Greg S > Recent Status Updates

Well, I’m glad I’m a little familiar with the French revolution so that I may understand some of these references. Good luck, high school students!

When was this book written? 1848? And Thackeray is already playing with narrative and starting the chapter in the middle of the action?

Whoa, what. You got me, Thackeray.

I don’t know. I find Jane Austen more clever than Thackeray. — “…to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig, Lieutenant Osborne.”

Small world. — “You wouldn't see any difference," Captain Crawley answered. "Do let's have him, when you begin to see a few people…”

“Gratitude among certain rich folks is scarcely natural or to be thought of. They take needy people's services as their due. Nor have you, O poor parasite and humble hanger-on, much reason to complain! …It is money you love, and not the man; and were Croesus and his footman to change places you know, you poor rogue, who would have the benefit of your allegiance.”

A little mystery. But why? — “Who could this young woman be, I wonder? That evening a little dinner for two persons was laid in the dining-room...”

Amelia sounds like a lot of my friends in high school, poor thing.

“…all the young fellows battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.”

“…but you ought to have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as my equal in every respect; and—will you put some coals on the fire, my dear; and will you pick this dress of mine, and alter it, you who can do it so well?" So this old philanthropist used to make her equal run of her errands, execute her millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels, every night.”

Irony. — “I say it's un-Christian. By Jove, it is.”

“Miss Crawley was, in consequence, an object of great respect when she came to Queen's Crawley, for she had a balance at her banker's which would have made her beloved anywhere.

What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative (and may every reader have a score of such), what a kind good-natured old creature we find her!”

“Such people there are living and flourishing in the world—Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that Laughter was made.”

Foreshadowing by the narrator.

Well, Mr. Osborne has certainly turned hostile quickly.

Thank goodness for Wikipedia with all these contemporary references.

Abhorrent. — “…Better she, my dear, than a black Mrs. Sedley, and a dozen of mahogany grandchildren."

“…in the hideous military frogged coat and cocked hat of those times, advanced to meet her, and made her one of the clumsiest bows that was ever performed by a mortal.”

I had to do some research into Greek mythology to understand Osborne reference to Adonis. Maybe Narcissus would have been a comparison too far.

“If people would but leave children to themselves…those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to all (for how much do you and I know of each other, of our children, of our fathers, of our neighbour, and how far more beautiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom you govern likely to be, than those of the dull and world-corrupted person who rules him?)…”

“Who amongst us is there that does not recollect similar hours of bitter, bitter childish grief? Who feels injustice; who shrinks before a slight; who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy? and how many of those gentle souls do you degrade, estrange, torture, for the sake of a little loose arithmetic, and miserable dog-latin?”

Ok. Sure. — “How Miss Sharp lay awake, thinking, will he come or not to-morrow? need not be told here.”

Today I learned about preposition headed adverbial groups.

Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley are a nice pair. It’s clear that they were created to be opposites of one another, foils. — A Virgin and a Vixen, but I think it’s too early to compare it to the Madonna-Whore trope.

Well, the narrators makes such statements about both sexes and are a little off-putting. — “It is what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call a yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women are commonly…”

A friend told me to read more satire and I’m already in with this audacity. — “But, lo! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her pale face out of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden.”

Long long paragraphs telling us what grief is like.

Sure. Why not. — “…the blue of the sock upon the cross, a beacon bright in the pending darkness.”

As a man who had had major surgery, being awake in pain is no better than being asleep on medication. How mindful are you without an epidural? — “I want to be awake,” was all he would say to her.”

My thought is that bringing an old man on a donkey is going to significantly slow down your pace. ‘An army is only as fast as its slowest person,’ as they say.