Jane Eyre- Charlotte Brontë (1847)
This is maybe the 5th or 6th time reading this book. It has been one of my favorites since recommended, and the more I read it, the more I love the character and lessons.
The French Dancer's Bastard- Emma Tennant (2006)
I have already reviewed this in a previous post so I won’t repost the same thing here. Suffice it to say I personally was not impressed with this side-story to Jane Eyre. As mentioned in the full review, I love Jane Eyre and when I found there were several novels that purported to cover secondary characters in more depth, I was excited to read what other writers might bring to the table in attempts to add depth to the characters. I’ve been deeply disappointed in the efforts I’ve read. Most don’t attempt to add depth to the story, they seem to want to recast the story.
This novel does that very thing. It tells us a different story, and in doing so, declares that the characters in Jane Eyre aren’t what they were portrayed as. It turns Jane Eyre into a warped accounting that was an injustice to the truth. In a coarse way of putting it: that pisses me off.
La Ciociara- Alberto Moravia (1957)
Ciociaria is the region south of Rome. La Ciociara is a peasant woman from the region. Cesira, a “ciociara“, moved to Rome where her husband and she set up a small shop. He dies after a while and during the war, she and her teenage daughter, Rosetta, are driven by the war from Rome to Ciociaria to live with family. As they approach her hometown, it is apparent that the war has hit Ciociaria too. Between the conscriptions that the Germans and Fascists alternately apply, most of the families have either left or hide.
Cesira and Rosetta first stay with a family of black market profiteers, but Cesira doesn’t trust them. She leaves to head up the mountains, but can’t get to her hometown. She is forced to rent a shack from some local mountain people. Their son, Michele, is educated and while Cesira doesn’t feel comfortable with the family, she and Rosetta do become close with Michele. As the time drags on and provisions dwindle down to nothing, they are increasingly destitute. At one point, some Germans, retreating the oncoming Allied armies, conscript Michele as a guide. A few weeks later, the mountain people get word that the Allies have won and the war is coming to an end. Cesira and Rosetta go towards Cesira’s hometown, but on the way, they are both gang-raped by Moroccan goumiers. The act has a profound impact on Rosetta, whose personality changes. Both realize they can’t stay there, and get a ride back. The driver says he knows a family that will take them in until they can return to Rome, which still hasn’t been liberated. Rosetta begins to hang around the sons and is soon allowing them to have sex with her. She claims she enjoys it and it really doesn’t matter with who.
Cesira hears that Michele had died when the Germans stopped into a home on their retreat, and through a misunderstanding, shot the family, with Michele trying to protect them. Cesire considers that the war kills the good people, who are brave and considerate; while the knaves, cowards, and dishonest prosper. If the war doesn’t kill them, it corrupts them.
Eventually, the two women are returning to Rome with one of the sons, when they are stopped by some robbers mid-journey. The son gets out to see what is up and is shot. An army officer then comes up and the robbers run away. Cesira and Rosetta return to Rome, with Rosetta beginning to show signs of her old self with the son no longer in the picture.
The Mexican Frontier 1821-1846- David Weber (1982)
The author starts with a description of the sparsely populated (at least by hispanics) areas of Mexico’s northern frontier: California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. He then describes the state of the Spanish monarchy’s rule, which was to say- nearly non-existent. In 1812, there was a more liberal constitutional monarchy instituted, which established a more federalized government granting powers to the territories for closer self-governance.
The Mexican independence from Spain happened in 1821, and for a decade, more localized rule held. In 1832, a more conservative government took root and tried to centralize control, but they were too far removed from the frontier, and too unstable to do much about it. The led to a series of rebellions in the frontier territories. Spain had also tried to shut down commerce with the Anglo-Americans now filing across the largely ungoverned frontier, and those that lived there actually supported more independence and freedom to trade with those the Anglos, since the central government was unable to help them.
Mexico’s independence from Spain also saw the expulsion of many Spaniards, which severely weakened the frontier churches. Liberal movements also weakened the Mission system, which had acted as a support system for what Hispanic influence did exist. Mexico’s weakened political system also meant empty coffers, and it often found it convenient to raid the wealth of the church.
The lack of protection against Indian raids was exacerbated by American willingness to trade with the Indians. Most Mexican outposts did not have the level of goods the Americans did, so Indians found the guns and liquor they wanted and much of what they traded: horses, for example, were stolen from the Mexican pueblos. More liberal minded attempts to treat the Indians as Mexican citizens were, in theory, fine, but meaningless in practical terms. The Indian tribes neither wanted nor cared about being considered Mexican citizens. Reversals in policy towards the tribes could not reverse the situation on the ground. When Santa Anna, for example, switched from liberal to conservative and tried to use more of an Iron Fist policy towards natives, the Mexican army still found itself greatly outmatched by the Indians, who usually had superior weapons bought from Americans.
Mexico’s interior instability resulted in an inability to be much concerned with the frontier, and even less able to do something about it when it could muster some concern. As such, Mexican cities in the far northern frontier were left to their own, and found closer ties to the Americans to more beneficial then trying to remain separate.
When it came to regulating the economy, the central governments constantly changing policies were beyond enforcement on the far northern frontier, and the leaders there often ignored them as counter to their own regional interests anyway.
The Mexican government recognized the need for more Mexican colonists in the frontier states to counter the growing influence of Americans, but Mexico was not near as attractive a destination for European immigrants as the US. Mexico was quickly losing the territories to American immigration.
The poverty of life on the frontier had a leveling effect, so that there were no super-rich during the Spanish colonial period. There were, due to land grants in place of service by even lower class soldiers, chances to build up one’s place in life. This led to many men making something of themselves and moving up during the Mexican era. However, those that did make good began to distance themselves socially and classes developed according to wealth. Cultural barriers dividing frontier Mexicans from Americans were breaking down, and new barriers were separating the frontier dwellers from central Mexico.
Gone with the Wind- Margaret Mitchell (1936)
“I won’t think of it now. I’ll think of it later when I can stand it.” Scarlet O’Hara
This is a big book, and it covers some big subjects: massive change and how those swept up in it handle things.
If you are unaware of the setting, the story begins in the ante-bellum (prewar) South, Georgia to be specific, and covers the life of Scarlett O’Hara, 16 in 1861, until 1873 during the Reconstruction years.
The first chapters cover the southerners at home in their comfortable lives, believing they’ll beat the Yankees easily and be back home in a month. A few among them, particularly Rhett Butler, believes the Yankees will win because the North possesses all the manufacturing capabilities, while the South has cotton, gentility, and arrogance. Rhett makes money by profiteering during the war and becomes rich, while the South is ground down by losses until the war is lost. The genteel families, having lost most everything, are reduced from their former state of grandeur and luxury to grinding poverty.
Scarlett begins the book as the center of all the young men’s attention, and the center of most of the young women’s ire. She hears that one of the young men, Ashley Wilkes, is going to marry his cousin Melanie, and she decides she loves him and must steal him. She is convinced he doesn’t really love Melanie, and so she sets about making her feelings known to him. But he rejects her, and in a showdown, she throws a tantrum. While she doesn’t know about it, Rhett had been laying down in the room and overheard all of it. To her embarrassment, he makes himself known and she declares him insolent and ill-bred for having eavesdropped.
Realizing she won’t get Ashley as a husband, she marries his brother Charles instead, who had previously been thought of as the beau of another girl. Her husband dies two months into the war.
As things get progressively worse for the South, Rhett is continually a help to both Scarlett and Melanie. Scarlett can’t stand Melanie, but Ashley has made her promise that Scarlett would help Melanie through her pregnancy. Scarlett does so, but mainly so she can remain as close as possible to Ashley. The two women are living in Atlanta up to the moment it becomes clear the Yankees are invading the town. Rhett helps them escape by delivering them to Tara, the old O’Hara plantation, where they find the estate in desolation. Scarlett’s mother had just passed of typhoid, her two sisters were ill, and her father was addled after the loss of the mother. Scarlett takes charge and begins to scrape together enough to live, when the Yankee army comes through again and takes what little they had. Scarlett decides that no matter what, she’ll never go hungry again, and will get money no matter what she has to do.
The war had ended, and they are beginning to scrape by again, when one of the previous overseers, now working with the Republican government, tries to tax Scarlett out of her family estate. She offers herself as a wife to Rhett, but he won’t marry her. She ends up marrying an older man her sister had considered her own beau, because he had enough money to pay the taxes. Resettling in Atlanta, she begins to run over her husband, who is too lax in collecting his overdue bills. She takes control of his businesses and begins to make money, but at the cost of making him, and herself, look bad.
At one point, she is traveling all over the land to make business deals, and is accosted by a poor white and a black man. She gets away, but her husband, now a member of the Klan, along with Ashley (a foreman in one of her mills), decides to punish the men who did this and go out to kill the two. They do, but her husband is killed in the process.
Rhett, having developed a more honest relationship with her over time, and deciding that he really does want to be with Scarlett, on the one condition that she be honest with him…. proposes marriage to her. While she acknowledges that he has been good to her, and that she actually enjoys his company, he also infuriates her because he sees through her attempts at manipulation or justification. However, she recognizes she will need a man, and he IS rich, so she consents.
They live very well, but because of Rhett’s contacts with the Northern overseers, they are not received in polite southern circles. She and Rhett have a little girl, which turns Rhett into a doating father, but the girl dies in an accident and it ruins Rhett. Scarlett finds herself increasingly isolated, and in when Melanie dies, and she is finally free to take up with Ashley, Rhett leaves her. When she asks what she is supposed to do now? Rhett utters the famous line: “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
The larger forces at work are the loss of a way of life. Some of the old southern gentility accept their poverty, holding on to the old memories despite knowing that life will never return. Some of them adapt to the new circumstances and become small business owners while trying to hold on to at least their old code of conduct. Others, like Scarlett, decide looking back will be fatal and choose to get money however they can.
But it isn’t until too late that Scarlett realizes that her attempts to hold on to Ashley are really an attempt at holding on to the fictionalized version of the old life. Scarlett is an exceptionally selfish person. She steals men, overpowers her two first feckless husbands, and ruins her relationships with everyone around her with her disregard of everyone else’s feelings or opinions. Only Rhett seems to understand her and accept her and she resents that, perhaps more than anything else. She even inadvertently ruins her relationship with Ashley.
She poisoned his marriage to his cousin Melanie by trying to steal him away. He does love her, but he had already promised himself to his cousin. At his return from the war, she keeps Ashley at Tara to help, but isn’t cut out for the work. His own self-estimation sinks as he understands he was never cut out for this life. He wants to move North and work for a bank, but she offers him a job at her mill to keep him close by, and when he refuses, she throws a fit, causing Melanie to come up and berate him for refusing Scarlett when she had done so much for them. The one line that Scarlett continually repeats when faced with the consequences of her decisions is: I won’t think about that now. I’ll think about it later.
Scarlett realizes only too late that she has been the downfall of so many around her. She consistently misjudged, or was willfully blind to reality because she was driven by her own selfishness and pride.
There is one amusing bit of the story I’ll relate. Scarlett was brought up to be deferential to men, and as such, wasn’t treated to much in the way of education. She could of course read and write, and she was exceptionally good at figures, but she didn’t have much breadth of education. For this story to make sense, know that her second husband’s name was Frank Kennedy, and he owned a general store. It was profitable, but Scarlett knew it could be more profitable, so she would take whatever shortcuts she could in order to do so.
“When she decided to change the name of ‘Kennedy’s General Store’ to something more edifying, she asked him (Rhett) to think of a title that would include the word “emporium”. Rhett suggested ‘Caveat Emptorium‘, assuring her that it would be a title most in keeping with the type of goods sold in the store. She thought it had an imposing sound and even went so far as to have the sign painted, when Ashley Wilkes, embarrassed, translated the real meaning. And Rhett had roared at her rage.”
Lastly, almost any discussion of the novel today has something to say about the racism. Certainly, any novel set during the Civil War and Reconstruction in Georgia will depict relations between white and black. The novel does depict racist attitudes because this was simply the way things were. When northerners come after reconstruction, they were curious about black/white relationships, having been informed by Uncle Tom’s Cabin. They had a lot of sympathy for Blacks, but were often just as racist in their own attitudes, even if not in the same systemic way. Reconstruction saw white former confederate soldiers unable to vote, and blacks given the vote, as much a way of keeping the old southern ways down as any real confidence in the ability of blacks to run government. At the same time, many of the blacks in the novel are treated as members of the family, but as childlike simpletons too ignorant to really govern themselves. Like I said, it portrays a more nuanced portrait than just: south and slavery bad, north and liberation good.