Mirth -- 3-2-1-stop!

In finishing up this last bit of House of Mirth something dawned on me. Throughout the book I've noticed that Wharton always spells out the emotion and tact behind the dialogue
that is going on. At first I just thought that this was bad form. Well, I'm not necessarily convinced now that it's not. But, regardless of that, if it is intentional and not just bad writing, the reason is that she is trying to say something about the calculation and lack of humanity that the elite class of this time have to take care to preserve. We saw the same thing with Austen, except Austen didn't spell it out; she left it up to the reader to figure out. Wharton is always describing the pause that one person takes when someone says something shocking. Or she points out the composure that people like Lily keep given the same event. All of this is important to the image that Wharton is trying to create of these people. There's a lot more to be done with that, especially in the way that each character slips in and out of maintaining this custom but it's not worth getting into because if I give it much more credit for being a valid literary tool then I'll feel that somehow I'm encouraging more writers to add in dozens of unnecessary pages to books that are already to long and pointless. It's detail that comes at the expense of much-needed brevity.

Mirth -- 1-2-3- go!

As far as I can tell, Wharton is trying to make a statement about women and their role in society. She's writing in the 19th/20th century, so I'm not so sure what she's saying is anything new. I really don't know what she's trying to get across at this point so I don't know what to think of it. Wharton is obviously offering some sort of satire about the lives of the landed/familial elite. This is an American perspective and I'm not sure what to make of that. Is the elitist American perspective (as far as satire goes) much different from the English/European perspective? I don't know, and perhaps I might find out. It depends on how good of a writer Wharton is...up to now, she is incredibly generic so I'm not so sure I'll be able to keep my interest until then.

On the other hand, she seems to be challenging social roles of men and women so I'm interested in sticking through it for that. My guess is that she's going to end the female role in either death or complacency since all 'gender oriented' writers of the time seem to end their stories by having the characters succumb to the ordinary.

Ok then!

Jude round 1

So, far Jude the Obscure is a lot better than Persuasion. Not only is the language easy to read through but the story seems to move along pretty quickly. Within the first 100 pages Jude has been a child, learned to read in a few languages, learned stone carving, been married, divorced (sort of), and moved to a new city. Something about the way it progresses makes it pretty enjoyable. At the same time, so much has happened that I'm wondering what else could possible occur. In that way there is a suspense to it that makes me want to keep reading. Another aspect of the writing that makes it attractive is that the author is following Jude very closely. He mentions other characters' emotions and actions but everything Hardy mentions is focused on how Jude is affected by them.

174 - Persuasion

If there is anything that has stuck out to me in the course of reading through Persuasion, it's the ability that Austen has to make the reader like or dislike a character. This struck me when the Musgroves, Anne, and Frederick Wentworth were in Lyme and Louisa fell and hit here head. I was so happy that she was either dead or knocked out for a while -- I was a little giddy that she might be gone from the story. Similar treatment of this sort can be seen in the description that Ms. Smith gives of the younger Mr. Elliot's behavior a few years before. There was something about him that I just didn't like -- perhaps because he was trying to marry Anne but obviously Frederick is her match -- so when the letter was shared with Anne it finally gave me a good reason to hate him. It's this sort of character treatment that has been able to transcend the language issue and the fact that this is a boring love story and give me something to appreciate in Austen's writing.

To go back to the Louisa incident, it's worth noting that just because Louisa was recovering and out of the picture for several months, she remained part of the plot and was essential to the development of the other characters' relationship. I don't know exactly how this effects the worth of the writing, it's just something I observed that was related to Austen's use of characters.