little woman

Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
Published 1939
Fiction

Man i hope it doesn’t come to this…

The odd numbered chapters are more commentary on the lives of those pushed west out of the Dust Bowl. The story of the Joads make that plight more personal.

Obviously this work has been banned and caused much controversy. The biggest protesters were the Associated Farmers of California for the way Californian farmers were depicted as having treated the people escaping to California.

He got the title from some lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic…

Special thanks to Wikipedia

These lyrics refer, in turn, to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19-20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment.

And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

Agnes Grey
by Anne Brontë
Published 1847
Victorian Literature/Fiction

Victorian Literature encompasses anything written during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). Authors that fall into this category are Lewis Carroll, the Bronte Sisters, Robert and Elisabeth Browning, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot to name a few…

There is much speculation as to the autobiographical nature of Agnes Grey to Anne’s own experiences as a governess. It is also said that a romantic relationship may have taken place with her father’s curate.

The darkest part of this book is the fascination with torturing animals at the beginning. One of Agnes’ pupils has a fondness for ripping the heads, wings and feet off of poor nesting birds. Agnes’ is incredibly compassionate and tries to teach him how wrong it is. She even goes so far as to flattening a nest of baby birds with a rock so her pupil doesnt have a chance to torment them.

One of my favorite exchanges was with Mrs. Bloomfield, “You seem to have forgotten that the creatures were created for our amusement” to which Agnes comes back quoting scripture on how treating animals poorly is not very Christian… “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” and “The merciful man shews mercy to his beast”. Me thinks Agnes would be a vegetarian……

I really enjoyed this book. Not really knowing much about it other than it was another Bronte governness novel, I really enjoyed Anne as a character and the story as a whole.

Anne

A Little Background…
Charlotte, the eldest of the Bronte sisters, born in 1816 and is best known for Jane Eyre (1847). She also wrote Shirley (1849), Villette (1853), and The Professor which was written before Jane Eyre but published  posthumously in 1857. Emily, the middle sister, was born in 1818, the year Jane Austen’s last novel Persuasion was published. Emily is best known for Wuthering Heights (1847). I read this in high school, loved it and plan on reading it again shortly. And Anne, born in 1820, wrote Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Apparently 1847 was a big year for these three…

Family Life…

Portrait of the sisters painted by their brother Branwell. The blur between Emily and Charlotte is where Branwell painted himself out.

Their mother died in 1824 and left her children’s care to her sister and her husband. Their two eldest children got ill and died, Maria and Elizabeth. There was also a brother, Branwell. In 1846, the three sisters published a collections of poems called Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell which only sold two copies. The next year they each wrote very successful novels.

The Bells…
Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily) and Acton (Anne) were their pen names. One day Charlotte stumbled upon some of Emily’s poetry and urged her to get it published. Anne was writing quite a bit on her own as well. They decided to put together Poems by… using pen names because “the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because- without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thining was not what is called ‘feminine’- we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice…” There was much speculation over the Bells… Anne and Charlotte had to physically go to their publishers together to convince them that it was not one person using different first names. And there was, of course, much speculation over their gender.

Self Portrait of Branwell

Branwell died in 1847 of tuberculosis brought on by his alcoholism and opium addiction. Emily caught a cold at her brother’s funeral in September of 1848 and died in December of the same year. Anne was very much grieved by her siblings death and became very ill early 1849. She died of consumption that year. Charlotte and her father were the only surviving members of their immediate family. Charlotte did not die until 1855 (made it to the ripe old age of 35!!) and their father, Patrick Bronte, passed in 1861. Patrick was responsible for getting Charlotte’s nove The Professor published and helped Elizabeth Gaskell with Charlotte’s biography.

Catcher in the rye
Jerome David Salinger
Published 1951
Fiction

Look at me celebrating Banned Book Week!!! I read Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret and The Catcher in the Rye…

Mark Chapman, the guy that shot Lennon, felt that his life mirrored Holden’s… He was even holding a copy of it when he shot him! The officers found Chapman sitting “very calmly” on the sidewalk. They reported that Chapman had dropped the revolver to the ground, and was holding a paperback book, J.D. Salinger‘s The Catcher in the Rye. Chapman had scribbled a message on the book’s inside front cover: “This is my statement. — The Catcher in the Rye.” He would later claim that his life mirrored that of Holden Caulfield, the main protagonist of the book. [Wikipedia] Pssh… if my life mirrored Holden’s I wouldnt shoot a Beatle… but I would probably do something really stupid. But what a jerk… shooting John Lennon and all… even though everyone knows that George was the best Beatle…

 
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
Published 1911 by Scribner’s
Tragic Romance

Such a tragic story!! You cannot help but have respect for Ethan’s situation because he has always done what is right… this is him reaching his breaking point. All I wanted was for him to be with Mattie… And I felt bad about it. Of course now when you are in a loveless marriage, we think nothing of it to split up. Some people don’t even wait that long…

I spent a lot of time wondering if Zeena knew of his feelings for Mattie… then when Zeena discovered the broken pickle dish and said “I tried to keep my things where you couldnt get at ‘em and now you’ve took from me the one I cared for most of all” I realized that she knew more than I thought.

The way Wharton tells the story is interesting because it is actually told from a strangers point-of-view. The stranger, who goes unnamed in the introduction, has to stay at Ethan’s home during a snow storm. When the stranger first sees Ethan, he is described as having “a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.” We later fine out the chain is Zeena… The stranger pieces together bits of information they learn from neighbors while staying in Starkfield, Massachusetts to form this story… kind of makes it more interesting because we take for granted its accuracy.

There is a film that came out in 1993 with Liam Neeson as Ethan and Patricia Arquette as Mattie… I bet that is interesting. I am going to try to watch that at some point.