A Tale of Two Cities - Tuesday 5th July

Have since begun A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and progressed about 40 pages into the book.

Introduced are the characters; Lucie Manette, the young and beautiful girl who has been made to believe both her parents were dead, she lives in England and has been informed that her Father is in fact alive and under care in Paris, France. Monsieur and Madame Defarge are the burly and hardened French carers of Mr Manette and own a wine shop. The mysterious Mr Jarvis Lorry who took it upon himself to travel the dangerous path to and fro England in the bid to bring Lucie back to her Father.

There seems to be a great deal of care and attention taken in affording Lucie that she is not too shocked by her revelations, she seems to be a gentle and prone girl; but who wouldnt be when they're finding out their father is alive after eighteen years. My favourite character so far is Madame Defarge, she stands on level if not higher ground than her husband and has this aura about her that she will kick someone's ass if they push the right buttons, yet she maintains her femininity such as her knitting.

Dickens has painted a very dark and grim scene of the late-18 century world "we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,". He doesn't touch upon the time's brutality but throws himself into it like the reader were another peasant giving thier baby wine to drink that has spilled and burst onto the mud-meandered cobblestones of Parisian streets. There are amounting tensions in the French people, a revoultion is on the verge. A harsh and intriguing read.

Themes Emerging:

Social Class. Crime. Captial Punishment. City and Countryside. Fear. Distrust. Truth. Desperation. Madness.

Dorian Gray 1.2.3.4 Blog

Key Characters:

Dorian Gray. Poisoned by the influence of the hedonistic Henry Wotton, Dorian’s innocence is lost when persuaded that ‘beauty’ and ‘youth’ is the only thing truly worth having. On the surface of diving into sin and corruption, he is kept afloat by the pure Sibyl Vane and her awe-rendering acting skills, but when she finds true love in Dorian and denounces and abandons her previous portrayals of love, Dorian is torn apart by her new outlook and throws away their engagement. Sibyl’s suicide that follows is viewed through warped eyes as Dorian convinces himself it is more ‘art’ than ‘tragedy’. What follows is Dorian’s complete and utter descent into the sin and temptations of London’s underworld, guided by the ‘yellow book’ handed to him by Henry. Dorian’s sin climaxes in the remorseless murder of his long-time friend Basil Hallward in spite of his creation of the portrait that taints and clings to Dorian’s mind and conscience. The younger brother of Sibyl Vane, James Vane, stumbles upon Dorian in the opium dens of the east-end trying to purge himself of Basil’s blood and sets about taking vengeance for the death of his sister. James dies unexpectedly and the event sparks Dorian to renounce his sinful ways and begin anew in hopes that if his soul could be ruined, it could also be repaired. Again, from the influence of Henry, Dorian is made to believe his new ways are not from true self-reproach but just another way in which he can explore and manipulate his own soul. With confirmation from the introspective portrait of him, Dorian is convinced repentance is futile and stabs the portrait, killing himself.

Lord Henry Wotton. The enigmatic and highly-influential upper-class Lord changes little throughout, serving as the story’s voice of narcissism, hedonism and aestheticism from beginning to end. Ever controversial, he seeks to plant the seed and spectate how it will grow, he opens the door of the maze to Dorian and lets Dorian close the door behind him.

Basil Hallward. If Henry was the devil on Dorian’s shoulder, Basil is the angel. Distanced from Dorian after Dorian finds more entertainment in sticking close to Henry, Basil sinks to the background of the story, hardly talked about and talked about unimpressively. But when chance brings Basil and Dorian together again, Basil acts as Dorian’s last voice of good and reason, before meeting a gruesome end drawn from the hatred of his greatest work.

Sibyl Vane. A young and tender girl working a modest acting career in one of London’s less glamorous boroughs, her naivety of the world around her brings a purity and truth to her acting that entices and enthrals Dorian into falling recklessly in love with her. But upon finding real love, she realises the superficiality of her work and the genuineness from that is moved to her love for Dorian.

Character Motivation:

Dorian Gray. Like an untainted child, Dorian has little direction or conception of the world at the beginning of the novel, his concerns are that of getting his portrait taken by the equally unadventurous Basil. Having met Henry however, he is disillusioned with the fear of his mortality and decay; so much so he wishes to that his portrait take the burden of years in place of him. Upon realising the portrait will do just as he desired and act as the visible symbol of his soul, he seeks about relishing in every delight and temptation that his body takes. A puppet to Henry and the ‘yellow book’ he receives from him. When by chance, he escapes a vendetta, he is driven to cleanse himself but finds in that the futility of living a moral life when he threw morals to the ground years ago.

Lord Henry Wotton. Henry is motivated by little but the simple satisfaction of his interests, the main one being the observation of Dorian under his direction. He views life as something to experience from the outside than the in. Little impacts Henry as his fulfilment of being a bystander to life leaves him impervious to its events, those that surround him are left to be his audience whilst Basil is the only word of good around him and is the only one shocked by his ideas and lifestyle.

The Plot:

Oscar Wilde realises his introspection on morality and retrospection on the 19^th century aristocracy wonderfully in the plot. It’s difficult to say whether the story was as I thought it would be because I’ve read it previously and even then, had some knowledge of its story before that. The plot takes us from the early days of a developing Dorian straight to fifteen or so years later, after his accumulation of sin and material goods has given him an infamous reputation of scandal and moral misconduct around London’s upper class. The story develops from the realisation of one’s gifts to the entertaining of every temptation on an immoral encompass to the reproach of these sins and the emptiness in trying to walk back down the path of time and degradation on one’s soul.

Key Themes Emerging:

Hedonism. Aestheticism. Narcissism. Vanity. Sin. Purity. Moral. Art. Social Class. Love. Hate. Temptation. Crime. Youth. Supernatural. Corruption. Soul.

Gothic Presentations

Gothic Settings:
Decaying and serious locations surrounded by awa and mystery which encapsulates anxiety in the readers and sometimes characters. Buildings often have a history but have since sunken into decay and evil. Dark and eerie tones dominate the scene.

Origins of the Gothic:
'Goth' derives from the barbaric tribes that invaded the Roman Empire. The first novel was published in the 18th Century. The supernatural was a main theme. Motifs; haunted, dreams, visions, blood, madness, blessed objects.

Male Gothic Protagonists:
Selfish needs. Sinful. Break the rules and go against the natural such as Dr. Viktor Frankenstein or the Prince from The Masque of The Red Death.

Gothic Novels, Short-Stories, Poems:
Dracula, Frankenstein.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Fall of the House of Usher.
The Raven.

Irony has been key to the Gothic genre, incorporating underlying messages of Humanity's flaws.

Gothic Women

Early Gothic women were presented as weak, foolish, helpless, lost and treated badly by their male counterparts. They were submissive and oppressed under a strong patriarchal dominancy.

Women were often placed in distressful situations and threatened by a powerful and implusive male character or in need of a powerful male to protect her.

In contemporary gothic, women are depicted in two extremes, either the submissive of old or a new position that see's them as the dominant character in the story. The revolutionary change was seen strongly in Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' where the naive and innocent Lucy was transformed into a lethal, voluptuous and seductive vampiress. This new persona given to women undermined the foundations of male-dominancy seen prior.

Dorian Gray

I've decided to read The Picture of Dorian Gray first, unless I'm meant to read them simultaneously?

Going through it this time, the experience is much more relaxed, rather than reading for the sake of getting to the book's climax which I ended up finding out through the recent film version of the novel - disappointment. I'm able to take in the characters: the reserved and seemingly camp Basil Hallward - architect of the infamous drawing of Dorian Gray itself. Dorian Gray, the story's protagonist, initially naive, turned horribly sour by the bad man that is, Lord Henry Wotton, the closest person to the story's antagonist if you exclude Dorian Gray himself. Whey hey, how is that possible? A character that doubles up as protagonist and antagonist? Wilde loved paradoxes, oxymoron (one of the two) so it would be fitting his lead character embodies hero and villain, a juxtaposition present in many forms in the novel, forms such as the immoral and moral, the pure and the sinful.

(Caroline, does this make sense to you, or do I sound unanchored?)

Got the literature

Have the two books I shall compare:
A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
I'm a sucker for anything pre-1900.

Both books I've read previously but I don't think my ten year-old self had the emotional capacity to comprehend  Dickens' take on the French Revolution or even my 15 year-old self to have the patience with Wilde's weaving of irony, morals and mock-wit for that matter. Nonetheless, here I am, ready to soak in the words of these old school powerhouses.

Books?

Started a bit later than everyone else so still on the decision of which books to read. Leaning towards the gothic area too but do Edgar Allan Poe's short stories count? They're not really fully-fledged novels..