Le Père Goriot (English: Old Goriot) is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set in Paris in 1819, it follows the intertwined lives of three characters: the elderly doting Goriot; a mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin; and a naive law student named Eugène de Rastignac.
Originally published in serial form during the winter of 1834–35, Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's most important novel.[1] It marks the first serious use by the author of characters who had appeared in other books, a technique that distinguishes Balzac's fiction. The novel is also noted as an example of his realist style, using minute details to create character and subtext.
The novel takes place during the Bourbon Restoration, which brought about profound changes in French society; the struggle of individuals to secure upper-class status is ubiquitous in the book. The city of Paris also impresses itself on the characters – especially young Rastignac, who grew up in the provinces of southern France. Balzac analyzes, through Goriot and others, the nature of family and marriage, providing a pessimistic view of these institutions.
The novel was released to mixed reviews. Some critics praised the author for his complex characters and attention to detail; others condemned him for his many depictions of corruption and greed. A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage. It gave rise to the French expression "Rastignac", a social climber willing to use any means to better his situation.
Originally published in serial form during the winter of 1834–35, Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's most important novel.[1] It marks the first serious use by the author of characters who had appeared in other books, a technique that distinguishes Balzac's fiction. The novel is also noted as an example of his realist style, using minute details to create character and subtext.
The novel takes place during the Bourbon Restoration, which brought about profound changes in French society; the struggle of individuals to secure upper-class status is ubiquitous in the book. The city of Paris also impresses itself on the characters – especially young Rastignac, who grew up in the provinces of southern France. Balzac analyzes, through Goriot and others, the nature of family and marriage, providing a pessimistic view of these institutions.
The novel was released to mixed reviews. Some critics praised the author for his complex characters and attention to detail; others condemned him for his many depictions of corruption and greed. A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage. It gave rise to the French expression "Rastignac", a social climber willing to use any means to better his situation.
Don Quixote (Spanish: About this sound Don Quijote; English: /ˌdɒn kiːˈhoʊtiː/, see spelling and pronunciation below), fully titled The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha), is a novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story by inventing a Moorish chronicler for Don Quixote named Cide Hamete Benengeli.
Published in two volumes a decade apart (in 1605 and 1615), Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
The novel's structure is in episodic form. It is written in the picaresco style of the late sixteenth century. The full title is indicative of the tale's object, as ingenioso (Spanish) means "to be quick with inventiveness".[2] Although the novel is farcical on the surface, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Quixote has served as an important thematic source not only in literature but in much of art and music, inspiring works by Pablo Picasso and Richard Strauss. The contrasts between the tall, thin, fancy-struck, and idealistic Quixote and the fat, squat, world-weary Panza is a motif echoed ever since the book’s publication, and Don Quixote's imaginings are the butt of outrageous and cruel practical jokes in the novel. Even faithful and simple Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at certain points. The novel is considered a satire of orthodoxy, veracity, and even nationalism. In going beyond mere storytelling to exploring the individualism of his characters, Cervantes helped move beyond the narrow literary conventions of the chivalric romance literature that he spoofed, which consists of straightforward retelling of a series of acts that redound to the knightly virtues of the hero.
Farce makes use of punning and similar verbal playfulness. Character-naming in Don Quixote makes ample figural use of contradiction, inversion, and irony, such as the names Rocinante[3] (a reversal) and Dulcinea (an allusion to illusion), and the word quixote itself, possibly a pun on quijada (jaw) but certainly cuixot (Catalan: thighs), a reference to a horse's rump.[4] As a military term, the word quijote refers to cuisses, part of a full suit of plate armour protecting the thighs. The Spanish suffix -ote denotes the superlative—for example, grande means large, but grandote means extra large. Following this example, Quixote would suggest 'The Great Quijano', a play on words that makes much sense in light of the character's delusions of grandeur.
The world of ordinary people, from shepherds to tavern-owners and inn-keepers, which figures in Don Quixote, was groundbreaking. The character of Don Quixote became so well-known in its time that the word quixotic was quickly adopted by many languages. Characters such as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote’s steed, Rocinante, are emblems of Western literary culture. The phrase "tilting at windmills" to describe an act of attacking imaginary enemies derives from an iconic scene in the book.
Because of its widespread influence, Don Quixote also helped cement the modern Spanish language. The opening sentence of the book created a classic Spanish cliché with the phrase de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, "whose name I do not care to recall."
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.
[Translation] In a place of La Mancha, whose name I would not like to remember, there lived, not very long ago, one of those gentlemen who keep a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound.
Plot summary
Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind from little sleep and food and because of so much reading.
First quest
Gustave Doré: Don Quixote de La Mancha and Sancho Panza, 1863
He decides to go out as a knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armor, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "Rocinante." He designates a neighboring farm girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his lady love, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing about this.
He sets out in the early morning and ends up at an inn, which he believes to be a castle. He asks the innkeeper, who he thinks to be the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor, where he becomes involved in a fight with muleteers who try to remove his armor from the horse trough so that they can water their mules. The innkeeper then "dubs" him a knight, and sends him on his way. He frees a young boy who is tied to a tree by his master, because the boy had the audacity to ask his master for the wages the boy had earned but had not yet been paid (who is promptly beaten as soon as Quixote leaves). Don Quixote has a run-in with traders from Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea, one of which severely beats Don Quixote and leaves him on the side of the road. Don Quixote is found and returned to his home by a neighboring peasant, Pedro Crespo.[5]
Second quest
Don Quixote plots an escape. Meanwhile, his niece, the housekeeper, the parish curate, and the local barber secretly burn most of the books of chivalry, and seal up his library pretending that a magician has carried it off. Don Quixote approaches another neighbor, Sancho Panza, and asks him to be his squire, promising him governorship of an island. The dull-witted Sancho agrees, and the pair sneak off in the early dawn. It is here that their series of famous adventures begin, starting with Don Quixote's attack on windmills that he believes to be ferocious giants.
In the course of their travels, the protagonists meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherds, soldiers, priests, escaped convicts, and scorned lovers. These encounters are magnified by Don Quixote’s imagination into chivalrous quests. The Don’s tendency to intervene violently in matters which don’t concern him, and his habit of not paying his debts, result in many privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often getting the worst of it). Finally, Don Quixote is persuaded to return to his home village. The author hints that there was a third quest, but says that records of it have been lost.
Part Two
Although the two parts are now normally published as a single work, Don Quixote, Part Two was actually a sequel published ten years after the original novel. Don Quixote and Sancho are now assumed to be famous throughout the land because of the adventures recounted in Part One. While Part One was mostly farcical, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Don Quixote's imaginings are made the butt of outrageously cruel practical jokes carried out by wealthy patrons. Even Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at one point. Trapped into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three dirty and ragged peasant girls, and tells Quixote that they are Dulcinea and her ladies-in-waiting. When Don Quixote only sees the peasant girls, Sancho pretends that Quixote suffers from a cruel spell which does not permit him to see the truth. Sancho eventually gets his imaginary island governorship and unexpectedly proves to be wise and practical; though this, too, ends in disaster.
Conclusion
Don Quixote, his horse Rocinante and his squire Sancho Panza after an unsuccessful attack on a windmill. By Gustave Doré
The cruel practical jokes eventually lead Don Quixote to a great melancholy. The novel ends with Don Quixote regaining his full sanity, and renouncing all chivalry. But, the melancholy remains, and grows worse. Sancho tries to restore his faith, but his attempt to resurrect Alonso's quixotic alter-ego fails, and Alonso Quixano dies, sane and broken.
Other stories
Both parts of Don Quixote contain a number of stories which do not directly involve the two main characters, but which are narrated by some of the picaresque figures encountered by the Don and Sancho during their travels. One of the most famous, known as "The Curious Impertinent," is found in Part One, Book Three. This story, read to a group of travelers at an inn, tells of a Florentine nobleman, Anselmo, who becomes obsessed with testing his wife's fidelity, and talks his close friend Lothario into attempting to seduce her, with disastrous results for all.
Several abridged editions have been published which delete some or all of the extra tales in order to concentrate on the central narrative.
Published in two volumes a decade apart (in 1605 and 1615), Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
The novel's structure is in episodic form. It is written in the picaresco style of the late sixteenth century. The full title is indicative of the tale's object, as ingenioso (Spanish) means "to be quick with inventiveness".[2] Although the novel is farcical on the surface, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Quixote has served as an important thematic source not only in literature but in much of art and music, inspiring works by Pablo Picasso and Richard Strauss. The contrasts between the tall, thin, fancy-struck, and idealistic Quixote and the fat, squat, world-weary Panza is a motif echoed ever since the book’s publication, and Don Quixote's imaginings are the butt of outrageous and cruel practical jokes in the novel. Even faithful and simple Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at certain points. The novel is considered a satire of orthodoxy, veracity, and even nationalism. In going beyond mere storytelling to exploring the individualism of his characters, Cervantes helped move beyond the narrow literary conventions of the chivalric romance literature that he spoofed, which consists of straightforward retelling of a series of acts that redound to the knightly virtues of the hero.
Farce makes use of punning and similar verbal playfulness. Character-naming in Don Quixote makes ample figural use of contradiction, inversion, and irony, such as the names Rocinante[3] (a reversal) and Dulcinea (an allusion to illusion), and the word quixote itself, possibly a pun on quijada (jaw) but certainly cuixot (Catalan: thighs), a reference to a horse's rump.[4] As a military term, the word quijote refers to cuisses, part of a full suit of plate armour protecting the thighs. The Spanish suffix -ote denotes the superlative—for example, grande means large, but grandote means extra large. Following this example, Quixote would suggest 'The Great Quijano', a play on words that makes much sense in light of the character's delusions of grandeur.
The world of ordinary people, from shepherds to tavern-owners and inn-keepers, which figures in Don Quixote, was groundbreaking. The character of Don Quixote became so well-known in its time that the word quixotic was quickly adopted by many languages. Characters such as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote’s steed, Rocinante, are emblems of Western literary culture. The phrase "tilting at windmills" to describe an act of attacking imaginary enemies derives from an iconic scene in the book.
Because of its widespread influence, Don Quixote also helped cement the modern Spanish language. The opening sentence of the book created a classic Spanish cliché with the phrase de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, "whose name I do not care to recall."
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.
[Translation] In a place of La Mancha, whose name I would not like to remember, there lived, not very long ago, one of those gentlemen who keep a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound.
Plot summary
Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind from little sleep and food and because of so much reading.
First quest
Gustave Doré: Don Quixote de La Mancha and Sancho Panza, 1863
He decides to go out as a knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armor, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "Rocinante." He designates a neighboring farm girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his lady love, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing about this.
He sets out in the early morning and ends up at an inn, which he believes to be a castle. He asks the innkeeper, who he thinks to be the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor, where he becomes involved in a fight with muleteers who try to remove his armor from the horse trough so that they can water their mules. The innkeeper then "dubs" him a knight, and sends him on his way. He frees a young boy who is tied to a tree by his master, because the boy had the audacity to ask his master for the wages the boy had earned but had not yet been paid (who is promptly beaten as soon as Quixote leaves). Don Quixote has a run-in with traders from Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea, one of which severely beats Don Quixote and leaves him on the side of the road. Don Quixote is found and returned to his home by a neighboring peasant, Pedro Crespo.[5]
Second quest
Don Quixote plots an escape. Meanwhile, his niece, the housekeeper, the parish curate, and the local barber secretly burn most of the books of chivalry, and seal up his library pretending that a magician has carried it off. Don Quixote approaches another neighbor, Sancho Panza, and asks him to be his squire, promising him governorship of an island. The dull-witted Sancho agrees, and the pair sneak off in the early dawn. It is here that their series of famous adventures begin, starting with Don Quixote's attack on windmills that he believes to be ferocious giants.
In the course of their travels, the protagonists meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherds, soldiers, priests, escaped convicts, and scorned lovers. These encounters are magnified by Don Quixote’s imagination into chivalrous quests. The Don’s tendency to intervene violently in matters which don’t concern him, and his habit of not paying his debts, result in many privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often getting the worst of it). Finally, Don Quixote is persuaded to return to his home village. The author hints that there was a third quest, but says that records of it have been lost.
Part Two
Although the two parts are now normally published as a single work, Don Quixote, Part Two was actually a sequel published ten years after the original novel. Don Quixote and Sancho are now assumed to be famous throughout the land because of the adventures recounted in Part One. While Part One was mostly farcical, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Don Quixote's imaginings are made the butt of outrageously cruel practical jokes carried out by wealthy patrons. Even Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at one point. Trapped into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three dirty and ragged peasant girls, and tells Quixote that they are Dulcinea and her ladies-in-waiting. When Don Quixote only sees the peasant girls, Sancho pretends that Quixote suffers from a cruel spell which does not permit him to see the truth. Sancho eventually gets his imaginary island governorship and unexpectedly proves to be wise and practical; though this, too, ends in disaster.
Conclusion
Don Quixote, his horse Rocinante and his squire Sancho Panza after an unsuccessful attack on a windmill. By Gustave Doré
The cruel practical jokes eventually lead Don Quixote to a great melancholy. The novel ends with Don Quixote regaining his full sanity, and renouncing all chivalry. But, the melancholy remains, and grows worse. Sancho tries to restore his faith, but his attempt to resurrect Alonso's quixotic alter-ego fails, and Alonso Quixano dies, sane and broken.
Other stories
Both parts of Don Quixote contain a number of stories which do not directly involve the two main characters, but which are narrated by some of the picaresque figures encountered by the Don and Sancho during their travels. One of the most famous, known as "The Curious Impertinent," is found in Part One, Book Three. This story, read to a group of travelers at an inn, tells of a Florentine nobleman, Anselmo, who becomes obsessed with testing his wife's fidelity, and talks his close friend Lothario into attempting to seduce her, with disastrous results for all.
Several abridged editions have been published which delete some or all of the extra tales in order to concentrate on the central narrative.
Jane Eyre (pronounced /ˌdʒeɪn ˈɛər/) is a famous and influential novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell". The American edition came out the following year published by Harper & Brothers of New York.
Plot introduction
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family at Marsh's End (or Moor House) and Morton, where her cold clergyman-cousin St John Rivers proposes to her; and her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester. Partly autobiographical, the novel abounds with social criticism. It is a novel considered ahead of its time. In spite of the dark, brooding elements, it has a strong sense of right and wrong, of morality at its core.
Jane Eyre is divided into 38 chapters and most editions are at least 400 pages long (although the preface and introduction on certain copies are liable to take up another 100). The original was published in three volumes, comprising chapters 1 to 15, 16 to 26, and 27 to 38.
Brontë dedicated the novel's second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray.
Plot summary
Chapters 1-4: Jane's childhood at Gateshead
Young Jane argues with her guardian Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. Illustration by F. H. Townsend.
A ten-year-old orphan named Jane Eyre lives with her uncle's family, the Reeds. Jane's aunt, Sarah Reed, dislikes her intensely. When her uncle dies, her aunt and the three Reed children become abusive. When bullied by her cousin John, Jane retaliates but is punished for the ensuing fight and is locked in the room where Mr. Reed died. As night falls, Jane's panicked screams rouse the house, but Mrs. Reed won't let her out. Jane faints and Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, is summoned. He talks with Jane and sympathetically suggests that she should go away to school.
Chapters 5-10: Jane's education at Lowood School
Mrs. Reed sends Jane to Lowood Institution, a charity school, and warns them that Jane is deceitful. During an inspection, Jane accidentally breaks her slate, and Mr. Brocklehurst, the self-righteous clergyman who runs the school, brands her as a liar and shames her before the entire assembly.
Jane is comforted by her friend, Helen Burns. Miss Temple, a caring teacher, facilitates Jane's self-defense and writes to Mr. Lloyd whose reply agrees with Jane's. Ultimately, Jane is publicly cleared of Mr. Brocklehurst's accusations.
Jane tries to catch Mr. Rochester's horse.
While the Brocklehurst family lives in luxury, the eighty pupils are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing. Many students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes. Jane's friend Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms.
When Mr. Brocklehurst's neglect and dishonesty are laid bare, several benefactors erect a new building and conditions at the school improve dramatically.
Chapters 11-26: Jane's time as governess at Thornfield Hall
Eight years later, Jane is a teacher employed by Alice Fairfax (the housekeeper of Thornfield Hall) as governess for Adèle Varens, a young French girl. Out walking one day, Jane encounters and helps a horseman who has sprained his ankle. On her return to Thornfield, she discovers that the horseman is Edward Rochester, Master of Thornfield Hall. Rochester is a moody, self-willed man nearly twenty years older than Jane. Adèle is his ward, belonging to a French "opera dancer" with whom he had a romantic relationship in the past. Adèle, however, is not his daughter, but is brought up by him after her mother abandons her.
Jane saves Mr. Rochester from a fire.
Miss Blanche Ingram looking in a book.
Mr. Rochester disguised as a Gypsy woman.
Bertha Mason rips Jane's wedding veil.
Mr. Rochester seems quite taken with Jane, and she enjoys his company. However, odd things begin to happen: a strange laugh is heard in the halls, a near-fatal fire mysteriously breaks out, and a guest named Mason is attacked.
Jane receives word that Mrs. Reed has suffered a stroke and is asking for her. Returning to Gateshead, she remains for over a month while her aunt lies dying. Mrs. Reed rejects Jane's efforts at reconciliation, but does give her a letter previously withheld out of spite. The letter is from John Eyre, Jane's uncle, notifying her that he wanted her to live with him in Madeira.
After returning to Thornfield, Jane broods over Rochester's impending marriage to Blanche Ingram. But on a midsummer evening, he proclaims his love for Jane and proposes. As she prepares for her wedding, Jane's forebodings arise when a strange, savage-looking woman sneaks into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. As with previous mysterious events, Mr Rochester attributes the incident to drunkenness on the part of Grace Poole, one of his servants.
During the wedding ceremony, Mr. Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr. Rochester cannot marry because he is already married to Mr. Mason's sister. Mr. Rochester bitterly admits the truth, explaining that his wife is a violent madwoman whom he keeps locked in the attic, in the care of Grace Poole. When Grace occasionally drinks too much, it gives his wife a chance to escape, and she is the true cause of Thornfield's strange events.
Mr. Rochester asks Jane to go with him to the south of France, and live as husband and wife, even though they cannot be married. Refusing to go against her principles, and despite her love for him, Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night.
Chapters 27-35: Jane's time with the Rivers family
Jane leaves Thornfield and sleeps outside.
Jane begs for food.
St. John Rivers admits Jane to Moor House.
Jane travels to the north of England. After mislaying her funds, she sleeps on the moor and begs for food, but is turned away as a beggar, a thief, or worse. Exhausted, she is saved by St. John Rivers, a young clergyman, who brings her to the home of his sisters, Diana and Mary. As she regains her health, St. John finds her a teaching position at a nearby charity school. Jane becomes warm friends with Mary and Diana, but St. John is too reserved for her to relate to, despite his efforts on her behalf. Jane sees that the brother and sisters have money-related worries, but does not enquire further.
Rosamond Oliver shows an interest in St. John.
St. John tells Jane she has inherited £20,000.
Jane considering St. John's proposal.
When the sisters leave for governess jobs in London, St. John becomes more comfortable around Jane, evidencing his own conflicts of the heart, which involve the beautiful and wealthy Rosamond Oliver. When Jane confronts him about his feelings for Miss Oliver, he confesses that he has turned away from them, because he feels called to be a missionary, and he knows that Miss Oliver would not accept such a life.
St. John discovers Jane's true identity, and astounds her by showing her a letter stating that her uncle John has died and left her his entire fortune of £20,000, equivalent to £1,560,000 in today's pounds. When Jane questions him further, St. John reveals that John is also his and his sisters' uncle. They had once hoped for a share of the inheritance, but have since resigned themselves to nothing. Jane, overjoyed by finding her family, insists on sharing the money equally with her cousins.
St. John asks Jane to accompany him to India as his wife. He asks solely because he wishes a good missionary's wife, a role in which he believes Jane will excel. She agrees to go, but refuses marriage, believing his reserve and reason incompatible with her warmth and passion. But, his powers of persuasion eventually begin to convince her to change her mind.
However, at that very moment, she suddenly seems to hear Mr. Rochester calling her name. The next morning, she leaves for Thornfield to ascertain Mr. Rochester's well-being before departing forever for India.
Chapters 36-38: Jane's reunion with Mr. Rochester
Thornfield burned to the ground by Bertha.
Jane and Mr. Rochester reunited.
Mr. Rochester's sight improving.
Jane arrives at Thornfield to find only blackened ruins. She learns that Rochester's wife set the house on fire and committed suicide by jumping from the roof. In his rescue attempts, Mr. Rochester lost a hand and his eyesight. Jane reunites with him, but he fears that she will be repulsed by his condition. When Jane assures him of her love and tells him that she will never leave him, Mr. Rochester again proposes. He eventually recovers enough sight to see their first-born son.
Characters
* Jane Eyre: The protagonist of the novel and the title character. Orphaned as a baby, she struggles through her nearly loveless childhood and becomes governess at Thornfield Hall. Although she falls in love with her wealthy employer, Edward Rochester, her strong sense of conscience does not permit her to become his mistress, and she does not return to him until his insane wife is dead and she herself has come into an inheritance.
* Mr. Reed: Jane's maternal uncle, who adopts Jane when her parents die. Before his own death, he makes his wife promise to care for Jane.
* Mrs. Sarah Reed: Jane's aunt by marriage, who adopts Jane but neglects and abuses her. Her dislike of Jane continues to her death.
* John Reed: Jane's cousin, who bullies Jane constantly, sometimes in his mother's presence. He ruins himself as an adult and is believed to die by suicide.
* Eliza Reed: Jane's cousin. Bitter because she is not as attractive as her sister, she devotes herself self-righteously to religion.
* Georgiana Reed: Jane's cousin. Though spiteful and insolent, she is also beautiful and indulged. Her sister Eliza foils her marriage to a wealthy Lord.
* Bessie Lee: The plain-spoken nursemaid at Gateshead. She sometimes treats Jane kindly, telling her stories and singing her songs. Later she marries Robert Leaven.
* Robert Leaven: The coachman at Gateshead, who brings Jane the news of John Reed's death, which brought on Mrs. Reed's stroke.
* Mr. Lloyd: A compassionate apothecary who recommends that Jane be sent to school. Later, he writes a letter to Miss Temple confirming Jane's account of her childhood and thereby clearing Jane of Mrs. Reed's charge of lying.
* Mr. Brocklehurst: The clergyman headmaster and treasurer of Lowood School, whose mistreatment of the students is eventually exposed.
* Miss Maria Temple: The kind superintendent of Lowood School, who treats Jane and Helen (and others) with respect and compassion. She helps clear Jane of Mr. Brocklehurst's false accusation of deceit.
* Miss Scatcherd: A sour and vicious teacher at Lowood.
* Helen Burns: A fellow-student and best friend of Jane's at Lowood School. She refuses to hate those who abuse her, trusting in God and turning the other cheek. She dies of consumption in Jane's arms. Some speculate that the book's author based Helen Burns on her elder sister Maria Brontë , who showed signs of dyspraxia.
* Edward Fairfax Rochester: The master of Thornfield Manor. A Byronic hero, he makes an unfortunate first marriage before he meets Jane.
* Bertha Antoinetta Mason: The violently insane first wife of Edward Rochester.
* Adèle Varens: An excitable French child to whom Jane is governess at Thornfield. She is Mr Rochester's ward and possibly his daughter. However Mr. Rochester denies this because her mother had been seeing another man behind his back.
* Mrs. Alice Fairfax: An elderly widow and housekeeper of Thornfield Manor. She treats Jane kindly and respectfully, but disapproves of her engagement to Mr Rochester.
* Blanche Ingram: A socialite whom Mr. Rochester appears to court in order to make Jane jealous. She is described as having great beauty, but displays callous behaviour and avaricious intent.
* Richard Mason: An Englishman from the West Indies, whose sister is Mr. Rochester's first wife. His appearance at Thornfield heralds the eventual revelation of Bertha Mason.
* Grace Poole: Bertha Mason's keeper. Jane is told that it is Grace Poole who causes the mysterious things to happen at Thornfield Hall.
* St. John Eyre Rivers: A clergyman who befriends Jane and turns out to be her cousin. He is Jane Eyre's cousin on her father's side. He is a devout Christian of Calvinistic leanings. By nature he is very reserved and single-minded.
* Diana and Mary Rivers: St. John's sisters and (as it turns out) Jane's cousins.
* Rosamond Oliver: A wealthy young woman who patronizes the village school where Jane teaches, and who is attracted to the Rev. St. John.
* John Eyre: Jane's paternal uncle, who leaves her his vast fortune. He never appears as a character.
Themes
Morality
Jane refuses to become Mr Rochester's paramour because of her "impassioned self-respect and moral conviction." She rejects St. John Rivers' Puritanism as much as the libertine aspects of Mr Rochester's character. Instead, she works out a morality expressed in love, independence, and forgiveness.
Religion
Throughout the novel, Jane endeavours to attain an equilibrium between moral duty and earthly happiness. She despises the hypocritical puritanism of Mr. Brocklehurst, and rejects St. John Rivers' cold devotion to his Christian duty, but neither can she bring herself to emulate Helen Burns' turning the other cheek, although she admires Helen for it. Ultimately, she rejects these three extremes and finds a middle ground in which religion serves to curb her immoderate passions but does not repress her true self.
Social class
Jane's ambiguous social position—a penniless yet moderately educated orphan from a good family—leads her to criticise discrimination based on class. Although she is educated, well-mannered, and relatively sophisticated, she is still a governess, a paid servant of low social standing, and therefore powerless. Nevertheless, Brontë possesses certain class prejudices herself, as is made clear when Jane has to remind herself that her unsophisticated village pupils at Morton "are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy."
Gender relations
A particularly important theme in the novel is the depiction of a patriarchal society. Jane attempts to assert her own identity within male-dominated society. Three of the main male characters, Brocklehurst, Mr Rochester and St. John, try to keep Jane in a subordinate position and prevent her from expressing her own thoughts and feelings. Jane escapes Brocklehurst and rejects St. John, and she only marries Mr Rochester once she is sure that their marriage is one between equals. Through Jane, Brontë opposes Victorian stereotypes about women, articulating her own feminist philosophy:
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. (Chapter XII)
Love and Passion
One of the secrets to the success of Jane Eyre lies in the way that it touches on a number of important themes while telling a compelling story. Indeed, so lively and dramatic is the story that the reader might not be fully conscious of all the thematic strands that weave through this work. Critics have argued about what comprises the main theme of Jane Eyre. There can be little doubt, however, that love and passion together form a major thematic element of the novel.
On its most simple and obvious level, Jane Eyre is a love story. The love between the orphaned and initially impoverished Jane and the wealthy but tormented Rochester is at its heart. The obstacles to the fulfillment of this love provide the main dramatic conflict in the work. However, the novel explores other types of love as well. Helen Burns, for example, exemplifies the selfless love of a friend. We also see some of the consequences of the absence of love, as in the relationship between Jane and Mrs. Reed, in the selfish relations among the Reed children, and in the mocking marriage of Rochester and Bertha. Jane realizes that the absence of love between herself and St. John Rivers would make their marriage a living death, too.
Throughout the work, Brontë suggests that a life that is not lived passionately is not lived fully. Jane undoubtedly is the central passionate character; her nature is shot through with passion. Early on, she refuses to live by Mrs. Reed's rules, which would restrict all passion. Her defiance of Mrs. Reed is her first, but by no means her last, passionate act. Her passion for Rochester is all consuming. Significantly, however, it is not the only force that governs her life. She leaves Rochester because her moral reason tells her that it would be wrong to live with him as his mistress: "Laws and principles are not for the time when there is no temptation," she tells Rochester; "they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise against their rigor."
Blanche Ingram feels no passion for Rochester; she is only attracted to the landowner because of his wealth and social position. St. John Rivers is a more intelligent character than Blanche, but like her he also lacks the necessary passion that would allow him to live fully. His marriage proposal to Jane has no passion behind it; rather, he regards marriage as a business arrangement, with Jane as his potential junior partner in his missionary work. His lack of passion contrasts sharply with Rochester, who positively seethes with passion. His injury in the fire at Thornfield may be seen as a chastisement for his past passionate indiscretions and as a symbolic taming of his passionate excesses.
Independence
Jane Eyre is not only a love story; it is also a plea for the recognition of the individual's worth. Throughout the book, Jane demands to be treated as an independent human being, a person with her own needs and talents. Early on, she is unjustly punished, precisely for being herself — first by Mrs. Reed and John Reed, and subsequently by Mr. Brocklehurst. Her defiance of Mrs. Reed is her first active declaration of independence in the novel, but not her last. Helen Burns and Miss Temple are the first characters to acknowledge her as an individual; they love her for herself, in spite of her obscurity. Rochester too loves her for herself; the fact that she is a governess and therefore his servant does not negatively affect his perception of her. Rochester confesses that his ideal woman is intellectual, faithful, and loving — qualities that Jane embodies. Rochester's acceptance of Jane as an independent person is contrasted by Blanche and Lady Ingram's attitude toward her: they see her merely as a servant. Lady Ingram speaks disparagingly of Jane in front of her face as though Jane isn't there. To her, Jane is an inferior barely worthy of notice, and certainly not worthy of respect. And even though she is his cousin, St. John Rivers does not regard Jane as a full, independent person. Rather, he sees her as an instrument, an accessory that would help him to further his own plans. Jane acknowledges that his cause (missionary work) may be worthy, but she knows that to marry simply for the sake of expedience would be a fatal mistake. Her marriage to Mr. Rochester, by contrast, is the marriage of two independent beings. It is because of their independence, Brontë suggests, that they acknowledge their dependence on each other and are able to live happily ever after.
God and Religion
In her preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, Brontë made clear her belief that "conventionality is not morality" and "self-righteousness is not religion." She declared that "narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ." Throughout the novel, Brontë presents contrasts between characters who believe in and practice what she considers a true Christianity and those who pervert religion to further their own ends. Mr. Brocklehurst, who oversees Lowood Institution, is a hypocritical Christian. He professes charity but uses religion as a justification for punishment. For example, he cites the biblical passage "man shall not live by bread alone" to rebuke Miss Temple for having fed the girls an extra meal to compensate for their inedible breakfast of burnt porridge. He tells Miss Temple that she "may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!" Helen Burns is a complete contrast to Brocklehurst; she follows the Christian creed of turning the other cheek and loving those who hate her. On her deathbed, Helen tells Jane that she is "going home to God, who loves her."
Jane herself cannot quite profess Helen's absolute, selfless faith. Jane does not seem to follow a particular doctrine, but she is sincerely religious in a nondoctrinaire way. (It is Jane, after all, who places the stone with the word "Resurgam" on Helen's grave, some fifteen years after her friend's death.) Jane frequently prays and calls on God to assist her, particularly in her trouble with Rochester. She prays too that Rochester is safe. When the Rivers's housekeeper, Hannah, tries to turn the begging Jane away, Jane tells her that "if you are a Christian, you ought not consider poverty a crime." The young evangelical clergyman St. John Rivers is a more conventionally religious figure. However, Brontë portrays his religious aspect ambiguously. Jane calls him "a very good man," yet she finds him cold and forbidding. In his determination to do good deeds (in the form of missionary work in India), Rivers courts martyrdom. Moreover, he is unable to see Jane as a whole person, but views her as a helpmate in his proposed missionary work. Rochester is far less a perfect Christian. He is, indeed, a sinner: He attempts to enter into a bigamous marriage with Jane and, when that fails, tries to persuade her to become his mistress. He also confesses that he has had three previous mistresses. In the end, however, he repents his sinfulness, thanks God for returning Jane to him, and begs God to give him the strength to lead a purer life.
Atonement and Forgiveness
Much of the religious concern in Jane Eyre has to do with atonement and forgiveness. Rochester is tormented by his awareness of his past sins and misdeeds. He frequently confesses that he has led a life of vice, and many of his actions in the course of the novel are less than commendable. Readers may accuse him of behaving sadistically in deceiving Jane about the nature of his relationship (or rather, non-relationship) with Blanche Ingram in order to provoke Jane's jealousy. His confinement of Bertha may bespeak mixed motives. He is certainly aware that in the eyes of both religious and civil authorities, his marriage to Jane before Bertha's death would be bigamous. Yet, at the same time, he makes genuine efforts to atone for his behavior. For example, although he does not believe that he is Adèle's natural father, he adopts her as his ward and sees that she is well cared for. This adoption may well be an act of atonement for the sins he has committed. He expresses his self-disgust at having tried to console himself by having three different mistresses during his travels in Europe and begs Jane to forgive him for these past transgressions. However, Rochester can only atone completely — and be forgiven completely — after Jane has refused to be his mistress and left him. The destruction of Thornfield by fire finally removes the stain of his past sins; the loss of his right hand and of his eyesight is the price he must pay to atone completely for his sins. Only after this purgation can he be redeemed by Jane's love.
Search for Home and Family
Without any living family that she is aware of (until well into the story), throughout the course of the novel Jane searches for a place that she can call home. Significantly, houses play a prominent part in the story. (In keeping with a long English tradition, all the houses in the book have names.) The novel's opening finds Jane living at Gateshead Hall, but this is hardly a home. Mrs. Reed and her children refuse to acknowledge her as a relation, treating her instead as an unwanted intruder and an inferior.
Shunted off to Lowood Institution, a boarding school for orphans and destitute children, Jane finds a home of sorts, although her place here is ambiguous and temporary. The school's manager, Mr. Brocklehurst, treats it more as a business than as school in loco parentis (in place of the parent). His emphasis on discipline and on spartan conditions at the expense of the girls' health make it the antithesis of the ideal home.
Jane subsequently believes she has found a home at Thornfield Hall. Anticipating the worst when she arrives, she is relieved when she is made to feel welcome by Mrs. Fairfax. She feels genuine affection for Adèle (who in a way is also an orphan) and is happy to serve as her governess. As her love for Rochester grows, she believes that she has found her ideal husband in spite of his eccentric manner and that they will make a home together at Thornfield. The revelation — as they are literally on the verge of marriage — that he is already legally married — brings her dream of home crashing down. Fleeing Thornfield, she literally becomes homeless and is reduced to begging for food and shelter. The opportunity of having a home presents itself when she enters Moor House, where the Rivers sisters and their brother, the Reverend St. John Rivers, are mourning the death of their father. (When the housekeeper at first shuts the door in her face, Jane has a dreadful feeling that "that anchor of home was gone.") She soon speaks of Diana and Mary Rivers as her own sisters, and is overjoyed when she learns that they are indeed her cousins. She tells St. John Rivers that learning that she has living relations is far more important than inheriting twenty thousand pounds. (She mourns the uncle she never knew. Earlier she was disheartened on learning that Mrs. Reed told her uncle that Jane had died and sent him away.) However, St. John Rivers' offer of marriage cannot sever her emotional attachment to Rochester. In an almost visionary episode, she hears Rochester's voice calling her to return to him. The last chapter begins with the famous simple declarative sentence, "Reader, I married him," and after a long series of travails Jane's search for home and family ends in a union with her ideal mate.
Context
The early sequences, in which Jane is sent to Lowood, a harsh boarding school, are derived from the author's own experiences. Helen Burns's death from tuberculosis (referred to as consumption) recalls the deaths of Charlotte Brontë's sisters Elizabeth and Maria, who died of the disease in childhood as a result of the conditions at their school, the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge, near Tunstall, Lancashire. Mr. Brocklehurst is based on Rev. William Carus Wilson (1791–1859), the Evangelical minister who ran the school, and Helen Burns is likely modelled on Charlotte's sister Maria. Additionally, John Reed's decline into alcoholism and dissolution recalls the life of Charlotte's brother Branwell, who became an opium and alcohol addict in the years preceding his death. Finally, like Jane, Charlotte becomes a governess. These facts were revealed to the public in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) by Charlotte's friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.
The Gothic manor of Thornfield was probably inspired by North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in the Peak District. This was visited by Charlotte Brontë and her friend Ellen Nussey in the summer of 1845 and is described by the latter in a letter dated 22 July 1845. It was the residence of the Eyre family, and its first owner, Agnes Ashurst, was reputedly confined as a lunatic in a padded second floor room.
Literary motifs and allusions
Jane Eyre uses many motifs from Gothic fiction, such as the Gothic manor (Thornfield), the Byronic hero (Mr Rochester and Jane herself) and The Madwoman in the Attic (Bertha), whom Jane perceives as resembling "the foul German spectre—the Vampyre" (Chapter XXV) and who attacks her own brother in a distinctly vampiric way: "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart" (Chapter XX). Also, besides gothicism, Jane Eyre displays romanticism to create a unique Victorian novel.
Literary allusions from the Bible, fairy tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott are also much in evidence. The novel deliberately avoids some conventions of Victorian fiction, not contriving a deathbed reconciliation between Aunt Reed and Jane Eyre and avoiding the portrayal of a "fallen woman".
Adaptations
Mr. Reed torments young Jane Eyre in Suffolk Youth Theatre's 2008 production of Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre has engendered numerous adaptations and related works inspired by the novel. The best known are the 1944 version starring Orson Welles as Rochester and Joan Fontaine as Jane, the BBC television adaptation with Timothy Dalton as Rochester and Zelah Clarke as Jane, and the 1996 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli with William Hurt as Rochester and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane.
Radio show versions
* 1943: Extremely loose adaptation (primarily chapters 11–26) on The Weird Circle, premiering on 11 November.
Silent film versions
* Several silent film adaptations entitled Jane Eyre were released; one in 1910, two in 1914, plus:
* 1915: Jane Eyre starring Louise Vale.
* 1915: A version was released called The Castle of Thornfield.
* 1918: A version was released called Woman and Wife, directed by Edward José, adapted by Paul West, starring Alice Brady as Jane.
* 1921: Jane Eyre starring Mabel Ballin and directed by Hugo Ballin.
* 1926: A version was made in Germany called Orphan of Lowood.
Motion picture versions
* 1934: Jane Eyre, starring Colin Clive and Virginia Bruce.
* 1940: Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based upon the novel of the same name which was influenced by Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine, who starred in this film, would also be cast in the 1944 version of Jane Eyre to reinforce the connection.
* 1943: I Walked with a Zombie is a horror movie loosely based upon Jane Eyre.
* 1944: Jane Eyre, with a screenplay by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. It features Orson Welles as Mr Rochester, Joan Fontaine as Jane, Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Reed, Margaret O'Brien as Adele and Elizabeth Taylor as Helen Burns.
* 1956: A version was made in Hong Kong called The Orphan Girl.
* 1963: A version was released in Mexico called El Secreto (English: "The Secret").
* 1970: Jane Eyre, starring George C. Scott as Mr Rochester and Susannah York as Jane.
* 1972: An Indian adaptation in Telugu, Shanti Nilayam, directed by C. Vaikuntarama Sastry, starring Anjali Devi.
* 1978: A version was released in Mexico called Ardiente Secreto (English: "Ardent Secret").
* 1996: Jane Eyre, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring William Hurt as Mr Rochester, Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane, Elle Macpherson as Blanche Ingram, Joan Plowright as Mrs. Fairfax, Anna Paquin as the young Jane, Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Reed and Geraldine Chaplin as Miss Scatcherd.
* 2006: Jane Eyre, Directed by Susanna White, starring Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester and Ruth Wilson as Jane Eyre.
* 2011: Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga, starring Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Rochester.
Musical versions
* A two-act ballet of Jane Eyre was created for the first time by the London Children's Ballet in 1994, with an original score by composer Julia Gomelskaya and choreography by Polyanna Buckingham. The run was a sell-out success.
* A musical version with a book by John Caird and music and lyrics by Paul Gordon, with Marla Schaffel as Jane and James Stacy Barbour as Mr Rochester, opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on 10 December 2000. It closed on 10 June 2001.
* Jane Eyre, opera in three acts, Op. 134 was composed by John Joubert in 1987–1997 to a libretto by Kenneth Birkin after the novel.
* An opera based on the novel was written in 2000 by English composer Michael Berkeley, with a libretto by David Malouf. It was given its premiere by Music Theatre Wales at the Cheltenham Festival.
* Jane Eyre was played for the first time in Europe in Beveren, Belgium. It was given its premiere at the cultural centre.
* The ballet "Jane," based on the book was created in 2007, a Bullard/Tye production with music by Max Reger. Its world premiere was scheduled at the Civic Auditorium, Kalamazoo, Michigan, June 29 and 30, performed by the Kalamazoo Ballet Company, Therese Bullard, Director.
* A musical production directed by Debby Race, book by Jana Smith and Wayne R. Scott, with a musical score by Jana Smith and Brad Roseborough, premiered in 2008 at the Lifehouse Theatre in Redlands, California
* A symphony (7th) by Michel Bosc premiered in Bandol (France), 11 October 2009.
Television versions
* 1952: This was a live television production presented by "Westinghouse Studio One (Summer Theatre)".
* Adaptations appeared on British and American television in 1956 and 1961.
* 1963:Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Richard Leech as Mr Rochester and Ann Bell as Jane.
* 1973: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Sorcha Cusack as Jane, Michael Jayston as Mr Rochester, Juliet Waley as the child Jane, and Tina Heath as Helen Burns.
* 1978: Telenovela El Ardiente Secreto (English The impassioned secret) was an adaptation of this novel.
* 1982: BBC Classics Presents: Jane Eyrehead. A parody movie by SCTV starred Andrea Martin as Jane Eyrehead, Joe Flaherty as Mr Rochester, also starting John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Martin Short in supporting roles.
* 1983: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Zelah Clarke as Jane, Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester, Sian Pattenden as the child Jane, and Colette Barker as Helen Burns.
* 1997: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the A&E Network and starred Ciaran Hinds as Mr Rochester and Samantha Morton as Jane.
* 2006: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester, Ruth Wilson as Jane, and Georgie Henley as Young Jane.
Literature
* 1938: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier was partially inspired by Jane Eyre.
* 1961: The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart adapts many of the motifs of Jane Eyre to 1950s northern England. The main character, Annabel, falls in love with her older neighbor who is married to a mentally ill woman. Like Jane, Annabel runs away to try to get over her love. The novel begins when she returns from her eight-year exile.
* 1966: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. The character Bertha Mason serves as the main protagonist for this novel which acts as a "prequel" to Jane Eyre. It describes the meeting and marriage of Antoinette (later renamed Bertha by Mr Rochester) and Mr Rochester. In its reshaping of events related to Jane Eyre, the novel suggests that Bertha's madness is the result of Mr Rochester's rejection of her and her Creole heritage. It was also adapted into film twice.
* 1997: Mrs Rochester: A Sequel to Jane Eyre by Hilary Bailey
* 2000: Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant
* 2000: Jane Rochester by Kimberly A. Bennett, content explores the first years of the Rochesters' marriage with gothic and explicit content. A fan favorite.
* 2001 novel The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde revolves around the plot of Jane Eyre. It portrays the book as originally largely free of literary contrivance: Jane and Mr Rochester's first meeting is a simple conversation without the dramatic horse accident, and Jane does not hear his voice calling for her and ends up starting a new life in India. The protagonist's efforts mostly accidentally change it to the real version.
* 2002: Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn, a science fiction novel based upon Jane Eyre
* 2006: The French Dancer's Bastard: The Story of Adele From Jane Eyre by Emma Tennant. This is a slightly modified version of Tennant's 2000 novel.
* 2007: Thornfield Hall: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant. This is another version of Jane Eyre.
* 2010: Rochester: A Novel Inspired by Jane Eyre by J.L. Niemann. Jane Eyre told from the first person-perspective of Edward Rochester.
* The novelist Angela Carter was working on a sequel to Jane Eyre at the time of her death in 1992. This was to have been the story of Jane's stepdaughter Adèle Varens and her mother Céline. Only a synopsis survives.
Plot introduction
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family at Marsh's End (or Moor House) and Morton, where her cold clergyman-cousin St John Rivers proposes to her; and her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester. Partly autobiographical, the novel abounds with social criticism. It is a novel considered ahead of its time. In spite of the dark, brooding elements, it has a strong sense of right and wrong, of morality at its core.
Jane Eyre is divided into 38 chapters and most editions are at least 400 pages long (although the preface and introduction on certain copies are liable to take up another 100). The original was published in three volumes, comprising chapters 1 to 15, 16 to 26, and 27 to 38.
Brontë dedicated the novel's second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray.
Plot summary
Chapters 1-4: Jane's childhood at Gateshead
Young Jane argues with her guardian Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. Illustration by F. H. Townsend.
A ten-year-old orphan named Jane Eyre lives with her uncle's family, the Reeds. Jane's aunt, Sarah Reed, dislikes her intensely. When her uncle dies, her aunt and the three Reed children become abusive. When bullied by her cousin John, Jane retaliates but is punished for the ensuing fight and is locked in the room where Mr. Reed died. As night falls, Jane's panicked screams rouse the house, but Mrs. Reed won't let her out. Jane faints and Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, is summoned. He talks with Jane and sympathetically suggests that she should go away to school.
Chapters 5-10: Jane's education at Lowood School
Mrs. Reed sends Jane to Lowood Institution, a charity school, and warns them that Jane is deceitful. During an inspection, Jane accidentally breaks her slate, and Mr. Brocklehurst, the self-righteous clergyman who runs the school, brands her as a liar and shames her before the entire assembly.
Jane is comforted by her friend, Helen Burns. Miss Temple, a caring teacher, facilitates Jane's self-defense and writes to Mr. Lloyd whose reply agrees with Jane's. Ultimately, Jane is publicly cleared of Mr. Brocklehurst's accusations.
Jane tries to catch Mr. Rochester's horse.
While the Brocklehurst family lives in luxury, the eighty pupils are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing. Many students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes. Jane's friend Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms.
When Mr. Brocklehurst's neglect and dishonesty are laid bare, several benefactors erect a new building and conditions at the school improve dramatically.
Chapters 11-26: Jane's time as governess at Thornfield Hall
Eight years later, Jane is a teacher employed by Alice Fairfax (the housekeeper of Thornfield Hall) as governess for Adèle Varens, a young French girl. Out walking one day, Jane encounters and helps a horseman who has sprained his ankle. On her return to Thornfield, she discovers that the horseman is Edward Rochester, Master of Thornfield Hall. Rochester is a moody, self-willed man nearly twenty years older than Jane. Adèle is his ward, belonging to a French "opera dancer" with whom he had a romantic relationship in the past. Adèle, however, is not his daughter, but is brought up by him after her mother abandons her.
Jane saves Mr. Rochester from a fire.
Miss Blanche Ingram looking in a book.
Mr. Rochester disguised as a Gypsy woman.
Bertha Mason rips Jane's wedding veil.
Mr. Rochester seems quite taken with Jane, and she enjoys his company. However, odd things begin to happen: a strange laugh is heard in the halls, a near-fatal fire mysteriously breaks out, and a guest named Mason is attacked.
Jane receives word that Mrs. Reed has suffered a stroke and is asking for her. Returning to Gateshead, she remains for over a month while her aunt lies dying. Mrs. Reed rejects Jane's efforts at reconciliation, but does give her a letter previously withheld out of spite. The letter is from John Eyre, Jane's uncle, notifying her that he wanted her to live with him in Madeira.
After returning to Thornfield, Jane broods over Rochester's impending marriage to Blanche Ingram. But on a midsummer evening, he proclaims his love for Jane and proposes. As she prepares for her wedding, Jane's forebodings arise when a strange, savage-looking woman sneaks into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. As with previous mysterious events, Mr Rochester attributes the incident to drunkenness on the part of Grace Poole, one of his servants.
During the wedding ceremony, Mr. Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr. Rochester cannot marry because he is already married to Mr. Mason's sister. Mr. Rochester bitterly admits the truth, explaining that his wife is a violent madwoman whom he keeps locked in the attic, in the care of Grace Poole. When Grace occasionally drinks too much, it gives his wife a chance to escape, and she is the true cause of Thornfield's strange events.
Mr. Rochester asks Jane to go with him to the south of France, and live as husband and wife, even though they cannot be married. Refusing to go against her principles, and despite her love for him, Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night.
Chapters 27-35: Jane's time with the Rivers family
Jane leaves Thornfield and sleeps outside.
Jane begs for food.
St. John Rivers admits Jane to Moor House.
Jane travels to the north of England. After mislaying her funds, she sleeps on the moor and begs for food, but is turned away as a beggar, a thief, or worse. Exhausted, she is saved by St. John Rivers, a young clergyman, who brings her to the home of his sisters, Diana and Mary. As she regains her health, St. John finds her a teaching position at a nearby charity school. Jane becomes warm friends with Mary and Diana, but St. John is too reserved for her to relate to, despite his efforts on her behalf. Jane sees that the brother and sisters have money-related worries, but does not enquire further.
Rosamond Oliver shows an interest in St. John.
St. John tells Jane she has inherited £20,000.
Jane considering St. John's proposal.
When the sisters leave for governess jobs in London, St. John becomes more comfortable around Jane, evidencing his own conflicts of the heart, which involve the beautiful and wealthy Rosamond Oliver. When Jane confronts him about his feelings for Miss Oliver, he confesses that he has turned away from them, because he feels called to be a missionary, and he knows that Miss Oliver would not accept such a life.
St. John discovers Jane's true identity, and astounds her by showing her a letter stating that her uncle John has died and left her his entire fortune of £20,000, equivalent to £1,560,000 in today's pounds. When Jane questions him further, St. John reveals that John is also his and his sisters' uncle. They had once hoped for a share of the inheritance, but have since resigned themselves to nothing. Jane, overjoyed by finding her family, insists on sharing the money equally with her cousins.
St. John asks Jane to accompany him to India as his wife. He asks solely because he wishes a good missionary's wife, a role in which he believes Jane will excel. She agrees to go, but refuses marriage, believing his reserve and reason incompatible with her warmth and passion. But, his powers of persuasion eventually begin to convince her to change her mind.
However, at that very moment, she suddenly seems to hear Mr. Rochester calling her name. The next morning, she leaves for Thornfield to ascertain Mr. Rochester's well-being before departing forever for India.
Chapters 36-38: Jane's reunion with Mr. Rochester
Thornfield burned to the ground by Bertha.
Jane and Mr. Rochester reunited.
Mr. Rochester's sight improving.
Jane arrives at Thornfield to find only blackened ruins. She learns that Rochester's wife set the house on fire and committed suicide by jumping from the roof. In his rescue attempts, Mr. Rochester lost a hand and his eyesight. Jane reunites with him, but he fears that she will be repulsed by his condition. When Jane assures him of her love and tells him that she will never leave him, Mr. Rochester again proposes. He eventually recovers enough sight to see their first-born son.
Characters
* Jane Eyre: The protagonist of the novel and the title character. Orphaned as a baby, she struggles through her nearly loveless childhood and becomes governess at Thornfield Hall. Although she falls in love with her wealthy employer, Edward Rochester, her strong sense of conscience does not permit her to become his mistress, and she does not return to him until his insane wife is dead and she herself has come into an inheritance.
* Mr. Reed: Jane's maternal uncle, who adopts Jane when her parents die. Before his own death, he makes his wife promise to care for Jane.
* Mrs. Sarah Reed: Jane's aunt by marriage, who adopts Jane but neglects and abuses her. Her dislike of Jane continues to her death.
* John Reed: Jane's cousin, who bullies Jane constantly, sometimes in his mother's presence. He ruins himself as an adult and is believed to die by suicide.
* Eliza Reed: Jane's cousin. Bitter because she is not as attractive as her sister, she devotes herself self-righteously to religion.
* Georgiana Reed: Jane's cousin. Though spiteful and insolent, she is also beautiful and indulged. Her sister Eliza foils her marriage to a wealthy Lord.
* Bessie Lee: The plain-spoken nursemaid at Gateshead. She sometimes treats Jane kindly, telling her stories and singing her songs. Later she marries Robert Leaven.
* Robert Leaven: The coachman at Gateshead, who brings Jane the news of John Reed's death, which brought on Mrs. Reed's stroke.
* Mr. Lloyd: A compassionate apothecary who recommends that Jane be sent to school. Later, he writes a letter to Miss Temple confirming Jane's account of her childhood and thereby clearing Jane of Mrs. Reed's charge of lying.
* Mr. Brocklehurst: The clergyman headmaster and treasurer of Lowood School, whose mistreatment of the students is eventually exposed.
* Miss Maria Temple: The kind superintendent of Lowood School, who treats Jane and Helen (and others) with respect and compassion. She helps clear Jane of Mr. Brocklehurst's false accusation of deceit.
* Miss Scatcherd: A sour and vicious teacher at Lowood.
* Helen Burns: A fellow-student and best friend of Jane's at Lowood School. She refuses to hate those who abuse her, trusting in God and turning the other cheek. She dies of consumption in Jane's arms. Some speculate that the book's author based Helen Burns on her elder sister Maria Brontë , who showed signs of dyspraxia.
* Edward Fairfax Rochester: The master of Thornfield Manor. A Byronic hero, he makes an unfortunate first marriage before he meets Jane.
* Bertha Antoinetta Mason: The violently insane first wife of Edward Rochester.
* Adèle Varens: An excitable French child to whom Jane is governess at Thornfield. She is Mr Rochester's ward and possibly his daughter. However Mr. Rochester denies this because her mother had been seeing another man behind his back.
* Mrs. Alice Fairfax: An elderly widow and housekeeper of Thornfield Manor. She treats Jane kindly and respectfully, but disapproves of her engagement to Mr Rochester.
* Blanche Ingram: A socialite whom Mr. Rochester appears to court in order to make Jane jealous. She is described as having great beauty, but displays callous behaviour and avaricious intent.
* Richard Mason: An Englishman from the West Indies, whose sister is Mr. Rochester's first wife. His appearance at Thornfield heralds the eventual revelation of Bertha Mason.
* Grace Poole: Bertha Mason's keeper. Jane is told that it is Grace Poole who causes the mysterious things to happen at Thornfield Hall.
* St. John Eyre Rivers: A clergyman who befriends Jane and turns out to be her cousin. He is Jane Eyre's cousin on her father's side. He is a devout Christian of Calvinistic leanings. By nature he is very reserved and single-minded.
* Diana and Mary Rivers: St. John's sisters and (as it turns out) Jane's cousins.
* Rosamond Oliver: A wealthy young woman who patronizes the village school where Jane teaches, and who is attracted to the Rev. St. John.
* John Eyre: Jane's paternal uncle, who leaves her his vast fortune. He never appears as a character.
Themes
Morality
Jane refuses to become Mr Rochester's paramour because of her "impassioned self-respect and moral conviction." She rejects St. John Rivers' Puritanism as much as the libertine aspects of Mr Rochester's character. Instead, she works out a morality expressed in love, independence, and forgiveness.
Religion
Throughout the novel, Jane endeavours to attain an equilibrium between moral duty and earthly happiness. She despises the hypocritical puritanism of Mr. Brocklehurst, and rejects St. John Rivers' cold devotion to his Christian duty, but neither can she bring herself to emulate Helen Burns' turning the other cheek, although she admires Helen for it. Ultimately, she rejects these three extremes and finds a middle ground in which religion serves to curb her immoderate passions but does not repress her true self.
Social class
Jane's ambiguous social position—a penniless yet moderately educated orphan from a good family—leads her to criticise discrimination based on class. Although she is educated, well-mannered, and relatively sophisticated, she is still a governess, a paid servant of low social standing, and therefore powerless. Nevertheless, Brontë possesses certain class prejudices herself, as is made clear when Jane has to remind herself that her unsophisticated village pupils at Morton "are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy."
Gender relations
A particularly important theme in the novel is the depiction of a patriarchal society. Jane attempts to assert her own identity within male-dominated society. Three of the main male characters, Brocklehurst, Mr Rochester and St. John, try to keep Jane in a subordinate position and prevent her from expressing her own thoughts and feelings. Jane escapes Brocklehurst and rejects St. John, and she only marries Mr Rochester once she is sure that their marriage is one between equals. Through Jane, Brontë opposes Victorian stereotypes about women, articulating her own feminist philosophy:
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. (Chapter XII)
Love and Passion
One of the secrets to the success of Jane Eyre lies in the way that it touches on a number of important themes while telling a compelling story. Indeed, so lively and dramatic is the story that the reader might not be fully conscious of all the thematic strands that weave through this work. Critics have argued about what comprises the main theme of Jane Eyre. There can be little doubt, however, that love and passion together form a major thematic element of the novel.
On its most simple and obvious level, Jane Eyre is a love story. The love between the orphaned and initially impoverished Jane and the wealthy but tormented Rochester is at its heart. The obstacles to the fulfillment of this love provide the main dramatic conflict in the work. However, the novel explores other types of love as well. Helen Burns, for example, exemplifies the selfless love of a friend. We also see some of the consequences of the absence of love, as in the relationship between Jane and Mrs. Reed, in the selfish relations among the Reed children, and in the mocking marriage of Rochester and Bertha. Jane realizes that the absence of love between herself and St. John Rivers would make their marriage a living death, too.
Throughout the work, Brontë suggests that a life that is not lived passionately is not lived fully. Jane undoubtedly is the central passionate character; her nature is shot through with passion. Early on, she refuses to live by Mrs. Reed's rules, which would restrict all passion. Her defiance of Mrs. Reed is her first, but by no means her last, passionate act. Her passion for Rochester is all consuming. Significantly, however, it is not the only force that governs her life. She leaves Rochester because her moral reason tells her that it would be wrong to live with him as his mistress: "Laws and principles are not for the time when there is no temptation," she tells Rochester; "they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise against their rigor."
Blanche Ingram feels no passion for Rochester; she is only attracted to the landowner because of his wealth and social position. St. John Rivers is a more intelligent character than Blanche, but like her he also lacks the necessary passion that would allow him to live fully. His marriage proposal to Jane has no passion behind it; rather, he regards marriage as a business arrangement, with Jane as his potential junior partner in his missionary work. His lack of passion contrasts sharply with Rochester, who positively seethes with passion. His injury in the fire at Thornfield may be seen as a chastisement for his past passionate indiscretions and as a symbolic taming of his passionate excesses.
Independence
Jane Eyre is not only a love story; it is also a plea for the recognition of the individual's worth. Throughout the book, Jane demands to be treated as an independent human being, a person with her own needs and talents. Early on, she is unjustly punished, precisely for being herself — first by Mrs. Reed and John Reed, and subsequently by Mr. Brocklehurst. Her defiance of Mrs. Reed is her first active declaration of independence in the novel, but not her last. Helen Burns and Miss Temple are the first characters to acknowledge her as an individual; they love her for herself, in spite of her obscurity. Rochester too loves her for herself; the fact that she is a governess and therefore his servant does not negatively affect his perception of her. Rochester confesses that his ideal woman is intellectual, faithful, and loving — qualities that Jane embodies. Rochester's acceptance of Jane as an independent person is contrasted by Blanche and Lady Ingram's attitude toward her: they see her merely as a servant. Lady Ingram speaks disparagingly of Jane in front of her face as though Jane isn't there. To her, Jane is an inferior barely worthy of notice, and certainly not worthy of respect. And even though she is his cousin, St. John Rivers does not regard Jane as a full, independent person. Rather, he sees her as an instrument, an accessory that would help him to further his own plans. Jane acknowledges that his cause (missionary work) may be worthy, but she knows that to marry simply for the sake of expedience would be a fatal mistake. Her marriage to Mr. Rochester, by contrast, is the marriage of two independent beings. It is because of their independence, Brontë suggests, that they acknowledge their dependence on each other and are able to live happily ever after.
God and Religion
In her preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, Brontë made clear her belief that "conventionality is not morality" and "self-righteousness is not religion." She declared that "narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ." Throughout the novel, Brontë presents contrasts between characters who believe in and practice what she considers a true Christianity and those who pervert religion to further their own ends. Mr. Brocklehurst, who oversees Lowood Institution, is a hypocritical Christian. He professes charity but uses religion as a justification for punishment. For example, he cites the biblical passage "man shall not live by bread alone" to rebuke Miss Temple for having fed the girls an extra meal to compensate for their inedible breakfast of burnt porridge. He tells Miss Temple that she "may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!" Helen Burns is a complete contrast to Brocklehurst; she follows the Christian creed of turning the other cheek and loving those who hate her. On her deathbed, Helen tells Jane that she is "going home to God, who loves her."
Jane herself cannot quite profess Helen's absolute, selfless faith. Jane does not seem to follow a particular doctrine, but she is sincerely religious in a nondoctrinaire way. (It is Jane, after all, who places the stone with the word "Resurgam" on Helen's grave, some fifteen years after her friend's death.) Jane frequently prays and calls on God to assist her, particularly in her trouble with Rochester. She prays too that Rochester is safe. When the Rivers's housekeeper, Hannah, tries to turn the begging Jane away, Jane tells her that "if you are a Christian, you ought not consider poverty a crime." The young evangelical clergyman St. John Rivers is a more conventionally religious figure. However, Brontë portrays his religious aspect ambiguously. Jane calls him "a very good man," yet she finds him cold and forbidding. In his determination to do good deeds (in the form of missionary work in India), Rivers courts martyrdom. Moreover, he is unable to see Jane as a whole person, but views her as a helpmate in his proposed missionary work. Rochester is far less a perfect Christian. He is, indeed, a sinner: He attempts to enter into a bigamous marriage with Jane and, when that fails, tries to persuade her to become his mistress. He also confesses that he has had three previous mistresses. In the end, however, he repents his sinfulness, thanks God for returning Jane to him, and begs God to give him the strength to lead a purer life.
Atonement and Forgiveness
Much of the religious concern in Jane Eyre has to do with atonement and forgiveness. Rochester is tormented by his awareness of his past sins and misdeeds. He frequently confesses that he has led a life of vice, and many of his actions in the course of the novel are less than commendable. Readers may accuse him of behaving sadistically in deceiving Jane about the nature of his relationship (or rather, non-relationship) with Blanche Ingram in order to provoke Jane's jealousy. His confinement of Bertha may bespeak mixed motives. He is certainly aware that in the eyes of both religious and civil authorities, his marriage to Jane before Bertha's death would be bigamous. Yet, at the same time, he makes genuine efforts to atone for his behavior. For example, although he does not believe that he is Adèle's natural father, he adopts her as his ward and sees that she is well cared for. This adoption may well be an act of atonement for the sins he has committed. He expresses his self-disgust at having tried to console himself by having three different mistresses during his travels in Europe and begs Jane to forgive him for these past transgressions. However, Rochester can only atone completely — and be forgiven completely — after Jane has refused to be his mistress and left him. The destruction of Thornfield by fire finally removes the stain of his past sins; the loss of his right hand and of his eyesight is the price he must pay to atone completely for his sins. Only after this purgation can he be redeemed by Jane's love.
Search for Home and Family
Without any living family that she is aware of (until well into the story), throughout the course of the novel Jane searches for a place that she can call home. Significantly, houses play a prominent part in the story. (In keeping with a long English tradition, all the houses in the book have names.) The novel's opening finds Jane living at Gateshead Hall, but this is hardly a home. Mrs. Reed and her children refuse to acknowledge her as a relation, treating her instead as an unwanted intruder and an inferior.
Shunted off to Lowood Institution, a boarding school for orphans and destitute children, Jane finds a home of sorts, although her place here is ambiguous and temporary. The school's manager, Mr. Brocklehurst, treats it more as a business than as school in loco parentis (in place of the parent). His emphasis on discipline and on spartan conditions at the expense of the girls' health make it the antithesis of the ideal home.
Jane subsequently believes she has found a home at Thornfield Hall. Anticipating the worst when she arrives, she is relieved when she is made to feel welcome by Mrs. Fairfax. She feels genuine affection for Adèle (who in a way is also an orphan) and is happy to serve as her governess. As her love for Rochester grows, she believes that she has found her ideal husband in spite of his eccentric manner and that they will make a home together at Thornfield. The revelation — as they are literally on the verge of marriage — that he is already legally married — brings her dream of home crashing down. Fleeing Thornfield, she literally becomes homeless and is reduced to begging for food and shelter. The opportunity of having a home presents itself when she enters Moor House, where the Rivers sisters and their brother, the Reverend St. John Rivers, are mourning the death of their father. (When the housekeeper at first shuts the door in her face, Jane has a dreadful feeling that "that anchor of home was gone.") She soon speaks of Diana and Mary Rivers as her own sisters, and is overjoyed when she learns that they are indeed her cousins. She tells St. John Rivers that learning that she has living relations is far more important than inheriting twenty thousand pounds. (She mourns the uncle she never knew. Earlier she was disheartened on learning that Mrs. Reed told her uncle that Jane had died and sent him away.) However, St. John Rivers' offer of marriage cannot sever her emotional attachment to Rochester. In an almost visionary episode, she hears Rochester's voice calling her to return to him. The last chapter begins with the famous simple declarative sentence, "Reader, I married him," and after a long series of travails Jane's search for home and family ends in a union with her ideal mate.
Context
The early sequences, in which Jane is sent to Lowood, a harsh boarding school, are derived from the author's own experiences. Helen Burns's death from tuberculosis (referred to as consumption) recalls the deaths of Charlotte Brontë's sisters Elizabeth and Maria, who died of the disease in childhood as a result of the conditions at their school, the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge, near Tunstall, Lancashire. Mr. Brocklehurst is based on Rev. William Carus Wilson (1791–1859), the Evangelical minister who ran the school, and Helen Burns is likely modelled on Charlotte's sister Maria. Additionally, John Reed's decline into alcoholism and dissolution recalls the life of Charlotte's brother Branwell, who became an opium and alcohol addict in the years preceding his death. Finally, like Jane, Charlotte becomes a governess. These facts were revealed to the public in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) by Charlotte's friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.
The Gothic manor of Thornfield was probably inspired by North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in the Peak District. This was visited by Charlotte Brontë and her friend Ellen Nussey in the summer of 1845 and is described by the latter in a letter dated 22 July 1845. It was the residence of the Eyre family, and its first owner, Agnes Ashurst, was reputedly confined as a lunatic in a padded second floor room.
Literary motifs and allusions
Jane Eyre uses many motifs from Gothic fiction, such as the Gothic manor (Thornfield), the Byronic hero (Mr Rochester and Jane herself) and The Madwoman in the Attic (Bertha), whom Jane perceives as resembling "the foul German spectre—the Vampyre" (Chapter XXV) and who attacks her own brother in a distinctly vampiric way: "She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart" (Chapter XX). Also, besides gothicism, Jane Eyre displays romanticism to create a unique Victorian novel.
Literary allusions from the Bible, fairy tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott are also much in evidence. The novel deliberately avoids some conventions of Victorian fiction, not contriving a deathbed reconciliation between Aunt Reed and Jane Eyre and avoiding the portrayal of a "fallen woman".
Adaptations
Mr. Reed torments young Jane Eyre in Suffolk Youth Theatre's 2008 production of Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre has engendered numerous adaptations and related works inspired by the novel. The best known are the 1944 version starring Orson Welles as Rochester and Joan Fontaine as Jane, the BBC television adaptation with Timothy Dalton as Rochester and Zelah Clarke as Jane, and the 1996 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli with William Hurt as Rochester and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane.
Radio show versions
* 1943: Extremely loose adaptation (primarily chapters 11–26) on The Weird Circle, premiering on 11 November.
Silent film versions
* Several silent film adaptations entitled Jane Eyre were released; one in 1910, two in 1914, plus:
* 1915: Jane Eyre starring Louise Vale.
* 1915: A version was released called The Castle of Thornfield.
* 1918: A version was released called Woman and Wife, directed by Edward José, adapted by Paul West, starring Alice Brady as Jane.
* 1921: Jane Eyre starring Mabel Ballin and directed by Hugo Ballin.
* 1926: A version was made in Germany called Orphan of Lowood.
Motion picture versions
* 1934: Jane Eyre, starring Colin Clive and Virginia Bruce.
* 1940: Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based upon the novel of the same name which was influenced by Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine, who starred in this film, would also be cast in the 1944 version of Jane Eyre to reinforce the connection.
* 1943: I Walked with a Zombie is a horror movie loosely based upon Jane Eyre.
* 1944: Jane Eyre, with a screenplay by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. It features Orson Welles as Mr Rochester, Joan Fontaine as Jane, Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Reed, Margaret O'Brien as Adele and Elizabeth Taylor as Helen Burns.
* 1956: A version was made in Hong Kong called The Orphan Girl.
* 1963: A version was released in Mexico called El Secreto (English: "The Secret").
* 1970: Jane Eyre, starring George C. Scott as Mr Rochester and Susannah York as Jane.
* 1972: An Indian adaptation in Telugu, Shanti Nilayam, directed by C. Vaikuntarama Sastry, starring Anjali Devi.
* 1978: A version was released in Mexico called Ardiente Secreto (English: "Ardent Secret").
* 1996: Jane Eyre, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring William Hurt as Mr Rochester, Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane, Elle Macpherson as Blanche Ingram, Joan Plowright as Mrs. Fairfax, Anna Paquin as the young Jane, Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Reed and Geraldine Chaplin as Miss Scatcherd.
* 2006: Jane Eyre, Directed by Susanna White, starring Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester and Ruth Wilson as Jane Eyre.
* 2011: Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga, starring Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Rochester.
Musical versions
* A two-act ballet of Jane Eyre was created for the first time by the London Children's Ballet in 1994, with an original score by composer Julia Gomelskaya and choreography by Polyanna Buckingham. The run was a sell-out success.
* A musical version with a book by John Caird and music and lyrics by Paul Gordon, with Marla Schaffel as Jane and James Stacy Barbour as Mr Rochester, opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on 10 December 2000. It closed on 10 June 2001.
* Jane Eyre, opera in three acts, Op. 134 was composed by John Joubert in 1987–1997 to a libretto by Kenneth Birkin after the novel.
* An opera based on the novel was written in 2000 by English composer Michael Berkeley, with a libretto by David Malouf. It was given its premiere by Music Theatre Wales at the Cheltenham Festival.
* Jane Eyre was played for the first time in Europe in Beveren, Belgium. It was given its premiere at the cultural centre.
* The ballet "Jane," based on the book was created in 2007, a Bullard/Tye production with music by Max Reger. Its world premiere was scheduled at the Civic Auditorium, Kalamazoo, Michigan, June 29 and 30, performed by the Kalamazoo Ballet Company, Therese Bullard, Director.
* A musical production directed by Debby Race, book by Jana Smith and Wayne R. Scott, with a musical score by Jana Smith and Brad Roseborough, premiered in 2008 at the Lifehouse Theatre in Redlands, California
* A symphony (7th) by Michel Bosc premiered in Bandol (France), 11 October 2009.
Television versions
* 1952: This was a live television production presented by "Westinghouse Studio One (Summer Theatre)".
* Adaptations appeared on British and American television in 1956 and 1961.
* 1963:Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Richard Leech as Mr Rochester and Ann Bell as Jane.
* 1973: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Sorcha Cusack as Jane, Michael Jayston as Mr Rochester, Juliet Waley as the child Jane, and Tina Heath as Helen Burns.
* 1978: Telenovela El Ardiente Secreto (English The impassioned secret) was an adaptation of this novel.
* 1982: BBC Classics Presents: Jane Eyrehead. A parody movie by SCTV starred Andrea Martin as Jane Eyrehead, Joe Flaherty as Mr Rochester, also starting John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Martin Short in supporting roles.
* 1983: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Zelah Clarke as Jane, Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester, Sian Pattenden as the child Jane, and Colette Barker as Helen Burns.
* 1997: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the A&E Network and starred Ciaran Hinds as Mr Rochester and Samantha Morton as Jane.
* 2006: Jane Eyre. It was produced by the BBC and starred Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester, Ruth Wilson as Jane, and Georgie Henley as Young Jane.
Literature
* 1938: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier was partially inspired by Jane Eyre.
* 1961: The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart adapts many of the motifs of Jane Eyre to 1950s northern England. The main character, Annabel, falls in love with her older neighbor who is married to a mentally ill woman. Like Jane, Annabel runs away to try to get over her love. The novel begins when she returns from her eight-year exile.
* 1966: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. The character Bertha Mason serves as the main protagonist for this novel which acts as a "prequel" to Jane Eyre. It describes the meeting and marriage of Antoinette (later renamed Bertha by Mr Rochester) and Mr Rochester. In its reshaping of events related to Jane Eyre, the novel suggests that Bertha's madness is the result of Mr Rochester's rejection of her and her Creole heritage. It was also adapted into film twice.
* 1997: Mrs Rochester: A Sequel to Jane Eyre by Hilary Bailey
* 2000: Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant
* 2000: Jane Rochester by Kimberly A. Bennett, content explores the first years of the Rochesters' marriage with gothic and explicit content. A fan favorite.
* 2001 novel The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde revolves around the plot of Jane Eyre. It portrays the book as originally largely free of literary contrivance: Jane and Mr Rochester's first meeting is a simple conversation without the dramatic horse accident, and Jane does not hear his voice calling for her and ends up starting a new life in India. The protagonist's efforts mostly accidentally change it to the real version.
* 2002: Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn, a science fiction novel based upon Jane Eyre
* 2006: The French Dancer's Bastard: The Story of Adele From Jane Eyre by Emma Tennant. This is a slightly modified version of Tennant's 2000 novel.
* 2007: Thornfield Hall: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story by Emma Tennant. This is another version of Jane Eyre.
* 2010: Rochester: A Novel Inspired by Jane Eyre by J.L. Niemann. Jane Eyre told from the first person-perspective of Edward Rochester.
* The novelist Angela Carter was working on a sequel to Jane Eyre at the time of her death in 1992. This was to have been the story of Jane's stepdaughter Adèle Varens and her mother Céline. Only a synopsis survives.
The Lady of the Camellias (French: La Dame aux camélias) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, first published in 1848, that was subsequently adapted for the stage. The Lady of the Camellias premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France on February 2, 1852. An instant success, Giuseppe Verdi immediately set about to put the story to music. His work became the 1853 opera La Traviata with the female protagonist "Marguerite Gautier" renamed "Violetta Valéry".
In the English-speaking world, The Lady of the Camellias became known as Camille and 16 versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone. The titular lady is Marguerite Gautier, who is based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of author Dumas, fils.
Stage performances
Since its debut as a play, numerous editions have been performed at theatres around the world. The role of the tragic "Marguerite Gautier" became one of the most coveted amongst actresses and included performances by Lillian Gish, Eleonora Duse, Margaret Anglin, Gabrielle Réjane, Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne, Isabelle Adjani, Cacilda Becker, and especially Sarah Bernhardt, who starred in Paris, London, and several Broadway revivals, plus a 1912 film. Dancer/Impressario Ida Rubinstein successfully recreated Bernhardt's interpretation of the role onstage in the mid-1920s, coached by the great actress herself before she died.
It is also the inspiration for the 2008 musical Marguerite, which places the story in 1944 German-occupied France.
Adaptations
Film
In addition to inspiring La Traviata, The Lady of the Camellias has been adapted for approximately twenty different motion pictures in numerous countries and in a wide variety of languages. The role of "Marguerite Gautier" has been played on screen by Sarah Bernhardt, Clara Kimball Young, Theda Bara, Yvonne Printemps, Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Micheline Presle, Francesca Bertini, Isabelle Huppert, and others.
films entitled Camille
There have been at least eight adaptations of The Lady of the Camellias entitled Camille.
other films based on La Dame aux Camélias
In addition to the Camille films, the story has been the adapted into numerous other screen versions: Elena Lunda
* Kameliadamen, the first movie based on the work. Kameliadamen was a 1907 Danish silent film directed by Viggo Larsen and starring Oda Alstrup, Larsen, Gustave Lund and Robert Storm Petersen.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1911 French language silent film, directed by André Calmettes and Henri Pouctal. It stars Sarah Bernhardt.
* La Signora delle Camelie, a 1915 Italian language film. It was directed by Baldassarre Negroni and Gustavo Serena. It stars Hesperia, Alberto Collo and Ida Carloni Talli.
* A 1921 English language silent film that stars Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino. It was directed by Ray C. Smallwood.
* Damen med kameliorna, a 1925 Swedish film adapted and directed by Olof Molander. It stars Uno Henning and Tora Teje.
* La Dame aux Camélias, the first sound adaptation. La Dame aux Camélias was a 1934 French film adapted by Abel Gance and directed by Gance and Fernand Rivers. It stars Yvonne Printemps and Pierre Fresnay.
* Greta Garbo had the starring role in Camille (1936), directed by George Cukor
* A 1944 Spanish language version was produced in Mexico. It was adapted by Roberto Tasker and directed by Gabriel Soria, and stars Lina Montes and Emilio Tuero.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1953 French film adapted by Bernard Natanson and directed by Raymond Bernard. It stars Gino Cervi, Micheline Presle and Roland Alexandre.
* Camelia, a 1954 Mexican film adapted by José Arenas, Edmundo Báez, Roberto Gavaldón and Gregorio Walerstein. It was directed by Gavaldón, and stars María Félix.
* La Mujer de las camelias, a 1954 Argentine film adapted by Alexis de Arancibia (as Wassen Eisen) and Ernesto Arancibia, and directed by Ernesto Arancibia. It stars Zully Moreno.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1981 French language film adapted by Jean Aurenche, Enrico Medioli and Vladimir Pozner, and directed by Mauro Bolognini. It stars Isabelle Huppert.
Ballet
* John Neumeier made a The Lady of the Camellias ballet on his Hamburg Ballet company.
* Marguerite and Armand is an adaptation created in 1963 by renowned choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton specifically for Rudolf Nureyev and prima ballerina assoluta Dame Margot Fonteyn.
In the English-speaking world, The Lady of the Camellias became known as Camille and 16 versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone. The titular lady is Marguerite Gautier, who is based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of author Dumas, fils.
Stage performances
Since its debut as a play, numerous editions have been performed at theatres around the world. The role of the tragic "Marguerite Gautier" became one of the most coveted amongst actresses and included performances by Lillian Gish, Eleonora Duse, Margaret Anglin, Gabrielle Réjane, Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne, Isabelle Adjani, Cacilda Becker, and especially Sarah Bernhardt, who starred in Paris, London, and several Broadway revivals, plus a 1912 film. Dancer/Impressario Ida Rubinstein successfully recreated Bernhardt's interpretation of the role onstage in the mid-1920s, coached by the great actress herself before she died.
It is also the inspiration for the 2008 musical Marguerite, which places the story in 1944 German-occupied France.
Adaptations
Film
In addition to inspiring La Traviata, The Lady of the Camellias has been adapted for approximately twenty different motion pictures in numerous countries and in a wide variety of languages. The role of "Marguerite Gautier" has been played on screen by Sarah Bernhardt, Clara Kimball Young, Theda Bara, Yvonne Printemps, Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Micheline Presle, Francesca Bertini, Isabelle Huppert, and others.
films entitled Camille
There have been at least eight adaptations of The Lady of the Camellias entitled Camille.
other films based on La Dame aux Camélias
In addition to the Camille films, the story has been the adapted into numerous other screen versions: Elena Lunda
* Kameliadamen, the first movie based on the work. Kameliadamen was a 1907 Danish silent film directed by Viggo Larsen and starring Oda Alstrup, Larsen, Gustave Lund and Robert Storm Petersen.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1911 French language silent film, directed by André Calmettes and Henri Pouctal. It stars Sarah Bernhardt.
* La Signora delle Camelie, a 1915 Italian language film. It was directed by Baldassarre Negroni and Gustavo Serena. It stars Hesperia, Alberto Collo and Ida Carloni Talli.
* A 1921 English language silent film that stars Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino. It was directed by Ray C. Smallwood.
* Damen med kameliorna, a 1925 Swedish film adapted and directed by Olof Molander. It stars Uno Henning and Tora Teje.
* La Dame aux Camélias, the first sound adaptation. La Dame aux Camélias was a 1934 French film adapted by Abel Gance and directed by Gance and Fernand Rivers. It stars Yvonne Printemps and Pierre Fresnay.
* Greta Garbo had the starring role in Camille (1936), directed by George Cukor
* A 1944 Spanish language version was produced in Mexico. It was adapted by Roberto Tasker and directed by Gabriel Soria, and stars Lina Montes and Emilio Tuero.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1953 French film adapted by Bernard Natanson and directed by Raymond Bernard. It stars Gino Cervi, Micheline Presle and Roland Alexandre.
* Camelia, a 1954 Mexican film adapted by José Arenas, Edmundo Báez, Roberto Gavaldón and Gregorio Walerstein. It was directed by Gavaldón, and stars María Félix.
* La Mujer de las camelias, a 1954 Argentine film adapted by Alexis de Arancibia (as Wassen Eisen) and Ernesto Arancibia, and directed by Ernesto Arancibia. It stars Zully Moreno.
* La Dame aux Camélias, a 1981 French language film adapted by Jean Aurenche, Enrico Medioli and Vladimir Pozner, and directed by Mauro Bolognini. It stars Isabelle Huppert.
Ballet
* John Neumeier made a The Lady of the Camellias ballet on his Hamburg Ballet company.
* Marguerite and Armand is an adaptation created in 1963 by renowned choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton specifically for Rudolf Nureyev and prima ballerina assoluta Dame Margot Fonteyn.
The Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, père, first serialized in March–July 1844. Set in the 17th century, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to become a guard of the musketeers. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, inseparable friends who live by the motto "all for one, one for all" ("tous pour un, un pour tous").
The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the d'Artagnan Romances.
The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the magazine Le Siècle between March and July 1844.
Origin
In the very first sentences of his preface Alexandre Dumas indicated as his source Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, printed by Pierre Rouge in Amsterdam. It was in this book, he said, that d'Artagnan relates his first visit to M. de Tréville, captain of the Musketeers, where in the antechamber he met three young men with the names Athos, Porthos and Aramis. This information struck the imagination of Dumas so much—he tells us—that he continued his investigation and finally encountered once more the names of the three musketeers in a manuscript with the title Mémoire de M. le comte de la Fère, etc.. Elated—so continues his yarn—he asked permission to reprint the manuscript. Permission granted:
"Well, it is the first part of this precious manuscript that we offer today to our readers, while giving it back its more convenient title and under the engagement to publish immediately the second part should this first part be successful. In the meantime, as the godfather is as good as a second father, we invite the reader to address himself to us, and not to the Comte de La Fère, about his pleasure or boredom. This being said, let's get on with our story."
The book he referred to was Mémoires de M .d'Artagnan, capitaine lieutenant de la première compagnie des Mousquetaires du Roi (Memoirs of Mister d'Artagnan, Lieutenant Captain of the first company of the King's Musketeers) by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (Cologne, 1700). The book was borrowed from the Marseille public library, and the card-index remains to this day; Dumas kept the book when he went back to Paris.
Attention to the extent of Dumas' preface is called for when compared with the recent analysis (2008) of the book's origin by Roger MacDonald in his The Man in the Iron Mask:The True Story of the Most Famous Prisoner in History and the Four Musketeers where the identity of the man in the iron mask is presented as real history.
Following Dumas's lead in his preface, Eugène d'Auriac (de la Bibliothèque Royale) in 1847 was able to write the biography of d'Artagnan: d'Artagnan, Capitaine-Lieutenant des Mousquetaires – Sa vie aventureuse – Ses duels – etc. based on Courtilz de Sandras. This work and especially its introduction with reference to the preface is uncited by MacDonald.
Plot summary
Plot brief
The poor d'Artagnan travels to Paris to join the Musketeers. He suffers misadventure and is challenged to a duel by each of three musketeers (Athos, Aramis and Porthos). Attacked by the Cardinal's guards, the four unite and escape.
D'Artagnan and his new love interest, Constance, help the French queen give a particular piece of jewellery to her paramour, the Duke of Buckingham. The Cardinal learns of this and coaxes the French king to hold a ball where the queen must wear the jewellery; its absence will reveal her infidelity. The four companions retrieve the jewellery from England.
The Cardinal kidnaps Constance who is later rescued by the queen. D'Artagnan meets Milady de Winter and discovers she is a felon, the ex-wife of Athos and the widow of Count de Winter. The Cardinal recruits Milady to kill Buckingham, also granting her a hand-written pardon for the future killing of d'Artagnan. Athos learns of this, takes the pardon but is unable to warn Buckingham. He sends word to Lord de Winter that Milady is arriving; Lord de Winter arrests her on suspicion of killing Count de Winter, his brother.
She seduces her guard and escapes to the monastery in France where the queen secreted Constance. Milady kills Constance. The four companions arrive and Athos identifies her as a multiple murderess. She is tried and beheaded.
On the road, d'Artagnan is arrested. Taken before the Cardinal, d'Artagnan relates recent events and reveals the Cardinal’s pardon. Impressed, the Cardinal offers him a blank musketeer officer's commission. D’Artagnan’s friends refuse the commission, each retiring to a new life, telling him to take it himself.
Detailed plot summary
The main character, d'Artagnan, born into an impoverished noble family of Gascony, leaves home for Paris to fulfill his greatest dream: becoming a Musketeer of the Guard. Fortunately his father knows Monsieur De Treville, Captain of the Company of Musketeers (and fellow Gascon) and has written a letter of introduction. On the road to Paris, the young Gascon soon gets in a quarrel with a mysterious gentleman and is set upon by the servants of the nearby inn. When d'Artagnan regains consciousness he realizes that the gentleman has stolen his letter of introduction. The innkeeper manages to get his hands on much of d'Artagnan's limited money as he recuperates.
In Paris d'Artagnan goes straight to M. De Treville's hôtel, but lacking his father's letter is received somewhat coolly. In a series of incidents at the hôtel, d'Artagnan is challenged to duels by three musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The four men meet and d'Artagnan begins to fight Athos (the first challenger). They are interrupted by Cardinal Richelieu's guards who threaten to arrest them because duels are forbidden by royal decree. The three musketeers and d'Artagnan unite to defeat the cardinal's guards. In this manner the young Gascon earns the respect and friendship of Athos, Porthos and Aramis and soon becomes a soldier in a regiment of the Royal Guard.
After obtaining lodging and hiring a servant (Planchet), he meets his aging landlord's pretty young wife, Constance Bonacieux, with whom he falls instantly in love. Constance and d'Artagnan help the Queen Consort of France, Anne of Austria, and the Duke of Buckingham have a rendezvous and the Queen presents her lover with a wooden box containing a set of diamond jewels originally given to her by her husband Louis XIII. Cardinal Richelieu, informed by his spies of the gift, persuades the King to invite the Queen to a ball where she would be expected to wear the diamonds; in hopes of uncovering her love affair.
Constance attempts to get her husband to go to London and retrieve the diamonds, but he has been recruited as an agent by the cardinal and refuses. D'Artagnan and his friends are convinced to take on the mission instead. After a series of adventures, they retrieve the jewels and return them to Queen Anne, just in time to save her façade of honour. Athos, Porthos and Aramis are all badly wounded by the cardinal's agents in this endeavor.
The cardinal's revenge comes swiftly: the next evening, Constance is kidnapped. D'Artagnan brings his friends back to Paris and tries to find her, but fails. Meanwhile, he befriends the Lord de Winter, an English nobleman who introduces him to his sister-in-law, Milady de Winter. D'Artagnan quickly develops a crush on the pretty noblewoman, but soon learns that she has no love for him, being an agent for the cardinal. He manages to sleep with her and learns that Milady has a fleur-de-lis burned into her shoulder, marking her as a felon. She had apparently been married to both Athos and the Count de Winter at different times in her wicked life and was livid that the young musketeer knew her secret. D'Artagnan is able to escape her home but is relieved when all the King's guards are ordered to La Rochelle where a siege of the Protestant-held town is taking place.
Milady makes several attempts to kill d'Artagnan in and around La Rochelle, but fails. At the same time, d'Artagnan finds out that the Queen has managed to save Constance from the prison where the cardinal and Milady had thrown her and that his beloved is now hidden somewhere safe.
The Musketeers stake out the inn and overhear a conversation between the cardinal and Milady, during which the cardinal asks her to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham (a supporter of the Protestant Rochellais rebels). The churchman then writes out a blanket pardon to Milady, effectively giving her permission to kill d'Artagnan. Athos quickly confronts his former wife and forces her to relinquish the cardinal's pardon. Because of the war between France and England, any attempt by the musketeers to warn the Duke of Buckingham about Milady would be considered treason, but they are able to send Planchet with a letter to Milady's brother-in-law (Lord de Winter) who suspects Milady killed his brother.
Milady is imprisoned on arrival in England, but soon seduces her hard-hearted Puritan jailer Felton and convinces him not only to help her escape, but also to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham. While the naive Felton shanks the prime minister, Milady sails to France. Milady sends a message to the cardinal and hides in the same North French monastery where Constance had been sent by the Queen. The trusting Constance bares her soul to Milady and the evil woman realizes that her enemy d'Artagnan is expected to arrive at the monastery at any moment. She escapes just before his arrival, but not before taking her revenge: she poisons Constance who dies minutes later in the arms of her beloved d'Artagnan.
They arrange to track down the whereabouts of Milady to exact punishment, joined by the Lord de Winter. The noblemen find her and try the countess on numerous charges: the poisoning of Madame Bonacieux; the assassination attempts on d'Artagnan; accomplice to the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham; the corruption of the Lord de Winter's servant, Felton; and the assassination of her late husband, Count de Winter. The most damning charge comes when Athos states that Milady, his wife, is a marked criminal with a brand on her shoulder. When the countess demands that Athos present the one who branded her, a man in a red cloak steps forward. She immediately recognizes him as the executioner of Lille and he recounts Milady's early misdeeds that led to the brand.
After Milady is beheaded the musketeers return to La Rochelle. On their way they encounter the Count of Rochefort, who was traveling to Milady to pay her. Rochefort also has an order to arrest d'Artagnan. He decides to postpone his trip to Milady in order to take d'Artagnan directly to the cardinal. When the young Gascon is presented before him the entire story about Milady's assassination attempts, her poisoning of Madame Bonacieux, etc. is told. The cardinal states that if Milady is indeed guilty, the courts will deal harshly with her. D'Artagnan frankly admits that he and his friends have already dealt with this evil woman. He then presents Richelieu with the blanket pardon written in the cardinal's own hand. The cardinal, impressed by d'Artagnan's resourcefulness and having already gotten what he wanted from Milady, offers the young man a lieutenant's commission with the musketeers — with the name left blank. The cardinal then presents Rochefort and asks both men to be on good terms.
The book ends with d'Artagnan offering the officer's commission to each of his friends, but he is told that he should insert his own name. Athos intends to retire to his estates, Porthos has decided to marry the widow of a rich lawyer and Aramis will soon fulfill his dream of entering the priesthood. Their lives will cross again, in Twenty Years After.
Important characters
Musketeers
* Athos
* Porthos
* Aramis
D'Artagnan was not one of the titular "three musketeers." The novel recounts his becoming a musketeer.
Musketeers' servants
* Planchet (d'Artagnan) – A clever fellow whom Porthos found to serve d'Artagnan.
* Grimaud (Athos) – A Breton, trained to speak only in emergencies and mostly communicates through sign language.
* Mousqueton (Porthos) – A would-be dandy, just as vain as his master, whose only pay is his master's old clothes
* Bazin (Aramis) – Waits for the day his master will join the church, as Bazin has always dreamed to serve a priest.
Others
* Milady de Winter
* Cardinal Richelieu
* Comte de Rochefort
* Louis XIII of France
* M. de Tréville
* Constance Bonacieux
* Monsieur Bonacieux
* Queen Anne of Austria
* George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
Editions
Les Trois Mousquetaires was translated into three English versions by 1846. One of these, by William Barrow, is still in print and fairly faithful to the original, available in the Oxford World's Classics 1999 edition. However, all of the explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality had been removed to conform to 19th-century English standards, thereby making the scenes between d'Artagnan and Milady, for example, confusing and strange. The most recent and now standard English translation is by Richard Pevear (2006), who in his introduction notes that most of the modern translations available today are "textbook examples of bad translation practices" which "give their readers an extremely distorted notion of Dumas' writing."
Adaptations
Musical theatre
The Three Musketeers is a musical with a book by William Anthony McGuire, lyrics by Clifford Grey and P. G. Wodehouse, and music by Rudolf Friml. The original 1928 production ran on Broadway for 318 performances. A 1984 revival ran for 15 previews and 9 performances. In 2003 a Dutch musical 3 Musketiers premiered, which went on to open in Germany (both the Dutch and German production starring Pia Douwes as Milady De Winter) and Hungary. Composer George Stiles, lyricist Paul Leigh and playwright Peter Raby have produced another version (under the title The 3 Musketeers, One Musical For All), which opened at the American Musical Theatre of San José on 10 March 2001.
Films
See The Three Musketeers (film) for a list of film adaptations.
Games
1995 saw the release by publisher U.S. Gold of Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer by video game developers Clipper Software, a classic point-and-click adventure game using the SCUMM engine.
In 2005, Swedish developer Legendo Entertainment published the side-scrolling platform game The Three Musketeers for Windows XP and Windows Vista. In July 2009, a version of the game was released for WiiWare in North America and Europe under the title The Three Musketeers: One for All!.
In 2009, Canadian developer Dingo Games self-published The Three Musketeers: The Game for Windows and Mac OS X. It is the first game to be truly based on the novel (in that it closely follows the novel's story).
2009 also saw the publication of the asymmetric team board game The Three Musketeers "The Queen's Pendants" (Настольная игра «Три мушкетера») from French designer Pascal Bernard by the Russian publisher Zvezda.
Television
* Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds is an anthropomorphic animated series adaptation
* Albert the Fifth Musketeer, animated series which is a sequel to the novel
* Young Blades, television series which is a sequel to the novels, centered on the son of d'Artagnan
* Three Musketeers is an anime series adaption
* The Three Musketeers, an animated adaption that aired as part of Hanna-Barbera's "The Banana Splits Comedy-Adventure Hour" & "The Banana Splits & Friends" show.
Influence on later works
In 1939, American author Tiffany Thayer published a book entitled Three Musketeers (Thayer, 1939). This is a re-telling of the story in Thayer's words, true to the original plot but told in a different order and with different points of view and emphasis from the original. For example, the book opens with the scene of Milady's youth and how she came to be branded, and more development of her early character, making her later scheming more believable and understandable. Thayer's treatment of sex and sexual politics is more explicit than typical English translations of the original, occasionally leading to consternation when this book found its way to library children's sections and school libraries.
The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the d'Artagnan Romances.
The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the magazine Le Siècle between March and July 1844.
Origin
In the very first sentences of his preface Alexandre Dumas indicated as his source Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, printed by Pierre Rouge in Amsterdam. It was in this book, he said, that d'Artagnan relates his first visit to M. de Tréville, captain of the Musketeers, where in the antechamber he met three young men with the names Athos, Porthos and Aramis. This information struck the imagination of Dumas so much—he tells us—that he continued his investigation and finally encountered once more the names of the three musketeers in a manuscript with the title Mémoire de M. le comte de la Fère, etc.. Elated—so continues his yarn—he asked permission to reprint the manuscript. Permission granted:
"Well, it is the first part of this precious manuscript that we offer today to our readers, while giving it back its more convenient title and under the engagement to publish immediately the second part should this first part be successful. In the meantime, as the godfather is as good as a second father, we invite the reader to address himself to us, and not to the Comte de La Fère, about his pleasure or boredom. This being said, let's get on with our story."
The book he referred to was Mémoires de M .d'Artagnan, capitaine lieutenant de la première compagnie des Mousquetaires du Roi (Memoirs of Mister d'Artagnan, Lieutenant Captain of the first company of the King's Musketeers) by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (Cologne, 1700). The book was borrowed from the Marseille public library, and the card-index remains to this day; Dumas kept the book when he went back to Paris.
Attention to the extent of Dumas' preface is called for when compared with the recent analysis (2008) of the book's origin by Roger MacDonald in his The Man in the Iron Mask:The True Story of the Most Famous Prisoner in History and the Four Musketeers where the identity of the man in the iron mask is presented as real history.
Following Dumas's lead in his preface, Eugène d'Auriac (de la Bibliothèque Royale) in 1847 was able to write the biography of d'Artagnan: d'Artagnan, Capitaine-Lieutenant des Mousquetaires – Sa vie aventureuse – Ses duels – etc. based on Courtilz de Sandras. This work and especially its introduction with reference to the preface is uncited by MacDonald.
Plot summary
Plot brief
The poor d'Artagnan travels to Paris to join the Musketeers. He suffers misadventure and is challenged to a duel by each of three musketeers (Athos, Aramis and Porthos). Attacked by the Cardinal's guards, the four unite and escape.
D'Artagnan and his new love interest, Constance, help the French queen give a particular piece of jewellery to her paramour, the Duke of Buckingham. The Cardinal learns of this and coaxes the French king to hold a ball where the queen must wear the jewellery; its absence will reveal her infidelity. The four companions retrieve the jewellery from England.
The Cardinal kidnaps Constance who is later rescued by the queen. D'Artagnan meets Milady de Winter and discovers she is a felon, the ex-wife of Athos and the widow of Count de Winter. The Cardinal recruits Milady to kill Buckingham, also granting her a hand-written pardon for the future killing of d'Artagnan. Athos learns of this, takes the pardon but is unable to warn Buckingham. He sends word to Lord de Winter that Milady is arriving; Lord de Winter arrests her on suspicion of killing Count de Winter, his brother.
She seduces her guard and escapes to the monastery in France where the queen secreted Constance. Milady kills Constance. The four companions arrive and Athos identifies her as a multiple murderess. She is tried and beheaded.
On the road, d'Artagnan is arrested. Taken before the Cardinal, d'Artagnan relates recent events and reveals the Cardinal’s pardon. Impressed, the Cardinal offers him a blank musketeer officer's commission. D’Artagnan’s friends refuse the commission, each retiring to a new life, telling him to take it himself.
Detailed plot summary
The main character, d'Artagnan, born into an impoverished noble family of Gascony, leaves home for Paris to fulfill his greatest dream: becoming a Musketeer of the Guard. Fortunately his father knows Monsieur De Treville, Captain of the Company of Musketeers (and fellow Gascon) and has written a letter of introduction. On the road to Paris, the young Gascon soon gets in a quarrel with a mysterious gentleman and is set upon by the servants of the nearby inn. When d'Artagnan regains consciousness he realizes that the gentleman has stolen his letter of introduction. The innkeeper manages to get his hands on much of d'Artagnan's limited money as he recuperates.
In Paris d'Artagnan goes straight to M. De Treville's hôtel, but lacking his father's letter is received somewhat coolly. In a series of incidents at the hôtel, d'Artagnan is challenged to duels by three musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The four men meet and d'Artagnan begins to fight Athos (the first challenger). They are interrupted by Cardinal Richelieu's guards who threaten to arrest them because duels are forbidden by royal decree. The three musketeers and d'Artagnan unite to defeat the cardinal's guards. In this manner the young Gascon earns the respect and friendship of Athos, Porthos and Aramis and soon becomes a soldier in a regiment of the Royal Guard.
After obtaining lodging and hiring a servant (Planchet), he meets his aging landlord's pretty young wife, Constance Bonacieux, with whom he falls instantly in love. Constance and d'Artagnan help the Queen Consort of France, Anne of Austria, and the Duke of Buckingham have a rendezvous and the Queen presents her lover with a wooden box containing a set of diamond jewels originally given to her by her husband Louis XIII. Cardinal Richelieu, informed by his spies of the gift, persuades the King to invite the Queen to a ball where she would be expected to wear the diamonds; in hopes of uncovering her love affair.
Constance attempts to get her husband to go to London and retrieve the diamonds, but he has been recruited as an agent by the cardinal and refuses. D'Artagnan and his friends are convinced to take on the mission instead. After a series of adventures, they retrieve the jewels and return them to Queen Anne, just in time to save her façade of honour. Athos, Porthos and Aramis are all badly wounded by the cardinal's agents in this endeavor.
The cardinal's revenge comes swiftly: the next evening, Constance is kidnapped. D'Artagnan brings his friends back to Paris and tries to find her, but fails. Meanwhile, he befriends the Lord de Winter, an English nobleman who introduces him to his sister-in-law, Milady de Winter. D'Artagnan quickly develops a crush on the pretty noblewoman, but soon learns that she has no love for him, being an agent for the cardinal. He manages to sleep with her and learns that Milady has a fleur-de-lis burned into her shoulder, marking her as a felon. She had apparently been married to both Athos and the Count de Winter at different times in her wicked life and was livid that the young musketeer knew her secret. D'Artagnan is able to escape her home but is relieved when all the King's guards are ordered to La Rochelle where a siege of the Protestant-held town is taking place.
Milady makes several attempts to kill d'Artagnan in and around La Rochelle, but fails. At the same time, d'Artagnan finds out that the Queen has managed to save Constance from the prison where the cardinal and Milady had thrown her and that his beloved is now hidden somewhere safe.
The Musketeers stake out the inn and overhear a conversation between the cardinal and Milady, during which the cardinal asks her to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham (a supporter of the Protestant Rochellais rebels). The churchman then writes out a blanket pardon to Milady, effectively giving her permission to kill d'Artagnan. Athos quickly confronts his former wife and forces her to relinquish the cardinal's pardon. Because of the war between France and England, any attempt by the musketeers to warn the Duke of Buckingham about Milady would be considered treason, but they are able to send Planchet with a letter to Milady's brother-in-law (Lord de Winter) who suspects Milady killed his brother.
Milady is imprisoned on arrival in England, but soon seduces her hard-hearted Puritan jailer Felton and convinces him not only to help her escape, but also to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham. While the naive Felton shanks the prime minister, Milady sails to France. Milady sends a message to the cardinal and hides in the same North French monastery where Constance had been sent by the Queen. The trusting Constance bares her soul to Milady and the evil woman realizes that her enemy d'Artagnan is expected to arrive at the monastery at any moment. She escapes just before his arrival, but not before taking her revenge: she poisons Constance who dies minutes later in the arms of her beloved d'Artagnan.
They arrange to track down the whereabouts of Milady to exact punishment, joined by the Lord de Winter. The noblemen find her and try the countess on numerous charges: the poisoning of Madame Bonacieux; the assassination attempts on d'Artagnan; accomplice to the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham; the corruption of the Lord de Winter's servant, Felton; and the assassination of her late husband, Count de Winter. The most damning charge comes when Athos states that Milady, his wife, is a marked criminal with a brand on her shoulder. When the countess demands that Athos present the one who branded her, a man in a red cloak steps forward. She immediately recognizes him as the executioner of Lille and he recounts Milady's early misdeeds that led to the brand.
After Milady is beheaded the musketeers return to La Rochelle. On their way they encounter the Count of Rochefort, who was traveling to Milady to pay her. Rochefort also has an order to arrest d'Artagnan. He decides to postpone his trip to Milady in order to take d'Artagnan directly to the cardinal. When the young Gascon is presented before him the entire story about Milady's assassination attempts, her poisoning of Madame Bonacieux, etc. is told. The cardinal states that if Milady is indeed guilty, the courts will deal harshly with her. D'Artagnan frankly admits that he and his friends have already dealt with this evil woman. He then presents Richelieu with the blanket pardon written in the cardinal's own hand. The cardinal, impressed by d'Artagnan's resourcefulness and having already gotten what he wanted from Milady, offers the young man a lieutenant's commission with the musketeers — with the name left blank. The cardinal then presents Rochefort and asks both men to be on good terms.
The book ends with d'Artagnan offering the officer's commission to each of his friends, but he is told that he should insert his own name. Athos intends to retire to his estates, Porthos has decided to marry the widow of a rich lawyer and Aramis will soon fulfill his dream of entering the priesthood. Their lives will cross again, in Twenty Years After.
Important characters
Musketeers
* Athos
* Porthos
* Aramis
D'Artagnan was not one of the titular "three musketeers." The novel recounts his becoming a musketeer.
Musketeers' servants
* Planchet (d'Artagnan) – A clever fellow whom Porthos found to serve d'Artagnan.
* Grimaud (Athos) – A Breton, trained to speak only in emergencies and mostly communicates through sign language.
* Mousqueton (Porthos) – A would-be dandy, just as vain as his master, whose only pay is his master's old clothes
* Bazin (Aramis) – Waits for the day his master will join the church, as Bazin has always dreamed to serve a priest.
Others
* Milady de Winter
* Cardinal Richelieu
* Comte de Rochefort
* Louis XIII of France
* M. de Tréville
* Constance Bonacieux
* Monsieur Bonacieux
* Queen Anne of Austria
* George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
Editions
Les Trois Mousquetaires was translated into three English versions by 1846. One of these, by William Barrow, is still in print and fairly faithful to the original, available in the Oxford World's Classics 1999 edition. However, all of the explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality had been removed to conform to 19th-century English standards, thereby making the scenes between d'Artagnan and Milady, for example, confusing and strange. The most recent and now standard English translation is by Richard Pevear (2006), who in his introduction notes that most of the modern translations available today are "textbook examples of bad translation practices" which "give their readers an extremely distorted notion of Dumas' writing."
Adaptations
Musical theatre
The Three Musketeers is a musical with a book by William Anthony McGuire, lyrics by Clifford Grey and P. G. Wodehouse, and music by Rudolf Friml. The original 1928 production ran on Broadway for 318 performances. A 1984 revival ran for 15 previews and 9 performances. In 2003 a Dutch musical 3 Musketiers premiered, which went on to open in Germany (both the Dutch and German production starring Pia Douwes as Milady De Winter) and Hungary. Composer George Stiles, lyricist Paul Leigh and playwright Peter Raby have produced another version (under the title The 3 Musketeers, One Musical For All), which opened at the American Musical Theatre of San José on 10 March 2001.
Films
See The Three Musketeers (film) for a list of film adaptations.
Games
1995 saw the release by publisher U.S. Gold of Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer by video game developers Clipper Software, a classic point-and-click adventure game using the SCUMM engine.
In 2005, Swedish developer Legendo Entertainment published the side-scrolling platform game The Three Musketeers for Windows XP and Windows Vista. In July 2009, a version of the game was released for WiiWare in North America and Europe under the title The Three Musketeers: One for All!.
In 2009, Canadian developer Dingo Games self-published The Three Musketeers: The Game for Windows and Mac OS X. It is the first game to be truly based on the novel (in that it closely follows the novel's story).
2009 also saw the publication of the asymmetric team board game The Three Musketeers "The Queen's Pendants" (Настольная игра «Три мушкетера») from French designer Pascal Bernard by the Russian publisher Zvezda.
Television
* Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds is an anthropomorphic animated series adaptation
* Albert the Fifth Musketeer, animated series which is a sequel to the novel
* Young Blades, television series which is a sequel to the novels, centered on the son of d'Artagnan
* Three Musketeers is an anime series adaption
* The Three Musketeers, an animated adaption that aired as part of Hanna-Barbera's "The Banana Splits Comedy-Adventure Hour" & "The Banana Splits & Friends" show.
Influence on later works
In 1939, American author Tiffany Thayer published a book entitled Three Musketeers (Thayer, 1939). This is a re-telling of the story in Thayer's words, true to the original plot but told in a different order and with different points of view and emphasis from the original. For example, the book opens with the scene of Milady's youth and how she came to be branded, and more development of her early character, making her later scheming more believable and understandable. Thayer's treatment of sex and sexual politics is more explicit than typical English translations of the original, occasionally leading to consternation when this book found its way to library children's sections and school libraries.
Wuthering Heights is a gothic novel, and the only novel by Emily Brontë. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte.
The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective; wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.
Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was initially considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior. Wuthering Heights has also given rise to many adaptations and inspired works, including films, radio, television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, ballet, opera, and song.
Plot
Writing in his diary, Mr. Lockwood describes arriving in the winter of 1801, at the manor house of Thrushcross Grange, on the Yorkshire moors in northern England. He soon meets his landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy man and the master of nearby Wuthering Heights. Despite not being welcome at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood returns for a second visit and is forced to stay overnight, due to a snow storm. Unable to sleep, he finds the diary of a girl named Catherine Earnshaw and reads an entry. Lockwood learns that she was a close childhood friend of Heathcliff. Later, he has a nightmare in which the ghost of a young girl appears at his window and begs to be let in. While Lockwood struggles to keep the ghost out of his room, Heathcliff is awakened by his cries of terror and rushes into the room. Upon hearing of Catherine's ghost, he asks Lockwood to leave the room. Standing outside the door, Lockwood hears Heathcliff sobbing, opening the window, and calling for Catherine to enter.
Upon returning to Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the others at Wuthering Heights. Nelly begins her story thirty years earlier, when Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff, an orphan boy, home to raise with his own children, Hindley and Catherine. Eventually, Mr. Earnshaw comes to favour Heathcliff over his own children. Both Earnshaw children initially resent Heathcliff, but soon he and Catherine become inseparable. Hindley continues to hate and physically abuse him
Mr. Earnshaw dies three years later and Hindley, now married to Frances after returning from boarding school, inherits Wuthering Heights. He brutalises Heathcliff, forcing him to work as a hired hand. Catherine becomes friends with the neighboring Linton family who live at Thrushcross Grange, and Mrs. Linton starts teaching her to be a proper lady. She is attracted to young Edgar Linton, whom Heathcliff immediately dislikes.
A year later, Frances dies from consumption shortly after giving birth to a son, Hareton. Hindley takes to drinking and becomes even more abusive to Heathcliff. Some two years later, Catherine informs Nelly that she wishes to marry Edgar Linton, as it will give her status and riches; despite her love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff, upon hearing this, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return three years later, soon after Catherine and Edgar are wed.
Heathcliff has apparently become a wealthy, respectable gentleman and now seeks revenge against all those he believes have wronged him. Heathcliff makes loans to Hindley that he knows cannot be repaid. Intent on ruining Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's sister, Isabella Linton, setting himself up to inherit Thrushcross Grange. After their marriage, Heathcliff becomes very cruel and abusive towards Isabella.
Catherine becomes very ill and dies shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. A few hours before her death, however, she and Heathcliff reaffirm their feelings for one another. After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff becomes more bitter and vengeful towards those around him. Isabella flees to London a month later and gives birth to a boy, Linton Heathcliff.
About this time, Hindley dies. Heathcliff takes ownership of Wuthering Heights and raises Hindley's son, Hareton, with as much neglect as he had suffered at Hindley's hands.
Thirteen years later, Isabella dies and Linton comes to live at Wuthering Heights with his father, Heathcliff. He treats his son even more cruelly than he treated his wife. Three years pass and Heathcliff invites Cathy to Wuthering Heights. He then introduces her to his son, Linton, wishing them to marry which would strengthen his claim on Thrushcross Grange.
Cathy receives news that Linton has fallen ill. She hurries to Wuthering Heights to see if she can be of help. Linton's health declines swiftly and Heathcliff puts Cathy under house arrest, forcing her to marry his son. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, followed shortly by Linton. Heathcliff has now gained complete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Cathy to stay at Wuthering Heights and treats her as a common servant. It is at this point in the narrative that Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff, and Nelly’s story reaches the present day. Lockwood is appalled and leaves for London.
Lockwood returns six months later to visit Nelly. She tells him that in his absence, Cathy gradually softened toward her rough, uneducated cousin Hareton, just as Catherine was tender towards Heathcliff. Having originally mocked Hareton for his illiteracy, she now teaches him to read. He allows her to open up again after becoming so bitter from Heathcliff's brutal treatment.
When Heathcliff is confronted by Cathy and Hareton's love, he seems to suffer a mental breakdown and begins to see Catherine's ghost. He seemingly abandons his life-long vendetta and dies, having "swallowed nothing for four days". Nelly describes finding Heathcliff lying on the bed, stiff with rigor mortis. Only Hareton mourns Heathcliff's death. He is buried next to Catherine in the graveyard. Cathy and Hareton inherit Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and plan their wedding for New Year’s Day. Upon hearing the end of the story, Lockwood leaves Nelly and on his walk home he visits the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.
Characters
* Heathcliff: Found, and presumably orphaned, on the streets of Liverpool, he is taken to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw and reluctantly cared for by the rest of the family. He and Catherine later grow close, and their love becomes the central theme of the first volume; his revenge and its consequences are the main theme of the second volume. Heathcliff is typically considered a Byronic hero, but critics have found his character, with a capacity for self-invention, to be profoundly difficult to assess. His position in society, without status (Heathcliff serves as both his given name and surname), is often the subject of Marxist criticism.
* Catherine Earnshaw: First introduced in Lockwood's discovery of her diary and etchings, Catherine's life is almost entirely detailed in the first volume. She seemingly suffers from a crisis of identity, unable to choose between nature and culture (and, by extension, Heathcliff and Edgar). Her decision to marry Edgar Linton over Heathcliff has been seen as a surrender to culture, and has implications for all the characters of Wuthering Heights. The character of Catherine has been analysed by many forms of literary criticism, including: psychoanalytic and feminist.
* Edgar Linton: Introduced as a child of the Linton family, who reside at Thrushcross Grange, Edgar's life and mannerisms are immediately contrasted with those of Heathcliff and Catherine, and indeed the former dislikes him. Yet, owing much to his status, Catherine marries him and not Heathcliff. This decision, and the differences between Edgar and Heathcliff, have been read into by feminist criticisms.
* Nelly Dean: The second and primary narrator of the novel, Nelly has been a servant of each generation of both the Earnshaw and Linton families. She is presented as a character who straddles the idea of a 'culture versus nature' divide in the novel: she is a local of the area and a servant, and has experienced life at Wuthering Heights. However, she is also an educated woman and has lived at Thrushcross Grange. This idea is represented in her having two names, Ellen—her given name and used to show respect, and Nelly—used by her familiars. Whether Nelly is an unbiased narrator and how far her actions, as an apparent bystander, affect the other characters are two points of her character discussed by critics.
* Isabella Linton: Introduced as part of the Linton family, Isabella is only ever shown in relation to other characters. She views Heathcliff as a romantic hero, despite Catherine warning her against such an opinion, and becomes an unwitting participant in his plot for revenge. After being married to Heathcliff and abused at Wuthering Heights, she escapes to London and gives birth to Linton. Such abusive treatment has led many, especially feminist critics, to consider Isabella the true/conventional 'tragic romantic' figure of Wuthering Heights.
* Hindley Earnshaw
* Hareton Earnshaw
* Catherine Linton
* Linton Heathcliff
* Joseph
* Lockwood
Timeline
1500: The stone above the front door of Wuthering Heights, bearing the name of Mr Earnshaw, is inscribed, possibly to mark the completion of the house.
1757: Hindley Earnshaw born (summer); Nelly Dean born
1762: Edgar Linton born
1765: Catherine Earnshaw born (summer); Isabella Linton born (late 1765)
1771: Heathcliff brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr Earnshaw (late summer)
1773: Mrs Earnshaw dies (spring)
1774: Hindley sent off to college
1777: Hindley marries Frances; Mr Earnshaw dies and Hindley comes back (October); Heathcliff and Cathy visit Thrushcross Grange for the first time; Cathy remains behind (November), and then returns to Wuthering Heights (Christmas Eve)
1778: Hareton born (June); Frances dies
1780: Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights; Mr and Mrs Linton both die
1783: Catherine has married Edgar (March); Heathcliff comes back (September)
1784: Heathcliff marries Isabella (February); Catherine dies and Cathy born (20 March); Hindley dies; Linton born (September)
1797: Isabella dies; Cathy visits Wuthering Heights and meets Hareton; Linton brought to Thrushcross Grange and then taken to Wuthering Heights
1800: Cathy meets Heathcliff and sees Linton again (20 March)
1801: Cathy and Linton are married (August); Edgar dies (August); Linton dies (September); Mr Lockwood goes to Thrushcross Grange and visits Wuthering Heights, beginning his narrative
1802: Mr Lockwood goes back to London (January); Heathcliff dies (April); Mr Lockwood comes back to Thrushcross Grange (September)
1803: Cathy plans to marry Hareton (1 January)
Development history
There are several theories as to which building was the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. One is Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse, that is located in a isolated area near the Haworth Parsonage. Yet, its structure does not match that of the farmhouse described in the novel, and is therefore considered less likely to be the model. Top Withens was first suggested as the model for the fictitious farmhouse by Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte Brontë's, to Edward Morison Wimperis, a commissioned artist for the Brontë sisters' novels in 1872.
The second option is the now demolished High Sunderland Hall, near Halifax, West Yorkshire. This Gothic edifice is located near Law Hill, and was where Emily worked briefly as a governess in 1838. While very grand for the farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, the hall had grotesque embellishments of griffins and misshapen nude men similar to those described by Lockwood of Wuthering Heights in chapter one of the novel:
"Before passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door, above which, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date '1500'".
The inspiration for Thrushcross Grange has been traditionally connected to Ponden Hall, near Haworth, although very small. More likely is Shibden Hall, near Halifax.
Critical response
Early reviews
Early reviews of Wuthering Heights were mixed in their assessment. Whilst most critics recognised the power and imagination of the novel, many found the story unlikeable and ambiguous.[note 1] Released in 1847, at a time when the background of the author was deemed to have an important impact on the story itself, many critics were also intrigued by the authorship of the novels.[note 2] H. F. Chorley of the Athenaeum said that it was a "disagreeable story" and that the 'Bells' (Brontës) "seem to affect painful and exceptional subjects". The Atlas review called it a "strange, inartistic story", but commented that every chapter seems to contain a "sort of rugged power". It supported the second point made in the Athenaeum, suggesting that the general effect of the novel was "inexpressibly painful", but adding that all of its subjects were either "utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible".
The Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper critique was more positive, emphasizing the "great power" of the novel and its provocative qualities; it said that it was a "strange sort of book—baffling all regular criticism" and that "[it is] impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it". Although the Examiner agreed on the strangeness, it saw the book as "wild, confused; disjointed and improbable". The Britannia review mirrored those comments made on the unpleasant characters, arguing that it would have been a "far better romance" if the characters were not "nearly as violent and destructive as [Heathcliff]". The unidentified review was less critical, considering it a "work of great ability" and that "it is not every day that so good a novel makes its appearance".
Adaptations
The earliest known film adaptation of Wuthering Heights was filmed in England and directed by A. V. Bramble. It is unknown if any prints still exist. The most famous was 1939's Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon and directed by William Wyler. This adaptation, like many others, eliminated the second generation's story (young Cathy, Linton and Hareton). It won the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film and was nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Best Picture.
The 1970 film with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff is notable for emphasizing that Heathcliff may be Cathy's illegitimate half-brother. This is the first colour version of the novel, and gained acceptance over the years though it was initially poorly received. The character of Hindley is portrayed much more sympathetically, and his story-arc is altered.
The 1992 film Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche is notable for including the oft-omitted second generation story of the children of Cathy, Hindley , and Heathcliff.
Adaptations which reset the story in a new setting include the 1954 adaptation by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel set in Catholic Mexico, with Heathcliff and Cathy renamed Alejandro and Catalina, and Yoshishige Yoshida's 1988 adaptation which set the story in Tokugawa period Japan. In 2003, MTV produced a poorly reviewed version set in a modern California with the characters as high school students.
The novel has been popular in opera and theatre, including operas written by Bernard Herrmann and Carlisle Floyd (both of which like many films cover only the first half of the book) and a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, as well as a song by Kate Bush.
In autumn of 2008, Mark Ryan launched a dramatic musical adaptation of the novel, narrated by Beowulf and Sexy Beast star Ray Winstone. He composed, sang and produced the tracks with Robb Vallier who also worked on Spamalot. He also directed the video for the song "Women" filmed especially for the website and featuring Jennifer Korbee, Jessica Keenan Wynn and Katie Boeck.
In August 2009 ITV aired a two part drama series starring Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Sarah Lancashire, and Andrew Lincoln.
Announced in April 2008, Natalie Portman was originally set to star as Cathy in a new film adaptation of the novel, but she left the project in May. In May 2008, director John Maybury cast Michael Fassbender as Heathcliff and Abbie Cornish as Cathy. They later left the project and in May 2009, Peter Webber was announced as the director, with Ed Westwick and Gemma Arterton attached to play Heathcliff and Cathy respectively. However, the project did not get off the ground and Andrea Arnold signed on to direct in January 2010. Kaya Scodelario was then cast as Cathy, with the filmmakers searching for an unknown young Yorkshire actor to play Heathcliff.
The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective; wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.
Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was initially considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior. Wuthering Heights has also given rise to many adaptations and inspired works, including films, radio, television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, ballet, opera, and song.
Plot
Writing in his diary, Mr. Lockwood describes arriving in the winter of 1801, at the manor house of Thrushcross Grange, on the Yorkshire moors in northern England. He soon meets his landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy man and the master of nearby Wuthering Heights. Despite not being welcome at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood returns for a second visit and is forced to stay overnight, due to a snow storm. Unable to sleep, he finds the diary of a girl named Catherine Earnshaw and reads an entry. Lockwood learns that she was a close childhood friend of Heathcliff. Later, he has a nightmare in which the ghost of a young girl appears at his window and begs to be let in. While Lockwood struggles to keep the ghost out of his room, Heathcliff is awakened by his cries of terror and rushes into the room. Upon hearing of Catherine's ghost, he asks Lockwood to leave the room. Standing outside the door, Lockwood hears Heathcliff sobbing, opening the window, and calling for Catherine to enter.
Upon returning to Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the others at Wuthering Heights. Nelly begins her story thirty years earlier, when Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff, an orphan boy, home to raise with his own children, Hindley and Catherine. Eventually, Mr. Earnshaw comes to favour Heathcliff over his own children. Both Earnshaw children initially resent Heathcliff, but soon he and Catherine become inseparable. Hindley continues to hate and physically abuse him
Mr. Earnshaw dies three years later and Hindley, now married to Frances after returning from boarding school, inherits Wuthering Heights. He brutalises Heathcliff, forcing him to work as a hired hand. Catherine becomes friends with the neighboring Linton family who live at Thrushcross Grange, and Mrs. Linton starts teaching her to be a proper lady. She is attracted to young Edgar Linton, whom Heathcliff immediately dislikes.
A year later, Frances dies from consumption shortly after giving birth to a son, Hareton. Hindley takes to drinking and becomes even more abusive to Heathcliff. Some two years later, Catherine informs Nelly that she wishes to marry Edgar Linton, as it will give her status and riches; despite her love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff, upon hearing this, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return three years later, soon after Catherine and Edgar are wed.
Heathcliff has apparently become a wealthy, respectable gentleman and now seeks revenge against all those he believes have wronged him. Heathcliff makes loans to Hindley that he knows cannot be repaid. Intent on ruining Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's sister, Isabella Linton, setting himself up to inherit Thrushcross Grange. After their marriage, Heathcliff becomes very cruel and abusive towards Isabella.
Catherine becomes very ill and dies shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. A few hours before her death, however, she and Heathcliff reaffirm their feelings for one another. After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff becomes more bitter and vengeful towards those around him. Isabella flees to London a month later and gives birth to a boy, Linton Heathcliff.
About this time, Hindley dies. Heathcliff takes ownership of Wuthering Heights and raises Hindley's son, Hareton, with as much neglect as he had suffered at Hindley's hands.
Thirteen years later, Isabella dies and Linton comes to live at Wuthering Heights with his father, Heathcliff. He treats his son even more cruelly than he treated his wife. Three years pass and Heathcliff invites Cathy to Wuthering Heights. He then introduces her to his son, Linton, wishing them to marry which would strengthen his claim on Thrushcross Grange.
Cathy receives news that Linton has fallen ill. She hurries to Wuthering Heights to see if she can be of help. Linton's health declines swiftly and Heathcliff puts Cathy under house arrest, forcing her to marry his son. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, followed shortly by Linton. Heathcliff has now gained complete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Cathy to stay at Wuthering Heights and treats her as a common servant. It is at this point in the narrative that Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff, and Nelly’s story reaches the present day. Lockwood is appalled and leaves for London.
Lockwood returns six months later to visit Nelly. She tells him that in his absence, Cathy gradually softened toward her rough, uneducated cousin Hareton, just as Catherine was tender towards Heathcliff. Having originally mocked Hareton for his illiteracy, she now teaches him to read. He allows her to open up again after becoming so bitter from Heathcliff's brutal treatment.
When Heathcliff is confronted by Cathy and Hareton's love, he seems to suffer a mental breakdown and begins to see Catherine's ghost. He seemingly abandons his life-long vendetta and dies, having "swallowed nothing for four days". Nelly describes finding Heathcliff lying on the bed, stiff with rigor mortis. Only Hareton mourns Heathcliff's death. He is buried next to Catherine in the graveyard. Cathy and Hareton inherit Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and plan their wedding for New Year’s Day. Upon hearing the end of the story, Lockwood leaves Nelly and on his walk home he visits the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.
Characters
* Heathcliff: Found, and presumably orphaned, on the streets of Liverpool, he is taken to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw and reluctantly cared for by the rest of the family. He and Catherine later grow close, and their love becomes the central theme of the first volume; his revenge and its consequences are the main theme of the second volume. Heathcliff is typically considered a Byronic hero, but critics have found his character, with a capacity for self-invention, to be profoundly difficult to assess. His position in society, without status (Heathcliff serves as both his given name and surname), is often the subject of Marxist criticism.
* Catherine Earnshaw: First introduced in Lockwood's discovery of her diary and etchings, Catherine's life is almost entirely detailed in the first volume. She seemingly suffers from a crisis of identity, unable to choose between nature and culture (and, by extension, Heathcliff and Edgar). Her decision to marry Edgar Linton over Heathcliff has been seen as a surrender to culture, and has implications for all the characters of Wuthering Heights. The character of Catherine has been analysed by many forms of literary criticism, including: psychoanalytic and feminist.
* Edgar Linton: Introduced as a child of the Linton family, who reside at Thrushcross Grange, Edgar's life and mannerisms are immediately contrasted with those of Heathcliff and Catherine, and indeed the former dislikes him. Yet, owing much to his status, Catherine marries him and not Heathcliff. This decision, and the differences between Edgar and Heathcliff, have been read into by feminist criticisms.
* Nelly Dean: The second and primary narrator of the novel, Nelly has been a servant of each generation of both the Earnshaw and Linton families. She is presented as a character who straddles the idea of a 'culture versus nature' divide in the novel: she is a local of the area and a servant, and has experienced life at Wuthering Heights. However, she is also an educated woman and has lived at Thrushcross Grange. This idea is represented in her having two names, Ellen—her given name and used to show respect, and Nelly—used by her familiars. Whether Nelly is an unbiased narrator and how far her actions, as an apparent bystander, affect the other characters are two points of her character discussed by critics.
* Isabella Linton: Introduced as part of the Linton family, Isabella is only ever shown in relation to other characters. She views Heathcliff as a romantic hero, despite Catherine warning her against such an opinion, and becomes an unwitting participant in his plot for revenge. After being married to Heathcliff and abused at Wuthering Heights, she escapes to London and gives birth to Linton. Such abusive treatment has led many, especially feminist critics, to consider Isabella the true/conventional 'tragic romantic' figure of Wuthering Heights.
* Hindley Earnshaw
* Hareton Earnshaw
* Catherine Linton
* Linton Heathcliff
* Joseph
* Lockwood
Timeline
1500: The stone above the front door of Wuthering Heights, bearing the name of Mr Earnshaw, is inscribed, possibly to mark the completion of the house.
1757: Hindley Earnshaw born (summer); Nelly Dean born
1762: Edgar Linton born
1765: Catherine Earnshaw born (summer); Isabella Linton born (late 1765)
1771: Heathcliff brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr Earnshaw (late summer)
1773: Mrs Earnshaw dies (spring)
1774: Hindley sent off to college
1777: Hindley marries Frances; Mr Earnshaw dies and Hindley comes back (October); Heathcliff and Cathy visit Thrushcross Grange for the first time; Cathy remains behind (November), and then returns to Wuthering Heights (Christmas Eve)
1778: Hareton born (June); Frances dies
1780: Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights; Mr and Mrs Linton both die
1783: Catherine has married Edgar (March); Heathcliff comes back (September)
1784: Heathcliff marries Isabella (February); Catherine dies and Cathy born (20 March); Hindley dies; Linton born (September)
1797: Isabella dies; Cathy visits Wuthering Heights and meets Hareton; Linton brought to Thrushcross Grange and then taken to Wuthering Heights
1800: Cathy meets Heathcliff and sees Linton again (20 March)
1801: Cathy and Linton are married (August); Edgar dies (August); Linton dies (September); Mr Lockwood goes to Thrushcross Grange and visits Wuthering Heights, beginning his narrative
1802: Mr Lockwood goes back to London (January); Heathcliff dies (April); Mr Lockwood comes back to Thrushcross Grange (September)
1803: Cathy plans to marry Hareton (1 January)
Development history
There are several theories as to which building was the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. One is Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse, that is located in a isolated area near the Haworth Parsonage. Yet, its structure does not match that of the farmhouse described in the novel, and is therefore considered less likely to be the model. Top Withens was first suggested as the model for the fictitious farmhouse by Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte Brontë's, to Edward Morison Wimperis, a commissioned artist for the Brontë sisters' novels in 1872.
The second option is the now demolished High Sunderland Hall, near Halifax, West Yorkshire. This Gothic edifice is located near Law Hill, and was where Emily worked briefly as a governess in 1838. While very grand for the farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, the hall had grotesque embellishments of griffins and misshapen nude men similar to those described by Lockwood of Wuthering Heights in chapter one of the novel:
"Before passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door, above which, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date '1500'".
The inspiration for Thrushcross Grange has been traditionally connected to Ponden Hall, near Haworth, although very small. More likely is Shibden Hall, near Halifax.
Critical response
Early reviews
Early reviews of Wuthering Heights were mixed in their assessment. Whilst most critics recognised the power and imagination of the novel, many found the story unlikeable and ambiguous.[note 1] Released in 1847, at a time when the background of the author was deemed to have an important impact on the story itself, many critics were also intrigued by the authorship of the novels.[note 2] H. F. Chorley of the Athenaeum said that it was a "disagreeable story" and that the 'Bells' (Brontës) "seem to affect painful and exceptional subjects". The Atlas review called it a "strange, inartistic story", but commented that every chapter seems to contain a "sort of rugged power". It supported the second point made in the Athenaeum, suggesting that the general effect of the novel was "inexpressibly painful", but adding that all of its subjects were either "utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible".
The Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper critique was more positive, emphasizing the "great power" of the novel and its provocative qualities; it said that it was a "strange sort of book—baffling all regular criticism" and that "[it is] impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it". Although the Examiner agreed on the strangeness, it saw the book as "wild, confused; disjointed and improbable". The Britannia review mirrored those comments made on the unpleasant characters, arguing that it would have been a "far better romance" if the characters were not "nearly as violent and destructive as [Heathcliff]". The unidentified review was less critical, considering it a "work of great ability" and that "it is not every day that so good a novel makes its appearance".
Adaptations
The earliest known film adaptation of Wuthering Heights was filmed in England and directed by A. V. Bramble. It is unknown if any prints still exist. The most famous was 1939's Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon and directed by William Wyler. This adaptation, like many others, eliminated the second generation's story (young Cathy, Linton and Hareton). It won the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film and was nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Best Picture.
The 1970 film with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff is notable for emphasizing that Heathcliff may be Cathy's illegitimate half-brother. This is the first colour version of the novel, and gained acceptance over the years though it was initially poorly received. The character of Hindley is portrayed much more sympathetically, and his story-arc is altered.
The 1992 film Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche is notable for including the oft-omitted second generation story of the children of Cathy, Hindley , and Heathcliff.
Adaptations which reset the story in a new setting include the 1954 adaptation by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel set in Catholic Mexico, with Heathcliff and Cathy renamed Alejandro and Catalina, and Yoshishige Yoshida's 1988 adaptation which set the story in Tokugawa period Japan. In 2003, MTV produced a poorly reviewed version set in a modern California with the characters as high school students.
The novel has been popular in opera and theatre, including operas written by Bernard Herrmann and Carlisle Floyd (both of which like many films cover only the first half of the book) and a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, as well as a song by Kate Bush.
In autumn of 2008, Mark Ryan launched a dramatic musical adaptation of the novel, narrated by Beowulf and Sexy Beast star Ray Winstone. He composed, sang and produced the tracks with Robb Vallier who also worked on Spamalot. He also directed the video for the song "Women" filmed especially for the website and featuring Jennifer Korbee, Jessica Keenan Wynn and Katie Boeck.
In August 2009 ITV aired a two part drama series starring Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Sarah Lancashire, and Andrew Lincoln.
Announced in April 2008, Natalie Portman was originally set to star as Cathy in a new film adaptation of the novel, but she left the project in May. In May 2008, director John Maybury cast Michael Fassbender as Heathcliff and Abbie Cornish as Cathy. They later left the project and in May 2009, Peter Webber was announced as the director, with Ed Westwick and Gemma Arterton attached to play Heathcliff and Cathy respectively. However, the project did not get off the ground and Andrea Arnold signed on to direct in January 2010. Kaya Scodelario was then cast as Cathy, with the filmmakers searching for an unknown young Yorkshire actor to play Heathcliff.
Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was notoriously a perfectionist about his writing and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the right word").
The novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between October 1, 1856 and December 15, 1856, resulting in a trial in January 1857 that made the story notorious. After the acquittal on February 7, 1857, it became a bestseller when it was published as a book in April 1857, and now stands virtually unchallenged not only as a seminal work of Realism, but as one of the most influential novels ever written.
A 2007 poll of contemporary authors, published in a book entitled The Top Ten, cited Madame Bovary as one of the two greatest novels ever written, second only to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
Plot summary
Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. The story begins and ends with Charles Bovary, a stolid, kindhearted man without much ability or ambition. As the novel opens, Charles is a shy, oddly-dressed teenager arriving at a new school amidst the ridicule of his new classmates. Later, Charles struggles his way to a second-rate medical degree and becomes an officier de santé in the Public Health Service. His mother chooses a wife for him, an unpleasant but supposedly rich widow, and Charles sets out to build a practice in the village of Tostes (now Tôtes).
One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg, and meets his client's daughter, Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful, daintily-dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent and who has a latent but powerful yearning for luxury and romance imbibed from the popular novels she has read. Charles is immediately attracted to her, and begins checking on his patient far more often than necessary until his wife's jealousy puts a stop to the visits. When his wife dies, Charles waits a decent interval, then begins courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles are married.
At this point, the novel begins to focus on Emma. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy, and after he and Emma attend a ball given by the Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma grows disillusioned with married life and becomes dull and listless. Charles consequently decides that his wife needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes into a larger, but equally stultifying market town, Yonville (traditionally based on the town of Ry). Here, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe; however, motherhood, too, proves to be a disappointment to Emma. She then becomes infatuated with one of the first intelligent young men she meets in Yonville, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life", and who returns her admiration. Out of fear and shame, however, Emma hides her love for Léon and her contempt for Charles, and plays the role of the devoted wife and mother, all the while consoling herself with thoughts and self-congratulations of her own virtue. Finally, in despair of ever gaining Emma's affection, Léon departs to study in Paris.
One day, a rich and rakish landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger, brings a servant to the doctor's office to be bled. He casts his eye over Emma and decides she is ripe for seduction. To this end, he invites Emma to go riding with him for the sake of her health; solicitous only for Emma's health, Charles embraces the plan, suspecting nothing. A three-year affair follows. Swept away by romantic fantasy, Emma risks compromising herself with indiscreet letters and visits to her lover, and finally insists on making a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, has no intention of carrying Emma off, and ends the relationship on the eve of the great elopement with an apologetic, self-excusing letter delivered at the bottom of a basket of apricots. The shock is so great that Emma falls deathly ill, and briefly turns to religion.
When Emma is nearly fully recovered, she and Charles attend the opera, on Charles' insistence, in nearby Rouen. The opera reawakens Emma's passions, and she re-encounters Léon who, now educated and working in Rouen, is also attending the opera. They begin an affair. While Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons, Emma travels to the city each week to meet Léon, always in the same room of the same hotel, which the two come to view as their "home." The love affair is, at first, ecstatic; then, by degrees, Léon grows bored with Emma's emotional excesses, and Emma grows ambivalent about Léon, who becoming himself more like the mistress in the relationship, compares poorly, at least implicitly, to the rakish and domineering Rodolphe. Meanwhile, Emma, given over to vanity, purchases increasing amounts of luxury items on credit from the crafty merchant, Lheureux, who arranges for her to obtain power of attorney over Charles’ estate, and crushing levels of debts mount quickly.
When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, including Léon and Rodolphe, only to be turned down. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death; even the romance of suicide fails her. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, preserves Emma's room as if it is a shrine, and in an attempt to keep her memory alive, adopts several of her attitudes and tastes. In his last months, he stops working and lives off the sale of his possessions. When he accidentally comes across Rodolphe's love letters one day, he still tries to understand and forgive. Soon after, he becomes reclusive; what has not already been sold of his possessions is seized to pay off Lheureux, and he dies, leaving his young daughter Berthe to live with distant relatives and eventually sent to work at a cotton mill.
Chapter-by-chapter
Part One
1. Charles Bovary's childhood, student days
2. First marriage, Charles meets Rouault and his daughter Emma; Charles's first wife dies
3. Charles proposes to Emma
4. The wedding
5. The new household at Tostes
6. An account of Emma's childhood and secret fantasy world
7. Emma becomes bored; invitation to a ball by the Marquis d'Andervilliers
8. The ball at the château La Vaubyessard
9. Emma follows fashions; her boredom concerns Charles, and they decide to move; they find out she is pregnant
Part Two
1. Description of Yonville-l'Abbaye: Homais, Lestiboudois, Binet, Bournisien, Lheureux
2. Emma meets Léon Dupuis, the lawyer's clerk
3. Emma gives birth to Berthe, visits her at the nurse's house with Léon
4. A card game; Emma's friendship with Léon grows
5. Trip to see flax mill; Lheureux's pitch; Emma is resigned to her life
6. Emma visits the priest Bournisien; Berthe is injured; Léon leaves for Paris
7. Charles's mother bans novels; the blood-letting of Rodolphe's farmhand; Rodolphe meets Emma
8. The comice agricole (agricultural show); Rodolphe woos Emma
9. Six weeks later Rodolphe returns and they go out riding; he seduces her and the affair begins
10. Emma crosses paths with Binet; Rodolphe gets nervous; a letter from her father makes Emma repent
11. Operation on Hippolyte's clubfoot; M. Canivet has to amputate; Emma returns to Rodolphe
12. Emma's extravagant presents; quarrel with mother-in-law; plans to elope
13. Rodolphe runs away; Emma falls gravely ill
14. Charles is beset by bills; Emma turns to religion; Homais and Bournisien argue
15. Emma meets Léon at performance of Lucie de Lammermoor
Part Three
1. Emma and Léon converse; tour of Rouen Cathedral; cab-ride synecdoche
2. Emma goes to Homais; the arsenic; Bovary senior's death; Lheureux's bill
3. She visits Léon in Rouen
4. She resumes "piano lessons" on Thursdays
5. Visits to Léon; the singing tramp; Emma starts to fiddle the accounts
6. Emma becomes noticeably anxious; debts spiral out of control
7. Emma begs for money from several people
8. Rodolphe cannot help; she swallows arsenic; her death
9. Emma lies in state
10. The funeral
11. Charles finds letter; his death
Characters
Emma Bovary
Emma is the novel's protagonist and is the main source of the novel's title (although Charles's mother and his former wife are also referred to as Madame Bovary). She has a highly romanticized view of the world and craves beauty, wealth, passion and high society. It is the disparity between these romantic ideals and the realities of her country life that drive most of the novel, most notably leading her into two extramarital love affairs as well as causing her to accrue an insurmountable amount of debt that eventually leads to her suicide.
Emma is quite intelligent, but she never has a chance to develop her mind. As an adult, Emma's capacity for imagination is far greater than her capacity for analysis. She is observant about surface details, such as how people are dressed, but she never looks below the surface. As a result, she is easily taken in by people who are pretending to be something more than they really are (which most people in the book do for one reason or another). Emma not only believes in the false fronts other people present to her, but she despises the very few people (Charles's mother, Madame Homais, and Monsieur Binet) who are exactly as they appear to be.
Convinced that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, Emma does not realize that extreme joy, even for the wealthy and powerful, comes rarely. Not only country or bourgeois life is dull. For instance, Emma is surprised to see that aristocrats do not serve fancy food and drink at their everyday breakfasts: she'd prefer to believe that for the nobility, life is really an excitement-filled drama. Later, she fails to see that Rodolphe's wealth hasn't made him happy, despite obvious evidence of this fact.
Since Emma lives chiefly in her own fantasy world, other people's opinions or perceptions of her aren't important except to the extent that they serve some aspect of whatever drama she's trying to act out. At the ball, she's convinced that her aristocratic hosts have fully accepted her as one of their own, so much so that she expects an invitation the following year. In reality, the hosts condescended to invite Charles and Emma to the ball as reward for a favor, intending for it to be a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Indeed, Emma makes several missteps that would be embarrassing to anyone steeped in upper-class culture of the period. She waltzes so badly that she tangles her dress up with her dance partner, and she uses the gaffe as an excuse to rest her head on his chest. She is one of the few people left at the party when the hosts finally go to bed. She does not attempt to establish new social contacts at the party, nor does she write a thank-you note afterwards. She does not attempt to return the cigar-case she and Charles find later, which might have been a reasonable pretext to resume correspondence with their host. So she is far from a gracious guest, and she fails to do the things that could, under the right circumstances, lead to real social connections in high places.
Emma seldom makes an effort to cultivate friendships with other people, unless doing so serves the image she has of herself. She wants desperately to be an aristocrat, particularly after the d'Andervilliers ball, but although she's very good at aping the superficial behaviors (such as clothing and figures of speech), she lacks the manners and savoir-faire to actually operate in their culture. No matter what social group she decides she belongs to (aristocrats, the people of Yonville, people with "noble souls", adulteresses, religious martyrs, dramatic heroines, etc.), every time her role requires interaction with someone who actually is in that group Emma messes up. She doesn't go out of her way to ingratiate herself with new people, because she genuinely doesn't care what they think of her. The same indifference causes her to be rejected by most people in Tostes and Yonville, and to be very careless of her reputation once she starts having extramarital affairs. Binet, Homais, Charles's mother, and Lheureux all catch her in compromising situations, and she truly doesn't care. At some level, she wants not only the excitement of taking the risk, but possibly the drama that would result from being caught.
Emma seeks out the extremes in life, both positive and negative. That she seeks out positive experiences is obvious, because unless she's experiencing the peak of ecstasy, she's convinced she's miserable. She also re-writes her own history and memory, telling herself that she has "never" been happy every time it appears to her that, by indulging some whim, she can achieve the emotional experiences to which she feels entitled. Her appetite for stimulation grows to the point where she becomes jaded enough not to appreciate the small pleasures in life, simply because they are small pleasures. The more she experiences, the less she is satisfied with more normal activities. Consider, for example, her taste in literature. She starts out with romances and bourgeois women's magazines targeted to her real social and economic position. From there she graduates to high-fashion women's magazines that advocate conspicuous consumption. The next step is overwrought romantic poetry, followed by tragic opera, and culminating in the violent pornography which she reads between assignations with Léon. As Vladimir Nabokov observes, Emma "reads books emotionally, in a shallow juvenile manner, putting herself in this or that female character's place."
Emma feels entitled to seek out increasing pleasure and stimulation for herself. Her sense of entitlement grows over time, as does her belief that she has been somehow wronged by destiny or by the people around her. As a young girl, Emma was influenced by her improvident but pretentious father. She was also indulged as a teen and as a young adult, and nobody ever realized her expectations and attitudes about life were unreasonable or attempted to correct them. Emma's mother died too early, and her father let her be raised at a convent and educated like a young woman of independent means. Emma eventually comes to believe that all her wishes will come true, if she believes in them strongly enough and throws a big enough tantrum when she doesn't get her way. Although her father is aware of the problem, he never tries to address it and chooses to leave it to Charles instead.
Over the course of the book, Emma finds different ways to rationalize her feeling of entitlement at different times of her life. Before her marriage, she craves excitement because she is bored. In Tostes, particularly after the ball, she believes she was unjustly born into the wrong socioeconomic class and that everything would be better if only she were rich. Later, after being introduced to poetry, she believes she suffers because she has a noble soul. Ultimately she casts herself as a tragic heroine.
Emma's attraction to the negative extremes of the human experience is less obvious, but the signs are there. As a teenager, she's rewarded for an overblown, somewhat fake display of grief after her mother's death. Her father caters to her whims, as does Charles, who responds to Emma's ennui and psychosomatic illnesses by ignoring his patients and concentrating solely on his wife. Emma's fleeting but intense fascination with religion is much the same: people reward her pious conduct with extra attention and treat her as though she's superior, which reinforces her feelings of entitlement.
It is Emma's sense of superiority and entitlement that make her vulnerable to people who seek to use and manipulate her. Anyone who plays along with Emma's pretentiousness is assured of her good graces. Lheureux, the predatory money-lender who fleeces Emma and Charles, is obsequious to Emma in order to get her to spend more money on unnecessary purchases. He takes advantage of her sense of entitlement by treating her like a grand lady and by indicating that she deserves all the impractical luxuries he persuades her to buy. By giving Emma credit for business sense and experience she doesn't actually possess, Lheureux takes advantage of Emma's financial inexperience. He skims ridiculous sums off the top of every promissory note he has Emma sign, and bluffs her into believing that large commissions are somehow customary in business. Unwilling to admit her ignorance, Emma lets herself be conned instead.
Throughout her life, Emma selects dramatic, exaggerated depictions of human existence and adopts them as a romantic or personal ideal; moreover, she convinces herself that her ideal is somehow the norm, and that the reality she experiences is the exception to the rule. As a teenager, she seeks to emulate the romantic novels she read while at the convent. After the ball, she seeks to emulate the nobility and the wealthy and creates a new romantic ideal based on a man she met at the ball. After being introduced to poetry, she adopts a romantic martyr-like facade. After being exposed to the melodramatic opera "Lucia de Lammermoor", Emma adopts the insane fictional character Lucy Ashton as her role model and becomes convinced that the correct way to respond to adversity is to lose her mind and commit suicide, which she eventually does.
Each individual decision of Emma's seems plausible and reasonable in isolation, but her actions and decisions on the whole make her a very difficult character to like. She is too self-absorbed to consider the consequences of her actions as they affect other people. Her recklessness with money leads to financial ruin not just for herself but for her husband and child.
Charles Bovary
Emma's husband, Charles Bovary, is a very simple and common man. He is a country doctor by profession, but is, as in everything else, not very good at it. He is in fact not qualified enough to be termed a doctor, but is instead an officier de santé, or "health officer". When he is persuaded by Homais, the local pharmacist, to attempt a difficult operation on a patient's clubfoot, the effort is an enormous failure, and his patient's leg must be amputated by a better doctor.
Charles adores his wife and finds her faultless, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. He never suspects her affairs and gives her complete control over his finances, thereby securing his own ruin. Despite Charles's complete devotion to Emma, she despises him as he is the epitome of all that is dull and common. When Charles discovers Emma's deceptions after her death he is devastated and dies soon after, but not before frittering away the very last of the assets remaining after his bankruptcy by living the way he believed Emma would have wanted him to live.
Charles is presented from the start as a likeable and well-meaning fool who happens to have a good memory and a way with people. Although it annoys Emma that Charles doesn't deduce her attitude toward him based on her very subtle hints and cues, she would need a far more blunt approach to get her message across. Charles's lack of insight regarding Emma is not unique. He fails to realize that Homais is not his friend but his enemy and lets the pharmacist isolate him from the other people in town. He fails to realize that Rodolphe has designs on Emma. He trusts Léon implicitly even though he's aware Emma is emotionally attached to the young clerk. He fails to realize that Emma's expenditures have put the household in debt, and he doesn't realize that Lheureux is a financial predator. He also ignores potential allies in the town who might have pointed out what everybody else thought was obvious.
Charles is no genius, but at the time he meets Emma he's doing well financially. He's married, he's got a thriving practice that has grown in response to his popularity with his patients, and he's got a good reputation in the community. After he moves to a new town, he never regains his former position, and Emma is part of the reason why. He knows he is in financial trouble, but continues to enable Emma's spendthrift ways. He takes on more than his share of his responsibility for the success of the marriage, and he tries to cover for Emma's lapses. Meanwhile, he gives up control over the financial aspects of his practice, which allows Emma to start embezzling. In fact, he borrows from a moneylender and does not tell Emma.
During Emma's first mysterious collapse, which is in response to her realization that she's not getting a second ball invitation, Charles abandons his patients and acts as her full-time nurse even though her life is not obviously in danger. The more he hovers, the worse Emma's "health problem" becomes. He gives up a thriving practice and moves to an area where he knows nobody. He nurses her through two more collapses, and allows her to talk him into attempting an operation he is not qualified to perform.
Monsieur Homais
Monsieur Homais is the town pharmacist. In one incident, he convinces Charles to perform corrective surgery on a young stable boy, afflicted with a club foot. During this era, correcting or eliminating a disability was a daring option and he may have considered this an opportunity to garner personal attention and praise. The operation is a disaster, and the stable boy is left with his leg amputated at the thigh.
Despite having been convicted of practicing medicine without a license, he continues to give "consultations" in his pharmacy. This means that the presence of a licensed health officer in town is a threat to him. Not only are he and Charles in competition for patients, but if Charles were to report Homais for practicing medicine without a license, the courts would deal strictly with Homais given that it would be a second conviction. So, to keep the clueless Charles from turning him in to the authorities should Charles ever find out about the "consultations", Homais becomes Charles's best friend, at least on the surface. Meanwhile he undermines Charles at every opportunity. Convincing him to attempt the risky club foot operation may have been part of an ongoing strategy to discredit Charles so as to run him out of town. At the end of the book, after Charles's death, Homais uses similar strategies to get rid of subsequent doctors and is left in sole control of the medical profession in Yonville.
He is also vehemently anti-clerical and an atheist. He is the one who insists that Emma should go riding with Rodolphe, that Charles take her to see the opera in Rouen, and that she be allowed to take expensive music lessons in Rouen. No idiot, and with his ear to the ground for gossip, Homais appears to be completely unaware of Emma's adultery but subtly goes out of his way to make it easier for her. He also directly enables her ultimate act of self-destruction by detailing in her presence the means by which his supply of arsenic might be accessed.
Madame Homais
The wife of Monsieur Homais, Madame Homais is a simple woman whose life revolves around her husband and children, of which she has four. Caring for four children is no trivial task, especially without electricity, hot running water, or any form of public schooling beyond occasional classes offered by the parish priest. Furthermore, in addition to her own four children Madame Homais cares for Justin, a teenage relative who lives with the Homais family and who helps Monsieur Homais out in the pharmacy. She also takes care of a boarder: a young male student by the name of Léon Dupuis. With that many people in the household, Madame Homais can be excused for having a live-in maid to help with at least some of the cooking, cleaning, and mending. Even with the maid's help, Madame Homais works very hard. Since the pharmacy is quite successful, she could perhaps get away with having her own horse or dressing in the latest fashions, but she does not. Instead, she takes in a boarder to earn extra money.
Madame Homais serves chiefly as a foil for Emma. Whereas Madame Homais, or even Charles's infirm first wife, has a legitimate reason for wanting a maid, Emma is able-bodied aside from her drama-induced fainting fits and collapses. She simply chooses to do no housework, and to refrain from any of the activities bourgeois women generally did in order to earn money on the side. She does not sub-let an upstairs bedroom to a tenant the way Madame Homais rents to Léon, she leaves all the housekeeping to the maid, and does no work herself unless it suits whatever religious or social fantasy she has about herself at the time. Madame Homais does not dress fashionably or even well, whereas Emma is always dressed in the latest expensive fashions that are more lavish than what anyone else in Yonville seems able to afford. Madame Homais dotes on her children, while Emma ignores and despises her daughter unless she's acting out a maternal fantasy.
Emma despises Madame Homais for her simplicity, unless she's in the mood to pretend to idealize good mothers. Madame Homais, however, seems unaware that Emma dislikes her. Even when other people gossip about Emma, Madame Homais defends her. That naive loyalty is rewarded with nothing but contempt most of the time.
Léon Dupuis
First befriending Emma when she moves to Yonville, Léon seems a perfect match for her. He shares her romantic ideals as well as her disdain for common life. He worships Emma from afar before leaving to study law in Paris. A chance encounter brings the two together several years later and this time they begin an affair. Though the relationship is passionate at first, after a time the mystique wears off.
Financially, Léon cannot afford to carry on the affair, so Emma pays more and more of the bills. Eventually she assumes the whole financial burden. She also takes the lead in planning meetings and setting up communication, which is a reversal of the role she had with Rodolphe. Léon does not seem to find Emma's financial aggression disturbing or inappropriate, although when Emma asks him to pawn some spoons she'd received as a wedding gift from her father, Léon does become uncomfortable. He objects to the heavy spending, but does not press too hard when Emma overrules him. He's content to be the recipient of Emma's largesse, and to not think too much about where the money is coming from. He also does not feel particularly obligated to reciprocate later, when Emma asks him for help in her hour of financial need.
Over time, Léon becomes disenchanted with Emma, particularly after her attentions start to affect his work. The first time she arrives at his office, he's charmed and leaves work quickly. After a while, the interruptions have an effect on his work and his attitude to the other clerks. Eventually someone sends word to Léon's mother that her son is "ruining himself with a married woman", and Léon's mother and employer insist that he break off the affair. Léon does, briefly, but cannot stay away from Emma. His reluctance is tempered with relief because Emma's pursuit of him has become increasingly disturbing. When Emma's debts finally come due, she attempts to seduce Léon into stealing the money to cover her debts from his employer. At this point, he becomes genuinely afraid. He fobs her off with an excuse and disappears from her life.
Rodolphe Boulanger
Rodolphe is a wealthy local man who seduces Emma as one more addition to a long string of mistresses. Though occasionally charmed by Emma, Rodolphe feels little true emotion towards her. As Emma becomes more and more desperate, Rodolphe loses interest and worries about her lack of caution. He eventually ends their relationship, but not before going through a collection of letters and tokens from previous mistresses, all of whom ended up wanting either love or money.
Rodolphe's deteriorating feelings for Emma do not keep him from accepting the valuable gifts she showers on him throughout their relationship, even though he realizes at some level that she can't afford to be so generous. The gifts she gives him are of the same value and quality as she imagines an aristocrat such as the Vicount might receive from a similarly aristocratic mistress. Rodolphe's gifts to Emma are nowhere near as valuable even though he is by far the wealthier of the two. He does not feel particularly obligated by having accepted the gifts, even though they create a large part of Emma's debt to Lheureux.
When Emma asks Rodolphe for help at the peak of her financial crisis, after refusing the sex-for-money exchange offered by the wealthy Monsieur Guillaumin, she essentially attempts to initiate a sex-for-money exchange with Rodolphe. She pretends at first to have returned out of love, then when the timing feels right she asks him for money, using an obvious lie about why she needs a loan. She therefore comes across as among the most mercenary of Rodolphe's past mistresses. Rodolphe therefore sees no need to help her, though he could perhaps not afford to lend her enough money to keep her creditors at bay even if he desired to.
Monsieur L'heureux
A manipulative and sly merchant who continually convinces Emma to buy goods on credit and borrow money from him. L'heureux plays Emma masterfully and eventually leads her so far into debt as to cause her financial ruin and subsequent suicide.
L'heureux's reputation as an aggressive money lender is well known in Yonville. Had Emma or Charles had the wit to make inquiries about him or even to listen to the gossip, they would have realized that L'heureux had ruined at least one other person in town through his stratagems. Yet the only "friend" they trust, Homais, is fully aware of L'heureux's treachery but disinclined to warn Emma or Charles. So both Emma and Charles end up borrowing money from L'heureux without each other's knowledge.
Setting
The setting of Madame Bovary is crucial to the novel for several reasons. First, it is important as it applies to Flaubert's realist style and social commentary. Secondly, the setting is important in how it relates to the protagonist Emma.
It has been calculated that the novel begins in October 1827 and ends in August 1846 (Francis Steegmuller). This is around the era known as the “July Monarchy”, or the rule of King Louis-Philippe. This was a period in which there was a great up-surge in the power of the bourgeois middle class. Flaubert detested the bourgeoisie. Much of the time and effort, therefore, that he spends detailing the customs of the rural French people can be interpreted as social criticism.
Flaubert put much effort into making sure his depictions of common life were accurate. This was aided by the fact that he chose a subject that was very familiar to him. He chose to set the story in and around the city of Rouen in Normandy, the setting of his own birth and childhood. This care and detail that Flaubert gives to his setting is important in looking at the style of the novel. It is this faithfulness to the mundane elements of country life that has garnered the book its reputation as the beginning of the literary movement known as “literary realism”.
Flaubert also deliberately used his setting to contrast with his protagonist. Emma's romantic fantasies are strikingly foiled by the practicalities of the common life around her. Flaubert uses this juxtaposition to reflect on both subjects. Emma becomes more capricious and ludicrous in the harsh light of everyday reality. By the same token, however, the self-important banality of the local people is magnified in comparison to Emma, who, though impractical, still reflects an appreciation of beauty and greatness that seems entirely absent in the bourgeois class.
Style
The book, loosely based on the life story of a schoolfriend who had become a doctor, was written at the urging of friends, who were trying (unsuccessfully) to "cure" Flaubert of his deep-dyed Romanticism by assigning him the dreariest subject they could think of, and challenging him to make it interesting without allowing anything out-of-the-way to occur. Although Flaubert had little liking for the styles of Balzac or Zola, the novel is now seen as a prime example of Realism, a fact which contributed to the trial for obscenity (which was a politically-motivated attack by the government on the liberal newspaper in which it was being serialized, La Revue de Paris). Flaubert, as the author of the story, does not comment directly on the moral character of Emma Bovary and abstains from explicitly condemning her adultery. This decision caused some to accuse Flaubert of glorifying adultery and creating a scandal.
The Realist movement used verisimilitude through a focus on character development. Realism was a reaction against Romanticism. Emma may be said to be the embodiment of a romantic; in her mental and emotional process, she has no relation to the realities of her world. She inevitably becomes dissatisfied since her larger-than-life fantasies are impossible to realize. Flaubert declared that much of what is in the novel is in his own life by saying, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary is me").
Madame Bovary, on the whole, is a commentary on the entire self-satisfied, deluded, bourgeois culture of Flaubert's time period. His contempt for the bourgeoisie is expressed through his characters: Emma and Charles Bovary lost in romantic delusions; absurd and harmful scientific characters, a self-serving money lender, lovers seeking excitement finding only the banality of marriage in their adulterous affairs. All are seeking escape in empty church rituals, unrealistic romantic novels, or delusions of one sort or another.
Literary significance and reception
Long established as one of the greatest novels ever written, the book has often been described as a "perfect" work of fiction. Henry James writes: "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment."
Adaptations
Madame Bovary has been made into several films, beginning with Jean Renoir's 1932 version. It has also been the subject of multiple television miniseries and made-for-TV movies. The most notable of these adaptations was the 1949 film produced by MGM. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, it starred Jennifer Jones in the title role, co-starring James Mason, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, and Gene Lockhart. It was adapted by Giles Cooper for the BBC in 1964, with the same script being used for a new production in 1975. A new BBC version adapted by Heidi Thomas was made in 2000, starring Frances O'Connor and Hugh Bonneville.
Claude Chabrol made his version starring Isabelle Huppert.
Madame Bovary has been adapted into a piece of musical theatre, entitled The Bovary Tale. Composer: Anne Freier. Librettist: Laura Steel. The first performance was at the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate Village in September 2009.
David Lean's film Ryan's Daughter (1970) was a loose adaptation of the story, relocating it to Ireland during the time of the Easter Rebellion. The script had begun life as a straight adaptation of Bovary, but Lean convinced writer Robert Bolt to re-work it into another setting.
Indian director Ketan Mehta adapted the novel into a 1992 Hindi film Maya Memsaab.
Madame Blueberry is an 1998 film in the Veggietales animated series. It is a loose parody of Madame Bovary, in which Madame Blueberry, an anthropomorphic blueberry, gathers material possessions in a vain attempt to find happiness.
Academy Award nominated film Little Children features the novel as part of a book club discussion, and shares a few elements of the main idea.
Naomi Ragen loosely based her 2007 novel The Saturday Wife on Madame Bovary.
Posy Simmonds graphic novel Gemma Bovery reworked the story into a satirical tale of English expatriates in France.
Vale Abraão (1993) (Abraham's Vale) by Manoel de Oliveira is a close interpretation set in Portugal, even referencing and discussing Flaubert's novel several times.
"Madame Ovary" is the name of a character in DC Comics' The Adventures of the Outsiders #33-35. Madame Ovary's name was really Dr. Ovarin, and she was created by Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis.
The novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between October 1, 1856 and December 15, 1856, resulting in a trial in January 1857 that made the story notorious. After the acquittal on February 7, 1857, it became a bestseller when it was published as a book in April 1857, and now stands virtually unchallenged not only as a seminal work of Realism, but as one of the most influential novels ever written.
A 2007 poll of contemporary authors, published in a book entitled The Top Ten, cited Madame Bovary as one of the two greatest novels ever written, second only to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
Plot summary
Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. The story begins and ends with Charles Bovary, a stolid, kindhearted man without much ability or ambition. As the novel opens, Charles is a shy, oddly-dressed teenager arriving at a new school amidst the ridicule of his new classmates. Later, Charles struggles his way to a second-rate medical degree and becomes an officier de santé in the Public Health Service. His mother chooses a wife for him, an unpleasant but supposedly rich widow, and Charles sets out to build a practice in the village of Tostes (now Tôtes).
One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg, and meets his client's daughter, Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful, daintily-dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent and who has a latent but powerful yearning for luxury and romance imbibed from the popular novels she has read. Charles is immediately attracted to her, and begins checking on his patient far more often than necessary until his wife's jealousy puts a stop to the visits. When his wife dies, Charles waits a decent interval, then begins courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles are married.
At this point, the novel begins to focus on Emma. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy, and after he and Emma attend a ball given by the Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma grows disillusioned with married life and becomes dull and listless. Charles consequently decides that his wife needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes into a larger, but equally stultifying market town, Yonville (traditionally based on the town of Ry). Here, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe; however, motherhood, too, proves to be a disappointment to Emma. She then becomes infatuated with one of the first intelligent young men she meets in Yonville, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life", and who returns her admiration. Out of fear and shame, however, Emma hides her love for Léon and her contempt for Charles, and plays the role of the devoted wife and mother, all the while consoling herself with thoughts and self-congratulations of her own virtue. Finally, in despair of ever gaining Emma's affection, Léon departs to study in Paris.
One day, a rich and rakish landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger, brings a servant to the doctor's office to be bled. He casts his eye over Emma and decides she is ripe for seduction. To this end, he invites Emma to go riding with him for the sake of her health; solicitous only for Emma's health, Charles embraces the plan, suspecting nothing. A three-year affair follows. Swept away by romantic fantasy, Emma risks compromising herself with indiscreet letters and visits to her lover, and finally insists on making a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, has no intention of carrying Emma off, and ends the relationship on the eve of the great elopement with an apologetic, self-excusing letter delivered at the bottom of a basket of apricots. The shock is so great that Emma falls deathly ill, and briefly turns to religion.
When Emma is nearly fully recovered, she and Charles attend the opera, on Charles' insistence, in nearby Rouen. The opera reawakens Emma's passions, and she re-encounters Léon who, now educated and working in Rouen, is also attending the opera. They begin an affair. While Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons, Emma travels to the city each week to meet Léon, always in the same room of the same hotel, which the two come to view as their "home." The love affair is, at first, ecstatic; then, by degrees, Léon grows bored with Emma's emotional excesses, and Emma grows ambivalent about Léon, who becoming himself more like the mistress in the relationship, compares poorly, at least implicitly, to the rakish and domineering Rodolphe. Meanwhile, Emma, given over to vanity, purchases increasing amounts of luxury items on credit from the crafty merchant, Lheureux, who arranges for her to obtain power of attorney over Charles’ estate, and crushing levels of debts mount quickly.
When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, including Léon and Rodolphe, only to be turned down. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death; even the romance of suicide fails her. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, preserves Emma's room as if it is a shrine, and in an attempt to keep her memory alive, adopts several of her attitudes and tastes. In his last months, he stops working and lives off the sale of his possessions. When he accidentally comes across Rodolphe's love letters one day, he still tries to understand and forgive. Soon after, he becomes reclusive; what has not already been sold of his possessions is seized to pay off Lheureux, and he dies, leaving his young daughter Berthe to live with distant relatives and eventually sent to work at a cotton mill.
Chapter-by-chapter
Part One
1. Charles Bovary's childhood, student days
2. First marriage, Charles meets Rouault and his daughter Emma; Charles's first wife dies
3. Charles proposes to Emma
4. The wedding
5. The new household at Tostes
6. An account of Emma's childhood and secret fantasy world
7. Emma becomes bored; invitation to a ball by the Marquis d'Andervilliers
8. The ball at the château La Vaubyessard
9. Emma follows fashions; her boredom concerns Charles, and they decide to move; they find out she is pregnant
Part Two
1. Description of Yonville-l'Abbaye: Homais, Lestiboudois, Binet, Bournisien, Lheureux
2. Emma meets Léon Dupuis, the lawyer's clerk
3. Emma gives birth to Berthe, visits her at the nurse's house with Léon
4. A card game; Emma's friendship with Léon grows
5. Trip to see flax mill; Lheureux's pitch; Emma is resigned to her life
6. Emma visits the priest Bournisien; Berthe is injured; Léon leaves for Paris
7. Charles's mother bans novels; the blood-letting of Rodolphe's farmhand; Rodolphe meets Emma
8. The comice agricole (agricultural show); Rodolphe woos Emma
9. Six weeks later Rodolphe returns and they go out riding; he seduces her and the affair begins
10. Emma crosses paths with Binet; Rodolphe gets nervous; a letter from her father makes Emma repent
11. Operation on Hippolyte's clubfoot; M. Canivet has to amputate; Emma returns to Rodolphe
12. Emma's extravagant presents; quarrel with mother-in-law; plans to elope
13. Rodolphe runs away; Emma falls gravely ill
14. Charles is beset by bills; Emma turns to religion; Homais and Bournisien argue
15. Emma meets Léon at performance of Lucie de Lammermoor
Part Three
1. Emma and Léon converse; tour of Rouen Cathedral; cab-ride synecdoche
2. Emma goes to Homais; the arsenic; Bovary senior's death; Lheureux's bill
3. She visits Léon in Rouen
4. She resumes "piano lessons" on Thursdays
5. Visits to Léon; the singing tramp; Emma starts to fiddle the accounts
6. Emma becomes noticeably anxious; debts spiral out of control
7. Emma begs for money from several people
8. Rodolphe cannot help; she swallows arsenic; her death
9. Emma lies in state
10. The funeral
11. Charles finds letter; his death
Characters
Emma Bovary
Emma is the novel's protagonist and is the main source of the novel's title (although Charles's mother and his former wife are also referred to as Madame Bovary). She has a highly romanticized view of the world and craves beauty, wealth, passion and high society. It is the disparity between these romantic ideals and the realities of her country life that drive most of the novel, most notably leading her into two extramarital love affairs as well as causing her to accrue an insurmountable amount of debt that eventually leads to her suicide.
Emma is quite intelligent, but she never has a chance to develop her mind. As an adult, Emma's capacity for imagination is far greater than her capacity for analysis. She is observant about surface details, such as how people are dressed, but she never looks below the surface. As a result, she is easily taken in by people who are pretending to be something more than they really are (which most people in the book do for one reason or another). Emma not only believes in the false fronts other people present to her, but she despises the very few people (Charles's mother, Madame Homais, and Monsieur Binet) who are exactly as they appear to be.
Convinced that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, Emma does not realize that extreme joy, even for the wealthy and powerful, comes rarely. Not only country or bourgeois life is dull. For instance, Emma is surprised to see that aristocrats do not serve fancy food and drink at their everyday breakfasts: she'd prefer to believe that for the nobility, life is really an excitement-filled drama. Later, she fails to see that Rodolphe's wealth hasn't made him happy, despite obvious evidence of this fact.
Since Emma lives chiefly in her own fantasy world, other people's opinions or perceptions of her aren't important except to the extent that they serve some aspect of whatever drama she's trying to act out. At the ball, she's convinced that her aristocratic hosts have fully accepted her as one of their own, so much so that she expects an invitation the following year. In reality, the hosts condescended to invite Charles and Emma to the ball as reward for a favor, intending for it to be a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Indeed, Emma makes several missteps that would be embarrassing to anyone steeped in upper-class culture of the period. She waltzes so badly that she tangles her dress up with her dance partner, and she uses the gaffe as an excuse to rest her head on his chest. She is one of the few people left at the party when the hosts finally go to bed. She does not attempt to establish new social contacts at the party, nor does she write a thank-you note afterwards. She does not attempt to return the cigar-case she and Charles find later, which might have been a reasonable pretext to resume correspondence with their host. So she is far from a gracious guest, and she fails to do the things that could, under the right circumstances, lead to real social connections in high places.
Emma seldom makes an effort to cultivate friendships with other people, unless doing so serves the image she has of herself. She wants desperately to be an aristocrat, particularly after the d'Andervilliers ball, but although she's very good at aping the superficial behaviors (such as clothing and figures of speech), she lacks the manners and savoir-faire to actually operate in their culture. No matter what social group she decides she belongs to (aristocrats, the people of Yonville, people with "noble souls", adulteresses, religious martyrs, dramatic heroines, etc.), every time her role requires interaction with someone who actually is in that group Emma messes up. She doesn't go out of her way to ingratiate herself with new people, because she genuinely doesn't care what they think of her. The same indifference causes her to be rejected by most people in Tostes and Yonville, and to be very careless of her reputation once she starts having extramarital affairs. Binet, Homais, Charles's mother, and Lheureux all catch her in compromising situations, and she truly doesn't care. At some level, she wants not only the excitement of taking the risk, but possibly the drama that would result from being caught.
Emma seeks out the extremes in life, both positive and negative. That she seeks out positive experiences is obvious, because unless she's experiencing the peak of ecstasy, she's convinced she's miserable. She also re-writes her own history and memory, telling herself that she has "never" been happy every time it appears to her that, by indulging some whim, she can achieve the emotional experiences to which she feels entitled. Her appetite for stimulation grows to the point where she becomes jaded enough not to appreciate the small pleasures in life, simply because they are small pleasures. The more she experiences, the less she is satisfied with more normal activities. Consider, for example, her taste in literature. She starts out with romances and bourgeois women's magazines targeted to her real social and economic position. From there she graduates to high-fashion women's magazines that advocate conspicuous consumption. The next step is overwrought romantic poetry, followed by tragic opera, and culminating in the violent pornography which she reads between assignations with Léon. As Vladimir Nabokov observes, Emma "reads books emotionally, in a shallow juvenile manner, putting herself in this or that female character's place."
Emma feels entitled to seek out increasing pleasure and stimulation for herself. Her sense of entitlement grows over time, as does her belief that she has been somehow wronged by destiny or by the people around her. As a young girl, Emma was influenced by her improvident but pretentious father. She was also indulged as a teen and as a young adult, and nobody ever realized her expectations and attitudes about life were unreasonable or attempted to correct them. Emma's mother died too early, and her father let her be raised at a convent and educated like a young woman of independent means. Emma eventually comes to believe that all her wishes will come true, if she believes in them strongly enough and throws a big enough tantrum when she doesn't get her way. Although her father is aware of the problem, he never tries to address it and chooses to leave it to Charles instead.
Over the course of the book, Emma finds different ways to rationalize her feeling of entitlement at different times of her life. Before her marriage, she craves excitement because she is bored. In Tostes, particularly after the ball, she believes she was unjustly born into the wrong socioeconomic class and that everything would be better if only she were rich. Later, after being introduced to poetry, she believes she suffers because she has a noble soul. Ultimately she casts herself as a tragic heroine.
Emma's attraction to the negative extremes of the human experience is less obvious, but the signs are there. As a teenager, she's rewarded for an overblown, somewhat fake display of grief after her mother's death. Her father caters to her whims, as does Charles, who responds to Emma's ennui and psychosomatic illnesses by ignoring his patients and concentrating solely on his wife. Emma's fleeting but intense fascination with religion is much the same: people reward her pious conduct with extra attention and treat her as though she's superior, which reinforces her feelings of entitlement.
It is Emma's sense of superiority and entitlement that make her vulnerable to people who seek to use and manipulate her. Anyone who plays along with Emma's pretentiousness is assured of her good graces. Lheureux, the predatory money-lender who fleeces Emma and Charles, is obsequious to Emma in order to get her to spend more money on unnecessary purchases. He takes advantage of her sense of entitlement by treating her like a grand lady and by indicating that she deserves all the impractical luxuries he persuades her to buy. By giving Emma credit for business sense and experience she doesn't actually possess, Lheureux takes advantage of Emma's financial inexperience. He skims ridiculous sums off the top of every promissory note he has Emma sign, and bluffs her into believing that large commissions are somehow customary in business. Unwilling to admit her ignorance, Emma lets herself be conned instead.
Throughout her life, Emma selects dramatic, exaggerated depictions of human existence and adopts them as a romantic or personal ideal; moreover, she convinces herself that her ideal is somehow the norm, and that the reality she experiences is the exception to the rule. As a teenager, she seeks to emulate the romantic novels she read while at the convent. After the ball, she seeks to emulate the nobility and the wealthy and creates a new romantic ideal based on a man she met at the ball. After being introduced to poetry, she adopts a romantic martyr-like facade. After being exposed to the melodramatic opera "Lucia de Lammermoor", Emma adopts the insane fictional character Lucy Ashton as her role model and becomes convinced that the correct way to respond to adversity is to lose her mind and commit suicide, which she eventually does.
Each individual decision of Emma's seems plausible and reasonable in isolation, but her actions and decisions on the whole make her a very difficult character to like. She is too self-absorbed to consider the consequences of her actions as they affect other people. Her recklessness with money leads to financial ruin not just for herself but for her husband and child.
Charles Bovary
Emma's husband, Charles Bovary, is a very simple and common man. He is a country doctor by profession, but is, as in everything else, not very good at it. He is in fact not qualified enough to be termed a doctor, but is instead an officier de santé, or "health officer". When he is persuaded by Homais, the local pharmacist, to attempt a difficult operation on a patient's clubfoot, the effort is an enormous failure, and his patient's leg must be amputated by a better doctor.
Charles adores his wife and finds her faultless, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. He never suspects her affairs and gives her complete control over his finances, thereby securing his own ruin. Despite Charles's complete devotion to Emma, she despises him as he is the epitome of all that is dull and common. When Charles discovers Emma's deceptions after her death he is devastated and dies soon after, but not before frittering away the very last of the assets remaining after his bankruptcy by living the way he believed Emma would have wanted him to live.
Charles is presented from the start as a likeable and well-meaning fool who happens to have a good memory and a way with people. Although it annoys Emma that Charles doesn't deduce her attitude toward him based on her very subtle hints and cues, she would need a far more blunt approach to get her message across. Charles's lack of insight regarding Emma is not unique. He fails to realize that Homais is not his friend but his enemy and lets the pharmacist isolate him from the other people in town. He fails to realize that Rodolphe has designs on Emma. He trusts Léon implicitly even though he's aware Emma is emotionally attached to the young clerk. He fails to realize that Emma's expenditures have put the household in debt, and he doesn't realize that Lheureux is a financial predator. He also ignores potential allies in the town who might have pointed out what everybody else thought was obvious.
Charles is no genius, but at the time he meets Emma he's doing well financially. He's married, he's got a thriving practice that has grown in response to his popularity with his patients, and he's got a good reputation in the community. After he moves to a new town, he never regains his former position, and Emma is part of the reason why. He knows he is in financial trouble, but continues to enable Emma's spendthrift ways. He takes on more than his share of his responsibility for the success of the marriage, and he tries to cover for Emma's lapses. Meanwhile, he gives up control over the financial aspects of his practice, which allows Emma to start embezzling. In fact, he borrows from a moneylender and does not tell Emma.
During Emma's first mysterious collapse, which is in response to her realization that she's not getting a second ball invitation, Charles abandons his patients and acts as her full-time nurse even though her life is not obviously in danger. The more he hovers, the worse Emma's "health problem" becomes. He gives up a thriving practice and moves to an area where he knows nobody. He nurses her through two more collapses, and allows her to talk him into attempting an operation he is not qualified to perform.
Monsieur Homais
Monsieur Homais is the town pharmacist. In one incident, he convinces Charles to perform corrective surgery on a young stable boy, afflicted with a club foot. During this era, correcting or eliminating a disability was a daring option and he may have considered this an opportunity to garner personal attention and praise. The operation is a disaster, and the stable boy is left with his leg amputated at the thigh.
Despite having been convicted of practicing medicine without a license, he continues to give "consultations" in his pharmacy. This means that the presence of a licensed health officer in town is a threat to him. Not only are he and Charles in competition for patients, but if Charles were to report Homais for practicing medicine without a license, the courts would deal strictly with Homais given that it would be a second conviction. So, to keep the clueless Charles from turning him in to the authorities should Charles ever find out about the "consultations", Homais becomes Charles's best friend, at least on the surface. Meanwhile he undermines Charles at every opportunity. Convincing him to attempt the risky club foot operation may have been part of an ongoing strategy to discredit Charles so as to run him out of town. At the end of the book, after Charles's death, Homais uses similar strategies to get rid of subsequent doctors and is left in sole control of the medical profession in Yonville.
He is also vehemently anti-clerical and an atheist. He is the one who insists that Emma should go riding with Rodolphe, that Charles take her to see the opera in Rouen, and that she be allowed to take expensive music lessons in Rouen. No idiot, and with his ear to the ground for gossip, Homais appears to be completely unaware of Emma's adultery but subtly goes out of his way to make it easier for her. He also directly enables her ultimate act of self-destruction by detailing in her presence the means by which his supply of arsenic might be accessed.
Madame Homais
The wife of Monsieur Homais, Madame Homais is a simple woman whose life revolves around her husband and children, of which she has four. Caring for four children is no trivial task, especially without electricity, hot running water, or any form of public schooling beyond occasional classes offered by the parish priest. Furthermore, in addition to her own four children Madame Homais cares for Justin, a teenage relative who lives with the Homais family and who helps Monsieur Homais out in the pharmacy. She also takes care of a boarder: a young male student by the name of Léon Dupuis. With that many people in the household, Madame Homais can be excused for having a live-in maid to help with at least some of the cooking, cleaning, and mending. Even with the maid's help, Madame Homais works very hard. Since the pharmacy is quite successful, she could perhaps get away with having her own horse or dressing in the latest fashions, but she does not. Instead, she takes in a boarder to earn extra money.
Madame Homais serves chiefly as a foil for Emma. Whereas Madame Homais, or even Charles's infirm first wife, has a legitimate reason for wanting a maid, Emma is able-bodied aside from her drama-induced fainting fits and collapses. She simply chooses to do no housework, and to refrain from any of the activities bourgeois women generally did in order to earn money on the side. She does not sub-let an upstairs bedroom to a tenant the way Madame Homais rents to Léon, she leaves all the housekeeping to the maid, and does no work herself unless it suits whatever religious or social fantasy she has about herself at the time. Madame Homais does not dress fashionably or even well, whereas Emma is always dressed in the latest expensive fashions that are more lavish than what anyone else in Yonville seems able to afford. Madame Homais dotes on her children, while Emma ignores and despises her daughter unless she's acting out a maternal fantasy.
Emma despises Madame Homais for her simplicity, unless she's in the mood to pretend to idealize good mothers. Madame Homais, however, seems unaware that Emma dislikes her. Even when other people gossip about Emma, Madame Homais defends her. That naive loyalty is rewarded with nothing but contempt most of the time.
Léon Dupuis
First befriending Emma when she moves to Yonville, Léon seems a perfect match for her. He shares her romantic ideals as well as her disdain for common life. He worships Emma from afar before leaving to study law in Paris. A chance encounter brings the two together several years later and this time they begin an affair. Though the relationship is passionate at first, after a time the mystique wears off.
Financially, Léon cannot afford to carry on the affair, so Emma pays more and more of the bills. Eventually she assumes the whole financial burden. She also takes the lead in planning meetings and setting up communication, which is a reversal of the role she had with Rodolphe. Léon does not seem to find Emma's financial aggression disturbing or inappropriate, although when Emma asks him to pawn some spoons she'd received as a wedding gift from her father, Léon does become uncomfortable. He objects to the heavy spending, but does not press too hard when Emma overrules him. He's content to be the recipient of Emma's largesse, and to not think too much about where the money is coming from. He also does not feel particularly obligated to reciprocate later, when Emma asks him for help in her hour of financial need.
Over time, Léon becomes disenchanted with Emma, particularly after her attentions start to affect his work. The first time she arrives at his office, he's charmed and leaves work quickly. After a while, the interruptions have an effect on his work and his attitude to the other clerks. Eventually someone sends word to Léon's mother that her son is "ruining himself with a married woman", and Léon's mother and employer insist that he break off the affair. Léon does, briefly, but cannot stay away from Emma. His reluctance is tempered with relief because Emma's pursuit of him has become increasingly disturbing. When Emma's debts finally come due, she attempts to seduce Léon into stealing the money to cover her debts from his employer. At this point, he becomes genuinely afraid. He fobs her off with an excuse and disappears from her life.
Rodolphe Boulanger
Rodolphe is a wealthy local man who seduces Emma as one more addition to a long string of mistresses. Though occasionally charmed by Emma, Rodolphe feels little true emotion towards her. As Emma becomes more and more desperate, Rodolphe loses interest and worries about her lack of caution. He eventually ends their relationship, but not before going through a collection of letters and tokens from previous mistresses, all of whom ended up wanting either love or money.
Rodolphe's deteriorating feelings for Emma do not keep him from accepting the valuable gifts she showers on him throughout their relationship, even though he realizes at some level that she can't afford to be so generous. The gifts she gives him are of the same value and quality as she imagines an aristocrat such as the Vicount might receive from a similarly aristocratic mistress. Rodolphe's gifts to Emma are nowhere near as valuable even though he is by far the wealthier of the two. He does not feel particularly obligated by having accepted the gifts, even though they create a large part of Emma's debt to Lheureux.
When Emma asks Rodolphe for help at the peak of her financial crisis, after refusing the sex-for-money exchange offered by the wealthy Monsieur Guillaumin, she essentially attempts to initiate a sex-for-money exchange with Rodolphe. She pretends at first to have returned out of love, then when the timing feels right she asks him for money, using an obvious lie about why she needs a loan. She therefore comes across as among the most mercenary of Rodolphe's past mistresses. Rodolphe therefore sees no need to help her, though he could perhaps not afford to lend her enough money to keep her creditors at bay even if he desired to.
Monsieur L'heureux
A manipulative and sly merchant who continually convinces Emma to buy goods on credit and borrow money from him. L'heureux plays Emma masterfully and eventually leads her so far into debt as to cause her financial ruin and subsequent suicide.
L'heureux's reputation as an aggressive money lender is well known in Yonville. Had Emma or Charles had the wit to make inquiries about him or even to listen to the gossip, they would have realized that L'heureux had ruined at least one other person in town through his stratagems. Yet the only "friend" they trust, Homais, is fully aware of L'heureux's treachery but disinclined to warn Emma or Charles. So both Emma and Charles end up borrowing money from L'heureux without each other's knowledge.
Setting
The setting of Madame Bovary is crucial to the novel for several reasons. First, it is important as it applies to Flaubert's realist style and social commentary. Secondly, the setting is important in how it relates to the protagonist Emma.
It has been calculated that the novel begins in October 1827 and ends in August 1846 (Francis Steegmuller). This is around the era known as the “July Monarchy”, or the rule of King Louis-Philippe. This was a period in which there was a great up-surge in the power of the bourgeois middle class. Flaubert detested the bourgeoisie. Much of the time and effort, therefore, that he spends detailing the customs of the rural French people can be interpreted as social criticism.
Flaubert put much effort into making sure his depictions of common life were accurate. This was aided by the fact that he chose a subject that was very familiar to him. He chose to set the story in and around the city of Rouen in Normandy, the setting of his own birth and childhood. This care and detail that Flaubert gives to his setting is important in looking at the style of the novel. It is this faithfulness to the mundane elements of country life that has garnered the book its reputation as the beginning of the literary movement known as “literary realism”.
Flaubert also deliberately used his setting to contrast with his protagonist. Emma's romantic fantasies are strikingly foiled by the practicalities of the common life around her. Flaubert uses this juxtaposition to reflect on both subjects. Emma becomes more capricious and ludicrous in the harsh light of everyday reality. By the same token, however, the self-important banality of the local people is magnified in comparison to Emma, who, though impractical, still reflects an appreciation of beauty and greatness that seems entirely absent in the bourgeois class.
Style
The book, loosely based on the life story of a schoolfriend who had become a doctor, was written at the urging of friends, who were trying (unsuccessfully) to "cure" Flaubert of his deep-dyed Romanticism by assigning him the dreariest subject they could think of, and challenging him to make it interesting without allowing anything out-of-the-way to occur. Although Flaubert had little liking for the styles of Balzac or Zola, the novel is now seen as a prime example of Realism, a fact which contributed to the trial for obscenity (which was a politically-motivated attack by the government on the liberal newspaper in which it was being serialized, La Revue de Paris). Flaubert, as the author of the story, does not comment directly on the moral character of Emma Bovary and abstains from explicitly condemning her adultery. This decision caused some to accuse Flaubert of glorifying adultery and creating a scandal.
The Realist movement used verisimilitude through a focus on character development. Realism was a reaction against Romanticism. Emma may be said to be the embodiment of a romantic; in her mental and emotional process, she has no relation to the realities of her world. She inevitably becomes dissatisfied since her larger-than-life fantasies are impossible to realize. Flaubert declared that much of what is in the novel is in his own life by saying, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary is me").
Madame Bovary, on the whole, is a commentary on the entire self-satisfied, deluded, bourgeois culture of Flaubert's time period. His contempt for the bourgeoisie is expressed through his characters: Emma and Charles Bovary lost in romantic delusions; absurd and harmful scientific characters, a self-serving money lender, lovers seeking excitement finding only the banality of marriage in their adulterous affairs. All are seeking escape in empty church rituals, unrealistic romantic novels, or delusions of one sort or another.
Literary significance and reception
Long established as one of the greatest novels ever written, the book has often been described as a "perfect" work of fiction. Henry James writes: "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment."
Adaptations
Madame Bovary has been made into several films, beginning with Jean Renoir's 1932 version. It has also been the subject of multiple television miniseries and made-for-TV movies. The most notable of these adaptations was the 1949 film produced by MGM. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, it starred Jennifer Jones in the title role, co-starring James Mason, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, and Gene Lockhart. It was adapted by Giles Cooper for the BBC in 1964, with the same script being used for a new production in 1975. A new BBC version adapted by Heidi Thomas was made in 2000, starring Frances O'Connor and Hugh Bonneville.
Claude Chabrol made his version starring Isabelle Huppert.
Madame Bovary has been adapted into a piece of musical theatre, entitled The Bovary Tale. Composer: Anne Freier. Librettist: Laura Steel. The first performance was at the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate Village in September 2009.
David Lean's film Ryan's Daughter (1970) was a loose adaptation of the story, relocating it to Ireland during the time of the Easter Rebellion. The script had begun life as a straight adaptation of Bovary, but Lean convinced writer Robert Bolt to re-work it into another setting.
Indian director Ketan Mehta adapted the novel into a 1992 Hindi film Maya Memsaab.
Madame Blueberry is an 1998 film in the Veggietales animated series. It is a loose parody of Madame Bovary, in which Madame Blueberry, an anthropomorphic blueberry, gathers material possessions in a vain attempt to find happiness.
Academy Award nominated film Little Children features the novel as part of a book club discussion, and shares a few elements of the main idea.
Naomi Ragen loosely based her 2007 novel The Saturday Wife on Madame Bovary.
Posy Simmonds graphic novel Gemma Bovery reworked the story into a satirical tale of English expatriates in France.
Vale Abraão (1993) (Abraham's Vale) by Manoel de Oliveira is a close interpretation set in Portugal, even referencing and discussing Flaubert's novel several times.
"Madame Ovary" is the name of a character in DC Comics' The Adventures of the Outsiders #33-35. Madame Ovary's name was really Dr. Ovarin, and she was created by Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis.
百年孤独The novel chronicles the history of the Buendía family in the town founded by their patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía. It is built on multiple time frames, playing on ideas presented earlier by Jorge Luis Borges in stories such as The Garden of Forking Paths.
Biographical background and publication
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born on March 6, 1927. García Márquez is a Colombian-born author and journalist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and a pioneer of the Latin American “Boom.” Affectionately known as “Gabo” to millions of readers, he first won international fame with his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, a defining classic of twentieth century literature . His Colombian roots influenced large parts of the novel, as evidenced by the different myths throughout the novel . These myths, along with events in the novel, recount a large portion of Colombian history. For instance, “the arguments over reform in the nineteenth century, the arrival of the railway, the War of the Thousand Days, the American fruit company, the cinema, the automobile, and the massacre of striking plantation workers” are all incorporated in the novel at one point or another".
Plot summary
The novel chronicles the seven generations of the Buendía family in the town of Macondo. The family patriarch and founder of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and his wife (and first cousin), Úrsula, leave their home in Riohacha, Colombia in hopes of finding a new home. One night on their journey while camping on the banks of a river, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of a city of mirrors named Macondo. Upon awakening, José Arcadio Buendía decides to found this city on the site of their campground. After wandering aimlessly in the jungle for many days, the founding of Macondo can be seen as the founding of UtopiaJosé Arcadio Buendía believes it to be surrounded by water, and from this 'island' he invents the world according to him, naming things at will. After its establishment, Macondo soon becomes a town frequented by unusual and extraordinary events. All the events revolve around the many generations of the Buendía family, who are either unable or unwilling to escape periodic, mostly self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, Macondo is destroyed by a terrible hurricane, which symbolizes the cyclical turmoil inherent in Macondo. At the end of the book one of the Buendía male decendants finally cracks a cipher that the males in his family had been trying to solve for generation. The cipher stated all the events that the Buendía family had gone through. Note that this information was available at the beginning of time, and in possession of the Buendia family, before Macondo was even thought of, just indecipherable.
Historical Context
Although One Hundred Years of Solitude is considered a work of fiction, Gabriel García Márquez, a Colombian native, drew upon his country’s history to create a world which parallels many of the major events in Colombia’s history, thus establishing the novel as a piece of critical interpretation.
Prior to European conquest, the region now called Colombia had no cultural developments akin to those of the Incas, the Mayas or the Aztecs The region consisted mainly of large families grouped into larger units that served to define local monarchies . The most well defined tribal groups of the area were the Tairona, the Cenu, the Chibcha . The first Spanish settlement was established in 1509 under the direction of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, as a precursor to the conquest of the territory . Marquez uses the founding of the town of Macondo by the Buendia family as a metaphor for the colonization of the region of Colombia.
After Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada’s conquest of the Chibchas in 1538, Bogotá became the center of Spanish rule . After the collapse of Spanish control in 1810, provincial juntas sprang up almost everywhere to challenge Bogotá’s authority. Eventually though, royalist armies led by Pablo Morillo restored Spanish rule in 1816. Three years later when Simon Bolivar began a second war for independence, he declared the creation of a supranational state-Gran Colombia. With its capital at Bogotá, Gran Colombia survived long enough to witness Spain's final defeat in 1825.
The achievement of Independence in 1819 revealed the further obstacles. Colombia’s geography was a formidable obstacle to modernization. High transportation costs made self-sufficient and disconnected enclaves viable much like the description of the town of Macondo). Colombia had been wrestling with modernity since the eighteenth century. The dynamism of the capitalist revolution gave Colombia’s ruling classes a stark choice: integration with the modern industrial world or perishing in a backwater of barbarism. To incorporate the country with the world, Colombia would have to look to the institutional, political, and economic models of Europe and the United States.
“As nineteenth century Colombians explored, described, and colonized their interior, they mapped racial hierarchy onto an emerging national geography composed of distinct localities and regions. This created a racialized discourse of regional differentiation that assigned greater morality and progress to certain regions that they marked as “white”. Meanwhile, those places defined as “black” and “Indian” were associated with disorder, backwardness, and danger” technology and modernization became associated with race.
In Macondo, with the introduction of technology, a rising population, and modernization came the insomnia plague, which was characterized by forgetfulness. The people of Macondo forgot the words for objects (such as tables and chairs) and eventually forgot the significance or usages of these objects. Not only does this serve as a criticism by Marquez of the modernization of Colombia, but also of the plagues characteristic of the Spanish conquest, which killed many indigenous people throughout the South American continent and the Caribbean. It is estimated that smallpox killed up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas during the conquest. The insomnia of the story represents the nostalgia for the better days of the past, which are now lost upon the residents of Macondo (as a metaphor for Colombia): days before the modernization of the town and before the spread of deadly disease.
The history of Colombia is one that has been marked by years of violence, from wars for independence to the modern-day rebel group commonly known as the FARC. The first major violence in Colombia was a product of the Bolivar Liberation from 1810 to 1821. The leader of the revolution, Simon Bolivar, led many battles against the Spanish in an attempt to free the country from Spanish rule. After independence, well-defined socioeconomic regions, divided in a roughly north-south direction by parallel spurs of the Andes mountains, came into being. During the nineteenth century, the existence of several powerful regional centers undoubtedly contributed to civil disorder . Politically, the relative dispersion of the population and its economic resources caused difficulties for the government’s modernizing programs.
In 1934 a reformist wave brought Dr. Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo to the presidency by unanimous Liberal choice. Lopez imposed La Revolución en Marcha, a revolution characterized by labor reform and social legislation, which angered many Conservatives. In August 1946, Mariano Ospina Pérez took office as the first Conservative president of Colombia. This marked the start of a political breakdown that drew the people under increasingly undemocratic rule . On April 9, 1948, influential and celebrated Liberal candidate, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, was assassinated, sparking the period of Colombia’s history known as “la Violencia”.
By the mid-1960’s, Colombia had witnessed in excess of two hundred thousand politically motivated deaths. La Violencia, from 1946–66, can be broken into five stages: the revival of political violence before and after the presidential election of 1946, the popular urban upheavals generated by Gaitan’s assassination, open guerrilla warfare, first against Conservative government of Ospina Perez, incomplete attempts at pacification and negotiation resulting from the Rojas Pinilla (who had ousted Laureano Gómez), and, finally, disjointed fighting under the Liberal/Conservative coalition of the “National Front,” from 1958 to 1975.
The politically charged violence characteristic of Colombia’s history is paralleled in One Hundred Years of Solitude by the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who wages war against the Conservatives who are facilitating the rise to power of foreign imperialists. The wealthy banana plantation owners (perhaps based on the United Fruit Co.) set up their own dictatorial police force, which brutally attacks citizens for even the slightest offenses.
The use of real events and Colombian history by Garcia Marquez makes One Hundred Years of Solitude an excellent example of magical realism. Not only are the events of the story an interweaving of reality and fiction, but the novel as a whole tells the history of Colombia from a critical perspective using magical realism. In this way, the novel compresses several centuries of Latin American history into a manageable text.
Furthermore, the novel points out that the current state of Latin America is the result of the inability to obtain the confidence required to construct a meaningful sense of direction and progress. The tragedy of Latin America is that it lacks a meaningful and solid identity, causing a lack of self-preservation. This can be attributed to a past highlighted by five hundred years of colonization. Subsequently, there is a seemingly perpetual repetition of violence, repression, and exploitation resulting in a loss of authenticity. The reality of Latin America is presented as a reoccurring fantastical world in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is a vacuum in which the characters have no chance of survival. The desire for change and forward movement exists in Macondo, just as it does in the countries of Latin America. However, the cyclical nature of time in the novel symbolizes the tendency toward repeating history in reality. Subsequently, meaningful progress is never achieved in Macondo or in Latin America. In this manner, Marquez provides insight into the feeling of solitude in present-day Latin America.
Symbolism and metaphors
A dominant theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the inevitable and inescapable repetition of history in Macondo. The protagonists are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time. Throughout the novel the characters are visited by ghosts. "The ghosts are symbols of the past and the haunting nature it has over Macondo. The ghosts and the displaced repetition that they evoke are, in fact, firmly grounded in the particular development of Latin American history". "Ideological transfiguration ensured that Macondo and the Buendías always were ghosts to some extent, alienated and estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that haunt and reinforce such social conditions.
The fate of Macondo is both doomed and predetermined from its very existence. "Fatalism is a metaphor for the particular part that ideology has played in maintaining historical dependence, by locking the interpretation of Latin American history into certain patterns that deny alternative possibilities.The narrative seemingly confirms fatalism in order to illustrate the feeling of entrapment that ideology can performatively create.
The Ghosts that haunt the people of Macondo are symbols of an inescapable past."Ideological transfiguration ensured that Macondo and the Buendías always were ghosts to some extent, alienated and estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that haunt and reinforce such social conditions".
Márquez uses colours as symbols. Yellow and gold are the most frequently used colours and they are symbols of imperialism and the Spanish Siglo de Oro. Gold signifies a search for economic wealth, whereas yellow represents death, change, and destruction.
The glass city is an image that comes to José Arcadio Buendía in a dream. It is the reason for the location of the founding of Macondo, but it is also a symbol of the ill fate of Macondo. Higgins writes that, "By the final page, however, the city of mirrors has become a city of mirages. Macondo thus represents the dream of a brave new world that America seemed to promise and that was cruelly proved illusory by the subsequent course of history". Images such as the glass city and the ice factory represent how Latin America already has its history outlined and is, therefore, fated for destruction.
Overall, there is an underlying pattern of Latin American history in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It could be said that the novel is one of a number of texts that "Latin American culture has created to understand itself" . In this sense, the novel can be conceived as a linear archive. This archive narrates the story of a Latin America discovered by European explorers, which had its historical entity developed by the printing press. The Archive is a symbol of the literature that is the foundation of Latin American history and also a decoding instrument. Melquiades, the keeper of the historical archive in the novel, represents both the whimsical and the literary. Finally, “the world of One Hundred Years of Solitude is a place where beliefs and metaphors become forms of fact, and where more ordinary facts become uncertain”
Characters
Buendía Family Tree
First generation
José Arcadio Buendía
Jose Arcadio Buendía is the patriarch of the Buendía family and the founder of Macondo. Buendía leaves Riohacha, Colombia with his wife, Úrsula Iguarán, after murdering Prudencio Aguilar in a duel. One night camping at the side of a river, Buendía dreams of a city of mirrors named Macondo and decides to establish the town in this location. Jose Arcadio is an introspective, inquisitive man of massive strength and energy who spends more time on his scientific pursuits than with his family. He flirts with alchemy and astronomy and becomes increasingly withdrawn from his family and community. Marquez uses carefully chosen diction, imagery and biblical references to portray this wonderfully unique character to the reader .
Úrsula Iguarán
Úrsula Iguarán is one of the two matriarchs of the Buendía family and is wife to José Arcadio Buendía.
Second generation
José Arcadio
José Arcadio Buendía's firstborn son, José Arcadio seems to have inherited his father's headstrong, impulsive mannerisms. He eventually leaves the family to chase a Gypsy girl and unexpectedly returns many years later as an enormous man covered in tattoos, claiming that he's sailed the seas of the world. He marries his adopted sister Rebeca, causing his banishment from the mansion, and he dies from a mysterious gunshot wound, days after saving his brother from execution.
Colonel Aureliano Buendía
José Arcadio Buendía's second son and the first person to be born in Macondo. He was thought to have premonitions because everything he said came true.He represents not only a warrior figure but also an artist due to his ability to write poetry and create finely crafted golden fish. During the wars he fathered 17 children by unknown women.
Remedios Moscote
Remedios was the youngest daughter of the town's Conservative administrator, Don Apolinar Moscote. Her most striking physical features are her beautiful skin and her emerald-green eyes. The future Colonel Aureliano falls in love with her, despite her extreme youth. She dies shortly after the marriage from a blood poisoning illness during her pregnancy.
Amaranta
The third child of José Arcadio Buendía, Amaranta grows up as a companion of her adopted sister Rebeca. However, her feelings toward Rebeca turn sour over Pietro Crespi, whom both sisters intensely desire in their teenage years. Amaranta dies a lonely and virginal spinster, but comfortable in her existence after having finally accepted what she had become.
Rebeca
Rebeca is the orphaned daughter of Ursula Iguaran's second cousins. At first she is extremely timid, refuses to speak, and has the habits of eating earth and whitewash from the walls of the house, a condition known as pica. She arrives carrying a canvas bag containing her parents' bones and seems not to understand or speak Spanish. However, she responds to questions asked by Visitacion and Cataure in the Guajiro or Wayuu language. She falls in love with and marries her adoptive brother José Arcadio after his return from traveling the world. After his mysterious and untimely death, she lives in seclusion for the rest of her life.
Third generation
Arcadio
Arcadio is José Arcadio's illegitimate son by Pilar Ternera. He is a schoolteacher who assumes leadership of Macondo after Colonel Aureliano Buendía leaves. He becomes a tyrannical dictator and uses his schoolchildren as his personal army. Macondo soon becomes subject to his whims. When the Liberal forces in Macondo fall, Arcadio is shot by a Conservative firing squad.
Aureliano José
Aureliano José is the illegitimate son of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and Pilar Ternera. He joins his father in several wars before deserting to return to Macondo. He deserted because he is obsessed with his aunt, Amaranta, who raised him since his birth. He is eventually shot to death by a Conservative captain midway through the wars.
Santa Sofía de la Piedad
Santa Sofía is a beautiful virgin girl and the daughter of a shopkeeper. She is hired by Pilar Ternera to have sex with her son Arcadio, her eventual husband. She is taken in along with her children by the Buendías after Arcadio's execution. After Úrsula's death she leaves unexpectedly, not knowing her destination.
17 Aurelianos
During his 32 civil war campaigns, Colonel Aureliano Buendía has 17 sons by 17 different women, each named after their father.. Four of these Aurelianos (A. Triste, A. Serrador, A. Arcaya and A. Centeno) stay in Macondo and become a permanent part of the family. Eventually, as revenge against the Colonel, all are assassinated by the government, which identified them by the mysteriously permanent Ash Wednesday cross on their foreheads. The only survivor of the massacre is A. Amador, who escapes into the jungle only to be assassinated at the doorstep of his father's house many years later.
Fourth generation
Remedios the Beauty
Remedios the Beauty is Arcadio and Santa Sofía's first child. It is said she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, and unintentionally causes the deaths of several men who love or lust over her. She appears to most of the town as naively innocent, and some come to think that she is mentally retarded. However, Colonel Aureliano Buendía believes she has inherited great lucidity: "It is as if she's come back from twenty years of war," he said. She rejects clothing and beauty. Too beautiful and, arguably, too wise for the world, Remedios ascends into the sky one morning, while folding laundry.
José Arcadio Segundo
José Arcadio Segundo is the twin brother of Aureliano Segundo, the children of Arcadio and Santa Sofía. Úrsula believes that the two were switched in their childhood, as José Arcadio begins to show the characteristics of the family's Aurelianos, growing up to be pensive and quiet. He plays a major role in the banana worker strike, and is the only survivor when the company massacres the striking workers. Afterward, he spends the rest of his days studying the parchments of Melquiades, and tutoring the young Aureliano. He dies at the exact instant that his twin does.
Aureliano Segundo
Of the two brothers, Aureliano Segundo is the more boisterous and impulsive, much like the José Arcadios of the family. He takes his first girlfriend Petra Cotes as his mistress during his marriage to the beautiful and bitter Fernanda del Carpio. When living with Petra, his livestock propagate wildly, and he indulges in unrestrained revelry. After the long rains, his fortune dries up, and the Buendías are left almost penniless. He turns to search for a buried treasure, which nearly drives him to insanity. He dies of throat cancer at the same moment as his twin. During the confusion at the funeral, the bodies are switched, and each is buried in the other's grave (highlighting Ursula's earlier comment that they had been switched at birth). Aureliano Segundo represents Colombia's economy: gaining and losing weight according to the situation at the time.
Fernanda del Carpio
Fernanda del Carpio is the only major character (except for Rebeca and the First generation) not from Macondo. She comes from a ruined, aristocratic family that kept her isolated from the world. She was chosen as the most beautiful of 5000 girls. Fernanda is brought to Macondo to compete with Remedios for the title of Queen of the carnival after her father promises her she will be the Queen of Madagascar. After the fiasco, she marries Aureliano Segundo and soon takes the leadership of the family away from the now-frail Úrsula. She manages the Buendía affairs with an iron fist. She has three children by Aureliano Segundo, José Arcadio, Renata Remedios, a.k.a. Meme, and Amaranta Úrsula. She remains in the house after he dies, taking care of the household until her death.
Fernanda is never accepted by anyone in the Buendía household who regard her as an outsider. Although, none of the Buendías rebel against her inflexible conservatism. Her mental and emotional instability is revealed through her paranoia, her correspondence with the 'invisible doctors', and her irrational behavior towards Aureliano, whom she tries to isolate from the whole world.
Fifth generation
Renata Remedios (a.k.a. Meme)
Renata Remedios, or Meme is the second child and first daughter of Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo. While she doesn't inherit Fernanda's beauty, she does have Aureliano Segundo's love of life and natural charisma. After her mother declares that she is to do nothing but play the clavichord, she is sent to school where she receives her performance degree as well as academic recognition. While she pursues the clavichord with 'an inflexible discipline', to placate Fernanda, she also enjoys partying and exhibits the same tendency towards excess as her father.
Meme meets and falls in love with Mauricio Babilonia, but when Fernanda discovers their affair, she arranges for Mauricio to be shot, claiming that he was a chicken thief. She then takes Meme to a convent. Meme remains mute for the rest of her life, partially because of the trauma, but also as a sign of rebellion. Several months later she gives birth to a son, Aureliano, at the convent. He is sent to live with the Buendías. She dies of old age in a hospital in Krakow.
José Arcadio (II)
José Arcadio II, named after his ancestors in the Buendía tradition, follows the trend of previous Arcadios. He is raised by Úrsula, who intends for him to become Pope. He returns from Rome without having become a priest. Eventually, he discovers buried treasure, which he wastes on lavish parties and escapades with adolescent boys. Later, he begins a tentative friendship with Aureliano Babilonia, his nephew. José Arcadio plans to set Aureliano up in a business and return to Rome, but is murdered in his bath by four of the adolescent boys who ransack his house and steal his gold.
Amaranta Úrsula
Amaranta Úrsula is the third child of Fernanda and Aureliano. She displays the same characteristics as her namesake who dies when she is only a child. She never knows that the child sent to the Buendía home is her nephew, the illegitimate son of Meme. He becomes her best friend in childhood. She returns home from Europe with an elder husband, Gastón, who leaves her when she informs him of her passionate affair with her nephew, Aureliano. She dies of hemorragia, after she has given birth to the last of the Buendía line.
Sixth generation
Aureliano Babilonia (Aureliano II)
Aureliano Babilonia, or Aureliano II, is the illegitimate child of Meme. He is hidden from everyone by his grandmother, Fernanda. He is strikingly similar to his namesake, the Colonel, and has the same character patterns as well. He is taciturn, silent, and emotionally charged. He barely knows Úrsula, who dies during his childhood. He is a friend of José Arcadio Segundo, who explains to him the true story of the banana worker massacre.
While other members of the family leave and return, Aureliano stays in the Buendía home. He only ventures into the empty town after the death of Fernanda. He works to decipher the parchments of Melquíades but stops to have an affair with his childhood partner and the love of his life, Amaranta Úrsula, not knowing that she is his aunt. When both her and her child die, he is able to decipher the parchments. "...Melquíades' final keys were revealed to him and he saw the epigraph of the parchments perfectly placed in the order of man's time and space: 'The first in line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by ants'." It is assumed he dies in the great wind that destroys Macondo the moment he finishes reading Mequiades' parchments.
Seventh generation
Aureliano (III)
Aureliano III is the child of Aureliano and his aunt, Amaranta Úrsula. He is born with a pig's tail, as the eldest and long dead Úrsula had always feared would happen (the parents of the child had never heard of the omen). His mother dies after giving birth to him, and, due to his grief-stricken father's negligence, he is devoured by ants.
Others
Melquíades
Melquíades is one of a band of gypsies who visit Macondo every year in March, displaying amazing items from around the world. Melquíades sells José Arcadio Buendía several new inventions including a pair of magnets and an alchemist's lab. Later, the gypsies report that Melquíades died in Singapore, but he, nonetheless, returns to live with the Buendía family, stating he could not bear the solitude of death. He stays with the Buendías and begins to write the mysterious parchments that Aureliano Babilonia eventually translates, before dying a second time. This time he drowns in the river near Macondo. He is buried in a grand ceremony organized by the Buendías.
Pilar Ternera
Pilar is a local woman who sleeps with the brothers Aureliano and José Arcadio. She becomes mother of their sons, Aureliano and José Arcadio. Pilar reads the future with cards, and every so often makes an accurate, though vague, prediction. She has close ties with the Buendias throughout the whole novel, helping them with her card predictions. She dies some time after she turns 145 years old (she had eventually stopped counting), surviving until the very last days of Macondo.
The word "Ternera" in Spanish signifies veal or calf, which is fitting considering the way she is treated by Aureliano, Jose Arcadio, and Arcadio. Also, it could be a play on the word "Ternura", which in Spanish means "Tenderness". Pilar is always presented as a very loving figure, and the author often uses names in a similar fashion.
Pietro Crespi
Pietro is a very handsome and polite Italian musician who runs a music school. He installs the pianola in the Buendía house. He becomes engaged to Rebeca, but Amaranta, who also loves him, manages to delay the wedding for years. When José Arcadio and Rebeca agree to be married, Pietro begins to woo Amaranta, who is so embittered that she cruelly rejects him. Despondent over the loss of both sisters, he kills himself.
Petra Cotes
Petra is a dark-skinned woman with gold-brown eyes similar to those of a panther. She is Aureliano Segundo's mistress and the love of his life. She arrives in Macondo as a teenager with her first husband. She briefly dates both of them before her husband dies. After José Arcadio decides to leave her, Aureliano Segundo gets her forgiveness and remains by her side. He continues to see her, even after his marriage. He eventually lives with her, which greatly embitters his wife, Fernanda del Carpio. When Aureliano and Petra make love, their animals reproduce at an amazing rate, but their livestock is wiped out during the four years of rain. Petra makes money by keeping the lottery alive and provides food baskets for Fernanda and her family after the death of Aureliano Segundo.
Mr. Herbert and Mr. Brown
Mr. Herbert is a gringo who showed up at the Buendía house for lunch one day. After tasting the local bananas for the first time, he arranges for a banana company to set up a plantation in Macondo. The plantation is run by the dictatorial Mr. Brown. When José Arcadio Segundo helps arrange a workers' strike on the plantation, the company traps the more than three thousand strikers and machine guns them down in the town square. The banana company and the government completely cover up the event. José Arcadio is the only one who remembers the slaughter. The company arranges for the army to kill off any resistance, then leaves Macondo for good. That event is likely based on the Banana massacre, that took place in Santa Marta, Colombia in 1928.
Mauricio Babilonia
Mauricio is a brutally honest, generous and handsome mechanic for the banana company. He is said to be a descendant of the gypsies who visit Macondo in the early days. He has the unusual characteristic of being constantly swarmed by yellow butterflies, which follow even his lover for a time. Mauricio begins a romantic affair with Meme until Fernanda discovers them and tries to end it. When Mauricio continues to sneak into the house to see her, Fernanda has him shot, claiming he is a chicken thief. Paralyzed and bedridden, he spends the rest of his long life in solitude.
Gastón
Gastón is Amaranta Úrsula's wealthy, Belgian husband. She marries him in Europe and returns to Macondo leading him on a silk leash. Gastón is about fifteen years older than his wife. He is an aviator and an adventurer. When he moves with Amaranta Ursula to Macondo he thinks it is only a matter of time before she realizes that her European ways out of place, causing her to want to move back to Europe. However, when he realizes his wife intends to stay in Macondo, he arranges for his airplane to be shipped over so he can start an airmail service. The plane is shipped to Africa by mistake. When he travels there to claim it, Amaranta writes him of her love for Aureliano Babilonia Buendía. Gastón takes the news in stride, only asking that they ship him his velocipede.
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez is only a minor character in the novel but he has the distinction of bearing the same name as the author. He is the great-great-grandson of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez. He and Aureliano Babilonia are close friends because they know the history of the town, which no one else believes. He leaves for Paris after winning a contest and decides to stay there, selling old newspapers and empty bottles. He is one of the few who is able to leave Macondo before the town is wiped out entirely.
Major themes
The subjectivity of reality and Magical Realism
Critics often cite certain works by García Márquez, such as A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and One Hundred Years of Solitude, as exemplary of magical realism, a style of writing in which the supernatural is presented as mundane, and the mundane as supernatural or extraordinary. The term was coined by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925.
The novel presents a fictional story in a fictional setting. The extraordinary events and characteres are fabricated. However the message that Marquez intends to deliver explains a true history. Marquez utilizes his fantastic story as an expression of reality. "In One Hundred Years of Solitude myth and history overlap. The myth acts as a vehicle to transmit history to the reader. Marquez’s novel can furthermore be referred to as anthropology, where truth is found in language and myth. What is real and what is fiction are indistinguishable. There are three main mythical elements of the novel: classical stories alluding to foundations and origins, characters resembling mythical heroes, and supernatural elements" Magical realism is inherent in the novel-achieved by the constant intertwining of the ordinary with the extraordinary. This magical realism strikes at one's traditional sense of naturalistic fiction. There is something clearly magical about the world of Macondo. It is a state of mind as much as, or more than, a geographical place. For example, one learns very little about its actual physical layout. Furthermore, once in it, the reader must be prepared to meet whatever the imagination of the author presents to him or her.
García Márquez achieves a perfect blend of the real with the magical through the masterful use of tone and narration. By maintaining the same tone throughout the novel, Márquez makes the extraordinary blend with the ordinary. His condensation of and lackadaisical manner in describing events causes the extraordinary to seem less remarkable than it actually is, thereby perfectly blending the real with the magical. Reinforcing this effect is the unastonished tone in which the book is written. This tone restricts the ability of the reader to question the events of the novel, however, it also causes the reader to call into question the limits of reality. Furthermore, maintaining the same narrator throughout the novel familiarizes the reader with his voice and causes he or she to become accustomed to the extraordinary events in the novel .
The fluidity of time
One Hundred Years of Solitude contains several ideas concerning time. Although the story can be read as a linear progression of events, both when considering individual lives and Macondo's history, García Márquez allows room for several other interpretations of time:
* He reiterates the metaphor of history as a circular phenomenon through the repetition of names and characteristics belonging to the Buendía family. Over six generations, all the José Arcadios possess inquisitive and rational dispositions as well as enormous physical strength. The Aurelianos, meanwhile, lean towards insularity and quietude. This repetition of traits reproduces the history of the individual characters and, ultimately, a history of the town as a succession of the same mistakes ad infinitum due to some endogenous hubris in our nature.
* The novel explores the issue of timelessness or eternity even within the framework of mortal existence. A major trope with which it accomplishes this task is the alchemist's laboratory in the Buendía family home. The laboratory was first designed by Melquíades near the start of the story and remains essentially unchanged throughout its course. It is a place where the male Buendía characters can indulge their will to solitude, whether through attempts to deconstruct the world with reason as in the case of José Arcadio Buendía, or by the endless creation and destruction of golden fish as in the case of his son Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Furthermore, a sense of inevitability prevails throughout the text. This is a feeling that regardless of what way one looks at time, its encompassing nature is the one truthful admission.
* On the other hand, it is important to keep in mind that One Hundred Years of Solitude, while basically chronological and "linear" enough in its broad outlines, also shows abundant zigzags in time, both flashbacks of matters past and long leaps towards future events. One example of this is the youthful amour between Meme and Mauricio Babilonia, which is already in full swing before we are informed about the origins of the affair .
Incest
A recurring theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the Buendía family's propensity toward incest. The patriarch of the family, Jose Arcadio Buendía, is the first of numerous Buendías to intermarry when he marries his first cousin, Úrsula. It is worth noting that this initial, incestuous act can be viewed as an "original sin", however it will not be the last one. Furthermore, the fact that "throughout the novel the family is haunted by the fear of punishment in the form of the birth of a monstrous child with a pig's tail" can be attributed to this initial, and the recurring acts of incest among the Buendías.
Solitude
Perhaps the most dominant theme in the book is that of solitude. Macondo was founded in the remote jungles of the Colombian rainforest. The solitude of the town is representative of the colonial period in Latin American history, where outposts and colonies were, for all intents and purposes, not interconnected. Isolated from the rest of the world, the Buendías grow to be increasingly solitary and selfish. With every member of the family living only for him or her self, the Buendías become representative of the aristocratic, land-owning elite who came to dominate Latin America in keeping with the sense of Latin American history symbolized in the novel. This egocentricity is embodied, especially, in the characters of Aureliano, who lives in a private world of his own, and Remedios, who destroys the lives of four men enamored by her beauty. Throughout the novel it seems as if no character can find true love or escape the destructiveness of their own egocentricity.
The selfishness of the Buendía family is eventually broken by the once superficial Aureliano Segundo and Petra Cotes, who discover a sense of mutual solidarity and the joy of helping others in need during Macondo's economic crisis. This pair even finds love, and their pattern is repeated by Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula. Eventually, Aureliano and Amaranta decide to have a child, and the latter is convinced that it will represent a fresh start for the once-conceited Buendía family. However, the child turns out to be the perpetually-feared monster with the pig's tail.
Nonetheless, the appearance of love represents a shift in Macondo, albeit one that leads to its destruction. "The emergence of love in the novel to displace the traditional egoism of the Buendías reflects the emergence of socialist values as a political force in Latin America, a force that will sweep away the Buendías and the order they represent". A well-known socialist, the ending to One Hundred Years of Solitude could be a wishful prediction by García Márquez regarding the future of Latin America.
Literary significance, reception and recognition
One Hundred Years of Solitude has received universal recognition. The novel has been awarded Italy’s Chianciano Award, France’s Prix de Meilleur Livre Etranger, Venezuela’s Romulo Gallegos Prize, and the Books Abroad/ Neustadt International Prize for Literature. García Márquez also received an honorary LL.D. from Columbia University in New York City. These awards set the stage for García Márquez’s 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.
García Márquez is said to have a gift for blending the everyday with the miraculous, the historical with the fabulous, and psychological realism with surreal flights of fancy. It is a revolutionary novel that provides a looking glass into the thoughts and beliefs of its author, who chose to give a literary voice to Latin America: "A Latin America which neither wants, nor has any reason, to be a pawn without a will of its own; nor is it merely wishful thinking that its quest for independence and originality should become a Western aspiration." Gabriel García Márquez
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech Márquez addressed the significance of his writing and proposed its role to be more than just literary expression: "I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude"
* In 1970, reviewing the book in the National Observer, William Kennedy hailed One Hundred Years of Solitude as "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race."
* The novel topped the list of books that have most shaped world literature over the last 25 years, according to a survey of international writers commissioned by the global literary journal Wasafiri as a part of its 25th anniversary.
According to Antonio Sacoto, professor at The City College of the City University of New York, One Hundred Years of Solitude is considered as one of the five key novels in Hispanic American literature. (Together with El señor Presidente, Pedro Páramo, La muerte de Artemio Cruz, y La ciudad los perros). These novels, representative of the boom allowed Hispanic American literature to reach the quality of North American and European literature in terms of technical quality, rich themes, and linguistic innovations, among other attributes.
Although we are faced with a very convoluted narrative, Garcia Marquez is able to define clear themes while maintaining individual character identities, and using different narrative techniques such as third person narrators, specific point of view narrators, and streams of consciousness. Cinematographic techniques are also employed in the novel, with the idea of the montage and the close-up, which effectively combine the comic and grotesque with the dramatic and tragic. Furthermore, political and historical realities are combined with the mythical and magical Latin American world. Lastly, through human comedy the problems of a family, a town, and a country are unveiled. This is all presented through Garcia Marquez’s unique form of narration, which causes the novel to never cease being at its most interesting point.
The characters in the novel are never defined; they are not created from a mold. Instead, they are developed and formed throughout the novel. All characters are individualized, with many characteristics that differentiate them from others.. Ultimately, the novel has a rich imagination achieved by its rhythmic tone, narrative technique, and fascinating character creation, making it a thematic quarry, where the trivial and anecdotal and the historic and political are combined. (260)
Criticisms
Style
Although One Hundred Years of Solitude has come to be considered one of, if not the, most influential Latin American texts of all time, the novel and Gabriel Garcia Marquez have both received many critical criticisms and reviews. Harold Bloom says “My primary impression, in the act of rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude, is a kind of aesthetic battle fatigue, since every page is rammed full of life beyond the capacity of any single reader to absorb . . . There are no wasted sentences, no mere transitions, in this novel, and you must notice everything at the moment you read it.”
Inspirations
Garcia Marquez has been accused of using many texts as his inspirations for One Hundred Years of Solitude. Of these, the most well-known is Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha David T. Haberly alleges that “strong cases have been made for Faulkner, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, and Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, and one which has not been mentioned is Chateaubriand’s Atala.” Hopkins backs his statement with evidence that Atala was available for Spanish-speaking audiences before the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude and makes comparisons between the plot of the two stories and some of the characters.
Reinforcing Gender Stereotypes
Critics have also speculated the potential of Marquez harboring ideals of marianismo, adhering to sexist stereotypes, and reinforcing these stereotypes and sexist attitudes in Cien Anos de Soledad through his portrayal of female characters as domestic housewives. This potentially sexist view also can be viewed as Marquez’s profound reflection on the social and cultural realities that exist in Latin America in terms of how women were viewed, and in particular, in Colombia. “What sort of values does Ursula symbolize? They are these: middle class stinginess, stupidity, superstition, insanity, reactionary activism, etc.” “There are numerous episodes and statements in the book which reinforce the patriarchical values of the story” . “One Hundred Years of Solitude reflects the traditional Latin American role of women as adjuncts to men and implies neither qualitative awareness nor literary criticism of the restrictive political and economic systems and notions (ie marianismo) that perpetuate such notions. As a whole, the women of Macondo are pictured as male-defined, biological reproducers or sexually pleasing objects who are treated thematically as accessories to the men who actually shape and control the world.”
McOndo Movement
The portrayal of Latin American culture and society in One Hundred Years of Solitude has been a point of criticism as well. It has been said that Gabriel Garcia Marquez has created a work in which Western audiences portray popular Latin American culture as a primitive society, lacking in technology, and as a region on the world which has been excluded from the effects of globalization. One group movement that speaks out against this portrayal of Latin America as a primitive society is the McOndo movement. McOndo is a Latin American literary movement that breaks away from the long-dominant magical realist literary tradition by strongly associating itself with mass media culture . McOndo attempts to contextualize being Latin American in a world dominated by American pop culture . The movement challenges the natural or rural, magical world typically depicted by the Magical Realism genre .
The work McOndo, by editors Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gomez, critiques the re-emphasis of the primitive stereotypes of Latin America in One Hundred Years of Solitude. They say “Nuestro McOndo es tan latinoamericano y magico (exotico) como el Macondo real (que, a todo esto no es real sin virtual). Nuestro pais McOndo es mas grande, sobrepoblado y lleno de contaminacion, con autopistas, metro, TV-cable y barriadas. En McOndo hay McDonald’s, computadores Mac y condominios, amen de hotels cinco estrellas construidos con dinero lavando y malls gigantescos” , roughly translated to say “Our McOndo is just as Latin American as the magic (exotic) as the real Macondo (which isn’t real so much as virtual). Our country McOndo is bigger, densely populated and full on contamination, with highways, public transit, cable TV and neighborhoods. In McOndo there are McDonald’s, Mac computers and condominiums, as well as five-star hotels built with clean money and gigantic malls” . He aims to denounce the primitive nature of Garcia Marquez’s Macondo and contrast it with the new McOndo, the metaphorical Latin America we now know after the effects of globalization and corporatization. “Now, thanks to Fuguet and his peers, there is a new voice south of the Rio Grande. It is savvy, street-smart, sometimes wiseass and un-ashamedly over the top. Fuguet calls this the voice of McOndo--a blend of McDonald's, Macintosh computers and condos. The label is a spoof, of course, not only on Garcia Marquez's fictitious village but also on all the poseurs who have turned these latitudes into a pastel tequila ad. ¡Hola! Fuguet is saying. Latin America is no paradise” .
Internal references
In the novel's final chapter, Márquez references the novel Hopscotch (Spanish: Rayuela) by Julio Cortázar in the following line: "...in the room that smelled of boiled cauliflower where Rocamadour was to die" (p. 412). Rocamadour is a fictional character in Hopscotch who indeed dies in the room described. He also references two other major works by Latin American writers in the novel: The Death of Artemio Cruz (Spanish: La Muerte de Artemio Cruz) by Carlos Fuentes and Explosion in a Cathedral (Spanish: El siglo de las luces) by Alejo Carpentier.
Adaptations
* Shuji Terayama's play One Hundred Years of Solitude (百年の孤独, originally performed by the Tenjo Sajiki theater troupe), as well as his film Farewell to the Ark (さらば箱舟) are loose (and not officially authorized) adaptations of the novel by García Marquez transplanted into the realm of Japanese culture and history.
Although One Hundred Years of Solitude has had such a big impact on the literature world, and although this novel is the author's best selling and most translated around the world, there have been no movies produced about it. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has never agreed to sell the rights for producing such film, even though his novel has inspired many to write and has more than enough themes to work on in the film industry.
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen. First published in 1813, as her second novel, she started it in 1796 as her first persevering effort for publication. She finished the original manuscript by 1797 in Steventon, Hampshire, where she lived with her parents and siblings in the town rectory. Austen originally called the story First Impressions, but it was never published under that title; instead, she made extensive revisions to the manuscript, then retitled and eventually published it as Pride and Prejudice. In renaming the novel, Austen may have had in mind the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, itself called "Pride and Prejudice" and where the phrase appears three times in block capitals. (She may also have been concerned that the original title might be confused with other works.)
The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, moral rightness, education and marriage in her aristocratic society of early 19th century England. Elizabeth is the second eldest of five daughters of a country gentleman landed in the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, not far from London.
Though the story's setting is uniquely turn of the 19th century, it retains a fascination for modern readers, continuing near the top of lists of 'most loved books' such as the Big Read. It still receives considerable attention from literary critics. This modern interest has resulted in a number of dramatic adaptations and an abundance of novels and stories imitating Austen's memorable characters or themes.
To date, the book has sold some 20 million copies worldwide.
Plot summary
The novel revolves around the Bennet family. The five marriageable daughters and mother will be without a home and income once Mr. Bennet dies: The terms on which Mr. Bennet inherited Longbourn ("fee tail male," now abolished by statute in England) prohibit women from inheriting it, with the effect that instead one of Mr. Bennet's collateral relatives will inherit the estate. The mother worries about this predicament, and wishes to find husbands for them quickly. The father doesn't seem to be worried at all, and Elizabeth, the heroine, has decided to only marry for love, even though she has no real ideas about how she will survive financially. She is of the opinion that her sister Jane, being kind and beautiful, will find a wealthy husband, and that she can then live with her. As the novel opens, Mr Bingley, a wealthy young gentleman, rents a country estate near the Bennets called Netherfield. He arrives in town accompanied by his fashionable sisters and his good friend, Mr Darcy. While Bingley is well-received in the community, Darcy begins his acquaintance with smug condescension and proud distaste for all the 'country' people. Bingley and Elizabeth Bennet's older sister Jane begin to grow close. Elizabeth's best friend Charlotte advises that Jane should be more affectionate to Bingley, as they are both shy, and he may not know that she is indeed interested in him. Elizabeth disregards her friend's opinion, saying that Jane is shy and modest, and that if Bingley can't see how she feels, he is a fool. With that, she never even tells Jane what Charlotte advised. Elizabeth is stung by Darcy's haughty rejection of her at a local dance and decides to match his coldness with her own wit.
At the same time Elizabeth begins a friendship with Mr Wickham, a militia officer who relates a prior acquaintance with Darcy. Wickham tells her that he has been seriously mistreated by Darcy. Elizabeth immediately seizes upon this information as another reason to hate Darcy. Ironically, but unbeknownst to her, Darcy finds himself gradually drawn to Elizabeth.
Just as Bingley appears to be on the point of proposing marriage to Jane Bennet, he quits Netherfield, leaving Jane confused and upset. Elizabeth is convinced that Bingley's sister has conspired with Darcy to separate Jane and Bingley.
Before Bingley leaves, Mr Collins, the male relative who is to inherit Longbourn, makes a sudden appearance and stays with the Bennets. He is a recently ordained clergyman employed by the wealthy and patronizing Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though he was partially entreated to visit by his patroness, Collins has another reason for visiting: he wishes to find a wife from among the Bennet sisters. Mr Bennet and Elizabeth are amused by his self-important and pedantic behaviour. He immediately enters pursuit of Jane; however, when Mrs Bennet mentions her preoccupation with Mr Bingley, he turns to Elizabeth. He soon proposes marriage to Elizabeth, who refuses him, much to her mother's distress. Collins quickly recovers and proposes to Elizabeth's close friend, Charlotte Lucas, who immediately accepts him. Once the marriage is arranged, Charlotte asks Elizabeth to come for an extended visit.
In the spring, Elizabeth joins Charlotte and her cousin at his parish in Kent. The parish is adjacent to Rosings Park, the grand manor of Mr Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, where Elizabeth is frequently invited. While calling on Lady Catherine, Mr Darcy encounters Elizabeth. She discovers from a cousin of Darcy that it was he who separated Bingley and Jane. Soon after, Darcy admits his love of Elizabeth and proposes to her. Insulted by his high-handed and insulting manner of proposing, Elizabeth refuses him. When he asks why she should refuse him, she confronts him with his sabotage of Bingley's relationship with Jane and Wickham's account of their dealings.
Deeply shaken by Elizabeth's vehemence and accusations, Darcy writes her a letter justifying his actions. The letter reveals that Wickham soon dissipated his legacy-settlement (from Darcy's father's estate), then came back to Darcy requesting permanent patronage; and that he became angry when rejected, accusing Darcy of cheating him. To exact revenge and to make off with part of the Darcy family fortune, he attempted to seduce Darcy's young sister Georgiana—to gain her hand and fortune, almost persuading her to elope with him—before he was found out and stopped. Towards Bingley and Jane, Darcy justifies his actions from having observed that Jane did not show any reciprocal interest in his friend; thus his aim in separating them was mainly to protect Bingley from heartache.
Darcy admits he was concerned about the disadvantageous connection with Elizabeth's family, especially her embarrassing mother and wild younger sisters. After reading the letter, Elizabeth begins to question both her family's behaviour and Wickham's credibility. She concludes that Wickham is not as trustworthy as his easy manners would indicate, that he had lied to her previously, and that her early impressions of Darcy might have been inaccurate. Soon after receiving the letter, Elizabeth returns home.
Elizabeth tells her father that Darcy was responsible for uniting Lydia and Wickham. This is one of the two earliest illustrations of Pride and Prejudice. The clothing styles reflect the time the illustration was engraved (the 1830s), not the time the novel was written or set.
Some months later, during a tour of Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth visits Pemberley, Darcy's estate. Darcy's housekeeper, an older woman who has known Darcy since childhood, presents Elizabeth and her relatives with a flattering and benevolent impression of his character. Unexpectedly, Darcy arrives at Pemberley as they tour its grounds. He makes an effort to be gracious and welcoming to them, thus strengthening Elizabeth's newly favourable impression of him. Darcy then introduces Elizabeth to his sister Georgiana. He treats her uncle and aunt very well, and finds them of a more sound character than her other relatives, whom he previously dismissed as socially inferior.
Elizabeth and Darcy's renewed acquaintance is cut short when news arrives that Elizabeth's younger sister Lydia has run away with Wickham. Initially, the Bennets believe that Wickham and Lydia have eloped, but soon it is surmised that Wickham has no plans to marry Lydia. Lydia's antics threaten the family's reputation and the Bennet sisters with social ruin. Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle hurriedly leave Derbyshire, and Elizabeth is convinced that Darcy will avoid her from now on.
Soon, thanks to the intervention of Elizabeth's uncle, Lydia and Wickham are found and married. After the marriage, Wickham and Lydia make a visit to Longbourn. While bragging to Elizabeth, Lydia comments that Darcy was present at the wedding. Surprised, Elizabeth sends an inquiry to her aunt, from whom she discovers that Darcy was responsible for both finding the couple and arranging their marriage at great expense to himself.
Soon after, Bingley and Darcy return to the area. Bingley proposes marriage to Jane, and this news starts rumors that Darcy will propose to Elizabeth. Lady Catherine travels to Longbourn with the sole aim of confronting Elizabeth and demanding that she never accept such a proposal. Elizabeth refuses to bow to Lady Catherine's demands. When news of this obstinance reaches Darcy, it convinces him that her opinion of him has changed. When he visits, he once again proposes marriage. Elizabeth accepts, and the two become engaged.
The final chapters of the book establish the future of the characters. Elizabeth and Darcy settle at Pemberley where Mr Bennet visits often. Mrs Bennet remains frivolous and silly; she often visits the new Mrs Bingley and talks of the new Mrs Darcy. Later, Jane and Bingley move from Netherfield to avoid Jane's mother and Meryton relations and to locate near the Darcys in Derbyshire. Elizabeth and Jane manage to teach Kitty greater social grace, and Mary learns to accept the difference between herself and her sisters' beauty and mixes more with the outside world. Lydia and Wickham continue to move often, leaving their debts for Jane and Elizabeth to pay off. At Pemberley, Elizabeth and Georgiana grow close, though Georgiana is surprised by Elizabeth's playful treatment of Darcy. Lady Catherine stays very angry with her nephew's marriage but over time the relationship between the two is repaired and she eventually decides to visit them. Elizabeth and Darcy also remain close with her uncle and aunt.
Main characters
[show]Character genealogy
Mr Hurst
Mrs Hurst
Mr Philips
Caroline Bingley
Mrs Philips
Mr Charles Bingley
Mrs Gardiner
Jane Bennet
Mr Gardiner
Elizabeth Bennet
Mrs Bennet
Mary Bennet
Mr Bennet
Catherine "Kitty" Bennet
Mr William Collins
Lydia Bennet
Charlotte Lucas
Mr George Wickham
(Old) Mr Darcy
Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy
Lady Anne Darcy
Georgiana Darcy
Lady Catherine De Bourgh
Anne De Bourgh
Lord ——
Colonel Fitzwilliam
* Elizabeth Bennet is the main character and protagonist. The reader sees the unfolding plot and the other characters mostly from her viewpoint. The second of the Bennet daughters at twenty years old, she is intelligent, lively, attractive, and witty, but with a tendency to judge on first impressions and perhaps to be a little selective of the evidence upon which she bases her judgments. As the plot begins, her closest relationships are with her father, her sister Jane, her aunt Mrs Gardiner, and her best friend Charlotte Lucas.
* Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is the main male character. Twenty-eight years old and unmarried, Darcy is the wealthy owner of the famous family estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire. Handsome, tall, and intelligent, but not convivial, his aloof decorum and moral rectitude are seen by many as an excessive pride and concern for social status. He makes a poor impression on strangers, such as the gentry of Meryton, but is valued by those who know him well.
* Mr Bennet has a wife and five daughters, and seems to have inurred himself to his fate. A bookish and intelligent gentleman somewhat withdrawn from society, he dislikes the indecorous behaviours of his wife and three younger daughters; but he offers little beyond mockery by way of correcting them. Rather than guiding these daughters to more sensible understanding, he is instead content to laugh at them. He relates very well with his two elder daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, showing them much more love and respect than his wife and younger daughters.
* Mrs Bennet is the wife of her social superior Mr Bennet, and mother of Elizabeth and her sisters. She is frivolous, excitable, and narrow-minded. She is susceptible to attacks of tremors and palpitations; her public manners and social climbing are embarrassing to Jane and Elizabeth. Her favourite daughter is the youngest, Lydia.
Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth about Darcy, on the title page of the first illustrated edition. This is the other of the first two illustrations of the novel.
* Jane Bennet is the eldest Bennet sister. Twenty-two years old when the novel begins, she is considered the most beautiful young lady in the neighbourhood. Her character is contrasted with Elizabeth's as sweeter, shyer, and equally sensible, but not as clever; her most notable trait is a desire to see only the good in others. Jane is closest to Elizabeth, and her character is often contrasted with that of Elizabeth.
* Mary Bennet is the only plain Bennet sister, and rather than join in some of the family activities, she reads, although is often impatient for display. She works hard for knowledge and accomplishment, but has neither genius nor taste. At the ball at Netherfield, she embarrasses her family by singing badly.
* Catherine "Kitty" Bennet is the fourth Bennet sister, aged seventeen. She is portrayed as a less headstrong but equally silly shadow of Lydia.
* Lydia Bennet is the youngest Bennet sister, aged fifteen. She is repeatedly described as frivolous and headstrong. Her main activity in life is socialising, especially flirting with the military officers stationed in the nearby town of Meryton. She dominates her older sister Kitty and is supported in the family by her mother. After she elopes with Wickham and he is paid to marry her, she shows no remorse for the embarrassment that her actions caused for her family, but acts as if she has made a wonderful match of which her sisters should be jealous.
* Charles Bingley is a young gentleman without an estate. His wealth was recent, and he is seeking a permanent home. He rents the Netherfield estate near Longbourn when the novel opens. Twenty-two years old at the start of the novel, handsome, good-natured, and wealthy, he is contrasted with his friend Darcy as being less intelligent but kinder and more charming, and hence more popular in Meryton. He lacks resolve and is easily influenced by others.
* Caroline Bingley is the snobbish sister of Charles Bingley. Clearly harbouring romantic intentions on Darcy herself, she views his growing attachment to Elizabeth Bennet with some jealousy, resulting in disdain and frequent verbal attempts to undermine Elizabeth and her society.
* George Wickham is an old acquaintance of Darcy from childhood, and an officer in the militia unit stationed near Meryton. Superficially charming, he rapidly forms a friendship with Elizabeth Bennet, prompting remarks upon his suitability as a potential husband. He spreads numerous tales about the wrongs Darcy has done to him, colouring the popular perception of the other man in local society. It is eventually revealed that these tales are distortions, and that Darcy was the wronged man in their acquaintance.
* William Collins, aged twenty-five, is Mr Bennet's clergyman cousin and, as Mr Bennet has no son, heir to his estate. Austen described him as "not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society." Collins boasts of his acquaintance with — and advantageous patronage from — Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Mr Bennet, Jane, and Elizabeth consider him pompous and lacking in common sense. Elizabeth's rejection of Collins' marriage proposal is welcomed by her father, regardless of the financial benefit to the family of such a match. Elizabeth is later somewhat distressed — although understanding — when her closest friend, Charlotte Lucas, consents to marry Collins out of her need for a settled position and to avoid the low status and lack of autonomy of an old maid.
* Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who has wealth and social standing, is haughty, domineering and condescending. Mr Collins, among others, enables these characteristics by deferring to her opinions and desires. Elizabeth, however, is duly respectful but not intimidated. Darcy, whilst respectful of their shared family connection, is offended by her lack of manners, especially towards Elizabeth, and later — when pressed by her demand that he not marry Elizabeth — is quick to assert his intentions to marry whom he wishes.
* Mr Gardiner is Mrs Bennet's brother, and a businessman. He is quite sensible and gentleman-like. He tries to help Lydia when she elopes with Wickham. His wife has close relationships with Elizabeth and Jane. Jane stays with the Gardiners in London for a while, and Elizabeth travels with them to Derbyshire, where she again meets Darcy.
* Georgiana Darcy is Mr Darcy's quiet and amiable younger sister, aged sixteen when the story begins. In a letter from Mr Darcy to Elizabeth, he describes that Wickham tried to persuade her to elope with him and inherit her 30,000 pounds. Later on, Elizabeth meets her at their home at Pemberly, where she is amiable and sweet. She is very happy with her brother's choosing of Elizabeth and maintains an extremely close relationship to both of them.
Interrelationships
A comprehensive web showing the relationships between the main characters in Pride and Prejudice
Major themes
Many critics take the novel's title as a starting point when analysing the major themes of Pride and Prejudice; however, Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title since commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title. It should be pointed out that the qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists; both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice."
A major theme in much of Austen's work is the importance of environment and upbringing on the development of young people's character and morality. Social standing and wealth are not necessarily advantages in her world, and a further theme common to Jane Austen's work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr and Mrs Bennet (particularly the latter) as parents is blamed for Lydia's lack of moral judgment; Darcy, on the other hand, has been taught to be principled and scrupulously honourable, but is also proud and overbearing. Kitty, rescued from Lydia's bad influence and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their superior society.
Style
Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke". By using narrative which adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, that of Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."
Publication history
Modern paperback editions of Pride and Prejudice
The novel was originally titled First Impressions by Jane Austen, and was written between October 1796 and August 1797. On 1 November 1797 Austen's father gave the draft to London bookseller Thomas Cadell in hopes of it being published, but it was rejected. The unpublished manuscript was returned to Austen and it stayed with her.
Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and 1812. She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice. In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarized in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals. It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.
Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton of Whitehall in exchange for £110 (Austen had asked for £150). This proved a costly decision. Austen had published Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis, whereby she indemnified the publisher against any losses and received any profits, less costs and the publisher's commission. Unaware that Sense and Sensibility would sell out its edition, making her £140, she passed the copyright to Egerton for a one-off payment, meaning that all the risk (and all the profits) would be his. Jan Fergus has calculated that Egerton subsequently made around £450 from just the first two editions of the book.
Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes in January 1813, priced at 18s. Favourable reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in November that year. A third edition was published in 1817.
Foreign language translations first appeared in 1813 in French; subsequent translations were published in German, Danish and Swedish. Pride and Prejudice was first published in the United States in August 1832 as Elizabeth Bennet or, Pride and Prejudice. The novel was also included in Richard Bentley's Standard Novel series in 1833. R. W. Chapman's scholarly edition of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition from which many modern publications of the novel are based.
Reception
The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following publication. Jan Fergus calls it "her most popular novel, both with the public and with her family and friends", and quotes David Gilson's A Bibliography of Jane Austen (Clarendon, 1982), where it is stated that Pride and Prejudice was referred to as "the fashionable novel" by Anne Isabella Milbanke, later to be the wife of Lord Byron. However, others did not agree. Charlotte Brontë wrote to noted critic and reviewer George Henry Lewes after reading a review of his published in Fraser's Magazine in 1847. He had praised Jane Austen's work and declared that he, "... would rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels". Miss Brontë, though, found Pride and Prejudice a disappointment, "... a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck."
Modern popularity
* In 2003 the BBC conducted the largest ever poll for the "UK's Best-Loved Book" in which Pride and Prejudice came second, behind The Lord of the Rings.
* In a 2008 survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers, Pride and Prejudice came first in a list of the 101 best books ever written.
Adaptations
Film, television, and theatre
Pride and Prejudice has engendered numerous adaptations. Some of the notable film versions include that of 1940 starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, that of 2003 starring Kam Heskin and Orlando Seale (which placed the characters of Pride and Prejudice in a Mormon university, and was directed by Andrew Black and that of 2005 starring Keira Knightley (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Matthew Macfadyen. Notable television versions include two by the BBC: the 1995 version starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and a 1980 version starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul. A 1936 stage version was created by Helen Jerome played at the St. James's Theatre in London, starring Celia Johnson and Hugh Williams. First Impressions was a 1959 Broadway musical version starring Polly Bergen, Farley Granger, and Hermione Gingold. In 1995, a musical concept album was written by Bernard J. Taylor, with Peter Karrie in the role of Mr Darcy and Claire Moore in the role of Elizabeth Bennet. A new stage production, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, The New Musical, was presented in concert on 21 October 2008 in Rochester, New York with Colin Donnell as Darcy. The popular film Bridget Jones's Diary is a contemporary retelling, starring Renee Zellweger as a modern day Elizabeth, and Colin Firth, once again, as Mr Darcy.
Bride and Prejudice, starring Aishwarya Rai, is a Bollywood adaptation of the novel, while Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003) places the novel in contemporary times. The off-Broadway musical I Love You Because reverses the gender of the main roles, set in modern day New York City. The Japanese comic Hana Yori Dango by Yoko Kamio, in which the wealthy, arrogant and proud protagonist, Doumyouji Tsukasa, falls in love with a poor, lower-class girl named Makino Tsukushi, is loosely based on Pride and Prejudice. A 2008 Israeli television six-part miniseries set the story in the Galilee with Mr Darcy a well-paid worker in the high-tech industry.
Pride and Prejudice has also crossed into the science fiction and horror genres. In the 1997 episode of science fiction comedy Red Dwarf entitled "Beyond a Joke", the crew of the space ship relax in a virtual reality rendition of "Pride and Prejudice Land" in "Jane Austen World". The central premise of the television miniseries Lost in Austen is a modern woman suddenly swapping lives with that of Elizabeth Bennet. In February 2009, it was announced that Elton John's Rocket Pictures production company was making a film, Pride and Predator, based on the story, but with the added twist of an alien landing in Longbourne.
Literature
The novel has inspired a number of other works that are not direct adaptations. Books inspired by Pride and Prejudice include: Mr. Darcy's Daughters and The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy by Elizabeth Aston; Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued and An Unequal Marriage: Or Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later by Emma Tennant; The Book of Ruth (ASIN B00262ZRBM) by Helen Baker; Jane Austen Ruined My Life and Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo; Precipitation - A Continuation of Miss Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Helen Baker; Searching for Pemberley by Mary Simonsen and Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and its sequel Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberly by Linda Berdoll. In Gwyn Cready's comedic romance novel, Seducing Mr. Darcy, the heroine lands in Pride and Prejudice by way of magic massage, has a fling with Darcy and unknowingly changes the rest of the story. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, which started as a newspaper column before becoming a novel and a film, was inspired by the then-current BBC adaptation; both works share a Mr. Darcy of serious disposition (both played by Colin Firth), a foolish match-making mother, and a detached affectionate father, as well as the protagonist overhearing Mr. Darcy speaking about her disparagingly, followed by the caddish character gaining the protagonist's affections by telling lies about Mr. Darcy. The self-referential in-jokes continue with the sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.
In March 2009, Quirk Books released Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which takes Austen's actual, original work, and laces it with zombie hordes, cannibalism, ninjas, and ultra-violent mayhem. Scheduled for publication in March 2010, Quirk Books has announced that it will produce a prequel which deals with Elizabeth Bennett's early days as a zombie hunter, entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.
Yet another angle was introduced by Monica Fairview, who wrote about Miss Caroline Bingley in The Other Mr Darcy, published in October 2009. Pride and Prejudice has also inspired many scholarly articles and books including: So Odd a Mixture: Along the Autism Spectrum in 'Pride and Prejudice' by Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer, Forewords by Eileen Sutherland and Tony Attwood.
Marvel has also published their take on this classic, releasing a short comic series of five issues that stays true to the original storyline. The first issue was published on 1 April 2009 and was written by Nancy Hajeski.
Author Amanda Grange wrote Mr. Darcy's Diary in 2007 that tells the original story of Pride and Prejudice from the view of Mr Darcy. In 2009, she wrote Mr. Darcy, Vampyre which reimagines Darcy as a vampire after he has married Elizabeth. Following the same premise is Regina Jeffers' "Vampire Darcy's Desire", which retells Pride and Prejudice on the basis that Darcy is a dhampir (part-human, part-vampire) joined by his lover Elizabeth to fight the evil vampire George Wickham.
The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, moral rightness, education and marriage in her aristocratic society of early 19th century England. Elizabeth is the second eldest of five daughters of a country gentleman landed in the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, not far from London.
Though the story's setting is uniquely turn of the 19th century, it retains a fascination for modern readers, continuing near the top of lists of 'most loved books' such as the Big Read. It still receives considerable attention from literary critics. This modern interest has resulted in a number of dramatic adaptations and an abundance of novels and stories imitating Austen's memorable characters or themes.
To date, the book has sold some 20 million copies worldwide.
Plot summary
The novel revolves around the Bennet family. The five marriageable daughters and mother will be without a home and income once Mr. Bennet dies: The terms on which Mr. Bennet inherited Longbourn ("fee tail male," now abolished by statute in England) prohibit women from inheriting it, with the effect that instead one of Mr. Bennet's collateral relatives will inherit the estate. The mother worries about this predicament, and wishes to find husbands for them quickly. The father doesn't seem to be worried at all, and Elizabeth, the heroine, has decided to only marry for love, even though she has no real ideas about how she will survive financially. She is of the opinion that her sister Jane, being kind and beautiful, will find a wealthy husband, and that she can then live with her. As the novel opens, Mr Bingley, a wealthy young gentleman, rents a country estate near the Bennets called Netherfield. He arrives in town accompanied by his fashionable sisters and his good friend, Mr Darcy. While Bingley is well-received in the community, Darcy begins his acquaintance with smug condescension and proud distaste for all the 'country' people. Bingley and Elizabeth Bennet's older sister Jane begin to grow close. Elizabeth's best friend Charlotte advises that Jane should be more affectionate to Bingley, as they are both shy, and he may not know that she is indeed interested in him. Elizabeth disregards her friend's opinion, saying that Jane is shy and modest, and that if Bingley can't see how she feels, he is a fool. With that, she never even tells Jane what Charlotte advised. Elizabeth is stung by Darcy's haughty rejection of her at a local dance and decides to match his coldness with her own wit.
At the same time Elizabeth begins a friendship with Mr Wickham, a militia officer who relates a prior acquaintance with Darcy. Wickham tells her that he has been seriously mistreated by Darcy. Elizabeth immediately seizes upon this information as another reason to hate Darcy. Ironically, but unbeknownst to her, Darcy finds himself gradually drawn to Elizabeth.
Just as Bingley appears to be on the point of proposing marriage to Jane Bennet, he quits Netherfield, leaving Jane confused and upset. Elizabeth is convinced that Bingley's sister has conspired with Darcy to separate Jane and Bingley.
Before Bingley leaves, Mr Collins, the male relative who is to inherit Longbourn, makes a sudden appearance and stays with the Bennets. He is a recently ordained clergyman employed by the wealthy and patronizing Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though he was partially entreated to visit by his patroness, Collins has another reason for visiting: he wishes to find a wife from among the Bennet sisters. Mr Bennet and Elizabeth are amused by his self-important and pedantic behaviour. He immediately enters pursuit of Jane; however, when Mrs Bennet mentions her preoccupation with Mr Bingley, he turns to Elizabeth. He soon proposes marriage to Elizabeth, who refuses him, much to her mother's distress. Collins quickly recovers and proposes to Elizabeth's close friend, Charlotte Lucas, who immediately accepts him. Once the marriage is arranged, Charlotte asks Elizabeth to come for an extended visit.
In the spring, Elizabeth joins Charlotte and her cousin at his parish in Kent. The parish is adjacent to Rosings Park, the grand manor of Mr Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, where Elizabeth is frequently invited. While calling on Lady Catherine, Mr Darcy encounters Elizabeth. She discovers from a cousin of Darcy that it was he who separated Bingley and Jane. Soon after, Darcy admits his love of Elizabeth and proposes to her. Insulted by his high-handed and insulting manner of proposing, Elizabeth refuses him. When he asks why she should refuse him, she confronts him with his sabotage of Bingley's relationship with Jane and Wickham's account of their dealings.
Deeply shaken by Elizabeth's vehemence and accusations, Darcy writes her a letter justifying his actions. The letter reveals that Wickham soon dissipated his legacy-settlement (from Darcy's father's estate), then came back to Darcy requesting permanent patronage; and that he became angry when rejected, accusing Darcy of cheating him. To exact revenge and to make off with part of the Darcy family fortune, he attempted to seduce Darcy's young sister Georgiana—to gain her hand and fortune, almost persuading her to elope with him—before he was found out and stopped. Towards Bingley and Jane, Darcy justifies his actions from having observed that Jane did not show any reciprocal interest in his friend; thus his aim in separating them was mainly to protect Bingley from heartache.
Darcy admits he was concerned about the disadvantageous connection with Elizabeth's family, especially her embarrassing mother and wild younger sisters. After reading the letter, Elizabeth begins to question both her family's behaviour and Wickham's credibility. She concludes that Wickham is not as trustworthy as his easy manners would indicate, that he had lied to her previously, and that her early impressions of Darcy might have been inaccurate. Soon after receiving the letter, Elizabeth returns home.
Elizabeth tells her father that Darcy was responsible for uniting Lydia and Wickham. This is one of the two earliest illustrations of Pride and Prejudice. The clothing styles reflect the time the illustration was engraved (the 1830s), not the time the novel was written or set.
Some months later, during a tour of Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth visits Pemberley, Darcy's estate. Darcy's housekeeper, an older woman who has known Darcy since childhood, presents Elizabeth and her relatives with a flattering and benevolent impression of his character. Unexpectedly, Darcy arrives at Pemberley as they tour its grounds. He makes an effort to be gracious and welcoming to them, thus strengthening Elizabeth's newly favourable impression of him. Darcy then introduces Elizabeth to his sister Georgiana. He treats her uncle and aunt very well, and finds them of a more sound character than her other relatives, whom he previously dismissed as socially inferior.
Elizabeth and Darcy's renewed acquaintance is cut short when news arrives that Elizabeth's younger sister Lydia has run away with Wickham. Initially, the Bennets believe that Wickham and Lydia have eloped, but soon it is surmised that Wickham has no plans to marry Lydia. Lydia's antics threaten the family's reputation and the Bennet sisters with social ruin. Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle hurriedly leave Derbyshire, and Elizabeth is convinced that Darcy will avoid her from now on.
Soon, thanks to the intervention of Elizabeth's uncle, Lydia and Wickham are found and married. After the marriage, Wickham and Lydia make a visit to Longbourn. While bragging to Elizabeth, Lydia comments that Darcy was present at the wedding. Surprised, Elizabeth sends an inquiry to her aunt, from whom she discovers that Darcy was responsible for both finding the couple and arranging their marriage at great expense to himself.
Soon after, Bingley and Darcy return to the area. Bingley proposes marriage to Jane, and this news starts rumors that Darcy will propose to Elizabeth. Lady Catherine travels to Longbourn with the sole aim of confronting Elizabeth and demanding that she never accept such a proposal. Elizabeth refuses to bow to Lady Catherine's demands. When news of this obstinance reaches Darcy, it convinces him that her opinion of him has changed. When he visits, he once again proposes marriage. Elizabeth accepts, and the two become engaged.
The final chapters of the book establish the future of the characters. Elizabeth and Darcy settle at Pemberley where Mr Bennet visits often. Mrs Bennet remains frivolous and silly; she often visits the new Mrs Bingley and talks of the new Mrs Darcy. Later, Jane and Bingley move from Netherfield to avoid Jane's mother and Meryton relations and to locate near the Darcys in Derbyshire. Elizabeth and Jane manage to teach Kitty greater social grace, and Mary learns to accept the difference between herself and her sisters' beauty and mixes more with the outside world. Lydia and Wickham continue to move often, leaving their debts for Jane and Elizabeth to pay off. At Pemberley, Elizabeth and Georgiana grow close, though Georgiana is surprised by Elizabeth's playful treatment of Darcy. Lady Catherine stays very angry with her nephew's marriage but over time the relationship between the two is repaired and she eventually decides to visit them. Elizabeth and Darcy also remain close with her uncle and aunt.
Main characters
[show]Character genealogy
Mr Hurst
Mrs Hurst
Mr Philips
Caroline Bingley
Mrs Philips
Mr Charles Bingley
Mrs Gardiner
Jane Bennet
Mr Gardiner
Elizabeth Bennet
Mrs Bennet
Mary Bennet
Mr Bennet
Catherine "Kitty" Bennet
Mr William Collins
Lydia Bennet
Charlotte Lucas
Mr George Wickham
(Old) Mr Darcy
Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy
Lady Anne Darcy
Georgiana Darcy
Lady Catherine De Bourgh
Anne De Bourgh
Lord ——
Colonel Fitzwilliam
* Elizabeth Bennet is the main character and protagonist. The reader sees the unfolding plot and the other characters mostly from her viewpoint. The second of the Bennet daughters at twenty years old, she is intelligent, lively, attractive, and witty, but with a tendency to judge on first impressions and perhaps to be a little selective of the evidence upon which she bases her judgments. As the plot begins, her closest relationships are with her father, her sister Jane, her aunt Mrs Gardiner, and her best friend Charlotte Lucas.
* Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is the main male character. Twenty-eight years old and unmarried, Darcy is the wealthy owner of the famous family estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire. Handsome, tall, and intelligent, but not convivial, his aloof decorum and moral rectitude are seen by many as an excessive pride and concern for social status. He makes a poor impression on strangers, such as the gentry of Meryton, but is valued by those who know him well.
* Mr Bennet has a wife and five daughters, and seems to have inurred himself to his fate. A bookish and intelligent gentleman somewhat withdrawn from society, he dislikes the indecorous behaviours of his wife and three younger daughters; but he offers little beyond mockery by way of correcting them. Rather than guiding these daughters to more sensible understanding, he is instead content to laugh at them. He relates very well with his two elder daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, showing them much more love and respect than his wife and younger daughters.
* Mrs Bennet is the wife of her social superior Mr Bennet, and mother of Elizabeth and her sisters. She is frivolous, excitable, and narrow-minded. She is susceptible to attacks of tremors and palpitations; her public manners and social climbing are embarrassing to Jane and Elizabeth. Her favourite daughter is the youngest, Lydia.
Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth about Darcy, on the title page of the first illustrated edition. This is the other of the first two illustrations of the novel.
* Jane Bennet is the eldest Bennet sister. Twenty-two years old when the novel begins, she is considered the most beautiful young lady in the neighbourhood. Her character is contrasted with Elizabeth's as sweeter, shyer, and equally sensible, but not as clever; her most notable trait is a desire to see only the good in others. Jane is closest to Elizabeth, and her character is often contrasted with that of Elizabeth.
* Mary Bennet is the only plain Bennet sister, and rather than join in some of the family activities, she reads, although is often impatient for display. She works hard for knowledge and accomplishment, but has neither genius nor taste. At the ball at Netherfield, she embarrasses her family by singing badly.
* Catherine "Kitty" Bennet is the fourth Bennet sister, aged seventeen. She is portrayed as a less headstrong but equally silly shadow of Lydia.
* Lydia Bennet is the youngest Bennet sister, aged fifteen. She is repeatedly described as frivolous and headstrong. Her main activity in life is socialising, especially flirting with the military officers stationed in the nearby town of Meryton. She dominates her older sister Kitty and is supported in the family by her mother. After she elopes with Wickham and he is paid to marry her, she shows no remorse for the embarrassment that her actions caused for her family, but acts as if she has made a wonderful match of which her sisters should be jealous.
* Charles Bingley is a young gentleman without an estate. His wealth was recent, and he is seeking a permanent home. He rents the Netherfield estate near Longbourn when the novel opens. Twenty-two years old at the start of the novel, handsome, good-natured, and wealthy, he is contrasted with his friend Darcy as being less intelligent but kinder and more charming, and hence more popular in Meryton. He lacks resolve and is easily influenced by others.
* Caroline Bingley is the snobbish sister of Charles Bingley. Clearly harbouring romantic intentions on Darcy herself, she views his growing attachment to Elizabeth Bennet with some jealousy, resulting in disdain and frequent verbal attempts to undermine Elizabeth and her society.
* George Wickham is an old acquaintance of Darcy from childhood, and an officer in the militia unit stationed near Meryton. Superficially charming, he rapidly forms a friendship with Elizabeth Bennet, prompting remarks upon his suitability as a potential husband. He spreads numerous tales about the wrongs Darcy has done to him, colouring the popular perception of the other man in local society. It is eventually revealed that these tales are distortions, and that Darcy was the wronged man in their acquaintance.
* William Collins, aged twenty-five, is Mr Bennet's clergyman cousin and, as Mr Bennet has no son, heir to his estate. Austen described him as "not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society." Collins boasts of his acquaintance with — and advantageous patronage from — Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Mr Bennet, Jane, and Elizabeth consider him pompous and lacking in common sense. Elizabeth's rejection of Collins' marriage proposal is welcomed by her father, regardless of the financial benefit to the family of such a match. Elizabeth is later somewhat distressed — although understanding — when her closest friend, Charlotte Lucas, consents to marry Collins out of her need for a settled position and to avoid the low status and lack of autonomy of an old maid.
* Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who has wealth and social standing, is haughty, domineering and condescending. Mr Collins, among others, enables these characteristics by deferring to her opinions and desires. Elizabeth, however, is duly respectful but not intimidated. Darcy, whilst respectful of their shared family connection, is offended by her lack of manners, especially towards Elizabeth, and later — when pressed by her demand that he not marry Elizabeth — is quick to assert his intentions to marry whom he wishes.
* Mr Gardiner is Mrs Bennet's brother, and a businessman. He is quite sensible and gentleman-like. He tries to help Lydia when she elopes with Wickham. His wife has close relationships with Elizabeth and Jane. Jane stays with the Gardiners in London for a while, and Elizabeth travels with them to Derbyshire, where she again meets Darcy.
* Georgiana Darcy is Mr Darcy's quiet and amiable younger sister, aged sixteen when the story begins. In a letter from Mr Darcy to Elizabeth, he describes that Wickham tried to persuade her to elope with him and inherit her 30,000 pounds. Later on, Elizabeth meets her at their home at Pemberly, where she is amiable and sweet. She is very happy with her brother's choosing of Elizabeth and maintains an extremely close relationship to both of them.
Interrelationships
A comprehensive web showing the relationships between the main characters in Pride and Prejudice
Major themes
Many critics take the novel's title as a starting point when analysing the major themes of Pride and Prejudice; however, Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title since commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title. It should be pointed out that the qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists; both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice."
A major theme in much of Austen's work is the importance of environment and upbringing on the development of young people's character and morality. Social standing and wealth are not necessarily advantages in her world, and a further theme common to Jane Austen's work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr and Mrs Bennet (particularly the latter) as parents is blamed for Lydia's lack of moral judgment; Darcy, on the other hand, has been taught to be principled and scrupulously honourable, but is also proud and overbearing. Kitty, rescued from Lydia's bad influence and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their superior society.
Style
Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke". By using narrative which adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, that of Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."
Publication history
Modern paperback editions of Pride and Prejudice
The novel was originally titled First Impressions by Jane Austen, and was written between October 1796 and August 1797. On 1 November 1797 Austen's father gave the draft to London bookseller Thomas Cadell in hopes of it being published, but it was rejected. The unpublished manuscript was returned to Austen and it stayed with her.
Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and 1812. She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice. In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarized in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals. It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.
Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton of Whitehall in exchange for £110 (Austen had asked for £150). This proved a costly decision. Austen had published Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis, whereby she indemnified the publisher against any losses and received any profits, less costs and the publisher's commission. Unaware that Sense and Sensibility would sell out its edition, making her £140, she passed the copyright to Egerton for a one-off payment, meaning that all the risk (and all the profits) would be his. Jan Fergus has calculated that Egerton subsequently made around £450 from just the first two editions of the book.
Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes in January 1813, priced at 18s. Favourable reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in November that year. A third edition was published in 1817.
Foreign language translations first appeared in 1813 in French; subsequent translations were published in German, Danish and Swedish. Pride and Prejudice was first published in the United States in August 1832 as Elizabeth Bennet or, Pride and Prejudice. The novel was also included in Richard Bentley's Standard Novel series in 1833. R. W. Chapman's scholarly edition of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition from which many modern publications of the novel are based.
Reception
The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following publication. Jan Fergus calls it "her most popular novel, both with the public and with her family and friends", and quotes David Gilson's A Bibliography of Jane Austen (Clarendon, 1982), where it is stated that Pride and Prejudice was referred to as "the fashionable novel" by Anne Isabella Milbanke, later to be the wife of Lord Byron. However, others did not agree. Charlotte Brontë wrote to noted critic and reviewer George Henry Lewes after reading a review of his published in Fraser's Magazine in 1847. He had praised Jane Austen's work and declared that he, "... would rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels". Miss Brontë, though, found Pride and Prejudice a disappointment, "... a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck."
Modern popularity
* In 2003 the BBC conducted the largest ever poll for the "UK's Best-Loved Book" in which Pride and Prejudice came second, behind The Lord of the Rings.
* In a 2008 survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers, Pride and Prejudice came first in a list of the 101 best books ever written.
Adaptations
Film, television, and theatre
Pride and Prejudice has engendered numerous adaptations. Some of the notable film versions include that of 1940 starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, that of 2003 starring Kam Heskin and Orlando Seale (which placed the characters of Pride and Prejudice in a Mormon university, and was directed by Andrew Black and that of 2005 starring Keira Knightley (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Matthew Macfadyen. Notable television versions include two by the BBC: the 1995 version starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and a 1980 version starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul. A 1936 stage version was created by Helen Jerome played at the St. James's Theatre in London, starring Celia Johnson and Hugh Williams. First Impressions was a 1959 Broadway musical version starring Polly Bergen, Farley Granger, and Hermione Gingold. In 1995, a musical concept album was written by Bernard J. Taylor, with Peter Karrie in the role of Mr Darcy and Claire Moore in the role of Elizabeth Bennet. A new stage production, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, The New Musical, was presented in concert on 21 October 2008 in Rochester, New York with Colin Donnell as Darcy. The popular film Bridget Jones's Diary is a contemporary retelling, starring Renee Zellweger as a modern day Elizabeth, and Colin Firth, once again, as Mr Darcy.
Bride and Prejudice, starring Aishwarya Rai, is a Bollywood adaptation of the novel, while Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003) places the novel in contemporary times. The off-Broadway musical I Love You Because reverses the gender of the main roles, set in modern day New York City. The Japanese comic Hana Yori Dango by Yoko Kamio, in which the wealthy, arrogant and proud protagonist, Doumyouji Tsukasa, falls in love with a poor, lower-class girl named Makino Tsukushi, is loosely based on Pride and Prejudice. A 2008 Israeli television six-part miniseries set the story in the Galilee with Mr Darcy a well-paid worker in the high-tech industry.
Pride and Prejudice has also crossed into the science fiction and horror genres. In the 1997 episode of science fiction comedy Red Dwarf entitled "Beyond a Joke", the crew of the space ship relax in a virtual reality rendition of "Pride and Prejudice Land" in "Jane Austen World". The central premise of the television miniseries Lost in Austen is a modern woman suddenly swapping lives with that of Elizabeth Bennet. In February 2009, it was announced that Elton John's Rocket Pictures production company was making a film, Pride and Predator, based on the story, but with the added twist of an alien landing in Longbourne.
Literature
The novel has inspired a number of other works that are not direct adaptations. Books inspired by Pride and Prejudice include: Mr. Darcy's Daughters and The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy by Elizabeth Aston; Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued and An Unequal Marriage: Or Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later by Emma Tennant; The Book of Ruth (ASIN B00262ZRBM) by Helen Baker; Jane Austen Ruined My Life and Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo; Precipitation - A Continuation of Miss Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Helen Baker; Searching for Pemberley by Mary Simonsen and Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and its sequel Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberly by Linda Berdoll. In Gwyn Cready's comedic romance novel, Seducing Mr. Darcy, the heroine lands in Pride and Prejudice by way of magic massage, has a fling with Darcy and unknowingly changes the rest of the story. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, which started as a newspaper column before becoming a novel and a film, was inspired by the then-current BBC adaptation; both works share a Mr. Darcy of serious disposition (both played by Colin Firth), a foolish match-making mother, and a detached affectionate father, as well as the protagonist overhearing Mr. Darcy speaking about her disparagingly, followed by the caddish character gaining the protagonist's affections by telling lies about Mr. Darcy. The self-referential in-jokes continue with the sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.
In March 2009, Quirk Books released Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which takes Austen's actual, original work, and laces it with zombie hordes, cannibalism, ninjas, and ultra-violent mayhem. Scheduled for publication in March 2010, Quirk Books has announced that it will produce a prequel which deals with Elizabeth Bennett's early days as a zombie hunter, entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.
Yet another angle was introduced by Monica Fairview, who wrote about Miss Caroline Bingley in The Other Mr Darcy, published in October 2009. Pride and Prejudice has also inspired many scholarly articles and books including: So Odd a Mixture: Along the Autism Spectrum in 'Pride and Prejudice' by Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer, Forewords by Eileen Sutherland and Tony Attwood.
Marvel has also published their take on this classic, releasing a short comic series of five issues that stays true to the original storyline. The first issue was published on 1 April 2009 and was written by Nancy Hajeski.
Author Amanda Grange wrote Mr. Darcy's Diary in 2007 that tells the original story of Pride and Prejudice from the view of Mr Darcy. In 2009, she wrote Mr. Darcy, Vampyre which reimagines Darcy as a vampire after he has married Elizabeth. Following the same premise is Regina Jeffers' "Vampire Darcy's Desire", which retells Pride and Prejudice on the basis that Darcy is a dhampir (part-human, part-vampire) joined by his lover Elizabeth to fight the evil vampire George Wickham.
Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager set by his friends at the Reform Club.
Plot summary
The story starts in London on October 2, 1872. Phileas Fogg is a wealthy English gentleman who lives unmarried in solitude at Number 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens. Despite his wealth, which is £40,000, Mr. Fogg, whose countenance is described as "repose in action", lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. As is noted in the first chapter, very little can be said about Mr. Fogg's social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at 84° Fahrenheit instead of 86°, Mr. Fogg hires the Frenchman Passepartout, who is about 30 years old, as a replacement.
Later, on that day, in the Reform Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph, stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. He accepts a wager for £20,000 from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8:45 P.M. on October 2, 1872, and thus is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, on December 21.
Map of the trip
The proposed schedule London to Suez rail and steamer 7 days
Suez to Bombay steamer 13 days
Bombay to Calcutta rail 3 days
Calcutta to Hong Kong steamer 13 days
Hong Kong to Yokohama steamer 6 days
Yokohama to San Francisco steamer 22 days
San Francisco to New York City rail 7 days
New York to London steamer and rail 9 days
Total 80 days
Fogg and Passepartout reach Suez in time. While disembarking in Egypt, they are watched by a Scotland Yard detective named Fix, who has been dispatched from London in search of a bank robber. Because Fogg matches the description of the bank robber, Fix mistakes Fogg for the criminal. Since he cannot secure a warrant in time, Fix goes on board the steamer conveying the travellers to Bombay. During the voyage, Fix becomes acquainted with Passepartout, without revealing his purpose. On the voyage, Fogg promises the engineer a large reward if he gets them to Bombay early. They dock two days ahead of schedule.
After reaching India they take a train from Bombay to Calcutta. About halfway there Fogg learns that the Daily Telegraph newspaper article was wrong – the railroad ends at Kholby and starts 50 miles further on at Allahabad. Fogg promptly buys an elephant, hires a guide and starts toward Allahabad.
During the ride, they come across a suttee procession, in which a young Parsi woman, Aouda, is led to a sanctuary to be sacrificed by the process of sati the next day by Brahmins. Since the young woman is drugged with the smoke of opium and hemp and obviously not going voluntarily, the travellers decide to rescue her. They follow the procession to the site, where Passepartout secretly takes the place of Aouda's deceased husband on the funeral pyre, on which she is to be burned the next morning. During the ceremony, he then rises from the pyre, scaring off the priests, and carries the young woman away. Due to this incident, the two days gained earlier are lost but Fogg shows no sign of regret.
The travellers then hasten on to catch the train at the next railway station, taking Aouda with them. At Calcutta, they can finally board a steamer going to Hong Kong. Fix, who has secretly been following them, has Fogg and Passepartout arrested in Calcutta. However, they jump bail and Fix is forced to follow them to Hong Kong. On board, he shows himself to Passepartout, who is delighted to meet again his travelling companion from the earlier voyage.
In Hong Kong, it turns out that Aouda's distant relative, in whose care they had been planning to leave her, has moved, probably to Holland, so they decide to take her with them to Europe. Meanwhile, still without a warrant, Fix sees Hong Kong as his last chance to arrest Fogg on British soil. He therefore confides in Passepartout, who does not believe a word and remains convinced that his master is not a bank robber. To prevent Passepartout from informing his master about the premature departure of their next vessel, Fix gets Passepartout drunk and drugs him in an opium den. In his dizziness, Passepartout still manages to catch the steamer to Yokohama, but neglects to inform Fogg.
Fogg, on the next day, discovers that he has missed his connection. He goes in search of a vessel that will take him to Yokohama. He finds a pilot boat that takes him and Aouda to Shanghai, where they catch a steamer to Yokohama. In Yokohama, they go on a search for Passepartout, believing that he may have arrived there on the original boat. They find him in a circus, trying to earn the fare for his homeward journey. Reunited, the four board a steamer taking them across the Pacific to San Francisco. Fix promises Passepartout that now, having left British soil, he will no longer try to delay Fogg's journey, but rather support him in getting back to Britain as fast as possible (to have him arrested there).
In San Francisco they get on a trans-American train to New York, encountering a number of obstacles along the way: a massive herd of bison crossing the tracks, a failing suspension bridge, and most disastrously, the train is attacked and overcome by Sioux Indians. After heroically uncoupling the locomotive from the carriages, Passepartout is kidnapped by the Indians, but Fogg rescues him after some soldiers volunteer to help. They continue by a wind-powered sledge over the snowy prairie to Omaha, where they get a train to New York.
Once in New York, and having missed departure of their ship (the China) by 35 minutes, Fogg starts looking for an alternative for the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. He finds a small steamboat, destined for Bordeaux. However, the captain of the boat refuses to take the company to Liverpool, whereupon Fogg consents to be taken to Bordeaux for the price of $2000 per passenger. On the voyage, he bribes the crew to mutiny and take course for Liverpool. Against hurricane winds and going on full steam all the time, the boat runs out of fuel after a few days. Fogg buys the boat at a very high price from the captain, soothing him thereby, and has the crew burn all the wooden parts to keep up the steam.
The companions arrive at Queenstown, Ireland, in time to reach London via Dublin and Liverpool before the deadline. However, once on British soil again, Fix produces a warrant and arrests Fogg. A short time later, the misunderstanding is cleared up—the actual bank robber had been caught three days earlier in Edinburgh. In response to this, Fogg, in a rare moment of impulse, punches Fix, who immediately falls to the ground. However, Fogg has missed the train and returns to London five minutes late, assured that he has lost the wager.
In his London house the next day, he apologises to Aouda for bringing her with him, since he now has to live in poverty and cannot financially support her. Aouda suddenly confesses that she loves him and asks him to marry her, which he gladly accepts. He calls for Passepartout to notify the reverend. At the reverend's, Passepartout learns that he is mistaken in the date, which he takes to be Sunday but which actually is Saturday due to the fact that the party travelled east, thereby gaining a full day on their journey around the globe, by crossing the International Date Line. He did not notice this after landing in North America because the only phase of the trip that depended on vehicles departing less often than daily was the Atlantic crossing, and he had hired his own ship for that.
Passepartout hurries back to Fogg, who immediately sets off for the Reform Club, where he arrives just in time to win the wager. Fogg marries Aouda and the journey around the world is complete.
Passepartout and Fogg's Baggage
Passepartout and Fogg carry only a carpet bag with only two shirts and three pairs of stockings each, a mackintosh, a travelling cloak, and a spare pair of shoes. The only book carried is Bradshaw's Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide. This contains timetables of trains and steamers. He also carried a huge roll of English banknotes-about twenty thousand pounds. He also left with twenty guineas won at whist, which he soon disposed of.
Background and analysis
Around the World in Eighty Days was written during difficult times, both for France and for Verne. It was during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) in which Verne was conscripted as a coastguard, he was having money difficulties (his previous works were not paid royalties), his father had died recently, and he had witnessed a public execution which had disturbed him. However despite all this, Verne was excited about his work on the new book, the idea of which came to him one afternoon in a Paris café while reading a newspaper (see "Origins" below).
The technological innovations of the 19th century had opened the possibility of rapid circumnavigation and the prospect fascinated Verne and his readership. In particular three technological breakthroughs occurred in 1869-70 that made a tourist-like around-the-world journey possible for the first time: the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). It was another notable mark in the end of an age of exploration and the start of an age of fully global tourism that could be enjoyed in relative comfort and safety. It sparked the imagination that anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world, a feat previously reserved for only the most heroic and hardy of adventurers.
Verne is often characterised as a futurist or science fiction author but there is not a glimmer of science-fiction in this, his most popular work (at least in English speaking countries). Rather than any futurism, it remains a memorable portrait of the British Empire "on which the sun never sets" shortly before its very peak, drawn by an outsider. It is also interesting to note that, as of 2006, there has never been a critical edition of Around the World in Eighty Days. This is in part due to the poor translations available of his works, the stereotype of "science fiction" or "boys' literature". However, Verne's works were being looked at more seriously in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with new translations and scholarship appearing. It is also rather interesting to note that the book is a source of common notable English and extended British attitudes in quotes such as, "Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty ... endured the discomfort with true British phlegm, talking little, and scarcely able to catch a glimpse of each other" as seen in Chapter Twelve when the group is being jostled around on the elephant ride across the jungle. Also seen in chapter Twenty-Five, when Phileas Fogg is insulted in San Francisco, and Detective Fix acknowledges that "It was clear that Mr. Fogg was one of those Englishmen who, while they do not tolerate dueling at home, fight abroad when their honor is attacked."
It is interesting to note that The China's departure from New York on the day of Fogg's arrival there constitutes a minor flaw in Verne's logic, because Fogg had already crossed the Pacific without accounting for the International Date Line so his entire journey across North America was apparently conducted with an erroneous belief about the date and day of the week. Had The China sailed in agreement with the published steamer schedule used by Fogg, it would have departed a day later than Fogg expected, and he would have been able to catch it in spite of arriving what he thought was a few minutes late.
The closing date of the novel, 22 December 1872, was also the same date as the serial publication. As it was being published serially for the first time, some readers believed that the journey was actually taking place — bets were placed, and some railway companies and ship liner companies actually lobbied Verne to appear in the book. It is unknown if Verne actually submitted to their requests, but the descriptions of some rail and shipping lines leave some suspicion he was influenced.
Although a journey by hot air balloon has become one of the images most strongly associated with the story, this iconic symbol was never deployed in the book by Verne himself – the idea is briefly brought up in chapter 32, but dismissed, it "would have been highly risky and, in any case, impossible." However the popular 1956 movie adaptation Around the World in Eighty Days floated the balloon idea, and it has now become a part of the mythology of the story, even appearing on book covers. This plot element is reminiscent of Verne's earlier Five Weeks in a Balloon which first made him a well-known author.
Following Towle and d'Anver's 1873 English translation, many people have tried to follow in the footsteps of Fogg's fictional circumnavigation, often within self-imposed constraints:
* 1889 – Nellie Bly undertook to travel around the world in 80 days for her newspaper, the New York World. She managed to do the journey within 72 days. Her book about the trip, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, became a best seller.
* 1903 – James Willis Sayre, a Seattle theatre critic and arts promoter, set the world record for circling the earth using public transportation exclusively, completing his trip in 54 days, 9 hours, and 42 minutes.
* 1908 – Harry Bensley, on a wager, set out to circumnavigate the world on foot wearing an iron mask.
* 1984 - Nicholas Coleridge emulated Fogg's trip and wrote a book entitled Around the World in 78 Days about his experience.
* 1988 – Monty Python alumnus Michael Palin took a similar challenge without using aircraft as a part of a television travelogue, called Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days. He completed the journey in 79 days and 7 hours.
* 1993–present – The Jules Verne Trophy is held by the boat that sails around the world without stopping, and with no outside assistance in the shortest time.
* 2009 - in Around the World in 80 Days twelve celebrities performed a relay version of the journey for the BBC Children In Need charity appeal. This featured a carpet bag.
Origins
The idea of a trip around the world within a set period had clear external origins and was popular before Verne published his book in 1872. Even the title Around the World in Eighty Days is not original to Verne. About six sources have been suggested as the origins of the story:
Greek traveller Pausanias (c. 100 AD) wrote a work that was translated into French in 1797 as Voyage autour du monde ("Around the World"). Verne's friend, Jacques Arago, had written a very popular Voyage autour du monde in 1853. However in 1869/70 the idea of travelling around the world reached critical popular attention when three geographical breakthroughs occurred: the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). In 1871 appeared Around the World by Steam, via Pacific Railway, published by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and an Around the World in A Hundred and Twenty Days by Edmond Planchut. Between 1869 and 1871, an American William Perry Fogg went around the world describing his tour in a series of letters to the Cleveland Leader, titled Round the World: Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (1872). Additionally, in early 1870, the Erie Railway Company published a statement of routes, times, and distances detailing a trip around the globe of 23,739 miles in seventy-seven days and twenty-one hours.
In 1872 Thomas Cook organised the first around the world tourist trip, leaving on 20 September 1872 and returning seven months later. The journey was described in a series of letters that were later published in 1873 as Letter from the Sea and from Foreign Lands, Descriptive of a tour Round the World. Scholars have pointed out similarities between Verne's account and Cook's letters, although some argue that Cook's trip happened too late to influence Verne. Verne, according to a second-hand 1898 account, refers to a Thomas Cook advertisement as a source for the idea of his book. In interviews in 1894 and 1904, Verne says the source was "through reading one day in a Paris cafe" and "due merely to a tourist advertisement seen by chance in the columns of a newspaper.” Around the World itself says the origins were a newspaper article. All of these point to Cook's advert as being a probable spark for the idea of the book.
Further, the periodical Le Tour du monde (3 October 1869) contained a short piece entitled "Around the World in Eighty Days", which refers to "140 miles" of railway not yet completed between Allahabad and Bombay, a central point in Verne's work. But even the Le Tour de monde article was not entirely original; it cites in its bibliography the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie, de l'Histoire et de l'Archéologie (August, 1869), which also contains the title Around the World in Eighty Days in its contents page. The Nouvelles Annales were written by Conrad Malte-Brun (1775—1826) and his son Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun (1816—1889). Scholars believe Verne was aware of either the Le Tour de monde article, or the Nouvelles Annales (or both), and consulted it — the 'Le Tour du monde even included a trip schedule very similar to Verne's final version.
A possible inspiration was the traveller George Francis Train, who made four trips around the world, including one in 80 days in 1870. Similarities include the hiring of a private train and his being imprisoned. Train later claimed "Verne stole my thunder. I'm Phileas Fogg."
Regarding the idea of gaining a day, Verne said of its origin: "I have a great number of scientific odds and ends in my head. It was thus that, when, one day in a Paris café, I read in the Siècle that a man could travel around the world in eighty days, it immediately struck me that I could profit by a difference of meridian and make my traveller gain or lose a day in his journey. There was a dénouement ready found. The story was not written until long after. I carry ideas about in my head for years – ten, or fifteen years, sometimes – before giving them form." In his lecture of April 1873 "The Meridians and the Calendar", Verne responded to a question about where the change of day actually occurred, since the international date line had only become current in 1880 and the Greenwich prime meridian was not adopted internationally until 1884. Verne cited an 1872 article in Nature, and Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" (1841), which was also based on going around the world and the difference in a day linked to a marriage at the end. Verne even analysed Poe's story in his Edgar Poe and His Works (1864).
In summary either the periodical 'Le Tour du monde or the Nouvelles Annales, W. P. Fogg, probably Thomas Cook's advert (and maybe his letters) would be the main likely source for the book. In addition, Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" was clearly the inspiration for the lost day plot device.
Literary significance and criticism
Select quotes:
1. "We will only remind readers en passant of Around the World in Eighty Days, that tour de force of Mr Verne's—and not the first he has produced. Here, however, he has summarised and concentrated himself, so to speak ... No praise of his collected works is strong enough .. they are truly useful, entertaining, poignant, and moral; and Europe and America have merely produced rivals that are remarkably similar to them, but in any case inferior." (Henry Trianon, Le Constitutionnel, December 20, 1873).
2. "His first books, the shortest, Around the World or From the Earth to the Moon, are still the best in my view. However, the works should be judged as a whole rather than in detail, and on their results rather than their intrinsic quality. Over the last forty years, they have had an influence unequalled by any other books on the children of this and every country in Europe. And the influence has been good, in so far as can be judged today." (Léon Blum, L'Humanité, April 3, 1905).
3. "Jules Verne's masterpiece .. stimulated our childhood and taught us more than all the atlases: the taste of adventure and the love of travel. 'Thirty thousand banknotes for you, Captain, if we reach Liverpool within the hour.' This cry of Phileas Fogg's remains for me the call of the sea." (Jean Cocteau, Mon premier voyage (Tour du monde en 80 jours), Gallimard, 1936).
4. "Leo Tolstoy loved his works. 'Jules Verne's novels are matchless', he would say. 'I read them as an adult, and yet I remember they excited me. Jules Verne is an astonishing past master at the art of constructing a story that fascinates and impassions the reader. (Cyril Andreyev, "Preface to the Complete Works", trans. François Hirsch, Europe, 33: 112-113, 22-48).
5. "Jules Verne's work is nothing but a long meditation, a reverie on the straight line—which represents the predication of nature on industry and industry on nature, and which is recounted as a tale of exploration. Title: the adventures of a straight line ... The train.. cleaves through nature, jumps obstacles .. and continues both the actual journey—whose form is a furrow—and the perfect embodiment of human industry. The machine has the additional advantage here of not being isolated in a purpose-built, artificial place, like the factory or all similar structures, but of remaining in permanent and direct contact with the variety of nature." Pierre Macherey (1966).
Adaptations and influences
The book has been adapted many times in different forms.
Theatre
* A 1874 play written by Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, where it was shown 415 times.
* In 1946 Orson Welles produced and starred in Around the World, a musical stage version, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, that was only loosely faithful to Verne's original.
* A musical version, 80 Days, with songs by Ray Davies of The Kinks and a book by playwright Snoo Wilson, directed by Des McAnuff, ran at the Mandell Weiss Theatre in San Diego from August 23 to October 9, 1988. The musical received mixed responses from the critics. Ray Davies's multi-faceted music, McAnuff's directing, and the acting, however, were well received, with the show winning the "Best Musical" award from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle.
* In 2001, the story was adapted for the stage by American playwright Mark Brown. In what has been described as "a wildly wacky, unbelievably creative, 90-miles-an-hour, hilarious journey" this award winning stage adaptation is written for five actors who portray thirty-nine characters.
* A stage musical adaptation premiered at the Fulton Opera House, Lancaster, PA in March 2007 with music by Ron Barnett, book and lyrics by Julianne Homokay, and direction by Robin McKercher.
Films
* A 1919 silent black and white parody by director Richard Oswald didn't disguise its use of locations in Germany as placeholders for the international voyage; part of the movie's joke is that Fogg's trip is obviously going to places in and around Berlin. There are no remaining copies of the film available today.
* The best known version was released in 1956, with David Niven and Cantinflas heading a huge cast. Many famous performers play bit parts, and part of the pleasure in this movie is playing "spot the star". The movie earned five Oscars, out of eight nominations. This film was also responsible for the popular misconception that Fogg and company travel by balloon for part of the trip in the novel, which has prompted later adaptations to include similar sequences. See Around the World in Eighty Days (1956 film) for details.
* 1963 saw the release of The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze. In this parody, the Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Joe DeRita) are cast as the menservants of Phileas Fogg III (Jay Sheffield), great-grandson of the original around-the-world voyager. When Phileas Fogg III is tricked into replicating his ancestor's feat of circumnavigation, Larry, Moe, and Curly-Joe dutifully accompany their master. Along the way, the boys get into and out of trouble in typical Stooge fashion.
* In 1983 the basic idea was expanded to a galactic scope in Japan's Ginga Shippu Sasuraiger, where a team of adventurers travel through the galaxy in a train-like ship that can transform into a giant robot. The characters are travelling to different planets in order to return within a certain period and win a bet.
* The story was again adapted for the screen in the 2004 film Around the World in 80 Days, starring Jackie Chan as Passepartout and Steve Coogan as Fogg. This version makes Passepartout the hero and the thief of the treasure of the Bank; Fogg's character is an eccentric inventor who bets a rival scientist that he can travel the world with (then) modern means of transportation.
TV
* An episode of the American television series, Have Gun – Will Travel, entitled "Fogg Bound", had the series' hero, Palladin (Richard Boone), escorting Phileas Fogg (Patric Knowles) through part of his journey. This episode was broadcasted by CBS on December 3, 1960.
* A 1989 three-part TV mini-series starred Pierce Brosnan as Fogg, Eric Idle as Passepartout, Peter Ustinov as Fix and several TV stars in cameo roles. The heroes travel a slightly different route than in the book and the script makes several contemporary celebrities part of the story who were not mentioned in the book. See Around the World in 80 Days (TV miniseries) for details.
* The BBC along with Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) created a 1989 television travel series following the book's path. It was one of many travelogues Michael Palin has done with the BBC and was a commercially successful transition from his comedic career. The latest series in a similar format was Michael Palin's New Europe in 2007.
* Around the World in 80 Days, a six part 2009 BBC One show in which twelve celebrities attempt to travel the world in aid of the Children in Need appeal. This featured a carpet bag similar to one carried by Fogg and Passeportout.
Animation
* An Indian Fantasy Story is an unfinished French/English co-production from 1938, featuring the wager at the Reform Club and the rescue of the Indian Princess. It was never completed as a full feature film.
* Around the World in 79 Days, a serial segment on the Hanna-Barbera show The Cattanooga Cats from 1969 to 1971.
* Around the World in 80 Days from 1972 by American studio Rankin/Bass with Japanese Mushi productions as part of the Festival of Family Classics series.
* A one-season cartoon series Around the World in 80 Days from 1972 by Australian Air Programs International. NBC aired the series in the US during the 1972-73 season on Saturday mornings.
* Puss 'N Boots Travels Around the World, a 1976 anime from Toei Animation
* A Walt Disney adaptation was produced in 1986. It featured Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy as the main characters.
* Around the World with Willy Fog by Spanish studio BRB Internacional from 1981 with a second season produced in 1993. This series depicts the characters as talking animals, and, despite adding some new characters and making some superficial modifications to the original story, it remains one of the most accurate adaptations of the book made for film or television. The show has gained a cult following in Finland, Britain, Germany and Spain. The first season is "Around the World in 80 Days", and the second season is "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"; all three books are by Jules Verne.
* Tweety's High-Flying Adventure is a direct-to-video cartoon by Warner Brothers from 2000 starring the Looney Tunes characters. It takes a great many liberties with the original story, but the central idea is still there - indeed, one of the songs in this film is entitled Around the World in Eighty Days. Tweety not only had to travel the world, he had to also collect 80 cat pawprints, all while evading the constant pursuits of Slyvester. This movie frequently appears on various US-based cable TV networks.
* "Around the World in 80 Narfs" is a Pinky and the Brain episode where the Brain claims to be able to make the travel in less than 80 days and the Pompous Explorers club agrees to make him their new president. With this, the Brain expects to be UK's new Prime Minister, what he considers back at that time, the fastest way to take over the world.
* A Mickey Mouse episode shows the effort of Mickey to get around the world in 80 days with the help of Goofy. The cartoon made reference to the ending of the novel. They realise they have a day extra by hearing church bells on what they believe to be a Monday. This referenced the ending with the vicar in the church.
Exhibitions
* "Around the World in 80 Days", group show curated by Jens Hoffman at the ICA London 2006
Cultural references
* "Around the Universe in 80 Days" is a song by the Canadian band Klaatu, and makes reference to a spaceship travelling around the galaxy, coming home to find the Earth second from the Sun. It was originally included on the 1977 album "Hope", but also appears on at least two compilations.
* There are at least four board games by this name.
* Worlds of Fun, an amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri, was conceived using the novel as its theme. It uses the hot air balloon in its logo, and the park's layout is based on world geography.
Argentinian avant-garde writer Julio Cortazar wrote in 1967 his book titled Around the Day in Eighty Worlds.
Plot summary
The story starts in London on October 2, 1872. Phileas Fogg is a wealthy English gentleman who lives unmarried in solitude at Number 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens. Despite his wealth, which is £40,000, Mr. Fogg, whose countenance is described as "repose in action", lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. As is noted in the first chapter, very little can be said about Mr. Fogg's social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at 84° Fahrenheit instead of 86°, Mr. Fogg hires the Frenchman Passepartout, who is about 30 years old, as a replacement.
Later, on that day, in the Reform Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph, stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. He accepts a wager for £20,000 from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8:45 P.M. on October 2, 1872, and thus is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, on December 21.
Map of the trip
The proposed schedule London to Suez rail and steamer 7 days
Suez to Bombay steamer 13 days
Bombay to Calcutta rail 3 days
Calcutta to Hong Kong steamer 13 days
Hong Kong to Yokohama steamer 6 days
Yokohama to San Francisco steamer 22 days
San Francisco to New York City rail 7 days
New York to London steamer and rail 9 days
Total 80 days
Fogg and Passepartout reach Suez in time. While disembarking in Egypt, they are watched by a Scotland Yard detective named Fix, who has been dispatched from London in search of a bank robber. Because Fogg matches the description of the bank robber, Fix mistakes Fogg for the criminal. Since he cannot secure a warrant in time, Fix goes on board the steamer conveying the travellers to Bombay. During the voyage, Fix becomes acquainted with Passepartout, without revealing his purpose. On the voyage, Fogg promises the engineer a large reward if he gets them to Bombay early. They dock two days ahead of schedule.
After reaching India they take a train from Bombay to Calcutta. About halfway there Fogg learns that the Daily Telegraph newspaper article was wrong – the railroad ends at Kholby and starts 50 miles further on at Allahabad. Fogg promptly buys an elephant, hires a guide and starts toward Allahabad.
During the ride, they come across a suttee procession, in which a young Parsi woman, Aouda, is led to a sanctuary to be sacrificed by the process of sati the next day by Brahmins. Since the young woman is drugged with the smoke of opium and hemp and obviously not going voluntarily, the travellers decide to rescue her. They follow the procession to the site, where Passepartout secretly takes the place of Aouda's deceased husband on the funeral pyre, on which she is to be burned the next morning. During the ceremony, he then rises from the pyre, scaring off the priests, and carries the young woman away. Due to this incident, the two days gained earlier are lost but Fogg shows no sign of regret.
The travellers then hasten on to catch the train at the next railway station, taking Aouda with them. At Calcutta, they can finally board a steamer going to Hong Kong. Fix, who has secretly been following them, has Fogg and Passepartout arrested in Calcutta. However, they jump bail and Fix is forced to follow them to Hong Kong. On board, he shows himself to Passepartout, who is delighted to meet again his travelling companion from the earlier voyage.
In Hong Kong, it turns out that Aouda's distant relative, in whose care they had been planning to leave her, has moved, probably to Holland, so they decide to take her with them to Europe. Meanwhile, still without a warrant, Fix sees Hong Kong as his last chance to arrest Fogg on British soil. He therefore confides in Passepartout, who does not believe a word and remains convinced that his master is not a bank robber. To prevent Passepartout from informing his master about the premature departure of their next vessel, Fix gets Passepartout drunk and drugs him in an opium den. In his dizziness, Passepartout still manages to catch the steamer to Yokohama, but neglects to inform Fogg.
Fogg, on the next day, discovers that he has missed his connection. He goes in search of a vessel that will take him to Yokohama. He finds a pilot boat that takes him and Aouda to Shanghai, where they catch a steamer to Yokohama. In Yokohama, they go on a search for Passepartout, believing that he may have arrived there on the original boat. They find him in a circus, trying to earn the fare for his homeward journey. Reunited, the four board a steamer taking them across the Pacific to San Francisco. Fix promises Passepartout that now, having left British soil, he will no longer try to delay Fogg's journey, but rather support him in getting back to Britain as fast as possible (to have him arrested there).
In San Francisco they get on a trans-American train to New York, encountering a number of obstacles along the way: a massive herd of bison crossing the tracks, a failing suspension bridge, and most disastrously, the train is attacked and overcome by Sioux Indians. After heroically uncoupling the locomotive from the carriages, Passepartout is kidnapped by the Indians, but Fogg rescues him after some soldiers volunteer to help. They continue by a wind-powered sledge over the snowy prairie to Omaha, where they get a train to New York.
Once in New York, and having missed departure of their ship (the China) by 35 minutes, Fogg starts looking for an alternative for the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. He finds a small steamboat, destined for Bordeaux. However, the captain of the boat refuses to take the company to Liverpool, whereupon Fogg consents to be taken to Bordeaux for the price of $2000 per passenger. On the voyage, he bribes the crew to mutiny and take course for Liverpool. Against hurricane winds and going on full steam all the time, the boat runs out of fuel after a few days. Fogg buys the boat at a very high price from the captain, soothing him thereby, and has the crew burn all the wooden parts to keep up the steam.
The companions arrive at Queenstown, Ireland, in time to reach London via Dublin and Liverpool before the deadline. However, once on British soil again, Fix produces a warrant and arrests Fogg. A short time later, the misunderstanding is cleared up—the actual bank robber had been caught three days earlier in Edinburgh. In response to this, Fogg, in a rare moment of impulse, punches Fix, who immediately falls to the ground. However, Fogg has missed the train and returns to London five minutes late, assured that he has lost the wager.
In his London house the next day, he apologises to Aouda for bringing her with him, since he now has to live in poverty and cannot financially support her. Aouda suddenly confesses that she loves him and asks him to marry her, which he gladly accepts. He calls for Passepartout to notify the reverend. At the reverend's, Passepartout learns that he is mistaken in the date, which he takes to be Sunday but which actually is Saturday due to the fact that the party travelled east, thereby gaining a full day on their journey around the globe, by crossing the International Date Line. He did not notice this after landing in North America because the only phase of the trip that depended on vehicles departing less often than daily was the Atlantic crossing, and he had hired his own ship for that.
Passepartout hurries back to Fogg, who immediately sets off for the Reform Club, where he arrives just in time to win the wager. Fogg marries Aouda and the journey around the world is complete.
Passepartout and Fogg's Baggage
Passepartout and Fogg carry only a carpet bag with only two shirts and three pairs of stockings each, a mackintosh, a travelling cloak, and a spare pair of shoes. The only book carried is Bradshaw's Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide. This contains timetables of trains and steamers. He also carried a huge roll of English banknotes-about twenty thousand pounds. He also left with twenty guineas won at whist, which he soon disposed of.
Background and analysis
Around the World in Eighty Days was written during difficult times, both for France and for Verne. It was during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) in which Verne was conscripted as a coastguard, he was having money difficulties (his previous works were not paid royalties), his father had died recently, and he had witnessed a public execution which had disturbed him. However despite all this, Verne was excited about his work on the new book, the idea of which came to him one afternoon in a Paris café while reading a newspaper (see "Origins" below).
The technological innovations of the 19th century had opened the possibility of rapid circumnavigation and the prospect fascinated Verne and his readership. In particular three technological breakthroughs occurred in 1869-70 that made a tourist-like around-the-world journey possible for the first time: the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). It was another notable mark in the end of an age of exploration and the start of an age of fully global tourism that could be enjoyed in relative comfort and safety. It sparked the imagination that anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world, a feat previously reserved for only the most heroic and hardy of adventurers.
Verne is often characterised as a futurist or science fiction author but there is not a glimmer of science-fiction in this, his most popular work (at least in English speaking countries). Rather than any futurism, it remains a memorable portrait of the British Empire "on which the sun never sets" shortly before its very peak, drawn by an outsider. It is also interesting to note that, as of 2006, there has never been a critical edition of Around the World in Eighty Days. This is in part due to the poor translations available of his works, the stereotype of "science fiction" or "boys' literature". However, Verne's works were being looked at more seriously in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with new translations and scholarship appearing. It is also rather interesting to note that the book is a source of common notable English and extended British attitudes in quotes such as, "Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty ... endured the discomfort with true British phlegm, talking little, and scarcely able to catch a glimpse of each other" as seen in Chapter Twelve when the group is being jostled around on the elephant ride across the jungle. Also seen in chapter Twenty-Five, when Phileas Fogg is insulted in San Francisco, and Detective Fix acknowledges that "It was clear that Mr. Fogg was one of those Englishmen who, while they do not tolerate dueling at home, fight abroad when their honor is attacked."
It is interesting to note that The China's departure from New York on the day of Fogg's arrival there constitutes a minor flaw in Verne's logic, because Fogg had already crossed the Pacific without accounting for the International Date Line so his entire journey across North America was apparently conducted with an erroneous belief about the date and day of the week. Had The China sailed in agreement with the published steamer schedule used by Fogg, it would have departed a day later than Fogg expected, and he would have been able to catch it in spite of arriving what he thought was a few minutes late.
The closing date of the novel, 22 December 1872, was also the same date as the serial publication. As it was being published serially for the first time, some readers believed that the journey was actually taking place — bets were placed, and some railway companies and ship liner companies actually lobbied Verne to appear in the book. It is unknown if Verne actually submitted to their requests, but the descriptions of some rail and shipping lines leave some suspicion he was influenced.
Although a journey by hot air balloon has become one of the images most strongly associated with the story, this iconic symbol was never deployed in the book by Verne himself – the idea is briefly brought up in chapter 32, but dismissed, it "would have been highly risky and, in any case, impossible." However the popular 1956 movie adaptation Around the World in Eighty Days floated the balloon idea, and it has now become a part of the mythology of the story, even appearing on book covers. This plot element is reminiscent of Verne's earlier Five Weeks in a Balloon which first made him a well-known author.
Following Towle and d'Anver's 1873 English translation, many people have tried to follow in the footsteps of Fogg's fictional circumnavigation, often within self-imposed constraints:
* 1889 – Nellie Bly undertook to travel around the world in 80 days for her newspaper, the New York World. She managed to do the journey within 72 days. Her book about the trip, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, became a best seller.
* 1903 – James Willis Sayre, a Seattle theatre critic and arts promoter, set the world record for circling the earth using public transportation exclusively, completing his trip in 54 days, 9 hours, and 42 minutes.
* 1908 – Harry Bensley, on a wager, set out to circumnavigate the world on foot wearing an iron mask.
* 1984 - Nicholas Coleridge emulated Fogg's trip and wrote a book entitled Around the World in 78 Days about his experience.
* 1988 – Monty Python alumnus Michael Palin took a similar challenge without using aircraft as a part of a television travelogue, called Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days. He completed the journey in 79 days and 7 hours.
* 1993–present – The Jules Verne Trophy is held by the boat that sails around the world without stopping, and with no outside assistance in the shortest time.
* 2009 - in Around the World in 80 Days twelve celebrities performed a relay version of the journey for the BBC Children In Need charity appeal. This featured a carpet bag.
Origins
The idea of a trip around the world within a set period had clear external origins and was popular before Verne published his book in 1872. Even the title Around the World in Eighty Days is not original to Verne. About six sources have been suggested as the origins of the story:
Greek traveller Pausanias (c. 100 AD) wrote a work that was translated into French in 1797 as Voyage autour du monde ("Around the World"). Verne's friend, Jacques Arago, had written a very popular Voyage autour du monde in 1853. However in 1869/70 the idea of travelling around the world reached critical popular attention when three geographical breakthroughs occurred: the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). In 1871 appeared Around the World by Steam, via Pacific Railway, published by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and an Around the World in A Hundred and Twenty Days by Edmond Planchut. Between 1869 and 1871, an American William Perry Fogg went around the world describing his tour in a series of letters to the Cleveland Leader, titled Round the World: Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (1872). Additionally, in early 1870, the Erie Railway Company published a statement of routes, times, and distances detailing a trip around the globe of 23,739 miles in seventy-seven days and twenty-one hours.
In 1872 Thomas Cook organised the first around the world tourist trip, leaving on 20 September 1872 and returning seven months later. The journey was described in a series of letters that were later published in 1873 as Letter from the Sea and from Foreign Lands, Descriptive of a tour Round the World. Scholars have pointed out similarities between Verne's account and Cook's letters, although some argue that Cook's trip happened too late to influence Verne. Verne, according to a second-hand 1898 account, refers to a Thomas Cook advertisement as a source for the idea of his book. In interviews in 1894 and 1904, Verne says the source was "through reading one day in a Paris cafe" and "due merely to a tourist advertisement seen by chance in the columns of a newspaper.” Around the World itself says the origins were a newspaper article. All of these point to Cook's advert as being a probable spark for the idea of the book.
Further, the periodical Le Tour du monde (3 October 1869) contained a short piece entitled "Around the World in Eighty Days", which refers to "140 miles" of railway not yet completed between Allahabad and Bombay, a central point in Verne's work. But even the Le Tour de monde article was not entirely original; it cites in its bibliography the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie, de l'Histoire et de l'Archéologie (August, 1869), which also contains the title Around the World in Eighty Days in its contents page. The Nouvelles Annales were written by Conrad Malte-Brun (1775—1826) and his son Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun (1816—1889). Scholars believe Verne was aware of either the Le Tour de monde article, or the Nouvelles Annales (or both), and consulted it — the 'Le Tour du monde even included a trip schedule very similar to Verne's final version.
A possible inspiration was the traveller George Francis Train, who made four trips around the world, including one in 80 days in 1870. Similarities include the hiring of a private train and his being imprisoned. Train later claimed "Verne stole my thunder. I'm Phileas Fogg."
Regarding the idea of gaining a day, Verne said of its origin: "I have a great number of scientific odds and ends in my head. It was thus that, when, one day in a Paris café, I read in the Siècle that a man could travel around the world in eighty days, it immediately struck me that I could profit by a difference of meridian and make my traveller gain or lose a day in his journey. There was a dénouement ready found. The story was not written until long after. I carry ideas about in my head for years – ten, or fifteen years, sometimes – before giving them form." In his lecture of April 1873 "The Meridians and the Calendar", Verne responded to a question about where the change of day actually occurred, since the international date line had only become current in 1880 and the Greenwich prime meridian was not adopted internationally until 1884. Verne cited an 1872 article in Nature, and Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" (1841), which was also based on going around the world and the difference in a day linked to a marriage at the end. Verne even analysed Poe's story in his Edgar Poe and His Works (1864).
In summary either the periodical 'Le Tour du monde or the Nouvelles Annales, W. P. Fogg, probably Thomas Cook's advert (and maybe his letters) would be the main likely source for the book. In addition, Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" was clearly the inspiration for the lost day plot device.
Literary significance and criticism
Select quotes:
1. "We will only remind readers en passant of Around the World in Eighty Days, that tour de force of Mr Verne's—and not the first he has produced. Here, however, he has summarised and concentrated himself, so to speak ... No praise of his collected works is strong enough .. they are truly useful, entertaining, poignant, and moral; and Europe and America have merely produced rivals that are remarkably similar to them, but in any case inferior." (Henry Trianon, Le Constitutionnel, December 20, 1873).
2. "His first books, the shortest, Around the World or From the Earth to the Moon, are still the best in my view. However, the works should be judged as a whole rather than in detail, and on their results rather than their intrinsic quality. Over the last forty years, they have had an influence unequalled by any other books on the children of this and every country in Europe. And the influence has been good, in so far as can be judged today." (Léon Blum, L'Humanité, April 3, 1905).
3. "Jules Verne's masterpiece .. stimulated our childhood and taught us more than all the atlases: the taste of adventure and the love of travel. 'Thirty thousand banknotes for you, Captain, if we reach Liverpool within the hour.' This cry of Phileas Fogg's remains for me the call of the sea." (Jean Cocteau, Mon premier voyage (Tour du monde en 80 jours), Gallimard, 1936).
4. "Leo Tolstoy loved his works. 'Jules Verne's novels are matchless', he would say. 'I read them as an adult, and yet I remember they excited me. Jules Verne is an astonishing past master at the art of constructing a story that fascinates and impassions the reader. (Cyril Andreyev, "Preface to the Complete Works", trans. François Hirsch, Europe, 33: 112-113, 22-48).
5. "Jules Verne's work is nothing but a long meditation, a reverie on the straight line—which represents the predication of nature on industry and industry on nature, and which is recounted as a tale of exploration. Title: the adventures of a straight line ... The train.. cleaves through nature, jumps obstacles .. and continues both the actual journey—whose form is a furrow—and the perfect embodiment of human industry. The machine has the additional advantage here of not being isolated in a purpose-built, artificial place, like the factory or all similar structures, but of remaining in permanent and direct contact with the variety of nature." Pierre Macherey (1966).
Adaptations and influences
The book has been adapted many times in different forms.
Theatre
* A 1874 play written by Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, where it was shown 415 times.
* In 1946 Orson Welles produced and starred in Around the World, a musical stage version, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, that was only loosely faithful to Verne's original.
* A musical version, 80 Days, with songs by Ray Davies of The Kinks and a book by playwright Snoo Wilson, directed by Des McAnuff, ran at the Mandell Weiss Theatre in San Diego from August 23 to October 9, 1988. The musical received mixed responses from the critics. Ray Davies's multi-faceted music, McAnuff's directing, and the acting, however, were well received, with the show winning the "Best Musical" award from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle.
* In 2001, the story was adapted for the stage by American playwright Mark Brown. In what has been described as "a wildly wacky, unbelievably creative, 90-miles-an-hour, hilarious journey" this award winning stage adaptation is written for five actors who portray thirty-nine characters.
* A stage musical adaptation premiered at the Fulton Opera House, Lancaster, PA in March 2007 with music by Ron Barnett, book and lyrics by Julianne Homokay, and direction by Robin McKercher.
Films
* A 1919 silent black and white parody by director Richard Oswald didn't disguise its use of locations in Germany as placeholders for the international voyage; part of the movie's joke is that Fogg's trip is obviously going to places in and around Berlin. There are no remaining copies of the film available today.
* The best known version was released in 1956, with David Niven and Cantinflas heading a huge cast. Many famous performers play bit parts, and part of the pleasure in this movie is playing "spot the star". The movie earned five Oscars, out of eight nominations. This film was also responsible for the popular misconception that Fogg and company travel by balloon for part of the trip in the novel, which has prompted later adaptations to include similar sequences. See Around the World in Eighty Days (1956 film) for details.
* 1963 saw the release of The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze. In this parody, the Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Joe DeRita) are cast as the menservants of Phileas Fogg III (Jay Sheffield), great-grandson of the original around-the-world voyager. When Phileas Fogg III is tricked into replicating his ancestor's feat of circumnavigation, Larry, Moe, and Curly-Joe dutifully accompany their master. Along the way, the boys get into and out of trouble in typical Stooge fashion.
* In 1983 the basic idea was expanded to a galactic scope in Japan's Ginga Shippu Sasuraiger, where a team of adventurers travel through the galaxy in a train-like ship that can transform into a giant robot. The characters are travelling to different planets in order to return within a certain period and win a bet.
* The story was again adapted for the screen in the 2004 film Around the World in 80 Days, starring Jackie Chan as Passepartout and Steve Coogan as Fogg. This version makes Passepartout the hero and the thief of the treasure of the Bank; Fogg's character is an eccentric inventor who bets a rival scientist that he can travel the world with (then) modern means of transportation.
TV
* An episode of the American television series, Have Gun – Will Travel, entitled "Fogg Bound", had the series' hero, Palladin (Richard Boone), escorting Phileas Fogg (Patric Knowles) through part of his journey. This episode was broadcasted by CBS on December 3, 1960.
* A 1989 three-part TV mini-series starred Pierce Brosnan as Fogg, Eric Idle as Passepartout, Peter Ustinov as Fix and several TV stars in cameo roles. The heroes travel a slightly different route than in the book and the script makes several contemporary celebrities part of the story who were not mentioned in the book. See Around the World in 80 Days (TV miniseries) for details.
* The BBC along with Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) created a 1989 television travel series following the book's path. It was one of many travelogues Michael Palin has done with the BBC and was a commercially successful transition from his comedic career. The latest series in a similar format was Michael Palin's New Europe in 2007.
* Around the World in 80 Days, a six part 2009 BBC One show in which twelve celebrities attempt to travel the world in aid of the Children in Need appeal. This featured a carpet bag similar to one carried by Fogg and Passeportout.
Animation
* An Indian Fantasy Story is an unfinished French/English co-production from 1938, featuring the wager at the Reform Club and the rescue of the Indian Princess. It was never completed as a full feature film.
* Around the World in 79 Days, a serial segment on the Hanna-Barbera show The Cattanooga Cats from 1969 to 1971.
* Around the World in 80 Days from 1972 by American studio Rankin/Bass with Japanese Mushi productions as part of the Festival of Family Classics series.
* A one-season cartoon series Around the World in 80 Days from 1972 by Australian Air Programs International. NBC aired the series in the US during the 1972-73 season on Saturday mornings.
* Puss 'N Boots Travels Around the World, a 1976 anime from Toei Animation
* A Walt Disney adaptation was produced in 1986. It featured Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy as the main characters.
* Around the World with Willy Fog by Spanish studio BRB Internacional from 1981 with a second season produced in 1993. This series depicts the characters as talking animals, and, despite adding some new characters and making some superficial modifications to the original story, it remains one of the most accurate adaptations of the book made for film or television. The show has gained a cult following in Finland, Britain, Germany and Spain. The first season is "Around the World in 80 Days", and the second season is "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"; all three books are by Jules Verne.
* Tweety's High-Flying Adventure is a direct-to-video cartoon by Warner Brothers from 2000 starring the Looney Tunes characters. It takes a great many liberties with the original story, but the central idea is still there - indeed, one of the songs in this film is entitled Around the World in Eighty Days. Tweety not only had to travel the world, he had to also collect 80 cat pawprints, all while evading the constant pursuits of Slyvester. This movie frequently appears on various US-based cable TV networks.
* "Around the World in 80 Narfs" is a Pinky and the Brain episode where the Brain claims to be able to make the travel in less than 80 days and the Pompous Explorers club agrees to make him their new president. With this, the Brain expects to be UK's new Prime Minister, what he considers back at that time, the fastest way to take over the world.
* A Mickey Mouse episode shows the effort of Mickey to get around the world in 80 days with the help of Goofy. The cartoon made reference to the ending of the novel. They realise they have a day extra by hearing church bells on what they believe to be a Monday. This referenced the ending with the vicar in the church.
Exhibitions
* "Around the World in 80 Days", group show curated by Jens Hoffman at the ICA London 2006
Cultural references
* "Around the Universe in 80 Days" is a song by the Canadian band Klaatu, and makes reference to a spaceship travelling around the galaxy, coming home to find the Earth second from the Sun. It was originally included on the 1977 album "Hope", but also appears on at least two compilations.
* There are at least four board games by this name.
* Worlds of Fun, an amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri, was conceived using the novel as its theme. It uses the hot air balloon in its logo, and the park's layout is based on world geography.
Argentinian avant-garde writer Julio Cortazar wrote in 1967 his book titled Around the Day in Eighty Worlds.
Anna Karenina (Russian: Анна Каренина; Russian pronunciation: [ˈanə kɐˈrʲenʲɪnə]) (sometimes Anglicised as Anna Karenin) is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with its editor Mikhail Katkov over issues that arose in the final installment; therefore, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form.
Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel, when he came to consider War and Peace to be more than a novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (Russian spelling Maria Gartung, 1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.[citation needed] Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy began reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character.
Although Russian critics dismissed the novel on its publication as a "trifling romance of high life", Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style", and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as "the best ever written".[citation needed] The novel is currently enjoying popularity as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in 2007 in The Top Ten, which declared that Anna Karenina is the "greatest novel ever written".
The title: Anna Karenin vs Anna Karenina
The title has been translated as both Anna Karenin and Anna Karenina. The first instance naturalizes the Russian name into English, whereas the second is a direct transliteration of the actual Russian name. As Vladimir Nabokov explains: "In Russian, a surname ending in a consonant acquires a final 'a' (except for the cases of such names that cannot be declined) when designating a woman".
Nabokov favours the first convention - removing the Russian 'a' to naturalize the name into English - but subsequent translators mostly allow Anna's actual Russian name to stand. Larissa Volokhonsky, herself a Russian, prefers the second option, while other translators like Constance Garnett and Rosemary Edmonds prefer the first solution.
Main characters
* Anna Arkadyevna Karenina – Stepan Oblonsky's sister, Karenin's wife and Vronsky's lover. She is also a minor character in War and Peace. [citation needed]
* Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky – Lover of Anna
* Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky ("Stiva") – a civil servant and Anna's brother.
* Princess Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya ("Dolly") – Stepan's wife
* Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin – a senior statesman and Anna's husband, twenty years her senior.
* Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin ("Kostya") – Kitty's suitor and then husband.
* Nikolai Levin – Konstantin's brother
* Sergius Ivanich Koznyshev – Konstantin's half-brother
* Princess Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya ("Kitty") – Dolly's younger sister and later Levin's wife
* Princess Elizaveta ("Betsy") – Anna's wealthy, morally loose society friend and Vronsky's cousin
* Countess Lidia Ivanovna – Leader of a high society circle that includes Karenin, and shuns Princess Betsy and her circle. She maintains an interest in the mystical and spiritual
* Countess Vronskaya – Vronsky's mother
* Sergei Alexeyitch Karenin ("Seryozha") – Anna and Karenin's son
* Anna ("Annie") – Anna and Vronsky's daughter
* Varenka – a young orphaned girl, semi-adopted by an ailing Russian noblewoman, whom Kitty befriends while abroad
Plot summary
The novel is divided into eight parts. The novel begins with one of its most quoted lines:
“ Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ”
Part 1
The novel opens with a scene introducing Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky, "Stiva", a Moscow aristocrat and civil servant who has been unfaithful to his wife Darya Alexandrovna, nicknamed "Dolly". Dolly has discovered his affair - with the family's governess - and the house and family are in turmoil. Stiva's affair and his reaction to his wife's distress shows an amorous personality that he cannot seem to suppress.
In the midst of the turmoil, Stiva reminds the household that his married sister, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina is coming to visit from Saint Petersburg.
Meanwhile, Stiva's childhood friend Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin ("Kostya") arrives in Moscow with the aim of proposing to Dolly's youngest sister Princess Katerina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, "Kitty". Levin is a passionate, restless but shy aristocratic landowner who, unlike his Moscow friends, chooses to live in the country on his large estate. He discovers that Kitty is also being pursued by Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, an army officer.
At the railway station to meet Anna, Stiva bumps into Vronsky. Vronsky is there to meet his mother. Anna and the Countess Vronskaya have travelled together in the same carriage and talked together. As the family members are reunited, and Vronsky sees Anna for the first time, a railway worker accidentally falls in front of a train and is killed. Anna interprets this as an "evil omen." Vronsky is infatuated with Anna. Anna, who is uneasy about leaving her young son, Seryozha, alone for the first time, talks openly and emotionally to Dolly about Stiva's affair and convinces Dolly that her husband still loves her, despite his infidelity. Dolly is moved by Anna's speeches and decides to forgive Stiva.
Dolly's youngest sister, Kitty, comes to visit her sister and Anna. Kitty, just 18, is in her first season as a debutante and is expected to make an excellent match with a man of her social standing. Vronsky has been paying her considerable attention, and she expects to dance with him at a ball that evening. Kitty is very struck by Anna's beauty and personality and is infatuated with her. When Levin proposes to Kitty at her home, she clumsily turns him down, because she believes she is in love with Vronsky and that he will propose to her.
At the ball, Vronsky pays Anna considerable attention, and dances with her, choosing her as a partner instead of Kitty, who is shocked and heartbroken. Kitty realises that Vronsky has fallen in love with Anna, and that despite his overt flirtations with her he has no intention of marrying her and in fact views his attentions to her as mere amusement, believing that she does the same.
Anna, shaken by her emotional and physical response to Vronsky, returns at once to Saint Petersburg. Vronsky travels on the same train. During the overnight journey, the two meet and Vronsky confesses his love. Anna refuses him, although she is deeply affected by his attentions to her.
Levin, crushed by Kitty's refusal, returns to his estate farm, abandoning any hope of marriage, and Anna returns to her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a senior government official, and their son Sergei ("Seryozha") in Petersburg.
Tatiana Samoilova as Anna in the 1967 Soviet screen version of Tolstoy's novel.
On seeing her husband for the first time since her encounter with Vronsky, Anna realises that she finds him repulsive, noting the odd way that his ears press against his hat.
Part 2
The Shcherbatskys consult doctors over Kitty's health which has been failing since she realizes that Vronsky did not love her and that he did not intend to propose marriage to her, and that she refused and hurt Levin, whom she cares for, in vain. A specialist doctor advises that Kitty should go abroad to a health spa to recover. Dolly speaks to Kitty and understands that she is suffering because of Vronsky and Levin. Kitty, humiliated by Vronsky and tormented by her rejection of Levin, upsets her sister by referring to Stiva's infidelity and says she could never love a man who betrayed her.
Stiva stays with Levin on his country estate when he makes a sale of a plot of land, to provide funds for his expensive city lifestyle. Levin is upset at the poor deal he makes with the buyer and his lack of understanding of the rural lifestyle.
In St. Petersburg, Anna begins to spend more time with the fashionable socialite and gossip Princess Betsy and her circle, in order to meet Vronsky, Betsy's cousin. Vronsky continues to pursue Anna. Although Anna initially tries to reject him, she eventually succumbs to his attentions.
Karenin warns Anna of the impropriety of paying too much attention to Vronsky in public, which is becoming a subject of society gossip. He is concerned about his and his wife's public image, although he believes that Anna is above suspicion.
Vronsky, a keen horseman, takes part in a steeplechase event, during which he rides his mare Frou-Frou too hard and she falls and breaks her back. Vronsky escapes with minimal injuries but is devastated that his mare must be shot. Anna tells him that she is pregnant with his child, and is unable to hide her distress when Vronsky falls from the racehorse. Karenin is also present at the races and remarks to her that her behaviour is improper. Anna, in a state of extreme distress and emotion, confesses her affair to her husband. Karenin asks her to break off the affair to avoid society gossip and believes that their relationship can then continue as previously.
Kitty goes with her mother to a resort at a German spa to recover from her ill health. There they meet the Pietist Madame Stahl and the saintly Varenka, her adopted daughter. Influenced by Varenka, Kitty becomes extremely pious, but is disillusioned by her father`s criticism. She then returns to Moscow.
Part 3
Levin continues his work on his large country estate, a setting closely tied to his spiritual thoughts and struggles. Levin wrestles with the idea of falseness, wondering how he should go about ridding himself of it, and criticising what he feels is falseness in others. He develops ideas relating to agriculture and the unique relationship between the agricultural labourer and his native land and culture. He believes that the agricultural reforms of Europe will not work in Russia because of the unique culture and personality of the Russian peasant.
Levin pays Dolly a visit, and she attempts to understand what happened between him and Kitty and to explain Kitty's behaviour to him. Levin is very agitated by Dolly's talk about Kitty, and he begins to feel distant from her as he perceives her behaviour towards her children as false. Levin resolves to forget Kitty and contemplates the possibility of marriage to a peasant woman. However, a chance sighting of Kitty in her carriage as she travels to Dolly's house makes Levin realise he still loves her.
In St. Petersburg, Karenin crushes Anna by refusing to separate from her. He insists that their relationship remain as it was and threatens to take away their son Seryozha if she continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky.
Part 4
Anna continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky. Karenin begins to find the situation intolerable. He talks with a lawyer about obtaining a divorce. In Russia at that time, divorce could only be requested by the innocent party in an affair, and required either that the guilty party confessed (which would ruin Anna's position in society) or that the guilty party was discovered in the act. Karenin forces Anna to give him some letters written to her by Vronsky as proof of the affair. However, Anna's brother Stiva argues against it and persuades Karenin to speak with Dolly first.
Dolly broaches the subject with Karenin and asks him to reconsider his plans to divorce Anna. She seems to be unsuccessful, but Karenin changes his plans after hearing that Anna is dying after a difficult childbirth. At her bedside, Karenin forgives Vronsky. Vronsky, embarrassed by Karenin's magnanimity, attempts suicide by shooting himself. He fails in his attempt but wounds himself badly.
Anna recovers, having given birth to a daughter, Anna ("Annie"). Although her husband has forgiven her, and has become attached to the new baby, Anna cannot bear living with him. She hears that Vronsky is about to leave for a military posting in Tashkent and becomes desperate. Stiva finds himself pleading to Karenin on her behalf to free her by giving her a divorce. Vronsky is intent on leaving for Tashkent, but changes his mind after seeing Anna.
The couple leave for Europe - leaving behind Anna's son Seryozha - without obtaining a divorce.
Much more straightforward is Stiva's matchmaking with Levin: he arranges a meeting between Levin and Kitty which results in their reconciliation and betrothal.
Part 5
Levin and Kitty marry and immediately go to start their new life together on Levin's country estate. The couple are happy but do not have a very smooth start to their married life and take some time to get used to each other. Levin feels some dissatisfaction at the amount of time Kitty wants to spend with him and is slightly scornful of her preoccupation with domestic matters, which he feels are too prosaic and not compatible with his romantic ideas of love.
A few months later, Levin learns that his brother Nikolai is dying of consumption. Levin wants to go to him, and is initially angry and put out that Kitty wishes to accompany him. Levin feels that Kitty, whom he has placed on a pedestal, should not come down to earth and should not mix with people from a lower class. Levin assumes her insistence on coming must relate to a fear of boredom from being left alone, despite her true desire to support her husband in a difficult time. Kitty persuades him to take her with him after much discussion, where she proves a great help nursing Nikolai for weeks over his slow death. She also discovers she is pregnant.
In Europe, Vronsky and Anna struggle to find friends who will accept their situation. Whilst Anna is happy to be finally alone with Vronsky, he feels suffocated. They cannot socialize with Russians of their own social set and find it difficult to amuse themselves. Vronsky, who believed that being with Anna in freedom was the key to his happiness, finds himself increasingly bored and unsatisfied. He takes up painting, and makes an attempt to patronize an émigré Russian artist of genius. Vronsky cannot see that his own art lacks talent and passion, and that his clever conversation about art is an empty shell. Bored and restless, Anna and Vronsky decide to return to Russia.
In Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky stay in one of the best hotels but take separate suites. It becomes clear that whilst Vronsky is able to move in Society, Anna is barred from it. Even her old friend, Princess Betsy - who has had affairs herself - evades her company. Anna starts to become very jealous and anxious that Vronsky no longer loves her.
Karenin is comforted – and influenced – by the strong-willed Countess Lidia Ivanovna, an enthusiast of religious and mystic ideas fashionable with the upper classes. She counsels him to keep Seryozha away from Anna and to make him believe that his mother is dead. However, Seryozha refuses to believe that this is true. Anna manages to visit Seryozha unannounced and uninvited on his ninth birthday, but is discovered by Karenin.
Anna, desperate to resume at least in part her former position in Society, attends a show at the theatre at which all of Petersburg's high society are present. Vronsky begs her not to go, but is unable to bring himself to explain to her why she cannot go. At the theatre, Anna is openly snubbed by her former friends, one of whom makes a deliberate scene and leaves the theatre. Anna is devastated.
Unable to find a place for themselves in Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky leave for Vronsky's country estate.
Part 6
Dolly, her mother the Princess Scherbatskaya, and Dolly's children spend the summer with Levin and Kitty on the Levins' country estate. The Levins' life is simple and unaffected, although Levin is uneasy at the "invasion" of so many Scherbatskys. He is able to cope until he is consumed with an intense jealousy when one of the visitors, Veslovsky, flirts openly with the pregnant Kitty. Levin tries to overcome his jealousy but eventually succumbs to it and in an embarrassing scene evicts Veslovsky from his house. Veslovsky immediately goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky, whose estate is close by.
Dolly also pays a short visit to Anna at Vronsky's estate. The difference between the Levins' aristocratic but simple home life and Vronsky's overtly luxurious and lavish country home strikes Dolly, who is unable to keep pace with Anna's fashionable dresses or Vronsky's extravagant spending on the hospital he is building. However, all is not quite well with Anna and Vronsky. Dolly is also struck by Anna's anxious behaviour and new habit of half closing her eyes when she alludes to her difficult position. When Veslovsky flirts openly with Anna, she plays along with him even though she clearly feels uncomfortable. Vronsky makes an emotional request to Dolly, asking her to convince Anna to divorce her husband so that the two might marry and live normally. Dolly broaches the subject with Anna, who appears not to be convinced. However, Anna is becoming intensely jealous of Vronsky, and cannot bear it when he leaves her for short excursions. The two have started to quarrel about this and when Vronsky leaves for several days of provincial elections, a combination of boredom and suspicion convinces Anna she must marry him in order to prevent him from leaving her. She writes to Karenin, and she and Vronsky leave the countryside for Moscow.
Part 7
The Levins are in Moscow for Kitty's confinement. Despite initial reservations, Levin quickly gets used to the fast-paced, expensive and frivolous Moscow society life. He starts to accompany Stiva to his Moscow gentleman's club, where drinking and gambling are popular pastimes. At the club, Levin meets Vronsky and Stiva introduces them. Levin and Stiva pay a visit to Anna, who is occupying her empty days by being a patroness to an orphaned English girl. Levin is uneasy about the visit and not sure it is the proper thing to do, and Anna easily puts Levin under her spell. When he confesses to Kitty where he has been, she accuses him falsely of falling in love with Anna. The couple are reconciled, realising that Moscow life has had a negative, corrupting effect on Levin.
Anna, who has made a habit of inducing the young men who visit her to fall in love with her, cannot understand why she can attract a man like Levin, who has a young and beautiful new wife, but cannot attract Vronsky in the way she wants to. Anna's relationship with Vronsky is under increasing strain, as whilst he can move freely in Society - and continues to spend considerable time doing so to stress to Anna his independence as a man - she is excluded from all her previous social connections. She is estranged from baby Annie, her child with Vronsky and her increasing bitterness, boredom, jealousy and emotional strain cause the couple to argue. Anna uses morphine to help her sleep, a habit we learned she had begun during her time living with Vronsky at his country estate. Now she has become dependent on it.
After a long and difficult labour, Kitty gives birth to a son, Dmitri, nicknamed Mitya. Levin is both extremely moved and horrified by the sight of the tiny, helpless baby.
Stiva visits Karenin to encourage his commendation for a new post he is seeking. During the visit he asks him to grant Anna a divorce, but Karenin's decisions are now governed by a French "clairvoyant" – recommended by Lidia Ivanovna – who apparently has a vision in his sleep during Stiva's visit, and gives Karenin a cryptic message that is interpreted as meaning that he must decline the request for divorce.
Anna becomes increasingly jealous and irrational towards Vronsky, whom she suspects of having love affairs with other women, and of giving in to his mother's plans to marry him off to a rich Society woman. There is a bitter row, and Anna believes that the relationship is over. She starts to think of suicide as an escape from her torments. In her mental and emotional confusion, she sends a telegram to Vronsky asking him to come home to her, and pays a visit to Dolly and Kitty. Anna's confusion overcomes her, and in a parallel to the railway worker's accidental death in part 1, she commits suicide by throwing herself in the path of a train.
Part 8
Stiva gets the job he desired so much, and Karenin takes custody of baby Annie. A group of Russian volunteers, including Vronsky, who does not plan to return alive, depart from Russia to fight in the Orthodox Serbian revolt that has broken out against the Turks. Meanwhile, a lightning storm occurs at Levin's estate while his wife and newborn son are outside, causing him to fear for the safety of both of them, and to realize that he does indeed love his son similarly to how he loves Kitty. Also, Kitty's family concerns, namely, that a man as altruistic as her husband does not consider himself to be a Christian, are also addressed when Levin decides after talking to a peasant that devotion to living righteously as decreed by the Christian God is the only justifiable reason for living. After coming to this decision, but without telling anyone about it, he is initially displeased that this change of thought does not bring with it a complete transformation of his behavior to be more righteous. However, at the end of the book he comes to the conclusion that this fact, and the fact that there are other religions with similar views on goodness that are not Christian, are acceptable and that neither of these things diminish the fact that now his life can be meaningfully oriented toward goodness.
Style
Tolstoy's style in Anna Karenina is considered by many critics to be transitional, forming a bridge between the realist and modernist novel. The novel is narrated from a third-person-omniscient perspective, shifting between the perspectives of several major characters, though most frequently focusing on the opposing lifestyles and attitudes of its central protagonists of Anna and Levin. As such, each of the novel's eight sections contains internal variations in tone: it assumes a relaxed voice when following Stepan Oblonsky's thoughts and actions and a much more tense voice when describing Levin's social encounters. Much of the novel's seventh section depicts Anna's thoughts fluidly, following each one of her ruminations and free associations with its immediate successor. This groundbreaking use of stream-of-consciousness would be utilised by such later authors as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.
Also of significance is Tolstoy's use of real events in his narrative, to lend greater verisimilitude to the fictional events of his narrative. Characters debate significant sociopolitical issues affecting Russia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, such as the place and role of the Russian peasant in society, education reform, and women's rights. Tolstoy's depiction of the characters in these debates, and of their arguments, allows him to communicate his own political beliefs. Characters often attend similar social functions to those which Tolstoy attended, and he includes in these passages his own observations of the ideologies, behaviors, and ideas running through contemporary Russia through the thoughts of Levin. The broad array of situations and ideas depicted in Anna Karenina allows Tolstoy to present a treatise on his era's Russia, and, by virtue of its very breadth and depth, all of human society. This stylistic technique, as well as the novel's use of perspective, greatly contributes to the thematic structure of Anna Karenina.[citation needed]
Major themes
Anna Karenina is commonly thought to explore the themes of hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, carnal desire and passion, and the agrarian connection to land in contrast to the lifestyles of the city. Translator Rosemary Edmonds wrote that Tolstoy doesn't explicitly moralise in the book, he allows his themes to emerge naturally from the "vast panorama of Russian life." She also writes that a key message is that "no one may build their happiness on another's pain," which is why things don't work out for Anna.
Levin is often considered as a semi-autobiographical portrayal of Tolstoy's own beliefs, struggles and life events. Tolstoy's first name is "Lev", and the Russian surname "Levin" means "of Lev". According to footnotes in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, the viewpoints Levin supports throughout the novel in his arguments match Tolstoy's outspoken views on the same issues. Moreover, according to W. Gareth Jones, Levin proposed to Kitty in the same way as Tolstoy to Sophie Behrs. Additionally, Levin's request that his fiancée read his diary as a way of disclosing his faults and previous sexual encounters, parallels Tolstoy's own requests to his fiancée Sophie Behrs.
Anna Karenina and Tolstoy's A Confession
Alla Tarasova as Anna Karenina in 1937
Many of the novel's themes can also be found in Tolstoy's A Confession, his first-person rumination about the nature of life and faith, written just two years after the publication of Anna Karenina.
In this book, Tolstoy describes his dissatisfaction with the hypocrisy of his social class:
“ Every time I tried to display my innermost desires – a wish to be morally good – I met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to base desires I was praised and encouraged. ”
Tolstoy also details the acceptability of adulterous "liaisons" in aristocratic Russian society:
“ A dear old aunt of mine, the purest of creatures, with whom I lived, was always saying that she wished for nothing as much as that I would have a relationship with a married woman. "Rien ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut." ("Nothing educates a young man better than an affair with a woman established in society.") ”
Another theme in Anna Karenina is that of the aristocratic habit of speaking French instead of Russian, which Tolstoy suggests is another form of society's falseness. When Dolly insists on speaking French to her young daughter, Tanya, she begins to seem false and tedious to Levin, who finds himself unable to feel at ease in her house.
In a passage that could be interpreted as a sign of Anna's eventual redemption in Tolstoy's eyes, the narrator explains:
“ For in the end what are we, who are convinced that suicide is obligatory and yet cannot resolve to commit it, other than the weakest, the most inconsistent and, speaking frankly, the most stupid of people, making such a song and dance with our banalities? ”
A Confession contains many other autobiographical insights into the themes of Anna Karenina. A public domain version of it is here.
Film, television, and theatrical adaptations
For more details on this topic, see Adaptations of Anna Karenina.
* Operas based on Anna Karenina have been written by Sassano (Naples, 1905), Leoš Janáček (unfinished, 1907), Granelli (1912), E. Malherbe (unperformed, 1914), Jeno Hubay (Budapest, 1915), Robbiani (Rome, 1924), Goldbach (1930), Iain Hamilton (London, 1981) and David Carlson (Miami, 2007).
* Love, a 1927 silent film based loosely on the novel. The film starred Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.
* Anna Karenina, a critically acclaimed 1935 film, directed by Clarence Brown. The film stars Greta Garbo, Fredric March, and Maureen O'Sullivan.
* Anna Karenina, a 1948 film directed by Julien Duvivier with Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and Kieron Moore.
* "MGM Theater Of The Air - Anna Karenina (Radio Broadcast)" (Broadcast 12/09/1949; on American radio, starring Marlene Dietrich
* "Nahr al-Hob" (or River of Love; 1960; an Egyptian movie starring Omar Sharif and Faten Hamama
* Anna Karenina, a 1967 Russian film directed by Aleksandr Zarkhi and starring Tatyana Samojlova, Nikolai Gritsenko and Vasili Lanovoy.
* Anna Karenina (1968) a ballet composed by Rodion Shchedrin
* Anna Karenina, a 1977 TV version in ten episodes. Made by the BBC it was directed by Basil Coleman and starred Nicola Pagett, Eric Porter and Stuart Wilson.
* Anna Karenina, a 1985 TV film directed by Simon Langton and starring Jacqueline Bisset, Paul Scofield and Christopher Reeve.
* Anna Karenina, a 1992 Broadway musical starring Ann Crumb and John Cunningham
* Anna Karenina, a 1997 British-American production filmed in St. Peterburg, Russia, by director Bernard Rose with Sophie Marceau as Anna Karenina.
* Anna Karenina, a 2000 TV version in four episodes. It was directed by David Blair and starred Helen McCrory, Stephen Dillane and Kevin McKidd.
* Anna Karenina a 2005 ballet with choreography by Boris Eifman and music drawn from the works of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Anna Karenina in literature
* Quirk Classics transformed Anna Karenina into the book 'Android Karenina' (other past transformations have included 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' and 'Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters')
* The novel is referenced in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.
* Repeated reference is made explicitly to Leo Tolstoy and Anna Karenin in Muriel Barbery's Elegance of the Hedgehog
* Anna Karenina is also mentioned in R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series Don't Go To Sleep.
* Mikhail Bulgakov makes reference to the Oblonsky household and Tolstoy in The Master and Margarita.
* In Jasper Fforde's novel Lost in a Good Book, a recurring joke is two unnamed "crowd-scene" characters from Anna Karenina discussing its plot.
* In the short-story "Sleep" by Haruki Murakami, the main character, an insomniac housewife, spends much time reading through and considering "Anna Karenina". Furthermore, in the short story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo", by the same author, the character of Frog references "Anna Karenina" when discussing how to beat Worm.
* Martin Amis's character Lev, in the novel House of Meetings, compares the protagonist with Anna Karenina's Vronsky.
* In the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being Anna Karenina is compared with the novel like beauty of life, and Tereza arrives at Tomas's apartment with a copy of the book under her arm. In addition, Tereza and Tomas have a pet dog named Karenin, after Anna's husband.
* In the novel What Happened to Anna K. Irina Reyn loosely transfers the Anna Karenina story to a setting in modern-day New York City.
* Anna Karenina plays a central role in Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics (2002), set in 1929, as a new lector, Juan Julian, reads the text as background for cigar rollers in the Ybor City section of Tampa, FL. As he reads the story of adultery, the workers' passions are inflamed, and end in tragedy like Anna's.
* In "The Slippery Slope", the 10th book in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, the Baudelaire orphans Violet, Klaus and the third Quagmire triplet Quigley need to use the central theme of "Anna Karenina" as the final password to open the Vernacularly Fastened Door leading to the V.F.D. Headquarters. Klaus remembered how his mother had read it to him one summer when he was young as a summer reading book. Klaus summarized the theme with these words: "The central theme of Anna Karenina is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy." Esme Squalor later said she once was supposed to read the book over the summer, but she decided it would never help her in her life and threw it in the fireplace.
* Guns, Germs, and Steel (by Jared Diamond) has a chapter (#9) on the domestication of large mammals, titled "Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle." This chapter begins with a variation on the quote, above.
* in Nicholas Sparks's book The Last Song, the main character, Ronnie, reads Anna Karenina and other Tolstoy books throughout the story.
Further reading
Translations
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Constance Garnett. Still widely reprinted.
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Allen Lane/Penguin, London, 2000)
* Anna Karénina, Translated by Margaret Wettlin (Progress Publishers, 1978)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Joel Carmichael (Bantam Books, New York, 1960)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by David Magarshack (A Signet Classic, New American Library, New York and Scarborough, Ontario, 1961)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1918)
* Anna Karenin, Translated by Rosemary Edmonds (Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1954)
* Anna Karénina, Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1886)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Kyril Zinovieff (Oneworld Classics 2008) ISBN 978-1-84749-059-9
Biographical and literary criticism
* Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981)
* Bayley, John, Tolstoy and the Novel (Chatto and Windus, London, 1966)
* Berlin, Isaiah, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967)
* Eikhenbaum, Boris, Tolstoi in the Seventies, trans. Albert Kaspin (Ardis, Ann Arbor, 1982)
* Evans, Mary, Anna Karenina (Routledge, London and New York, 1989)
* Gifford, Henry, Tolstoy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982)
* Gifford, Henry (ed) Leo Tolstoy (Penguin Critical Anthologies, Harmondsworth, 1971)
* Leavis, F. R., Anna Karenina and Other Essays (Chatto and Windus, London, 1967)
* Mandelker, Amy, Framing 'Anna Karenina': Tolstoy, the Woman Question, and the Victorian Novel (Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1993)
* Morson,Gary Saul, Anna Karenina in our time: seeing more wisely (Yale University Press 2007) read parts at Google-Books
* Nabokov, Vladimir, Lectures on Russian Literature (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1981)
* Orwin, Donna Tussing, Tolstoy's Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993)
* Speirs, Logan, Tolstoy and Chekhov (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971)
* Strakhov, Nikolai, N., "Levin and Social Chaos", in Gibian, ed., (W.W. Norton & Company New York, 2005).
* Steiner, George, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast (Faber and Faber, London, 1959)
* Thorlby, Anthony, Anna Karenina (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1987)
* Tolstoy, Leo, Correspondence, 2. vols., selected, ed. and trans. by R. F. Christian (Athlone Press, London and Scribner, New York, 1978)
* Tolstoy, Leo, Diaries, ed. and trans. by R. F. Christian (Athlone Press, London and Scribner, New York, 1985)
* Tolstoy, Sophia A., The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy, ed. O. A. Golinenko, trans. Cathy Porter (Random House, New York, 1985)
* Turner, C. J. G., A Karenina Companion (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, 1993)
* Wasiolek, Edward, Critical Essays on Tolstoy (G. K. Hall, Boston, 1986)
* Wasiolek, Edward, Tolstoy's Major Fiction (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978)
Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel, when he came to consider War and Peace to be more than a novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (Russian spelling Maria Gartung, 1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.[citation needed] Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy began reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character.
Although Russian critics dismissed the novel on its publication as a "trifling romance of high life", Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style", and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as "the best ever written".[citation needed] The novel is currently enjoying popularity as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in 2007 in The Top Ten, which declared that Anna Karenina is the "greatest novel ever written".
The title: Anna Karenin vs Anna Karenina
The title has been translated as both Anna Karenin and Anna Karenina. The first instance naturalizes the Russian name into English, whereas the second is a direct transliteration of the actual Russian name. As Vladimir Nabokov explains: "In Russian, a surname ending in a consonant acquires a final 'a' (except for the cases of such names that cannot be declined) when designating a woman".
Nabokov favours the first convention - removing the Russian 'a' to naturalize the name into English - but subsequent translators mostly allow Anna's actual Russian name to stand. Larissa Volokhonsky, herself a Russian, prefers the second option, while other translators like Constance Garnett and Rosemary Edmonds prefer the first solution.
Main characters
* Anna Arkadyevna Karenina – Stepan Oblonsky's sister, Karenin's wife and Vronsky's lover. She is also a minor character in War and Peace. [citation needed]
* Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky – Lover of Anna
* Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky ("Stiva") – a civil servant and Anna's brother.
* Princess Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya ("Dolly") – Stepan's wife
* Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin – a senior statesman and Anna's husband, twenty years her senior.
* Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin ("Kostya") – Kitty's suitor and then husband.
* Nikolai Levin – Konstantin's brother
* Sergius Ivanich Koznyshev – Konstantin's half-brother
* Princess Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya ("Kitty") – Dolly's younger sister and later Levin's wife
* Princess Elizaveta ("Betsy") – Anna's wealthy, morally loose society friend and Vronsky's cousin
* Countess Lidia Ivanovna – Leader of a high society circle that includes Karenin, and shuns Princess Betsy and her circle. She maintains an interest in the mystical and spiritual
* Countess Vronskaya – Vronsky's mother
* Sergei Alexeyitch Karenin ("Seryozha") – Anna and Karenin's son
* Anna ("Annie") – Anna and Vronsky's daughter
* Varenka – a young orphaned girl, semi-adopted by an ailing Russian noblewoman, whom Kitty befriends while abroad
Plot summary
The novel is divided into eight parts. The novel begins with one of its most quoted lines:
“ Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ”
Part 1
The novel opens with a scene introducing Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky, "Stiva", a Moscow aristocrat and civil servant who has been unfaithful to his wife Darya Alexandrovna, nicknamed "Dolly". Dolly has discovered his affair - with the family's governess - and the house and family are in turmoil. Stiva's affair and his reaction to his wife's distress shows an amorous personality that he cannot seem to suppress.
In the midst of the turmoil, Stiva reminds the household that his married sister, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina is coming to visit from Saint Petersburg.
Meanwhile, Stiva's childhood friend Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin ("Kostya") arrives in Moscow with the aim of proposing to Dolly's youngest sister Princess Katerina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, "Kitty". Levin is a passionate, restless but shy aristocratic landowner who, unlike his Moscow friends, chooses to live in the country on his large estate. He discovers that Kitty is also being pursued by Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, an army officer.
At the railway station to meet Anna, Stiva bumps into Vronsky. Vronsky is there to meet his mother. Anna and the Countess Vronskaya have travelled together in the same carriage and talked together. As the family members are reunited, and Vronsky sees Anna for the first time, a railway worker accidentally falls in front of a train and is killed. Anna interprets this as an "evil omen." Vronsky is infatuated with Anna. Anna, who is uneasy about leaving her young son, Seryozha, alone for the first time, talks openly and emotionally to Dolly about Stiva's affair and convinces Dolly that her husband still loves her, despite his infidelity. Dolly is moved by Anna's speeches and decides to forgive Stiva.
Dolly's youngest sister, Kitty, comes to visit her sister and Anna. Kitty, just 18, is in her first season as a debutante and is expected to make an excellent match with a man of her social standing. Vronsky has been paying her considerable attention, and she expects to dance with him at a ball that evening. Kitty is very struck by Anna's beauty and personality and is infatuated with her. When Levin proposes to Kitty at her home, she clumsily turns him down, because she believes she is in love with Vronsky and that he will propose to her.
At the ball, Vronsky pays Anna considerable attention, and dances with her, choosing her as a partner instead of Kitty, who is shocked and heartbroken. Kitty realises that Vronsky has fallen in love with Anna, and that despite his overt flirtations with her he has no intention of marrying her and in fact views his attentions to her as mere amusement, believing that she does the same.
Anna, shaken by her emotional and physical response to Vronsky, returns at once to Saint Petersburg. Vronsky travels on the same train. During the overnight journey, the two meet and Vronsky confesses his love. Anna refuses him, although she is deeply affected by his attentions to her.
Levin, crushed by Kitty's refusal, returns to his estate farm, abandoning any hope of marriage, and Anna returns to her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a senior government official, and their son Sergei ("Seryozha") in Petersburg.
Tatiana Samoilova as Anna in the 1967 Soviet screen version of Tolstoy's novel.
On seeing her husband for the first time since her encounter with Vronsky, Anna realises that she finds him repulsive, noting the odd way that his ears press against his hat.
Part 2
The Shcherbatskys consult doctors over Kitty's health which has been failing since she realizes that Vronsky did not love her and that he did not intend to propose marriage to her, and that she refused and hurt Levin, whom she cares for, in vain. A specialist doctor advises that Kitty should go abroad to a health spa to recover. Dolly speaks to Kitty and understands that she is suffering because of Vronsky and Levin. Kitty, humiliated by Vronsky and tormented by her rejection of Levin, upsets her sister by referring to Stiva's infidelity and says she could never love a man who betrayed her.
Stiva stays with Levin on his country estate when he makes a sale of a plot of land, to provide funds for his expensive city lifestyle. Levin is upset at the poor deal he makes with the buyer and his lack of understanding of the rural lifestyle.
In St. Petersburg, Anna begins to spend more time with the fashionable socialite and gossip Princess Betsy and her circle, in order to meet Vronsky, Betsy's cousin. Vronsky continues to pursue Anna. Although Anna initially tries to reject him, she eventually succumbs to his attentions.
Karenin warns Anna of the impropriety of paying too much attention to Vronsky in public, which is becoming a subject of society gossip. He is concerned about his and his wife's public image, although he believes that Anna is above suspicion.
Vronsky, a keen horseman, takes part in a steeplechase event, during which he rides his mare Frou-Frou too hard and she falls and breaks her back. Vronsky escapes with minimal injuries but is devastated that his mare must be shot. Anna tells him that she is pregnant with his child, and is unable to hide her distress when Vronsky falls from the racehorse. Karenin is also present at the races and remarks to her that her behaviour is improper. Anna, in a state of extreme distress and emotion, confesses her affair to her husband. Karenin asks her to break off the affair to avoid society gossip and believes that their relationship can then continue as previously.
Kitty goes with her mother to a resort at a German spa to recover from her ill health. There they meet the Pietist Madame Stahl and the saintly Varenka, her adopted daughter. Influenced by Varenka, Kitty becomes extremely pious, but is disillusioned by her father`s criticism. She then returns to Moscow.
Part 3
Levin continues his work on his large country estate, a setting closely tied to his spiritual thoughts and struggles. Levin wrestles with the idea of falseness, wondering how he should go about ridding himself of it, and criticising what he feels is falseness in others. He develops ideas relating to agriculture and the unique relationship between the agricultural labourer and his native land and culture. He believes that the agricultural reforms of Europe will not work in Russia because of the unique culture and personality of the Russian peasant.
Levin pays Dolly a visit, and she attempts to understand what happened between him and Kitty and to explain Kitty's behaviour to him. Levin is very agitated by Dolly's talk about Kitty, and he begins to feel distant from her as he perceives her behaviour towards her children as false. Levin resolves to forget Kitty and contemplates the possibility of marriage to a peasant woman. However, a chance sighting of Kitty in her carriage as she travels to Dolly's house makes Levin realise he still loves her.
In St. Petersburg, Karenin crushes Anna by refusing to separate from her. He insists that their relationship remain as it was and threatens to take away their son Seryozha if she continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky.
Part 4
Anna continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky. Karenin begins to find the situation intolerable. He talks with a lawyer about obtaining a divorce. In Russia at that time, divorce could only be requested by the innocent party in an affair, and required either that the guilty party confessed (which would ruin Anna's position in society) or that the guilty party was discovered in the act. Karenin forces Anna to give him some letters written to her by Vronsky as proof of the affair. However, Anna's brother Stiva argues against it and persuades Karenin to speak with Dolly first.
Dolly broaches the subject with Karenin and asks him to reconsider his plans to divorce Anna. She seems to be unsuccessful, but Karenin changes his plans after hearing that Anna is dying after a difficult childbirth. At her bedside, Karenin forgives Vronsky. Vronsky, embarrassed by Karenin's magnanimity, attempts suicide by shooting himself. He fails in his attempt but wounds himself badly.
Anna recovers, having given birth to a daughter, Anna ("Annie"). Although her husband has forgiven her, and has become attached to the new baby, Anna cannot bear living with him. She hears that Vronsky is about to leave for a military posting in Tashkent and becomes desperate. Stiva finds himself pleading to Karenin on her behalf to free her by giving her a divorce. Vronsky is intent on leaving for Tashkent, but changes his mind after seeing Anna.
The couple leave for Europe - leaving behind Anna's son Seryozha - without obtaining a divorce.
Much more straightforward is Stiva's matchmaking with Levin: he arranges a meeting between Levin and Kitty which results in their reconciliation and betrothal.
Part 5
Levin and Kitty marry and immediately go to start their new life together on Levin's country estate. The couple are happy but do not have a very smooth start to their married life and take some time to get used to each other. Levin feels some dissatisfaction at the amount of time Kitty wants to spend with him and is slightly scornful of her preoccupation with domestic matters, which he feels are too prosaic and not compatible with his romantic ideas of love.
A few months later, Levin learns that his brother Nikolai is dying of consumption. Levin wants to go to him, and is initially angry and put out that Kitty wishes to accompany him. Levin feels that Kitty, whom he has placed on a pedestal, should not come down to earth and should not mix with people from a lower class. Levin assumes her insistence on coming must relate to a fear of boredom from being left alone, despite her true desire to support her husband in a difficult time. Kitty persuades him to take her with him after much discussion, where she proves a great help nursing Nikolai for weeks over his slow death. She also discovers she is pregnant.
In Europe, Vronsky and Anna struggle to find friends who will accept their situation. Whilst Anna is happy to be finally alone with Vronsky, he feels suffocated. They cannot socialize with Russians of their own social set and find it difficult to amuse themselves. Vronsky, who believed that being with Anna in freedom was the key to his happiness, finds himself increasingly bored and unsatisfied. He takes up painting, and makes an attempt to patronize an émigré Russian artist of genius. Vronsky cannot see that his own art lacks talent and passion, and that his clever conversation about art is an empty shell. Bored and restless, Anna and Vronsky decide to return to Russia.
In Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky stay in one of the best hotels but take separate suites. It becomes clear that whilst Vronsky is able to move in Society, Anna is barred from it. Even her old friend, Princess Betsy - who has had affairs herself - evades her company. Anna starts to become very jealous and anxious that Vronsky no longer loves her.
Karenin is comforted – and influenced – by the strong-willed Countess Lidia Ivanovna, an enthusiast of religious and mystic ideas fashionable with the upper classes. She counsels him to keep Seryozha away from Anna and to make him believe that his mother is dead. However, Seryozha refuses to believe that this is true. Anna manages to visit Seryozha unannounced and uninvited on his ninth birthday, but is discovered by Karenin.
Anna, desperate to resume at least in part her former position in Society, attends a show at the theatre at which all of Petersburg's high society are present. Vronsky begs her not to go, but is unable to bring himself to explain to her why she cannot go. At the theatre, Anna is openly snubbed by her former friends, one of whom makes a deliberate scene and leaves the theatre. Anna is devastated.
Unable to find a place for themselves in Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky leave for Vronsky's country estate.
Part 6
Dolly, her mother the Princess Scherbatskaya, and Dolly's children spend the summer with Levin and Kitty on the Levins' country estate. The Levins' life is simple and unaffected, although Levin is uneasy at the "invasion" of so many Scherbatskys. He is able to cope until he is consumed with an intense jealousy when one of the visitors, Veslovsky, flirts openly with the pregnant Kitty. Levin tries to overcome his jealousy but eventually succumbs to it and in an embarrassing scene evicts Veslovsky from his house. Veslovsky immediately goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky, whose estate is close by.
Dolly also pays a short visit to Anna at Vronsky's estate. The difference between the Levins' aristocratic but simple home life and Vronsky's overtly luxurious and lavish country home strikes Dolly, who is unable to keep pace with Anna's fashionable dresses or Vronsky's extravagant spending on the hospital he is building. However, all is not quite well with Anna and Vronsky. Dolly is also struck by Anna's anxious behaviour and new habit of half closing her eyes when she alludes to her difficult position. When Veslovsky flirts openly with Anna, she plays along with him even though she clearly feels uncomfortable. Vronsky makes an emotional request to Dolly, asking her to convince Anna to divorce her husband so that the two might marry and live normally. Dolly broaches the subject with Anna, who appears not to be convinced. However, Anna is becoming intensely jealous of Vronsky, and cannot bear it when he leaves her for short excursions. The two have started to quarrel about this and when Vronsky leaves for several days of provincial elections, a combination of boredom and suspicion convinces Anna she must marry him in order to prevent him from leaving her. She writes to Karenin, and she and Vronsky leave the countryside for Moscow.
Part 7
The Levins are in Moscow for Kitty's confinement. Despite initial reservations, Levin quickly gets used to the fast-paced, expensive and frivolous Moscow society life. He starts to accompany Stiva to his Moscow gentleman's club, where drinking and gambling are popular pastimes. At the club, Levin meets Vronsky and Stiva introduces them. Levin and Stiva pay a visit to Anna, who is occupying her empty days by being a patroness to an orphaned English girl. Levin is uneasy about the visit and not sure it is the proper thing to do, and Anna easily puts Levin under her spell. When he confesses to Kitty where he has been, she accuses him falsely of falling in love with Anna. The couple are reconciled, realising that Moscow life has had a negative, corrupting effect on Levin.
Anna, who has made a habit of inducing the young men who visit her to fall in love with her, cannot understand why she can attract a man like Levin, who has a young and beautiful new wife, but cannot attract Vronsky in the way she wants to. Anna's relationship with Vronsky is under increasing strain, as whilst he can move freely in Society - and continues to spend considerable time doing so to stress to Anna his independence as a man - she is excluded from all her previous social connections. She is estranged from baby Annie, her child with Vronsky and her increasing bitterness, boredom, jealousy and emotional strain cause the couple to argue. Anna uses morphine to help her sleep, a habit we learned she had begun during her time living with Vronsky at his country estate. Now she has become dependent on it.
After a long and difficult labour, Kitty gives birth to a son, Dmitri, nicknamed Mitya. Levin is both extremely moved and horrified by the sight of the tiny, helpless baby.
Stiva visits Karenin to encourage his commendation for a new post he is seeking. During the visit he asks him to grant Anna a divorce, but Karenin's decisions are now governed by a French "clairvoyant" – recommended by Lidia Ivanovna – who apparently has a vision in his sleep during Stiva's visit, and gives Karenin a cryptic message that is interpreted as meaning that he must decline the request for divorce.
Anna becomes increasingly jealous and irrational towards Vronsky, whom she suspects of having love affairs with other women, and of giving in to his mother's plans to marry him off to a rich Society woman. There is a bitter row, and Anna believes that the relationship is over. She starts to think of suicide as an escape from her torments. In her mental and emotional confusion, she sends a telegram to Vronsky asking him to come home to her, and pays a visit to Dolly and Kitty. Anna's confusion overcomes her, and in a parallel to the railway worker's accidental death in part 1, she commits suicide by throwing herself in the path of a train.
Part 8
Stiva gets the job he desired so much, and Karenin takes custody of baby Annie. A group of Russian volunteers, including Vronsky, who does not plan to return alive, depart from Russia to fight in the Orthodox Serbian revolt that has broken out against the Turks. Meanwhile, a lightning storm occurs at Levin's estate while his wife and newborn son are outside, causing him to fear for the safety of both of them, and to realize that he does indeed love his son similarly to how he loves Kitty. Also, Kitty's family concerns, namely, that a man as altruistic as her husband does not consider himself to be a Christian, are also addressed when Levin decides after talking to a peasant that devotion to living righteously as decreed by the Christian God is the only justifiable reason for living. After coming to this decision, but without telling anyone about it, he is initially displeased that this change of thought does not bring with it a complete transformation of his behavior to be more righteous. However, at the end of the book he comes to the conclusion that this fact, and the fact that there are other religions with similar views on goodness that are not Christian, are acceptable and that neither of these things diminish the fact that now his life can be meaningfully oriented toward goodness.
Style
Tolstoy's style in Anna Karenina is considered by many critics to be transitional, forming a bridge between the realist and modernist novel. The novel is narrated from a third-person-omniscient perspective, shifting between the perspectives of several major characters, though most frequently focusing on the opposing lifestyles and attitudes of its central protagonists of Anna and Levin. As such, each of the novel's eight sections contains internal variations in tone: it assumes a relaxed voice when following Stepan Oblonsky's thoughts and actions and a much more tense voice when describing Levin's social encounters. Much of the novel's seventh section depicts Anna's thoughts fluidly, following each one of her ruminations and free associations with its immediate successor. This groundbreaking use of stream-of-consciousness would be utilised by such later authors as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.
Also of significance is Tolstoy's use of real events in his narrative, to lend greater verisimilitude to the fictional events of his narrative. Characters debate significant sociopolitical issues affecting Russia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, such as the place and role of the Russian peasant in society, education reform, and women's rights. Tolstoy's depiction of the characters in these debates, and of their arguments, allows him to communicate his own political beliefs. Characters often attend similar social functions to those which Tolstoy attended, and he includes in these passages his own observations of the ideologies, behaviors, and ideas running through contemporary Russia through the thoughts of Levin. The broad array of situations and ideas depicted in Anna Karenina allows Tolstoy to present a treatise on his era's Russia, and, by virtue of its very breadth and depth, all of human society. This stylistic technique, as well as the novel's use of perspective, greatly contributes to the thematic structure of Anna Karenina.[citation needed]
Major themes
Anna Karenina is commonly thought to explore the themes of hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, carnal desire and passion, and the agrarian connection to land in contrast to the lifestyles of the city. Translator Rosemary Edmonds wrote that Tolstoy doesn't explicitly moralise in the book, he allows his themes to emerge naturally from the "vast panorama of Russian life." She also writes that a key message is that "no one may build their happiness on another's pain," which is why things don't work out for Anna.
Levin is often considered as a semi-autobiographical portrayal of Tolstoy's own beliefs, struggles and life events. Tolstoy's first name is "Lev", and the Russian surname "Levin" means "of Lev". According to footnotes in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, the viewpoints Levin supports throughout the novel in his arguments match Tolstoy's outspoken views on the same issues. Moreover, according to W. Gareth Jones, Levin proposed to Kitty in the same way as Tolstoy to Sophie Behrs. Additionally, Levin's request that his fiancée read his diary as a way of disclosing his faults and previous sexual encounters, parallels Tolstoy's own requests to his fiancée Sophie Behrs.
Anna Karenina and Tolstoy's A Confession
Alla Tarasova as Anna Karenina in 1937
Many of the novel's themes can also be found in Tolstoy's A Confession, his first-person rumination about the nature of life and faith, written just two years after the publication of Anna Karenina.
In this book, Tolstoy describes his dissatisfaction with the hypocrisy of his social class:
“ Every time I tried to display my innermost desires – a wish to be morally good – I met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to base desires I was praised and encouraged. ”
Tolstoy also details the acceptability of adulterous "liaisons" in aristocratic Russian society:
“ A dear old aunt of mine, the purest of creatures, with whom I lived, was always saying that she wished for nothing as much as that I would have a relationship with a married woman. "Rien ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut." ("Nothing educates a young man better than an affair with a woman established in society.") ”
Another theme in Anna Karenina is that of the aristocratic habit of speaking French instead of Russian, which Tolstoy suggests is another form of society's falseness. When Dolly insists on speaking French to her young daughter, Tanya, she begins to seem false and tedious to Levin, who finds himself unable to feel at ease in her house.
In a passage that could be interpreted as a sign of Anna's eventual redemption in Tolstoy's eyes, the narrator explains:
“ For in the end what are we, who are convinced that suicide is obligatory and yet cannot resolve to commit it, other than the weakest, the most inconsistent and, speaking frankly, the most stupid of people, making such a song and dance with our banalities? ”
A Confession contains many other autobiographical insights into the themes of Anna Karenina. A public domain version of it is here.
Film, television, and theatrical adaptations
For more details on this topic, see Adaptations of Anna Karenina.
* Operas based on Anna Karenina have been written by Sassano (Naples, 1905), Leoš Janáček (unfinished, 1907), Granelli (1912), E. Malherbe (unperformed, 1914), Jeno Hubay (Budapest, 1915), Robbiani (Rome, 1924), Goldbach (1930), Iain Hamilton (London, 1981) and David Carlson (Miami, 2007).
* Love, a 1927 silent film based loosely on the novel. The film starred Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.
* Anna Karenina, a critically acclaimed 1935 film, directed by Clarence Brown. The film stars Greta Garbo, Fredric March, and Maureen O'Sullivan.
* Anna Karenina, a 1948 film directed by Julien Duvivier with Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and Kieron Moore.
* "MGM Theater Of The Air - Anna Karenina (Radio Broadcast)" (Broadcast 12/09/1949; on American radio, starring Marlene Dietrich
* "Nahr al-Hob" (or River of Love; 1960; an Egyptian movie starring Omar Sharif and Faten Hamama
* Anna Karenina, a 1967 Russian film directed by Aleksandr Zarkhi and starring Tatyana Samojlova, Nikolai Gritsenko and Vasili Lanovoy.
* Anna Karenina (1968) a ballet composed by Rodion Shchedrin
* Anna Karenina, a 1977 TV version in ten episodes. Made by the BBC it was directed by Basil Coleman and starred Nicola Pagett, Eric Porter and Stuart Wilson.
* Anna Karenina, a 1985 TV film directed by Simon Langton and starring Jacqueline Bisset, Paul Scofield and Christopher Reeve.
* Anna Karenina, a 1992 Broadway musical starring Ann Crumb and John Cunningham
* Anna Karenina, a 1997 British-American production filmed in St. Peterburg, Russia, by director Bernard Rose with Sophie Marceau as Anna Karenina.
* Anna Karenina, a 2000 TV version in four episodes. It was directed by David Blair and starred Helen McCrory, Stephen Dillane and Kevin McKidd.
* Anna Karenina a 2005 ballet with choreography by Boris Eifman and music drawn from the works of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Anna Karenina in literature
* Quirk Classics transformed Anna Karenina into the book 'Android Karenina' (other past transformations have included 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' and 'Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters')
* The novel is referenced in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.
* Repeated reference is made explicitly to Leo Tolstoy and Anna Karenin in Muriel Barbery's Elegance of the Hedgehog
* Anna Karenina is also mentioned in R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series Don't Go To Sleep.
* Mikhail Bulgakov makes reference to the Oblonsky household and Tolstoy in The Master and Margarita.
* In Jasper Fforde's novel Lost in a Good Book, a recurring joke is two unnamed "crowd-scene" characters from Anna Karenina discussing its plot.
* In the short-story "Sleep" by Haruki Murakami, the main character, an insomniac housewife, spends much time reading through and considering "Anna Karenina". Furthermore, in the short story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo", by the same author, the character of Frog references "Anna Karenina" when discussing how to beat Worm.
* Martin Amis's character Lev, in the novel House of Meetings, compares the protagonist with Anna Karenina's Vronsky.
* In the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being Anna Karenina is compared with the novel like beauty of life, and Tereza arrives at Tomas's apartment with a copy of the book under her arm. In addition, Tereza and Tomas have a pet dog named Karenin, after Anna's husband.
* In the novel What Happened to Anna K. Irina Reyn loosely transfers the Anna Karenina story to a setting in modern-day New York City.
* Anna Karenina plays a central role in Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics (2002), set in 1929, as a new lector, Juan Julian, reads the text as background for cigar rollers in the Ybor City section of Tampa, FL. As he reads the story of adultery, the workers' passions are inflamed, and end in tragedy like Anna's.
* In "The Slippery Slope", the 10th book in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, the Baudelaire orphans Violet, Klaus and the third Quagmire triplet Quigley need to use the central theme of "Anna Karenina" as the final password to open the Vernacularly Fastened Door leading to the V.F.D. Headquarters. Klaus remembered how his mother had read it to him one summer when he was young as a summer reading book. Klaus summarized the theme with these words: "The central theme of Anna Karenina is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy." Esme Squalor later said she once was supposed to read the book over the summer, but she decided it would never help her in her life and threw it in the fireplace.
* Guns, Germs, and Steel (by Jared Diamond) has a chapter (#9) on the domestication of large mammals, titled "Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle." This chapter begins with a variation on the quote, above.
* in Nicholas Sparks's book The Last Song, the main character, Ronnie, reads Anna Karenina and other Tolstoy books throughout the story.
Further reading
Translations
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Constance Garnett. Still widely reprinted.
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Allen Lane/Penguin, London, 2000)
* Anna Karénina, Translated by Margaret Wettlin (Progress Publishers, 1978)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Joel Carmichael (Bantam Books, New York, 1960)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by David Magarshack (A Signet Classic, New American Library, New York and Scarborough, Ontario, 1961)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1918)
* Anna Karenin, Translated by Rosemary Edmonds (Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1954)
* Anna Karénina, Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1886)
* Anna Karenina, Translated by Kyril Zinovieff (Oneworld Classics 2008) ISBN 978-1-84749-059-9
Biographical and literary criticism
* Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981)
* Bayley, John, Tolstoy and the Novel (Chatto and Windus, London, 1966)
* Berlin, Isaiah, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967)
* Eikhenbaum, Boris, Tolstoi in the Seventies, trans. Albert Kaspin (Ardis, Ann Arbor, 1982)
* Evans, Mary, Anna Karenina (Routledge, London and New York, 1989)
* Gifford, Henry, Tolstoy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982)
* Gifford, Henry (ed) Leo Tolstoy (Penguin Critical Anthologies, Harmondsworth, 1971)
* Leavis, F. R., Anna Karenina and Other Essays (Chatto and Windus, London, 1967)
* Mandelker, Amy, Framing 'Anna Karenina': Tolstoy, the Woman Question, and the Victorian Novel (Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1993)
* Morson,Gary Saul, Anna Karenina in our time: seeing more wisely (Yale University Press 2007) read parts at Google-Books
* Nabokov, Vladimir, Lectures on Russian Literature (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1981)
* Orwin, Donna Tussing, Tolstoy's Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993)
* Speirs, Logan, Tolstoy and Chekhov (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971)
* Strakhov, Nikolai, N., "Levin and Social Chaos", in Gibian, ed., (W.W. Norton & Company New York, 2005).
* Steiner, George, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast (Faber and Faber, London, 1959)
* Thorlby, Anthony, Anna Karenina (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1987)
* Tolstoy, Leo, Correspondence, 2. vols., selected, ed. and trans. by R. F. Christian (Athlone Press, London and Scribner, New York, 1978)
* Tolstoy, Leo, Diaries, ed. and trans. by R. F. Christian (Athlone Press, London and Scribner, New York, 1985)
* Tolstoy, Sophia A., The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy, ed. O. A. Golinenko, trans. Cathy Porter (Random House, New York, 1985)
* Turner, C. J. G., A Karenina Companion (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, 1993)
* Wasiolek, Edward, Critical Essays on Tolstoy (G. K. Hall, Boston, 1986)
* Wasiolek, Edward, Tolstoy's Major Fiction (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978)
War and Peace (Russian: Война и мир, Pre-reform Russian: «Война и миръ»), a Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy, is considered one of the greatest works of fiction and a literary giant of the 19th century. It is regarded, along with Anna Karenina (1873–1877), as his finest literary achievement.
Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.
Portions of an earlier version having been serialized in the magazine The Russian Messenger between 1865 and 1867, the novel was first published in its entirety in 1869. Newsweek in 2009 ranked it top of its list of Top 100 Books.
Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle."
War and Peace is famously long for a novel (though not the longest by any means). It is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with subparts containing many chapters.
Tolstoy got the title, and some of his themes, from an 1861 work of Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix. Tolstoy had served in the Crimean War and written a series of short stories and novellas featuring scenes of war. He began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. During the writing of the second half of the book, after the first half had already been written under the name "1805", he read widely, acknowledging Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations, although he developed his own views of history and the role of the individual within it.
The novel can be generally classified as historical fiction. It contains elements present in many types of popular 18th and 19th century literature, especially the romance novel. War and Peace attains its literary status by transcending genres. Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted for its "god-like" ability to hover over and within events, but also swiftly and seamlessly to take a particular character's point of view. His use of visual detail is often cinematic in its scope, using the literary equivalents of panning, wide shots and close-ups, to give dramatic interest to battles and ballrooms alike. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new novel that is arising in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proves himself a master.
Realism
Tolstoy incorporated extensive historical research, and he was influenced by many other novels as well. Himself a veteran of the Crimean War, Tolstoy was quite critical of standard history, especially the standards of military history, in War and Peace. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing with the novel form - he explains at the start of the novel's third volume his views on how history ought to be written. His aim was to blur the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth, as he states in Volume II.
The novel is set 60 years earlier than the time at which Tolstoy wrote it, "in the days of our grandfathers", as he puts it. He had spoken with people who had lived through the war of 1812 (In Russia), so the book is also, in part, accurate ethnography fictionalized. He read letters, journals, autobiographical and biographical materials pertaining to Napoleon and the dozens of other historical characters in the novel. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace.
Reception
The first draft of War and Peace was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical Russkiy Vestnik published the first part of this early version under the title 1805 and the following year published more of the same early version. Tolstoy was increasingly dissatisfied with this version, although he allowed several parts of it to be published (with a different ending) in 1867 still under the title "1805" He heavily rewrote the entire novel between 1866 and 1869. Tolstoy's wife Sophia Tolstoy handwrote as many as 8 or 9 separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it again ready for publication. The version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending than the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869.
The completed novel was then called Voyna i mir (new style orthography; in English War and Peace).
Tolstoy did not destroy the 1805 manuscript (sometimes referred to as "the original War and Peace"), which was re-edited and annotated in Russia in 1983 and since has been translated separately from the "known" version, to English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish and Korean. The fact that so many extant versions of War and Peace survive make it one of the best revelations into the mental processes of a great novelist.
Russians who had read the serialized version, were anxious to acquire the complete first edition, which included epilogues, and it sold out almost immediately. The novel was translated almost immediately after publication into many other languages.
Isaac Babel said, after reading War and Peace, "If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy." Tolstoy "gives us a unique combination of the 'naive objectivity' of the oral narrator with the interest in detail characteristic of realism. This is the reason for our trust in his presentation."
Language
Although Tolstoy wrote most of the book, including all the narration, in Russian, significant portions of dialogue (including its opening paragraph) are written in French and characters often switch between the languages. This reflected 19th century reality since Russian aristocracy in the early nineteenth century were conversant in French, which was often considered more refined than Russian—many were much less competent in Russian. An example in the novel is Julie Karagina, Princess Marya's friend, who has to take Russian lessons in order to master her native language.
It has been suggested that it is a deliberate strategy of Tolstoy to use French to portray artifice and insincerity, as the language of the theater and deceit while Russian emerges as a language of sincerity, honesty and seriousness. When Pierre proposes to Helene he speaks to her in French—Je vous aime—and as the marriage emerges as a sham he blames those words.
As the book progresses, and the wars with the French intensify, culminating in the capture and eventual burning of Moscow, the use of French diminishes. The progressive elimination of French from the text is a means of demonstrating that Russia has freed itself from foreign cultural domination. It is also, at the level of plot development, a way of showing that a once-admired and friendly nation, France, has turned into an enemy. By midway through the book, several of the Russian aristocracy, whose command of French is far better than their command of Russian, are anxious to find Russian tutors for themselves.
English translations
War and Peace has been translated into English on several occasions, starting by Clara Bell working from a French translation. The translators Constance Garnett and Louise and Aylmer Maude knew Tolstoy personally. Translations have to deal with Tolstoy’s often peculiar syntax and his fondness of repetitions. About 2% of War and Peace is in French; Tolstoy removed the French in a revised 1873 edition, only to restore it later again. Most translators follow Garnett retaining some French, Briggs uses no French, while Pevear-Volokhonsky retain the French fully. (For a list of translations see below)
Background and historical context
In 1812 by the Russian artist Illarion Pryanishnikov
The novel begins in the year 1805 and leads up to the war of 1812[citation needed]. The era of Catherine the Great is still fresh in the minds of older people. It was Catherine who ordered the Russian court to change to speaking French, a custom that was stronger in Petersburg than in Moscow.[citation needed] Catherine's son and successor, Paul I, is the father of the current Czar, Alexander I. Alexander I came to the throne in 1801 at the age of 24. His mother, Marya Feodorovna, is the most powerful woman in the court.
The novel tells the story of five aristocratic families — the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoys—and the entanglements of their personal lives with the history of 1805–1813, principally Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The Bezukhovs, while very rich, are a fragmented family as the old Count, Kirill Vladimirovich, has fathered dozens of illegitimate sons. The Bolkonskys are an old established and wealthy family based at Bald Hills. Old Prince Bolkonsky, Nikolai Andreevich, served as a general under Catherine the Great, in earlier wars. The Moscow Rostovs have many estates, but never enough cash. They are a closely knit, loving family who live for the moment regardless of their financial situation. The Kuragin family has three children, who are all of questionable character. The Drubetskoy family is of impoverished nobility, and consists of an elderly mother and her only son, Boris, whom she wishes to push up the career ladder.
Tolstoy spent years researching and rewriting the book. He worked from primary source materials (interviews and other documents), as well as from history books, philosophy texts and other historical novels. Tolstoy also used a great deal of his own experience in the Crimean War to bring vivid detail and first-hand accounts of how the Russian army was structured.
The standard Russian text of 'War and Peace' is divided into four books (fifteen parts) and two epilogues – one mainly narrative, the other thematic. While roughly the first half of the novel is concerned strictly with the fictional characters, the later parts, as well as one of the work's two epilogues, increasingly consist of essays about the nature of war, power, history, and historiography. Tolstoy interspersed these essays into the story in a way that defies previous fictional convention. Certain abridged versions remove these essays entirely, while others, published even during Tolstoy's life, simply moved these essays into an appendix.
Plot summary
War and Peace has a large cast of characters, some historically real (like Napoleon and Alexander I), the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. The scope of the novel is vast, but the focus is primarily on five aristocratic families and their experiences in life. The interactions of these characters are set in the era leading up to, around and following the French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars.
Book/Volume One
The novel begins in Saint Petersburg, at a soirée given in July 1805 by Anna Pavlovna Scherer — the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main players and aristocratic families of the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. He is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad after his mother's death and at his father's expense, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward owing in part to his open, benevolent nature, and finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. He is his father's favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children, and this is known to everyone at Anna Pavlovna's.
Pierre's friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of the charming society favourite Lise, also attends the soireé. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon.
The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his teenage love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances.
At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys' country estate, Prince Andrei leaves his terrified, pregnant wife Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky and his devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya, and departs for the war.
The second part opens with descriptions of the impending Russian-French war preparations. At the Schöngrabern engagement, Nikolai Rostov, who is now conscripted as ensign in a squadron of hussars, has his first taste of battle. He meets Prince Andrei, whom he insults in a fit of impetuousness. Even more than most young soldiers, he is deeply attracted by Tsar Alexander's charisma. Nikolai gambles and socializes with his officer, Vasily Dmitrich Denisov, and befriends the ruthless and perhaps psychopathic Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov.
Book/Volume Two
Book Two begins with Nikolai Rostov briefly returning home to Moscow on home leave in early 1806. Nikolai finds the Rostov family facing financial ruin due to poor estate management. He spends an eventful winter at home, accompanied by his friend Denisov, his officer from the Pavlograd Regiment in which he serves. Natasha has blossomed into a beautiful young girl. Denisov falls in love with her, proposes marriage but is rejected. Although his mother pleads with Nikolai to find himself a good financial prospect in marriage, Nikolai refuses to accede to his mother's request. He promises to marry his childhood sweetheart, the dowry-less Sonya.
Pierre Bezukhov, upon finally receiving his massive inheritance, is suddenly transformed from a bumbling young man into the richest and most eligible bachelor in the Russian Empire. Despite rationally knowing that it is wrong, he proposes marriage with Prince Kuragin's beautiful and immoral daughter Hélène (Elena Vasilyevna Kuragina), to whom he is sexually attracted. Hélène, who is rumoured to be involved in an incestuous affair with her brother, the equally charming and immoral Anatol, tells Pierre that she will never have children with him. Hélène has an affair with Dolokhov, who mocks Pierre in public. Pierre loses his temper and challenges Dolokhov, a seasoned dueller and a ruthless killer, to a duel. Unexpectedly, Pierre wounds Dolokhov. Hélène denies her affair, but Pierre is convinced of her guilt and, after almost being violent to her, leaves her. In his moral and spiritual confusion, he joins the Freemasons, and becomes embroiled in Masonic internal politics. Much of Book Two concerns his struggles with his passions and his spiritual conflicts to be a better man. Now a rich aristocrat, he abandons his former carefree behavior and enters upon a philosophical quest particular to Tolstoy: how should one live a moral life in an ethically imperfect world? The question continually baffles and confuses Pierre. He attempts to liberate his serfs, but ultimately achieves nothing of note.
Pierre is vividly contrasted with the intelligent and ambitious Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. At the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is inspired by a vision of glory to lead a charge of a straggling army. He suffers a near fatal artillery wound. In the face of death, Andrei realizes all his former ambitions are pointless and his former hero Napoleon (who rescues him in a horseback excursion to the battlefield) is apparently as vain as himself.
Prince Andrei recovers from his injuries in a military hospital and returns home, only to find his wife Lise dying in childbirth. He is stricken by his guilty conscience for not treating Lise better when she was alive and is haunted by the pitiful expression on his dead wife's face. His child, Nikolenka, survives.
Burdened with nihilistic disillusionment, Prince Andrei does not return to the army but chooses to remain on his estate, working on a project that would codify military behavior and help solve some of the problems of Russian disorganization that he believes were responsible for the loss of life in battle on the Russian side. Pierre comes to visit him and brings new questions: where is God in this amoral world? Pierre is interested in panentheism and the possibility of an afterlife.
Pierre's estranged wife, Hélène, begs him to take her back, and against his better judgment he does. Despite her vapid shallowness, Hélène establishes herself as an influential hostess in Petersburg society.
Prince Andrei feels impelled to take his newly written military notions to Petersburg, naively expecting to influence either the Emperor himself or those close to him. Young Natasha, also in Petersburg, is caught up in the excitement of dressing for her first grand ball, where she meets Prince Andrei and briefly reinvigorates him with her vivacious charm. Andrei believes he has found purpose in life again and, after paying the Rostovs several visits, proposes marriage to Natasha. However, old Prince Bolkonsky, Andrei's father, dislikes the Rostovs, opposes the marriage, and insists on a year's delay. Prince Andrei leaves to recuperate from his wounds abroad, leaving Natasha initially distraught. She soon recovers her spirits, however, and Count Rostov takes her and Sonya to spend some time with a friend in Moscow.
Natasha visits the Moscow opera, where she meets Hélène and her brother Anatol. Anatol has since married a Polish woman whom he has abandoned in Poland. He is very attracted to Natasha and is determined to seduce her. Hélène and Anatol conspire together to accomplish this plan. Anatol kisses Natasha and writes her passionate letters, eventually establishing plans to elope. Natasha is convinced that she loves Anatol and writes to Princess Maria, Andrei's sister, breaking off her engagement. At the last moment, Sonya discovers her plans to elope and foils them. Pierre is initially shocked and horrified at Natasha's behavior, but comes to realize he has fallen in love with her himself. During the time when the Great Comet of 1811–2 streaks the sky, life appears to begin anew for Pierre.
Prince Andrei accepts coldly Natasha's breaking of the engagement. He tells Pierre that his pride will not allow him to renew his proposal of marriage. Shamed by her near-seduction and at the realisation that Andrei will not forgive her, Natasha makes a suicide attempt and is left seriously ill.
Book/Volume Three
With the help of her family, especially Sonya, and the stirrings of religious faith, Natasha manages to persevere in Moscow through this dark period. Meanwhile, the whole of Russia is affected by the coming showdown between Napoleon's troops and the Russian army. Pierre convinces himself through gematria that Napoleon is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation. Old prince Bolkonsky dies of a stroke while trying to protect his estate from French marauders. No organized help from any Russian army seems available to the Bolkonskys, but Nikolai Rostov turns up at their estate in time to help put down an incipient peasant revolt. He finds himself attracted to Princess Maria, but remembers his promise to Sonya.
Back in Moscow, the war-obsessed Petya manages to snatch a loose piece of the Tsar's biscuit outside the Cathedral of the Assumption; he finally convinces his parents to allow him to enlist.
Napoleon himself is a main character in this section of the novel and is presented in vivid detail, as both thinker and would-be strategist. His toilette and his customary attitudes and traits of mind are depicted in detail. Also described are the well-organized force of over 400,000 French Army (only 140,000 of them actually French-speaking) which marches quickly through the Russian countryside in the late summer and reaches the outskirts of the city of Smolensk. Pierre decides to leave Moscow and go to watch the Battle of Borodino from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew. After watching for a time, he begins to join in carrying ammunition. In the midst of the turmoil he experiences firsthand the death and destruction of war. The battle becomes a hideous slaughter for both armies and ends in a standoff. The Russians, however, have won a moral victory by standing up to Napoleon's reputedly invincible army. For strategic reasons and having suffered grievous losses, the Russian army withdraws the next day, allowing Napoleon to march on to Moscow. Among the casualties are Anatol Kuragin and Prince Andrei. Anatol loses a leg, and Andrei suffers a cannon wound in the abdomen. Both are reported dead, but their families are in such disarray that no one can be notified.
Book/Volume Four
The Rostovs have waited until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it is clear that Kutuzov has retreated past Moscow and Muscovites are being given contradictory, often propagandistic, instructions on how to either flee or fight. Count Rostopchin is publishing posters, rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons, while at the same time urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary. Before fleeing himself, he gives orders to burn the city. The Rostovs have a difficult time deciding what to take with them, and in the end load their carts with the wounded and dying from the Battle of Borodino. Unknown to Natasha, Prince Andrei is amongst the wounded.
When Napoleon's Grand Army finally occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow, Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon. He becomes an anonymous man in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. The only people he sees while in this garb are Natasha and some of her family, as they depart Moscow. Natasha recognizes and smiles at him, and he in turn realizes the full scope of his love for her.
Pierre saves the life of a French officer who fought at Borodino, yet is taken prisoner by the retreating French during his attempted assassination of Napoleon, after saving a woman from being raped by soldiers in the French Army. He becomes friends with a fellow prisoner, Platon Karataev, a peasant with a saintly demeanor, who is incapable of malice. In Karataev, Pierre finally finds what he has been seeking: an honest person of integrity (unlike the aristocrats of Petersburg society) who is utterly without pretense. Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by living and interacting with him. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians arbitrarily, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter. After months of trial and tribulation—during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French—Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action.
Meanwhile, Andrei, wounded during Napoleon's invasion, has been taken in as a casualty and cared for by the fleeing Rostovs. He is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live, he forgives Natasha in a last act before dying.
As the novel draws to a close, Pierre's wife Hélène dies in a botched operation (implied to be an abortion). Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei's death and Pierre of Karataev's. Both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. With the help of Princess Maria, Pierre finds love at last and, revealing his love after being released by his former wife's death, marries Natasha.
Epilogues
The first epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in 1813. It is the last happy event for the Rostov family, which is undergoing a transition. Count Rostov dies soon after, leaving his eldest son Nikolai to take charge of the debt-ridden estate.
Nikolai finds himself with the task of maintaining the family on the verge of bankruptcy. His abhorrence at the idea of marrying for wealth almost gets in his way, but finally in spite of rather than according to his mother's wishes, he marries the now-rich Maria Bolkonskaya and in so doing also saves his family from financial ruin.
Nikolai and Maria then move to Bald Hills with his mother and Sonya, whom he supports for the rest of their life. Buoyed by his wife's fortune, Nikolai pays off all his family's debts. They also raise Prince Andrei's orphaned son, Nikolai Andreyevich (Nikolenka) Bolkonsky.
As in all good marriages, there are misunderstandings, but the couples–Pierre and Natasha, Nikolai and Maria–remain devoted to their spouses. Pierre and Natasha visit Bald Hills in 1820, much to the jubilation of everyone concerned. There is a hint in the closing chapters that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising. The first epilogue concludes with Nikolenka promising he would do something with which even his late father "would be satisfied..." (presumably as a revolutionary in the Decembrist revolt).
The second epilogue contains Tolstoy's critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. He attempts to show that there is a great force behind history, which he first terms divine. He offers the entire book as evidence of this force, and critiques his own work. God, therefore, becomes the word Tolstoy uses to refer to all the forces that produce history, taken together and operating behind the scenes.
Principal characters in War and Peace
Main article: List of characters in War and Peace
War and Peace character tree
* Count Pyotr Kirillovich (Pierre) Bezukhov — The central character and often a voice for Tolstoy's own beliefs or struggles. He is one of several illegitimate children of Count Bezukhov; he is his father's favorite offspring.
* Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky — A strong but cynical, thoughtful and philosophical aide-de-camp in the Napoleonic Wars.
* Princess Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya — A pious woman whose eccentric father attempted to give her a good education. The caring, nurturing nature of her large eyes in her otherwise thin and plain face are frequently mentioned.
* Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov — The pater-familias of the Rostov family; terrible with finances, generous to a fault.
* Countess Natalya Rostova — Wife of Count Ilya Rostov, mother of the four Rostov children.
* Countess Natalia Ilyinichna (Natasha) Rostova — Introduced as a beautiful and romantic young girl, she evolves through trials and suffering and eventually finds happiness. She is an accomplished singer and dancer.[citation needed]
* Count Nikolai Ilyich Rostov — A hussar, the beloved eldest son of the Rostov family.
* Sofia Alexandrovna (Sonya) Rostova — Orphaned cousin of Vera, Nikolai, Natasha and Petya Rostov.
* Countess Vera Ilyinichna Rostova — Eldest of the Rostov children, she marries the German career soldier, Berg.
* Pyotr Ilyich (Petya) Rostov — Youngest of the Rostov children.
* Prince Vasily Sergeyevich Kuragin — A ruthless man who is determined to marry his children well, despite having doubts about the character of some of them.
* Princess Elena Vasilyevna (Hélène) Kuragina — A beautiful and sexually alluring woman who has many affairs, including (it is rumoured) with her brother Anatole
* Prince Anatol Vasilyevich Kuragin — Hélène's brother and a very handsome, ruthless and amoral pleasure seeker who is secretly married yet tries to elope with Natasha Rostova.
* Prince Ipolit Vasilyevich — The eldest and perhaps most dim-witted of the Kuragin children.
* Prince Boris Drubetskoy — A poor but aristocratic young man who is determined to make his career, even at the expense of his friends and benefactors, marries a rich and ugly woman to help him climb the social ladder.
* Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskoya — The mother of Boris.
* Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov — A cold, almost psychopathic officer, he ruins Nikolai Rostov after his proposal to Sonya is refused, he only shows love to his doting mother.
* Adolf Karlovich Berg — A young Russian officer, who desires to be just like everyone else.
* Anna Pavlovna Sherer — Also known as Annette, she is the hostess of the salon that is the site of much of the novel's action in Petersburg.
* Maria Dmitryevna Akhrosimova — An older Moscow society lady, she is an elegant dancer and trend-setter, despite her age and size.
* Amalia Evgenyevna Bourienne — A French woman who lives with the Bolkonskys, primarily as Princess Marya's companion.
* Vasily Dmitrich Denisov — Nikolai Rostov's friend and brother officer, who proposes to Natasha.
* Platon Krataev - The archetypal good Russian peasant, whom Pierre meets in the prisoner of war camp.
* Napoleon I of France — the Great Man, whose fate is detailed in the book.
* General Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov — Russian commander-in-chief throughout the book. His diligence and modesty eventually save Russia from Napoleon.[citation needed]
* Osip Bazdeyev — the Freemason who interests Pierre in his mysterious group, starting a lengthy subplot.[citation needed]
* Tsar Alexander I of Russia — He signed a peace treaty with Napoleon in 1807 and then went to war with him.
Many of Tolstoy's characters in War and Peace were based on real-life people known to Tolstoy himself. His grandparents and their friends were the models for many of the main characters, his great-grandparents would have been of the generation of Prince Vasilly or Count Ilya Rostov. Some of the characters, obviously, are actual historic figures.
Adaptations
Film
The first Russian film adaptation of War and Peace was the 1915 film Война и мир (Voyna i mir), directed by Vladimir Gardin and starring Gardin and the Russian ballerina Vera Karalli. It was followed in 1968 by the critically acclaimed four-part film version War and Peace, by the Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk, released individually in 1965-1967, and as a re-edited whole in 1968. This starred Lyudmila Savelyeva (as Natasha Rostova) and Vyacheslav Tikhonov (as Andrei Bolkonsky). Bondarchuk himself played the character of Pierre Bezukhov. The film was almost seven hours long; it involved thousands of actors, 120 000 extras, and it took seven years to finish the shooting, as a result of which the actors age changed dramatically from scene to scene. It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for its authenticity and massive scale.
The novel has been adapted twice for cinema outside of Russia. The first of these was produced by F. Kamei in Japan (1947). The second was the 208-minute long 1956 War and Peace, directed by the American King Vidor. This starred Audrey Hepburn (Natasha), Henry Fonda (Pierre) and Mel Ferrer (Andrei). Audrey Hepburn was nominated for a BAFTA Award for best British actress and for a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a drama production.
Opera
* Initiated by a proposal of the German director Erwin Piscator in 1938, the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev composed his opera War and Peace (Op. 91, libretto by Mira Mendelson) based on this epic novel during the 1940s. The complete musical work premiered in Leningrad in 1955. It was the first opera to be given a public performance at the Sydney Opera House (1973).
Music
* Composition by Nino Rota
* Referring to album notes, the first track "The Gates of Delirium", from the album Relayer, by the progressive rock group Yes, is said to be based loosely on the novel.
Theatre
The first successful stage adaptations of War and Peace were produced by Alfred Neumann and Erwin Piscator (1942, revised 1955, published by Macgibbon & Kee in London 1963, and staged in 16 countries since) and R. Lucas (1943).
A stage adaptation by Helen Edmundson, first produced in 1996 at the Royal National Theatre, was published that year by Nick Hern Books, London. Edmundson added to and amended the play for a 2008 production as two 3-hour parts by Shared Experience, directed by Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale. This was first put on at the Nottingham Playhouse, then toured in the UK to Liverpool, Darlington, Bath, Warwick, Oxford, Truro, London (the Hampstead Theatre) and Cheltenham.
On the 15th-18th July, The Birmingham Theatre School performed this seven-hour epic play at The Crescent Theatre in Brindleyplace with great success. Birmingham Theatre School is the only drama school in the world to perform the new adaptation of War and Peace. Directed by Chris Rozanski and Assistant to Director was Royal National Theatre performer Anthony Mark Barrow with Vocals arranged by Dr Ria Keen and choreography by Colin Lang.
Radio and television
* In December 1970, Pacifica Radio station WBAI broadcast a reading of the entire novel (the 1968 Dunnigan translation) read by over 140 celebrities and ordinary people.
* War and Peace (1972): The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made a television serial based on the novel, broadcast in 1972-73. Anthony Hopkins played the lead role of Pierre. Other lead characters were played by Rupert Davies, Faith Brook, Morag Hood, Alan Dobie, Angela Down and Sylvester Morand. This version faithfully included many of Tolstoy's minor characters, including Platon Karataev (Harry Locke). ,
* A dramatized full-cast adaptation in ten parts was written by Marcy Kahan and Mike Walker in 1997. The production won the 1998 Talkie award for Best Drama and was around 9.5 hours in length. It was directed by Janet Whitaker and featured Simon Russell Beale, Gerard Murphy, Richard Johnson, and others.
* La Guerre et la paix (TV) (2000) by François Roussillon. Robert Brubaker played the lead role of Pierre.
* War and Peace (2007): produced by the Italian Lux Vide, a TV mini-series in Russian & English co-produced in Russia, France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Directed by Robert Dornhelm, with screenplay written by Lorenzo Favella, Enrico Medioli and Gavin Scott. It features an international cast with Alexander Beyer playing the lead role of Pierre assisted by Malcolm McDowell, Clémence Poésy, Alessio Boni, Pilar Abella, J. Kimo Arbas, Ken Duken, Juozapas Bagdonas and Toni Bertorelli.
Full translations into English
* Clara Bell (from a French version) 1885-86
* Nathan Haskell Dole 1898
* Leo Wiener 1904
* Constance Garnett (1904)
* Louise and Aylmer Maude (1922-3)
* Rosemary Edmonds (1957, revised 1978)
* Ann Dunnigan (1968)
* Anthony Briggs (2005)
* Andrew Bromfield (2007), translation of the first completed draft, approx. 400 pages shorter than other English translations.
* Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007)
Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.
Portions of an earlier version having been serialized in the magazine The Russian Messenger between 1865 and 1867, the novel was first published in its entirety in 1869. Newsweek in 2009 ranked it top of its list of Top 100 Books.
Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle."
War and Peace is famously long for a novel (though not the longest by any means). It is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with subparts containing many chapters.
Tolstoy got the title, and some of his themes, from an 1861 work of Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix. Tolstoy had served in the Crimean War and written a series of short stories and novellas featuring scenes of war. He began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. During the writing of the second half of the book, after the first half had already been written under the name "1805", he read widely, acknowledging Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations, although he developed his own views of history and the role of the individual within it.
The novel can be generally classified as historical fiction. It contains elements present in many types of popular 18th and 19th century literature, especially the romance novel. War and Peace attains its literary status by transcending genres. Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted for its "god-like" ability to hover over and within events, but also swiftly and seamlessly to take a particular character's point of view. His use of visual detail is often cinematic in its scope, using the literary equivalents of panning, wide shots and close-ups, to give dramatic interest to battles and ballrooms alike. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new novel that is arising in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proves himself a master.
Realism
Tolstoy incorporated extensive historical research, and he was influenced by many other novels as well. Himself a veteran of the Crimean War, Tolstoy was quite critical of standard history, especially the standards of military history, in War and Peace. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing with the novel form - he explains at the start of the novel's third volume his views on how history ought to be written. His aim was to blur the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth, as he states in Volume II.
The novel is set 60 years earlier than the time at which Tolstoy wrote it, "in the days of our grandfathers", as he puts it. He had spoken with people who had lived through the war of 1812 (In Russia), so the book is also, in part, accurate ethnography fictionalized. He read letters, journals, autobiographical and biographical materials pertaining to Napoleon and the dozens of other historical characters in the novel. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace.
Reception
The first draft of War and Peace was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical Russkiy Vestnik published the first part of this early version under the title 1805 and the following year published more of the same early version. Tolstoy was increasingly dissatisfied with this version, although he allowed several parts of it to be published (with a different ending) in 1867 still under the title "1805" He heavily rewrote the entire novel between 1866 and 1869. Tolstoy's wife Sophia Tolstoy handwrote as many as 8 or 9 separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it again ready for publication. The version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending than the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869.
The completed novel was then called Voyna i mir (new style orthography; in English War and Peace).
Tolstoy did not destroy the 1805 manuscript (sometimes referred to as "the original War and Peace"), which was re-edited and annotated in Russia in 1983 and since has been translated separately from the "known" version, to English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish and Korean. The fact that so many extant versions of War and Peace survive make it one of the best revelations into the mental processes of a great novelist.
Russians who had read the serialized version, were anxious to acquire the complete first edition, which included epilogues, and it sold out almost immediately. The novel was translated almost immediately after publication into many other languages.
Isaac Babel said, after reading War and Peace, "If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy." Tolstoy "gives us a unique combination of the 'naive objectivity' of the oral narrator with the interest in detail characteristic of realism. This is the reason for our trust in his presentation."
Language
Although Tolstoy wrote most of the book, including all the narration, in Russian, significant portions of dialogue (including its opening paragraph) are written in French and characters often switch between the languages. This reflected 19th century reality since Russian aristocracy in the early nineteenth century were conversant in French, which was often considered more refined than Russian—many were much less competent in Russian. An example in the novel is Julie Karagina, Princess Marya's friend, who has to take Russian lessons in order to master her native language.
It has been suggested that it is a deliberate strategy of Tolstoy to use French to portray artifice and insincerity, as the language of the theater and deceit while Russian emerges as a language of sincerity, honesty and seriousness. When Pierre proposes to Helene he speaks to her in French—Je vous aime—and as the marriage emerges as a sham he blames those words.
As the book progresses, and the wars with the French intensify, culminating in the capture and eventual burning of Moscow, the use of French diminishes. The progressive elimination of French from the text is a means of demonstrating that Russia has freed itself from foreign cultural domination. It is also, at the level of plot development, a way of showing that a once-admired and friendly nation, France, has turned into an enemy. By midway through the book, several of the Russian aristocracy, whose command of French is far better than their command of Russian, are anxious to find Russian tutors for themselves.
English translations
War and Peace has been translated into English on several occasions, starting by Clara Bell working from a French translation. The translators Constance Garnett and Louise and Aylmer Maude knew Tolstoy personally. Translations have to deal with Tolstoy’s often peculiar syntax and his fondness of repetitions. About 2% of War and Peace is in French; Tolstoy removed the French in a revised 1873 edition, only to restore it later again. Most translators follow Garnett retaining some French, Briggs uses no French, while Pevear-Volokhonsky retain the French fully. (For a list of translations see below)
Background and historical context
In 1812 by the Russian artist Illarion Pryanishnikov
The novel begins in the year 1805 and leads up to the war of 1812[citation needed]. The era of Catherine the Great is still fresh in the minds of older people. It was Catherine who ordered the Russian court to change to speaking French, a custom that was stronger in Petersburg than in Moscow.[citation needed] Catherine's son and successor, Paul I, is the father of the current Czar, Alexander I. Alexander I came to the throne in 1801 at the age of 24. His mother, Marya Feodorovna, is the most powerful woman in the court.
The novel tells the story of five aristocratic families — the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoys—and the entanglements of their personal lives with the history of 1805–1813, principally Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The Bezukhovs, while very rich, are a fragmented family as the old Count, Kirill Vladimirovich, has fathered dozens of illegitimate sons. The Bolkonskys are an old established and wealthy family based at Bald Hills. Old Prince Bolkonsky, Nikolai Andreevich, served as a general under Catherine the Great, in earlier wars. The Moscow Rostovs have many estates, but never enough cash. They are a closely knit, loving family who live for the moment regardless of their financial situation. The Kuragin family has three children, who are all of questionable character. The Drubetskoy family is of impoverished nobility, and consists of an elderly mother and her only son, Boris, whom she wishes to push up the career ladder.
Tolstoy spent years researching and rewriting the book. He worked from primary source materials (interviews and other documents), as well as from history books, philosophy texts and other historical novels. Tolstoy also used a great deal of his own experience in the Crimean War to bring vivid detail and first-hand accounts of how the Russian army was structured.
The standard Russian text of 'War and Peace' is divided into four books (fifteen parts) and two epilogues – one mainly narrative, the other thematic. While roughly the first half of the novel is concerned strictly with the fictional characters, the later parts, as well as one of the work's two epilogues, increasingly consist of essays about the nature of war, power, history, and historiography. Tolstoy interspersed these essays into the story in a way that defies previous fictional convention. Certain abridged versions remove these essays entirely, while others, published even during Tolstoy's life, simply moved these essays into an appendix.
Plot summary
War and Peace has a large cast of characters, some historically real (like Napoleon and Alexander I), the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. The scope of the novel is vast, but the focus is primarily on five aristocratic families and their experiences in life. The interactions of these characters are set in the era leading up to, around and following the French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars.
Book/Volume One
The novel begins in Saint Petersburg, at a soirée given in July 1805 by Anna Pavlovna Scherer — the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main players and aristocratic families of the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. He is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad after his mother's death and at his father's expense, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward owing in part to his open, benevolent nature, and finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. He is his father's favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children, and this is known to everyone at Anna Pavlovna's.
Pierre's friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of the charming society favourite Lise, also attends the soireé. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon.
The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his teenage love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances.
At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys' country estate, Prince Andrei leaves his terrified, pregnant wife Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky and his devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya, and departs for the war.
The second part opens with descriptions of the impending Russian-French war preparations. At the Schöngrabern engagement, Nikolai Rostov, who is now conscripted as ensign in a squadron of hussars, has his first taste of battle. He meets Prince Andrei, whom he insults in a fit of impetuousness. Even more than most young soldiers, he is deeply attracted by Tsar Alexander's charisma. Nikolai gambles and socializes with his officer, Vasily Dmitrich Denisov, and befriends the ruthless and perhaps psychopathic Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov.
Book/Volume Two
Book Two begins with Nikolai Rostov briefly returning home to Moscow on home leave in early 1806. Nikolai finds the Rostov family facing financial ruin due to poor estate management. He spends an eventful winter at home, accompanied by his friend Denisov, his officer from the Pavlograd Regiment in which he serves. Natasha has blossomed into a beautiful young girl. Denisov falls in love with her, proposes marriage but is rejected. Although his mother pleads with Nikolai to find himself a good financial prospect in marriage, Nikolai refuses to accede to his mother's request. He promises to marry his childhood sweetheart, the dowry-less Sonya.
Pierre Bezukhov, upon finally receiving his massive inheritance, is suddenly transformed from a bumbling young man into the richest and most eligible bachelor in the Russian Empire. Despite rationally knowing that it is wrong, he proposes marriage with Prince Kuragin's beautiful and immoral daughter Hélène (Elena Vasilyevna Kuragina), to whom he is sexually attracted. Hélène, who is rumoured to be involved in an incestuous affair with her brother, the equally charming and immoral Anatol, tells Pierre that she will never have children with him. Hélène has an affair with Dolokhov, who mocks Pierre in public. Pierre loses his temper and challenges Dolokhov, a seasoned dueller and a ruthless killer, to a duel. Unexpectedly, Pierre wounds Dolokhov. Hélène denies her affair, but Pierre is convinced of her guilt and, after almost being violent to her, leaves her. In his moral and spiritual confusion, he joins the Freemasons, and becomes embroiled in Masonic internal politics. Much of Book Two concerns his struggles with his passions and his spiritual conflicts to be a better man. Now a rich aristocrat, he abandons his former carefree behavior and enters upon a philosophical quest particular to Tolstoy: how should one live a moral life in an ethically imperfect world? The question continually baffles and confuses Pierre. He attempts to liberate his serfs, but ultimately achieves nothing of note.
Pierre is vividly contrasted with the intelligent and ambitious Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. At the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is inspired by a vision of glory to lead a charge of a straggling army. He suffers a near fatal artillery wound. In the face of death, Andrei realizes all his former ambitions are pointless and his former hero Napoleon (who rescues him in a horseback excursion to the battlefield) is apparently as vain as himself.
Prince Andrei recovers from his injuries in a military hospital and returns home, only to find his wife Lise dying in childbirth. He is stricken by his guilty conscience for not treating Lise better when she was alive and is haunted by the pitiful expression on his dead wife's face. His child, Nikolenka, survives.
Burdened with nihilistic disillusionment, Prince Andrei does not return to the army but chooses to remain on his estate, working on a project that would codify military behavior and help solve some of the problems of Russian disorganization that he believes were responsible for the loss of life in battle on the Russian side. Pierre comes to visit him and brings new questions: where is God in this amoral world? Pierre is interested in panentheism and the possibility of an afterlife.
Pierre's estranged wife, Hélène, begs him to take her back, and against his better judgment he does. Despite her vapid shallowness, Hélène establishes herself as an influential hostess in Petersburg society.
Prince Andrei feels impelled to take his newly written military notions to Petersburg, naively expecting to influence either the Emperor himself or those close to him. Young Natasha, also in Petersburg, is caught up in the excitement of dressing for her first grand ball, where she meets Prince Andrei and briefly reinvigorates him with her vivacious charm. Andrei believes he has found purpose in life again and, after paying the Rostovs several visits, proposes marriage to Natasha. However, old Prince Bolkonsky, Andrei's father, dislikes the Rostovs, opposes the marriage, and insists on a year's delay. Prince Andrei leaves to recuperate from his wounds abroad, leaving Natasha initially distraught. She soon recovers her spirits, however, and Count Rostov takes her and Sonya to spend some time with a friend in Moscow.
Natasha visits the Moscow opera, where she meets Hélène and her brother Anatol. Anatol has since married a Polish woman whom he has abandoned in Poland. He is very attracted to Natasha and is determined to seduce her. Hélène and Anatol conspire together to accomplish this plan. Anatol kisses Natasha and writes her passionate letters, eventually establishing plans to elope. Natasha is convinced that she loves Anatol and writes to Princess Maria, Andrei's sister, breaking off her engagement. At the last moment, Sonya discovers her plans to elope and foils them. Pierre is initially shocked and horrified at Natasha's behavior, but comes to realize he has fallen in love with her himself. During the time when the Great Comet of 1811–2 streaks the sky, life appears to begin anew for Pierre.
Prince Andrei accepts coldly Natasha's breaking of the engagement. He tells Pierre that his pride will not allow him to renew his proposal of marriage. Shamed by her near-seduction and at the realisation that Andrei will not forgive her, Natasha makes a suicide attempt and is left seriously ill.
Book/Volume Three
With the help of her family, especially Sonya, and the stirrings of religious faith, Natasha manages to persevere in Moscow through this dark period. Meanwhile, the whole of Russia is affected by the coming showdown between Napoleon's troops and the Russian army. Pierre convinces himself through gematria that Napoleon is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation. Old prince Bolkonsky dies of a stroke while trying to protect his estate from French marauders. No organized help from any Russian army seems available to the Bolkonskys, but Nikolai Rostov turns up at their estate in time to help put down an incipient peasant revolt. He finds himself attracted to Princess Maria, but remembers his promise to Sonya.
Back in Moscow, the war-obsessed Petya manages to snatch a loose piece of the Tsar's biscuit outside the Cathedral of the Assumption; he finally convinces his parents to allow him to enlist.
Napoleon himself is a main character in this section of the novel and is presented in vivid detail, as both thinker and would-be strategist. His toilette and his customary attitudes and traits of mind are depicted in detail. Also described are the well-organized force of over 400,000 French Army (only 140,000 of them actually French-speaking) which marches quickly through the Russian countryside in the late summer and reaches the outskirts of the city of Smolensk. Pierre decides to leave Moscow and go to watch the Battle of Borodino from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew. After watching for a time, he begins to join in carrying ammunition. In the midst of the turmoil he experiences firsthand the death and destruction of war. The battle becomes a hideous slaughter for both armies and ends in a standoff. The Russians, however, have won a moral victory by standing up to Napoleon's reputedly invincible army. For strategic reasons and having suffered grievous losses, the Russian army withdraws the next day, allowing Napoleon to march on to Moscow. Among the casualties are Anatol Kuragin and Prince Andrei. Anatol loses a leg, and Andrei suffers a cannon wound in the abdomen. Both are reported dead, but their families are in such disarray that no one can be notified.
Book/Volume Four
The Rostovs have waited until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it is clear that Kutuzov has retreated past Moscow and Muscovites are being given contradictory, often propagandistic, instructions on how to either flee or fight. Count Rostopchin is publishing posters, rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons, while at the same time urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary. Before fleeing himself, he gives orders to burn the city. The Rostovs have a difficult time deciding what to take with them, and in the end load their carts with the wounded and dying from the Battle of Borodino. Unknown to Natasha, Prince Andrei is amongst the wounded.
When Napoleon's Grand Army finally occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow, Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon. He becomes an anonymous man in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. The only people he sees while in this garb are Natasha and some of her family, as they depart Moscow. Natasha recognizes and smiles at him, and he in turn realizes the full scope of his love for her.
Pierre saves the life of a French officer who fought at Borodino, yet is taken prisoner by the retreating French during his attempted assassination of Napoleon, after saving a woman from being raped by soldiers in the French Army. He becomes friends with a fellow prisoner, Platon Karataev, a peasant with a saintly demeanor, who is incapable of malice. In Karataev, Pierre finally finds what he has been seeking: an honest person of integrity (unlike the aristocrats of Petersburg society) who is utterly without pretense. Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by living and interacting with him. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians arbitrarily, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter. After months of trial and tribulation—during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French—Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action.
Meanwhile, Andrei, wounded during Napoleon's invasion, has been taken in as a casualty and cared for by the fleeing Rostovs. He is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live, he forgives Natasha in a last act before dying.
As the novel draws to a close, Pierre's wife Hélène dies in a botched operation (implied to be an abortion). Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei's death and Pierre of Karataev's. Both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. With the help of Princess Maria, Pierre finds love at last and, revealing his love after being released by his former wife's death, marries Natasha.
Epilogues
The first epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in 1813. It is the last happy event for the Rostov family, which is undergoing a transition. Count Rostov dies soon after, leaving his eldest son Nikolai to take charge of the debt-ridden estate.
Nikolai finds himself with the task of maintaining the family on the verge of bankruptcy. His abhorrence at the idea of marrying for wealth almost gets in his way, but finally in spite of rather than according to his mother's wishes, he marries the now-rich Maria Bolkonskaya and in so doing also saves his family from financial ruin.
Nikolai and Maria then move to Bald Hills with his mother and Sonya, whom he supports for the rest of their life. Buoyed by his wife's fortune, Nikolai pays off all his family's debts. They also raise Prince Andrei's orphaned son, Nikolai Andreyevich (Nikolenka) Bolkonsky.
As in all good marriages, there are misunderstandings, but the couples–Pierre and Natasha, Nikolai and Maria–remain devoted to their spouses. Pierre and Natasha visit Bald Hills in 1820, much to the jubilation of everyone concerned. There is a hint in the closing chapters that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising. The first epilogue concludes with Nikolenka promising he would do something with which even his late father "would be satisfied..." (presumably as a revolutionary in the Decembrist revolt).
The second epilogue contains Tolstoy's critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. He attempts to show that there is a great force behind history, which he first terms divine. He offers the entire book as evidence of this force, and critiques his own work. God, therefore, becomes the word Tolstoy uses to refer to all the forces that produce history, taken together and operating behind the scenes.
Principal characters in War and Peace
Main article: List of characters in War and Peace
War and Peace character tree
* Count Pyotr Kirillovich (Pierre) Bezukhov — The central character and often a voice for Tolstoy's own beliefs or struggles. He is one of several illegitimate children of Count Bezukhov; he is his father's favorite offspring.
* Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky — A strong but cynical, thoughtful and philosophical aide-de-camp in the Napoleonic Wars.
* Princess Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya — A pious woman whose eccentric father attempted to give her a good education. The caring, nurturing nature of her large eyes in her otherwise thin and plain face are frequently mentioned.
* Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov — The pater-familias of the Rostov family; terrible with finances, generous to a fault.
* Countess Natalya Rostova — Wife of Count Ilya Rostov, mother of the four Rostov children.
* Countess Natalia Ilyinichna (Natasha) Rostova — Introduced as a beautiful and romantic young girl, she evolves through trials and suffering and eventually finds happiness. She is an accomplished singer and dancer.[citation needed]
* Count Nikolai Ilyich Rostov — A hussar, the beloved eldest son of the Rostov family.
* Sofia Alexandrovna (Sonya) Rostova — Orphaned cousin of Vera, Nikolai, Natasha and Petya Rostov.
* Countess Vera Ilyinichna Rostova — Eldest of the Rostov children, she marries the German career soldier, Berg.
* Pyotr Ilyich (Petya) Rostov — Youngest of the Rostov children.
* Prince Vasily Sergeyevich Kuragin — A ruthless man who is determined to marry his children well, despite having doubts about the character of some of them.
* Princess Elena Vasilyevna (Hélène) Kuragina — A beautiful and sexually alluring woman who has many affairs, including (it is rumoured) with her brother Anatole
* Prince Anatol Vasilyevich Kuragin — Hélène's brother and a very handsome, ruthless and amoral pleasure seeker who is secretly married yet tries to elope with Natasha Rostova.
* Prince Ipolit Vasilyevich — The eldest and perhaps most dim-witted of the Kuragin children.
* Prince Boris Drubetskoy — A poor but aristocratic young man who is determined to make his career, even at the expense of his friends and benefactors, marries a rich and ugly woman to help him climb the social ladder.
* Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskoya — The mother of Boris.
* Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov — A cold, almost psychopathic officer, he ruins Nikolai Rostov after his proposal to Sonya is refused, he only shows love to his doting mother.
* Adolf Karlovich Berg — A young Russian officer, who desires to be just like everyone else.
* Anna Pavlovna Sherer — Also known as Annette, she is the hostess of the salon that is the site of much of the novel's action in Petersburg.
* Maria Dmitryevna Akhrosimova — An older Moscow society lady, she is an elegant dancer and trend-setter, despite her age and size.
* Amalia Evgenyevna Bourienne — A French woman who lives with the Bolkonskys, primarily as Princess Marya's companion.
* Vasily Dmitrich Denisov — Nikolai Rostov's friend and brother officer, who proposes to Natasha.
* Platon Krataev - The archetypal good Russian peasant, whom Pierre meets in the prisoner of war camp.
* Napoleon I of France — the Great Man, whose fate is detailed in the book.
* General Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov — Russian commander-in-chief throughout the book. His diligence and modesty eventually save Russia from Napoleon.[citation needed]
* Osip Bazdeyev — the Freemason who interests Pierre in his mysterious group, starting a lengthy subplot.[citation needed]
* Tsar Alexander I of Russia — He signed a peace treaty with Napoleon in 1807 and then went to war with him.
Many of Tolstoy's characters in War and Peace were based on real-life people known to Tolstoy himself. His grandparents and their friends were the models for many of the main characters, his great-grandparents would have been of the generation of Prince Vasilly or Count Ilya Rostov. Some of the characters, obviously, are actual historic figures.
Adaptations
Film
The first Russian film adaptation of War and Peace was the 1915 film Война и мир (Voyna i mir), directed by Vladimir Gardin and starring Gardin and the Russian ballerina Vera Karalli. It was followed in 1968 by the critically acclaimed four-part film version War and Peace, by the Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk, released individually in 1965-1967, and as a re-edited whole in 1968. This starred Lyudmila Savelyeva (as Natasha Rostova) and Vyacheslav Tikhonov (as Andrei Bolkonsky). Bondarchuk himself played the character of Pierre Bezukhov. The film was almost seven hours long; it involved thousands of actors, 120 000 extras, and it took seven years to finish the shooting, as a result of which the actors age changed dramatically from scene to scene. It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for its authenticity and massive scale.
The novel has been adapted twice for cinema outside of Russia. The first of these was produced by F. Kamei in Japan (1947). The second was the 208-minute long 1956 War and Peace, directed by the American King Vidor. This starred Audrey Hepburn (Natasha), Henry Fonda (Pierre) and Mel Ferrer (Andrei). Audrey Hepburn was nominated for a BAFTA Award for best British actress and for a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a drama production.
Opera
* Initiated by a proposal of the German director Erwin Piscator in 1938, the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev composed his opera War and Peace (Op. 91, libretto by Mira Mendelson) based on this epic novel during the 1940s. The complete musical work premiered in Leningrad in 1955. It was the first opera to be given a public performance at the Sydney Opera House (1973).
Music
* Composition by Nino Rota
* Referring to album notes, the first track "The Gates of Delirium", from the album Relayer, by the progressive rock group Yes, is said to be based loosely on the novel.
Theatre
The first successful stage adaptations of War and Peace were produced by Alfred Neumann and Erwin Piscator (1942, revised 1955, published by Macgibbon & Kee in London 1963, and staged in 16 countries since) and R. Lucas (1943).
A stage adaptation by Helen Edmundson, first produced in 1996 at the Royal National Theatre, was published that year by Nick Hern Books, London. Edmundson added to and amended the play for a 2008 production as two 3-hour parts by Shared Experience, directed by Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale. This was first put on at the Nottingham Playhouse, then toured in the UK to Liverpool, Darlington, Bath, Warwick, Oxford, Truro, London (the Hampstead Theatre) and Cheltenham.
On the 15th-18th July, The Birmingham Theatre School performed this seven-hour epic play at The Crescent Theatre in Brindleyplace with great success. Birmingham Theatre School is the only drama school in the world to perform the new adaptation of War and Peace. Directed by Chris Rozanski and Assistant to Director was Royal National Theatre performer Anthony Mark Barrow with Vocals arranged by Dr Ria Keen and choreography by Colin Lang.
Radio and television
* In December 1970, Pacifica Radio station WBAI broadcast a reading of the entire novel (the 1968 Dunnigan translation) read by over 140 celebrities and ordinary people.
* War and Peace (1972): The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made a television serial based on the novel, broadcast in 1972-73. Anthony Hopkins played the lead role of Pierre. Other lead characters were played by Rupert Davies, Faith Brook, Morag Hood, Alan Dobie, Angela Down and Sylvester Morand. This version faithfully included many of Tolstoy's minor characters, including Platon Karataev (Harry Locke). ,
* A dramatized full-cast adaptation in ten parts was written by Marcy Kahan and Mike Walker in 1997. The production won the 1998 Talkie award for Best Drama and was around 9.5 hours in length. It was directed by Janet Whitaker and featured Simon Russell Beale, Gerard Murphy, Richard Johnson, and others.
* La Guerre et la paix (TV) (2000) by François Roussillon. Robert Brubaker played the lead role of Pierre.
* War and Peace (2007): produced by the Italian Lux Vide, a TV mini-series in Russian & English co-produced in Russia, France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Directed by Robert Dornhelm, with screenplay written by Lorenzo Favella, Enrico Medioli and Gavin Scott. It features an international cast with Alexander Beyer playing the lead role of Pierre assisted by Malcolm McDowell, Clémence Poésy, Alessio Boni, Pilar Abella, J. Kimo Arbas, Ken Duken, Juozapas Bagdonas and Toni Bertorelli.
Full translations into English
* Clara Bell (from a French version) 1885-86
* Nathan Haskell Dole 1898
* Leo Wiener 1904
* Constance Garnett (1904)
* Louise and Aylmer Maude (1922-3)
* Rosemary Edmonds (1957, revised 1978)
* Ann Dunnigan (1968)
* Anthony Briggs (2005)
* Andrew Bromfield (2007), translation of the first completed draft, approx. 400 pages shorter than other English translations.
* Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007)
Gone with the Wind, first published in May 1936, is a romantic novel written by Margaret Mitchell. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia and Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War and Reconstruction and depicts the experiences of Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner. The novel is the source of the extremely popular 1939 film of the same name.
Title
The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind". The novel's protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara, also uses the title phrase in a line in the book: when her home area is overtaken by the Yankees, she wonders to herself if her home, a plantation called Tara, is still standing, or if it was "also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia". More generally, the title has been interpreted as referring to the entire way of life of the antebellum South as having "Gone with the Wind". The prologue of the movie refers to the old way of life in the South as "gone with the wind…."
The title for the novel was a problem for Mitchell. She initially titled the book "Pansy", the original name for the character of Scarlett O'Hara. Although never seriously considered, the title "Pansy" was dropped once MacMillan persuaded Mitchell to rename the main character. Other proposed titles included "Tote the Weary Load" and "Tomorrow is Another Day", the latter taken from the last line in the book; however, the publisher noted that there were several books close to the same title at the time, so Mitchell was asked to find another title, and "Gone with the Wind" was chosen.
Plot
This section's plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (April 2009)
Overview
Scarlett O'Hara is the daughter of an Irish immigrant who has risen from humble origins to become materially and socially successful in the deep south of 1861. He owns a plantation named Tara in Georgia. Scarlett is infatuated with Ashley Wilkes, who, although attracted to her, marries his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. Wilkes is genuinely ambiguous about his feelings toward Scarlett. He knows his feelings run deep, and are both emotional and sexual in nature; but he never resolves whether to act upon his feelings, or to renounce them and definitively reject Scarlett’s flirtations, in favor of his wife and his social position. And though he never sins in the flesh, the novel clearly implies that he does so in his heart, leading Scarlett along; limited only by his weakness in making a decision as to what ultimately, he should do.
At the party announcing Ashley's engagement to Melanie, Scarlett meets Rhett Butler, who has a reputation as a rogue. As the Civil War begins, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton, who soon dies of disease in training. Scarlett's main concern regarding his death is that she must wear black and cannot attend parties. After the war, Scarlett inherits Tara and manages to keep the place going. When Scarlett cannot get money from Rhett to pay the taxes on Tara, she marries her sister's fiancé, Frank Kennedy, takes control of his business, and increases its profitability with business practices that make many Atlantans resent her. Frank is killed when he and other Ku Klux Klan members raid a shanty town where Scarlet was assaulted while driving alone. Remorseful after Frank's death, Scarlett marries Rhett, who is aware of her passion for Ashley but hopes that one day she will come to love him instead. Scarlett eventually comes to realize that she does love Rhett, but only once the couple has been through so much that Rhett has fallen out of love with her.
Part one
Scarlett O'Hara is the belle of the County. Her flirtatiousness and charm won the hearts of many men in Clayton County, Georgia. At sixteen years old, however, she begins the trials that will completely overtake her life for the next twelve years. She does this by having an impromptu marriage with the bashful Charles Hamilton to save face and make her real love—Ashley Wilkes—jealous. However, soon after their wedding, Charles and all the other men in Georgia who are able to bear arms, go to war against the Yankees at the start of the Civil War. After six weeks of being in camp, Charles dies of measles. With Charles's death, Scarlett's main concern is that, in order to conform to society, she must dress in black mourning clothes and attend no parties.
Parts two and three
Scarlett moves to Atlanta to stay with her sister-in-law and Ashley’s wife, Melanie Wilkes and Melanie's Aunt Pittypat. Melanie grows to love Scarlett like a sister; however, Scarlett is very self-centered and resents Melanie. Scarlett meets Rhett Butler again while in Atlanta; he is attentive to her and she uses him (and his money) when it is convenient. Rhett has a bad reputation and is "not received" in polite society. Ashley is able to come home for Christmas from the war and stay with the ladies. At the end of his stay, Scarlett promises him that she will keep Melanie safe. With the help of Rhett and her personal slave, Prissy, Scarlett delivers Melanie's child Beau in the middle of a battle and leads Melanie, the baby and Prissy to safety back at Tara. The Civil War is ending and the northern army is marching through Georgia laying waste to the country. Upon her arrival, Scarlett hears the news of the death of her beloved mother, Ellen, of typhoid. Scarlett stays at Tara Plantation and tries to keep it solvent and care for its inhabitants.
Part four
Scarlett hears that Tara is about to be charged an enormous amount of tax by the new corrupt local government which she cannot pay. She decides to go to Atlanta and charm Rhett into paying the bill. After offering herself to Rhett as his mistress and being refused, however, Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy, who has enough money to pay the tax on Tara. Frank is the fiancé of Scarlett's sister Suellen so she deceives him into thinking that Suellen is engaged to someone else in Clayton County.
With money borrowed from and then repaid to Rhett, Scarlett buys two timber mills and proceeds to make them very profitable. Her actions are considered very inappropriate for a woman by Atlanta society. As she travels home from it one night, she is attacked. Frank, Ashley, and many other men in the newly formed Ku Klux Klan avenge her attack. In the fight, Frank is killed.
A few months later Scarlett marries Rhett, who has become very rich by dubious means during the War.
Part five
Scarlett and Rhett start to enjoy their new life together. They have a child named Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler, who becomes Rhett’s pride and joy. They live happily until Scarlett’s old infatuation with Ashley takes over. When Bonnie is killed in a riding accident Scarlett in the first flush of grief tells Rhett that she blames him. Rhett is heartbroken over the death of his beloved daughter. He drinks heavily and finally decides, after the death of Melanie Wilkes, to leave Scarlett forever. However, Scarlett realizes that she loves Rhett and never truly loved Ashley, but merely an idea of him. She confesses this to Rhett, but he is adamant. The book ends on an ambiguous note, as she decided to return to the familiarity of her beloved Tara, where she will find a way to win Rhett back: "Tomorrow is another day!".
Characters
Butler family
* Rhett Butler – Scarlett's love interest and third husband, often publicly shunned for scandalous behavior, sometimes accepted for his charm. He is financially a very shrewd man and initially appears to love Scarlett dearly.
* Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler – Scarlett and Rhett's pretty, beloved daughter.
Wilkes family
* Ashley Wilkes – The gallant Ashley married his unglamourous cousin, Melanie, because she represented all that he loved and wanted in life, that is, the quiet and happy life of a Southern gentleman of the "Twelve Oaks" plantation. Ashley Wilkes marries Melanie Hamilton as an arranged marriage between the Wilkes-Hamilton families; in which the marriage of cousins (which Ashley and Melanie are) is the practice; when necessary to preserve the blood line and social position of the family. As such, Wilkes is not, in the strictest sense, brought to marriage by love, money, or sexual infatuation; but by a sense of duty to preserve the socio-economic status quo of a world which he personally enjoys and agrees with; and believes this marriage will support and sustain.
Wilkes becomes a soldier for the Confederate cause though he personally would have freed the slaves his father owned had the war not erupted, or at least that is what he claimed. Although many of his friends and relations were killed in the Civil War, Ashley survived to see its brutal aftermath. He remains the object of Scarlett's daydream of infatuated devotion, even throughout her three marriages. She is simply obsessed with unobtainable Ashley. Believing that she was in love with him, Scarlett imagined Ashley to be the "perfect man", leaving her unable to love another.
* Melanie Hamilton Wilkes – Ashley's wife and cousin, her character is that of the genuinely humble, serene and gracious Southern woman. As the story unfolds, Melanie becomes progressively physically weaker, first by childbirth, then the effects of war, and ultimately illness. She had her own unique inner spirit of perseverance, as did Scarlett. Melanie loved Ashley, Beau, and Scarlett unwaveringly, and dutifully supported the Confederate cause, revealing the naivete of her character.
* Beau Wilkes – Melanie's and Ashley's lovable son.
* India Wilkes – Ashley's sister. Almost engaged to Stuart Tarleton, she bitterly hates Scarlett for stealing his attention before he is killed at Gettysburg. Lives with Aunt Pittypat after Melanie kicks her out for accusing Scarlett and Ashley of infidelity.
* Honey Wilkes – another sister of India and Ashley. Originally hoped to marry Charles Hamilton until Scarlett marries him; following the war, she marries a man from Mississippi, and moves to his home state with him.
* John Wilkes – Owner of Twelve Oaks Plantation and patriarch of the Wilkes family. Killed during the Civil War.
O'Hara family
* Scarlett O'Hara – The wilful protagonist of the novel, whose travails the novel follows throughout war and reconstruction. She marries Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy and Rhett Butler, all the time wishing she was married to Ashley Wilkes instead. She has three children, one from each husband: Wade Hampton Hamilton (son to Charles Hamilton), Ella Lorena Kennedy (daughter to Frank Kennedy) and Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler (deceased daughter to Rhett Butler).
* Gerald O'Hara – Scarlett's impetuous Irish father.
* Suellen O'Hara – Scarlett's selfish sister.
* Carreen O'Hara – Scarlett's timid, religious sister who, in the end of the story, joins a convent.
* Ellen O'Hara – Scarlett's gracious mother, of French ancestry.
Other characters
* Mammy – Scarlett's nurse from birth; a slave. Cited by Rhett as "the real head of the household." She has a no-nonsense attitude and is outspoken and opinionated. She chastises Scarlett often. She is extremely loyal to the O'Haras, especially Scarlett, whom she cares for like a daughter.
* Prissy – A young slave girl who features in Scarlett's life. She is portrayed as flighty and silly.
* Pork – The O'Hara family's butler, favored by Gerald.
* Dilcey – Pork's wife, a strong, outspoken slave woman of mixed Indian and Black decent, Prissy's mother.
* Charles Hamilton – Melanie's brother, Scarlett's first husband, shy and loving.
* Frank Kennedy – Suellen's former beau, Scarlett's second husband, an older man who only wants peace and quiet. He originally asks for Suellen's hand in marriage, but Scarlett steals him to save Tara. He is portrayed as a pushover who will do anything to appease Scarlett.
* Belle Watling – a brothel madam and prostitute; Rhett is her friend. She is portrayed as a kind-hearted country woman and a loyal confederate. At one point she states she has nursing experience.
* Archie – an ex-convict and former Confederate soldier who is taken in by Melanie. Has a strong disliking for all women, especially Scarlett. The only woman he respects is Melanie.
* Jonas Wilkerson – former overseer of Tara, father of Emmie Slattery's illegitimate baby. After being dismissed because of the aforementioned he eventually becomes employed by the Freedmen's Bureau, where he abuses his position to get back at the O'Haras and becomes rich.
* Emmie Slattery – later wife of Jonas Wilkerson, whom Scarlett blames for her mother's death.
* Will Benteen – Confederate soldier who seeks refuge at Tara and stays on to help with the plantation, in love with Carreen but marries Suellen to stay on Tara, and repair her reputation. He is portrayed as very perceptive and lost half of his leg in the war.
* Aunt Pittypat Hamilton – Charles and Melanie's vaporish aunt who lives in Atlanta.
* Uncle Peter – Aunt Pittypat's houseman and driver, he is extremely loyal to Pittypat.
Setting
* Tara Plantation – The O'Hara home and plantation
* Twelve Oaks – The Wilkes' plantation.
* Peachtree Street – location of Aunt Pittypat's home in Atlanta
The novel opens in April 1861 and ends in the early autumn of 1873.
Politics
The book includes a vivid description of the fall of Atlanta in 1864 and the devastation of war (some of that aspect was missing from the 1939 film). The novel showed considerable historical research. According to her biography, Mitchell herself was ten years old before she learned that the South had lost the war. Mitchell's sweeping narrative of war and loss helped the book win the Pulitzer Prize on May 3, 1937.
An episode in the book dealt with the early Ku Klux Klan. In the immediate aftermath of the War, Scarlett is assaulted by poor Southerners living in shanties, whereupon her former black slave Big Sam saves her life. In response, Scarlett's male friends attempt to make a retaliatory nighttime raid on the encampment. Northern soldiers try to stop the attacks, and Rhett helps Ashley, who is shot, to get help through his prostitute friend Belle. Scarlett's husband Frank is killed. This raid is presented sympathetically as being necessary and justified, while the law-enforcement officers trying to catch the perpetrators are depicted as oppressive Northern occupiers.
Although the Klan is not mentioned in that scene (though Rhett tells Archie to burn the "robes"), the book notes that Scarlett finds the Klan abominable. She believed the men should all just stay at home (she wanted both to be petted for her ordeal and to give the hated Yankees no more reason to tighten martial law, which is bad for her businesses). Rhett is also mentioned to be no great lover of the Klan. At one point, he said that if it were necessary, he would join in an effort to join "society". The novel never explicitly states whether this drastic step was necessary in his view. The local chapter later breaks up under the pressure from Rhett and Ashley.
Scarlett expresses views that were common of the era. Some examples:
* "How stupid negroes were! They never thought of anything unless they were told." — Scarlett thinks to herself, after returning to Tara after the fall of Atlanta.
* "How dared they laugh, the black apes!...She'd like to have them all whipped until the blood ran down...What devils the Yankees were to set them free!" — Scarlett again thinking to herself, seeing free blacks after the war.
* However, she is kind to Pork, her father's trusted manservant. He tells Scarlett that if she were as nice to white people as she is to black, a lot more people would like her.
* She almost loses her temper when the Yankee women say they would never have a black nurse in their house and talk about Uncle Peter, Aunt Pittypat's beloved and loyal servant, as if he were a mule. Scarlett informs them that Uncle Peter is a member of the family, which bewilders the Yankee women and leads them to misinterpret the situation.
* It was mentioned that only one slave was ever whipped at Tara, and that was a stablehand who didn't brush Gerald's horse. The only time Scarlett hit a slave was when Prissy was hysterical.
* Scarlett at one point criticized Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, saying no one treated their slaves that badly.
Inspirations
As several elements of Gone with the Wind have parallels with Margaret Mitchell's own life, her experiences may have provided some inspiration for the story in context. Mitchell's understanding of life and hardship during the American Civil War, for example, came from elderly relatives and neighbors passing war stories to her generation.
While Margaret Mitchell used to say that her Gone with the Wind characters were not based on real people, modern researchers have found similarities to some of the people in Mitchell's own life as well as to individuals she knew or she heard of. Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, was born in 1845; she was the daughter of an Irish immigrant, who owned a large plantation on Tara Road in Clayton County, south of Atlanta, and who married an American woman named Ellen, and had several children, all daughters.
Many researchers believe that the physical brutality and low regard for women exhibited by Rhett Butler was based on Mitchell's first husband, Red Upshaw. She divorced him after she learned he was a bootlegger amid rumors of abuse and infidelity. Some believe he was patterned on the life of George Trenholm.
After a stay at the plantation called The Woodlands, and later Barnsley Gardens, Mitchell may have gotten the inspiration for the dashing scoundrel from Sir Godfrey Barnsley of Adairsville, Georgia.
Belle Watling was based on Lexington, Kentucky, madam Belle Brezing.
Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president Theodore Roosevelt may have been an inspiration for Scarlett O'Hara. Roosevelt biographer David McCullough discovered that Mitchell, as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal, conducted an interview with one of Martha's closest friends and bridesmaid, Evelyn King Baker, then 87. In that interview, she described Martha's physical appearance, beauty, grace, and intelligence in detail. The similarities between Martha and the Scarlett character are striking.
Reception
The sales of Margaret Mitchell's novel in the summer of 1936, at the virtually unprecedented price of three dollars, reached about one million by the end of December. Favorable critics found in the novel and its success an implicit rejection of what one reviewer dismissed as "all the thousands of technical tricks our novelists have been playing with for the past twenty years," while from the ramparts of the critical establishment almost universally male reviewers lamented the book's literary mediocrity and labeled it mere "entertainment." [citation needed]
Symbolism
Over the past years, the novel Gone with the Wind has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes. For example, Scarlett has been characterized as a heroic figure struggling and attempting to twist life to suit her own personal wishes in society. The land is considered a source of strength, as in the plantation Tara, whose name is almost certainly drawn from the Hill of Tara in Ireland, a mysterious and poorly-understood archeological site that has traditionally been connected to the temporal and/or spiritual authority of the ancient Irish kings. It also represents the permanence of the land in a rapid changing world. Scarlett’s beautiful, perky hats take part of the symbolism as well. They show her feminine side and how she wants nothing more than to be the most attractive woman and the center of attention.
Sequels
Although Mitchell refused to write a sequel to Gone With The Wind, Mitchell's estate authorised Alexandra Ripley to write the novel Scarlett in 1991.
Author Pat Conroy was approached to write a follow-up, but the project was ultimately abandoned.
In 2000, the copyright holders attempted to suppress publication of Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone, a book that retold the story from the point of view of the slaves. A federal appeals court denied the plaintiffs an injunction against publication in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001), on the basis that the book was parody protected by the First Amendment. The parties subsequently settled out of court to allow the book to be published. After its release, the book became a New York Times bestseller.
In 2002, the copyright holders blocked distribution of an unauthorised sequel published in the U.S, The Winds of Tara by Katherine Pinotti, alleging copyright infringement. The story follows Scarlett as she returns to Tara where a family issue threatens Tara and the family's reputation. In it Scarlett shows just how far she will go to protect her family and her home. The book was immediately removed from bookstores by publisher Xlibris. The book sold in excess of 2,000 copies within 2 weeks before being removed. More recently, in 2008, Australian publisher Fontaine Press re-published "The Winds of Tara" exclusively for their domestic market, avoiding U.S. copyright restrictions.
A second sequel was released in November 2007. The story covers the same time period as Gone with the Wind and is told from Rhett Butler’s perspective – although it begins years before and ends after. Written by Donald McCaig, this novel is titled Rhett Butler's People (2007).
Adaptations
Gone With The Wind has been adapted several times for stage and screen, most famously in the 1939 film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.
On stage it has been adapted as a musical Scarlett (premiering in 1972). The musical opened in the West End followed by a pre-Broadway tryout in 1973 (with Lesley Ann Warren as Scarlett). The book was again adapted as a musical called Gone With The Wind which premiered at the New London Theatre in 2008 in a production directed by Trevor Nunn.
The Japanese Takarazuka Revue has also adapted the novel into a musical with the same name. The first performance was in 1977, performed by the Moon Troupe. It has been performed several times since by the group, the most recent being in 2004 (performed by the Cosmos Troupe).
There has also been a French musical Autant en Emporte le Vent, based on the book.
Awards
The novel won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. The book was also adapted during the 1970s into a stage musical Scarlett; there is also a 2008 new musical stage adaptation in London's West End titled Gone With The Wind. It is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime. It took her seven years to write the book and a further eight months to check the thousands of historical and social references. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies. Over the years, the novel has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes.
Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Title
The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind". The novel's protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara, also uses the title phrase in a line in the book: when her home area is overtaken by the Yankees, she wonders to herself if her home, a plantation called Tara, is still standing, or if it was "also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia". More generally, the title has been interpreted as referring to the entire way of life of the antebellum South as having "Gone with the Wind". The prologue of the movie refers to the old way of life in the South as "gone with the wind…."
The title for the novel was a problem for Mitchell. She initially titled the book "Pansy", the original name for the character of Scarlett O'Hara. Although never seriously considered, the title "Pansy" was dropped once MacMillan persuaded Mitchell to rename the main character. Other proposed titles included "Tote the Weary Load" and "Tomorrow is Another Day", the latter taken from the last line in the book; however, the publisher noted that there were several books close to the same title at the time, so Mitchell was asked to find another title, and "Gone with the Wind" was chosen.
Plot
This section's plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (April 2009)
Overview
Scarlett O'Hara is the daughter of an Irish immigrant who has risen from humble origins to become materially and socially successful in the deep south of 1861. He owns a plantation named Tara in Georgia. Scarlett is infatuated with Ashley Wilkes, who, although attracted to her, marries his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. Wilkes is genuinely ambiguous about his feelings toward Scarlett. He knows his feelings run deep, and are both emotional and sexual in nature; but he never resolves whether to act upon his feelings, or to renounce them and definitively reject Scarlett’s flirtations, in favor of his wife and his social position. And though he never sins in the flesh, the novel clearly implies that he does so in his heart, leading Scarlett along; limited only by his weakness in making a decision as to what ultimately, he should do.
At the party announcing Ashley's engagement to Melanie, Scarlett meets Rhett Butler, who has a reputation as a rogue. As the Civil War begins, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton, who soon dies of disease in training. Scarlett's main concern regarding his death is that she must wear black and cannot attend parties. After the war, Scarlett inherits Tara and manages to keep the place going. When Scarlett cannot get money from Rhett to pay the taxes on Tara, she marries her sister's fiancé, Frank Kennedy, takes control of his business, and increases its profitability with business practices that make many Atlantans resent her. Frank is killed when he and other Ku Klux Klan members raid a shanty town where Scarlet was assaulted while driving alone. Remorseful after Frank's death, Scarlett marries Rhett, who is aware of her passion for Ashley but hopes that one day she will come to love him instead. Scarlett eventually comes to realize that she does love Rhett, but only once the couple has been through so much that Rhett has fallen out of love with her.
Part one
Scarlett O'Hara is the belle of the County. Her flirtatiousness and charm won the hearts of many men in Clayton County, Georgia. At sixteen years old, however, she begins the trials that will completely overtake her life for the next twelve years. She does this by having an impromptu marriage with the bashful Charles Hamilton to save face and make her real love—Ashley Wilkes—jealous. However, soon after their wedding, Charles and all the other men in Georgia who are able to bear arms, go to war against the Yankees at the start of the Civil War. After six weeks of being in camp, Charles dies of measles. With Charles's death, Scarlett's main concern is that, in order to conform to society, she must dress in black mourning clothes and attend no parties.
Parts two and three
Scarlett moves to Atlanta to stay with her sister-in-law and Ashley’s wife, Melanie Wilkes and Melanie's Aunt Pittypat. Melanie grows to love Scarlett like a sister; however, Scarlett is very self-centered and resents Melanie. Scarlett meets Rhett Butler again while in Atlanta; he is attentive to her and she uses him (and his money) when it is convenient. Rhett has a bad reputation and is "not received" in polite society. Ashley is able to come home for Christmas from the war and stay with the ladies. At the end of his stay, Scarlett promises him that she will keep Melanie safe. With the help of Rhett and her personal slave, Prissy, Scarlett delivers Melanie's child Beau in the middle of a battle and leads Melanie, the baby and Prissy to safety back at Tara. The Civil War is ending and the northern army is marching through Georgia laying waste to the country. Upon her arrival, Scarlett hears the news of the death of her beloved mother, Ellen, of typhoid. Scarlett stays at Tara Plantation and tries to keep it solvent and care for its inhabitants.
Part four
Scarlett hears that Tara is about to be charged an enormous amount of tax by the new corrupt local government which she cannot pay. She decides to go to Atlanta and charm Rhett into paying the bill. After offering herself to Rhett as his mistress and being refused, however, Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy, who has enough money to pay the tax on Tara. Frank is the fiancé of Scarlett's sister Suellen so she deceives him into thinking that Suellen is engaged to someone else in Clayton County.
With money borrowed from and then repaid to Rhett, Scarlett buys two timber mills and proceeds to make them very profitable. Her actions are considered very inappropriate for a woman by Atlanta society. As she travels home from it one night, she is attacked. Frank, Ashley, and many other men in the newly formed Ku Klux Klan avenge her attack. In the fight, Frank is killed.
A few months later Scarlett marries Rhett, who has become very rich by dubious means during the War.
Part five
Scarlett and Rhett start to enjoy their new life together. They have a child named Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler, who becomes Rhett’s pride and joy. They live happily until Scarlett’s old infatuation with Ashley takes over. When Bonnie is killed in a riding accident Scarlett in the first flush of grief tells Rhett that she blames him. Rhett is heartbroken over the death of his beloved daughter. He drinks heavily and finally decides, after the death of Melanie Wilkes, to leave Scarlett forever. However, Scarlett realizes that she loves Rhett and never truly loved Ashley, but merely an idea of him. She confesses this to Rhett, but he is adamant. The book ends on an ambiguous note, as she decided to return to the familiarity of her beloved Tara, where she will find a way to win Rhett back: "Tomorrow is another day!".
Characters
Butler family
* Rhett Butler – Scarlett's love interest and third husband, often publicly shunned for scandalous behavior, sometimes accepted for his charm. He is financially a very shrewd man and initially appears to love Scarlett dearly.
* Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler – Scarlett and Rhett's pretty, beloved daughter.
Wilkes family
* Ashley Wilkes – The gallant Ashley married his unglamourous cousin, Melanie, because she represented all that he loved and wanted in life, that is, the quiet and happy life of a Southern gentleman of the "Twelve Oaks" plantation. Ashley Wilkes marries Melanie Hamilton as an arranged marriage between the Wilkes-Hamilton families; in which the marriage of cousins (which Ashley and Melanie are) is the practice; when necessary to preserve the blood line and social position of the family. As such, Wilkes is not, in the strictest sense, brought to marriage by love, money, or sexual infatuation; but by a sense of duty to preserve the socio-economic status quo of a world which he personally enjoys and agrees with; and believes this marriage will support and sustain.
Wilkes becomes a soldier for the Confederate cause though he personally would have freed the slaves his father owned had the war not erupted, or at least that is what he claimed. Although many of his friends and relations were killed in the Civil War, Ashley survived to see its brutal aftermath. He remains the object of Scarlett's daydream of infatuated devotion, even throughout her three marriages. She is simply obsessed with unobtainable Ashley. Believing that she was in love with him, Scarlett imagined Ashley to be the "perfect man", leaving her unable to love another.
* Melanie Hamilton Wilkes – Ashley's wife and cousin, her character is that of the genuinely humble, serene and gracious Southern woman. As the story unfolds, Melanie becomes progressively physically weaker, first by childbirth, then the effects of war, and ultimately illness. She had her own unique inner spirit of perseverance, as did Scarlett. Melanie loved Ashley, Beau, and Scarlett unwaveringly, and dutifully supported the Confederate cause, revealing the naivete of her character.
* Beau Wilkes – Melanie's and Ashley's lovable son.
* India Wilkes – Ashley's sister. Almost engaged to Stuart Tarleton, she bitterly hates Scarlett for stealing his attention before he is killed at Gettysburg. Lives with Aunt Pittypat after Melanie kicks her out for accusing Scarlett and Ashley of infidelity.
* Honey Wilkes – another sister of India and Ashley. Originally hoped to marry Charles Hamilton until Scarlett marries him; following the war, she marries a man from Mississippi, and moves to his home state with him.
* John Wilkes – Owner of Twelve Oaks Plantation and patriarch of the Wilkes family. Killed during the Civil War.
O'Hara family
* Scarlett O'Hara – The wilful protagonist of the novel, whose travails the novel follows throughout war and reconstruction. She marries Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy and Rhett Butler, all the time wishing she was married to Ashley Wilkes instead. She has three children, one from each husband: Wade Hampton Hamilton (son to Charles Hamilton), Ella Lorena Kennedy (daughter to Frank Kennedy) and Eugenia Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler (deceased daughter to Rhett Butler).
* Gerald O'Hara – Scarlett's impetuous Irish father.
* Suellen O'Hara – Scarlett's selfish sister.
* Carreen O'Hara – Scarlett's timid, religious sister who, in the end of the story, joins a convent.
* Ellen O'Hara – Scarlett's gracious mother, of French ancestry.
Other characters
* Mammy – Scarlett's nurse from birth; a slave. Cited by Rhett as "the real head of the household." She has a no-nonsense attitude and is outspoken and opinionated. She chastises Scarlett often. She is extremely loyal to the O'Haras, especially Scarlett, whom she cares for like a daughter.
* Prissy – A young slave girl who features in Scarlett's life. She is portrayed as flighty and silly.
* Pork – The O'Hara family's butler, favored by Gerald.
* Dilcey – Pork's wife, a strong, outspoken slave woman of mixed Indian and Black decent, Prissy's mother.
* Charles Hamilton – Melanie's brother, Scarlett's first husband, shy and loving.
* Frank Kennedy – Suellen's former beau, Scarlett's second husband, an older man who only wants peace and quiet. He originally asks for Suellen's hand in marriage, but Scarlett steals him to save Tara. He is portrayed as a pushover who will do anything to appease Scarlett.
* Belle Watling – a brothel madam and prostitute; Rhett is her friend. She is portrayed as a kind-hearted country woman and a loyal confederate. At one point she states she has nursing experience.
* Archie – an ex-convict and former Confederate soldier who is taken in by Melanie. Has a strong disliking for all women, especially Scarlett. The only woman he respects is Melanie.
* Jonas Wilkerson – former overseer of Tara, father of Emmie Slattery's illegitimate baby. After being dismissed because of the aforementioned he eventually becomes employed by the Freedmen's Bureau, where he abuses his position to get back at the O'Haras and becomes rich.
* Emmie Slattery – later wife of Jonas Wilkerson, whom Scarlett blames for her mother's death.
* Will Benteen – Confederate soldier who seeks refuge at Tara and stays on to help with the plantation, in love with Carreen but marries Suellen to stay on Tara, and repair her reputation. He is portrayed as very perceptive and lost half of his leg in the war.
* Aunt Pittypat Hamilton – Charles and Melanie's vaporish aunt who lives in Atlanta.
* Uncle Peter – Aunt Pittypat's houseman and driver, he is extremely loyal to Pittypat.
Setting
* Tara Plantation – The O'Hara home and plantation
* Twelve Oaks – The Wilkes' plantation.
* Peachtree Street – location of Aunt Pittypat's home in Atlanta
The novel opens in April 1861 and ends in the early autumn of 1873.
Politics
The book includes a vivid description of the fall of Atlanta in 1864 and the devastation of war (some of that aspect was missing from the 1939 film). The novel showed considerable historical research. According to her biography, Mitchell herself was ten years old before she learned that the South had lost the war. Mitchell's sweeping narrative of war and loss helped the book win the Pulitzer Prize on May 3, 1937.
An episode in the book dealt with the early Ku Klux Klan. In the immediate aftermath of the War, Scarlett is assaulted by poor Southerners living in shanties, whereupon her former black slave Big Sam saves her life. In response, Scarlett's male friends attempt to make a retaliatory nighttime raid on the encampment. Northern soldiers try to stop the attacks, and Rhett helps Ashley, who is shot, to get help through his prostitute friend Belle. Scarlett's husband Frank is killed. This raid is presented sympathetically as being necessary and justified, while the law-enforcement officers trying to catch the perpetrators are depicted as oppressive Northern occupiers.
Although the Klan is not mentioned in that scene (though Rhett tells Archie to burn the "robes"), the book notes that Scarlett finds the Klan abominable. She believed the men should all just stay at home (she wanted both to be petted for her ordeal and to give the hated Yankees no more reason to tighten martial law, which is bad for her businesses). Rhett is also mentioned to be no great lover of the Klan. At one point, he said that if it were necessary, he would join in an effort to join "society". The novel never explicitly states whether this drastic step was necessary in his view. The local chapter later breaks up under the pressure from Rhett and Ashley.
Scarlett expresses views that were common of the era. Some examples:
* "How stupid negroes were! They never thought of anything unless they were told." — Scarlett thinks to herself, after returning to Tara after the fall of Atlanta.
* "How dared they laugh, the black apes!...She'd like to have them all whipped until the blood ran down...What devils the Yankees were to set them free!" — Scarlett again thinking to herself, seeing free blacks after the war.
* However, she is kind to Pork, her father's trusted manservant. He tells Scarlett that if she were as nice to white people as she is to black, a lot more people would like her.
* She almost loses her temper when the Yankee women say they would never have a black nurse in their house and talk about Uncle Peter, Aunt Pittypat's beloved and loyal servant, as if he were a mule. Scarlett informs them that Uncle Peter is a member of the family, which bewilders the Yankee women and leads them to misinterpret the situation.
* It was mentioned that only one slave was ever whipped at Tara, and that was a stablehand who didn't brush Gerald's horse. The only time Scarlett hit a slave was when Prissy was hysterical.
* Scarlett at one point criticized Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, saying no one treated their slaves that badly.
Inspirations
As several elements of Gone with the Wind have parallels with Margaret Mitchell's own life, her experiences may have provided some inspiration for the story in context. Mitchell's understanding of life and hardship during the American Civil War, for example, came from elderly relatives and neighbors passing war stories to her generation.
While Margaret Mitchell used to say that her Gone with the Wind characters were not based on real people, modern researchers have found similarities to some of the people in Mitchell's own life as well as to individuals she knew or she heard of. Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, was born in 1845; she was the daughter of an Irish immigrant, who owned a large plantation on Tara Road in Clayton County, south of Atlanta, and who married an American woman named Ellen, and had several children, all daughters.
Many researchers believe that the physical brutality and low regard for women exhibited by Rhett Butler was based on Mitchell's first husband, Red Upshaw. She divorced him after she learned he was a bootlegger amid rumors of abuse and infidelity. Some believe he was patterned on the life of George Trenholm.
After a stay at the plantation called The Woodlands, and later Barnsley Gardens, Mitchell may have gotten the inspiration for the dashing scoundrel from Sir Godfrey Barnsley of Adairsville, Georgia.
Belle Watling was based on Lexington, Kentucky, madam Belle Brezing.
Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president Theodore Roosevelt may have been an inspiration for Scarlett O'Hara. Roosevelt biographer David McCullough discovered that Mitchell, as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal, conducted an interview with one of Martha's closest friends and bridesmaid, Evelyn King Baker, then 87. In that interview, she described Martha's physical appearance, beauty, grace, and intelligence in detail. The similarities between Martha and the Scarlett character are striking.
Reception
The sales of Margaret Mitchell's novel in the summer of 1936, at the virtually unprecedented price of three dollars, reached about one million by the end of December. Favorable critics found in the novel and its success an implicit rejection of what one reviewer dismissed as "all the thousands of technical tricks our novelists have been playing with for the past twenty years," while from the ramparts of the critical establishment almost universally male reviewers lamented the book's literary mediocrity and labeled it mere "entertainment." [citation needed]
Symbolism
Over the past years, the novel Gone with the Wind has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes. For example, Scarlett has been characterized as a heroic figure struggling and attempting to twist life to suit her own personal wishes in society. The land is considered a source of strength, as in the plantation Tara, whose name is almost certainly drawn from the Hill of Tara in Ireland, a mysterious and poorly-understood archeological site that has traditionally been connected to the temporal and/or spiritual authority of the ancient Irish kings. It also represents the permanence of the land in a rapid changing world. Scarlett’s beautiful, perky hats take part of the symbolism as well. They show her feminine side and how she wants nothing more than to be the most attractive woman and the center of attention.
Sequels
Although Mitchell refused to write a sequel to Gone With The Wind, Mitchell's estate authorised Alexandra Ripley to write the novel Scarlett in 1991.
Author Pat Conroy was approached to write a follow-up, but the project was ultimately abandoned.
In 2000, the copyright holders attempted to suppress publication of Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone, a book that retold the story from the point of view of the slaves. A federal appeals court denied the plaintiffs an injunction against publication in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001), on the basis that the book was parody protected by the First Amendment. The parties subsequently settled out of court to allow the book to be published. After its release, the book became a New York Times bestseller.
In 2002, the copyright holders blocked distribution of an unauthorised sequel published in the U.S, The Winds of Tara by Katherine Pinotti, alleging copyright infringement. The story follows Scarlett as she returns to Tara where a family issue threatens Tara and the family's reputation. In it Scarlett shows just how far she will go to protect her family and her home. The book was immediately removed from bookstores by publisher Xlibris. The book sold in excess of 2,000 copies within 2 weeks before being removed. More recently, in 2008, Australian publisher Fontaine Press re-published "The Winds of Tara" exclusively for their domestic market, avoiding U.S. copyright restrictions.
A second sequel was released in November 2007. The story covers the same time period as Gone with the Wind and is told from Rhett Butler’s perspective – although it begins years before and ends after. Written by Donald McCaig, this novel is titled Rhett Butler's People (2007).
Adaptations
Gone With The Wind has been adapted several times for stage and screen, most famously in the 1939 film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.
On stage it has been adapted as a musical Scarlett (premiering in 1972). The musical opened in the West End followed by a pre-Broadway tryout in 1973 (with Lesley Ann Warren as Scarlett). The book was again adapted as a musical called Gone With The Wind which premiered at the New London Theatre in 2008 in a production directed by Trevor Nunn.
The Japanese Takarazuka Revue has also adapted the novel into a musical with the same name. The first performance was in 1977, performed by the Moon Troupe. It has been performed several times since by the group, the most recent being in 2004 (performed by the Cosmos Troupe).
There has also been a French musical Autant en Emporte le Vent, based on the book.
Awards
The novel won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. The book was also adapted during the 1970s into a stage musical Scarlett; there is also a 2008 new musical stage adaptation in London's West End titled Gone With The Wind. It is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime. It took her seven years to write the book and a further eight months to check the thousands of historical and social references. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies. Over the years, the novel has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes.
Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is a popular 1876 novel about a young boy growing up in the antebellum South. The story is set in the town of "St Petersburg", inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain grew up. In the story's introduction, Twain notes:
Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.
Plot summary
The imaginative and mischievous twelve-year-old boy named Thomas Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly, his half-brother, Sid, also known as Sidney, and cousin Mary, in the Mississippi River town of St Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him a large marble for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two Disciples were David and Goliath
Tom falls in love with Rebecca "Becky" Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” to him. Their love is ruined when she learns that Tom has been engaged to another girl before: Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a “cure” for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr Robinson by a part-Native American “half-breed”, Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away in the process dropping the previously obtained marble, and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom's anxiety and guilt begin to grow. Tom, Huck and their friend Joe Harper run away to an island on the Mississippi, in order to "become pirates". While frolicking around and enjoying their new-found freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends.
Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky's favour after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has torn. Soon Muff Potter's trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window. Tom and Huck witness him finding a box of gold with his partner, a Spaniard, and Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal's Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero.
Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. At the sight of Tom, Injun Joe flees. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky's father, Judge Thatcher seals up the main entrance with an iron door. After a week Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves causing him to die. Injun Joe's partner accidentally drowns trying to escape.
A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave via the new entrance Tom has found and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom's robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.
Publication history
The first publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was by Chatto and Windus, in England in June 1876 (it was listed as "ready" on June 10 and was reviewed on June 24 in the literary publication The Atheneum), and in the U.S. by subscription only in December 1876. Twain and other U.S. authors used initial publication in England fairly often, since otherwise it was impossible to obtain a copyright in the British Commonwealth. In the case of Tom Sawyer, the delay between the London and U.S. editions extended much beyond what Twain envisioned, or desired. This led to widespread piracy of the work - notably a July 1876 pirated edition in Canada obtained by many American readers - and, Twain believed, to a significant loss of his royalties.
When the work did appear in the U.S., it was sold by subscription only. In this distribution method, book agents across the country took orders for the book prior to publication and then delivered the book when available. It was only with subsequent editions that the book became available retail shops.
In dictations for his autobiography, Twain claimed Tom Sawyer "must have been" the first book whose manuscript was typed on a typewriter. However, typewriter historian Darryl Rehr has concluded that Twain's first typed manuscript was Life on the Mississippi.
Adaptations
The story of Tom Sawyer has been filmed or animated multiple times since its initial publication. Some of the film adaptations of Twain's novel include:
* A 1907 silent version released by the Paramount studio
* A 1917 silent version directed by William Desmond Taylor, starring Jack Pickford as Tom
* A 1930 version directed by John Cromwell, starring Jackie Coogan as Tom
* In 1938 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was filmed in Technicolor by the Selznick Studio. It starred Tommy Kelly as Tom and was directed by Norman Taurog. Most notable was the cave sequence designed by William Cameron Menzies.
* A 1947 Soviet Union version, directed by Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatvornitsky
* A 1960 US television serial, also shown on British television
* A 1968 French/German made-for-television miniseries, directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner, starring Roland Demongeot as Tom and Marc Di Napoli as Huck
* The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968) was a half-hour live-action/animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions
* A 1973 musical version with songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, starring Johnny Whitaker as Tom and a young Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher. A TV movie version sponsored by Dr. Pepper was released that same year. It starred Buddy Ebsen as Muff Potter and was filmed in Upper Canada Village.
* Huckleberry Finn and His Friends (1979 TV series)
* The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (anime) (1980), a Japanese anime TV series by Nippon Animation, part of the World Masterpiece Theater; aired in the United States on HBO
* [[Приключения Тома Сойера и Гекльберри Финна (фильм)The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1981), another Soviet Union version directed by Stanislav Govorukhin.
* A 1984 Canadian claymation version produced by Hal Roach studios
* Tom and Huck (1995), starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Tom and Brad Renfro as Huck Finn
* A 1995 episode for the PBS Wishbone TV series "A Tail in Twain".
* The Modern Adventures of Tom Sawyer
* A 2000 animated adaptation, featuring the characters as anthropomorphic animals with an all-star voice cast, including country singers Rhett Akins (as Tom), Mark Wills (as Huck Finn), Lee Ann Womack, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. as well as Betty White as Aunt Polly
* Tom Sawyer appears as a United States Secret Service agent in the 2003 movie based on comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
* This book was featured in an episode of The Fairly Odd Parents
Stage musicals: In 1956 'We're From Missouri', a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with book, music and lyrics by Tom Boyd, was presented by the students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1960, Boyd's musical version (re-titled Tom Sawyer) was presented professionally at Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, England, and in 1961 toured provincial theatres in England.Tom Boyd's musical of TOM SAWYER was produced again in April and June 2010 in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. Another musical adaptation is Mississippi Melody, a musical by Jack Hylton.
Theatrical Adaptation: In April 2010, The Hartford Stage presented a theatrical adaptation entitled Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as part of a centennial observation of Mark Twain's passing.
Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.
Plot summary
The imaginative and mischievous twelve-year-old boy named Thomas Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly, his half-brother, Sid, also known as Sidney, and cousin Mary, in the Mississippi River town of St Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him a large marble for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two Disciples were David and Goliath
Tom falls in love with Rebecca "Becky" Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” to him. Their love is ruined when she learns that Tom has been engaged to another girl before: Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a “cure” for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr Robinson by a part-Native American “half-breed”, Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away in the process dropping the previously obtained marble, and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom's anxiety and guilt begin to grow. Tom, Huck and their friend Joe Harper run away to an island on the Mississippi, in order to "become pirates". While frolicking around and enjoying their new-found freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends.
Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky's favour after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has torn. Soon Muff Potter's trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window. Tom and Huck witness him finding a box of gold with his partner, a Spaniard, and Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal's Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero.
Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. At the sight of Tom, Injun Joe flees. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky's father, Judge Thatcher seals up the main entrance with an iron door. After a week Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves causing him to die. Injun Joe's partner accidentally drowns trying to escape.
A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave via the new entrance Tom has found and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom's robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.
Publication history
The first publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was by Chatto and Windus, in England in June 1876 (it was listed as "ready" on June 10 and was reviewed on June 24 in the literary publication The Atheneum), and in the U.S. by subscription only in December 1876. Twain and other U.S. authors used initial publication in England fairly often, since otherwise it was impossible to obtain a copyright in the British Commonwealth. In the case of Tom Sawyer, the delay between the London and U.S. editions extended much beyond what Twain envisioned, or desired. This led to widespread piracy of the work - notably a July 1876 pirated edition in Canada obtained by many American readers - and, Twain believed, to a significant loss of his royalties.
When the work did appear in the U.S., it was sold by subscription only. In this distribution method, book agents across the country took orders for the book prior to publication and then delivered the book when available. It was only with subsequent editions that the book became available retail shops.
In dictations for his autobiography, Twain claimed Tom Sawyer "must have been" the first book whose manuscript was typed on a typewriter. However, typewriter historian Darryl Rehr has concluded that Twain's first typed manuscript was Life on the Mississippi.
Adaptations
The story of Tom Sawyer has been filmed or animated multiple times since its initial publication. Some of the film adaptations of Twain's novel include:
* A 1907 silent version released by the Paramount studio
* A 1917 silent version directed by William Desmond Taylor, starring Jack Pickford as Tom
* A 1930 version directed by John Cromwell, starring Jackie Coogan as Tom
* In 1938 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was filmed in Technicolor by the Selznick Studio. It starred Tommy Kelly as Tom and was directed by Norman Taurog. Most notable was the cave sequence designed by William Cameron Menzies.
* A 1947 Soviet Union version, directed by Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatvornitsky
* A 1960 US television serial, also shown on British television
* A 1968 French/German made-for-television miniseries, directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner, starring Roland Demongeot as Tom and Marc Di Napoli as Huck
* The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968) was a half-hour live-action/animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions
* A 1973 musical version with songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, starring Johnny Whitaker as Tom and a young Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher. A TV movie version sponsored by Dr. Pepper was released that same year. It starred Buddy Ebsen as Muff Potter and was filmed in Upper Canada Village.
* Huckleberry Finn and His Friends (1979 TV series)
* The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (anime) (1980), a Japanese anime TV series by Nippon Animation, part of the World Masterpiece Theater; aired in the United States on HBO
* [[Приключения Тома Сойера и Гекльберри Финна (фильм)The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1981), another Soviet Union version directed by Stanislav Govorukhin.
* A 1984 Canadian claymation version produced by Hal Roach studios
* Tom and Huck (1995), starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Tom and Brad Renfro as Huck Finn
* A 1995 episode for the PBS Wishbone TV series "A Tail in Twain".
* The Modern Adventures of Tom Sawyer
* A 2000 animated adaptation, featuring the characters as anthropomorphic animals with an all-star voice cast, including country singers Rhett Akins (as Tom), Mark Wills (as Huck Finn), Lee Ann Womack, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. as well as Betty White as Aunt Polly
* Tom Sawyer appears as a United States Secret Service agent in the 2003 movie based on comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
* This book was featured in an episode of The Fairly Odd Parents
Stage musicals: In 1956 'We're From Missouri', a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with book, music and lyrics by Tom Boyd, was presented by the students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1960, Boyd's musical version (re-titled Tom Sawyer) was presented professionally at Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, England, and in 1961 toured provincial theatres in England.Tom Boyd's musical of TOM SAWYER was produced again in April and June 2010 in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. Another musical adaptation is Mississippi Melody, a musical by Jack Hylton.
Theatrical Adaptation: In April 2010, The Hartford Stage presented a theatrical adaptation entitled Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as part of a centennial observation of Mark Twain's passing.
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) is a semi-autobiographical novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its extended length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine". The novel is still widely referred to in English as Remembrance of Things Past, but the title In Search of Lost Time, a more accurate rendering of the French, has gained in usage since D.J. Enright's 1992 revision of the earlier translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. The complete story contains nearly 1.5 million words and is generally considered to be one of the longest novels ever written.
The novel as we know it began seriously to take shape in 1909, and work continued for the remainder of Proust's life, broken off only by his final illness and death in the autumn of 1922. The main overarching structure was in place at an early stage, and the novel is effectively complete as a work of art and a literary cosmos, but Proust kept adding new material through his final years while editing one time after another for print; the final three volumes actually contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages which only existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.
The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927; Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) himself after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs, and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it, or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. In his work, Proust explores the themes of time, space, and memory, but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic, and thematic possibilities.
Initial publication
Although different editions divide the work into a varying number of tomes, A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time is a novel consisting of seven volumes.
Vol. French titles Published English titles
1 Du côté de chez Swann 1913 Swann's Way
The Way by Swann's
2 À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs 1919 Within a Budding Grove
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
3 Le Côté de Guermantes
(published in two volumes) 1920/21 The Guermantes Way
4 Sodome et Gomorrhe
(published in two volumes) 1921/22 Cities of the Plain
Sodom and Gomorrah
5 La Prisonnière 1923 The Captive
The Prisoner
6 La Fugitive
Albertine disparue 1925 The Fugitive
The Sweet Cheat Gone
Albertine Gone
7 Le Temps retrouvé 1927 The Past Recaptured
Time Regained
Finding Time Again
Volume 1: Du côté de chez Swann (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide famously was given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic bloopers, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay for the costs of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7).
Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous "Madeleine cookie" episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.
In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.
Volume 2: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919), scheduled to be published in 1914, was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception.
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.
Volume 3: Le Côté de Guermantes originally appeared as Le Côté de Guermantes I (1920) and Le Côté de Guermantes II (1921).
Volume 4: The first forty pages of Sodome et Gomorrhe initially appeared at the end of Le Côté de Guermantes II (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 942), the remainder appearing as Sodome et Gomorrhe I (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.
Volume 5: La Prisonnière (1923), first volume of the section of the novel known as "le Roman d'Albertine" ("the Albertine novel"). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in these volumes was developed during the hiatus between the publication of Volumes 1 and 2, and they are a departure from the three-volume series announced by Proust in Du côté de chez Swann.
Volume 6: La Fugitive or Albertine disparue (1925) is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921). The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the title Albertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.
Volume 7: Much of Le Temps retrouvé (1927) was written at the same time as Du côté de chez Swann, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.
Themes
A la Recherche made a decisive break with the 19th century realist and plot-driven novel, populated by people of action and people representing different social and cultural groups or moral issues. Although parts of the novel could be read as an exploration of snobbism, deceit, jealousy, and suffering and although it contains a multitude of realistic details, the focus is not on the development of a tight plot or of a coherent evolution, but on a multiplicity of perspectives and on the formation of the experience that will serve as the foundation for the novel itself. The leading characters of the first volume (the narrator as a boy and Swann) are, by the standards of 19th century novels of any kind, remarkably introspective and non-prone to decisive actions, or to trigger such actions from other leading characters; to many readers at the time, reared on Balzac, Hugo, and Tolstoy, they would not function as centers of a well-defined plot. And while there is a rich array of symbolism in the work, it is rarely defined through any explicit "keys" leading to moral, romantic or philosophical ideas. The significance of what is happening is often placed within the memory or in the inner contemplation of what is described. This focus on the relationship between experience, memory and writing, and the radical de-emphasizing of the outward plot, have become staples of the modern novel but were almost unheard of in 1913.
The role of memory is central to the novel, introduced with the famous madeleine episode in the first section of the novel, and in the last volume, Time Regained, a flashback similar to that caused by the madeleine is the beginning of the resolution of the story. Throughout the work many similar instances of involuntary memory, triggered by sensory experiences such as sights, sounds, smells, and so on, conjure important memories for the narrator, and sometimes return attention to an earlier episode of the novel. Although Proust wrote contemporaneously with Sigmund Freud, with there being many points of similarity between their thought on the structures and mechanisms of the human mind, neither author read a word of the other's work (Bragg). Gilles Deleuze, by contrast, believed that the main focus of Proust was not memory and the past but the narrator's learning the use of "signs" to understand—and communicate—ultimate reality, and thereby becoming an artist. While Proust was bitterly aware of the experience of loss and exclusion - loss of loved ones, loss of affection, friendship, and innocent joy, which are dramatized in the novel through recurrent jealousy, betrayal and the death of loved persons - his response to this, formulated after he had discovered Ruskin, was that the work of art can recapture the lost and thus save it from destruction, at least in our minds: thus art triumphs over the destructive power of time. This element of his artistic philosophy is clearly inherited from romantic platonism, but Proust crosses it with a new intensity in describing jealousy, desire and self-doubt. (on that matter see the last quatrain of Baudelaire's poem "Une Charogne": "Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will Devour you with kisses, That I have kept the form and the divine essence Of my decomposed love!")
The nature of art is another recurring topic in the novel, and is often explored at great length. Proust sets forth a theory of art in which we are all capable of producing art, if by this we mean taking the experiences of life and transforming them in a way that shows understanding and maturity. Writing, painting and music are also discussed at great length. Morel the violinist, for example, is examined to give an example of a certain type of "artistic" character, along with other fictional artists, namely the novelist Bergotte and painter Elstir.
Homosexuality is another major theme, particularly in later volumes, most notably in Sodom and Gomorrah, the first part of which consists of a detailed account of a sexual encounter between two of the novel's male characters. Though the narrator himself is heterosexual, he invariably suspects his lovers of liaisons with other women, in a repetition of the suspicions held by Charles Swann in the first volume, with regards to his mistress and eventual wife, Odette. Several characters are forthrightly homosexual, like the Baron de Charlus, while others, such as the narrator's good friend Robert de Saint-Loup, are only later revealed to be far more closeted.
There is much debate as to how great a bearing Proust's own sexual inclination has on understanding these aspects of the novel. Although many of Proust's close family and friends suspected that he was homosexual, Proust never openly admitted this. It was only after Proust's death that André Gide, in his publication of correspondence between himself and Proust, made public Proust's homosexuality. The true nature of Proust's intimate relations with such individuals as Alfred Agostinelli and Reynaldo Hahn are well documented, though Proust was not "out and proud," except perhaps in close knit social circles. In 1949, the critic Justin O'Brien published an article in the PMLA called "Albertine the Ambiguous: Notes on Proust's Transposition of Sexes" which proposed that some female characters are best understood as actually referring to young men. Strip off the feminine ending of the names of the Narrator's lovers—Albertine, Gilberte, Andrée—and one has their masculine counterpart. This theory has become known as the "transposition of sexes theory" in Proust criticism, which in turn has been challenged in Epistemology of the Closet (1992) by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Critical reception
In Search of Lost Time is considered the definitive Modern novel by many scholars, and it had a profound effect on subsequent writers such as the Bloomsbury Group. "Oh if I could write like that!" marveled Virginia Woolf in 1922 (2:525). Proust's influence on Evelyn Waugh is manifest in A Handful of Dust (1934) in which Waugh entitles Chapter 1 "Du Cote de Chez Beaver" and Chapter 6 "Du Cote de Chez Tod." More recently, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that In Search of Lost Time is now "widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century." Vladimir Nabokov, in a 1965 interview, named the greatest prose works of the 20th century as, in order, "Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Biely's Petersburg, and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time." J. Peder Zane's book The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, collates 125 "top 10 greatest books of all time" lists by prominent living writers; In Search of Lost Time places eighth. In the 1960s, Swedish literary critic Bengt Holmqvist dubbed the novel "at once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of the 'nouveau roman'", indicating the sixties vogue of new, experimental French prose but also, by extension, other post-war attempts to fuse different planes of location, temporality and fragmented consciousness within the same novel.
Since the publication in 1992 of a revised English translation by The Modern Library, based on a new definitive French edition (1987–89), interest in Proust's novel in the English-speaking world has increased. Two substantial new biographies have appeared in English, by Edmund White and William C. Carter, and at least two books about the experience of reading Proust have appeared, by Alain de Botton and Phyllis Rose. The Proust Society of America, founded in 1997, now has three chapters: at The Mercantile Library of New York City, the Mechanic's Institute Library in San Francisco, and the Boston Athenæum Library. The French phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty, frequently refers to Swann's Way to help elucidate his own ideas.
Main characters
Proust - Personnages
Main characters - Family tree
The Narrator's household
* The narrator: A sensitive young man who wishes to become a writer, whose identity is explicitly kept vague. In volume 5, The Prisoner, he addresses the reader thus: "Now she began to speak; her first words were 'darling' or 'my darling,' followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would produce 'darling Marcel' or 'my darling Marcel.'" (Proust, 64)
* Bathilde Amédée: The narrator's grandmother. Her life and death greatly influence her daughter and grandson.
* Françoise: The narrator's faithful, stubborn maid.
The Guermantes
* Palamède de Guermantes (Baron de Charlus): An aristocratic, decadent aesthete with many antisocial habits.
* Oriane de Guermantes (Duchesse de Guermantes): The toast of Paris' high society. She lives in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain.
* Robert de Saint-Loup: An army officer and the narrator's best friend. Despite his patrician birth (he is the nephew of M. de Guermantes) and affluent lifestyle, Saint-Loup has no great fortune of his own until he marries Gilberte.
The Swanns
* Charles Swann: A friend of the narrator's family. His political views on the Dreyfus Affair and marriage to Odette ostracize him from much of high society.
* Odette de Crécy: A beautiful Parisian courtesan. Odette is also referred to as Mme Swann, the woman in pink/white, and in the final volume, Mme de Forcheville.
* Gilberte Swann: The daughter of Swann and Odette. She takes the name of her adopted father, M. de Forcheville, after Swann's death, and then becomes Mme de Saint-Loup following her marriage to Robert de Saint-Loup, which joins Swann's Way and the Guermantes Way.
Artists
* Elstir: A famous painter whose renditions of sea and sky echo the novel's theme of the mutability of human life.
* Bergotte: A well-known writer whose works the narrator has admired since childhood.
* Vinteuil: An obscure musician who gains posthumous recognition for composing a beautiful, evocative sonata.
* Berma
Others
* Charles Morel: The son of a former servant of the narrator's uncle and a gifted violinist. He profits greatly from the patronage of the Baron de Charlus and later Robert de Saint-Loup.
* Albertine Simonet: A privileged orphan of average beauty and intelligence. The narrator's romance with her is the subject of much of the novel.
* Sidonie Verdurin: A poseur who rises to the top of society through inheritance, marriage, and sheer single-mindedness. Often referred to simply as Mme. Verdurin.
Publication in English
The first six volumes were first translated into English by the Scotsman C. K. Scott Moncrieff between 1922 and his death in 1930 under the title Remembrance of Things Past, a phrase taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30; this was the first translation of the Recherche into another language. The final volume, Le Temps retrouvé, was initially published in English in the UK as Time Regained (1931), translated by Stephen Hudson (a pseudonym of Sydney Schiff), and in the US as The Past Recaptured (1932) in a translation by Frederick Blossom. Although cordial with Scott Moncrieff, Proust grudgingly remarked in a letter that Remembrance eliminated the correspondence between Temps perdu and Temps retrouvé (Painter, 352). Terence Kilmartin revised the Scott Moncrieff translation in 1981, using the new French edition of 1954. An additional revision by D.J. Enright - that is, a revision of a revision - was published by the Modern Library in 1992. It is based on the latest and most authoritative French text (1987–89), and rendered the title of the novel more literally as In Search of Lost Time. In 1995, Penguin undertook a fresh translation of In Search of Lost Time by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven different translators, one Australian, one American, and the others English. Based on the authoritative French text (of 1987-98), it was published in six volumes in Britain under the Allen Lane imprint in 2002. The first four (those which under American copyright law are in the public domain) have since been published in the US under the Viking imprint and in paperback under the Penguin Classics imprint. The remaining volumes are scheduled to come out in 2018.
Both the Modern Library and Penguin translations provide a detailed plot synopsis at the end of each volume. The last volume of the Modern Library edition, Time Regained, also includes Kilmartin's "A Guide to Proust," an index of the novel's characters, persons, places, and themes. The Modern Library volumes include a handful of endnotes, and alternative versions of some of the novel's famous episodes. The Penguin volumes each provide an extensive set of brief, non-scholarly endnotes that help identify cultural references perhaps unfamiliar to contemporary English readers. Reviews which discuss the merits of both translations can be found online at the Observer, the Telegraph, The New York Review of Books (subscription only), The New York Times, TempsPerdu.com, and Reading Proust.
English-language translations in print
* In Search of Lost Time (General Editor: Christopher Prendergast), translated by Lydia Davis, Mark Treharne, James Grieve, John Sturrock, Carol Clark, Peter Collier, & Ian Patterson. London: Allen Lane, 2002 (6 vols). Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89), except The Fugitive, which is based on the 1954 definitive French edition. The first four volumes have been published in New York by Viking, 2003–2004, but the Copyright Term Extension Act will delay the rest of the project until 2018.
o (Volume titles: The Way by Swann's (in the U.S., Swann's Way) ISBN 0-14-243796-4; In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower ISBN 0-14-303907-5; The Guermantes Way ISBN 0-14-303922-9; Sodom and Gomorrah ISBN 0-14-303931-8; The Prisoner; and The Fugitive — Finding Time Again.)
* In Search of Lost Time, translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). Revised by D.J. Enright. London: Chatto and Windus, New York: The Modern Library, 1992. Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89). ISBN 0-8129-6964-2
o (Volume titles: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove — The Guermantes Way — Sodom and Gomorrah — The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
* A Search for Lost Time: Swann's Way, translated by James Grieve. Canberra: Australian National University, 1982 ISBN 0-7081-1317-6
* Remembrance of Things Past, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). New York: Random House, 1981 (3 vols). ISBN 0-394-71243-9
o (Published in three volumes: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove; The Guermantes Way — Cities of the Plain; The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
Adaptations
Print
* The Proust Screenplay, a film adaptation by Harold Pinter published in 1978 (never filmed).
* Remembrance of Things Past, Part One: Combray; Part Two: Within a Budding Grove, vol.1; Part Three: Within a Budding Grove, vol.2; and Part Four: Un amour de Swann, vol.1 are graphic novel adaptations by Stéphane Heuet.
* Albertine, a novel based on a rewriting of Albertine by Jacqueline Rose. Vintage UK, 2002.
Screen
* Swann in Love (Un Amour de Swann), a 1984 film by Volker Schlöndorff starring Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti.
* Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé), a 1999 film by Raul Ruiz starring Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, and John Malkovich.
* La Captive, a 2000 film by Chantal Akerman.
* Quartetto Basileus (1982) uses segments from Sodom and Gomorrah and Time Regained. Le Intermittenze del cuore (2003) concerns a director working on a movie about Proust's life. Both from Italian director Fabio Capri.
Stage
* A Waste of Time, by Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald. A 4 hour long adaptation with a huge cast. Dir. by Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1980, revived 1981 plus European tour.
* Remembrance of Things Past, by Harold Pinter and Di Trevis, based on Pinter's The Proust Screenplay. Dir. by Trevis (who had acted in A Waste of Time - see above) at the Royal National Theatre in 2000.
* Eleven Rooms of Proust, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman. A series of 11 vignettes from In Search of Lost Time, staged throughout an abandoned factory in Chicago.
* My Life With Albertine, a 2003 Off-Broadway musical with book by Richard Nelson, music by Ricky Ian Gordon, and lyrics by both.
Radio
* In Search of Lost Time dramatised by Michael Butt for the The Classic Serial, broadcast between February 6, 2005 and March 13, 2005. Starring James Wilby, it condensed the entire series into six episodes. Although considerably shortened, it received excellent reviews .
The novel as we know it began seriously to take shape in 1909, and work continued for the remainder of Proust's life, broken off only by his final illness and death in the autumn of 1922. The main overarching structure was in place at an early stage, and the novel is effectively complete as a work of art and a literary cosmos, but Proust kept adding new material through his final years while editing one time after another for print; the final three volumes actually contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages which only existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.
The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927; Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) himself after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs, and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it, or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. In his work, Proust explores the themes of time, space, and memory, but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic, and thematic possibilities.
Initial publication
Although different editions divide the work into a varying number of tomes, A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time is a novel consisting of seven volumes.
Vol. French titles Published English titles
1 Du côté de chez Swann 1913 Swann's Way
The Way by Swann's
2 À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs 1919 Within a Budding Grove
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
3 Le Côté de Guermantes
(published in two volumes) 1920/21 The Guermantes Way
4 Sodome et Gomorrhe
(published in two volumes) 1921/22 Cities of the Plain
Sodom and Gomorrah
5 La Prisonnière 1923 The Captive
The Prisoner
6 La Fugitive
Albertine disparue 1925 The Fugitive
The Sweet Cheat Gone
Albertine Gone
7 Le Temps retrouvé 1927 The Past Recaptured
Time Regained
Finding Time Again
Volume 1: Du côté de chez Swann (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide famously was given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic bloopers, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay for the costs of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7).
Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous "Madeleine cookie" episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.
In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.
Volume 2: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919), scheduled to be published in 1914, was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception.
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.
Volume 3: Le Côté de Guermantes originally appeared as Le Côté de Guermantes I (1920) and Le Côté de Guermantes II (1921).
Volume 4: The first forty pages of Sodome et Gomorrhe initially appeared at the end of Le Côté de Guermantes II (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 942), the remainder appearing as Sodome et Gomorrhe I (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.
Volume 5: La Prisonnière (1923), first volume of the section of the novel known as "le Roman d'Albertine" ("the Albertine novel"). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in these volumes was developed during the hiatus between the publication of Volumes 1 and 2, and they are a departure from the three-volume series announced by Proust in Du côté de chez Swann.
Volume 6: La Fugitive or Albertine disparue (1925) is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921). The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the title Albertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.
Volume 7: Much of Le Temps retrouvé (1927) was written at the same time as Du côté de chez Swann, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.
Themes
A la Recherche made a decisive break with the 19th century realist and plot-driven novel, populated by people of action and people representing different social and cultural groups or moral issues. Although parts of the novel could be read as an exploration of snobbism, deceit, jealousy, and suffering and although it contains a multitude of realistic details, the focus is not on the development of a tight plot or of a coherent evolution, but on a multiplicity of perspectives and on the formation of the experience that will serve as the foundation for the novel itself. The leading characters of the first volume (the narrator as a boy and Swann) are, by the standards of 19th century novels of any kind, remarkably introspective and non-prone to decisive actions, or to trigger such actions from other leading characters; to many readers at the time, reared on Balzac, Hugo, and Tolstoy, they would not function as centers of a well-defined plot. And while there is a rich array of symbolism in the work, it is rarely defined through any explicit "keys" leading to moral, romantic or philosophical ideas. The significance of what is happening is often placed within the memory or in the inner contemplation of what is described. This focus on the relationship between experience, memory and writing, and the radical de-emphasizing of the outward plot, have become staples of the modern novel but were almost unheard of in 1913.
The role of memory is central to the novel, introduced with the famous madeleine episode in the first section of the novel, and in the last volume, Time Regained, a flashback similar to that caused by the madeleine is the beginning of the resolution of the story. Throughout the work many similar instances of involuntary memory, triggered by sensory experiences such as sights, sounds, smells, and so on, conjure important memories for the narrator, and sometimes return attention to an earlier episode of the novel. Although Proust wrote contemporaneously with Sigmund Freud, with there being many points of similarity between their thought on the structures and mechanisms of the human mind, neither author read a word of the other's work (Bragg). Gilles Deleuze, by contrast, believed that the main focus of Proust was not memory and the past but the narrator's learning the use of "signs" to understand—and communicate—ultimate reality, and thereby becoming an artist. While Proust was bitterly aware of the experience of loss and exclusion - loss of loved ones, loss of affection, friendship, and innocent joy, which are dramatized in the novel through recurrent jealousy, betrayal and the death of loved persons - his response to this, formulated after he had discovered Ruskin, was that the work of art can recapture the lost and thus save it from destruction, at least in our minds: thus art triumphs over the destructive power of time. This element of his artistic philosophy is clearly inherited from romantic platonism, but Proust crosses it with a new intensity in describing jealousy, desire and self-doubt. (on that matter see the last quatrain of Baudelaire's poem "Une Charogne": "Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will Devour you with kisses, That I have kept the form and the divine essence Of my decomposed love!")
The nature of art is another recurring topic in the novel, and is often explored at great length. Proust sets forth a theory of art in which we are all capable of producing art, if by this we mean taking the experiences of life and transforming them in a way that shows understanding and maturity. Writing, painting and music are also discussed at great length. Morel the violinist, for example, is examined to give an example of a certain type of "artistic" character, along with other fictional artists, namely the novelist Bergotte and painter Elstir.
Homosexuality is another major theme, particularly in later volumes, most notably in Sodom and Gomorrah, the first part of which consists of a detailed account of a sexual encounter between two of the novel's male characters. Though the narrator himself is heterosexual, he invariably suspects his lovers of liaisons with other women, in a repetition of the suspicions held by Charles Swann in the first volume, with regards to his mistress and eventual wife, Odette. Several characters are forthrightly homosexual, like the Baron de Charlus, while others, such as the narrator's good friend Robert de Saint-Loup, are only later revealed to be far more closeted.
There is much debate as to how great a bearing Proust's own sexual inclination has on understanding these aspects of the novel. Although many of Proust's close family and friends suspected that he was homosexual, Proust never openly admitted this. It was only after Proust's death that André Gide, in his publication of correspondence between himself and Proust, made public Proust's homosexuality. The true nature of Proust's intimate relations with such individuals as Alfred Agostinelli and Reynaldo Hahn are well documented, though Proust was not "out and proud," except perhaps in close knit social circles. In 1949, the critic Justin O'Brien published an article in the PMLA called "Albertine the Ambiguous: Notes on Proust's Transposition of Sexes" which proposed that some female characters are best understood as actually referring to young men. Strip off the feminine ending of the names of the Narrator's lovers—Albertine, Gilberte, Andrée—and one has their masculine counterpart. This theory has become known as the "transposition of sexes theory" in Proust criticism, which in turn has been challenged in Epistemology of the Closet (1992) by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Critical reception
In Search of Lost Time is considered the definitive Modern novel by many scholars, and it had a profound effect on subsequent writers such as the Bloomsbury Group. "Oh if I could write like that!" marveled Virginia Woolf in 1922 (2:525). Proust's influence on Evelyn Waugh is manifest in A Handful of Dust (1934) in which Waugh entitles Chapter 1 "Du Cote de Chez Beaver" and Chapter 6 "Du Cote de Chez Tod." More recently, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that In Search of Lost Time is now "widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century." Vladimir Nabokov, in a 1965 interview, named the greatest prose works of the 20th century as, in order, "Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Biely's Petersburg, and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time." J. Peder Zane's book The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, collates 125 "top 10 greatest books of all time" lists by prominent living writers; In Search of Lost Time places eighth. In the 1960s, Swedish literary critic Bengt Holmqvist dubbed the novel "at once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of the 'nouveau roman'", indicating the sixties vogue of new, experimental French prose but also, by extension, other post-war attempts to fuse different planes of location, temporality and fragmented consciousness within the same novel.
Since the publication in 1992 of a revised English translation by The Modern Library, based on a new definitive French edition (1987–89), interest in Proust's novel in the English-speaking world has increased. Two substantial new biographies have appeared in English, by Edmund White and William C. Carter, and at least two books about the experience of reading Proust have appeared, by Alain de Botton and Phyllis Rose. The Proust Society of America, founded in 1997, now has three chapters: at The Mercantile Library of New York City, the Mechanic's Institute Library in San Francisco, and the Boston Athenæum Library. The French phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty, frequently refers to Swann's Way to help elucidate his own ideas.
Main characters
Proust - Personnages
Main characters - Family tree
The Narrator's household
* The narrator: A sensitive young man who wishes to become a writer, whose identity is explicitly kept vague. In volume 5, The Prisoner, he addresses the reader thus: "Now she began to speak; her first words were 'darling' or 'my darling,' followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would produce 'darling Marcel' or 'my darling Marcel.'" (Proust, 64)
* Bathilde Amédée: The narrator's grandmother. Her life and death greatly influence her daughter and grandson.
* Françoise: The narrator's faithful, stubborn maid.
The Guermantes
* Palamède de Guermantes (Baron de Charlus): An aristocratic, decadent aesthete with many antisocial habits.
* Oriane de Guermantes (Duchesse de Guermantes): The toast of Paris' high society. She lives in the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain.
* Robert de Saint-Loup: An army officer and the narrator's best friend. Despite his patrician birth (he is the nephew of M. de Guermantes) and affluent lifestyle, Saint-Loup has no great fortune of his own until he marries Gilberte.
The Swanns
* Charles Swann: A friend of the narrator's family. His political views on the Dreyfus Affair and marriage to Odette ostracize him from much of high society.
* Odette de Crécy: A beautiful Parisian courtesan. Odette is also referred to as Mme Swann, the woman in pink/white, and in the final volume, Mme de Forcheville.
* Gilberte Swann: The daughter of Swann and Odette. She takes the name of her adopted father, M. de Forcheville, after Swann's death, and then becomes Mme de Saint-Loup following her marriage to Robert de Saint-Loup, which joins Swann's Way and the Guermantes Way.
Artists
* Elstir: A famous painter whose renditions of sea and sky echo the novel's theme of the mutability of human life.
* Bergotte: A well-known writer whose works the narrator has admired since childhood.
* Vinteuil: An obscure musician who gains posthumous recognition for composing a beautiful, evocative sonata.
* Berma
Others
* Charles Morel: The son of a former servant of the narrator's uncle and a gifted violinist. He profits greatly from the patronage of the Baron de Charlus and later Robert de Saint-Loup.
* Albertine Simonet: A privileged orphan of average beauty and intelligence. The narrator's romance with her is the subject of much of the novel.
* Sidonie Verdurin: A poseur who rises to the top of society through inheritance, marriage, and sheer single-mindedness. Often referred to simply as Mme. Verdurin.
Publication in English
The first six volumes were first translated into English by the Scotsman C. K. Scott Moncrieff between 1922 and his death in 1930 under the title Remembrance of Things Past, a phrase taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30; this was the first translation of the Recherche into another language. The final volume, Le Temps retrouvé, was initially published in English in the UK as Time Regained (1931), translated by Stephen Hudson (a pseudonym of Sydney Schiff), and in the US as The Past Recaptured (1932) in a translation by Frederick Blossom. Although cordial with Scott Moncrieff, Proust grudgingly remarked in a letter that Remembrance eliminated the correspondence between Temps perdu and Temps retrouvé (Painter, 352). Terence Kilmartin revised the Scott Moncrieff translation in 1981, using the new French edition of 1954. An additional revision by D.J. Enright - that is, a revision of a revision - was published by the Modern Library in 1992. It is based on the latest and most authoritative French text (1987–89), and rendered the title of the novel more literally as In Search of Lost Time. In 1995, Penguin undertook a fresh translation of In Search of Lost Time by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven different translators, one Australian, one American, and the others English. Based on the authoritative French text (of 1987-98), it was published in six volumes in Britain under the Allen Lane imprint in 2002. The first four (those which under American copyright law are in the public domain) have since been published in the US under the Viking imprint and in paperback under the Penguin Classics imprint. The remaining volumes are scheduled to come out in 2018.
Both the Modern Library and Penguin translations provide a detailed plot synopsis at the end of each volume. The last volume of the Modern Library edition, Time Regained, also includes Kilmartin's "A Guide to Proust," an index of the novel's characters, persons, places, and themes. The Modern Library volumes include a handful of endnotes, and alternative versions of some of the novel's famous episodes. The Penguin volumes each provide an extensive set of brief, non-scholarly endnotes that help identify cultural references perhaps unfamiliar to contemporary English readers. Reviews which discuss the merits of both translations can be found online at the Observer, the Telegraph, The New York Review of Books (subscription only), The New York Times, TempsPerdu.com, and Reading Proust.
English-language translations in print
* In Search of Lost Time (General Editor: Christopher Prendergast), translated by Lydia Davis, Mark Treharne, James Grieve, John Sturrock, Carol Clark, Peter Collier, & Ian Patterson. London: Allen Lane, 2002 (6 vols). Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89), except The Fugitive, which is based on the 1954 definitive French edition. The first four volumes have been published in New York by Viking, 2003–2004, but the Copyright Term Extension Act will delay the rest of the project until 2018.
o (Volume titles: The Way by Swann's (in the U.S., Swann's Way) ISBN 0-14-243796-4; In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower ISBN 0-14-303907-5; The Guermantes Way ISBN 0-14-303922-9; Sodom and Gomorrah ISBN 0-14-303931-8; The Prisoner; and The Fugitive — Finding Time Again.)
* In Search of Lost Time, translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). Revised by D.J. Enright. London: Chatto and Windus, New York: The Modern Library, 1992. Based on the most recent definitive French edition (1987–89). ISBN 0-8129-6964-2
o (Volume titles: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove — The Guermantes Way — Sodom and Gomorrah — The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
* A Search for Lost Time: Swann's Way, translated by James Grieve. Canberra: Australian National University, 1982 ISBN 0-7081-1317-6
* Remembrance of Things Past, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor (Vol. 7). New York: Random House, 1981 (3 vols). ISBN 0-394-71243-9
o (Published in three volumes: Swann's Way — Within a Budding Grove; The Guermantes Way — Cities of the Plain; The Captive — The Fugitive — Time Regained.)
Adaptations
* The Proust Screenplay, a film adaptation by Harold Pinter published in 1978 (never filmed).
* Remembrance of Things Past, Part One: Combray; Part Two: Within a Budding Grove, vol.1; Part Three: Within a Budding Grove, vol.2; and Part Four: Un amour de Swann, vol.1 are graphic novel adaptations by Stéphane Heuet.
* Albertine, a novel based on a rewriting of Albertine by Jacqueline Rose. Vintage UK, 2002.
Screen
* Swann in Love (Un Amour de Swann), a 1984 film by Volker Schlöndorff starring Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti.
* Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé), a 1999 film by Raul Ruiz starring Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, and John Malkovich.
* La Captive, a 2000 film by Chantal Akerman.
* Quartetto Basileus (1982) uses segments from Sodom and Gomorrah and Time Regained. Le Intermittenze del cuore (2003) concerns a director working on a movie about Proust's life. Both from Italian director Fabio Capri.
Stage
* A Waste of Time, by Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald. A 4 hour long adaptation with a huge cast. Dir. by Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1980, revived 1981 plus European tour.
* Remembrance of Things Past, by Harold Pinter and Di Trevis, based on Pinter's The Proust Screenplay. Dir. by Trevis (who had acted in A Waste of Time - see above) at the Royal National Theatre in 2000.
* Eleven Rooms of Proust, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman. A series of 11 vignettes from In Search of Lost Time, staged throughout an abandoned factory in Chicago.
* My Life With Albertine, a 2003 Off-Broadway musical with book by Richard Nelson, music by Ricky Ian Gordon, and lyrics by both.
Radio
* In Search of Lost Time dramatised by Michael Butt for the The Classic Serial, broadcast between February 6, 2005 and March 13, 2005. Starring James Wilby, it condensed the entire series into six episodes. Although considerably shortened, it received excellent reviews .
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black), 1830, by Stendhal, is a historical psychological novel in two volumes, chronicling a provincial young man’s attempts to socially rise beyond his plebeian upbringing with a combination of talent and hard work, deception and hypocrisy — yet who ultimately allows his passions to betray him. In literature, it is considered the first realist novel.
The novel’s composite full title, Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siécle (The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century), indicates its two-fold literary purpose, a psychological portrait of the romantic protagonist, Julien Sorel, and an analytic, sociological satire of the French social order under the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30). In English, Le Rouge et le Noir is variously translated as Red and Black, Scarlet and Black, and The Red and the Black, without the sub-title.
Background
Occurring from September 1826 until July 1831, Le Rouge et le Noir is the Bildungsroman of Julien Sorel, the intelligent, ambitious, protagonist from a poor family, who fails to understand much about the ways of the world he sets to conquer. He harbours many romantic illusions, becoming mostly a pawn in the political machinations of the ruthless influential people about him. The adventures of the flawed hero satirize French nineteenth-century society, especially the hypocrisy and materialism of the aristocracy and members of the Roman Catholic Church in foretelling the coming radical changes that will depose them from French society.
The first volume’s epigraph is attributed to Danton: “La vérité, l’âpre vérité” (“The truth, the harsh truth”), which is fictional, like most of the chapter epigraphs. The first chapter of each volume repeats the title Le Rouge et le Noir and the Chronique de 1830 sub-title. The novel’s title denotes the contrasting uniforms of the Army and the Church. Early in the story, Julien Sorel realistically observes that under the Bourbon restoration it is impossible for a man of his plebian social class to distinguish himself in the army (as he might have done under Napoleon), hence only a Church career offers social advancement and glory.
In some editions, the first book ("Livre premier", ending after Chapter XXX) concludes with the quotation: “To the Happy Few”, a dedication variously interpreted to mean either the few readers who could understand Stendhal’s writing; or a Shakespearean allusion to Henry V (1599); or a sardonic reference to the well-born of society (viz. Canto 11 Don Juan, 1821, by Byron)l or to those living per “Beylisme”: personal happiness being the purpose of existence — accordingly, every action taken to achieve that is permissible — hence Julien’s expediency with people — wherein “La force d’ame” (“Force of the soul”) is the most important virtue, realised as courage, resolution, and moral energy. (It seems most French editions do not have this quote, for unclear reasons; as is well-known, it appears also at the end of "La Chartreuse de Parme").
Plot
In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class.
Book I presents the ambitious son of a carpenter in the (fictional) Verrières village, in Franche-Comté, France, who would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army, than work his father’s timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectations. In the event, Julien Sorel becomes an acolyte of the abbé Chénal, the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a post as the tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. Despite appearing to be a pious, austere cleric, Julien is uninterested in the Bible beyond its literary value, and how he can use memorised passages (learnt in Latin) to impress important people.
He enters a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife; it ends badly when exposed to the village, by her chambermaid, Elisa, who had romantic designs upon him. The abbé Chénal orders Julien to a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. The initially cynical seminary director, the abbé Pirard (of the Jansenist faction more hated that the Jesuit faction in the diocese), likes Julien, and becomes his protector. Disgusted by the Church’s political machinations, the abbé Pirard leaves the seminary, yet first rescues Julien from the persecution he would have suffered as his protégé, by recommending him as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Roman Catholic legitimist.
Book II chronicles the time leading to the July Revolution of 1830, and Julien Sorel’s Parisian life, as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite moving among high society, the family and their friends, condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian — his intellectual talents notwithstanding. In his boundlessly ambitious rise in the world, Julien perceives the materialism and hypocrisy important to the élite of Parisian society, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for well-born men of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility to progressively participate in the public affairs of the nation with any success.
The Marquis de la Mole takes Julien to a secret meeting, then despatches him on a dangerous mission to communicate a political letter (that he has memorised) to the Duc d'Angouleme, who is exiled in England; however, the callow Julien is mentally distracted, by an unsatisfying love affair, thus he only learns the message by rote, but not its political significance as a legitimist plot. Unwittingly, the plebeian Julien Sorel risks his life in secret service to the right-wing monarchists he most opposes; to himself, Julien rationalises such action as merely helping the Marquis, his employer, whom he respects.
Meanwhile, in the preceding months, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, had become emotionally torn, between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued, by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness (he won her over aristocrat suitors). Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections: a cynical jeu d’amour proffered to him by Prince Korasoff, a Russian man-of-the-world. At great emotional cost, Julien feigns indifference to Mathilde, provoking her jealousy with a sheaf of love-letters meant to woo Madame de Fervaques, a widow in the social circle of the de la Mole family. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; yet, whilst he was on diplomatic mission in England, she became officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy.
Learning of Julien’s romantic liaison with Mathilde, the Marquis de la Mole is angered, but relents before her determination, and his affection for him, and bestows upon Julien an income-producing property attached to an aristocratic title, and a military commission in the army. Although ready to bless their marriage, he changes his mind upon receiving the reply to a character-reference-letter he wrote to the abbé Chénal, Julien’s previous employer in the village of Verrières; however, the reply letter, written by Madame de Rênal — at the urging of her confessor priest — warns the Marquis that Julien Sorel is a social-climbing cad who preys upon emotionally vulnerable women.
On learning the Marquis’s disapproval of the marriage, Julien Sorel travels to his home village of Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal during Mass in the village church; she survives. Despite the efforts of Mathilde, Madame de Rênal, and the priests devoted to him since his early life, Julien Sorel is determined to die — because the materialist society of Bourbon Restoration France will not accommodate a low-born man of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility possessing neither money nor social connections.
Meanwhile, the presumptive duke, Monsieur de Croisenois, one of the fortunate few of Bourbon France, is killed in a duel fought over a slur upon the honour of Mathilde de la Mole. Despite her undiminished love for Julien, his imperiously intellectual nature, and its component romantic exhibitionism, render Mathilde’s prison visits to him a duty.
Moreover, when Julien learns he did not kill Madame de Rênal, that resurrects his intemperate love for her — lain dormant throughout his Parisian time and his passion for Mathilde, who visits him during the final days of his life. Afterwards, Mathilde de la Mole re-enacts the cherished, sixteenth-century French tale of Queen Margot visiting her dead lover, Joseph Boniface de La Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. In the nineteenth century, Mathilde de la Mole so treated Julien Sorel’s severed head, making a shrine of his tomb, in the Italian fashion.
Structure and themes
Le Rouge et le Noir occurs in the latter years of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30) and the days of the 1830 July Revolution that established the Kingdom of the French (1830–48). Julien Sorel’s worldly ambitions are motivated by the emotional tensions, between his idealistic Republicanism (especially nostalgic allegiance to Napoleon), and the realistic politics of counter-revolutionary conspiracy, by Jesuit-supported legitimists, notably the Marquis de la Mole, whom Julien serves, for personal gain. Presuming a knowledgeable reader, the novelist Stendhal only alludes to the historical background of Le Rouge et le Noir — yet did sub-title it Chronique de 1830 (“Chronicle of 1830”). Moreover, the reader wishing an exposé of the same historical background might wish to read Lucien Leuwen (1834), Stendhal’s un-finished novel, posthumously published in 1894.
Stendhal repeatedly questions the possibility, and the desirability, of “sincerity”, because most of the characters, especially Julien Sorel, are acutely aware of having to play a role to gain social approval. In that nineteenth-century context, the word “hypocrisy” denoted the affectation of high religious sentiment; in The Red and the Black it connotes the contradiction between thinking and feeling.
In Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, 1961, (Deceit, Desire and the Novel) philosopher and critic René Girard identifies in Le Rouge et le Noir the triangular structure he denominates as “mimetic desire”, which reveals how a person’s desire for another is always mediated by a third party, i.e. one desires a person only when he or she is desired by someone else. Girard’s proposition accounts for the perversity of the Mathilde–Julien relationship, especially when he begins courting the widow Mme de Fervaques, to pique Mathilde’s jealousy, but also Julien’s fascination with and membership to the high society he simultaneously desires and despises; to wit, in achieving said literary effect, Stendhal wrote the epigraphs — literary, poetic, historic quotations — that he attributed to others.
Literary and critical significance
The novel marks the beginning of realism.
André Gide said that The Red and the Black was a novel ahead of its time, that it was a novel for readers in the twentieth century. In Stendhal’s time, prose novels included dialogue and omniscient narrator descriptions; his great contribution to literary technique was describing the psychologies (feelings, thoughts, inner monologues) of the characters, resultantly he is considered the creator of the psychological novel.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (1948), the protagonist Hugo Barine suggests pseudonyms for himself, including “Julien Sorel”, whom he resembles.
Joyce Carol Oates stated in the Afterword to her novel them that she originally titled the manuscript Love and Money as a nod to classic 19th century novels, among them, The Red and The Black "whose class-conscious hero Julien Sorel is less idealistic, greedier, and crueler than Jules Wendell but is cleary his spiritual kinsman".
Translations
Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siècle (1830) was first translated to English circa 1900; the best-known translation, The Red and the Black (1926), by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrief, has been, like his other translations, characterised as one of his “fine, spirited renderings, not entirely accurate on minor points of meaning . . . Scott Moncrieff’s versions have not really been superseded”. The version by Robert M. Adams, for the Norton Critical Editions series, also is highly regarded; it “is more colloquial; his edition includes an informative section on backgrounds and sources, and excerpts from critical studies”. About Burton Raffel’s 2006 translation for the Modern Library, an anonymous Amazon.com reviewer said it is “actually a vulgar, anachronistic retelling of Stendhal’s novel. I recall abandoning it in disgust when the main character refers to his life as a total ‘blast’ ”. MTV was obviously very popular in 1838 [sic] France”. In its stead, that reviewer recommends C. K. Scott-Moncrieff’s translation, revised by scholar Ann Jefferson, (Everyman paperback, ISBN 0460876430).
Film adaptations
* Der geheime Kurier (The Secret Courier) is a silent 1928 German film by Gennaro Righelli, featuring Ivan Mosjoukine, Lil Dagover, and Valeria Blanka.
* Il Corriere del re (The Courier of the King) is a black-and-white 1947 Italian film adaptation of the story also directed by Gennaro Righelli. It features Rossano Brazzi, Valentina Cortese, and Irasema Dilián.
* Another film adaptation of the novel was released in 1954, directed by Claude Autant-Lara. It stars Gerard Philipe, Antonella Lualdi and Danielle Darrieux. It won the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics award for the best film of the year.
* Le Rouge et le Noir is a 1961 French made-for-TV film version directed by Pierre Cardinal, with Robert Etcheverry, Micheline Presle, Marie Laforêt, and Jean-Roger Caussimon.
* A BBC TV mini-series in five episodes The Scarlet and the Black, was made in 1965, starring John Stride, June Tobin, and Karin Fernald.
* Krasnoe i chyornoe (Red and Black) is a 1976 Soviet film version, directed by Sergei Gerasimov, with Nikolai Yeryomenko Ml, Natalya Bondarchuk, and Natalya Belokhvostikova.
* Another BBC TV mini-series called The Scarlet and the Black was first broadcast in 1993, starring Ewan McGregor, Rachel Weisz and Stratford Johns as the Abbe Pirard. A notable addition to the plot was the spirit of Napoleon (Christopher Fulford) who advises Sorel (McGregor) through his rise and fall.
* A made-for-TV film version of the novel called The Red and the Black was first broadcast in 1997 by Koch Lorber Films, starring Kim Rossi Stuart, Carole Bouquet and Judith Godrèche; it was directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe. This version is available on DVD.
The novel’s composite full title, Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siécle (The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century), indicates its two-fold literary purpose, a psychological portrait of the romantic protagonist, Julien Sorel, and an analytic, sociological satire of the French social order under the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30). In English, Le Rouge et le Noir is variously translated as Red and Black, Scarlet and Black, and The Red and the Black, without the sub-title.
Background
Occurring from September 1826 until July 1831, Le Rouge et le Noir is the Bildungsroman of Julien Sorel, the intelligent, ambitious, protagonist from a poor family, who fails to understand much about the ways of the world he sets to conquer. He harbours many romantic illusions, becoming mostly a pawn in the political machinations of the ruthless influential people about him. The adventures of the flawed hero satirize French nineteenth-century society, especially the hypocrisy and materialism of the aristocracy and members of the Roman Catholic Church in foretelling the coming radical changes that will depose them from French society.
The first volume’s epigraph is attributed to Danton: “La vérité, l’âpre vérité” (“The truth, the harsh truth”), which is fictional, like most of the chapter epigraphs. The first chapter of each volume repeats the title Le Rouge et le Noir and the Chronique de 1830 sub-title. The novel’s title denotes the contrasting uniforms of the Army and the Church. Early in the story, Julien Sorel realistically observes that under the Bourbon restoration it is impossible for a man of his plebian social class to distinguish himself in the army (as he might have done under Napoleon), hence only a Church career offers social advancement and glory.
In some editions, the first book ("Livre premier", ending after Chapter XXX) concludes with the quotation: “To the Happy Few”, a dedication variously interpreted to mean either the few readers who could understand Stendhal’s writing; or a Shakespearean allusion to Henry V (1599); or a sardonic reference to the well-born of society (viz. Canto 11 Don Juan, 1821, by Byron)l or to those living per “Beylisme”: personal happiness being the purpose of existence — accordingly, every action taken to achieve that is permissible — hence Julien’s expediency with people — wherein “La force d’ame” (“Force of the soul”) is the most important virtue, realised as courage, resolution, and moral energy. (It seems most French editions do not have this quote, for unclear reasons; as is well-known, it appears also at the end of "La Chartreuse de Parme").
Plot
In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class.
Book I presents the ambitious son of a carpenter in the (fictional) Verrières village, in Franche-Comté, France, who would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army, than work his father’s timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectations. In the event, Julien Sorel becomes an acolyte of the abbé Chénal, the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a post as the tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. Despite appearing to be a pious, austere cleric, Julien is uninterested in the Bible beyond its literary value, and how he can use memorised passages (learnt in Latin) to impress important people.
He enters a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife; it ends badly when exposed to the village, by her chambermaid, Elisa, who had romantic designs upon him. The abbé Chénal orders Julien to a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. The initially cynical seminary director, the abbé Pirard (of the Jansenist faction more hated that the Jesuit faction in the diocese), likes Julien, and becomes his protector. Disgusted by the Church’s political machinations, the abbé Pirard leaves the seminary, yet first rescues Julien from the persecution he would have suffered as his protégé, by recommending him as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Roman Catholic legitimist.
Book II chronicles the time leading to the July Revolution of 1830, and Julien Sorel’s Parisian life, as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite moving among high society, the family and their friends, condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian — his intellectual talents notwithstanding. In his boundlessly ambitious rise in the world, Julien perceives the materialism and hypocrisy important to the élite of Parisian society, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for well-born men of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility to progressively participate in the public affairs of the nation with any success.
The Marquis de la Mole takes Julien to a secret meeting, then despatches him on a dangerous mission to communicate a political letter (that he has memorised) to the Duc d'Angouleme, who is exiled in England; however, the callow Julien is mentally distracted, by an unsatisfying love affair, thus he only learns the message by rote, but not its political significance as a legitimist plot. Unwittingly, the plebeian Julien Sorel risks his life in secret service to the right-wing monarchists he most opposes; to himself, Julien rationalises such action as merely helping the Marquis, his employer, whom he respects.
Meanwhile, in the preceding months, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, had become emotionally torn, between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued, by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness (he won her over aristocrat suitors). Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections: a cynical jeu d’amour proffered to him by Prince Korasoff, a Russian man-of-the-world. At great emotional cost, Julien feigns indifference to Mathilde, provoking her jealousy with a sheaf of love-letters meant to woo Madame de Fervaques, a widow in the social circle of the de la Mole family. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; yet, whilst he was on diplomatic mission in England, she became officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy.
Learning of Julien’s romantic liaison with Mathilde, the Marquis de la Mole is angered, but relents before her determination, and his affection for him, and bestows upon Julien an income-producing property attached to an aristocratic title, and a military commission in the army. Although ready to bless their marriage, he changes his mind upon receiving the reply to a character-reference-letter he wrote to the abbé Chénal, Julien’s previous employer in the village of Verrières; however, the reply letter, written by Madame de Rênal — at the urging of her confessor priest — warns the Marquis that Julien Sorel is a social-climbing cad who preys upon emotionally vulnerable women.
On learning the Marquis’s disapproval of the marriage, Julien Sorel travels to his home village of Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal during Mass in the village church; she survives. Despite the efforts of Mathilde, Madame de Rênal, and the priests devoted to him since his early life, Julien Sorel is determined to die — because the materialist society of Bourbon Restoration France will not accommodate a low-born man of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility possessing neither money nor social connections.
Meanwhile, the presumptive duke, Monsieur de Croisenois, one of the fortunate few of Bourbon France, is killed in a duel fought over a slur upon the honour of Mathilde de la Mole. Despite her undiminished love for Julien, his imperiously intellectual nature, and its component romantic exhibitionism, render Mathilde’s prison visits to him a duty.
Moreover, when Julien learns he did not kill Madame de Rênal, that resurrects his intemperate love for her — lain dormant throughout his Parisian time and his passion for Mathilde, who visits him during the final days of his life. Afterwards, Mathilde de la Mole re-enacts the cherished, sixteenth-century French tale of Queen Margot visiting her dead lover, Joseph Boniface de La Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. In the nineteenth century, Mathilde de la Mole so treated Julien Sorel’s severed head, making a shrine of his tomb, in the Italian fashion.
Structure and themes
Le Rouge et le Noir occurs in the latter years of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30) and the days of the 1830 July Revolution that established the Kingdom of the French (1830–48). Julien Sorel’s worldly ambitions are motivated by the emotional tensions, between his idealistic Republicanism (especially nostalgic allegiance to Napoleon), and the realistic politics of counter-revolutionary conspiracy, by Jesuit-supported legitimists, notably the Marquis de la Mole, whom Julien serves, for personal gain. Presuming a knowledgeable reader, the novelist Stendhal only alludes to the historical background of Le Rouge et le Noir — yet did sub-title it Chronique de 1830 (“Chronicle of 1830”). Moreover, the reader wishing an exposé of the same historical background might wish to read Lucien Leuwen (1834), Stendhal’s un-finished novel, posthumously published in 1894.
Stendhal repeatedly questions the possibility, and the desirability, of “sincerity”, because most of the characters, especially Julien Sorel, are acutely aware of having to play a role to gain social approval. In that nineteenth-century context, the word “hypocrisy” denoted the affectation of high religious sentiment; in The Red and the Black it connotes the contradiction between thinking and feeling.
In Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, 1961, (Deceit, Desire and the Novel) philosopher and critic René Girard identifies in Le Rouge et le Noir the triangular structure he denominates as “mimetic desire”, which reveals how a person’s desire for another is always mediated by a third party, i.e. one desires a person only when he or she is desired by someone else. Girard’s proposition accounts for the perversity of the Mathilde–Julien relationship, especially when he begins courting the widow Mme de Fervaques, to pique Mathilde’s jealousy, but also Julien’s fascination with and membership to the high society he simultaneously desires and despises; to wit, in achieving said literary effect, Stendhal wrote the epigraphs — literary, poetic, historic quotations — that he attributed to others.
Literary and critical significance
The novel marks the beginning of realism.
André Gide said that The Red and the Black was a novel ahead of its time, that it was a novel for readers in the twentieth century. In Stendhal’s time, prose novels included dialogue and omniscient narrator descriptions; his great contribution to literary technique was describing the psychologies (feelings, thoughts, inner monologues) of the characters, resultantly he is considered the creator of the psychological novel.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (1948), the protagonist Hugo Barine suggests pseudonyms for himself, including “Julien Sorel”, whom he resembles.
Joyce Carol Oates stated in the Afterword to her novel them that she originally titled the manuscript Love and Money as a nod to classic 19th century novels, among them, The Red and The Black "whose class-conscious hero Julien Sorel is less idealistic, greedier, and crueler than Jules Wendell but is cleary his spiritual kinsman".
Translations
Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe siècle (1830) was first translated to English circa 1900; the best-known translation, The Red and the Black (1926), by Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrief, has been, like his other translations, characterised as one of his “fine, spirited renderings, not entirely accurate on minor points of meaning . . . Scott Moncrieff’s versions have not really been superseded”. The version by Robert M. Adams, for the Norton Critical Editions series, also is highly regarded; it “is more colloquial; his edition includes an informative section on backgrounds and sources, and excerpts from critical studies”. About Burton Raffel’s 2006 translation for the Modern Library, an anonymous Amazon.com reviewer said it is “actually a vulgar, anachronistic retelling of Stendhal’s novel. I recall abandoning it in disgust when the main character refers to his life as a total ‘blast’ ”. MTV was obviously very popular in 1838 [sic] France”. In its stead, that reviewer recommends C. K. Scott-Moncrieff’s translation, revised by scholar Ann Jefferson, (Everyman paperback, ISBN 0460876430).
Film adaptations
* Der geheime Kurier (The Secret Courier) is a silent 1928 German film by Gennaro Righelli, featuring Ivan Mosjoukine, Lil Dagover, and Valeria Blanka.
* Il Corriere del re (The Courier of the King) is a black-and-white 1947 Italian film adaptation of the story also directed by Gennaro Righelli. It features Rossano Brazzi, Valentina Cortese, and Irasema Dilián.
* Another film adaptation of the novel was released in 1954, directed by Claude Autant-Lara. It stars Gerard Philipe, Antonella Lualdi and Danielle Darrieux. It won the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics award for the best film of the year.
* Le Rouge et le Noir is a 1961 French made-for-TV film version directed by Pierre Cardinal, with Robert Etcheverry, Micheline Presle, Marie Laforêt, and Jean-Roger Caussimon.
* A BBC TV mini-series in five episodes The Scarlet and the Black, was made in 1965, starring John Stride, June Tobin, and Karin Fernald.
* Krasnoe i chyornoe (Red and Black) is a 1976 Soviet film version, directed by Sergei Gerasimov, with Nikolai Yeryomenko Ml, Natalya Bondarchuk, and Natalya Belokhvostikova.
* Another BBC TV mini-series called The Scarlet and the Black was first broadcast in 1993, starring Ewan McGregor, Rachel Weisz and Stratford Johns as the Abbe Pirard. A notable addition to the plot was the spirit of Napoleon (Christopher Fulford) who advises Sorel (McGregor) through his rise and fall.
* A made-for-TV film version of the novel called The Red and the Black was first broadcast in 1997 by Koch Lorber Films, starring Kim Rossi Stuart, Carole Bouquet and Judith Godrèche; it was directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe. This version is available on DVD.
Fathers and Sons is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, his best known work. The title of this work in Russian is Отцы и дети (Otcy i Deti), which literally means "Fathers and Children"; the work is often translated to Fathers and Sons in English for reasons of euphony.
Historical context and notes
The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov has been referred to as the "first Bolshevik", for his nihilism and rejection of the old order.
Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the "sons") and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality.
Fathers and Sons might be regarded as the first wholly modern novel in Russian Literature (Gogol's Dead Souls, another main contender, is sometimes referred to as a poem or epic in prose as in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy). The novel introduces a dual character study, as seen with the gradual breakdown of Bazarov's and Arkady's nihilistic opposition to emotional display, especially in the case of Bazarov's love for Madame Odintsova and Fenichka. This prominent theme of character duality and deep psychological insight would exert an influence on most of the great Russian novels to come, most obviously echoed in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
The novel is also the first Russian work to gain prominence in the Western world, eventually gaining the approval of well established novelists Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry James.
Major characters
* Yevgeny Vasil'evich Bazarov - A nihilist, a student of science, and is training to be a doctor. As a nihilist he is a mentor to Arkady, and a challenger to the liberal ideas of the Kirsanov brothers and the traditional Russian Orthodox feelings of his own parents.
* Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov - A recent graduate of St. Petersburg University and friend of Bazarov. He is also a nihilist, although his belief seems to stem from his admiration of Bazarov rather than his own conviction.
* Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov - A landlord, a liberal democrat, Arkady’s father.
* Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov - Nikolai’s brother and a bourgeois with aristocratic pretensions, who prides himself on his refinement but like his brother is reform minded. Although he is reluctantly tolerant of the nihilism, he cannot help hating Bazarov.
* Vasily Ivanovich Bazarov - Bazarov’s father, a retired army surgeon, and a small countryside land/serf holder. Educated and enlightened, he nonetheless feels, like many of the characters, that rural isolation has left him out of touch with modern ideas. He thus retains a loyalty to traditionalist ways, manifested particularly in devotion to God and to his son Yevgeny.
* Arina Vlas'evna Bazarova - Bazarov’s mother. A very traditional woman of the 15th c. Moscovy style aristocracy: a pious follower of Orthodox Christianity, woven with folk tales and falsehoods. She loves her son deeply, but is also terrified of him and his rejection of all beliefs.
* Anna Sergeevna Odintsova - A wealthy widow who entertains the nihilist friends at her estate. Bazarov declares his love for her, but she is unable to reciprocate, both out of fear for the emotional chaos it could bring and an inability to recognize her own sentiments as love itself. Bazarov's love is a challenge to his nihilist ideal of rejection of all established order.
* Katerina (Katya) Sergeevna Lokteva - A character similar to Arkady and the younger sister of Anna. She lives comfortably with her sister but lacks confidence, finding it hard to escape Anna Sergeevna's shadow. This shyness makes her and Arkady’s love slow to realize itself.
* Fedosya (Fenichka) Nikolayevna - The daughter of Nikolai’s housekeeper, with whom he has fallen in love and fathered a child out of wedlock. The implied obstacles to their marriage are difference in class, and perhaps Nikolai's previous marriage - the burden of 'traditionalist' values.
* Viktor Sitnikov - A pompous and somewhat stupid friend of Bazarov who joins populist ideals and groups.
* Avdotya Nikitishna or Evdoksya Kukshina - An emancipated woman who lives in the town of X. Kukshina is independent but rather eccentric and incapable as a proto-feminist despite her potential.
Themes
Transgression and redemption
Bazarov (the prototypical nihilist) argues with Pavel Kirsanov (the prototypical liberal of the 1840s generation) about the nature of nihilism and usefulness to Russia in an episode which personifies the struggle between the fathers (i.e., the liberals of the 1840s) and their nihilist "sons". "Aristocratism, liberalism, progress, principles," Bazarov says. "Just think, how many foreign…and useless words!"
Bazarov tells Pavel that he will abandon nihilism when Pavel can show him "…a single institution of contemporary life, either in the family or in the social sphere, that doesn’t deserve absolute and merciless rejection." But despite this utter scorn for all things associated with traditional Russia, Bazarov still believes that there is a purpose and a value in applied science.
Human emotion and love as redemption
Bazarov's nihilism falls apart in the face of human emotions, specifically his love for Anna Odintsova. His nihilism does not account for the pain that his unrequited love causes him, and this introduces a despair that he is not capable of contending with.
Bazarov returns to his family after Odintsova rejects him. Bazarov complains to Arkady that "…they, that is, my parents, are occupied, and don't worry in the least about their own insignificance; they don't give a damn about it… While I…I feel only boredom and anger." His theory's inability to account for his emotions frustrates him and he sinks deep into boredom and ennui.
And then there is the enigmatic Anna Odintsova, a beautiful young woman of lowly origin. By virtue of having married well and been widowed young, she has inherited an exceedingly comfortable and insular life on a palatial country estate. In a letter written the same year the novel was published, Turgenev revealed that he conceived of Anna as “the representative of our idle, dreaming, curious and cold epicurean young ladies, our female nobility.” And yet, as with Bazarov, Turgenev’s fictional creation takes on a life of its own, superseding the author’s intellectual scheme to become a complex and perplexing figure.
Apparently content at the outset with her unattached life, Anna finds herself increasingly attracted to the blunt, unorthodox, highly intelligent Bazarov. She proceeds almost unwittingly to emotionally seduce the self-declared womanizer, luring him step by step in a pair of riveting, back-to-back passages to reveal his love. In the intimacy of her study, Anna confesses that she is very “unhappy,” that she has no desire to “go on,” that she longs for a “strong attachment” that is “all or nothing. A life for a life. You take mine, you give up yours, without regrets, without turning back.”
And yet, a moment after Bazarov capitulates and confesses his love, Odintsova rejects him brutally. Afterward, she is tortured, alternately blaming and excusing herself while fearing she may have thrown away a chance for genuine love. Finally she decides, “No. God knows where it might have led; one mustn’t fool around with this kind of thing.”
Conversely, Turgenev shows us Arkady and Nikolai's traditional happiness in marriage and estate management as the solution to Bazarov's cosmic despair and Anna's life of loveless comfort. (Arkady marries Anna Odintsova's sister Katya, though he was also originally in love with Anna). The height of the conflict between Bazarov and the older generation comes when Bazarov wounds Pavel in a duel. Finally, Turgenev also refutes Bazarov's "insignificance principle", i.e., the nihilist idea that life is utterly insignificant and that nothing remains after death: after leaving and then returning again to his parents, Bazarov dies of typhus. The final passage of the book portrays Bazarov's parents visiting his grave.
They walk with a heavy step, supporting each other; when they approach the railing, they fall on their knees and remain there for a long time, weeping bitterly, gazing attentively at the headstone under which their son lies buried: they exchange a few words, brush the dust off the stone, move a branch of the pine tree, and pray once again; they can’t forsake this place where they seem to feel closer to their son, to their memories of him… Can it really be that their prayers and tears are futile? Can it really be that love, sacred, devoted love is not all powerful? Oh, no!
Their love causes them to remember Bazarov: he has transcended death, but only through the love of other people. Fyodor Dostoevsky, who read Fathers and Sons and apparently appreciated Bazarov as a character, explores a similar theme with Raskolnikov's religious redemption (via the love of Christ) in Crime and Punishment.
Historical context and notes
The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov has been referred to as the "first Bolshevik", for his nihilism and rejection of the old order.
Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the "sons") and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality.
Fathers and Sons might be regarded as the first wholly modern novel in Russian Literature (Gogol's Dead Souls, another main contender, is sometimes referred to as a poem or epic in prose as in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy). The novel introduces a dual character study, as seen with the gradual breakdown of Bazarov's and Arkady's nihilistic opposition to emotional display, especially in the case of Bazarov's love for Madame Odintsova and Fenichka. This prominent theme of character duality and deep psychological insight would exert an influence on most of the great Russian novels to come, most obviously echoed in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
The novel is also the first Russian work to gain prominence in the Western world, eventually gaining the approval of well established novelists Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry James.
Major characters
* Yevgeny Vasil'evich Bazarov - A nihilist, a student of science, and is training to be a doctor. As a nihilist he is a mentor to Arkady, and a challenger to the liberal ideas of the Kirsanov brothers and the traditional Russian Orthodox feelings of his own parents.
* Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov - A recent graduate of St. Petersburg University and friend of Bazarov. He is also a nihilist, although his belief seems to stem from his admiration of Bazarov rather than his own conviction.
* Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov - A landlord, a liberal democrat, Arkady’s father.
* Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov - Nikolai’s brother and a bourgeois with aristocratic pretensions, who prides himself on his refinement but like his brother is reform minded. Although he is reluctantly tolerant of the nihilism, he cannot help hating Bazarov.
* Vasily Ivanovich Bazarov - Bazarov’s father, a retired army surgeon, and a small countryside land/serf holder. Educated and enlightened, he nonetheless feels, like many of the characters, that rural isolation has left him out of touch with modern ideas. He thus retains a loyalty to traditionalist ways, manifested particularly in devotion to God and to his son Yevgeny.
* Arina Vlas'evna Bazarova - Bazarov’s mother. A very traditional woman of the 15th c. Moscovy style aristocracy: a pious follower of Orthodox Christianity, woven with folk tales and falsehoods. She loves her son deeply, but is also terrified of him and his rejection of all beliefs.
* Anna Sergeevna Odintsova - A wealthy widow who entertains the nihilist friends at her estate. Bazarov declares his love for her, but she is unable to reciprocate, both out of fear for the emotional chaos it could bring and an inability to recognize her own sentiments as love itself. Bazarov's love is a challenge to his nihilist ideal of rejection of all established order.
* Katerina (Katya) Sergeevna Lokteva - A character similar to Arkady and the younger sister of Anna. She lives comfortably with her sister but lacks confidence, finding it hard to escape Anna Sergeevna's shadow. This shyness makes her and Arkady’s love slow to realize itself.
* Fedosya (Fenichka) Nikolayevna - The daughter of Nikolai’s housekeeper, with whom he has fallen in love and fathered a child out of wedlock. The implied obstacles to their marriage are difference in class, and perhaps Nikolai's previous marriage - the burden of 'traditionalist' values.
* Viktor Sitnikov - A pompous and somewhat stupid friend of Bazarov who joins populist ideals and groups.
* Avdotya Nikitishna or Evdoksya Kukshina - An emancipated woman who lives in the town of X. Kukshina is independent but rather eccentric and incapable as a proto-feminist despite her potential.
Themes
Transgression and redemption
Bazarov (the prototypical nihilist) argues with Pavel Kirsanov (the prototypical liberal of the 1840s generation) about the nature of nihilism and usefulness to Russia in an episode which personifies the struggle between the fathers (i.e., the liberals of the 1840s) and their nihilist "sons". "Aristocratism, liberalism, progress, principles," Bazarov says. "Just think, how many foreign…and useless words!"
Bazarov tells Pavel that he will abandon nihilism when Pavel can show him "…a single institution of contemporary life, either in the family or in the social sphere, that doesn’t deserve absolute and merciless rejection." But despite this utter scorn for all things associated with traditional Russia, Bazarov still believes that there is a purpose and a value in applied science.
Human emotion and love as redemption
Bazarov's nihilism falls apart in the face of human emotions, specifically his love for Anna Odintsova. His nihilism does not account for the pain that his unrequited love causes him, and this introduces a despair that he is not capable of contending with.
Bazarov returns to his family after Odintsova rejects him. Bazarov complains to Arkady that "…they, that is, my parents, are occupied, and don't worry in the least about their own insignificance; they don't give a damn about it… While I…I feel only boredom and anger." His theory's inability to account for his emotions frustrates him and he sinks deep into boredom and ennui.
And then there is the enigmatic Anna Odintsova, a beautiful young woman of lowly origin. By virtue of having married well and been widowed young, she has inherited an exceedingly comfortable and insular life on a palatial country estate. In a letter written the same year the novel was published, Turgenev revealed that he conceived of Anna as “the representative of our idle, dreaming, curious and cold epicurean young ladies, our female nobility.” And yet, as with Bazarov, Turgenev’s fictional creation takes on a life of its own, superseding the author’s intellectual scheme to become a complex and perplexing figure.
Apparently content at the outset with her unattached life, Anna finds herself increasingly attracted to the blunt, unorthodox, highly intelligent Bazarov. She proceeds almost unwittingly to emotionally seduce the self-declared womanizer, luring him step by step in a pair of riveting, back-to-back passages to reveal his love. In the intimacy of her study, Anna confesses that she is very “unhappy,” that she has no desire to “go on,” that she longs for a “strong attachment” that is “all or nothing. A life for a life. You take mine, you give up yours, without regrets, without turning back.”
And yet, a moment after Bazarov capitulates and confesses his love, Odintsova rejects him brutally. Afterward, she is tortured, alternately blaming and excusing herself while fearing she may have thrown away a chance for genuine love. Finally she decides, “No. God knows where it might have led; one mustn’t fool around with this kind of thing.”
Conversely, Turgenev shows us Arkady and Nikolai's traditional happiness in marriage and estate management as the solution to Bazarov's cosmic despair and Anna's life of loveless comfort. (Arkady marries Anna Odintsova's sister Katya, though he was also originally in love with Anna). The height of the conflict between Bazarov and the older generation comes when Bazarov wounds Pavel in a duel. Finally, Turgenev also refutes Bazarov's "insignificance principle", i.e., the nihilist idea that life is utterly insignificant and that nothing remains after death: after leaving and then returning again to his parents, Bazarov dies of typhus. The final passage of the book portrays Bazarov's parents visiting his grave.
They walk with a heavy step, supporting each other; when they approach the railing, they fall on their knees and remain there for a long time, weeping bitterly, gazing attentively at the headstone under which their son lies buried: they exchange a few words, brush the dust off the stone, move a branch of the pine tree, and pray once again; they can’t forsake this place where they seem to feel closer to their son, to their memories of him… Can it really be that their prayers and tears are futile? Can it really be that love, sacred, devoted love is not all powerful? Oh, no!
Their love causes them to remember Bazarov: he has transcended death, but only through the love of other people. Fyodor Dostoevsky, who read Fathers and Sons and apparently appreciated Bazarov as a character, explores a similar theme with Raskolnikov's religious redemption (via the love of Christ) in Crime and Punishment.
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (French: Notre-Dame de Paris, "Our Lady of Paris") is a novel by Victor Hugo published in 1831. The French title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, around which the story is centered.
Hugo began to write Hunchback in 1829. The agreement with his original publisher, Gosselin, was that the book would be finished that same year. However, Hugo was constantly delayed due to the demands of other projects. By the summer of 1830, Gosselin demanded the book to be completed by February 1831. And so beginning in September 1830, Hugo worked non-stop on the project; he bought a new bottle of ink, a woollen cloak, [citation needed] and cloistered himself in his room refusing to leave his house (except for nightly visits to the cathedral). The book was finished six months later.
Synopsis
The story dates back to January 6, 1482 in Paris, France, the day of the 'Festival of Fools' in Paris. Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of Notre Dame, is introduced by his crowning as Pope of Fools.
Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men but especially those of Quasimodo and his adopted father, Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Frollo is torn between his lust and the rules of the church. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her and then abandons him when he is caught and whipped and ordered to be tied down in the heat. Esmeralda, seeing his thirst, offers the hunchback water. It saves her, for she captures the heart of Quasimodo.
Esmeralda is later charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus, whom Frollo attempted to kill in jealousy, and is sentenced to death by hanging. Crazy with frustrated lust, Frollo has her condemned to death when she refuses to be his. As she is being led to the gallows, Quasimodo swings down by the bell rope of Notre Dame and carries her off to the cathedral under the law of sanctuary. Clopin rallies the Truands (criminals of Paris) to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda. The King, seeing the chaos, vetoes the law of sanctuary and commands his troops to take Esmeralda out and kill her. When Quasimodo sees the Truands, he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda, so he drives them off. Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is hanged. Quasimodo pushes him from the heights of Notre Dame to his death. Quasimodo then goes to a mass grave, lies next to her corpse, crawls off to Esmeralda's tomb with his arms around her body and eventually dies of starvation. Two years later, excavationists find the skeletons of Esmeralda with a broken neck and Quasimodo locked in an embrace.
Characters
Major
* Quasimodo, the titular protagonist of the story. He is a barely verbal hunchback bell-ringer of Notre Dame. Ringing the church bells has made him deaf. When he was a hideous and abandoned baby, he was adopted by Claude Frollo. Quasimodo's life within the confines of the cathedral and his only two outlets—ringing the bells and his love and devotion for Frollo—are described. He ventures outside the Cathedral rarely, since people despise and shun him for his appearance. The notable occasions when he does leave are his taking part in the Festival of Fools—during which he is elected Fools'-Pope due to his perfect hideousness—and his subsequent attempt to kidnap Esmeralda, his rescue of Esmeralda from the gallows, his attempt to bring Phoebus to Esmeralda, and his final abandonment of the cathedral at the end of the novel. It is revealed in the story that the baby Quasimodo was left by the Gypsies in place of Esmeralda, whom they abducted.
* Esmeralda, the protagonist of the story. She is a beautiful young barefoot Gypsy dancer, innocent, close to nature, and naturally compassionate and kind. She is the center of the human drama within the story. A popular focus of the citizens' attentions, she experiences their changeable attitudes, being first adored as an entertainer, then hated as a witch, before being lauded again for her dramatic rescue by Quasimodo; when the King finally decides to put her to death, he does so in the belief that the Parisian mob want her dead. She is loved by both Quasimodo and Claude Frollo, but falls deeply in love with Captain Phoebus, a handsome military man who only has a passing infatuation with her and whom she believes will protect her. She is the only character to show the hunchback a moment of human kindness: as he is being whipped for punishment and jeered by a horrid rabble, she approaches the public stock and gives him a drink of water. Because of this, he falls fiercely in love with her, even though she is too disgusted by his ugliness even to let him kiss her hand.
* Claude Frollo is the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Despite his celibacy vows as a priest, he finds himself madly in love with Esmeralda. He nearly murders Phoebus in a jealous rage from seeing Phoebus on top of Esmeralda. He is killed when Quasimodo pushes him off the cathedral. His dour attitude and his alchemical experiments scared and alienated him from the Parisians, who believed him a sorcerer, and so he lived without family, save for Quasimodo and his spoiled brother Jehan. He serves as the novel's main antagonist.
* Pierre Gringoire is a struggling poet. He mistakenly finds his way into the "Court of Miracles", the secret lair of the Gypsies. In order to preserve the secrecy, Gringoire must either be killed by hanging, or marry a Gypsy. Although Esmeralda does not love him, and in fact believes him a coward rather than a true man (he, unlike Phoebus, failed in his attempt to rescue her from Quasimodo), she takes pity on his plight and marries him—although, much to his disappointment, she refuses to let him touch her.
* Phoebus de Chateaupers is the Captain of the King's Archers. After he saves Esmeralda from abduction, she becomes infatuated with him, and he is intrigued by her. He is already betrothed, but just wants to lie with her. As he continues talking to and kissing her, Frollo comes from behind and stabs him. Esmeralda faints and upon waking up, finds that she has been framed with killing him. After the events of the novel, he suffers the 'tragedy' of marriage to the beautiful but spiteful Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier.
* Clopin Trouillefou is the King of Truands. He rallies the Court of Miracles to rescue Esmeralda from Notre Dame after the idea is suggested by Gringoire. He is eventually killed during the attack by the King's soldiers.
Minor
* Djali (pronounced like "Jolly") is Esmeralda's pet goat. She performs tricks such as writing the word "Phoebus" in moveable letter-blocks, and tapping the number of beats to indicate the month and hour of the day. These tricks delight the citizens at first, but later horrify them, causing them to believe Esmeralda is a witch.
* Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier is a beautiful and wealthy socialite engaged to Phoebus. Phoebus's attentions to Esmeralda make her insecure and jealous, and she and her friends respond by treating Esmeralda with contempt and spite. Fleur-de-Lys later neglects to inform Phoebus that Esmeralda has not been executed, which serves to deprive the pair of any further contact. Phoebus and Fleur-de-Lys marry at the end of the novel.
* Jehan Frollo is Claude Frollo's over-indulged, scallywag younger brother. He is a troublemaker and a student at the university. He is dependent on his brother for money, which he then proceeds to squander on alcohol. Quasimodo kills him during the attack on the cathedral.
* Sister Gudule, formerly named Paquette la Chantefleurie, is an anchorite, who lives in seclusion in an exposed cell in central Paris. She is tormented by the loss of her daughter Agnes, whom she believes to have been cannibalised by Gypsies as a baby, and devotes her life to mourning her. Her long-lost daughter turns out to be Esmeralda.
* Louis XI is the King of France. Appears briefly when he is brought the news of the rioting at Notre Dame.
* Tristan l'Hermite is a friend of King Louis XI. He leads the band that goes to capture Esmeralda.
* Henriet Cousin is the city executioner.
* Florian Barbedienne is the judge who sentences Quasimodo to be tortured. He is also deaf.
* Jacques Charmolue gets Esmeralda to falsely confess to killing Phoebus. He then has her executed.
Major themes
The original French title, Notre-Dame de Paris (the formal title of the Cathedral) indicates that the Cathedral itself is the most significant aspect of the novel, both the main setting and the focus of the story's themes. Nearly every event in the novel takes place in the cathedral, atop the cathedral or can be witnessed by a character standing within or atop the cathedral. The Cathedral had fallen into disrepair at the time of writing, which Hugo wanted to point out. The book portrays the Gothic era as one of extremes of architecture, passion, and religion. The theme of determinism (fate and destiny) is explored as well as revolution and social strife. The severe distinction of the social classes is shown by the relationships of Quasimodo and Esmeralda with higher-caste people in the book. Hugo is also very concerned with justice, and description of religious fanaticism.
The main theme as said in the Disney's adpatation is "Who is the Monster and who is the Man?????"
Architecture
Architecture is a major concern of Hugo's in Notre-Dame de Paris, not just as embodied in the cathedral itself, but as representing throughout Paris and the rest of Europe an artistic genre which, Hugo argued, was about to disappear with the arrival of the printing press. Claude Frollo's portentous phrase, ‘Ceci tuera cela’ ("This will kill that", as he looks from a printed book to the cathedral building), sums up this thesis, which is expounded on in Book V, chapter 2. Hugo writes that ‘quiconque naissait poète se faisait architecte’ ("whoever is born a poet becomes an architect"), arguing that while the written word was heavily censored and difficult to reproduce, architecture was extremely prominent and enjoyed considerable freedom.
Il existe à cette époque, pour la pensée écrite en pierre, un privilége tout-à-fait comparable à notre liberté actuelle de la presse. C'est la liberté de l'architecture.
There exists in this era, for thoughts written in stone, a privilege absolutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom of architecture.
—Book V, Chapter 2
With the recent introduction of the printing press, it became possible to reproduce one's ideas much more easily on paper, and Hugo considered this period to represent the last flowering of architecture as a great artistic form. As with many of his books, Hugo was interested in a time which seemed to him to be on the cusp between two types of society.
Literary significance and reception
The enormous popularity of the book in France spurred the nascent historical preservation movement in that country and strongly encouraged Gothic revival architecture. Ultimately it led to major renovations at Notre-Dame in the 19th century led by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Much of the cathedral's present appearance is a result of this renovation.
Allusions and references
Allusions to actual history, geography and current science
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo makes frequent reference to the architecture of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
He also mentions the invention of the printing press, when the bookmaker near the beginning of the work speaks of "the German pest."
Victor Hugo lived a few homes away from Victor of Aveyron, the first well-documented feral child, although the inspiration for Quasimodo's character is not directly linked to him.
Allusions in other works
The name Quasimodo has become synonymous with "a courageous heart beneath a grotesque exterior."
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
To date, all of the film and TV adaptations have strayed somewhat from the original plot, some going as far as to give it a happy ending. The 1956 film is one of the only ones to end exactly like the novel, although it changes other parts of the story. Unlike most adaptations, the Disney version has the ending that's inspired by an opera created by Hugo himself.
Film
* Esmeralda (1905 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911 film)
* The Darling of Paris (1917 film)
* Esmeralda (1922 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)
* The Hunchback (1997 film)
* Quasimodo d'El Paris (1999 film)
* Saeed Khan Rangeela a Pakistani comedian turned director made a movie named Kubra Aashiq in 1973 inspired from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, with himself in the lead role of Quasimodo. However it did not fulfill the expectations of the audience and literary circles also did not appreciate it.
Television
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1966 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1977 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1986 film)
Theatre
* In 1977, an adaptation by Ken Hill was commissioned and staged by the National Theatre in London.
Music
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Alec R. Costandinos and the Syncophonic Orchestra from 1977, a lush orchestral disco 28 minute epic re-telling the tale of Quasimodo and Esmeralda.
Musical theatre
* Opera "La Esmeralda", by Louise Bertin (1836), libretto by Victor Hugo.
* Opera "Esmeralda", by Arthur Goring Thomas (1883) based on the Victor Hugo novel.
* Opera Esmeralda, by Dargomyzhsky (1847), also based on the same Victor Hugo novel.
* "Notre Dame", romantic Opera in two acts, text after Victor Hugo by Franz Schmidt and Leopold Wilk; composed: 1902-4, 1st perf.: Vienna 1914
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1993), an Off Broadway musical with music by Byron Janis, lyrics by Hal Hackady and book by Anthony Scully
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1993), a dramatic sung-through musical with book and lyrics by Gary Sullivan and music by John Trent Wallace. After a production at the Mermaid Theatre in London it was published by Samuel French Ltd in 1997 and has received several UK productions as well as productions in New Zealand and Australia. In 2010 it was re-written as a conventional musical, with the new title Notre Dame.
* In 1999, "Notre Dame de Paris (musical)" opened in Paris and became an instant success. It is considered the most successful adaptation of any novel except for "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Misérables." It was also adapted for the stage by Nicholas DeBaubien.
* From 1999 to 2002, the Disney film was adapted into a darker, more Gothic musical production called Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (translated in English as The Bellringer of Notre Dame), re-written and directed by James Lapine and produced by the Disney theatrical branch, in Berlin, Germany. A cast recording was also recorded in German. There has been discussion of an American revival of the musical.
* A rock musical version was released in Seattle, Washington in 1998 titled "Hunchback" with music and script by C. Rainey Lewis.
* A musical version, scored by Dennis DeYoung, will open in Chicago at the Bailiwick Reperatory in the summer of 2008
Ballet
* Notre-Dame de Paris A ballet choreographed by Roland Petit. First performed in 1965 at the Paris Opera.
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1998) – choreography and direction by Michael Pink and original music score by Philip Feeney. Currently in the repertoire of Milwaukee Ballet, Boston Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Colorado Ballet.
* Ringaren i Notre Dame (Swedish for The Bellringer of Notre Dame; 2009) – choreography by Pär Isberg and original music score by Stefan Nilsson. Its first performance was on 3 April 2009, by the Royal Swedish Ballet at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm.
Radio
The book was twice adapted and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 as its Classic Serial:
* in 5 parts from 6 January to 3 February 1989, with Jack Klaff as Quasimodo
* in 2 parts on 30 November and 7 December 2008, with deaf actor David Bower playing Quasimodo.
Translation history
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has been translated into English many times. Translations are often reprinted by various publisher imprints. Some translations have been revised over time.
* 1833. Translated by Frederic Shoberl as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Later revisions.
* 1833. Translated by William Hazlitt as Notre Dame: A Tale of the Ancien Regime. Later revisions.
* 1888. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood as Notre-Dame de Paris.
* 1895. Translated by M.W. Artois et al., part of the 28-vol The Novels of Victor Hugo, re-printed in the 20th century under other titles.
* 1964. Translated by Walter J. Cobb. In multiple editions, see for example Signet Classics ISBN 0451527887, Pub date 10 April 2001, paperback.
* 1978. Translated by John Sturrock. In multiple editions, see for example Penguin Classics ISBN 0140443533, Pub date 26 October 1978, paperback.
* 1993. Translated by Alban J. Krailsheim as Notre-Dame de Paris. See Oxford World's Classics ISBN 978-0199555802
* 2002. Revised translation by Catherine Liu of an anonymous 19th century translation. See Modern Library Classics ISBN 0679642579, Pub date 8 October 2002.
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Quotations
* A description of Quasimodo upon his election as the fool's pope: "We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose- that horse-shoe mouth- that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart- of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress- of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant- of that forked chin- and, above all, of the expression spread over all this-that expression of mingled malice, amazement and sadness." (p. 62)
* On the connection between architecture and culture: "When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door." (p. 184)
* Quasimodo's reaction to Esmeralda's gift of a drink of water while he is being heckled on the pillory: "Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and burning, was seen to roll a big tear, which fell slowly down that deformed visage so long contracted by despair. Perhaps it was the first that the unfortunate creature had ever shed." (p. 322)
* Quasimodo, explaining why he won't enter Esmeralda's cell: "The owl goes not into the nest of the lark." (p. 502)
* After Esmeralda's execution: "Quasimodo then lifted his eye to look upon the Gypsy girl, whose body, suspended from the gibbet, he beheld quivering afar, under its white robes, in the last struggles of death; then again he dropped it upon the archdeacon, stretched a shapeless mass at the foot of the tower, and he said with a sob that heaved his deep breast to the bottom, 'Oh-all that I've ever loved!'"
Hugo began to write Hunchback in 1829. The agreement with his original publisher, Gosselin, was that the book would be finished that same year. However, Hugo was constantly delayed due to the demands of other projects. By the summer of 1830, Gosselin demanded the book to be completed by February 1831. And so beginning in September 1830, Hugo worked non-stop on the project; he bought a new bottle of ink, a woollen cloak, [citation needed] and cloistered himself in his room refusing to leave his house (except for nightly visits to the cathedral). The book was finished six months later.
Synopsis
The story dates back to January 6, 1482 in Paris, France, the day of the 'Festival of Fools' in Paris. Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of Notre Dame, is introduced by his crowning as Pope of Fools.
Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men but especially those of Quasimodo and his adopted father, Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Frollo is torn between his lust and the rules of the church. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her and then abandons him when he is caught and whipped and ordered to be tied down in the heat. Esmeralda, seeing his thirst, offers the hunchback water. It saves her, for she captures the heart of Quasimodo.
Esmeralda is later charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus, whom Frollo attempted to kill in jealousy, and is sentenced to death by hanging. Crazy with frustrated lust, Frollo has her condemned to death when she refuses to be his. As she is being led to the gallows, Quasimodo swings down by the bell rope of Notre Dame and carries her off to the cathedral under the law of sanctuary. Clopin rallies the Truands (criminals of Paris) to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda. The King, seeing the chaos, vetoes the law of sanctuary and commands his troops to take Esmeralda out and kill her. When Quasimodo sees the Truands, he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda, so he drives them off. Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is hanged. Quasimodo pushes him from the heights of Notre Dame to his death. Quasimodo then goes to a mass grave, lies next to her corpse, crawls off to Esmeralda's tomb with his arms around her body and eventually dies of starvation. Two years later, excavationists find the skeletons of Esmeralda with a broken neck and Quasimodo locked in an embrace.
Characters
Major
* Quasimodo, the titular protagonist of the story. He is a barely verbal hunchback bell-ringer of Notre Dame. Ringing the church bells has made him deaf. When he was a hideous and abandoned baby, he was adopted by Claude Frollo. Quasimodo's life within the confines of the cathedral and his only two outlets—ringing the bells and his love and devotion for Frollo—are described. He ventures outside the Cathedral rarely, since people despise and shun him for his appearance. The notable occasions when he does leave are his taking part in the Festival of Fools—during which he is elected Fools'-Pope due to his perfect hideousness—and his subsequent attempt to kidnap Esmeralda, his rescue of Esmeralda from the gallows, his attempt to bring Phoebus to Esmeralda, and his final abandonment of the cathedral at the end of the novel. It is revealed in the story that the baby Quasimodo was left by the Gypsies in place of Esmeralda, whom they abducted.
* Esmeralda, the protagonist of the story. She is a beautiful young barefoot Gypsy dancer, innocent, close to nature, and naturally compassionate and kind. She is the center of the human drama within the story. A popular focus of the citizens' attentions, she experiences their changeable attitudes, being first adored as an entertainer, then hated as a witch, before being lauded again for her dramatic rescue by Quasimodo; when the King finally decides to put her to death, he does so in the belief that the Parisian mob want her dead. She is loved by both Quasimodo and Claude Frollo, but falls deeply in love with Captain Phoebus, a handsome military man who only has a passing infatuation with her and whom she believes will protect her. She is the only character to show the hunchback a moment of human kindness: as he is being whipped for punishment and jeered by a horrid rabble, she approaches the public stock and gives him a drink of water. Because of this, he falls fiercely in love with her, even though she is too disgusted by his ugliness even to let him kiss her hand.
* Claude Frollo is the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Despite his celibacy vows as a priest, he finds himself madly in love with Esmeralda. He nearly murders Phoebus in a jealous rage from seeing Phoebus on top of Esmeralda. He is killed when Quasimodo pushes him off the cathedral. His dour attitude and his alchemical experiments scared and alienated him from the Parisians, who believed him a sorcerer, and so he lived without family, save for Quasimodo and his spoiled brother Jehan. He serves as the novel's main antagonist.
* Pierre Gringoire is a struggling poet. He mistakenly finds his way into the "Court of Miracles", the secret lair of the Gypsies. In order to preserve the secrecy, Gringoire must either be killed by hanging, or marry a Gypsy. Although Esmeralda does not love him, and in fact believes him a coward rather than a true man (he, unlike Phoebus, failed in his attempt to rescue her from Quasimodo), she takes pity on his plight and marries him—although, much to his disappointment, she refuses to let him touch her.
* Phoebus de Chateaupers is the Captain of the King's Archers. After he saves Esmeralda from abduction, she becomes infatuated with him, and he is intrigued by her. He is already betrothed, but just wants to lie with her. As he continues talking to and kissing her, Frollo comes from behind and stabs him. Esmeralda faints and upon waking up, finds that she has been framed with killing him. After the events of the novel, he suffers the 'tragedy' of marriage to the beautiful but spiteful Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier.
* Clopin Trouillefou is the King of Truands. He rallies the Court of Miracles to rescue Esmeralda from Notre Dame after the idea is suggested by Gringoire. He is eventually killed during the attack by the King's soldiers.
Minor
* Djali (pronounced like "Jolly") is Esmeralda's pet goat. She performs tricks such as writing the word "Phoebus" in moveable letter-blocks, and tapping the number of beats to indicate the month and hour of the day. These tricks delight the citizens at first, but later horrify them, causing them to believe Esmeralda is a witch.
* Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier is a beautiful and wealthy socialite engaged to Phoebus. Phoebus's attentions to Esmeralda make her insecure and jealous, and she and her friends respond by treating Esmeralda with contempt and spite. Fleur-de-Lys later neglects to inform Phoebus that Esmeralda has not been executed, which serves to deprive the pair of any further contact. Phoebus and Fleur-de-Lys marry at the end of the novel.
* Jehan Frollo is Claude Frollo's over-indulged, scallywag younger brother. He is a troublemaker and a student at the university. He is dependent on his brother for money, which he then proceeds to squander on alcohol. Quasimodo kills him during the attack on the cathedral.
* Sister Gudule, formerly named Paquette la Chantefleurie, is an anchorite, who lives in seclusion in an exposed cell in central Paris. She is tormented by the loss of her daughter Agnes, whom she believes to have been cannibalised by Gypsies as a baby, and devotes her life to mourning her. Her long-lost daughter turns out to be Esmeralda.
* Louis XI is the King of France. Appears briefly when he is brought the news of the rioting at Notre Dame.
* Tristan l'Hermite is a friend of King Louis XI. He leads the band that goes to capture Esmeralda.
* Henriet Cousin is the city executioner.
* Florian Barbedienne is the judge who sentences Quasimodo to be tortured. He is also deaf.
* Jacques Charmolue gets Esmeralda to falsely confess to killing Phoebus. He then has her executed.
Major themes
The original French title, Notre-Dame de Paris (the formal title of the Cathedral) indicates that the Cathedral itself is the most significant aspect of the novel, both the main setting and the focus of the story's themes. Nearly every event in the novel takes place in the cathedral, atop the cathedral or can be witnessed by a character standing within or atop the cathedral. The Cathedral had fallen into disrepair at the time of writing, which Hugo wanted to point out. The book portrays the Gothic era as one of extremes of architecture, passion, and religion. The theme of determinism (fate and destiny) is explored as well as revolution and social strife. The severe distinction of the social classes is shown by the relationships of Quasimodo and Esmeralda with higher-caste people in the book. Hugo is also very concerned with justice, and description of religious fanaticism.
The main theme as said in the Disney's adpatation is "Who is the Monster and who is the Man?????"
Architecture
Architecture is a major concern of Hugo's in Notre-Dame de Paris, not just as embodied in the cathedral itself, but as representing throughout Paris and the rest of Europe an artistic genre which, Hugo argued, was about to disappear with the arrival of the printing press. Claude Frollo's portentous phrase, ‘Ceci tuera cela’ ("This will kill that", as he looks from a printed book to the cathedral building), sums up this thesis, which is expounded on in Book V, chapter 2. Hugo writes that ‘quiconque naissait poète se faisait architecte’ ("whoever is born a poet becomes an architect"), arguing that while the written word was heavily censored and difficult to reproduce, architecture was extremely prominent and enjoyed considerable freedom.
Il existe à cette époque, pour la pensée écrite en pierre, un privilége tout-à-fait comparable à notre liberté actuelle de la presse. C'est la liberté de l'architecture.
There exists in this era, for thoughts written in stone, a privilege absolutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom of architecture.
—Book V, Chapter 2
With the recent introduction of the printing press, it became possible to reproduce one's ideas much more easily on paper, and Hugo considered this period to represent the last flowering of architecture as a great artistic form. As with many of his books, Hugo was interested in a time which seemed to him to be on the cusp between two types of society.
Literary significance and reception
The enormous popularity of the book in France spurred the nascent historical preservation movement in that country and strongly encouraged Gothic revival architecture. Ultimately it led to major renovations at Notre-Dame in the 19th century led by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Much of the cathedral's present appearance is a result of this renovation.
Allusions and references
Allusions to actual history, geography and current science
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo makes frequent reference to the architecture of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
He also mentions the invention of the printing press, when the bookmaker near the beginning of the work speaks of "the German pest."
Victor Hugo lived a few homes away from Victor of Aveyron, the first well-documented feral child, although the inspiration for Quasimodo's character is not directly linked to him.
Allusions in other works
The name Quasimodo has become synonymous with "a courageous heart beneath a grotesque exterior."
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
To date, all of the film and TV adaptations have strayed somewhat from the original plot, some going as far as to give it a happy ending. The 1956 film is one of the only ones to end exactly like the novel, although it changes other parts of the story. Unlike most adaptations, the Disney version has the ending that's inspired by an opera created by Hugo himself.
Film
* Esmeralda (1905 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911 film)
* The Darling of Paris (1917 film)
* Esmeralda (1922 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)
* The Hunchback (1997 film)
* Quasimodo d'El Paris (1999 film)
* Saeed Khan Rangeela a Pakistani comedian turned director made a movie named Kubra Aashiq in 1973 inspired from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, with himself in the lead role of Quasimodo. However it did not fulfill the expectations of the audience and literary circles also did not appreciate it.
Television
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1966 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1977 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982 film)
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1986 film)
Theatre
* In 1977, an adaptation by Ken Hill was commissioned and staged by the National Theatre in London.
Music
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Alec R. Costandinos and the Syncophonic Orchestra from 1977, a lush orchestral disco 28 minute epic re-telling the tale of Quasimodo and Esmeralda.
Musical theatre
* Opera "La Esmeralda", by Louise Bertin (1836), libretto by Victor Hugo.
* Opera "Esmeralda", by Arthur Goring Thomas (1883) based on the Victor Hugo novel.
* Opera Esmeralda, by Dargomyzhsky (1847), also based on the same Victor Hugo novel.
* "Notre Dame", romantic Opera in two acts, text after Victor Hugo by Franz Schmidt and Leopold Wilk; composed: 1902-4, 1st perf.: Vienna 1914
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1993), an Off Broadway musical with music by Byron Janis, lyrics by Hal Hackady and book by Anthony Scully
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1993), a dramatic sung-through musical with book and lyrics by Gary Sullivan and music by John Trent Wallace. After a production at the Mermaid Theatre in London it was published by Samuel French Ltd in 1997 and has received several UK productions as well as productions in New Zealand and Australia. In 2010 it was re-written as a conventional musical, with the new title Notre Dame.
* In 1999, "Notre Dame de Paris (musical)" opened in Paris and became an instant success. It is considered the most successful adaptation of any novel except for "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Misérables." It was also adapted for the stage by Nicholas DeBaubien.
* From 1999 to 2002, the Disney film was adapted into a darker, more Gothic musical production called Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (translated in English as The Bellringer of Notre Dame), re-written and directed by James Lapine and produced by the Disney theatrical branch, in Berlin, Germany. A cast recording was also recorded in German. There has been discussion of an American revival of the musical.
* A rock musical version was released in Seattle, Washington in 1998 titled "Hunchback" with music and script by C. Rainey Lewis.
* A musical version, scored by Dennis DeYoung, will open in Chicago at the Bailiwick Reperatory in the summer of 2008
Ballet
* Notre-Dame de Paris A ballet choreographed by Roland Petit. First performed in 1965 at the Paris Opera.
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1998) – choreography and direction by Michael Pink and original music score by Philip Feeney. Currently in the repertoire of Milwaukee Ballet, Boston Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Colorado Ballet.
* Ringaren i Notre Dame (Swedish for The Bellringer of Notre Dame; 2009) – choreography by Pär Isberg and original music score by Stefan Nilsson. Its first performance was on 3 April 2009, by the Royal Swedish Ballet at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm.
Radio
The book was twice adapted and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 as its Classic Serial:
* in 5 parts from 6 January to 3 February 1989, with Jack Klaff as Quasimodo
* in 2 parts on 30 November and 7 December 2008, with deaf actor David Bower playing Quasimodo.
Translation history
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has been translated into English many times. Translations are often reprinted by various publisher imprints. Some translations have been revised over time.
* 1833. Translated by Frederic Shoberl as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Later revisions.
* 1833. Translated by William Hazlitt as Notre Dame: A Tale of the Ancien Regime. Later revisions.
* 1888. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood as Notre-Dame de Paris.
* 1895. Translated by M.W. Artois et al., part of the 28-vol The Novels of Victor Hugo, re-printed in the 20th century under other titles.
* 1964. Translated by Walter J. Cobb. In multiple editions, see for example Signet Classics ISBN 0451527887, Pub date 10 April 2001, paperback.
* 1978. Translated by John Sturrock. In multiple editions, see for example Penguin Classics ISBN 0140443533, Pub date 26 October 1978, paperback.
* 1993. Translated by Alban J. Krailsheim as Notre-Dame de Paris. See Oxford World's Classics ISBN 978-0199555802
* 2002. Revised translation by Catherine Liu of an anonymous 19th century translation. See Modern Library Classics ISBN 0679642579, Pub date 8 October 2002.
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Quotations
* A description of Quasimodo upon his election as the fool's pope: "We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose- that horse-shoe mouth- that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart- of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress- of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant- of that forked chin- and, above all, of the expression spread over all this-that expression of mingled malice, amazement and sadness." (p. 62)
* On the connection between architecture and culture: "When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door." (p. 184)
* Quasimodo's reaction to Esmeralda's gift of a drink of water while he is being heckled on the pillory: "Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and burning, was seen to roll a big tear, which fell slowly down that deformed visage so long contracted by despair. Perhaps it was the first that the unfortunate creature had ever shed." (p. 322)
* Quasimodo, explaining why he won't enter Esmeralda's cell: "The owl goes not into the nest of the lark." (p. 502)
* After Esmeralda's execution: "Quasimodo then lifted his eye to look upon the Gypsy girl, whose body, suspended from the gibbet, he beheld quivering afar, under its white robes, in the last struggles of death; then again he dropped it upon the archdeacon, stretched a shapeless mass at the foot of the tower, and he said with a sob that heaved his deep breast to the bottom, 'Oh-all that I've ever loved!'"
《源氏物语》可分为两大部分：前44回写源氏极享荣华，伴随着感情纠葛的一生。这是作品的中心内容。后10回写源氏之子薰(实为三公主和柏木大将的私生子)与宇治山庄女子之间错综的爱情故事。小说历经4代天皇、跨越70多个年头，登场人物数以百计，仅主要人物就有几十人之多。
故事开始于桐壶帝在位的时候。出身低微的更衣，独得桐壶帝的宠爱。后此更衣生下一位皇子，其他嫔妃，尤其是弘徽殿女御也愈加忌恨。更衣不堪凌辱折磨，生子不到3年，便悒郁而亡。小皇子没有强大的外戚做靠山，很难在宫中立足。桐壶帝不得已将其降为臣籍，赐姓源氏。源氏不仅貌美惊人，而且才华横溢。12岁行冠礼后，娶当权的左大臣之女葵姬为妻，但葵姬不遂源氏的意。于是源氏追求桐壶帝续娶的女御藤壶，据说女御酷肖源氏生母。不久，两人发生乱伦关系，生下一子，后来即位称冷泉帝。源氏到处偷香窃玉，强行占有了伊豫介的后妻空蝉，还向比他大7岁的婶母六条妃子求欢，并同时辗转在花散里、末摘花等众女子之间。当他劫持一位不明身分的弱女子夕颜去荒屋幽会时，这女子不幸暴亡，源氏为此大病一场，病愈进香时遇到一个酷似自己日思夜想而不得相见的藤壶的女孩，得知她是藤壶女御的侄女，名叫紫姬，就趁紫姬熟睡把她带回家中，收为养女，朝夕相伴，以寄托对藤壶的思慕。几年后紫姬出落得亭亭玉立，高贵优雅，才艺超众，十分可人。源氏便把她据为己有。葵姬因六条妃子生魂附体过世后，紫姬被扶为正夫人。
桐壶帝退位以后，右大臣弘徽殿女御的儿子登上皇位（朱雀帝），源氏及岳父左大臣一派从此失势。恰巧源氏与右大臣女儿胧月夜偷情之事败露，源氏自觉噩运临头，便远离京城，到荒凉少人的须磨、明石隐居。为排遣寂寞，与明石道人的女儿明石姬结合，后生一女，被选入宫中做了皇后。
由于天降异兆，朱雀帝又重病在身，朝政不稳。源氏奉召回京辅佐朝廷。不久，朱雀帝让位给冷泉帝。源氏升任太政大臣，源氏及左大臣一门恢复了往日的繁华气派。源氏建造了集四季景物为一体、蔚为壮观的六条院寓所，将昔日恋人统统接到院里来住。源氏近40岁时，将朱雀帝之女三公主纳为正妻，紫姬终因心力交瘁，病卧在床。早已凯觎三公主美貌的头中将之子柏木趁源氏探病的机会，与三公主幽会，被源氏发现。柏木惧悔交加，一病不起，英年夭折。三公主生下容貌与柏木毫无二致的私生子薰后，落发为尼。源氏深感自己和藤壶乱伦之罪的报应临头，心如死灰。恰巧紫姬不久又逝，源氏失去了精神支柱，了断尘缘，隐遁出家。几年后死去。
源氏之子薰生性严谨。20岁来到宇治山庄爱上了庄主八亲王的大女公子，不料遭到拒绝。大女公子病故后，他寻回外貌酷肖大女公子的八亲王的私生女浮舟，填补心灵的空白。可是有人深夜闯入浮舟卧房，假冒薰的声音，占有了浮舟。当浮舟意识到自己一身事二主后，毅然跳水自尽，被人救起后削发出家。尽管薰一往情深，多次捎信，以求一见，但终未了此心愿。
《源氏物语》-作者简介
作者紫式部，本姓藤原，原名不详。因其长兄任式部丞，故称为藤式部，这是宫里女官中的一种时尚，她们往往以父兄的官衔为名，以示身份；后来她写成《源氏物语》，书中女主人公紫姬为世人传诵，遂又称作紫式部。作者生卒年月也无法详考，大约是生于九七八年，殁于一○一五年。紫式部出身中层贵族，是书香门第的才女，曾祖父、祖父、伯父和兄长都是有名的歌人，父亲兼长汉诗、和歌，对中国古典文学颇有研究。作者自幼随父学习汉诗，熟读中国古代文献，特别是对白居易的诗有较深的造诣。
此外，她还十分熟悉音乐和佛经。不幸家道中落，她嫁给了一个比她年长二十多岁的地方官藤原宣孝，婚后不久，丈夫去世，她过着孤苦的孀居生活。后来应当时统治者藤原道长之召，入宫充当一条彰子皇后的女官，给彰子讲解《日本书纪》和白居易的诗作，有机会直接接触宫廷的生活，对妇女的不幸和宫廷的内幕有了全面的了解，对贵族阶级的没落倾向也有所感受。这些都为她的创作提供了艺术构思的广阔天地和坚实的生活基础。
《源氏物语》-作品主题
长篇写实小说《源氏物语》浸润着浓厚的佛教色彩，透过光源氏身世、用世、玩世、超世之苦，映射出“四大皆空”的佛学观念。但它并不是一部宣传宗教教义的宗教性文学作品，它思想上的真正价值在于展示了平安王朝的宫廷豪华奢侈、腐朽淫乱的生活，反映了贵族阶级人与人之间争权夺势、互相倾轧的人际关系，暴露了贵族社会门第为重、男尊女卑的不平等的社会现象。这就从客观上预示了旧贵族阶级必然崩溃、灭亡的趋势。因此，具有一定的认识价值和思想意义。
艺术成就《源氏物语》艺术上最大的成功之处是塑造了源氏及众多女性形象，并通过这些形象反映了物哀、幽情等审美意向。
《源氏物语》-写作背景
《源氏物语》产生的时代，是藤原道长执政下平安王朝贵族社会全盛时期。这个时期，平安京的上层贵族恣意享乐，表面上一派太平盛世，实际上却充满着极其复杂而尖锐的矛盾。藤原利用累代是皇室外戚，实行摄关政治①，由其一族垄断了所有的高官显职，扩大了自己的庄园，而且同族之间又展开权利之争；皇室贵族则依靠大寺院，设置上皇 “院政”，以对抗藤源氏的势力；至于中下层贵族，虽有才能也得不到晋身之阶，他们纷纷到地方去别寻出路，地方贵族势力迅速抬头；加上庄园百姓的反抗，使这些矛盾更加激化，甚至爆发了多次武装叛乱。整个贵族社会危机四起，已经到了盛极而衰的转折时期。
《源氏物语》正是以这段历史为背景，通过主人公源氏的生活经历和爱情故事，描写了当时贵族社会的腐败政治和淫逸生活，以典型的艺术形象，真实地反映了这个时代的面貌和特征。
首先，作者敏锐地觉察到王朝贵族社会的种种矛盾，特别是贵族内部争权夺利的斗争。作品中以弘徽殿女御（地位最高的妃子）及其父右大臣为代表的皇室外戚一派政治势力，同以源氏及其岳父左大臣为代表的皇室一派政治势力之间的较量，正是这种矛盾和斗争的反映，是主人公源氏生活的时代环境，而且决定着他一生的命运。源氏是桐壶天皇同更衣（次于女御的妃子）所生的小皇子，母子深得天皇的宠爱，弘徽殿出于妒忌，更怕天皇册立源氏为皇太子，于是逼死更衣，打击源氏及其一派，促使天皇将源氏降为臣籍。在天皇让位给弘徽殿所生的朱雀天皇之后，右大臣掌政，源氏便完全失势；弘徽殿一派进而抓住源氏与右大臣的女儿胧月夜偷情的把柄，逼使源氏离开宫廷，把他流放到须磨、明石。
后来朝政日非，朱雀天皇身罹重病，为收拾残局才不顾弘徽殿的坚决反对，召源氏回京，恢复他的官爵。冷泉天皇继位以后，知道源氏是他的生父，就倍加礼遇，后源氏官至太政大臣，独揽朝纲。但是，贵族统治阶级内部的斗争并没有停息，源氏与左大臣之子围绕为冷泉天皇立后一事又产生了新的矛盾。
作者在书中表白：“作者女流之辈，不敢侈谈天下大事。”所以作品对政治斗争的反映，多采用侧写的手法，少有具体深入的描写，然而，我们仍能清晰地看出上层贵族之间的互相倾轧、权力之争是贯穿全书的一条主线，主人公的荣辱沉浮都与之密不可分。总之，《源氏物语》隐蔽式地折射了这个阶级走向灭亡的必然趋势，可以堪称为一幅历史画卷。
《源氏物语》-作品评价
源氏生为皇子却不得不降为臣籍，空有济世之才却无心仕途，酷爱紫姬却不断沾花拈草，一世风流却落得剃度为僧的结局。他的一生伴随着许多的矛盾和烦恼，其中最折磨他的是与藤壶乱伦的罪孽感和背叛紫姬的深深自责。他的灵魂与肉欲始终在斗争中苦苦挣扎，结果又总是欲望压倒理智，从而陷入更深的心灵冲突之中。源氏最终弃家出走，面壁向佛，正是这种心灵冲突导致的结果。作者大写特写源氏生活中无法摆脱的矛盾造成的苦闷及精神上接连不断的碰撞造成的无奈，意在说明人生的苦痛和悲哀，显露了作者以哀动人、以悲感人的美学观。
“物哀”的审美意向除以源氏挣扎的一生反映出来外，还通过作品中所有与源氏命运连在一起的女性的不幸得到进一步的强化。在紫式部笔下，这些女子个个容貌姣好，聪明伶俐，性情可人，然而个个都是有命无运之人。
紫姬是作者着意刻画的理想淑女形象，她气质优雅，艺压群芳，性格婉约，通情达理。深得源氏钟爱，被公认为最幸福的女人。可是即便是这位十全十美的女人，也有着难以言说的苦楚—— 因源氏用情不专而引起的嫉妒，所以正值盛年，日渐衰弱，香消玉殒。
《源氏物语》中的女性命运只有3种选择，要么走入坟墓一了百了，要么落发为尼斩断尘缘，要么独守空闺虽生犹死。这些女性的多灾多难的命运和源氏一生经历一样，反映了紫式部感物而哀的审美特征。
物哀的审美意向，主要来自“人生无常”、“四大皆空”等佛学观，在她看来人生不过是欲海横流，欲海也便是苦海，摆脱欲海的最佳途径，就是皈依佛门。紫式部在这里无意识地宣传了无欲之说，表现了她在佛教思想影响下的人生观、世界观。这种佛教宿命思想从一定意义上削弱了作品主题的深刻性。
《源氏物语》是世界文学史上最早的一部长篇写实小说，作品流露出明显的现实主义倾向，被认为代表了日本古典现实主义文学的最高峰，给后世作家的创作提供了艺术典范。它所创立的物哀等美学传统，一直被后世作家继承和发展，成为日本文学民族化的一大因素。
在《源氏物语》中，作者虽然主要描写源氏的爱情生活，但又不是单纯地描写爱情，而是通过源氏的恋爱、婚姻，揭示一夫多妻制下妇女的悲惨命运。在贵族社会里，男女婚嫁往往是同政治利益联系在一起的，是政治斗争的手段，妇女成了政治交易的工具。在这方面，紫式部作了大胆的描写。左大臣把自己的女儿葵姬许配给源氏，是为了加强自己的声势，朱雀天皇在源氏四十岁得势之时，将年方十六岁的女儿三公主嫁给源氏，也是出于政治上的考虑，就连政敌右大臣发现源氏和自己的女儿胧月夜偷情，也拟将她许配给源氏，以图分化源氏一派。地方贵族明石道人和常陆介，一个为了求得富贵，强迫自己的女儿嫁给源氏；一个为了混上高官，将自己的女儿许给了左近少将，而左近少将娶他的女儿，则是为了利用常陆介的财力。作者笔下的众多妇女形象，有身份高贵的，也有身世低贱的，但她们的处境都是一样，不仅成了贵族政治斗争的工具，也成了贵族男人手中的玩物，一夫多妻制的牺牲品。
小说着墨最多的是源氏及其上下三代人对妇女的摧残。源氏的父皇玩弄了更衣，由于她出身寒微，在宫中备受冷落，最后屈死于权力斗争之中。源氏依仗自己的权势，糟蹋了不少妇女：半夜闯进地方官夫人空蝉的居室玷污了这个有夫之妇；践踏了出身低贱的夕颜的爱情，使她抑郁而死；看见继母藤壶肖似自己的母亲，由思慕进而与她通奸；闯入家道中落的摘末花的内室调戏她，发现她长相丑陋，又加以奚落。此外，他对紫姬、明石姬等许多不同身份的女子，也都大体如此。在后十回里出现的源氏继承人董君（他名义上是源氏和三公主之子，实际上是三公主同源氏的妻舅之子柏木私通所生）继承了祖、父两辈人荒淫的传统，摧残了孤苦伶仃的弱女浮舟，又怕事情败露，把她弃置在荒凉的宇治山庄。
紫式部的创作不可避免地有其历史和阶级的局限性。她既不满当时的社会现实，哀叹贵族阶级的没落，却又无法彻底否定这个社会和这个阶级；她既感到“这个恶浊可叹的末世……总是越来越坏”，可又未能自觉认识贵族阶级灭亡的历史必然性，以她在触及贵族腐败政治的时候，一方面谴责了弘徽殿一派政治野心和独断专行，另一方面又袒护源氏一派，并企图将源氏理想化，作为自己政治上的希望和寄托，对源氏政治生命的完结不胜其悲。书中第四十一回只有题目《云隐》而无正文，以这种奇特的表现手法来暗喻源氏的结局，正透露了作者的哀惋心情。另外在写到妇女命运的时候，她一方面对她们寄予深切的同情，另一方面又把源氏写成一个有始有终的妇女的庇护者，竭力美化源氏，在一定程度上对源氏表示同情与肯定。此外，作品中还充满了贵族阶级的美学情趣、佛教的因果报应思想，以及虚空感伤的情调。
《源氏物语》在艺术上也是一部有很大成就的作品，它开辟了日本物语文学的新道路，使日本古典现实主义文学达到一个新的高峰。
《源氏物语》问世以来，已经过去近千年了。尽管它在结构上显得有些庞杂、冗长，相同场面和心理描写重复过多，有损于作品的艺术完美性，但它毕竟是一部思想性和艺术性都很高的日本古典文学作品，在今天仍保持着它的艺术生命力，对日本文学继续产生着影响。
故事开始于桐壶帝在位的时候。出身低微的更衣，独得桐壶帝的宠爱。后此更衣生下一位皇子，其他嫔妃，尤其是弘徽殿女御也愈加忌恨。更衣不堪凌辱折磨，生子不到3年，便悒郁而亡。小皇子没有强大的外戚做靠山，很难在宫中立足。桐壶帝不得已将其降为臣籍，赐姓源氏。源氏不仅貌美惊人，而且才华横溢。12岁行冠礼后，娶当权的左大臣之女葵姬为妻，但葵姬不遂源氏的意。于是源氏追求桐壶帝续娶的女御藤壶，据说女御酷肖源氏生母。不久，两人发生乱伦关系，生下一子，后来即位称冷泉帝。源氏到处偷香窃玉，强行占有了伊豫介的后妻空蝉，还向比他大7岁的婶母六条妃子求欢，并同时辗转在花散里、末摘花等众女子之间。当他劫持一位不明身分的弱女子夕颜去荒屋幽会时，这女子不幸暴亡，源氏为此大病一场，病愈进香时遇到一个酷似自己日思夜想而不得相见的藤壶的女孩，得知她是藤壶女御的侄女，名叫紫姬，就趁紫姬熟睡把她带回家中，收为养女，朝夕相伴，以寄托对藤壶的思慕。几年后紫姬出落得亭亭玉立，高贵优雅，才艺超众，十分可人。源氏便把她据为己有。葵姬因六条妃子生魂附体过世后，紫姬被扶为正夫人。
桐壶帝退位以后，右大臣弘徽殿女御的儿子登上皇位（朱雀帝），源氏及岳父左大臣一派从此失势。恰巧源氏与右大臣女儿胧月夜偷情之事败露，源氏自觉噩运临头，便远离京城，到荒凉少人的须磨、明石隐居。为排遣寂寞，与明石道人的女儿明石姬结合，后生一女，被选入宫中做了皇后。
由于天降异兆，朱雀帝又重病在身，朝政不稳。源氏奉召回京辅佐朝廷。不久，朱雀帝让位给冷泉帝。源氏升任太政大臣，源氏及左大臣一门恢复了往日的繁华气派。源氏建造了集四季景物为一体、蔚为壮观的六条院寓所，将昔日恋人统统接到院里来住。源氏近40岁时，将朱雀帝之女三公主纳为正妻，紫姬终因心力交瘁，病卧在床。早已凯觎三公主美貌的头中将之子柏木趁源氏探病的机会，与三公主幽会，被源氏发现。柏木惧悔交加，一病不起，英年夭折。三公主生下容貌与柏木毫无二致的私生子薰后，落发为尼。源氏深感自己和藤壶乱伦之罪的报应临头，心如死灰。恰巧紫姬不久又逝，源氏失去了精神支柱，了断尘缘，隐遁出家。几年后死去。
源氏之子薰生性严谨。20岁来到宇治山庄爱上了庄主八亲王的大女公子，不料遭到拒绝。大女公子病故后，他寻回外貌酷肖大女公子的八亲王的私生女浮舟，填补心灵的空白。可是有人深夜闯入浮舟卧房，假冒薰的声音，占有了浮舟。当浮舟意识到自己一身事二主后，毅然跳水自尽，被人救起后削发出家。尽管薰一往情深，多次捎信，以求一见，但终未了此心愿。
《源氏物语》-作者简介
作者紫式部，本姓藤原，原名不详。因其长兄任式部丞，故称为藤式部，这是宫里女官中的一种时尚，她们往往以父兄的官衔为名，以示身份；后来她写成《源氏物语》，书中女主人公紫姬为世人传诵，遂又称作紫式部。作者生卒年月也无法详考，大约是生于九七八年，殁于一○一五年。紫式部出身中层贵族，是书香门第的才女，曾祖父、祖父、伯父和兄长都是有名的歌人，父亲兼长汉诗、和歌，对中国古典文学颇有研究。作者自幼随父学习汉诗，熟读中国古代文献，特别是对白居易的诗有较深的造诣。
此外，她还十分熟悉音乐和佛经。不幸家道中落，她嫁给了一个比她年长二十多岁的地方官藤原宣孝，婚后不久，丈夫去世，她过着孤苦的孀居生活。后来应当时统治者藤原道长之召，入宫充当一条彰子皇后的女官，给彰子讲解《日本书纪》和白居易的诗作，有机会直接接触宫廷的生活，对妇女的不幸和宫廷的内幕有了全面的了解，对贵族阶级的没落倾向也有所感受。这些都为她的创作提供了艺术构思的广阔天地和坚实的生活基础。
《源氏物语》-作品主题
长篇写实小说《源氏物语》浸润着浓厚的佛教色彩，透过光源氏身世、用世、玩世、超世之苦，映射出“四大皆空”的佛学观念。但它并不是一部宣传宗教教义的宗教性文学作品，它思想上的真正价值在于展示了平安王朝的宫廷豪华奢侈、腐朽淫乱的生活，反映了贵族阶级人与人之间争权夺势、互相倾轧的人际关系，暴露了贵族社会门第为重、男尊女卑的不平等的社会现象。这就从客观上预示了旧贵族阶级必然崩溃、灭亡的趋势。因此，具有一定的认识价值和思想意义。
艺术成就《源氏物语》艺术上最大的成功之处是塑造了源氏及众多女性形象，并通过这些形象反映了物哀、幽情等审美意向。
《源氏物语》-写作背景
《源氏物语》产生的时代，是藤原道长执政下平安王朝贵族社会全盛时期。这个时期，平安京的上层贵族恣意享乐，表面上一派太平盛世，实际上却充满着极其复杂而尖锐的矛盾。藤原利用累代是皇室外戚，实行摄关政治①，由其一族垄断了所有的高官显职，扩大了自己的庄园，而且同族之间又展开权利之争；皇室贵族则依靠大寺院，设置上皇 “院政”，以对抗藤源氏的势力；至于中下层贵族，虽有才能也得不到晋身之阶，他们纷纷到地方去别寻出路，地方贵族势力迅速抬头；加上庄园百姓的反抗，使这些矛盾更加激化，甚至爆发了多次武装叛乱。整个贵族社会危机四起，已经到了盛极而衰的转折时期。
《源氏物语》正是以这段历史为背景，通过主人公源氏的生活经历和爱情故事，描写了当时贵族社会的腐败政治和淫逸生活，以典型的艺术形象，真实地反映了这个时代的面貌和特征。
首先，作者敏锐地觉察到王朝贵族社会的种种矛盾，特别是贵族内部争权夺利的斗争。作品中以弘徽殿女御（地位最高的妃子）及其父右大臣为代表的皇室外戚一派政治势力，同以源氏及其岳父左大臣为代表的皇室一派政治势力之间的较量，正是这种矛盾和斗争的反映，是主人公源氏生活的时代环境，而且决定着他一生的命运。源氏是桐壶天皇同更衣（次于女御的妃子）所生的小皇子，母子深得天皇的宠爱，弘徽殿出于妒忌，更怕天皇册立源氏为皇太子，于是逼死更衣，打击源氏及其一派，促使天皇将源氏降为臣籍。在天皇让位给弘徽殿所生的朱雀天皇之后，右大臣掌政，源氏便完全失势；弘徽殿一派进而抓住源氏与右大臣的女儿胧月夜偷情的把柄，逼使源氏离开宫廷，把他流放到须磨、明石。
后来朝政日非，朱雀天皇身罹重病，为收拾残局才不顾弘徽殿的坚决反对，召源氏回京，恢复他的官爵。冷泉天皇继位以后，知道源氏是他的生父，就倍加礼遇，后源氏官至太政大臣，独揽朝纲。但是，贵族统治阶级内部的斗争并没有停息，源氏与左大臣之子围绕为冷泉天皇立后一事又产生了新的矛盾。
作者在书中表白：“作者女流之辈，不敢侈谈天下大事。”所以作品对政治斗争的反映，多采用侧写的手法，少有具体深入的描写，然而，我们仍能清晰地看出上层贵族之间的互相倾轧、权力之争是贯穿全书的一条主线，主人公的荣辱沉浮都与之密不可分。总之，《源氏物语》隐蔽式地折射了这个阶级走向灭亡的必然趋势，可以堪称为一幅历史画卷。
《源氏物语》-作品评价
源氏生为皇子却不得不降为臣籍，空有济世之才却无心仕途，酷爱紫姬却不断沾花拈草，一世风流却落得剃度为僧的结局。他的一生伴随着许多的矛盾和烦恼，其中最折磨他的是与藤壶乱伦的罪孽感和背叛紫姬的深深自责。他的灵魂与肉欲始终在斗争中苦苦挣扎，结果又总是欲望压倒理智，从而陷入更深的心灵冲突之中。源氏最终弃家出走，面壁向佛，正是这种心灵冲突导致的结果。作者大写特写源氏生活中无法摆脱的矛盾造成的苦闷及精神上接连不断的碰撞造成的无奈，意在说明人生的苦痛和悲哀，显露了作者以哀动人、以悲感人的美学观。
“物哀”的审美意向除以源氏挣扎的一生反映出来外，还通过作品中所有与源氏命运连在一起的女性的不幸得到进一步的强化。在紫式部笔下，这些女子个个容貌姣好，聪明伶俐，性情可人，然而个个都是有命无运之人。
紫姬是作者着意刻画的理想淑女形象，她气质优雅，艺压群芳，性格婉约，通情达理。深得源氏钟爱，被公认为最幸福的女人。可是即便是这位十全十美的女人，也有着难以言说的苦楚—— 因源氏用情不专而引起的嫉妒，所以正值盛年，日渐衰弱，香消玉殒。
《源氏物语》中的女性命运只有3种选择，要么走入坟墓一了百了，要么落发为尼斩断尘缘，要么独守空闺虽生犹死。这些女性的多灾多难的命运和源氏一生经历一样，反映了紫式部感物而哀的审美特征。
物哀的审美意向，主要来自“人生无常”、“四大皆空”等佛学观，在她看来人生不过是欲海横流，欲海也便是苦海，摆脱欲海的最佳途径，就是皈依佛门。紫式部在这里无意识地宣传了无欲之说，表现了她在佛教思想影响下的人生观、世界观。这种佛教宿命思想从一定意义上削弱了作品主题的深刻性。
《源氏物语》是世界文学史上最早的一部长篇写实小说，作品流露出明显的现实主义倾向，被认为代表了日本古典现实主义文学的最高峰，给后世作家的创作提供了艺术典范。它所创立的物哀等美学传统，一直被后世作家继承和发展，成为日本文学民族化的一大因素。
在《源氏物语》中，作者虽然主要描写源氏的爱情生活，但又不是单纯地描写爱情，而是通过源氏的恋爱、婚姻，揭示一夫多妻制下妇女的悲惨命运。在贵族社会里，男女婚嫁往往是同政治利益联系在一起的，是政治斗争的手段，妇女成了政治交易的工具。在这方面，紫式部作了大胆的描写。左大臣把自己的女儿葵姬许配给源氏，是为了加强自己的声势，朱雀天皇在源氏四十岁得势之时，将年方十六岁的女儿三公主嫁给源氏，也是出于政治上的考虑，就连政敌右大臣发现源氏和自己的女儿胧月夜偷情，也拟将她许配给源氏，以图分化源氏一派。地方贵族明石道人和常陆介，一个为了求得富贵，强迫自己的女儿嫁给源氏；一个为了混上高官，将自己的女儿许给了左近少将，而左近少将娶他的女儿，则是为了利用常陆介的财力。作者笔下的众多妇女形象，有身份高贵的，也有身世低贱的，但她们的处境都是一样，不仅成了贵族政治斗争的工具，也成了贵族男人手中的玩物，一夫多妻制的牺牲品。
小说着墨最多的是源氏及其上下三代人对妇女的摧残。源氏的父皇玩弄了更衣，由于她出身寒微，在宫中备受冷落，最后屈死于权力斗争之中。源氏依仗自己的权势，糟蹋了不少妇女：半夜闯进地方官夫人空蝉的居室玷污了这个有夫之妇；践踏了出身低贱的夕颜的爱情，使她抑郁而死；看见继母藤壶肖似自己的母亲，由思慕进而与她通奸；闯入家道中落的摘末花的内室调戏她，发现她长相丑陋，又加以奚落。此外，他对紫姬、明石姬等许多不同身份的女子，也都大体如此。在后十回里出现的源氏继承人董君（他名义上是源氏和三公主之子，实际上是三公主同源氏的妻舅之子柏木私通所生）继承了祖、父两辈人荒淫的传统，摧残了孤苦伶仃的弱女浮舟，又怕事情败露，把她弃置在荒凉的宇治山庄。
紫式部的创作不可避免地有其历史和阶级的局限性。她既不满当时的社会现实，哀叹贵族阶级的没落，却又无法彻底否定这个社会和这个阶级；她既感到“这个恶浊可叹的末世……总是越来越坏”，可又未能自觉认识贵族阶级灭亡的历史必然性，以她在触及贵族腐败政治的时候，一方面谴责了弘徽殿一派政治野心和独断专行，另一方面又袒护源氏一派，并企图将源氏理想化，作为自己政治上的希望和寄托，对源氏政治生命的完结不胜其悲。书中第四十一回只有题目《云隐》而无正文，以这种奇特的表现手法来暗喻源氏的结局，正透露了作者的哀惋心情。另外在写到妇女命运的时候，她一方面对她们寄予深切的同情，另一方面又把源氏写成一个有始有终的妇女的庇护者，竭力美化源氏，在一定程度上对源氏表示同情与肯定。此外，作品中还充满了贵族阶级的美学情趣、佛教的因果报应思想，以及虚空感伤的情调。
《源氏物语》在艺术上也是一部有很大成就的作品，它开辟了日本物语文学的新道路，使日本古典现实主义文学达到一个新的高峰。
《源氏物语》问世以来，已经过去近千年了。尽管它在结构上显得有些庞杂、冗长，相同场面和心理描写重复过多，有损于作品的艺术完美性，但它毕竟是一部思想性和艺术性都很高的日本古典文学作品，在今天仍保持着它的艺术生命力，对日本文学继续产生着影响。
静静的顿河Translated by Google
Cossacks, ancient noble family of slaves fled Russia after the reproduction elsewhere group developed
Don Elegy
We honor the land is not used to plow tillage ... ...
We use the horseshoe to plow the land,
Glorious Cossack land species is the head,
Quiet Flows the Don everywhere decorated with a young widow,
Our Father, Quiet Flows the Don is full of orphans,
Quiet Flows the Don of the rolling waves of the father and mother's tears.
Oh, alas, Quiet Flows the Don, our father!
Oh, alas, Quiet Flows the Don, your muddy water why?
Oh, I Quiet Flows the Don of the water how can you not muddy!
Cold Spring from my Quiet Flows the Don of the river flowing out,
Silver fish to muddy my Quiet Flows the Don.
- Old Cossack song
"Quiet Flows the Don" is a famous Soviet writer Sholokhov's masterpiece. This book is divided into four, from 1928 until 1940, sharing 12 years before the completion of its creation. Sholokhov film debut came upon immediately by domestic and international attention, has been called "amazing masterpiece," "Soviet literature, it has not met the same compared to the novel." This book was awarded the Stalin prize in 1941, 1965, Sholokhov won the Nobel Prize for Literature books thus became the first Soviet writer so honored.
"Quiet Flows the Don," depicts the 1912 to 1922 between two revolutions (February Revolution, October Revolution), and two wars (the First World War, the Soviet civil war) in the sides of major historical events and the Don Cossacks In the turbulent life of 10 years, broadly reflecting the unique customs of the Cossacks, Cossacks changes in all sectors, the majority of Cossacks turning point in the complex history of ups and downs experienced by the road, and involved a powerful vortex of historical events in the hero Ge high interest in the tragedy of fate.
This novel has been published since 1928, have been Stalin's favor, which is Sholokhov lives in the Great Purges protected during the main reason for it being too high Wilkie and Romain Rolland, Lu Xun, Kobayashi Takiji and Hemingway other world-renowned author of highly praised. When the book was translated into German in Germany after the release, actually printed more than a German writer Remak's "Western Front." It has been translated into almost all major world languages, and a reprinted, sold worldwide, the contemporary world's most widely circulated literature, the reader is one of the most famous. Its influence is worldwide.
"Quiet Flows the Don" by its depth of content and theme, it covers the reality of the breadth and depth to reveal the process of life, it depicts a lively variety of character and explore the depth of the inner world of the hero, and the integrated use of various language arts skills are indeed a delicate euphemism both spectacular and majestic, gripping epic novel.
Content outline
Mailiehuofu a living in Russia during the Tatar village of the Don River, this small son Geligolie fell in love with the neighbor's wife, A Kexi Stepan Virginia. A Kexi Virginia long-term abuse by her husband, then by Stepan in the military during the affair with Geligolie have. Geligolie father outside in order to avoid scandal Yang, arranged in a village girl he married Natalie in Australia. But Geligolie not love her, and soon open cohabitation with A Kexi Virginia, the village has become a scandal.
Geligolie ashamed of his father, beating his son. Geligolie huff away from home, he ran out of the village and well-李斯特尼兹基 A Kexi Virginia home helpers. During this time, A Kexi Virginia had a daughter. Soon, Geligolie enlisted.
Natalie Australia see her husband on their own without any feelings, the pain was like suicide. However, comfort in every possible way by Mailiehuofu home, she finally calmed down. Geligolie first leave home, find A Kexi Virginia officers and landlords belongings Master Eugene hooked into adultery. Unfortunately, the tragic death of their daughter. Geligolie angry. He found a fight Eugene, and Virginia beat the A Kexi meal. Then return to their home, request forgiveness Natalie Australia. They reconciled. The end of vacation, Natalie has been pregnant in Australia, soon gave birth to a male and female twins.
Geligolie courage in the military fighting the enemy, so was awarded the Cross, the village became the first Knight. In the army, he met his brother Pietro and rival Stepan. Stepan repeatedly to harm Geligolie, but can not start. Geligolie but in a battle to save a life Stepan. Two scores off.
Geligolie back to the village after they heard the news of the Red Army to call. The villagers are ready to flee, Gregorian high actually not. Then came the news of the Red Army burning and looting, which cause great panic. For the villagers organized a resistance army. Geligolie villagers refused the request to him as leader, Pietro became a leader. Counterattack in the White Army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of defeat. Geligolie met the Red Army captured the original parent, and rebuked him to kill the White Army prisoners of war of the past.
In 1918, the Don Cossack region became a battlefield of revolution and counterrevolution. Tatar village was turned to the White Army, was the side of the Red Army. Geligolie and Pietro have become leader of the White Army. Pietro ruthless, is a complete counter-revolution. Gregorian High actually live in the depression in the. He would not killing innocent people, just in hurried retreat to preserve their lives. What he has no intention in the doctrine of the struggle, just peace as soon as possible.
The insurgency continues. At this time, Eugene returned to his hometown. He lost an arm in the war, came back after with a married woman. His former mistress A Kexi Virginia is still waiting for him. Eugene never married but do not want her to and from the. After a while they intimate that he would give her some money to let her go. A Kexi much against Virginia.
Geligolie tired of war, he returned to the Tatar village of Red political power has taken over the village. He is now on the A Kexi Virginia has not the slightest love, while getting good impression of Natalie Australia. After the Red Army began to consolidate the rule eliminated dissidents. Geligolie be included in the first list. He heard the wind, the night away.
With the increasing political imprisonment and executions, people fed up with the Red Army Cossacks indiscriminate and rise up, rebel in a relatively short period of time was a success, Pietro soon became commander. He start with sinister, ruthless to the Red Army in a battle later, he was the Red Army captured and killed.
Geligolie was promoted to division commander in the rebel. Pietro's death made him a ruthless, murderous. But he never killing of sick and elderly. As a group the Red Army opened a small difference, the Tatar village occupied by the rebels, the Red Army leaders were executed. Daria hand as Pietro avenged.
Geligolie home for the holidays, sister-in-law Daria tried flirting with him he refused. Geligolie have tired of war and lust, but he still missed the A Kexi Virginia. Natalie Leah gradually cool to him. He decided to return troops. To go before he met Ake Xi river in Dayton Virginia. Two-phase, as long, but also ignited a spark of love.
By 1919, the Soviet government realized that they face the daunting task. And sent over a large number of Red Army to defeat the rebels. Rebel with a large number of refugees crossed the Don River and blocked the Red Army offensive.
Red Army took over the Tatar village, all well-off were arson burned the house. Natalie died of typhoid in Australia to stay in the village. As teachers of Geligolie Although war continued, still taking the time to send someone over to the A Kexi Virginia. They resumed their former intimacy.
White Army fought back, the Red Army was driven away. At this time the rebels were compiled into a regular army. Geligolie because of no education, drop any squadron leader for the Cavaliers. White Army also sent punitive expeditions killing those who have helped the Red Army, and this makes the Tatar village fell into terror. At this time, Daria had contracted syphilis and plunge himself. Natalie Australia are doing abortions when bleeding to death.
As the Red Army offensive and Cossack troops continue to strengthen the growing phenomenon of many soldiers deserted, the White Army retreat. Geligolie and A Kexi Virginia also tried to escape, but 因阿克西尼亚 disease without the trip. Later, she returned to the Tatar village. Geligolie then joined the Red Army, fighting with the Poles in the performance is very brave.
Soon, Geligolie back home. Authorities heard the news, immediately sent came for him. He escaped and joined the mutiny from the Red Army out of the Fuming troops. Fuming want to organize the Communist Party of the Cossack revolt tax requisitions. But the rebellion was quickly suppressed. Rebels have been killed, only Geligolie back to the village. Geligolie fled again when brought to the A Kexi Virginia, but she was a chase from the Red Army patrol killed. Geligolie thrown away their arms, back home. Now he has only his own son. He does not want to lose the only family of this world.
Don Elegy
We honor the land is not used to plow tillage ... ...
We use the horseshoe to plow the land,
Glorious Cossack land species is the head,
Quiet Flows the Don everywhere decorated with a young widow,
Our Father, Quiet Flows the Don is full of orphans,
Quiet Flows the Don of the rolling waves of the father and mother's tears.
Oh, alas, Quiet Flows the Don, our father!
Oh, alas, Quiet Flows the Don, your muddy water why?
Oh, I Quiet Flows the Don of the water how can you not muddy!
Cold Spring from my Quiet Flows the Don of the river flowing out,
Silver fish to muddy my Quiet Flows the Don.
- Old Cossack song
"Quiet Flows the Don" is a famous Soviet writer Sholokhov's masterpiece. This book is divided into four, from 1928 until 1940, sharing 12 years before the completion of its creation. Sholokhov film debut came upon immediately by domestic and international attention, has been called "amazing masterpiece," "Soviet literature, it has not met the same compared to the novel." This book was awarded the Stalin prize in 1941, 1965, Sholokhov won the Nobel Prize for Literature books thus became the first Soviet writer so honored.
"Quiet Flows the Don," depicts the 1912 to 1922 between two revolutions (February Revolution, October Revolution), and two wars (the First World War, the Soviet civil war) in the sides of major historical events and the Don Cossacks In the turbulent life of 10 years, broadly reflecting the unique customs of the Cossacks, Cossacks changes in all sectors, the majority of Cossacks turning point in the complex history of ups and downs experienced by the road, and involved a powerful vortex of historical events in the hero Ge high interest in the tragedy of fate.
This novel has been published since 1928, have been Stalin's favor, which is Sholokhov lives in the Great Purges protected during the main reason for it being too high Wilkie and Romain Rolland, Lu Xun, Kobayashi Takiji and Hemingway other world-renowned author of highly praised. When the book was translated into German in Germany after the release, actually printed more than a German writer Remak's "Western Front." It has been translated into almost all major world languages, and a reprinted, sold worldwide, the contemporary world's most widely circulated literature, the reader is one of the most famous. Its influence is worldwide.
"Quiet Flows the Don" by its depth of content and theme, it covers the reality of the breadth and depth to reveal the process of life, it depicts a lively variety of character and explore the depth of the inner world of the hero, and the integrated use of various language arts skills are indeed a delicate euphemism both spectacular and majestic, gripping epic novel.
Content outline
Mailiehuofu a living in Russia during the Tatar village of the Don River, this small son Geligolie fell in love with the neighbor's wife, A Kexi Stepan Virginia. A Kexi Virginia long-term abuse by her husband, then by Stepan in the military during the affair with Geligolie have. Geligolie father outside in order to avoid scandal Yang, arranged in a village girl he married Natalie in Australia. But Geligolie not love her, and soon open cohabitation with A Kexi Virginia, the village has become a scandal.
Geligolie ashamed of his father, beating his son. Geligolie huff away from home, he ran out of the village and well-李斯特尼兹基 A Kexi Virginia home helpers. During this time, A Kexi Virginia had a daughter. Soon, Geligolie enlisted.
Natalie Australia see her husband on their own without any feelings, the pain was like suicide. However, comfort in every possible way by Mailiehuofu home, she finally calmed down. Geligolie first leave home, find A Kexi Virginia officers and landlords belongings Master Eugene hooked into adultery. Unfortunately, the tragic death of their daughter. Geligolie angry. He found a fight Eugene, and Virginia beat the A Kexi meal. Then return to their home, request forgiveness Natalie Australia. They reconciled. The end of vacation, Natalie has been pregnant in Australia, soon gave birth to a male and female twins.
Geligolie courage in the military fighting the enemy, so was awarded the Cross, the village became the first Knight. In the army, he met his brother Pietro and rival Stepan. Stepan repeatedly to harm Geligolie, but can not start. Geligolie but in a battle to save a life Stepan. Two scores off.
Geligolie back to the village after they heard the news of the Red Army to call. The villagers are ready to flee, Gregorian high actually not. Then came the news of the Red Army burning and looting, which cause great panic. For the villagers organized a resistance army. Geligolie villagers refused the request to him as leader, Pietro became a leader. Counterattack in the White Army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of defeat. Geligolie met the Red Army captured the original parent, and rebuked him to kill the White Army prisoners of war of the past.
In 1918, the Don Cossack region became a battlefield of revolution and counterrevolution. Tatar village was turned to the White Army, was the side of the Red Army. Geligolie and Pietro have become leader of the White Army. Pietro ruthless, is a complete counter-revolution. Gregorian High actually live in the depression in the. He would not killing innocent people, just in hurried retreat to preserve their lives. What he has no intention in the doctrine of the struggle, just peace as soon as possible.
The insurgency continues. At this time, Eugene returned to his hometown. He lost an arm in the war, came back after with a married woman. His former mistress A Kexi Virginia is still waiting for him. Eugene never married but do not want her to and from the. After a while they intimate that he would give her some money to let her go. A Kexi much against Virginia.
Geligolie tired of war, he returned to the Tatar village of Red political power has taken over the village. He is now on the A Kexi Virginia has not the slightest love, while getting good impression of Natalie Australia. After the Red Army began to consolidate the rule eliminated dissidents. Geligolie be included in the first list. He heard the wind, the night away.
With the increasing political imprisonment and executions, people fed up with the Red Army Cossacks indiscriminate and rise up, rebel in a relatively short period of time was a success, Pietro soon became commander. He start with sinister, ruthless to the Red Army in a battle later, he was the Red Army captured and killed.
Geligolie was promoted to division commander in the rebel. Pietro's death made him a ruthless, murderous. But he never killing of sick and elderly. As a group the Red Army opened a small difference, the Tatar village occupied by the rebels, the Red Army leaders were executed. Daria hand as Pietro avenged.
Geligolie home for the holidays, sister-in-law Daria tried flirting with him he refused. Geligolie have tired of war and lust, but he still missed the A Kexi Virginia. Natalie Leah gradually cool to him. He decided to return troops. To go before he met Ake Xi river in Dayton Virginia. Two-phase, as long, but also ignited a spark of love.
By 1919, the Soviet government realized that they face the daunting task. And sent over a large number of Red Army to defeat the rebels. Rebel with a large number of refugees crossed the Don River and blocked the Red Army offensive.
Red Army took over the Tatar village, all well-off were arson burned the house. Natalie died of typhoid in Australia to stay in the village. As teachers of Geligolie Although war continued, still taking the time to send someone over to the A Kexi Virginia. They resumed their former intimacy.
White Army fought back, the Red Army was driven away. At this time the rebels were compiled into a regular army. Geligolie because of no education, drop any squadron leader for the Cavaliers. White Army also sent punitive expeditions killing those who have helped the Red Army, and this makes the Tatar village fell into terror. At this time, Daria had contracted syphilis and plunge himself. Natalie Australia are doing abortions when bleeding to death.
As the Red Army offensive and Cossack troops continue to strengthen the growing phenomenon of many soldiers deserted, the White Army retreat. Geligolie and A Kexi Virginia also tried to escape, but 因阿克西尼亚 disease without the trip. Later, she returned to the Tatar village. Geligolie then joined the Red Army, fighting with the Poles in the performance is very brave.
Soon, Geligolie back home. Authorities heard the news, immediately sent came for him. He escaped and joined the mutiny from the Red Army out of the Fuming troops. Fuming want to organize the Communist Party of the Cossack revolt tax requisitions. But the rebellion was quickly suppressed. Rebels have been killed, only Geligolie back to the village. Geligolie fled again when brought to the A Kexi Virginia, but she was a chase from the Red Army patrol killed. Geligolie thrown away their arms, back home. Now he has only his own son. He does not want to lose the only family of this world.
Translated by Google
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce, first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature, it has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".
Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle). The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and Joyce's novel (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus). Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.
Ulysses contains approximately 265,000 words from a lexicon of 30,030 words (including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses), divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." Ulysses' stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle). The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and Joyce's novel (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus). Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.
Ulysses contains approximately 265,000 words from a lexicon of 30,030 words (including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses), divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." Ulysses' stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.