Lizbeth’s Comments (group member since Feb 04, 2015)

Lizbeth’s comments from the Classics Without All the Class group.

I have read "Tess", "Return of the Native", "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and began "Jude the Obscure" but couldn't finish it. I agree with Jennifer that "Mayor" has the best plot, as it not quite as grim, even if tragic, as the others. "Mayor" has a slightly Dickensian/Mrs. Gaskell air about it (in a good way, begging the pardon of Mr. Hardy), when it comes to plot, with a little sense of "Les Mis", too. So you get a clearer plot than some of his others, but with all of the wonderful nuance and reflection that makes Hardy so masterful.

@Sam: I was assigned in college (a hundred years ago) an essay comparing/contrasting the heath in Return of the Native" and the moor in "Wuthering Heights." It is interesting to see how differently Hardy and Bronte viewed these two vast areas of land and its effects on the characters and the plot. Maybe you're not a glutton, but actually were drawn to the way these authors balance each other. :)

Thanks, Nancy, on the idea of hearing Ulysses performed. That might help.

Because Ulysses was declared the most important book of the 20th century, (somewhere here on GR, maybe?) I feel that I must, somehow, MUST get through it. That and seeing a photo of Marilyn Monroe holding the book. I really hope she didn't come away from it thinking that she wasn't clever enough for literature in general.

After reading all of the interesting comments, my thinking is that if Newland (whose name should be OldWorld, it seems) had gone up to see Ellen again, then we would have a somewhat satisfying romance/ love story.

It seems like Edith Wharton was more interested in social commentary about high society Victorian New York, and what it does to people-- how it works them, plays upon them, and how they turn out. So, she's not very nice to her characters.

With "Say I'm old-fashioned: that's enough" he's explaining to both his son and Ellen that New York Victorianism fashioned him because he stayed within its confines, and so he can't now act except by its will, and not his own. He is not a self-made man.

By Ellen closing the shutters, she is giving him a visual of his own heart.

And yet, Edith Wharton does have Newland's son Dallas, (a western name after a place where everything is booming oil and fortune and rules are changing) come into this last scene in what feels like a bridge between old and new. The couple doesn't seem completely doomed.

I like the idea that through Dallas, they may meet again in a more open setting, in a way that doesn't require such a claustrophobic "showdown", if they were suddenly faced with each other in Ellen's parlor, with all eyes noticing every minuscule detail of appearance, micro-movement and inflection of syllable. I think the tension in this enclosed but not private reunion might have me bowing out, too. At least until I was in a setting that was not so rigidly Victorian, and I could express myself more freely.