The Story of the Novel moves hurriedly along. Ivanhoe - a brief mention. Quickly through Dickins, Gaskell, Bronte, Thackerey, Eliot, James, Gissing and finishing for the time being with Hardy. I am mostly unfamiliar with the Victorian writers, I find them so overly proper and yet so hypocritical that they become uninspiring. My loss, I guess. I did read Ivanhoe when I was a child and got upset that he (the twat) chose whatshername...Rowena over the much nicer Rebecca. But of course Rowena was blond. However, I am quite interested in Great Expectations - I saw the crap version with Gwyneth Paltrow (whom I find boring and appaling, although she has regained some street-cred by hanging out with Chris Martin - strangely, since he is kind of boring too), that didn't do much for me, but I could imagine reading it would be a different and dark experience. Jane Eyre I must read, if nothing else because I'm dying to read Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys is so to be recommended! Vanity Fair...well, one should really, yes? Middlemarch has been greatly recommended to me and Portrait of a Lady is, well, Henry James, whom I quite like - I have however read Jude the Obscure which I liked loads because of the style of writing, but it depressed me so much that I flung the book into the bookshelf in disgust and have not touched it since. The pace of the program was almost too fast, but it still managed to give a good overview over the greater visibility of women in the 19th century. Looking forward to next week and perhaps a bit of Joyce?


Things I Don't Know, numero uno:

How cricket works.
posted by charlotte at 13:24 - comment