lack of any sense of relative values, would make her an easy prey to the powers of folly.” (Ch.6) 

Ralph sees her crudity and limitations from the start, but chooses her anyway. He himself picks an intellectually inferior, incompatible wife.

Mansfield Park: how is Mary Crawford different from Jane Austen’s heroines?

If anyone asks me to compare between Jane Austen and George Eliot, I would say, Middlemarch is a novel of great scope and depth, a good contender for the title of greatest English novel, but Mansfield Park is the reason I place Jane Austen above George Eliot as an artist. She allows 2 characters of whom she disapproves to be immensely attractive and charming, and lays a trap for unsuspecting readers, whereas George Eliot would have made sure, through the moralising narrator, that readers would never side with Henry and Mary Crawford.  
So far I’ve written enough about Henry Crawford. Let’s talk about Mary. 
It’s easy to see why many people like Mary Crawford. She is cheerful, lively, animated, playful, outspoken, and extremely charismatic. Some readers might also see themselves in her because she likes variety and excitement, or when she’s careless and does something deemed inappropriate by the “priggish” Edmund and Fanny. 
Mary Crawford and Fanny Price have 2 things in common. 1, both love Edmund, and are loved by Edmund. 2, both are highly perceptive, and good judges of character. 
Mary notices everything. She sees her uncle, the Admiral, as a man of vices, and knows that her aunt is ill-used. She sees through Dr Grant: 

““…And though Dr. Grant is most kind and obliging to me, and though he is really a gentleman, and, I dare say, a good scholar and clever, and often preaches good sermons, and is very respectable, I see him to be an indolent, selfish bon vivant, who must have his palate consulted in everything; who will not stir a finger for the convenience of any one; and who, moreover, if the cook makes a blunder, is out of humour with his excellent wife. To own the truth, Henry and I were partly driven out this very evening by a disappointment about a green goose, which he could not get the better of. My poor sister was forced to stay and bear it.”” (Ch.11)  

She knows that both Maria and Julia are in love with Henry, which escapes almost everyone else apart from him and Fanny. She understands Henry better than he does himself—knowing his love for Fanny wouldn’t last.  
She personally knows many bad marriages and sees through them all, such as the Frasers and the Stornaways. She clearly understands why Maria marries Mr Rushworth. In her turn, Mary falls in love with a kind, good man—Edmund Bertram. And she recognises Fanny’s qualities. 
(Imagine Mary Crawford and Emma Woodhouse in the same book). 
In short, like Fanny, Mary is a good judge of character, and notices many things that escape everyone else at Mansfield Park (and Sotherton). The difference between the 2 characters is that Fanny feels for others, whereas Mary doesn’t care. 
Mary’s main faults are her selfishness, insincerity, and lack of regard for others.  
Early on, there’s a scene where Mary complains about the inconvenience of not having anything to transport her harp: 

““I am to have it to-morrow; but how do you think it is to be conveyed? Not by a wagon or cart: oh no! nothing of that kind could be hired in the village. I might as well have asked for porters and a handbarrow.”
“You would find it difficult, I dare say, just now, in the middle of a very late hay harvest, to hire a horse and cart?”
“I was astonished to find what a piece of work was made of it! To want a horse and cart in the country seemed impossible, so I told my maid to speak for one directly; and as I cannot look out of my dressing-closet without seeing one farmyard, nor walk in the shrubbery without passing another, I thought it would be only ask and have, and was rather grieved that I could not give the advantage to all. Guess my surprise, when I found that I had been asking the most unreasonable, most impossible thing in the world; had offended all the farmers, all the labourers, all the hay in the parish! As for Dr. Grant's bailiff, I believe I had better keep out of his way; and my brother-in-law himself, who is all kindness in general, looked rather black upon me when he found what I had been at.”” (Ch.6) 

She doesn’t stop there: 

““I shall understand all your ways in time; but, coming down with the true London maxim, that everything is to be got with money, I was a little embarrassed at first by the sturdy independence of your country customs…””(ibid.)   

This says a lot about her. To Mary, her own convenience is more important than the farmers’ need for carts during harvest. 
Other little details reveal Mary’s character. She speaks badly of her uncle in front of strangers, and make sweeping generalisations about the Navy and the clergy. She knows the impropriety of private theatricals, and knows Sir Thomas would disapprove, but doesn’t feel bothered. Later, she speaks disrespectfully of Sir Thomas in front of Fanny. 
She doesn’t care when Henry toys with the feelings of Maria and Julia and succeeds at making them both fall in love with him. She doesn’t stop him from trying to “make a small hole in Fanny’s heart”, and even assists him in lying to her about the necklace. Later on, she encourages Fanny to accept Henry, and alludes to the promotion to put pressure on her, despite knowing her own brother’s character and doubting his constancy.
There are 2 moments that are particularly telling. The 1st time is when Mary acknowledges Henry’s flirtatiousness, but defends him anyway: 

““Ah! I cannot deny it. He has now and then been a sad flirt, and cared very little for the havoc he might be making in young ladies' affections. I have often scolded him for it, but it is his only fault; and there is this to be said, that very few young ladies have any affections worth caring for. And then, Fanny, the glory of fixing one who has been shot at by so many; of having it in one's power to pay off the debts of one's sex! Oh! I am sure it is not in woman's nature to refuse such a triumph.”
Fanny shook her head. “I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.”
“I do not defend him. I leave him entirely to your mercy, and when he has got you at Everingham, I do not care how much you lecture him. But this I will say, that his fault, the liking to make girls a little in love with him, is not half so dangerous to a wife's happiness as a tendency to fall in love himself, which he has never been addicted to. And I do seriously and truly believe that he is attached to you in a way that he never was to any woman before…””(Ch.36)  

Note that Mary thinks Fanny is distrustful of his loyalty, and thinks that as long as Henry doesn’t fall in love himself, that’s enough to assure her, whilst Fanny is saying “there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of”, which is about other women’s feelings. Mary can’t think in such terms because she only cares about herself (and her brother).  
When the Henry-Maria affair is exposed: 

““Their substance was great anger at the folly of each. She reprobated her brother's folly in being drawn on by a woman whom he had never cared for, to do what must lose him the woman he adored; but still more the folly of poor Maria, in sacrificing such a situation, plunging into such difficulties, under the idea of being really loved by a man who had long ago made his indifference clear.”” (Ch.44) 

(This is Edmund telling Fanny about his talk with Mary). 
Again, Mary tries to downplay the seriousness of the betrayal by saying that Henry doesn’t care for Maria, not realising that that is much worse. 
To Edmund, she even blames Fanny:  

““Why would not she have him? It is all her fault. Simple girl! I shall never forgive her. Had she accepted him as she ought, they might now have been on the point of marriage, and Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object. He would have taken no pains to be on terms with Mrs. Rushworth again. It would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings at Sotherton and Everingham.”” (ibid.) 

(my emphasis) 
Look at that. These 2 moments say everything you need to know about Mary Crawford, I don’t even need to mention the fact that she wishes Tom Bertram to die so Edmund can be the new heir. 
I’m puzzled that there are people who call themselves Janeites and prefer Mary to Fanny. Tony Tanner writes in his introduction “More than one critic has suggested that Mary Crawford, with her quick wit, her vitality and resilience, is much more like Jane Austen herself than is the shrinking Fanny” (he doesn’t agree, by the way). What a joke. 
Jane Austen’s trap in Mansfield Park is creating Mary Crawford as superficially very similar to the witty, vivacious Elizabeth Bennet, but the similarity is only on the surface. Many readers don’t seem to realise that Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse and all of Jane Austen heroines, different as they are, all share a capacity for self-reflection, delicacy, and regard for others. 
Elizabeth Bennet may be proud and make hasty judgment, but she has self-reflection and realises her mistakes. Emma Woodhouse may misread everything, commit errors, and hurt people, but she means well and her mistakes are results of misguided helpfulness rather than malice; she has a bad conscience when realising she has harmed Harriet, hurt Miss Bates, and upset Jane Fairfax, and she changes. The ability to reflect on one’s actions and acknowledge one’s mistakes is highly valued in Jane Austen—understanding, self-awareness, and regard for others are a constant subject in the 6 novels. 
(The word “aware” appears 14 times in Pride and Prejudice, 26 times in Emma, and 40 times in Mansfield Park. Also in Mansfield Park, the word “delicacy” appears 26 times). 
Mary Crawford doesn’t have these qualities. She is self-centred, mercenary, insincere, and manipulative. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself, and has no self-reflection. 
To the readers who love Mary for her wit, Jane Austen has this to say: 

“Wisdom is better than Wit, & in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.” (letter to her niece Fanny Knight)