Top Ten Troubled Women in Classic Novels

 



Top Ten Tuesday is one of my favourite weekly list-y things to read. It is hosted by the people over at The Broke and the Bookish and today's topic is "Top Ten favourite characters in [whatever genre you choose]". So I decided to go with my Top Ten Troubled Women in Classic Novels. It does not mean that I like and admire all those women, but rather that I found their characters and development interesting to observe. Some I like more than others; some I despise and some I symphatise with. Okay, here goes:

 

1. Anna Karenina from "Anna Karenina" (Leo Tolstoy) - one of the most famous female characters out there, Anna has trouble finding her place in society and finding balance between the wishes of her heart and the unforgiving social norms.
2. Emma Bovary from "Madame Bovary" (Gustave Flaubert) - both Anna and Emma have always been strongly associated in my mind, as Emma too would prefer life away from "boring" husband and decides to follow the whims of her heart.
3. Rebecca Sharp from "Vanity Fair" (William Makepeace Thackeray) - there is a woman that can send shivers of anger and despise right through your body. Probably one of the most famous climbers of the social ladder in literature.
4. Margarita from "The Master and Margarita" (Mikhail Bulgakov) - Margarita is a character who also knows that she is married to a wrong man, but unlike the previous three characters, she is portrayed as strong and courageous woman instead. She is so certain she is doing the right thing that readers are drawn to rather admire her.
5. Sarah Woodruff from "French Lieutenant's Woman" (John Knowles) -  nicknamed "Tragedy", Sarah is a really complicated character, mayhaps a little ahead of her time. She spends many of her days gazing out at the sea, and it is commonly thought that she is waiting for the French Lieutenant.
6. Daisy Buchanan from "The Great Gatsby" (F. Scott Fitzgerald) - a spoiled brat (excuse the expression); a woman so shallow she has hard time figuring out what it is that she wants.
7. Frances "Franny" from "Franny and Zooey" (J. D. Salinger) - one of the members of Salinger's Glass family, featured in many of his stories. Being a 20-year old college student, Franny is searching for her spiritual self and it is not easy for her to find.
8. Charlotte Haze from Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) - Lolita's mother. The woman forces Humbert Humbert into marriage while refusing/incapable to see how he despises her; she is also unable or unwilling to see her husband's interest into her teenage daughter.
9. Arwen Undómiel from "The Lord of the Rings" (J. R. R. Tolkien) - elf Arwen has a tough decision to make - she loves a man; the problem is, elves' lifespan goes tens and tens of times beyond that of men. Arwen feels pressure from her father to be "sensible" and take a ship away from Middle-Earth, and remain immortal.
10. An honourary mention - The Madwoman in the Attic from "Jane Eyre" (Charlottë Bronte) -  no comments needed here. She is clearly very troubled :)

"A Modern March" - Making the Spring New

Allie over at A Literary Odyssey is hosting an event to my liking this March - A Modern March.

 

People will be (voluntarily!) tackling authors like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, E. M. Forster, et cetera, et cetera... Stream of consciousness, experiments in literary techniques, multiple narratives, inner monologues, all the Make It New stuff from the late 19th-halfwaythrough the 20th century.

 

In general, I love modernists. For different reasons. I might not personally like some of them that much, or I might find them very hard to approach (Joyce, Woolf), but I can relate to the movement as such. I enjoy the concept of thinking of something new. Changing the old ways. Progress! Yes. Making It New. I also fancy some of the authors just for making me move my "little grey cells" a tad more than when I read something else, more conventional.

 

During the literature courses in uni, as much as I am able to recall, I read at least a few modernist pieces. The brightest flame among them Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury"; I was able to rave about this one more than any other book for a good while (and I don't even generally rave over books... almost ever). We read "To the Lighthouse" - to this day I remember the scene with the pot of stew. It was the first time I realised that food can actually act almost like a character in novel. Kafka - how I loved the bureaucratic corridors of human mind in "The Trial", and how it depressed the me in late teens. We read Thomas Mann, to whom I did not take particular liking, but I really want to read him again, and will do that during the Classics Club project. I have read "The Great Gatsby" (Fitzgerald) twice and I loved "Lolita" (Nabokov), which I think is actually hanging on the border of modernism and postmodernism (such is the nature of genres; they mix and melt).

 

Anyway. I intend to read some modernist goodness this March, yes I do! Crossing over with my Classics Club list is plenty of stuff, so I'll just come up a short initial, spontaneous list (who doesn't love a good list, even if it's short):

 

* F. Scott Fitzgerald "Tender is the Night" - it's sitting on my bookshelf and I'd love a good excuse to give it some attention rather sooner than later.

* Ernest Hemingway "For Whom the Bell Tolls" - quite the contrary with this one; I think without a good motivational factors I might get to that one who knows when.

* And I'm hoping to pull out a copy of Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" from the top hat by March, because I reallyreallyreally want to read it (and then I want to read "The Hours" right after it!), so fingers crossed.

 

The list may, of course, and is likely to, be altered.

Brain Food, II

I have been reading! Of course. After finishing "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" last week (review coming up hopefully), I had to make some decisions. 

I cheat on books, with other books. I usually have a small pile of "currently reading" next to bed. As a rule, it contains books from different genres, to match different moods, situations and brain energy levels. For example, right now the pile consists of 

• a collection of Chinese short stories (in Estonian);
• a non-fiction book on psychology;
• a non-fiction book on medical condition that I have;
• a sci-fi novel;
• a fantasy novel;
• a 19th century classic novel;
• a contemporary magical realism novel.

The books I am reading actively are George R.R. Martin's latest "A Dance With Dragons", Wilkie Collins's "The Woman in White" and Murakami's "1Q84". In itself, it is a pretty nifty list, leaving aside the fact that all these three are complete chunksters! 1178, 728 and 1156 pages, respectively. That means I should take another book to go aside... a slim one. Something that I would be able to finish in less than 1+ week. *sigh*

Anyhow, on to some books I hoarded since the last brain-food post. 

Left - 

• Orson Scott Card "Ender's Game", "Speaker for the Dead", "Xenocide", "Children of the Mind" - back when I was small, I read "Ender's Game" in Estonian. Of course, this book was hit by the fate as many others of the genre at the time - they only translated first of the series, and that was it. I still remember how I practically gulped it down, and figured it would be nice to do that again, + some extra.

Right, from top to bottom - 

• Jodi Picoult "My Sister's Keeper" - totally out of my usual comfort zone this, but I want to read more female authors, and the plot of this one picqued my interest. I will attack Picoult with great apprehension and carefulness, however. It might not be my cup of coffee at all.
• Erin Morgenstern "The Night Circus" - hmph. Another one of those books I got based on introduction of the story. + allegedly the writing style is to be admired. We shall see.
• Francis Scott Fitzgerald "Tender is the Night" - I have read "The Great Gatsby" twice and was always drawn to the title of this one (it's even better-sounding in Estonian).
• Robin Hobb "Ship of Magic" - I like Robb's soapish style of fantasy, and the (perfect) ending of the Farseer's trilogy made me forgive her all the naiveties, plot holes and stupid twists she might have taken along the way. And made me give her another chance.