Charlotte or Emily?

Whose novels do you like better - Charlotte Bronte's or Emily Bronte's? I was swept up by Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" when I was in college; the extreme romance (in both senses of the word - the "love" sense and the literary sense) and drama were appealing to me as they are to so many young people. Those moors...that howling wind...that love that even death couldn't end.... But as the years went by, the appeal of the novel wore thin, and the appeal of the cruel, overbearing "hero," Heathcliff (understandable as his behavior was, given the way he had been treated as a child), turned sour. Ever since, I have liked and appreciated Charlotte Bronte's work more. "Jane Eyre" is, of course, also romantic, gothic, and unrealistic in some ways, and its hero is also sometimes quite overbearing and even unlikable. But there is somehow more reality in "Jane" than in "Wuthering." And the character of Jane is so well drawn, so appealing. The story and main character in Charlotte Bronte's "Villette" are also very believable and compelling. Charlotte's writing conveys a kind of hard-won wisdom about life. I have re-read and enjoyed her novels several times. But when I tried to re-read "Wuthering Heights" a few years ago, I just couldn't do it.

"Mrs. Bridge" and Betty Friedan

I have long heard about the twin novels, "Mrs. Bridge" and "Mr. Bridge," by Evan S. Connell, but somehow never got around to reading them. I have now just finished reading "Mrs. Bridge" (North Point Press, 1981, but originally published in 1959). It is the story of a traditional wife and mother in the mid-20th century, living in the American Midwest (Kansas City) and married to a busy, ambitious lawyer. Her story is told through a series of brief episodes ranging over her adult lifetime. The tone is straightforward, flattened, matter of fact, undramatic. Mrs. Bridge attempts to be a good, correct wife, mother and citizen of her city and country. Her interests and intellectual pursuits are limited, and her few attempts to branch out in that regard - such as trying to learn Spanish, or considering voting Democratic in one election - usually fizzle. Her relationship with her husband and children seems loving but - despite her efforts - somehow distant. She often wonders - but discusses only with one or two close friends, one of whom commits suicide - why her life seems to rush by with so little sense of meaning or fulfillment. "She could not get over the feeling that something was drawing steadily away from her"(p. 63), and as her servant Harriet does all the housework, she feels useless and "so often dismally bored" (p. 64). "She spent a great deal of time staring into space, oppressed by the sense that she was waiting. But waiting for what? She did not know" (p. 94). Mrs. Bridge seems the classic case that Betty Friedan was writing about in her groundbreaking feminist book, "The Feminine Mystique" (1963). Friedan wrote about all the women who were isolated in their homes, from which their husbands left early every morning and to which they returned late every night. These women had little opportunity to have meaningful work outside of their homes; they knew they were supposed to be happy with their lives as wives and mothers, and were ashamed to admit to others that they often felt unfulfilled and lonely. Each woman thought her discontent must be her own burden and even her own fault, so kept quiet about her sense of desperation. The ending of "Mrs. Bridge," which I won't give away here, is a perfect (although perhaps too literal) metaphor for Mrs. Bridge's feeling of being trapped in her own life, and a vivid illustration of Friedan's thesis.

Sarah Orne Jewett

Posting on 4/25/10 about Willa Cather reminded me of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), a pioneer who influenced Cather by her example of writing about women's lives and concerns, and writing vividly and lovingly about rural and small town life and about nature. Jewett lived in various places in New England, especially Maine, and her novels and stories are set in New England as well. Unfortunately some have used this fact to label her as "merely" a sort of quaint "regional" writer; she was in fact much more than that. (Who labels William Faulkner, for example, whose work is mostly set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, as merely a regional writer?) Jewett's most well-known novel is "The Country of the Pointed Firs" (1896), more a collection of sketches than a traditional novel, but carefully constructed for all that (despite later insertions of related short stories by various editors). The main character and narrator is an unnamed woman writer who goes to the small village of Dunnet Landing to work on her writing, and soon gets involved with the lives and stories of the local people, especially the women. In some ways this book reminds me of the English writer Elizabeth Gaskell's "Cranford," which I wrote about here on 4/20/10; both take place in very small towns, and tell the stories of their various inhabitants, mostly women, especially older women, in a low-key way that soon draws readers in. Both novels could be labeled "gentle," but that adjective should not be allowed to minimize the way that both - in their understated ways - include some dramatic events and compelling characters, and should not allow us to dismiss the emotions and relationships of those characters. Jewett's writing is not for everyone, as some may find it old-fashioned. But I find "The Country of the Pointed Firs" a lovely book full of human interest as well as beautifully descriptive observations of New England landscapes.

Joyce Carol Oates and Raymond Smith

Yesterday I wrote about the special fiction issue of The Atlantic (May 2010) that is available now. One of the pieces in that issue, as I mentioned in my post, is an essay by Joyce Carol Oates about the painful time following the 2008 death of her husband of 48 years, Raymond Smith. I found this essay heartbreaking and fascinating. Oates describes how she mourned her husband with a kind of stunned grief, and found that the only thing that saved her was her teaching and her efforts to put out what she decided would be the last issue of the Ontario Review, the literary journal she and Smith had produced and edited together for 34 years as a shared labor of love. She did not feel she could continue the Ontario Review without Smith, but she knew he would want her to finish and send the last issue, which he had been working on even in the hospital in the days before his death. This Atlantic essay is a preview of a book on Oates' loss, titled "The Siege: A Widow's Story," to appear in February 2011. I can't help but be reminded of Joan Didion's compelling 2005 book, "The Year of Magical Thinking," written on the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne. Oates and Didion are both such great writers, each in her own way so emblematic of her time and so influential; it is of note that they both suffered their great losses within a few years of each other, and that both have written so openly and so wrenchingly about their bereavement. An interesting postscript is that Oates has very recently remarried, to a scientist also teaching at Princeton, and thus is starting a new phase in her life. One more note: For Oates' readers, I recommend a website written and administered by a librarian at the university where I teach, Randall Souther, called "Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Home Page" (http://jco.usfca.edu/).

The Atlantic Fiction 2010

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer of the major magazines publish fiction. The Atlantic, although no longer publishing fiction regularly in its monthly issues, now publishes an annual fiction supplement, which for subscribers is a separate publication, and for newsstand buyers is bound into the magazine. The current (May 2010) fiction issue is now available. It contains seven very different stories, including those by Jerome Charyn and T. C. Boyle, and seven poems, including one by Jane Hirshfield. Also included are an essay by Richard Bausch (about whose recent collection of short stories I posted on 4/10/10), speaking out against writer's manuals; an interview with Paul Theroux about e-books; and a heartrending essay by Joyce Carol Oates about the painful loss of her husband of 48 years, Raymond Smith. Kudos to The Atlantic for its continued commitment to publishing fiction, poetry, and literature-related essays!

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month (for more information, see www.poets.org/npm). Although I am far more a reader of fiction than of poetry, I do enjoy poetry as well, and find it a source of inspiration, solace, and beauty. I was reminded of this yesterday when I was teaching a short poetry unit to my writing students, and found myself thoroughly enjoying discussing such poems as Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" (always a favorite of young people), Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise," and Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" with my students. One student, S., had written a wonderful poem that she shared with me and the class, to great applause and appreciation; this was especially impressive because English is her third language. I've also been thinking about poetry lately because several of the poets/professors at my university have recently received major awards and other recognitions; I would like to congratulate D.A. Powell, Aaron Shurin, and Dean Rader, as well as my longtime colleague and friend, poet Darrell Schramm, for their publications and achievements. And just tonight, I attended a poetry reading at the university in which one of the poets who read was our program assistant, Andrea Wise; she read some lovely, evocative poems. For those who would like more poetry in their lives, I recommend NPR's The Writer's Almanac, which can be subscribed to at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org; subscribing brings a poem as well as brief literary notes to your email inbox daily; it's a lovely way to start the day! Finally, I want to mention a poem that means a lot to me: "Otherwise," by Jane Kenyon. I am not sure what the copyright issues are, so I won't include it here, but it is easy to find by Googling it.

"Writing Ann Arbor: A Literary Anthology"

One of my birthday gifts from my generous friend M. was "Writing Ann Arbor: A Literary Anthology" (University of Michigan Press, 2005), edited by Laurence Goldstein. M. has lived in Ann Arbor most of her adult life, and she of course knows that I lived in the Ann Arbor area for my last two years of high school, and have visited it often since then; also, my own 2009 book ("Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator") was published by the University of Michigan Press; so, for many reasons, this book was a welcome gift. Ann Arbor is known as a beautiful and progressive college town and a great place to live. This anthology contains essays, histories, memoirs, stories, and poems from the mid-nineteenth century through the present. Some of the contributors are or were famous University of Michigan alumni or faculty (e.g., philosopher/education theorist John Dewey, playwright Arthur Miller, political activist and later politician Tom Hayden, poet Frank O'Hara, feminist poet and novelist Marge Piercy, food editor and critic Ruth Reichl, novelist Charles Baxter, and poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, who were married to each other), and some are less known. One of my favorite pieces is author/editor Sven Birkerts' story of working for a couple of years at an offshoot of the original Ann Arbor Borders Bookstore (long before Borders became a sprawling empire); in particular, he tells the story of his meeting and trying to impress the Nobel Prize winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who was then a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, and who came into the shop. "Writing Ann Arbor" is a special pleasure to dip into for anyone who has a connection with or interest in Ann Arbor, or with the writers represented in the book, but any reader will find much to enjoy in the book.