On Eugénie Grandet, or my problems with Balzac

Spoiler alert: I usually don’t put up a spoiler alert even though I spoil everything, but Eugénie Grandet has an interesting plot and I will discuss significant plot points that you may not want to know, including the ending. 

1/ Eugénie Grandet, if you don’t know the book, is about the daughter of the richest man in Saumur, who happens to be a miser. There are 2 families in town competing for Eugénie, because of her inheritance—Eugénie doesn’t know because she’s not aware of how rich her family is, Monsieu Grandet knows they’re after his money but keeps hanging out with them in order to squeeze money out of them. Everyone in town watches and gossips and speculates about which family will get Eugénie, but everything takes a new turn when one day her handsome cousin Charles from Paris crashes her 23th birthday party. 

Check out this line.   

““Dear Eugenie, a cousin is better than a brother, for he can marry you,” said Charles.” (Ch.9) 

HAHAHAHAHAA. 

2/ Do I become grumpier and more irritable over time? I wonder. Or is it still Hong lou meng hangover? I mean, look at this passage about first love in Eugénie Grandet: 

“Eugenie took delight in lulling her cousin’s pain with the pretty childish joys of a new-born love. Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love and the birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and softest glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow and its tears of joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the pretty pebbles with which to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers forgotten as soon as plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming time, to spring forward into life? Love is our second transformation...” (ibid.)  

I cut that short—Balzac went on a bit more. I don’t doubt that her feeling is genuine, but I can’t get out of my head the thought that this is love at first sight, she barely knows the guy. I can’t take it very seriously.  

However I like this, which is said by Nanon the ugly servant: 

““If I had a man for myself I’d—I’d follow him to hell, yes, I’d exterminate myself for him; but I’ve none. I shall die and never know what life is…”” (ibid.) 

That’s a moving moment that may almost be corny, but so far Nanon has been nothing but a simple, faithful, and accepting servant, a cliché of a character—this line suggests that there’s something more. 

Later on, Nanon also secretly disobeys her master when he punishes Eugénie, though I’m not going to get ecstatic and praise the “realism” of the character after seeing the wide range of servants depicted in Hong lou meng.

3/ Balzac has sympathy for women: 

“In all situations women have more cause for suffering than men, and they suffer more. Man has strength and the power of exercising it; he acts, moves, thinks, occupies himself; he looks ahead, and sees consolation in the future. It was thus with Charles. But the woman stays at home; she is always face to face with the grief from which nothing distracts her; she goes down to the depths of the abyss which yawns before her, measures it, and often fills it with her tears and prayers. Thus did Eugenie. She initiated herself into her destiny. To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself,—is not this the sum of woman’s life?” (Ch.9) 

Such a good passage. 

This, of course, is about the 19th century. Now there are plenty of things for women to do to distract themselves. 

However, I’m getting rather fed up with all the stuff about moral qualities and love and sadness improving the beauty of the female characters. 

“From that day the beauty of Mademoiselle Grandet took a new character. The solemn thoughts of love which slowly filled her soul, and the dignity of the woman beloved, gave to her features an illumination such as painters render by a halo. Before the coming of her cousin, Eugenie might be compared to the Virgin before the conception; after he had gone, she was like the Virgin Mother,—she had given birth to love. These two Marys so different, so well represented by Spanish art, embody one of those shining symbols with which Christianity abounds.” (ibid.) 

Later on: 

“…answered the old notary respectfully, struck with the beauty which seclusion, melancholy, and love had stamped upon her face.” (Ch.11) 

Come on. 

Her mother also becomes more beautiful: 

“…his angel of gentleness, whose ugliness day by day decreased, driven out by the ineffable expression of moral qualities which shone upon her face. She was all soul. The spirit of prayer seemed to purify her and refine those homely features and make them luminous. Who has not seen the phenomenon of a like transfiguration on sacred faces where the habits of the soul have triumphed over the plainest features, giving them that spiritual illumination whose light comes from the purity and nobility of the inward thought?...” (ibid.) 

This is the way Balzac describes her at the beginning:

“Madame Grandet was a dry, thin woman, as yellow as a quince, awkward, slow, one of those women who are born to be down-trodden. She had big bones, a big nose, a big forehead, big eyes, and presented at first sight a vague resemblance to those mealy fruits that have neither savor nor succulence. Her teeth were black and few in number, her mouth was wrinkled, her chin long and pointed.” (Ch.2) 

Her yellow skin is mentioned several times throughout the novel. Now go back and look at the “angel of gentleness” passage again. 

Do you like those passages? I don’t, but can’t quite explain why I find them irritating. Balzac’s better at describing the house.  

4/ The miser is hard—his daughter’s suffering doesn’t bother him, his wife’s illness doesn’t concern him, the only thing that can soften him is the fear of losing his wife’s estate to the daughter. The only thing that holds any meaning for him is money. 

Eugénie does change through the course of the story, (almost) like James’s Catherine Sloper—love and belief in herself give her the strength to stand up against her father, for the first time in her life. But at the same time I can’t help thinking, is Balzac not one-sided in reinforcing the miser’s hardness and unreasonableness over and over again, and siding with Eugénie in the matter of gold? Of course it is her gold and she can do whatever she wants with it, but is it wise to give away all of it when she herself isn’t aware of how rich she is and that’s all she thinks she has? In Washington Square, Dr Sloper may be unkind to Catherine but he isn’t wrong about Morris Townsend and isn’t wrong about expressing his concern. 

Monsieur Grandet remains consistently himself all the way to the end. Once in a while he feels a bit bad, (almost) like he has a conscience, and there is one moment when he feels torn between remaining where he is and coming to hug his daughter but the feeling doesn’t last long. He thinks like a miser, talks like a miser, and acts like a miser—there is no complexity, no more depth to him, and he has that monomania, that pointless obsession with gold till the last moment. He is defined by a single trait, a single obsession. 

5/ There is a mistake in the book: in the first chapter, the narrator says that in 1806, Monsieur Grandet is 57 (his wife is 36 and Eugénie is 10). 

Now in chapter 12, the narrator says Monsieur Grandet is 82 in the year 1827, when he should be 78. 

6/ Nobody told me that Charles went to the Indies and became a slave trader! 

“Crossing the line had brushed a good many cobwebs out of his brain; he perceived that the best means of attaining fortune in tropical regions, as well as in Europe, was to buy and sell men. He went to the coast of Africa and bought Negroes, combining his traffic in human flesh with that of other merchandise equally advantageous to his interests.” (Ch.13) 

Fucking hell. I didn’t expect that. 

Balzac expands: 

“He sold Chinamen, Negroes, birds’ nests, children, artists; he practised usury on a large scale; the habit of defrauding custom-houses soon made him less scrupulous about the rights of his fellow men.” (ibid.) 

I don’t mean that I didn’t expect Charles to do it because of what I thought about him, I mean that I didn’t expect Balzac to write it in his novel. 

This passage is interesting: 

“By dint of jostling with men, travelling through many lands, and studying a variety of conflicting customs, his ideas had been modified and had become sceptical. He ceased to have fixed principles of right and wrong, for he saw what was called a crime in one country lauded as a virtue in another. In the perpetual struggle of selfish interests his heart grew cold, then contracted, and then dried up. The blood of the Grandets did not fail of its destiny; Charles became hard, and eager for prey.” (ibid.) 

That’s good.

Charles’s letter to Eugénie at the end is, I think, excellent. Cold, frank. I won’t put it here—you have to read it for yourself.  

7/ After the letter, which is written so well, Balzac throws this in my face: 

“Some women when they see themselves abandoned will try to tear their lover from the arms of a rival, they will kill her, and rush to the ends of the earth,—to the scaffold, to their tomb. That, no doubt, is fine; the motive of the crime is a great passion, which awes even human justice. Other women bow their heads and suffer in silence; they go their way dying, resigned, weeping, forgiving, praying, and recollecting, till they draw their last breath. This is love,—true love, the love of angels, the proud love which lives upon its anguish and dies of it. Such was Eugenie’s love after she had read that dreadful letter.” (ibid.) 

I’m sorry but what kind of bullshit is this? 

Throughout the novel, Balzac’s intrusive narrator keeps making generalisations about women—women this, women that…, which I find nonsensical and utterly annoying. This is even more annoying because it comes right after the letter, which is excellent. 

Remember that Eugénie falls in love with Charles at first sight and knows him for 3 days—3 days! She barely knows him, and more importantly, the Charles she knows is not him in his normal environment, but him in exceptional circumstances, staying in her house instead of living in Paris, and facing the shock of grief and loss of fortune at the same time. 7 years have passed, and I’m expected to think that this is true love and “the love of angels”? 

I understand that women in the past had confined lives, but I don’t think that I’m imposing modern standards on a 19th century novel. I’m sure that Jane Austen would have laughed at it, considering her views on first impressions and love at first sight. 

It is one thing to portray Eugénie as she is, it’s a different thing for the intrusive narrator to express that view. 

8/ The ending is thought-provoking, I can see why many readers love it. In a way she changes—she becomes hardened and turns part of herself off. But in a way she doesn’t—she is still a Grandet, her lifestyle remains exactly the same as when her father’s alive, and she puts on a mask before the world, just like her father. 

I think Henry James got the inspiration from Balzac’s novel and wrote a greater book. Apart from characters’ complexity, I think the difference is in vision. In Washington Square, Catherine becomes hardened and disillusioned as she comes to understand, and see through, the 2 men that mean the most to her—her own father despises her and the man she loves only wants her money. She doesn’t give in to them and in the end has her triumph—a triumph that has nothing to do with happiness, but it’s about dignity and self-respect. 

In other words, it is specifically about 2 individuals—Dr Sloper and Morris Townsend. 

This is Balzac’s vision: 

“She has the noblest qualities of sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never soiled her soul by contact with the world…” (Ch.14) 

His view, as we hear from the narrator over and over again throughout the novel, is that society is full of corruptions and calculations, everyone is scheming, dishonest, and full of flattery, and the only noble people are those who have no contact with the world and don’t understand its calculations and customs, such as Eugénie, her mother, or Nanon.   

In the end, having lost her illusions, Eugénie turns off a part of herself, rejects the world as a whole, and becomes a miser with her feelings. Everyone is dishonest, everyone is calculating, the only one who cares about her is Nanon. 

I don’t accept that vision of life. 

Eugénie Grandet: writing, Washington Square, money

1/ I like the house descriptions in Eugénie Grandet. 

“When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall of his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He fancied himself in a hen-roost. […]

“Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?” he said to himself.

When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted in Etruscan red and without casings,—doors sunk in the dusty walls and provided with iron bars, which in fact were bolts, each ending with the pattern of a flame, as did both ends of the long sheath of the lock.” (Ch.3) 

Charles is the handsome nephew from Paris—nephew of Monsieur Grandet and cousin of Eugénie. He crashes Eugénie’s birthday party, to everyone’s surprise. 

Now check out the old man’s office, which nobody is allowed to enter: 

“… there, no doubt, while Nanon’s loud snoring shook the rafters, while the wolf-dog watched and yawned in the courtyard, while Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet were quietly sleeping, came the old cooper to cuddle, to con over, to caress and clutch and clasp his gold. The walls were thick, the screens sure. He alone had the key of this laboratory, where—so people declared—he studied the maps on which his fruit-trees were marked, and calculated his profits to a vine, and almost to a twig.” (ibid.) 

What an image. 

Now look at the room poor Charles is going to sleep in. 

“Charles stood aghast in the midst of his trunks. After casting his eyes on the attic-walls covered with that yellow paper sprinkled with bouquets so well known in dance-houses, on the fireplace of ribbed stone whose very look was chilling, on the chairs of yellow wood with varnished cane seats that seemed to have more than the usual four angles, on the open night-table capacious enough to hold a small sergeant-at-arms, on the meagre bit of rag-carpet beside the bed, on the tester whose cloth valance shook as if, devoured by moths, it was about to fall, he turned gravely to la Grande Nanon…” (ibid.) 

Such a nightmare for a dandy Parisian. 

2/ The birthday scene is good—at first the des Grassins and the Crouchots are rivals, both going after Eugénie, i.e. the money, then they’re interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the handsome cousin from Paris and they now form a temporary alliance against the common enemy. The premise of Eugénie Grandet makes me think of Washington Square (I’m aware that Henry James sees Balzac as his master) and I liked Washington Square a lot, but Balzac’s novel now “exposes” a fault with James’s novel: the fact that Morris Townsend is the only one courting and pursuing Catherine Sloper, considering how rich she is. I know the point is the battle of minds between him and Dr Sloper, and then between the 2 men, Catherine, and the aunt, but still… 

3/ The titular character isn’t described till chapter 4, after the house and after everyone else, even the handsome cousin. Eugénie, now infatuated with the cousin, is looking at herself in the mirror and judging her own looks; the description however is Balzac’s—it is Eugénie as seen by her creator, not as seen by herself.

Balzac mentions “softer Christian sentiment”, “love and kindness”, etc. and she has a well-curved bust, but the main point still is that our poor Eugénie isn’t good-looking: enormous head, “masculine yet delicate forehead”, grey eyes, thick nose, round throat, etc. I mean: 

“Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and none but artists truly love.” (Ch.4) 

It’s meant to be complimentary but isn’t that flattering, is it? 

I don’t have much to say about the passages about Eugénie falling in love (all the stuff about “virgin modesty” and “happiness” and “angelic nature” blah blah blah get on my nerves a bit and I’m not really a fan of stories about love at first sight), but this is interesting:  

“Perceiving for the first time the cold nakedness of her father’s house, the poor girl felt a sort of rage that she could not put it in harmony with her cousin’s elegance. She felt the need of doing something for him,—what, she did not know.” (ibid.) 

I like that. 

The thing that interests me more than Eugénie’s change, which is natural and expected because of her youth and sheltered life, is that Nanon the servant also changes though she’s still afraid of the master. Charles has an effect on her too. 

SPOILER ALERT: For the rest of the blog post, I will discuss some significant plot points that those of you who haven’t read the book may not want to know.    

4/ Chapter 5 has a marvellous breakfast scene of the morning after the birthday: first Eugénie, now head over heels in love, takes advantage of her father’s absence to make “a feast” for her cousin, with bread, eggs, butter, and so on; then the cousin comes down asking for “anything, it doesn’t matter what, a chicken, a partridge” and the poor girl realises how meagre, how pathetic the meal she has prepared is; the scene is marvellous, the young Parisian and his country relatives unable to understand each other; then the man of the house comes home, to everyone’s panic and Charles’s amazement at their reaction…

What a vivid, lively scene. 

5/ See the moment the miser has to break the news to his nephew: 

“Grandet was not at all troubled at having to tell Charles of the death of his father; but he did feel a sort of compassion in knowing him to be without a penny…” (Ch.5) 

Ugh. 

““The first burst must have its way,” said Grandet […] “But that young man is good for nothing; his head is more taken up with the dead than with his money.”

Eugenie shuddered as she heard her father’s comment on the most sacred of all griefs. From that moment she began to judge him.” (ibid.) 

That’s a significant moment—Eugénie is starting to see her father more clearly and starting to rebel, the way Catherine Sloper does. 

I can’t help thinking that Balzac’s characters are types and can be summed up in one word or one phrase: Monsieur Grandet is the miser, Madame Grandet is the pious wife, Nanon is the faithful servant, Charles is the dandy, Eugénie is the sheltered daughter, etc. The characters in Eugénie Grandet can also be roughly divided into 2 groups: those who are obsessed with money and those who aren’t. Another way of categorising them is selfish people and selfless ones, but the plot of Eugénie Grandet is driven by money and its main theme relates to money, and I expect that whatever Eugénie does will involve money, whether or not she personally cares about it. 

As a type, Monsieur Grandet is a striking study of a miser—he is a force of nature. I mean, he tells his servant to shoot some crows and make soup instead of getting meat from a butcher’s. He even cuts up sugar cubes! 

Here’s the man calculating and scheming. 

“There was in him, as in all misers, a persistent craving to play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally. To impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual proof that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who suffer themselves to be preyed upon in this world.” (Ch.6) 

When thinking about earning, he thinks in millions; when thinking about spending, he thinks in sous. 

That is interesting, and even more interesting if you remember that he is 70. That’s a lot of energy for a 70-year-old man (the year is 1819). 

6/ Out of curiosity, I did a few searches. In the Katharine Prescott Wormeley translation I’m reading (which is on Gutenberg), the word “money” appears 63 times, “gold” or “gold-pieces” 108 times, “francs” 113 times, “louis” 19 times. 

7/ Balzac is cynical: 

“…Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs of society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already an old man under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful education of social life, of that world where in one evening more crimes are committed in thought and speech than justice ever punishes at the assizes; where jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest ideas; where no one is counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and to see clear in that world is to believe in nothing, neither in feelings, nor in men, nor even in events,—for events are falsified. There, to “see clear” we must weigh a friend’s purse daily, learn how to keep ourselves adroitly on the top of the wave, cautiously admire nothing, neither works of art nor glorious actions, and remember that self-interest is the mainspring of all things here below.” (Ch.8) 

Jeez. 

And more: 

“Charles, so far, had had no occasion to apply the maxims of Parisian morality; up to this time he was still endowed with the beauty of inexperience. And yet, unknown to himself, he had been inoculated with selfishness. The germs of Parisian political economy, latent in his heart, would assuredly burst forth, sooner or later, whenever the careless spectator became an actor in the drama of real life.” (ibid.)

Contrasted with that is the angelic provincial girl: 

“To young girls religiously brought up, whose minds are ignorant and pure, all is love from the moment they set their feet within the enchanted regions of that passion. They walk there bathed in a celestial light shed from their own souls, which reflects its rays upon their lover; they color all with the flame of their own emotion and attribute to him their highest thoughts. A woman’s errors come almost always from her belief in good or her confidence in truth.” (ibid.) 

In all honesty, I’m not really a fan of these passages—I don’t go along with the idea that, except for those who are ignorant and pure, everyone in society has to believe in nothing, has to be false, hypocritical, and calculating, as though there’s nothing beyond it. 

8/ The childlike simplicity of Eugénie, which I assume is meant to be endearing, is getting on my nerves. 

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?

The depth and profound sadness of The House of Mirth

I picked up The House of Mirth, expecting to like Edith Wharton—her prose seemed good, and her style seemed to match my personal aesthetics. As it turns out, I’m starting to like her, and like to read her other works. 
Edith Wharton, probably influenced by Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Henry James, creates complex, multifaceted characters, and presents things as they are, with a cool detachment (even if there’s an underlying misanthropy in the tone). The House of Mirth doesn’t have an intrusive, moralising narrator as in the works of George Eliot, which is good. 
I’ve seen people compare her to Henry James (and see her as an inferior James). It’s easy to see why—both write about the American upper class; both are detached; The House of Mirth tells a single story and has a perfect form like the novels of James, i.e. isn’t a “loose baggy monster”; and he’s her mentor. In the previous post, I mentioned a similarity in the idea of victory—victory has nothing to do with happiness, but with self-respect and a sense of dignity. 
However, such comparison is unfair, as they’re different. I, for one, am glad that she doesn’t write Jamesian sentences. Wharton’s also more of a visual writer—I can’t imagine James writing about light as she does, for instance. 
Above all, The House of Mirth has such depth, and profound sadness. 
Take this line: 

“Society did not turn away from her, it simply drifted by, preoccupied and inattentive, letting her feel, to the full measure of her humbled pride, how completely she had been the creature of its favour.” (B.2, ch.8) 

Or these heart-breaking lines, from Lily Bart herself: 

“"I have tried hard—but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds that one only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap—and you don't know what it's like in the rubbish heap!"” (B.2, ch.12) 

Lily’s love for Lawrence Selden is deeply sad and haunting. This is the scene when he comes to talk to her and convince her to leave Mrs Hatch: 

“Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question was framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were unsought; and for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation between them was one which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling; and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of such an explosion. Selden's calmness seemed rather to harden into resistance, and Miss Bart's into a surface of glittering irony, as they faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch's elephantine sofas.” (B.2, ch.9) 

The scene reminds me of the silences in Henry James—the moments where people leave things unsaid. 
Then:

“In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the effect of confirming Lily's resistance. The very apprehensions he aroused hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the note of personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over him; and his attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all response to her appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment of his interference. The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair's breadth farther into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her situation to be, she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.” (ibid.) 

It is a subtle scene. 
Later, at their last meeting: 

“Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece. The tinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible under the friendly ease of his manner. Her self-absorption had not allowed her to perceive it at first; but now that her consciousness was once more putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming an embarrassment to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an immediate outrush of feeling; and on Selden's side the determining impulse was still lacking.
The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done. She had passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in which every demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to the emotion it elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only ostentation condemned. But the sense of loneliness returned with redoubled force as she saw herself forever shut out from Selden's inmost self. She had come to him with no definite purpose; the mere longing to see him had directed her; but the secret hope she had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in its death-pang.” (B.2, ch.12)  

Others might not call him worthless and despicable as I did, but he’s a coward who hides behind a light-hearted, joking tone and runs away in crucial moments. He pushes her away, and she is lonely. Gerty is kind and tender to Lily, but their values are so different that she can’t understand her. Lily is lonely. 

“It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that she turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper empoverishment—of an inner destitution compared to which outward conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to be poor—to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more miserable still—it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the years. That was the feeling which possessed her now—the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown hither and thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal existence to shelter them from its shifting gusts.” (B.2, ch.13) 

That’s a wonderful passage. 
Throughout the novel, Edith Wharton has the same detachment, but in Book 2, mostly after Lily Bart’s disgrace, Lily becomes more likeable and admirable—she becomes more aware, and there’s a very slight, very subtle shift in the tone, particularly when her values start to change. 
I like that before letting her die, Wharton lets her see a woman from Gerty’s Girls’ Club. Lily has saved her by giving her money to go to the hospital, so now, before her death, she knows she has done some good.  
The meeting with her and the baby also makes Lily realise something she never knew before about life: 

“All the men and women she knew were like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild centrifugal dance: her first glimpse of the continuity of life had come to her that evening in Nettie Struther's kitchen.
The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious permanence of a bird's nest built on the edge of a cliff—a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.” (ibid.) 

The House of Mirth is a profound book. Wharton achieves something remarkable here: she creates a superficial, selfish, and frivolous character, and now and then seems to “make sure” that readers don’t sympathise with her, but gradually gives her depth and strength, and turns her into such a tragic, heroic figure. The final chapters are haunting.

The House of Mirth: Lily Bart’s dignity

Spoiler alert: people who haven’t read The House of Mirth are warned that I shall discuss details of the plot, including the ending. 


In my previous post, I make a strong statement that Edith Wharton didn’t want readers to sympathise with Lily Bart—I was expecting someone to disagree with me. Nobody did. So now I’m arguing with myself. 
I wrote about Lily Bart’s choices, but they’re the choices before the disgrace (Bertha Dorset’s humiliation, and the disinheritance). What about the choices she makes after the disgrace? 
Readers should probably ask: should she have done what she did? what would I have done? (It’s not about identifying with the character, but about considering the ethics of her choices, and other choices she could have made). 
Let’s look at the situation: Bertha Dorset kicks her off the yacht, humiliating her in front of everyone, and playing the role of a jealous wife who can’t take it anymore. Her husband does nothing, Lily gets entangled in a scandal. Then she makes some more blunders, and is disinherited—getting a legacy that is only a bit more than the amount she owes Gus Trenor. People in her class start to desert her, including her friends (except for the poor Gerty Farish, and the scandalous Carry Fisher). She becomes disgraced, an outcast. 
Lily faces 3 choices: 

• a) Bear witness against Bertha Dorset, using Bertha’s letters to Selden, help George Dorset in the divorce case 
• b) Threaten Bertha with the letters, regain her “friendship” and connection, get accepted again in society, then marry Rosedale for money and social standing 
• c) Do nothing, accept her fate 

She does nothing. 
Instead, she accepts Carry Fisher’s suggestion to stay with the Gormers: 

“The Gormer milieu represented a social outskirt which Lily had always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the "society play" approaches the manners of the drawing-room.” (B.2, ch.5)    

This choice, to Gerty Farish and Lawrence Selden, is a mistake, because it would constantly remind Lily of the social circle of which she’s no longer a part. As Gerty realises, “Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the unimportance of what they have lost.” (B.2, ch.8) 
Then when Bertha Dorset starts to have her hold on Mattie Gormer and undermine their friendship, Lily leaves, and starts working as a secretary for Mrs Hatch, a disreputable woman who wants to get in high society. 

“If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower level.” (ibid.) 

As Lily becomes, indeed, lower and lower (after leaving Mrs Hatch, she comes to a milliner’s for training), one might question her choice, and wonder why she doesn’t make a different one. The weapon is in her hands.  
Consider all the options again—the 1st one might be satisfying, but insecure, and involve siding with George Dorset. Lily doesn’t want to be involved in the Dorset drama again, I doubt she wants to fight Bertha. She also doesn’t want to help that weak, pathetic, and selfish George Dorset. 

“She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town […] he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject: himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his self-absorption. […] The fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might mean—and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous perception of the way in which her particular misfortunes might serve him.” (B.2, ch.6)  

The man is weak and pathetic; he has no backbone, no self-respect. He does nothing when Lily’s humiliated in front of others and thrown away. He does nothing when she’s socially disgraced, and in need of help. In fact, he has his share in the scandal because he lets Bertha know that he knows about the affair but does nothing, and allows Bertha to take the first step, to save herself. 
George Dorset only comes to Lily when he feels wretched and wants her help in the divorce. He may even want to marry her afterwards. It is understandable that Lily doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. 
Above all, she doesn’t want to use the letters, because they’re sent to Lawrence Selden. It is partly love, partly pride. Selden is worthless, even despicable—he speaks of loving her, but never asks to marry her; he runs away whenever she’s in trouble, and neglects her when society abandons her. By sparing him, she proves herself more dignified, more heroic. 
This is also why Lily doesn’t want to use the letters to threaten Bertha and regain her place in high society. Seen from different perspectives, the 2nd option appears to be the best option, because she shouldn’t be discarded like a pawn, and, as she herself knows, she can’t survive outside her social circle. If Bertha doesn’t pay for her deceit, at least she should be frightened and kept in place. By marrying Rosedale, Lily can regain her former position, have money, pay off the debt to Gus Trenor, regain connection with everyone, especially her friend Judy Trenor, have social standing, and have power over Bertha Dorset. 
Instead, she accepts defeat. I suppose she’s tired of fighting, and sick of that world. As Rosedale puts it: 

“Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and her best friends wouldn't believe her on oath where their own interests were concerned; but as long as they're out of the row it's much easier to follow her lead than to set themselves against it, and you've simply been sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness.” (B.2, ch.7)  

It is a world of hypocrites and false friends, a world where people use each other and discard those who are no longer of use, a world where people have neither feeling nor principle and only care about their own interests. Lily knows she can’t survive outside it, but no longer wants to be part of it and its falsehoods. 
In her self-respect, Lily doesn’t want to owe anyone, which is why she’s determined to return money to Gus Trenor, even though she needs the money from the legacy. She rejects Rosedale, which can be interpreted in multiple ways, but I think part of it is that she knows it’s just another transaction of sorts, nobody wants to help her unless it’s also useful to themselves (except for Gerty Farish), and she’s tired of being used. 
Her resignation is because of the awareness that she has herself to blame, for the choices she made which led to the disgrace. 
Most importantly, her resignation is a rejection of the values of the world that abandoned her, and its falsehoods. I thought Lily Bart was similar to Emma Bovary—she isn’t. She has been brought up to chase after comfort and luxury, but now she chooses dignity and self-respect. 
I can’t help thinking of what Azar Nafisi wrote about Washington Square and Henry James’s characters: 

“Only Catherine has the capacity to change and mature, although here, as in so many of James’s novels, our heroine pays a dear price for this change. And she does take a form of revenge on both her father and her suitor: she refuses to give in to them. In the end, she has her triumph. 
If we can call it that. One can believe James’s claim to an “imagination of disaster”; so many of his protagonists are unhappy in the end, and yet he gives them an aura of victory. It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole. Their reward is not happiness—a word that is central in Austen’s novels but is seldom used in James’s universe. What James’s characters gain is self-respect…” (Reading Lolita in Tehran) 

This is also true for Lily Bart. Throughout the story, especially as she tries to marry for money, Lily is filled with self-disgust. The terms “disgust”, “self-disgust”, “self-loathing” keep appearing throughout the entire novel. But now, in her defeat, Lily triumphs—she has her self-respect.    
This is a great, masterful novel. Edith Wharton earlier makes it very difficult to like Lily. But no one can leave The House of Mirth without feeling a profound sadness, and seeing Lily in a different light—she has her dignity at last.

Random musings on No Name

1/ Can anyone read the scene of private theatricals in No Name without thinking about Mansfield Park? The concern is the same, Norah Vanstone is on the same side as Jane Austen’s Fanny Price—amateur acting may encourage flirting and intimacy between young people, which is inappropriate. 
Here’s a funny bit, between Magdalen Vanstone and Frank, or Francis Clare: 

“… “It’s a compliment, I know, to be asked to act,” said Frank, in great embarrassment. “But I hope you and Miss Marrable will excuse me—”
“Certainly not. Miss Marrable and I are both remarkable for the firmness of our characters. When we say Mr. So-and-So is positively to act the part of Falkland, we positively mean it. Come in and be introduced.”
“But I never tried to act. I don’t know how.”
“Not of the slightest consequence. If you don’t know how, come to me and I’ll teach you.”
“You!” exclaimed Mr. Vanstone. “What do you know about it?”
“Pray, papa, be serious! I have the strongest internal conviction that I could act every character in the play—Falkland included. Don’t let me have to speak a second time, Frank. Come and be introduced.”” (S.1, Ch.4)   

As someone who was forced to act to fill a role (in my graduation film), I must say that is cute. The experience was mortifying—now that I’ve had the experience of being before the camera, I’ve understood the vulnerability of actors. 
Acting before a live audience is even worse. 

2/ Mr Clare, father of Frank and neighbour of the Vanstones, is an interesting character. He despises his own children, especially Frank, and wants them to fail just to be proven right. 
Sounds familiar. Did Wilkie Collins read Washington Square? 
Except that No Name was published in 1862, and Henry James’s book in 1880. Never mind. 

3/ No Name is about the story of the 2 Vanstone sisters, Norah and Magdalene, who become disinherited because of illegitimacy and some stupid laws. 
The question of supreme importance is: how much should each of the sisters get, if not for the unfortunate circumstances, and how much does each sister actually get from their cruel uncle Michael Vanstone?   
The amounts are, the book says, £40,000 (Mr Andrew Vanstone’s total fortune is £80,000) and £100, respectively. 
But what does that mean? 
The year in the story is 1846. I’ve just used an inflation calculator, and if it’s to be trusted (it’s the website of Bank of England), in 2018 each of the sisters would be entitled to about £4,580,618 and the amount the uncle offers each of them would be equivalent to £11,451. 
For context, the national minimum wage in the UK for over 25s is £8.21, so if we make it simple by assuming that someone works for 40 hours/ week, the annual salary would be £17,076 before tax. You might want to know the amount after tax, but there are lots of factors involved and the calculation is not perfect, especially over such a long period of time, so there’s no need to pretend to be exact—this, I think, is enough to get an idea of the money in No Name.

2010- 2019 in books [updated]

Soon we will enter the 2020s, so let’s talk about our reading over the past decade, shall we?  
1/ I came to Norway in 2009—before this, I only read literature in Vietnamese. Slowly I started to switch, and now read almost exclusively in English. 

2/ My years in Norway, 2009-2016, especially after I entered University of Oslo in 2012, will without doubt be seen as my formative years in reading.
(I will, forever, be grateful to HumSam-bibliotek of University of Oslo, and Deichmanske bibliotek—Oslo public library). 

3/ My favourite writers are: Lev Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Vladimir Nabokov, Herman Melville, and Gustave Flaubert. 
I also like: the Bronte sisters, especially Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, P. G. Wodehouse… 
George Eliot is a great writer I have immense respect for but don’t love. Henry James is another I struggled quite a lot with, but I’m warming to his works. 

4/ I started to have a love for literature in the English language at the IB (International Baccalaureate). 
However, most of my favourite writers from this period I’m now indifferent to: F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Isabel Allende…  

5/ I discovered Nabokov and Tolstoy in 2012, Jane Austen in 2013, and Melville in 2016 (before coming to the UK). 

6/ I love British literature and Russian literature. 
The most important reading challenge I did on this blog was Russian Literature Challenge in 2014. Here’s the wrap-up: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/01/russian-literature-challenge-2014-wrap.html

7/ Here are some top 10 lists about books, from 2016: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/08/some-top-10-lists-about-books.html
The list of favourite books is now different (what do you expect? It’s been 3 years!), but the other lists remain more or less the same. 

8/ My new list of 10 favourite novels: 
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens 
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 

9/ My favourite Jane Austen novel is her least popular and most misunderstood work, Mansfield Park: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/reading-misreading-mansfield-park.html
This is a book about which I often fight with people. The blog post above is a collection of my writings and arguments about Mansfield Park, from 2014 and before. 
I wrote a bit about Mansfield Park on Jane Austen’s 244th birthday: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/12/jane-austens-birthday-16121775-16122019.html 

10/ Another novel about which I also often fight with people is Lolita. Here are my final arguments when I reread the book in 2017: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/lolita-chapter-29.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/lolitas-tears.html
I also wrote about motifs in Lolita that I didn’t notice earlier, such as: 
Dogs: https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-dogs-in-lolita.html 
Birds and butterflies: https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/butterflies-and-birds-in-lolita.html
In 2019, I read The Enchanter, which is known as the proto-Lolita, and compared the 2 here: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/04/from-enchanter-to-lolita.html 
Also, if anyone accuses Nabokov of plagiarising Henz von Lichberg’s short story, here’s my response:  
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-other-lolita.html 

11/ On my blog, the label “writers and readers” is devoted to discussing the art of reading, good readers vs bad readers. 
Some important posts are: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2013/08/3-wrong-attitudes-in-reading-novels.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/02/poshlost-according-to-nabokov.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/05/philistines-and-philistinism-vladimir.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/on-idea-of-relevance-and-relatableness.html 
Nabokov, as you can see, has huge influence on my thinking and reading. 
Also, this is a post about top 10 “Are we reading the same book?” moments: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/08/top-10-are-we-reading-same-book-moments.html 

12/ I have written a few times about feminist literary criticism, especially The Madwoman in the Attic:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-madwoman-in-attic-george-eliot.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-madwoman-in-attic-on-middlemarch.html

13/ 1 of my best series on my blog is about George Eliot’s Middlemarch: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/characters-in-middlemarch-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/get-out-of-way-will-you-or-george-eliot.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/lydgate-sexist.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-paintings-and-miniatures.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-taking-wife.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/chapter-42-and-casaubon-or-how-i-learn.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/experience-and-growth-dorothea-brooke.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-2nd-plot-of-middlemarch-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/george-eliots-moral-lessons-in.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-each-unhappy-family-is.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/on-fred-vincy.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/last-thoughts-on-middlemarch-tingle.html 

14/ Another good series is about Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/09/experience-and-reading-p2-readers-in.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-signs.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-time.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-characters-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-more-on-time-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/metaphors-in-portrait-of-lady.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/silence-in-portrait-of-lady.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-greatness-of-portrait-of-lady.html 

15/ Here’s my series about Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit, from earlier this year: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/starting-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-houses-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/repetition-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-story-strands-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-character-of-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/little-dorrit-rivals.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-themes-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-amy-dorrit-or-how-dickens-improves.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/little-dorrit-some-random-observations.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/on-finishing-little-dorrit.html 

16/ I think my recent series about Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is not bad. 
However, I’ve noticed that I’ve not written any good series of blog posts at all about Tolstoy or Jane Austen or Melville. 

17/ Here I explain why I don’t use the star rating system: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/04/why-i-dont-use-star-rating.html 

18/ To lots of people, 2010- 2019 is just another decade, but to me, it has been an important decade: I read a lot more than before, switched to reading in English, discovered Russian literature, discovered writers who shaped my taste and thinking and who would most likely remain in my personal canon, learnt to read a literary work, learnt to analyse and write about it, shaped my views and aesthetics in literature, got a degree in language and literature, created a blog that focused mostly on literature, and got blogger friends. 
Here’s to another good decade in reading!


__________________________________________

Update: 
In the earlier version of this post, I didn’t link to any of my writings about Moby Dick, because at the time of reading and writing about the book, I was in awe and had nothing intelligent to say. The posts were more like notes for myself than finished and polished blog posts to share with the world. However, it’s not really fair to go on and on about Lolita and Mansfield Park but not say a word about Moby Dick, a book of genius, a book that I’m sure will always remain in my top 3 (together with Anna Karenina and War and Peace). 
Here’s a blog post in which I stated why Moby Dick is a book about everything: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/moby-dick-is-book-about-everything.html
Some of my posts were about the whale chapters:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/03/moby-dick-chapter-32-cetology.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-whales-skin.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-whales-eyes-structure-of-moby-dick.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-noble-sperm-whale.html
My view regarding Moby Dick is an “extreme” view: the book is perfect as it is and does not “need an editor”; it is several books in one, it is about everything, and therefore it is the way it should be; readers should not skip the whale chapters and should not read for only the story, but should read Moby Dick with the right mindset, i.e. with curiosity and a sense of wonder; an abridged War and Peace might still be War and Peace, but an abridged Moby Dick is not Moby Dick.
When will I again experience the aesthetic bliss of reading something incredible like Anna Karenina or Moby Dick?