Esther Racah Writer & Literary Blogger

Tag: fiction novel

Cranford By Elizabeth Gaskell

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell is an 1853 British novel, and it is the most renowned of this British author. This book consists of sixteen chapters, and it is the sixth novel in my second list of books. Between 1851 and 1853 Elizabeth Gaskell published the story in eight issues in the magazine Household Words. Charles Dickens was the editor in chief of this English magazine, besides being an extraordinary writer. Dickens was also a reporter and an editor. (If you are curious about Charles Dickens, I wrote three articles about the first, the second and the third book of his extraordinary novel A Tale of Two Cities). The plot of Cranford takes place in a small town in Victorian England.

The Book Of Cranford By Elizabeth Gaskell

Cranford is a small town where a group of women leads a quiet life. They know all about each other’s lives, although they don’t pay too much attention to others’ opinions. Each woman keeps her individuality or eccentricity, nevertheless in this little town “good-will reign among them”. Time to time, there is some altercation, but all return to a natural peace and calm. They wear ordinary and suitable dresses, not caring about fashion rules. Regulations rule all the visits and calls, which the ladies sometimes organise. Most of the Cranford families’ standard of living is lowly, and it is forbidden to talk about poverty and money. The people of Cranford try to ignore all the life flaws due to their poverty. Expensive food and drinks are considered vulgar and ostentatious. Frugal and inexpensive lifestyle is an elegant way of living, which satisfies this quiet and humble community.

A Pretty Quiet Novel

This novel is not a real romance or poetry. There are no heroes, and everything is pretty quiet. No rich and wicked people are present in the book. And the poor is no extraordinary at all since the crowd of Cranford includes ordinary and regular persons. Cranford is a small country town with a torporific ambience. The main characters are old “gentlewomen of limited incomes”. Among them, there is Matilda Matty Jenkyns, who is the daughter of a deceased rector. The mise en scene is indoor, where the gentlewomen organise meetings to take the tea and talk about everything. It is a book about ordinary people experiencing common circumstances in their life. The realism of Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell is evident in the homely details of those ladies’ daily lives.

A Country-Town Life

In Cranford, there is a particular art of telling a story. Although neither poetry nor passions are present in this household novel, humour and fun don’t miss. In the beginning, the picturesque chronicles of a “country-town life” were under Household Words. It is the humoristic description of life sketches in a small country town. Madame George Sand expressed her opinion regarding Elizabeth Gaskell, claiming that “Mrs Gaskell has done what other female writers nor I in France can accomplish – she has written novels which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and which every girl will be the better for reading.” Elizabeth was a hearted and kind person, and she was familiar with her poorer neighbours. Her interactions with the poor gave her an inside vision of the lower, middle and working classes, which influenced her writings. I suggest you read this book to get a different perspective on British literature. I’ve read this edition of Cranford on Apple Books.

October 6, 2020
The Blue Castle

The Blue Castle is a 1926 novel by the Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery. It is a fictional story, which takes place in the Muskoka region of Ontario in Canada. This novel is the fifth book in my second list of books.

The Dreadful Life Of Valancy

The first part of this fantasy is pretty sad and dull. Valancy Stirling, who is the main character of this story, lives a segregated and lifeless life. A life, which is full of anguishes, abuses and repression. She lives in an ugly red brick house on Elm Street, with her dreadful and abusive family, which control her assiduously. Indeed, Valancy is not free to take a walk whenever she wishes. She has to keep the many rules of her family, such as attending the three meals regularly at the same hours and not sneezing at all. She has to be a submissive and docile girl. Valancy is twenty-nine and, her family and acquaintances consider her a hopeless and insignificant spinster. They love to humiliate her and abuse her unassertive nature. Hence Miss Stirling flees to her imaginary blue castle by night.

The Fairy Tale of The Blue Castle

Valancy tries to preserve her sanity, pretending to live a virtual life in her beautiful blue castle. A castle with its turrets and banners on a pine-clad mountain in an unknown land. Everything is gorgeous and exquisite in her blue castle. Handsome knights court her because she is the most beautiful and lovely dame of the castle. No man pays attention to her in her real-life, and everyone mocks her for being an old, lonely and undesired maid. Valancy is “insignificant-looking” with her always short and thin black hair. In the book, Miss Stirling appears as small and slender with a pale complexion. She found refuge in her lovely and exquisite hideout during her colourless life, where she identified herself as a twenty-five-year-old girl. Valancy Stirling closed herself in her small hideous room during the nights and fled to her dreamy castle. Since her family never allowed Valancy to read novels, she found comfort in the nature books by John Foster, which were all about woods, birds and bugs.

The End Of The Anguishes

Valancy’s life’s anguishes endure up to the day she finds out that she will die because of angina pectoris. At this very moment, she realises that “Fear is the original sin. Almost all the evil in the world has its origin because someone is afraid of something. It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear, and it is of all things degrading”, as John Foster wrote in one of his books. She understands that her submissive “well-behaviour” is due to her fears. All her life, she has been trapped inside her fears to disappoint her family. She allowed her old dismays to overwhelm her, leading an unhappy and miserable life. So Valancy decides to start a new life with unapologetic behaviour, not anymore afraid to disappoint her family. She begins to behave as she wishes, and she expresses her real and unfiltered thoughts as they are in her mind.

Valancy And Her Real Blue Castle

Valancy decides to look for her blue castle. In reality, she goes to keep house for Roaring Abel Gay because of his dying daughter. Mr Gay has a bad reputation for being an alcoholic, and Valancy’s decision is a disgrace for the Stirlings. Even though Valancy works hard and takes care of the moribund Cecily “Cissy” Gay, she finds happiness and freedom, far away from her dreadful Stirling clan. Valancy is acquainted with Barney Snaith, who is well-known as a criminal living as a hermit on his island. She discovers that Barney is a gentleman, a very kind person, and falls in love with him. Therefore, Valancy askes Barney to be her husband because she is going to die soon. After they get married, Valancy lives with Barney on his island, where his house is amazingly similar to her blue castle. Barney hides his identity because, in reality, he is a millionaire and the famous writer John Foster. They love each other candidly, and they enjoy spending time together and travelling. It is a romantic and happy ending story where you will find the Muskoka region’s exquisite nature description.

Reflections

I enjoyed reading this book. It kept me distracted and engaged. I have to confess that in the beginning, I found it an unfortunate and depressing book. Nevertheless, after some chapter, I changed my mind, and I loved it. It indeed is a classic love story, which sometimes can help cheer yourself up, even though the patriarchal beliefs are present in this book. The heroine Valancy, has to be rescued by her charming prince Barney to improve her life. And also in this novel, every woman’s success is to marry a rich gentleman; indeed, without marriage, Valancy was continuing leading her sorrowful life with her dreadful family. Valancy prefers to have a short happy life rather than a long-lifeless existence, which is overflowing with enslavement and fear. She is delighted with her husband, having found the happiness she was seeking. Like a real princess of a fairy tale, Valancy preserves her integrity and pureness. She remains pure, honest and virtuous inside herself. I had read this digital edition in the Apple Book Store.

September 26, 2020
Animal Farm By George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell is a 1945 short allegorical novel. It is about the rebellion of a group of animals on a farm. They want to rebel because of the oppression and abuses perpetrated by their farmers.

The Unusual Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell is the fourth novel of my second list of books. It is a fiction and phantasmagoric novel, which starts with a nocturnal meeting of all the animals on a farm in England. They organise a rebellion against their farmers, Mr and Mrs Jones. Once they succeed, they happily celebrate. Now the farm goes under the name “Animal Farm”, and they fought against the only creature, the man, who consumes without producing. Once the animals remove their real enemy, they organise their “society” following Animalism’s principles. Their leader is Napoleon, a large and fat Berkshire pig. Napoleon is an allegory of Joseph Stalin, and he stands out for his “reputation for getting his way”. It is the only farm in England to be managed by animals.

Getting Worse And Worse

In Animal Farm by George Orwell, the pigs lead the farm, and the other animals are simple workers, which work very hard in extreme conditions and eating a small amount of food. Indeed, the best food is owned by the pigs, which do not work physically with the excuse to be “responsible” of the organisation of the farm. Soon Napoleon becomes the cruel dictator of Animal Farm, and he makes sure that every subordinate animal works hard without complaining. All-day and every day, all the other animals work for the pigs surrounded by their frightening dogs. While the pigs can read and write correctly, the other animals cannot get further than the letter A. The animal prole is exploited by the pigs, which dominate over the other animals to raise the farm production and sell the products to human farmers.

Human Pigs

Napoleon loves to strike fear and eliminate rebel animals, like a good dictator. At the end of the book, he and his piggy squad start walking on their hind legs, wearing human clothes, smoking, and drinking alcohol. They humanise themselves, adopting the bad habits and customs of the human race. All animals are not equal anymore because “some of them are more equal than others”. The lower animals are more frightened by the pigs rather than human visitors. “Animal Farm” becomes “The Manor Farm” and the pigs become prosperous and powerful. In fact, Napoleon and his pig subalterns planned to replace the previous tyrant’s role from the beginning. The pig dictatorship is more cruel and oppressive than the previous human one.

Moral Of The Story of Animal Farm by George Orwell

This novel precedes Nineteen Eighty-Four, where there is a similar thematic. They are allegorical novels about dictatorship, abuse of power, exploitation of humans and animals, and mass slaughter. The ends justify the means. The suppression of free thought and free speech, and the constant intimidation, are the only ways to create an ignorant and docile prole. Indeed, this is how a dictator overuses his power and exploit the population. Animal Farm might be an allegory of Stalinism. The inspiration of the subject comes from the Stalinist purges in Barcelona. During that period George Orwell and his wife risked perishing. Different American publishers rejected Animal Farm, finding it too English and too anti-Soviet. Nevertheless, it was published in August 1945, and it became a great success.

Thoughts

After 75 years, the reality of Animal Farm is still actual and accurate. Everyone should read this book. Unfortunately, even nowadays, there are still fifty dictatorships around the world. There are countries where freedom is replaced by tyranny, terror, genocide, complete control of the mass. Human rights and every form of liberty are abolished. Usually, the rate of unemployed and impoverished people is very high. Persecutions of people because of their religion and ethnicity are typical of dictatorships and the organisation of concentration camps. It is sad and scary that today the young generation is not aware of past crimes and massacres such as the holocaust. Being Jewish, it hurts so much to read that there is a lack of holocaust knowledge among American millennials and Gen Z. To make this planet a better place, there should be a historical awareness. Hence study history is essential for cognitive moral development.

September 18, 2020
Nineteen Eighty-Four – A Novel

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a 1949 novel by the English author Eric Arthur Blair, who wrote under George Orwell’s pseudonym. It is a dystopian and satirical book about totalitarianism. This novel takes place in Airstrip One (previously Great Britain) in the provinces of Oceania. It is the second novel in my second list of books.

The Social Structure

The Nineteen Eighty-Four book starts with a bright cold day in 1984 to anticipate this story’s harsh and ruthless dynamic. The cult of the Big Brother and the Ingsoc ideology are the bases of this society. There is a pyramidal social structure where the majority consists of proles, the lower working class; the Outer Party composes the middle-class, and the Inner Party represents the upper class. The dictator is the mysterious Big Brother, whose identity is secret. He is a phantasmatic leader who represents the Party. His face appears all over Oceania, in posters and telescreens with the “Big Brother Is Watching You” caption. Microphones and telescreens upholster every bit of the indoors and outdoors. Everyone and everything is under the control of the elitist Inner Party. The role of the Thought Police is to control everybody all the time.

The Ministries

In this lunatic and foolish social structure, there are three different government ministries: the Ministry of Truth, Minitrue, the Ministry of Peace, Minipax, the Ministry of Love, Miniluv and the Ministry of Plenty, Miniplenty. The Minitrue deals with news, entertainment and education; the Minipax is responsible for the war; the Miniluv is in charge of law and order; the Miniplenty manages the economic affairs. The worst among them is the Miniluv. The main character of this catastrophic scenario is Winston Smith, who works for the Minitrue. In Oceania, the official language is the Newspeak which consists of a minimal amount of words. Furthermore, the third most populous region of Oceania is Airstrip One, whose chief city is London. And it is in London that all the episodes occur.

A Ridiculous Propaganda

The three slogans of the Party are: War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery and Ignorance Is Strength. It sums up the concept of the ideal citizen who must be an ignorant slave and fanatic supporter of the Big Brother. Hence, instincts, free-thinking, love, and individualism are illegal. And every thought and emotion is meticulously scrutinised as much as actions. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the people’s enemy is Emmanuel Goldstein, one of the Party leaders; after he engaged in revolutionary activities, he escaped and disappeared. Everyone hated and despised Goldstein. Winston hates the Big Brother, the Party and the Thought Police. These three heinous entities fight the thoughtcrime, which consists of unorthodox thoughts and rejection of the Party’s doctrine.

The Thoughtcrime

Winston keeps remembering ancient times when he was a child, and there were privacy, love and friendship. Therefore, he firmly believes that thoughtcrime involves death, recognising himself as a dead man. Indeed, the deprivation of feelings and freedom gave birth to a society made of fear, hatred and pain; and the old England was now Airstrip one. Another slogan of the Party is: “Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past”. A mist surrounds every memory of Winston because he remembers only sporadic events. Briefly, he realises that whoever displeases the Party, disappears mysteriously. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, marriages were happening among Party members with the approval of a committee, with the condition that the two parts were not feeling any mutual attraction. The only purpose of marriages was the procreation of children for the service of the Party.

An Unbearable Existence

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, love is an unthinkable act because of the denial of feelings and affection. The Party considered the proles as natural inferiors such as animals. Hence there is no need to indoctrinate them with the ideology. And to exploit the proles, the only requirement is a mere patriotism. They are free from telescreens, daily inspections, and puritanism. Indeed, another Party slogan is: “Proles and animals are free”.

On the contrary, Winston’s life is a blend of a nebulous past and lies, which become truth. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Big Brother’s hypnotic eye is everywhere, even on the children’s books. And it is a coercive and frightening way to manipulate the minds. Literature is banned, and the only legal books are the ones about the doctrine of the Party. Therefore the history and the past are erased. Nobody escapes torture and detection.

Thoughts And Dreams

Not only thoughts and speeches are under examination but also dreams, which are the unconsciousness’s expression. Even during the sleep, the mind must control itself and love the Big Brother. On this purpose, the children are often spies, who denounce their parents, and their loyalty to the Party replaces their love for their parents. Moreover, no emotion is pure because the fear and hate contaminate everything. Nevertheless, Winston has a love affair with a girl, Julia, who hates the Party. They both try to survive, even though they break the rules, know that their death can come in a moment. Among all the social classes, the proles remain human, keeping their primitive emotions. In the end, Winston will go through several years of tortures, which will reshape his mind as brand new, inducing him to love and venerate only the Big Brother.

Cogito Ergo Sum

The Party’s logic finds its explanation in the concept of perception of reality, where truth and lie are consequences of the thoughts. A principle recalls René Descartes’s philosophy, who stated that “I think; therefore I am”. In this sense, reality exists because we think about it. As he explained: “We cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt”. Moreover, the self-evident truth of “two plus two equals four” exists only in the human mind. The English writer Samuel Johnson used to affirm that you may have a reason to assert that two plus two equals five. In the Nineteen Eighty-Four novel, what is essential to the Party is that every mind subordinates to the Party doctrine. As a consequence, the power of thinking must overcome reality; nothing exists outside the human mind.

The Zombies Of Nineteen Eighty-Four

The Big Brother Party’s ultimate ambition is to create a crowd of brainless zombies, who obey the Party’s doctrine unconditionally. The real interest of the Party and every type of dictatorship is to seek power for its own sake. And of course, they don’t care about the wellness of the multitude. As O’Brien, the torturer of Winston claims: “One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”. No individuality is allowed since each individual is a mere cell of a social organism. Thence, individuals achieve power as soon as they lose their identity. And they cease to exist, living a grey life of zombies without emotions nor freedom.

Considerations

It is essential to read this book because it reminds that dictatorship and totalitarianism are very dangerous and terrible. Nevertheless, even nowadays, many people are nostalgic for authoritarian regimes, perpetuating many tortures, murders and heinous crimes. I find unbearable and unbelievable that even nowadays there are groups of fanatics, who organise marches, which recall horrible atrocities both in Europe and in the USA, where this happens with the local authorities’ consent. I really cannot understand how it is legit to justify racism and people’s murders in the name of lunatic ideologies. Indeed the past should show how to avoid such horrific injustices and massacres. It seems humans did not learn from history and keep perpetuating the same depravities.

August 30, 2020

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