The Classics Club Spin!

The Classics Club has announced its fifth official Classics Spin and I am excited, mainly because I have never managed to participate in a spin before, even though I love the idea.
To take part you have to post a list of twenty titles from your Classics Club list and on Monday a number will be announced which will determine the book you should read until April.

Here comes my choice of books and I have included some very scary titles so I will just hope that the lot won't fall upon one of them.

1. Don Quixote (yes, I'm starting with scary)
2. Uncle Tom's Cabin
3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
4. The Canterbury Tales
5. Villette
6. The House of the Seven Gables
7. Moby Dick (ugh.)
8. Beloved
9. Northanger Abbey (please, please, please)
10. Anna Karenina
11. I know why the Caged Bird Sings
12. Gone with the Wind
13. Mrs Dalloway
14. The Good Earth
15. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
16. Ulysses (the fear is self-explanatory)
17. Moll Flanders
18. The Bell Jar
19. The Crucible
20. The House of Mirth

The books I'd be most happy about are Northanger Abbey (could you tell?), Gone with the Wind, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and The Bell Jar. Which ones I would not be too ecstatic about was noticeable I think... although they'd certainly make for a challenge. So good luck to me and everyone else participating!

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie... From a Feminist Perspective

Peter Pan is one of these stories everyone knows. Written as a highly successful play it was adapted by J.M. Barrie into a novel in 1911 and later followed by countless other stories about the boy who would not grow up. Understandably, like most other children's classics it is dear to the hearts of many and of course the idea of staying a child forever without ever having to face the disillutionments of growing up carries an eternal appeal, but reading the novel for the first time I could not help noting some aspects that genuinely astonished and bothered me.

First off, the story is very surrealistic and symbolic in ways that cannot be explained by its fantasy world. There are many passsages such as this description of Mrs Darling which cannot be targeted at children (only).

“She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner. ”

However, more than anything the novel contains some surprisingly dark parts. The Lost Boys, who are after all children less that twelve years old, go into battles and even kill pirates without thinking twice. It reminds me of Grimms' Fairy Tales where the most brutal things happen to the villains but don't bother children listening to them at all. As Barrie writes, children are indeed "gay and innocent and heartless".

Still, all of this might have surprised me but it is not where my problem with the book lies. The problem is this: amid all his beautiful ideas and poetic descriptions J.M. Barrie gives his female characters only one-dimensional, boring and ultimately worrisome narratives.
While Peter is cocky, playful, selfish and sometimes cruel, in short a typical child, Wendy is brought to Neverland as a "mother" for the boys and then immediately assumes the role of a miniature housewive (with the exception of those times when she is portrayed as a damsel in distress waiting for the hero to save her).
Although she is no older than Peter Pan he automatically expects her to care for him and the other boys and to often do housework while the Lost Boys have fun and go on adventures.
For Wendy Neverland is no childhood paradise because even there she already has to act as a grown-up little woman. Shaped by her society's expectations, she is happy to embrace this domestic existence.

There are several hints of romantic feelings Wendy might possibly have for Peter, although she is too young to really fall in love with him and probably only imitates the adults she knows by making Peter the "father" of the Lost Boys and therefore her husband. However, Peter resists this idea. He says his feelings towards Wendy are "those of a devoted son" and wants to stay a careless child, unwilling to burden himself with the responisibilities of an adult even in play. This does not keep Tiger Lily, Wendy and Tinkerbell (who even tries to kill Wendy) from being jealous and hating each other over him though. I think I do not have to explain how harmful a narrative is in which the only way women interact is in their struggle to "get the man".

While I liked some parts of the book I would not want my daughter, should I one day have one, to read it.
I want her Neverland to be happy and exciting and full of possibilies beyond marrying and domestic bliss.

A very late Readathon Wrap-up

I know, I know, I am tremendously late in reviewing the Classics Club Readathon which ended three days ago, and I should have known that I would not have time to write a wrap-up post in time because it was exactly the same last year.
But in my defense school started for me on Monday, meaning that I again have to endure endless hours of boredom during the day and work through dangerously high piles of homework in the evening.
Oh, the sweet joys of education.


Anyway, back to the Readathon! Here is the ending questionnaire:

1. What book(s) did you read during the event?

    Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Siddharta by Hermann Hesse

2. What book(s) did you finish?

    All except Siddharta, that was too much theologic philosophy for the early hours of the morning.
3. What did you like about our event?

    It was a really great way to start the year with a lot of guilt-free reading.
4. Do you have suggestions for future Readathons through The Classics Club?

    Maybe make them semi-annual? It would be great to have such a big Readathon in the summer as well!
5. Would you participate in future Readathons?

    Definitely!
6. Anything else you’d like to share? (Favorite quote from your reading? Funny anecdote from the event?)

    I loved The Great Gatsby and there are many beautiful quotes in it, but my favourite is this one about          Gatsby from near the end of the book:

"He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight—watching over nothing."

The Classics Club Readathon

It is already 2 pm in Austria and after a busy morning I'm ready to start The Second Annual Classics Club Readathon! I am more than excited and thankfully I've got the living room all to myself, I love reading next to the Christmas tree. Supplied with chocolate, Christmas cookie leftovers and plenty of coffee I feel properly prepared for reading through the night.

The books I've chosen are Siddharta by Hermann Hesse because I am trying to overcome my unpatriotic dislike of German literature, Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie because I need a break from growing up and finally The Great Gatsby because I am apparently the only person on earth to not have read it yet.

I'll probably start with Peter Pan which I hope to finish today. Updates will be added to this post every few hours.
For now, good luck to everyone participating and happy reading!

First Update - 8.30 pm
I have finished Peter Pan and it was quite different from what I expected. Not bad, but very surreal, especially in the beginning which rather dragged. For a children's book I found it pretty grown up though, and it took me longer than expected.
Now I'll have dinner and make a minimum of civil conversation with my family before curling up with The Great Gatsby.

Second Update - Midnight

I am halfway through Gatsby and very captivated by it so far, although I'm starting to feel a little melancholy. All the loneliness of the Jazz Age's party people seems to be creeping into my room... 

Surprisingly I'm not tired at all yet, but I suppose the morning hours are going to be tough.

Third Update - 4.30 am
I've just finished The Great Gatsby and right now I'm almost overwhelmed with feelings and ideas. I know for sure that this is one of the books I'll be reading many more times throughout my life, hoping to uncover all its meanings.

I'll sleep a little now - not so much because I'm tired but because I simply cannot imagine reading another book right after this! But if I can get out of bed I'd like to read Siddharta in the morning before the readathon ends. It's only 100 pages long and I've got time until 2 pm so it should be manageable.
Good luck to everyone who is reading through the night!

Fourth Update - 11 am
I slept for six hours and had weird dreams of people dancing in dresses from the Twenties, thanks Gatsby!
However, I am wide awake now and ready to tackle the last 3 hours of the readathon with my duty read, Siddharta.

Fifth and Final Update - 2 pm
That's it! 24 hours are over and I have to say they passed really quickly. I am not quite finished with Siddharta because I found it too complex and philosophical to read it in my exhausted state, but I am still very happy with all the progress I've made during the readathon.
I've read around 500 pages, which is gigantic considering my slow-motion reading pace! Sometime later today or tomorrow I'll write a wrap-up post, but I need a little rest and time to sort my thoughts first.

The Frozen Deep by Wilkie Collins

Sometimes people have strange, inexplicable, menacing presentiments that seemingly come out of nowhere. There is no sound reason for it, but at the same time it is not possible to shake off the certainty that some nebulous threat  is waiting in the shadows of the future. This is the tone that dominates most of Wilkie Collins's novella The Frozen Deep.
Maybe it is just me, but I think even the title already carries the sense of gloom and of the foreboding of tragedy.

Based off Franklin's doomed Arctic Expedition of 1845 which disappeared forever during their search for the Northwest Passage,
The Frozen Deep was written as a play by Wilkie Collins for the annual Christmas performance at Charles Dickens's house in 1856 and later reworked into this novella.  Dickens apparently altered it so much that critics claimed the play should be ascribed to him rather than to his friend, but in the story his influence isn't directly noticeable.

The writing style is definitely Wilkie Collins's (which is great!), even though it is obvious that the novella was adapted from a play because at the beginnings of chapters there are only thinly veiled play-like scene descriptions. However, my only real criticism is that, with less than a hundred pages, the story was too short. I wanted to read more scenes set in the desolation of the eternal ice. I was captivated by their atmosphere of abject loneliness and doom, and I think that, had Wilkie Collins only adapted his play into a proper novel, it would have both enjoyed immense success and turned into one of my favourite books.

As it is, the novella tells the story of Clara Burnham, whose lover Frank Aldersley is about to leave as an officer for the Arctic expedition when she meets her childhood friend Richard Wardour who is just coming back from another expedition and madly in love with her. Through a misunderstanding he believes Clara to be engaged to him, and when she refuses him he vows to make the man who "stole her from him" regret the day they met. Weary of life, he then signs up to join the Arctic expedition without knowing that Aldersley is his rival. But Clara, who believes she has the Second Sight (a belief which interestingly is neither outright confirmed nor refuted during the story) is afraid for Frank Aldersley's life nonetheless. And she is right: Richard Wardour really finds out that his comrade is the man he has sworn revenge and eventually the two end up drifting on an iceberg in the ocean, completely alone in a desert of snow.

As I've said the chilling atmosphere is magnificent and the sense of threat stems largely from Richard Wardour. He is an extremely interesting character, and although he provided the inspiration for Sydney Carton from Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, I was surprised to learn that there are significant differences between these two men. Richard Wardour is more respected in his position as a gentleman than the drunkard Sydney Carton, but completely different to him he appears as very dangerous, at least in the beginning. I wonder what it must be like to read The Frozen Deep without knowing beforehand that Richard Wardour is in the end the neglected, tragic hero of the story.