Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
In fact, I agree with you. I think the real reason I couldn’t read GWTW now is that I damned near memorized it when I was a girl and I’d be too bored. But I also suspect it hasn’t aged well, at least for me. Taking the easy one first, I’ve totally gone off that romantic dark brooding Gothic hero carp. Rhett, Rochester, Heathcliff and so forth - they’re all controlling and abusive. And when that’s presented in a way that the reader is supposed to take it as great love, my reaction is to think, “Honey (Scarlett, Jane, Catherine), run. Like the wind.”
As for the racism, I think the issue in regard to this particular book for me is threefold. Not so much the Civil War era stuff, that’s a given. More problematic is it as an expression of attitudes in the 1930s when the book was written. And then you have my lack of awareness when I read it as a girl decades later, and bingo. That’s the one. If I were to read it, which I’m not for the reason of boredom I gave at first, I’m pretty sure I’d cringe at my own unthinking girlhood self who loved it so much. But it’s a pity in a way, because there was something about it. I once read a review which recalled the “glazed inattention” of those who were immersed in it for the first time and that describes my own reaction. Would that I could recapture that sense when I read now!
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Sure, but y'know...the time and space and distance, respectively and proportionately, between 1861-1865 and the 1930's--a single person's lifetime, think about that--and the respective time and space, today, between, say, 2010 and 2020...these are
lightyears apart, to grind my floridity to the bone. 60 years, in a time and place in which
every bit of news travelled either by mouth, on foot or horseback (mostly), or by paper, delivered at speeds only slightly beyond glacial...change takes time.
I don't think we can rightfully compare what someone thought in the 30's, to what they should think today. There were people--lots of them--who grew up with slavery extant, in their lifetimes. They'd fought a
war over it. It's like...when I was a young girl, I worked one summer in a local restaurant, hauling food and booze, right? And the two women who owned the place were Expat Brits, who'd come over after WWII.
It disturbs me when folks say that they "won't" read this or that, because it's racist or sexist or whatever (not talkin' 'bout you, Issy). We can't or IMHO, shouldn't rose-colored-glass our way through history. History is
all of it that we bothered to write down (by definition). It's grand and glorious and ugly and I won't be especially tedious by repeating the whole "doomed to.." shtick.
Back OT: I wanted to LOVE
The Name of the Rose. I really did, but OMG, I
really didn't. Of course, not everything is
Presumed Innocent, to be fair.
And, of course,
Ulysses. You guys have heard me on this before. Talk about pretentious twaddle. Yeah, yeah the cocktail-party-set-glitterati can all tell themselves it's brilliant. To my way of thinking, Ulysses is Joyce's "Clifford Irving" hoax on the publishing industry and I'll bet he laughed up his sleeve the entire time.
Hitch