REVIEW: THE INFERNAL DEVICES BY CASSANDRA CLARE - VICTORIAN LONDON & THE SHADOWHUNTERS WORLD

A full immersion in The Shadowhunters Chronicles these days! I've been reading Cassandra Clare's trilogy The Infernal Devices (prequel to The Mortal Instruments), I've been following the huge publicity campaign for the first movie based on the shadowhunters world (TheMortal Instruments City of Bones), and re-reading City of Bones for aread-a-long meant to be a sort of counting down to the movie release .

The shadowhunters in The Mortal Instruments series are half angel half human creatures who  fight demons in present-day New York city. In The Infernal Devices their ancestors have to fulfil the same task in a dark Victorian London setting. The stories of the two series are somehow intertwined,  more so than you might expect. Once back in time and in London,  you find yourself in the same fascinating world you had known with Clary Fray in 21st century NY , a world made of blood, danger, fight, runes, iratzes, great values and deep love.

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES - A PURE WOMAN, A DEVIL AND AN ANGEL

A scene from Tess of The D'Urbervilles (2008)

I've just finished rewatching BBC "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (2008) to prepare the last  lesson of a series on this novel. I've been choosing the bits to show in my wrap up class to elicit discussion from my students after reading with them some pages and reflecting on the theme that has been our focus lately: the woman question in the Victorian Age. 

This is the reason why I played and have been rewatching this DVD tonight.
I started with the intention of looking for the right scenes to show and analyse and finished being absorbed again, touched and deeply emotional,

ASK JANE EYRE

"Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you"

If you are obscure, plain, poor and little,  life  may not be smooth and easy for you. Ask Jane Eyre. You may have to bite wicked older cousins who want to torture you,  defend yourself from a jealous aunt who wishes you were dead, you may have to survive long solitary hours locked in a scary red room, then to strive to keep yourself sane and alive in a bleak, heartless place like a school for poor girls,  you must accept to go on living without anybody caring for you or loving you ... but, in the end, you'll meet your hero, your Mr Rochester and have your own reward. He is not tender and handsome, maybe, but impetuous, fascinating, authoritative, mysterious, restless. Anyhow, he doesn't trample on you, he doesn't make you feel a nobody, he treats you as his equal and trusts you. Last but not least, he desires you passionately. What if you discover on your wedding day that he has a mad wife in the attic and can't marry you? No panic, hold on, you can make it. You'll have to endure the awesome shock, run away and give up your dreams for a while, live among strangers you'll  learn to love for about a year, but be sure,  at last,  you'll have your reward, you'll have your happy ending.

CHARLES DICKENS IN ITALY - CAELUM NON ANIMUM MUTANT QUI TRANS MARE CURRUNT

Today is Charles Dickens's birthday. He was born on 7 February 1812. I'm posting this article to celebrate the incredibly talented story-teller on a very special date and to let you know the man behind the books a little more.

Would you believe such a successful, rich and widely appreciated man suffered from unhappiness? That he pined  for romantic, passionate love all his life long? Apparently he did. He tried to escape his dissatisfaction and unhappiness travelling and, especially, writing.

This piece by Claudio Taccucci, was originally published on Tiscali online paper in Italian. I asked Mr Taccucci permission to translate his article and post it here at FLY HIGH! to share it with all of you who, like me,  are interested in the great English novelist. He gladly and generously accepted, so here it is for you to enjoy. 

Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt . Those who go to sea may change their horizon,  not their soul. Charles Dickens had a tormented soul and when he was haunted by his own predicaments  or unhappiness, he escaped. If he was in his London house, he went out at night and roamed the city for hours,  going back only in the morning. Nobody will ever know what he actually did in those hours,  which he justified as a quest for inspiration for his novels. When, to avoid melancholy, his walks were not enough, he left on trips. He travelled all over England with a friend, stayed for long periods in Paris or sailed for the States on self – promotion tours.

ROMANCING MISS BRONTE BY JULIET GAEL - BOOK REVIEW

If you love Jane Eyre and Charlotte Brontë, this novel is unmissable. If you are interested in the lives of the Brontë family, so full of sorrow and talent, you'll love it.
I've just finished reading it and, by chance, I'm also working on the Brontës and their novels with my students at the moment. So Romancing Miss Brontë has come out a great source of anecdotes in order to bring  Charlotte, Emily and Anne to life for my pupils, with the aim to make today's teenagers see them as unique human beings as well as great writers. 
Practical advantages apart, reading this novel was a real treat and a great pleasure. I came to discover it after meeting  the author Juliet Gael in Rome not long ago (see my post) and I'm really happy I did it. 

Impossible not to be fascinated by the story of the three sisters who managed to get to fame thanks to their strength, talent and ... stubborness. Yes, stubborness. Because,  if we have Jane Eyre, Villette and Shirley,  Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,  we owe that especially to Charlotte's stubborness. She fought to make it and made it at last. This is the prevailing trait of  her personality revealed in Juliet Gael's portrait: a certain tenacity,  we might even recognize as stubborness.

The romance  suggested in the title is a constant element in the story. Charlotte spent most of her life trying to forget Monsier Heger, the married professor she fell in love with, unrequited, when she was studying in Brussels. She tried to recognize his stern stare and his strong personality in any man she met, and when she couldn't find them anywhere around her, she depicted those traits on paper, attributing them to her own iconic hero, Mr Rochester.

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR. HENRY MAYHEW'S LONDON AND ITS FIRST ITALIAN TRANSLATION

London Labour and the London Poor is a remarkable work of Victorian journalism by Henry Mayhew, Dickens's contemporary and like Dickens celebrating his bicentenary this year (both were born in 1812). 

Mayhew observed, documented, interviewed, described hundreds of poor people living in the abyss which was London in the 1840s-50s for a series of articles published in the Morning Chronicle. Those articles were later on compiled  into book form (1851 in 3 volumes, 1861 a fourth Extra Volume was added). 

As a fond reader of Victorian literature, yesterday I was in Rome, at Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, for the presentation of the first Italian translation of Mayhew's work by Mauro Cotone: Il lavoro e i poveri nella Londra Vittoriana.

The Italian version of the work is a selection of 138 articles out of the many hundreds Mayhew wrote. Mauro Cotone selected them obtaining a significant wide range of typical figures from the crowd inhabiting London slums: beggars, street entertainers, mudlarks, prostitutes, labourers and thieves. A great portion of those destitute beings had no fixed place of work nor a fixed abode, they lived in the slum alleys and streets where Mayhew meet them. The caricatures full of pathos we find in Charles Dickens's pages become sketches of real people in these articles, people telling about themselves in authentic first-person accounts and objectively described by a professional reporter. 

READING DANIEL DERONDA, GEORGE ELIOT'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL WORK

Hugh Dancy as Daniel Deronda - BBC 2002

I decided my more- than- 500-pages tome for this summer  would be Daniel Deronda and I successfully got through  its 675 pages + notes +  introduction slowly but enjoying every bit . Long didactic passages about Zionism included? Yes, I found them interesting if not exciting.

My first meeting with George Eliot’s last novel  was actually 10 years ago with its 2002 BBC adaptation , which soon became one of my best favourites ,  when I hadn’t even read a page from the book and only  just heard about it.

BBC drama was stunning and I found the story so original and brave  that I promised myself I would read the book sooner or later. I’ve  kept the promise though it wasn’t sooner.  You know, how is it that we usually complain? Too many books, too little time. That’s it. Now,   let’s start my musings giving some order to my thoughts , focusing on few important themes  and,  especially,   let’s introduce the book properly.

CRANFORD: I ONLY HOPE IT IS NOT IMPROPER ... SO MANY PLEASANT THINGS ARE!

THIS POST DEDICATED TO  MRS GASKELL 'S CRANFORD IS PART OF  "THE PICNIC AT CRANFORD", EVENT HOSTED AT GASKELL'S BLOG.


(N.B. At the bottom you'll find the details of a great double giveaway provided by yours truly, MG, here at FLY HIGH!) 

"Miss Jenkyns wore a cravat, and a little bonnet like a jockey-cap, and altogether had the appearence of a strong-minded woman; although she would have despised the modern idea of women being equal to men. Equal indeed!  She knew they were superior" (p. 18)

You must be a great writer to build a masterpiece on tiny, trivial, ordinary events. This is what you discover reading this novel by Elizabeth Gaskell and what Jane Austen's lovers already know very well. Cranford  is the most Austensian of Mrs Gaskell's novels, mainly for its witty tone,  and  I was really glad  to read it  for this event Katherine Cox is hosting at her Gaskell-dedicated blog and to which I was invited: The Picninc at Cranford.

AT THE CINEMA - JANE EYRE

If there is a heroine I deeply sympathized with in my teenage, she was Jane Eyre. She substituted Jo March, who had been my model heroine when I was a child. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is the book I have most frequently re-read in my life. Strangely enough, I haven't written much about the book or the several adaptations I saw on FLY HIGH. This is the first real occasion I find to discuss my admiration for Jane. Yes, for Jane more than for Rochester.

WHAT I HAVE BEEN WATCHING - THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE (2003)

When it comes to Thomas Hardy, forget optimism and happy endings. His peculiarities are realism and a tendency to tragic scenarios. I’ve always found his works rather interesting though, half way between Victorianism and Modernism.  Hardy  followed Schopenhauer’s notion of the “Immanent Will” which describes a blind force that drives the universe irrespective of human lives or desires. Though his novels often end in crushing tragedies – think of Tess of the D’Urbevilles or Jude The Obscure - that reflect Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Hardy described himself as a "meliorist", one who believes that the world tends to become better and that people aid in this betterment. Humans can live with some happiness, he claimed, so long as they understand their place in the universe and accept it.

WHAT I'VE BEEN WATCHING - THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE

A tale of love, lust, desire and revenge. I must warn you, especially if you are very sensitive : if you dare enter this world, you better tread carefully. As soon as the first images run on the screen, you get a punch in your stomach, with painful images of beaten women and squalid London slums in all their disgusting details. The Crimson Petal and the White, is set in 1870 Victorian London but it's not Dickens, nor George Eliot and neither brave Mrs Gaskell. Based on Michel Faber's novel of the same title (2003), it is a very gripping and realistic tale, as if Dickens's London turned much more wicked, more desperate, more disturbing, definitely nightmarish, seen through the eyes of a 21st century writer.

WHAT I HAVE BEEN WATCHING - 19th CENTURY HEROINES

1. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE  - DVD (2008)

This BBC drama (2008) explores the emotional and spiritual trauma suffered by Florence Nightingale on her return from the Crimean War. After witnessing the horrors of the war first hand, Florence Nightingale (Laura Fraser) campaigned strongly for an investigation when she finally returned to England. The findings however, that many of the soldiers in her care died as a result of her own failings, caused her to re-evaluate her life's mission, breaking her in mind and spirit.

2. MISS POTTER - DVD ( 2007)

The life and story of the woman who created Peter Rabbit, Jeremy Fisher and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle shows that Beatrix Potter was a headstrong pioneer in Edwardian England who had to fight for success in a man's world. She became a celebrity whose secret love affair with her publisher Norman Warne, haunted her throughout her life. Both funny and sad, this makes great use of the beautiful Lake District landscape and stars Renee Zellweger as Beatrix and Ewan McGregor as Norman.

3. THE GOVERNESS - DVD (1998)

 Rosina da Silva (Minnie Driver) is well-educated and unusually curious for a female in an era (1830s) when a woman's primary focus is keeping house and attending to the needs of her family. So when her Jewish father is murdered on the street and leaves behind numerous debts, she forsakes an arranged marriage to an older suitor, transforms herself into Mary Blackchurch - a Protestant of partial Italian descent - in order to conceal her heritage, and accepts a position as a governess for a Scottish family living on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides

Why I saw these movies

I'm keenly interested in the woman question from Austen to the Victorian Age, from the beginning of the Suffragette Movement to Virginia Woolf's writings. I take an eager interest  in reading books and watch films that can help me to understand and know more about it.

The idealised,  stereotyped Victorian "angel of the hearth" model was refused and defied by the protagonists of these stories.

These three different women lived more or less in the same period and experienced the same men's society full of prejudices and obstacles against their freedom and independence.

They fought against them, strongly believing in their right to freedom and to the acknowldegement of their talent and intelligence.

For instance, both in Florence Nightingale and in Miss Potter there are scenes in which the protagonist,  arguing with her mother,  states her  refusal of  marriage , her right not to make a living becoming a man's wife and his childern's mother. Miss Potter renounced  her freedom only for love, Miss Nightingale renounced  love to be free to follow her ideals.

In a touching scene of the 2008 TV movie (based on letters, diaries and autobiographical writings), young FlorenceNightingale refuses a marriage proposal by an affectionate friend and persistent wooer, Richard Monckton Milnes , and that -  she would say  later on - almost broke her heart every time she thought of him. But she had to prevent herself from becoming like her mother or sister . In her essay Cassandra (part of her Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth) she  - through Cassandra's voice - protests the over-feminization of women into near helplessness,what she recognized in her mother's and older sister's lethargic lifestyle, despite their education. She rejected their life of thoughtless comfort for the world of social service.  Elaine Showalter called Nightingale's writing "a major text of English feminism, a link between Wollstonecraft and Woolf.

Beatrix Potter,  instead,  fought against her family to be free not to marry,  first. Then, at the age of 32, after meeting Norman Warne her publisher, she claimed the right  to marry the man she loved. But her upper class family  considered him unsuitable for being  a tradesman. Though there are some historical inaccuracies in this biopic, though many people didn't like Renée Zellweger's cast for the role, I found  it is a delightful Victorian fairy -  tale-  like movie and I was glad to see it,  also for the appeal of its romance, settings and social implications.

I didn't like Florence Nightingale 2008 DVD as much. This BBC drama has got a very confused storyline, the continuous shifts in time are rather displacing and puzzling and prevented me from feeling involved. Moreover, the biographical account is often interrupted by a popular stage perfomance , a music hall dedicated to Nightingale, that I found quite fastidious and out of place.

The third film, The Governess (1998) is an accomplished, touching and original movie, beautifully craft with a good cast including a brilliant Minnie Driver and a very young Jonathan Rhys Meyers (as Henry Cavendish). Also Rosina /Mary finds her way to indepence, in the end: she  becomes  a photographer noted for her distinct images of Jewish people, a very modern woman with a very modern profession.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE, AN OLD MAN'S LOVE - BOOK REVIEW

Henry James said that Trollope's greatest and undeniable merit was his utter understanding of the ordinary. He succeded in feeling any little thing in everyday life not only in seeing it. He felt them simply and directly in their sadness and in their gaiety, in  their appeal and in their comical aspects and in their most obvious but sensible meanings. This introduction of an amazingly prolific writer made by another terrific author made me  feel guilty and sorry for not knowing him more and deeply. I decided I had to read one of Trollope's novels. Isn't he one of the Victorian writers , I'm so intrested in? He is,  but I'm ashamed to say I had never read one of his novels.

So, strangely enough , I happened to start from his latest achievement, written in the final years of his life and only published posthumously in 1884: AN OLD MAN'S LOVE. It was one of my tasks for the Wish I'd read That Challenge 2010 hosted at Royal Reviews.

WILLIAM WHITTLESTAFF, having lost the woman he loved to a richer, more lively rival many years before, lives alone at Croker Hall in Hampshire, looked after by his loyal, odd housekeeper Mrs Baggett. Mr Whittlestaff impulsively takes in as his ward the orphaned daughter of an old friend, nineteen year-old Mary Lawrie, much to Mrs Baggett's disapproval. She — rightly — suspects that Mary's arrival will eventually lead to her master falling in love with the girl, who will supplant her as head of the household. The reserved, unworldly Mary gradually warms towards the lonely bachelor, and he eventually asks her to be his wife. Mary has only briefly experienced love three years before, with John Gordon, a penniless Oxford student who was sent away by her step-mother as a bad prospect. Mary accepts Mr Whittlestaff, but not before making him aware of the history of her short and painful dealings with John Gordon. He dismisses this knowledge, allowing that Mary 'may think of him' from time to time, but privately presuming the young man to be safely out of her life.

But John Gordon unexpectedly arrives at Croker Hall. Fresh from the diamond fields of South Africa where he has made a considerable fortune in order to make himself worthy of Mary, he has come to renew his suit, and she finds herself caught in an impossible situation, feeling incapable of jilting the man whose proposal she has so recently accepted. Mr Whittlestaff, though well aware who it is that Mary really loves, is unwilling to be rejected himself once again, and reluctant to release her from her promise. John Gordon, unable quite to give up hope, goes to stay for a few days with an old university friend, Montagu Blake, a curate who lives nearby. The battle is on for the hand of Mary Lawrie.

(plot from http://www.victorianweb.org/)

The story is rather paradoxical and extremely pleasant: Trollope's irony and wit, his attention to simple ordinary aspects of life, to very simple and ordinary people, his bitter/sweet approach to the theme of old age versus youth made this last of his works a very good, entertaining read.
 Maybe some of you have already noticed I've got a professional tendency to find connections and links -   a pedantic mania ? - and  also on this occasion ... here we go!

Trollope & Austen: Mr Hall vs Mr Bennet

Introducing Mr. Hall, Trollope directly reflects on Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice and, especially, on Mr Bennet. Mr Hall , who has an entailed estate (which cannot be left to his female offspring), lives frugally — in fact in a style well beneath what one expect — precisely because he does not want to have his daughters end up in the world of Pride and Prejudice; that is, unlike Austen's Mr. Bennett, who retreats to his library and proclaims he can do nothing to help his  daughters, Trollope's Mr. Hall changes his life, sacrificing much because chosen not "to leave his children paupers",  so dependent on marriage for their economic survival. Trollope's character obviously criticizes Austen's as weak and self-indulgent.

Trollope & Dickens-Mr Sentiment

Trollope parodies Dickens calling him Mr Sentiment (seeTrollope, Anthony. "Tom Towers, Dr. Anticant, and Mr. Sentiment." The Warden. World Classics. Oxford: Oxford UP). Reading this novella, An Old Man's Love,  and after reading several of Dickens's novels their different approach to story-telling and characterization is evident.
Dickens's exaggerations often make his characters like caritures: both positive and negative aspects in their personalities are stressed and seen as through a magnifying glass. Trollope's characterization is more realistic, his humoristic portrayals are not based on exaggeration and his sense of human drama not approached with sensationalism. You smile and you are sorrowful at the different situations he describes, but you never laugh out loud or are never moved to tears. (Just in brackets, I do love Dickens!)

AT THE MOVIES - SHERLOCK HOLMES 2009

I was at the cinema this afternoon and I was surprisingly glad to see the new SHERLOCK HOLMES film.

Guy Ritchie’s movie matches Sherlock Holmes’s intellectual ability with incredible physical strength and agility turning our beloved Victorian “consulting detective” in a new unbeatable modern hero. A very fascinating one, impossible to resist his oomph. Robert Downey Jr. gives a very convincing performance. Watson, his loyal right-hand man and friend is the first who can never say no to him. I’ve always imagined Watson as short, fat and not very young so … Jude Law? Not that I want to claim about the change, but he … rather surpasses any optimistic expectation.

Holmes’s infallible deductive method is still there. Do you remember? He believes that “From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other." Thanks to his method and the help of Dr Watson, in this story set in London in 1891, he uncovers an incredibly devilish plot by an occult-dabbling secret society known as the Temple of the Four Orders with Lord Blackwood (fascinatingly evil Mark Strong) eventually leading it on a quest for world domination.

Many fighting scenes, lots of them , but accurately made and mostly amusing. I usually don’t like them but they were fun, this time. Holmes defeats very frightening bigger-than-him guys and you believe it possible. He studies them with his cunning observation and finds out what their weaknesses are!

As for female characters, the only woman to impress Holmes in Sir Conan Doyle’s work was Irene Adler, who was always referred to by Holmes as "the woman". Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term—even though he does mention her actual name several times in other cases. Adler is one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, though she actually appears in person in only one, "A Scandal in Bohemia". She is in this film too and is a very smart brave young woman who has only a fawl, she loves Holmes. Irene is interpreted by vivacious Canadian actress Rachel McAdams. The other woman in the movie is Dr Watson’s fiance, beatiful and intelligent Mary ( Kelly Reilly ) , who is immediately seen as a rival by Holmes.

Another interesting point is the possibility of Holmes having bipolar disorder (also referred to as manic depressive disorder) which has been suggested many times but most notably  in this new movie adaptation. Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal has been called "inauthentic" because of the implications of his performance, but some of Watson's observations in "A Study in Scarlet" provide crediblity to the claim, as Watson notes: "Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night."

Let’s say something about the setting. The Tower Bridge still being built, Ritchie's London is gloomy, smoky, wet and portrayed as metallic and grey. Impressive photography.

So, did I like it? I enjoyed myself. No sense of guilt, I was amused and entertained.

N.B.No offence is meant to purists or to spectators with different opinions.

I only have one regret:  dubbing. I mean, it was strange, they spoke Italian (though Holmes’s voice was an excellent one, Luca Ward’s) . So I promised myself I'll have to watch it again, in the original version, as soon as the DVD is released.

SHERLOCK HOLMES 2009 OFFICAL SITE

VICTORIAN MIST(ERIES) : SALLY LOCKHART

It's time to wrap up beautiful Period Drama Challenge.This is my last review, the 4th in the section Victorian Mist. The 8th task on the whole. Thanks to LIGHTS, CAMERA ... HISTORY for hosting it. It'll go on till July 2010.

THE SALLY LOCKHART MYSTERIES (DVD review)

Sally Lockhart's London, misty Victorian London, has a surplus of opium dens, mediums and boarding houses, it is a place where there were still enough shadows to conceal casual murder and where bodies could be buried beneath mud floors. It is in this world that Sally Lockhart hears of a priceless ruby , a precious stone that brings violence and death into hers and many other people's lives as well as  the memory of a murder in the cloud of opium smoke.

Sally Lockhart is a brave Victorian heroine created by writer, Philip Pullman. He wrote four novels in this series


• The Ruby in the Smoke

• The Shadow in the North

• The Tiger in the Well

• The Tin Princess


BBC has adapted the fist two ones so far, starring Billie Piper as Sally.

Episode 1. The Ruby In The Smoke opens in 1872 with young Sally Lockhart finding a message from her father, joint owner of the Lockhart & Selby shipping firm and who recently went down with all hands on the Lavinia in her sinking in the far east. The letter tells Sally to beware of the Seven Blessings, which means nothing to her but which is something of a dire warning for others as, when Sally asks the company's secretary about its meaning, he drops dead of fright before her very eyes. In the same office, Sally meets Jim Taylor (Matt Smith) and together they investigate why death seems to follow the Seven Blessings. The road to the truth takes in murder, the smuggling of opium and the mysterious Ruby of Agrapur. And all the while they are watched by the wicked Mrs Holland ( Julie Walters). Sally makes new friends who will become her new family, Frederick Garland ( J.J. Feild ) and his sister, who will support her in solving the mystery …

2. The Shadow in the North . Six years have passed . Jim and Frederick are running a detective agency and Sally hasn't just found herself a dog ( a big black frightening one)  but now runs a well-regarded financial consultancy.  The Shadow In The North is slightly the better of the two films  but only in its focusing more on the story than on the atmosphere. Briefly...

The story is set in 1878 when an old woman loses a large sum of money by investing in a British shipping firm. Twenty two year old Sally Lockhart, a financial adviser, sets out to investigate the cause of the sunken ship and learns about a wicked plan to release the Hopkinson Self-Regulator, also known as the Steam Gun. Pursuing this, she becomes tangled in the stories of a young magician, a jolly old medium and Lord Wytham, whose debt has forced him to marry off his daughter for money...

Two great  mystery stories set in  dark and misty Victorian London, perfect for the next cold December nights. Lots of familiar faces and very good actors. Good drama , BBC style.

BBC HOMEPAGE

SATURDAY NIGHT CLASSIC READING - MIDDLEMARCH by G. ELIOT

I’m fond of really long Victorian era novels. I’d much rather read one of those than 10 modern books. So, like every Saturday Night, here I am to suggest you a Classic to read , as usual it is one chosen among my favourites, again a Victorian long novel. I’ve chosen to introduce you to tonight’s classic with a videoclip. It is set in Italy, my country. Young idealist Dorothea Brooke has just married old Reverend Casaubon and they are on their honeymoon in romantic Italy. But their journey is not at all romantic …

 (from BBC MIDDLEMARCH 1994)

MIDDLEMARCH by George Eliot (1870-71)

If we had to sum up Middlemarch in just a few words, we might say that it's a novel about social and political reform. But it's also a novel about love and marriage. And about trying and failing. And about second chances. It is, in other words, a huge and wide-ranging novel. And we do mean huge: the edition I own  is 838 pages long. That's a lot of pages, but then, George Eliot had a lot to say.

But why was Middlemarch so popular? Well, it was socially and politically relevant when it first came out: it was published in 1870-71, just four years after the 3rd Reform Bill was passed in Parliament. Reform was a big deal in 19th-century England. Who would get to vote, and who would take care of poor people, and healthcare, and minimum wages – everyone had some pet reform project they wanted to bring before Parliament. But Eliot didn't want to write a novel about something that had just taken place, so she set the novel forty years earlier, in 1830 – just before the First Reform Bill was passed. Eliot believed that it takes time to understand historical events – it's impossible to understand all the consequences of something right after it takes place. Forty years, Eliot reasoned, was the perfect amount of distance: it's long enough that people have gained some perspective on what happened back then, but it's recent enough that the events are still pretty familiar.

But this epic novel has also a really extraordinary heroine which contributed to its popularity: Dorothea Brooke.

Upper-middle and upper-class Victorian women were expected to "marry money," stay home to raise the family, and be responsible for the management of domestic affairs. As a result, women, who lacked the opportunity for the kind of education men had, were praised chiefly for their ability to act properly towards their husbands. Dorothea Brooke is an intelligent and independent young woman, who differs from the conventional woman of the Victorian Age. While other Victorian ladies worried about fashion and marriage, Dorothea concerns herself with issues of philosophy, spirituality, and service. Eliot points out Dorothea's genuine beauty in describing her physical appearance:

"Miss Brooke had the kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, — or from one of our elder poets, — in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper".

Tonight's reader is Dan Stevens and he is going to read one of the most exciting and touching scenes in the novel ... Ludislow is going to leave Middlemarch forever and visits Dorothea to bid her goodbye...

(CLICK ON THE URL UNDER THE PICTURE, RELAX AND ENJOY )

http://www.cartenoire.co.uk/middlemarch

OTHER LINKS

THE PLOT AND OTHER INFORMATION

MIDDLEMARCH ON LINE

YOUNG VICTORIA

When I was in London last April, it was still on but, not being there alone, I couldn't see it.  I really wanted to watch this movie for several reasons - I love costume films, the Victorian Age, Queen Victoria as a historical figure, Victorian literature... - I couldn't miss it.  So Amazon UK was my saviour. It's the latest addition to my collection: YOUNG VICTORIA 2009 starring Emily Blunt, Rupert Fiend,  Miranda Richardson, Mark Strong.

I've recently seen it and just wanted to share some points with you.

The film is a romantic dramatisation of some of the events preceding and following the coronation of Queen Victoria, focusing on her early reign and romance with Prince Albert in the 1830s.

 Enough attention is given to Victoria's attitude to life and power, with a good  convincing characterization. Less realistic seems Prince Albert's portrayal: he is depicted as a youg prince, ready to satisfy his father's will, trying to flatter his young, beautiful, powerful cousin in order to fulfil political aims, planning strategies to  please Victoria as a political duty. Official biographies want him really in love with her: they were good friends first of all, then lovers, then husband and wife. Furthermore, Victoria's uncle, Leopold I of Belgium,was not as pushy and selfish in persuading Albert to marry the queen in real life as he was portrayed in the film. The Belgian King was Victoria's favorite uncle and served as a sort of father figure to her.

What surprised me most was young Victoria's relationship with power: I have always seen royals as human beings in golden cages. I mean, they live glamourous lives in wonderful palaces but totally lack freedom in my mind. In this film, Victoria, instead, after feeling herself as a prisoner of her mother's will and Sir John Conroy's  (her mother's lover and personal secretary) pressure,  she saw becoming the Queen of England as a liberation. So power = freedom.
The movie also underlines the great solitude she had to experience, especially before marrying Albert. And this, I guess, was  what brought her to the serious depression which followed his death:  to be brought again into that nightmarish solitude .

VICTORIA AND ALBERT IN OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHIES

Victoria, the daughter of the duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, was born in 1819. She inherited the throne of Great Britain at the age of 18, upon the death of her uncle William IV in 1837, and reigned until 1901, bestowing her name upon her age. She married her mother's nephew, Albert (1819-1861), prince of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, in 1840, and until his death he remained the focal point of her life (she bore him nine children).

Albert replaced Lord Melbourne, the Whig Prime Minister who had served her as her first personal and political tutor and instructor, as Victoria's chief advisor. Albert was moralistic, conscientious and progressive, if rather priggish, sanctimonious, and intellectually shallow, and with Victoria initiated various reforms and innovations— he organized the Great Exhibition of 1851, for example— which were responsible for a great deal of the popularity later enjoyed by the British monarchy. (In contrast to the Great Exhibition, housed in the Crystal Palace and viewed by proud Victorians as a monument to their own cultural and technological achievements, however, we may recall that the government over which Victoria and Albert presided had, in the midst of the potato famine of 1845, continued to permit the export of grain and cattle from Ireland to England while over a million Irish peasants starved to death).

HISTORICAL INACCURACIES

In this beautiful filmed portrayal of Queen Victoria and her beloved Prince Albert there are few historical inaccuracies  that can be interesting to notice.

1. Victoria was left handed; however, in the film she draws and paints with her right hand

2. Prince Albert was never shot during an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria: the bullet missed him.

UNBELIEVABLE TRUE FACTS

(above -  Mark Strong as John Conroy and

Miranda Richardson as Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent)

The scene where Conroy, her mother's lover,  is trying to make Victoria sign the paper when she is ill and she throws it to the floor - it's completely true and the scene in Windsor where the King stands up and insults Victoria's mother is not only true, but about two-thirds of his speech is what he actually said. However, the duchess of Kent was seated next to the King when he spoke  and did not leave during the speech; and, undepicted in the film, the princess burst into tears "and the two parties, soon realizing that they had gone too far, patched up an uneasy truce . According to Greville's Memoirs: "The Queen looked in deep distress, the Princess burst into tears, and the whole company were aghast. The Duchess of Kent said not a word. Immediately after they rose and retired, and a terrible scene ensued; the Duchess announced her immediate departure and ordered her carriage, but a sort of reconciliation was patched up, and she was prevailed upon to stay till the next day".

Though I know this is predictable and obvious, I particularly loved the costumes and locations. Mark Strong , who was a "good" wicked Sir Conroy, and Jim Broadbent, a convincing King William. I had already loved Emily Blunt as Prudie in THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB  and she has been an extraordinary young queen in this movie. Rupert Fiend as Albert? Still thinking about it ...