Over the weekend I read an article about male writers talking about the female writers they had read and been moved by. It turned out that the favourites were Jane Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). Not exactly up to date but interesting.
Middlemarch was mentioned, so I sorted through my library in Audible and found it, all 33 hours of it and have been listening to Eliot's snipey view of life through her heroine's eye Dorothea Brookes. I am still only on her catastrophic marriage to Casaubon but having the book read to you leaves one to concentrate on what is being said. Intelligent women such as Eliot, Austen and the Brontes painted their canvases of words with wit and subversive mutterings, feminism lurks on the page.
When I was young it was written that every young female should read Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles to understand the female lot in life. True, this was a poor girl's wretched journey through life but Hardy, a class act as a fictional writer loved misery. In fact I might listen to some of his work such as 'Jude the Obscure' to relive that melancholia he so cleverly wrote about. I think one of my favourite characters was Eustacia Vye In Return of the Native.
I also found online Mike Pitts ( editor of British Archaeology magazine) lecture on the 'effect' Stonehenge had on the imperalistic Indian Occupation by Britain in the Victorian age. Now at the end of the Tess book, she is captured at Stonehenge for murder of the suitor that has plagued her through her young life, so it was interesting to see the hold that Stonehenge had on the minds of the men who went to India and saw the standing stones there that was part of that culture.
Grainy photos of how stones were moved dominates the lecture as everyone tries to work out how to move several tons of stone. Now I don't want anyone to watch the lecture because most people would find it boring but I will record it here.
Why does it interest? because the shaping of ideas often goes back a long time, we ask, rather foolishly, why do we have war? the answers are often quite simple.......
Everyone over the years has been sidetracked by how these massive stone things were built and how you transport huge monoliths over large areas, but as someone who has worked with stone most of their life, I can say that almost nothing is impossible in engineering. Years ago I threw the I Ching (if you remember what that is) and asked it about the Great Pyramid in Egypt. It came up with 'Endurance'. If you read that passage it seems to answer all the obvious questions in an abstract sort of way and you begin to understand that you knew the answers all along - or at least the ones most relevant to the questions which everyone always ask.
ReplyDeleteI. Ching . Another rabbit hole to go down and discover Tom. I agree that raising the great megaliths was a problem solved by all that raised them. This of course as far away as Russia, Japan and Europe, they all follow the same pattern, what we don't have is of course the wood used to raise them, or in fact how much using wood contributed to their livelihoods. One of the interesting thing is such places as Woodhenge, and the nineteen concentric rings of timber at Stanton Drew, before stone.
DeleteOne of the many things written in the books that followed on from the original I.Ching book was................
"The Great Commentary associates knowledge of the I Ching with the ability to "delight in Heaven and understand fate;" the sage who reads it will see cosmological patterns and not despair in mere material difficulties."
Perhaps we should all aspire to that!
It might have occupied the minds of women, but their voices are diminished, so who knows? I have read most of those books above, but so very very very long ago!
ReplyDeleteI think Tabor, women may have lost out, but they were always there in the background dictating their outlook. It is interesting to go back to all those books read of a certain period to see if you can understand what they are saying any better.
DeleteT'was ever thus.
ReplyDeleteStill we have come a long way Pat!
DeleteI have an undergraduate degree in English lit, and those authors are among my favorites. I may have to download all of Elliot again, for hours of great listening. Silas Marner and Mill on the Floss are more Elliot favorites.
ReplyDeleteYes I loved the Mill on the Floss Joanne. Eliot had an interesting life, and she made the most of it.
ReplyDeleteReturn of the Native is one of my favourite Hardy novels - I've had a soft spot for Diggory Venn since I first read it about 40 years ago.
ReplyDeleteGoing back and reading or listening to all these books is a good exercise Anne. Venn was the 'reddle man' I can't remember how he figures in the story.
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