Talking meme

[lunabee34]

chelseagirl asks: Other than Ouida, who are your top three Victorian novelists and why?



I absolutely adore Wuthering Heights. I've read it upwards of twenty times. I love it so much that I made it the central wooing device in the Jensen/Jared college AU I wrote back in my CW RPF heydays.

It's one of my favorite books to teach, too. I've taught it more frequently than any other novel in my career, and even though I've re-read it more often than probably any other novel, I always find something new every time. Students respond to so many elements in this novel--the unreliable narrators, the gothic conventions, the soulmates, the tragic love story, the necrophilia! We get to talk about doing it *and* digging up your dead honey when I teach this novel; it's an educator's dream.

Since this is a book I have read consistently at least once a year since I was 15, I've been able to chart my reactions to the text as time as passed. I write in the books I care about, and so much of the joy of re-reading this book to me is reading the progression of marginalia. Is there a word for commenting on your own commentary? LOL I love how the handwriting matures, how many times I wrote, "What an ass," next to something Heathcliff does.

I think my favorite aspect of this book is its discussion of identity and the impact love has on self-hood. For Cathy and Heathcliff, love is dangerous. It risks self-dissolution. It is soul-subsuming, and it leads to madness. It leads to death. "Nelly, I am Heathcliff!" Cathy cries, and she means it in that way that every sixteen year old who feels her soul thrum to the magnetic resonance of another's means it, when she believes that she is close enough to another person that they are but extensions of one another's bodies--a single soul inhabiting separate flesh.

Unfortunately, Cathy kinda forgets to tell Heathcliff that they're soulmates yo and marries another dude. Heathcliff is not impressed.

And, ooh oooh! The puns. Penistone Crag, anybody? Bridle hook?

I was struck on my last re-read by how modern the horror elements seem to me. Much of the violence and abuse and horror in the text is glossed over; the narrators don't call attention to it but rather treat it as a matter of course, as a background element. I'll just be reading along and all of sudden, I'll go, "Wait! He just tried to saw off a ghost kid's hand on a broken window!" or "He just shoved a knife blade. into. her. mouth. OMG." None of these moments are belabored but they slowly add up to create a feeling of terror. It feels analogous to creating a painting a layer at a time with one faint wash of color on top of another until the end product is quite vivid and striking. And what I mean by modern is that this novel seems to treat abuse and abusers much differently than most of the Victorian novels I've read. It is way more concerned with motive and psychology than a lot of books from the era, and it seems to have a much more current take on what constitutes abuse. I know that the frank violence of the novel was pretty shocking when it was published; it was the HBO of the mid-19th century! LOL

I think this is one of the most accessible 19th-century novels (well except for all of Joseph's phonetically rendered dialogue *shudders*), and if you haven't read it, I'd suggest giving it a go.



I love Wilkie Collins. I have read Hide and Seek, The Dead Secret, The Woman in White, No Name, Man and Wife, and Heart and Science and mostly thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience.

It's been quite some time since I read most of these, but I taught No Name at least once, and it was a great novel to teach.

I love the female characters in his works; they are so interesting and behave in unexpected ways. I love the detective elements in many of this novels; at the heart of a lot of them, there's a mystery to be solved. I also love his sense of humor. He can be really funny (although sometimes as in Man and Wife he is being unintentionally hilarious).

Definitely suggest No Name for a starter if you're interested in exploring Collins.



A third writer is a little harder to pick for me. I like a lot of authors equally in this third tier, but I think I'll go with Dickens.

I've read a fair amount of Dickens: Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. With the exception of A Christmas Carol, I've read none of these recently.

I really enjoy his sense of humor, his focus on social issues that need reforming, and on his deftly drawn characters. Who can forget Miss Havisham or Uriah Heep?

I'd like to reread Dickens soon (although let's be real; I've been working on my re-read my own shelves project for like three years now and barely made it into the Bs).


executrix asks: Worst Victorian novel you have ever read

I guess The Warden by Trollope. I feel terrible labelling it the worst because there's nothing really wrong with it; I just find it very boring. It did not speak to me.