Tag: 19th Century

A Fortunate Man

~ Jane ~ 22 Comments

At the end of the 19th century Johannes Sidenius, a Lutheran pastor, lives with his wife and 11 children in a small provincial town in east Jutland. Stern and pious, curt and inhospitable, Pastor Sidenius is more likely to question his parishioners on their religious inclinations that offer them the expected coffee and sympathy. Set apart from the community by his aloof indifference, his wife, after so many childbirths in quick succession, the strain of living in dire poverty and a reluctance to countenance any sort of secular behaviour has taken to her bed. Their children go to school but otherwise are kept to themselves, there are hymns around the piano, prayers and homework. Their appearance, with their unusual neck collars, long curling hair for the five boys, and hair plastered to their skulls with a plait at each temple running in front of their ears for the girls, sets them apart from their peers. Life is frugal and meagre, and silent unless you’re invited to speak. But they’ve inherited a strict sense of duty and are eager to emulate their parents’.

Not Peter Andreas though. Almost from birth he’s like a stranger in the home. He burns with shame at their odd appearance that keeps him singled out. He climbs out of his bedroom window at night to skate with his classmates and kiss the girls. He dreams of engineering and developing a new canal system which will bring Jutland into contact with the rest of Denmark and bring Denmark into contact with the rest of Europe. Not for him a life of humble gratitude, he wants to be rich, rich and famous.

At last, he’s allowed to leave home for Engineering college in Copenhagan; he drops his apostolic names and becomes simply Per. He says goodbye to his family and sets his sights on a glorious future.

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The Time Machine

~ Jane ~ 18 Comments

This was my Classics Club spin read and what a fun surprise it was! Written in 1895, a group of Victorian gentleman meet every Thursday for dinner. Only referred to by their professions, one week their discussion turns to Time-Dimension, and the possibility of moving through space and time, when the Time Traveller shows them the Time Machine he’s been working on.

These meetings provide the frame for an extraordinary adventure that the Time Traveller recounts to them the following Thursday – when he arrives late, limping, haggard and covered in dust. After draining a few glasses of champagne he begins his story.

He has travelled through space,

‘the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue ,a splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.’

until clumsily landing by a huge white statue in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand.

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The Master of Ballantrae

~ Jane ~ 21 Comments

Reminding me of those lovely old Gainsborough films, the story is told through the memoir of Ephraim Mackellar, Lord Steward for forty years on the Durisdeer estate in Scotland.

It all begins in 1745 with the eighth Lord of Durisdeer, at home with his eldest son James, the Master of Ballantrea, popular and wild, he loves wine and cards, women and being in on the fight; his younger son, Henry, and Miss Alison Graeme, an orphan from a remote part of the family who has lived with them since a girl and is the heir to a considerable fortune. Now it’s understood that there’s an understanding between the Master and Miss Alison and as the Durisdeer land is heavily mortgaged, they need that money; Alison is very willing.

When news arrives that Prince Charles Edward; has landed in Scotland attempting to reclaim the throne for his father and proclaim him James VIII of Scotland our James, the Master of Ballantrea has his head turned by the sense of adventure and leaves to join the Jacobite rebellion. Henry, left at home with Alison to run the estate, hears news that the uprising has failed and believing James to be dead, takes the title of Lord Durisdeer and Alison as his wife. Oh dear.

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North and South

~ Jane ~ 28 Comments

Rebellion, acceptance and education are at the core of this brilliant novel.

The Hale family live comfortably in the South of England until the Reverend Hale has a crisis of conscience, he can no longer follow the teachings of the church and decides he must give up his living. His old University friend owns property in the Northern mill town of Milton and offers this to the Hales’. Their daughter Margaret is distraught. The South is sunny and gentle, full of friendly faces, flowers and grass and birds tweeting in the hedgerows, and she’s to give this up for the squalid harshness of The North, from the little she’s heard it sounds cold and grim. And how will her brother Frederick find them? After taking part in a mutiny on board ship he’s now in exile somewhere in the world, if he’s caught he’ll be hanged, how does she get word to him that they’ve had to leave their dear home?

They arrive in the North and it’s everything Margaret feared, perhaps even worse. The mill owner, John Thornton, is a proud haughty individual. He has no time for book learning, from poverty he’s built up his business to be one of the most successful cotton mills around. He lives at the mill with his mother who’s devoted to him because of his success and the power he holds, and his sister who’s devoted to him because of all that he can provide.

Margaret has left the safety of the south with it’s old-world order of land owners and their feudal workers for the new modern world of industrialisation and entrepreneurs, and she finds herself adrift; her haughty demeanour comes into full play when met by the forthright behaviour of the locals who stare at her openly, and speak before being invited too!

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Daisy Miller

~ Jane ~ 19 Comments

It’s thanks to Rose’s review that I was finally inspired to pick this up from the pile and read in time for Cathy and Rebecca’s Novellas in November.

It’s the end of the nineteenth century and the small Swiss town of Vevey and then Rome, are filled with rich American tourists who have brought with them their stultifying air of polite society. Into this mannered world blows Daisy Miller with her mother and younger brother Randolph.

Natural, open, fresh and honest Daisy behaves as she wishes; she walks out alone or with a male friend, even an Italian; thinking nothing of a chaperone or her reputation. She flirts and laughs aloud, invites male friends to their hotel regardless of whether her mother is at home, or the hotel staff are gossiping.

Winterbourne, a young American living in Europe while he ‘studies’ is captivated. He loves her innocence, her naivity; but does her behaviour come from innocence, an unsophisticated flirtatiousness or is she actually ‘bad’, a dangerous coquette’?

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Villette

~ Jane ~ 18 Comments

What a strange book this is! It begins in rip roaring style when Lucy Snowe, after a comfortable and happy childhood finds herself alone in the world, with very little money. She’s a quiet, unassuming person but this doesn’t deter her, from her home in the north of England she decides to go to London and start a new life but then, after a day or two exploring the city, emboldened by her new found sense of adventure she decides that France should be her home and so takes a boat and arrives in Villette: alone, almost penniless, with no real knowledge of spoken French and with no where to live. Luckily a passing young man (aye aye I thought, we’ll see more of him!) directs her to a school for young ladies and she lands a job as nanny, companion, tutor to the young children of Madame Beck, the owner of the school.

Ah, Lucy Snowe! I thought I had found myself a new heroine; because although all this decision making sounds fantastic, her emotions are very real. She cries herself to sleep with worry, frets over money, is wary of getting lost and afraid of men she encounters in the street; and yet she doesn’t give in; and all this in 1853 when a young women travelling alone, without a structured plan probably wasn’t a very common sight. But the novel is divided into three books and this adventure is all covered in the first book.

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Madame Bovary

~ Jane ~ 16 Comments

Set in the mid 1800’s in the villages and cathedral city of Rouen in Normandy, Madame Bovary is 311 pages of drama.

Young Emma Rouault lives with her widowed father on his farm and attends the convent, where she is as good as gold; always punctual, attends to her lessons and plans to become a nun. Then she takes to reading what Jane Austen calls ‘horrid novels’ and like Catherine Morland is enthralled by oaken chests, guardrooms, and all things historical. Mary Queen of Scots is her idol and Walter Scott her guide to life.

Oh but she’s, bored, bored, bored, to tears; so when the local doctor asks for her hand in marriage she accepts; anything must be better than this?

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Hard Times

~ Jane ~ 23 Comments

Facts, facts, facts; it’s 1854, industrialisation is key and Mr Thomas Gradgrind, headmaster of Coketown school, wants his pupils to answer a straightforward question with a straightforward answer, it’s why his pupils are known by a number. There’s no room for wonder and fancy, rationalism and material prosperity are the order of the day.

Mr Gradgrind is father to five young models of rationalism

‘No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon . . . No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities , and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.’

Life is good; he has a large house, a school of his own, likeminded friends and Mrs Gradgrind: ‘a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls’

But when the circus arrives in town, Mr. Gradgrind gets the shock of his life when he realises that his own eldest offspring, Louisa and Tom, are amongst the rabble trying to get a peek at the horses.. And then Sissy Jupe, daughter of the ringmaster, joins the school as ‘Girl number twenty’, and takes a place in their household. She has no head for facts, but relies on her common sense and is earnest, affectionate and loyal.

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Les Misérables

~ Jane ~ 27 Comments

The social epic that follows the lives of convict Jean Valjean, and his search for redemption; the dogged police inspector Javert; the tragedy of Fantine and her daughter Cosette, and Marius Pontmercy and the bravery of the students on the barricades. All these individual stories are linked with the cruel Thénardiers, the shadowy sprite Éponine and Hugo’s own artful dodger, Gavroche.

First published in 1862, the action begins in 1815 when Jean Valjean is released from prison, and follows his story until 1833. The narrative moves backwards and forwards with time as it explains different characters’ backstories, as well as key points in history; and also allows the narrator to express his concerns for the present day and talk (at some length!) about the uprising of 1848.

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The Warden

~ Jane ~ 20 Comments

The first volume in the Barsetshire Chronicles is the story of the Reverend Septimus Harding, the gentle, conscientious warden of Hiram’s Hospital, in the city of Barchester. Set up in the 15th century according to the will of John Hiram, the hospital is an almshouse providing homes for 12 elderly, local men and a home for a warden.

In 1855, the almshouse still enjoys its idyllic location on the riverbank, where Mr Harding likes to sit and play the violoncello to the men and the men live easily with meals and a small stipend provided. But, much of the land that Hiram left has been sold and housing development has increased the income of the hospital handsomely; so much so that the warden now receives a salary of £800 a year and is very comfortably off.

Into this happy setting comes young John Bold, a newly qualified surgeon who takes over his fathers’ practice in Barchester, falls in love with Mr. Harding’s daughter Eleanor, and has reform in his heart. He knows the genuine kindness of the warden, but sees the disparity between him and the bedesmen and knows it’s time to fight. Tom Towers, editor of The Jupiter is ready to publish any scandalous rumours and Archbishop Grantly is ready to argue and cajole in favour of Mr Harding – the church, the hospital and the tranquil life by the riverbank is over.

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