The Born Again English Major

A lapsed English major, the Born Again English Major is longing for the good old days: reading and writing and reading some more.

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Chapter Seven:  Sense and Sensibility

The Born Again English Major has been rereading the works of Jane Austen, which a person ought to do from time to time, if she possibly can.  The passionate heroine of Sense and Sensibility, Miss Marianne Dashwood, has become a source of interest and concern for the E.M. Marianne, as anyone who has read the novel knows, “was born to an extraordinary fate,” which was of course to live the latter part of her life in direct opposition to the deep feelings and strong opinions which she had held in her youth.  How, then, could the novel’s ending possibly have been happy for her?  Is it to be believed for a moment that Jane Austen has left a heroine, after the close of the last chapter, unhappy? Heaven forbid!

Elinor, Marianne’s sister, welcomes her fate eagerly.  She cries “tears of joy” when she learns that Edward Ferrars is at last free to marry her.  After they are engaged, “she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity.” Together she and Edward walk and talk and plan, and the part she plays is an active one.  In contrast, Marianne’s marriage to Colonel Brandon, which is “the darling object” of her friends, is planned for her; her role is passive, and “she found herself at nineteen submitting to new attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new home, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village.” She submits! She enters on duties! She is placed! And this is Marianne, who had hoped to be “a sacrifice to an irresistible passion.” Can this be possible? And yet our narrator assures us that “Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby.”

Some critics (for whom the E.M. has the utmost respect of course) speculate that Jane Austen was using Marianne to make a statement, that there was no place in her respectable society for such heartfelt, passionate determination as Marianne’s. In order to be accepted, they argue, Marianne has to change. They think that Marianne represented a problem that needed to be solved.

But no, our narrator tells us that Marianne “was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions...to overcome an affection...” So she took action! She discovered and she overcame!  In fact, what she did was learn how to save herself. As anyone knows who has suffered through a terrible romantic betrayal, or a life-threatening illness, either one can spoil the appetite for drama. So both of those things striking her in one brief novel could probably indeed have led Marianne to find her real happiness with a man “who still sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!” The Born Again English Major only wishes we could follow her to Delaford, to watch her bloom in those new roles of wife and patroness!

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Chapter Six:  The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

Yes, Tove Jansson, she of Finn Family Moomintroll fame.  When the Born Again English Major was very small, (when, in fact, she had not even become an English Major for the first time) she was given a boxed set of the Finn Family Moomintroll books.  They were strange and wonderful, with lovable heroes, terrible monsters, beautiful maidens, and hippopotamuses, or at least things that looked very much like hippopotamuses.  When she grew up, the EM was amazed to discover that there were some other people out there who had heard of the Moomintrolls.  She was also delighted to find that the author had written a few books for adults as well, one of which is The Summer Book.

This is also a strange little book, but there are no heroes or monsters or hippos.  It is a little collection of stories about the adventures of a girl and her father and grandmother during summers on an island in the Gulf of Finland. This summer world is fast disappearing, as neighboring islands are bought up by people who put up “No Trespassing” signs and decorate with fake anchors and buoys.  The neighbors themselves are courteous enough, though.  During a visit...

Malander came back with bottles and glasses and put them on the table. “Cognac,” he said. “And whiskey.  But I’m sure you’d rather have a lemonade.” “I’m very fond of cognac,” Grandmother said.  “A small glass, and no water, thank you. Sophia? What would you like?” “The other!” Sophia hissed in her ear. “Sophia would prefer a lemonade,” Grandmother said, and thought: We’ve got to teach her some manners.  We’ve made a mistake.  She has to spend more time with people she doesn’t like, before it’s too late.

  Some elements of this summer life might not be missed, like the ancient moldy bathrobe that is home to a family of mice, or the dirty dishes kept under the bed until they can be washed (one hopes) in the morning.  But some of the stories are enchanting, and although Sophia and Grandmother are both sort of prickly, their love for each other fills this book with sweetness.  There is a lovely story of a terrible storm that strikes when the family is out for a day of fishing on the outermost island in the Gulf.  They hunker down in a matter-of-fact way in an old abandoned cottage, and the grown-ups protect Sophia both from her guilt over wishing for this destructive storm and from the wind and waves themselves.  But the best story is about an unpleasant cat.  His name was Moppy.  Sophia loved him passionately but he was entirely indifferent to her. He refused to cuddle in her bed.  He brought dead songbirds to the door every day.  After he moves out of the house entirely, the family trades him for the cat of some friends.  The new cat was named Fluff.  She adored Sophia and slept in her arms.  She rolled in the sun and was not interested in storms. Sophia despised her. So cats were exchanged again.

“It’ll be awful,” said Sophia gravely. “But it’s Moppy I love.”

[thebornagainenglishmajor]

Chapter Five: Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit

The Born Again English Major once knew a wise old gentleman who would only read books that he had read before.  Lucky for him, he had read a vast number of pretty good books.  While she cannot agree with his philosophy, the E.M. does love to revisit an old book friend once in a while. Last week, while cleaning some dusty shelves, she came across a copy of Tuck Everlasting.  This was a formative book for the E.M. Every word in it is just right.  Although in theory it is a book for children, there really is no upper age limit on this story of love and sacrifice, with its mythic treatment of the downside of immortality.

What the E.M. remembered most about this book, since her last reading of it many years ago, was the weather.  The story takes place across a few days in August, and the gorgeous imagery of the still and brutal heat of late summer is unforgettable. Here is a passage from the book's prologue:

...the first week of August is motionless, and hot.  It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.  Often at night there is lightening, but it quivers all alone.  There is no thunder, no relieving rain.  These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

It is hard to believe, though, that Winnie was ever sorry for what she did during those sweltering few days.  She made the choice to save Mae because, as Winnie says before she sneaks off to the jail, she wants to make a difference.  By saving Mae, Winnie saved the humanity of countless others.  She saved their happiness and maybe their sanity. Of course no one ever knew that, except Winnie and the Tucks.

One thing that had escaped the E.M., in previous readings (see, this is why it's so nice to reread!) was that Winnie herself must have had a hand in the destruction of the spring.  (Stop reading right here if you do not want any spoilers.)  Winnie had been gone only two years when the Tucks returned to Treegap.  The woods had belonged to her.  After the destruction of the ash tree, it must have been Winnie, or a relative of Winnie's, who saw to it that the spring was buried safely in the most unromantic, ordinary way.  She really was a mythic heroine then, one who just went on and on making a difference.

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Chapter Four: Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore

The Born Again English Major wonders why she has been wasting time reading so many lesser books when Lorna Doone has been sitting there with such a tremendously good story to tell.  It is an old book, set very long ago, and does contain lengthy passages on wrestling and loach fishing (which can safely be skimmed without losing the gist of the plot) as well as some dialogue in a nearly impenetrable Devonshire dialect.  But the story of John Ridd's love for Lorna Doone is wonderful, and his adventures in rescuing her from the truly evil Doones and discovering her true identity make for gripping reading. 

Highwaymen feature prominently in the story.  When we think about highwaymen nowadays, we romanticize them the way we do pirates, but clearly they were, in reality, terrifying and in some cases murderous.  The Doones were a plague, robbing and tormenting everyone they found alone on the road, killing them in some cases.  When John and Jeremy Stickles were on the road to London ( a six-day walk), they had to be on the alert constantly for danger, and to try at all times to look as poor as possible.  John's cousin, Tom Faggus, was a dashing and gallant example of a highwayman, who eventually settled down to farm, but who nonetheless spent his youth getting rich by robbing travelers.  These were lawless times, and reading about John and his family ay Plover's Barrows, the Born Again English Major worried a good bit about their safety.

But so much of what John wisely observes of human nature could have been written today, allowing for his old-fashioned language.  In this passage he is feeling sorry for mocking his sister's table manners and comparing them to Lorna's:

For it strikes me that of all human dealings, satire is the very lowest, and most mean and common. It is the equivalent in words, for what bullying is in deeds; and no more bespeaks a clever man, than the other does a brave one.  These two wretched tricks exalt a fool in his own low esteem, but never in his neighbor's; for the deep common sense of our nature tells that no man of a genial heart, or of any spread of mind, can take pride in either. And though a good man may commit the one fault or the other, now and then, by way of outlet, he is sure to have compunctions soon, and to scorn himself more than the sufferer.

John's musings and asides are a pleasure to read, and filled with words you just don't hear everyday.  The Born Again English Major will leave you with a short list of them: cark, tallat, collop, fallals, and carkled!

  #Lorna Doone, #R.D.Blackmore

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Chapter Three: The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Born Again English Major picked up The Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because she wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Well, she devoured every single one of the mysteries and found The Hound of the Baskervilles to be the most gripping of all.  The Born Again English Major recently saw a book described as "unputdownable," and while she recognizes that this is not a real word it is a perfect one to describe this story.  Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are an unbeatable pair, the one so loveable and admiring and the other brilliant and relentless.  Holmes is offstage during much of the story, after telling Watson and Sir Henry Baskerville that this murderous case has to take a back seat to a lesser one in London.  Of course he was hot on the trail of the killer the entire time. The Born Again English Major made some feeble attempts while reading to try to figure out the killer, but really just sat back to enjoy the ride.  She was taken completely by surprise with every twist and turn of the plot. She will try not to reveal any spoilers here, but will say that the tantalizing possibility of a supernatural hound was very scary (that is, for a sheltered person not in the habit of reading terrifying stuff).  The ominous Baskerville curse, the horrible death of Sir Charles, the presence of the dangerous escaped convict, the uncharacteristic absence of Holmes, and the mysterious behavior of Miss Stapleton toward the eligible Sir Henry all made for edge-of-the-seat reading.  Add to all this the spooky setting of the moors of Devonshire, and the atmosphere is perfect.

                                             These old books endure because people read them, and people read them because the stories they tell still entertain, inform, and enlighten (and scare!) to this day.  It is the book left unread that is the greatest mystery.  Why, for example, does the Born Again English Major's library have six copies of Lorna Doone on the shelf?  What treasures are inside? We'll find out, in the next chapter.

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Chapter Two: A Passage to India

The Born Again English Major can't believe that A Passage to India is a book anyone would read for fun anymore, if indeed anyone ever did.  She does not advise picking it up hoping for romantic descriptions of exotic locales, admirable dreams of independence from Colonial oppression, or any Ali-and-Nino-style love across ethnic boundaries.  There is none of that.  Chandrapore is a dismal city, although E.M. Forster evokes it so beautifully, with the fateful Marabar Hills as its backdrop.  The hatred of the English and the Indians for each other is palpable throughout the story, long before it erupts into violence toward the end.  There are no loveable characters, although Dr Aziz and Mrs Moore have their good qualities, and their meeting in the mosque is the happiest moment in the book.  Just for those few minutes in the mosque in the dark, they discover what they have in common and believe that as a result, their differences will not matter.  They are wrong.  This story is all about the differences between people.

A Passage to India was written almost a century ago, and it feels very dated.  But the inescapeable thing is that the sectarian hatred and strife it describes are still so prevalent.  So much has changed since the days when the "Anglo-Indians" controlled India, and yet still our newspapers, as theirs must have been, are filled with stories of ethnic hatred and division, all over the world.  People like Dr Aziz, who hope to bridge the divide between themselves and members of different groups, can face disappointments both large and small.  His difficulties in planning an outing for Muslims, Hindus, and Europeans are described almost comically:

There was the problem of Professor Godbole and his food, and of Professor Godbole and other people's food--two problems, not one problem.  The Professor was not a very strict Hindu--he would take tea, fruit, soda-water and sweets, whoever cooked them, and vegetables and rice if cooked by a Brahman; but not meat, not cakes lest they contained eggs, and he would not allow anyone else to eat beef: a slice of beef upon a distant plate would wreck his happiness.  Other people might eat mutton, they might eat ham.  But over ham Aziz' own religion raised its voice: he did not fancy other people eating ham.  Trouble after trouble encountered him, because he had challenged the spirit of the Indian earth, which tries to keep men in compartments.

But his efforts end in humiliation and real danger for him.  Even though he is cleared of the charge of "insulting" Miss Quested, he loses his dignity and his privacy, leaves his city of Chandrapore to live in a part of India less dominated by the British (the Born Again English Major was really wishing for a map in this book too. Did he go to what later became Pakistan?), and abandons his friendship with the Englishman Fielding.  The reader finishes the book hopeful that Aziz and Fielding will both be happy in their new lives, but sorry that those lives will be so separate, with each one keeping carefully to his own compartment.

    Next time--The Hound of the Baskervilles!

#A Passage to India #E.M. Forster

[thebornagainenglishmajor]

Chapter One: Framley Parsonage

The Born Again English Major can't remember that any of her literature classes included Anthony Trollope, but that hardly matters.  There must be some, somewhere, that do.  And with good reason.  It isn't just because the book opens with a map.  Many dreadful books begin with maps (yes, the Born Again English Major is looking at you, Faulkner!).  The map is nice to refer to, however, when the reader begins to wonder just how near (and yet how far) Lucy Robarts is from Lord Lufton while she is off at far-distant Hogglestock nursing Mrs Crawley. Or which way the wind must blow to send the foul smoke and brimstone of Gatherum Castle wafting toward Framley Court.  Or just how many miles Lucy's brother has to travel to reach Barchester in order to do whatever it is that one does in a prebendary stall. No, it is just the delightful ordinariness of the characters, and the leisurely pace at which the reader gets to know them.  After six hundred pages of Volume Four of the Barchester Novels, the Born Again English Major believes that she would recognize Lucy and Fanny Robarts if she were to see them walking down the street.  But she won't see them, of course, and that is just the point.  Gentle souls like those, living out their quiet romantic dramas in parsonages, have faded away.

The dramas in Framley Parsonage, while completely satisfying, are indeed ordinary.  Well, all right, maybe parson's sisters don't marry Lords everyday.  But here are star-struck clergymen getting into money trouble, mothers scheming to marry off their children, wives overlooking their husbands faults, heiresses despairing of finding true love, spendthrift black sheep losing their last pennies, and politicians being called in to see the Queen.  The Born Again English Major does not have a rock-solid understanding of Victorian Parliamentary procedures, nor does she completely grasp the difference between a Dean and an Archdeacon.  These failings, however, really don't interfere too much with a thorough enjoyment of Trollope.  He reveals his characters with the wit and insight of Jane Austen, and indeed the relationship between the Robarts' and the family at Framley court recalls the less affectionate one between Mr Collins and his neighbor at Rosings.  How much fun the author seems to be having!  Here is his description of the icy Griselda Grantly addressing the matter of her trousseau:

"When this subject was discussed Griselda displayed no lack of a becoming interest.  She went to work steadily, slowly, and almost with solemnity, as though the business at hand were one which it would be wicked to treat with impatience.  She even struck her mother with awe by the grandeur of her ideas and the depth of her theories.  Nor let it be supposed that she rushed away at once to the consideration of the great fabric which was to be the ultimate sign and mark of her status, the quintessence of her briding, the outer veil, as it were, of the tabernacle--namely, her wedding dress.  As a great poet works himself up by degrees to that inspiration which is necessary for the grand turning-point of his epic, so did she slowly approach the hallowed ground on which she would sit, with her ministers around her, when about to discuss the nature, the extent, the design, the colouring, the structure, and the ornamentation of that momentous piece of apparel.  No; there was much indeed to be done before she came to this; and as the poet, to whom I have already alluded, first invokes his muse, and then brings his smaller events out upon his stage, so did Miss Grantly with sacred fervour ask her mother's aid, and then prepare her list of all those articles of underclothing which must be the substratum for the visible magnificence of her trousseau.  Money was no object....And, under these circumstances, Griselda Grantly went to work with a solemn industry and a steady perseverance that was beyond all praise."

We readers may be rejoicing that Griselda is not to marry Our Hero, but even she has her happy ending. In fact, four couples are married off in the end.  The scoundrel who lured Mark Roberts into trouble departs into oblivion, and he is as much a villain as the story has, unless we include the journalists and the Liberals. Yes, without a doubt, we must include the journalists and the Liberals. The Born Again English Major knows they'll be back, and she can't wait.