Rereading Emma

Mr. Knightley scolds Emma for matchmaking because she is meddling in affairs that don't concern her and causing her friend Harriet to think too highly of herself. Harriet, someone's illegitimate daughter, is too low of a social station to think of marrying Mr. Elton the vicar, while the gentleman-farmer Robert Martin is perfectly all right for her. Mr. Knightley is correct in his opinion of it and in telling Emma what he thinks, but I find it interesting because he sort of does the same thing himself. It is he who gives Robert his blessing to marry Harriet, and it feels like he's upset in half because his own neat matchmaking was ruined by Emma's. Later on in the book, too, he lets or sends Robert Martin to London to meet up with Harriet and propose to her (which she accepts, since she is far away from Emma's influence). Mr. Knightley may possibly lecture Emma about matchmaking and having strong, often selfish opinions about things and people because he recognizes such inclinations in himself.
Emma dislikes Jane Fairfax because she is the ideal accomplished, elegant young lady: excellent at music, genteel, quiet, pale, never speaks out of turn, etc. Emma is "handsome", true, but she is strong-willed, chatty, witty and not afraid to show it, likes to take control, doesn't practice her music or read enough, etc., and she feels a grudge towards Jane for being so perfect and so much closer to the Ideal Young Lady than Emma is. No one else in Highbury brings to light her shortcomings, except Mr. Knightley. The latter and Emma are friends, but a good chunk of their friendship is them bickering, mostly about her character flaws and things she does wrong.
Also, can we talk about how creepy it is that Mr. Knightley has been the Woodhouses' family friend since Emma was a child and was always trying to improve her character and correct her behavior, and professed falling in love with her at thirteen? He tells her this towards the end of the book, and while it is clear he didn't realize it until Frank Churchill came into the picture as a plausible love interest for Emma some months earlier and Mr. Knightley became jealous of him and realized why (and Emma is twenty to twenty-one years old in the book), that's still seriously creepy. He's sixteen years older than her! He's old enough to be her dad, which in itself is creepy enough, but he's known her since she was a child?? Someone I was discussing the book with once said that they'd read something comparing Mr. Knightley's behavior to child molesters/predators who "groom" their child victims into mentally accepting them as partners later on, or just to accept their abuse as not being wrong at all. Like, they groom them into becoming their perfect mate. Uggghhhhhh. I don't think that was Mr. Knightley's intention, obviously, but it's still really creepy and weird.
I read Emma mostly on my Nook and partially from my Barnes & Noble Classics copy. The Nook book is "25 Favorite Novels" in one ebook, which is nice because it was 99 cents, but there are no foot- and endnotes like in the B&N Classics, and I think it can only hold like ten highlights at a time? I'm quite sure I highlighted my favorite passages from P&P and S&S in the ebook, along with Emma, but I can only see/read the latter book's. It sucks. Also, each book is treated as a chapter, and while there are "Book I" and chapter divisions within each book, you can't jump to the next chapter within the ebook book. That sucks most of all. For some reason the place wasn't kept between my Nook app on my phone and my Nook ereader, so that was a pain.
Anyway, I read the introduction to my B&N Classics copy of Emma, which was an exhaustive essay in the awesome English journal article style on Emma and its characters and social aspects, etc. Those are quite interesting, if you like literary analysis and criticism, but I don't recommend reading the introductions (for sure in the B&N Classics books) before you read the novel because they will ruin it for you. Besides, it's nice to go back and get insight on the characters and plot points etc. after you've already read the book. Anyway the person who wrote Emma's introduction pointed out that Emma chose to befriend and improve Harriet and manage her love life because she sees her as an extension of herself. Like, Emma herself does not want to have a love life, partially because she does not think she can due to her codependent father, but she can be involved in Harriet's love life. She treats her like a human Barbie, almost. A love life by proxy. A fascinating discussion of control (Emma must be first in everything) and self-absorption. Emma does annoy me but I think I mainly like her.

I read Silas Marner and it was good, sad yet heartwarming at the end in that sympathetic, melodramatic way of most nineteenth century novels. It was good but from all that I'd heard of George Eliot, I sort of expected more? More fleshing out or explanations or whatever. There was a lot of buildup for Silas getting the little girl Eppie, and then it's just like "flashforward 18 years and Eppie's a gorgeous golden-haired girl!" Like of course she is. But for all that's spent on Silas's life prior to that? No depictions of single-father life? No struggles with raising a little girl on one's hermit/miserly own? And we're just told that Godfrey Cass just like marries his love, just like that? I hate just being told things. Show, don't merely tell! I just feel like there was a lot of potential in the story and with its characters. How did Godfrey convince his wife to marry him? How did she take over the household and get it running well? How did Godfrey live with the guilt of pretending the child wasn't his? I hate just being told stuff after the fact. IDK. I'm used to Dickens and Austen.

Anyway, I'm now reading Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales. I'm of course familiar with and have read most of them, but I like having a complete collection. I bought it at Barnes & Noble last Saturday night. It's not a gorgeous leatherbound book like the Hans Christian Andersen one that I bought at the same time, but the Grimm's was $8 while the other was $20, so. The Grimm's has a lovely wood scene painting as the dustjacket cover, while the HCA one is a gorgeous purple leatherbound one with gold designs. A bit too cutesy to be truly old-fashioned, but it's still nice. The books are uploaded to my LibraryThing (widget in sidebar). Oh, I also bought the fourth season of Ugly Betty on DVD, so now I own the entire show. I will have to watch it one of these days.

Cuentos

Tell me who you are
are you a good witch or a bad witch
neither, you're the other girl in the story
not the love interest (that'd be far too exciting)
you're the girl who sits in dull existence
waiting for the story to be about her
you're the jealous sister, one of the people
in the village or the chambermaid who fetches
the light and perhaps if you are lucky
you'll become the mother (step or otherwise)
of the hero who fulfills the quest

this is something they never told you
maybe you're not the storybook
you're just the bookmark in it

Birthday, silver anniversary

A quarter of a century old and I feel half that, maybe.
It's hard to judge what age I "really" am,
this kaleidoscope of mindsets and feelings,
and I know we are all every age we've ever been,
but I am an age I've never been and will not be
for years. Twenty-five, twenty, sixteen, twelve;
some and yet none of them fit. I'm fit for adolescence
now, not hardly when I was in it. Extended childhood,
extended adolescence, and then what? I won't know.
I never do. Always reaching on ahead, stretching to
fill the gap. I succeed and also don't. Keep trying
anyway; they will be fooled because they want to be.

Barnes & Noble Haul

I love my family and friends. Whenever it's my birthday or Christmas or graduation, they all immediately know to give me Barnes & Noble giftcards. I have a lot thanks to graduating from UCLA, so I went to B&N and bought books (of course).
I got:
-Miracles by C.S. Lewis
-Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon [unfinished] by Jane Austen [in one volume]
-The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
-Abarat by Clive Barker

I'm pleased with these finds but I'm going to have to check a few finished versions of Sanditon out from the library. I think I mentioned that The Mystery of Edwin Drood is my favorite Dickens probably but I'm sad it's unfinished. We'll see how I like Sanditon and The Watsons. I've read Lady Susan before; it is a riot. She's a total Wilhelmina Slater rich femme fatale with the guys twisted around her finger. Love her.  I think I'm going to return Abarat, though, because there are no illustrations. Clive Barker is apparently also a painter, and the copy of Abarat I checked out from the library was hardcover and had his weird, creepy, wondrous paintings to supplement the story. Since I know about them I must have them in the copy of the book I own.
As always, all my books are in my LibraryThing (widget in sidebar).

Rereading Mansfield Park

I think I hate Mrs. Norris more than I hate any other Austen character. Probably even more than idiot Lydia from P&P, because she's young and, while stupid, is indiscriminate with her stupidity and doesn't single anyone out like Mrs. Norris does. Good grief does she ever have it in for her niece. What did the poor girl ever do to her? I hate her so much. She just smashes her down at every opportunity. Why is she so eager to make her low? What good does it do anyone? At least Austen shows an improvement in her writing by giving Mrs. Norris some comeuppance. Sir Bertram overrides her and won't let Maria move back home after the latter runs away and lives in sin with Henry Crawford, ruining her reputation etc., so she and Mrs. Norris are forced to live in another country together. Austen is clear that while Maria is her aunt's darling, Maria doesn't love her back. So there's something, at least. That's not enough of a comeuppance, in my opinion, but at least it's a bit better than what passes for Lydia's (she has to live out the rest of her days with Wickham, who doesn't love her. But her family mainly still keeps in touch with her. Ugh.).
It's also easy to get frustrated with the characters in Mansfield Park, but not as much as I did with S&S. The intro was all like "oh readers hate Fanny because she is so virtuous" but I like her, probably because I am rather like her. However, she is so very retiring and, well, wimpy, and modern culture has taught us to despise people who don't stand up for themselves, plus she's so weak and gets headaches from cutting roses in the garden wtf. Look at her life, though. She's the second oldest of TEN children (those who are anti-birth control haven't read this book, I'll wager. I do want kids but I'd rather die than have more than four) and is sent away to live with relatives who are strangers to her when she is ten years old, and the only one who is nice to her is her cousin Edmund and everyone is super eager to show her how inferior she is and is always ignoring, scolding, or putting her down. So of course she's the way she is. She could easily be worse. She actually shows strength of character in being against the play even though she'd been taught to obey her relatives all her life and her opinion was never taken into account. She also refused Henry Crawford even though her entire family, even Edmund, lectured that she should accept him because she'd never get a better offer. They even brought out the big guns that had kept her in control all her life, gratitude and obedience, but Fanny stuck to what she knew was right. I like her for that. The English professor or whatever who wrote the intro in my B&N copy points out that Mary Crawford is more of an Austen heroine than Fanny is, because Mary is sparkling and witty and flirtily argues with her love interest etc. But she hates religion and doesn't care about propriety and is all about the exciting rather than what is right. So for that she is not a good match for Edmund, even though they love each other.
Edmund is the second nicest character in the book, but I still get frustrated with him. Mary is beautiful and charming, yes, but really his love so blinds him that he cannot see she's totally wrong for him. He's going to be a clergyman, for pete's sake. And then instead of sticking up for Fanny when she turns down Henry Crawford, even though she explains that he's never acted properly and was leading both the Bertram girls on like the dickhead player he is, he lectures her too about how wrong it is of her to reject him. WTF, Edmund. Just because he's your gf's brother doesn't make him perfect. I mean, Edmund knows Fanny best of anyone and he really thinks Henry's a good match for her, with his player ways that don't take propriety into account? Come on. Just seeing her distress should be enough to not pressure her to do something she doesn't want to do. What I really dislike him for is when both Betram girls run away with their paramours (Maria with Henry and Julia with Mr. Yates) and he brings Fanny home from visiting her immediate family, and he's all like "yeah, Fanny, it sucks that your only suitor who was in love with you totally dropped you and ran off scandalously with your married cousin to live in sin and so now you'll never marry him, but think of ME! My gf didn't really do anything wrong except for not being shocked enough at the immorality of her brother and my sister, therefore showing that she's totally wrong for me and for a clergyman's wife!" Yeah, ok. Selfish much? I guess what he's saying that is that it probably hurts Fanny less because she didn't love Henry, but he really loved Mary so it really hurts to see, without any of the prior love-blindness, that she doesn't care about morality and is totally wrong for him. Like, she's only mad that they got caught, not that they did it. Still, though. And I was less disgusted with it this time, but I still hate that Fanny is a second choice. She's loved Edmund half her life, basically, and it's not until after he sees finally that Mary is wrong for him and finishes nursing his broken heart that he sees, "exactly when it's proper and not a week before", that Fanny's great. How convenient, he sees her good qualities in a new light and falls in love with her, mainly because his prior love, whom he really loved, turned out to be a twerp and wrong for him. Where have I heard that before? Poor Fanny. She's just a second choice, like Colonel Brandon. She deserves to be loved first.
This book is really heavy on morality and propriety, which makes it less popular today. It's hard to see what's so immoral about young people putting on a play to amuse themselves. I can see the objections to the play itself, which is about a mistress and illegitimate child, etc., but as to the putting on of the play I don't really get the objections. Oh well. The morality and Fanny's meekness are probably why this book isn't as well loved as P&P or Emma, as well as its slowness and length. The whole "be virtuous/a good girl and you will be rewarded (often with a love of your own)" thing is very common in literature of this period and before, but MP is more modern in its portrayal of this old trope. The book is clear that you will be unpopular if you do the right thing, that you'll be outcast and that those who do or think wrong are much more attractive than you. Society doesn't censure it anymore. It's harder to be good now that the reward is less sure. I like it also for that reason.

Rereading Sense & Sensibility

Fanny Dashwood is such a bitch ugh. Moving into her late father in law's house right after he dies??? That's so rude and inconsiderate even by today's standards!
John Dashwood is such a snotweasel, too. Selfish idiot. Don't feel guilty for not helping your half-sisters and therefore hope their friends will give them money, YOU do it!
SHUT UP Mrs. Jennings you need to stop
You too, Sir John. And especially you too Miss Steele
Edward srsly what is wrong with you
I mean really, y so awkward
And why on earth did you get engaged to Lucy Steele in the first place (okay, young love makes you an idiot) but then stay engaged to her? So dumb. And then he goes and falls in love with Elinor! Either you break it off with the first chick or you stay away from the second! You're supposed to be a gentleman for pete's sake
And really WTF is up with Lucy Steele? Does she suspect Edward loves Elinor instead of her? What's with all her secrets and conjecture? The basic bitch. So Lifetime movie
Willoughby can die in a fire. I wish he did
Marianne is SUCH. AN. IDIOT. Like, I get that she's sanguine and is all ~*FEELINGS*~ and crap, but what was wrong with her father in not trying to correct that? He didn't die until she was like sixteen; that's plenty of time to address the problem. Or hire a governess who can. Why is Elinor the only non-idiot in the family? Like, Marianne is just so rude and crap, even by today's standards. You don't go with a guy to his aunt's house that he'll inherit when she dies; that's just rude. And she's so rude to people she doesn't like (which is everyone besides W and her immediate family and Edward).
Also what is with people assuming couples are engaged if they talk to each other. Like can't people just like each other? And write letters to each other? Geez
Mrs. Dashwood is such an idiot too. It's mainly her fault her daughter turned out like that.
Okay, Elinor, you are the only one with any sense. PLEASE butt into your sister's love life and boss her around. She's too stupid to manage it on her own. We're lucky Willoughby didn't knock her up, really, with the way she was acting.
I really, really do not get why Elinor and her mom didn't just ask Marianne, so like are you engaged? Oh, you're not? Well, don't act like you are unless you want people thinking you're a total common tart, free milk = not buying the cow etc. BOOM, problem solved.
I mean Edward seems nice and all but he's so insipid and passive I feel he doesn't deserve Elinor
Elinor should have ended up with Colonel Brandon
I haven't reached the ending yet but I really think Jane Austen just made C. Brandon end up with Marianne as like a nice pity consolation prize cuz his life was so sad. I don't buy their supposed love. It's convenient, is all.

War Some of the Time

                                             by Charles Bukowski

when you write a poem it
needn't be intense
it
can be nice and
easy
and you shouldn't necessarily
be
concerned only with things like anger or
love or need;
at any moment the
greatest accomplishment might be to simply
get
up and tap the handle
on that leaking toilet;
I've
done that twice now while typing
this
and now the toilet is
quiet.
to
solve simple problems: that's
the most
satisfying thing, it
gives you a chance and it
gives everything else a chance
too.

we were made to accomplish the easy
things
and made to live through the things
hard.