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Mar. 2nd, 2003 02:34 pmAt least for now, this seems to be turning into a reading journal. One of the things I'm working on is the politeness factor. A friend who is reading through my current dissertation chapter tells me I was too nice to a couple of Dickens's characters. Too nice. That's me.
*The Crimson Petal and the White* by Michel Faber. This is a book I have extremely mixed feelings about. There are necessarily going to be all sorts of issues surrounding a Victorian novel published in 2002, and it seems to be positioning itself (all 800 plus pages) as a Victorian novel and not an historical novel. Historically, it seems nearly impeccable, and he manages the language without sounding either too stilted or too contemporary. Reading the afterward, I saw that he acknowledged the VICTORIA list, on which I've lurked on and off for years (currently off), and I realized that he used to post fairly frequently, in fact. Knowing that while reading the text, I recalled several threads which seem to have been put to good use here (Richmall Mangnall's textbook comes to mind). And, of course, addressing sexuality in an appropriate way in a "Victorian" novel (since that never would have happened in a Victorian novel), is a plus.
There's a touch of what I call *Memoirs of a Geisha* syndrome -- a discomfort about reading a female sex worker from a different culture/time written about by a male writer. But Sugar is actually by far Faber's most successful character -- intelligent, sympathetic, but also angry, flawed, complicated. Others who work well are the prostitute Caroline and little Sophie (who is refreshingly like a real child and unlike the sickly sweet children in real Victorian novels).
William Rackham is a Type: Victorian Upper Middle Class Male; he serves primarily as a foil. The novel's weak point is Agnes Rackham: the Victorian sexually repressed child-wife and madwoman in the room down the hall. She's hard to believe in, and an amalgam of too many stereotypes. (A.S. Byatt created a much more interesting sexually repressed Victorian wife in Ellen Ash, who was neither mad nor childish.) Also, it's fair to have religious-based repression and madness in one of the primary characters, but *three*? Henry Rackham is another "type" from a Victorian novel: the would-be clergyman who feels himself insufficiently pure, and *yes* sexually is going to play a part in that, but after awhile, his interior monologues are belabored. The greatest disappointment is Mrs. Fox, who is both devout and irreverent and along with Sugar, comes closest to the novel's New Woman figure. She's interesting and complicated -- did she *have* to crumble after Henry's death? (I choose to read her last scene as positive for her, but only because I liked her so much.)
Kevin Baker is the winner and still champion in the "make me believe in your 19th century characters" contest . . .
*The Crimson Petal and the White* by Michel Faber. This is a book I have extremely mixed feelings about. There are necessarily going to be all sorts of issues surrounding a Victorian novel published in 2002, and it seems to be positioning itself (all 800 plus pages) as a Victorian novel and not an historical novel. Historically, it seems nearly impeccable, and he manages the language without sounding either too stilted or too contemporary. Reading the afterward, I saw that he acknowledged the VICTORIA list, on which I've lurked on and off for years (currently off), and I realized that he used to post fairly frequently, in fact. Knowing that while reading the text, I recalled several threads which seem to have been put to good use here (Richmall Mangnall's textbook comes to mind). And, of course, addressing sexuality in an appropriate way in a "Victorian" novel (since that never would have happened in a Victorian novel), is a plus.
There's a touch of what I call *Memoirs of a Geisha* syndrome -- a discomfort about reading a female sex worker from a different culture/time written about by a male writer. But Sugar is actually by far Faber's most successful character -- intelligent, sympathetic, but also angry, flawed, complicated. Others who work well are the prostitute Caroline and little Sophie (who is refreshingly like a real child and unlike the sickly sweet children in real Victorian novels).
William Rackham is a Type: Victorian Upper Middle Class Male; he serves primarily as a foil. The novel's weak point is Agnes Rackham: the Victorian sexually repressed child-wife and madwoman in the room down the hall. She's hard to believe in, and an amalgam of too many stereotypes. (A.S. Byatt created a much more interesting sexually repressed Victorian wife in Ellen Ash, who was neither mad nor childish.) Also, it's fair to have religious-based repression and madness in one of the primary characters, but *three*? Henry Rackham is another "type" from a Victorian novel: the would-be clergyman who feels himself insufficiently pure, and *yes* sexually is going to play a part in that, but after awhile, his interior monologues are belabored. The greatest disappointment is Mrs. Fox, who is both devout and irreverent and along with Sugar, comes closest to the novel's New Woman figure. She's interesting and complicated -- did she *have* to crumble after Henry's death? (I choose to read her last scene as positive for her, but only because I liked her so much.)
Kevin Baker is the winner and still champion in the "make me believe in your 19th century characters" contest . . .
