Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (1836)

 

Oliver Twist

Charles Dicken’s “Oliver Twist” is one of the best-known stories in this segment of nineteenth century literature. There are quite a few adaptations around and the main characters are well known by name among people who have never read the book or watched any of the adaptations. Until this time round, I belonged to that group of people.

I had my own pretty solid idea about what sort of story “Oliver Twist” was and I must say, it turned out to be quite different.

The basic plotline of “Oliver Twist” is that Oliver is an orphan who spends his early childhood in the care of the parish social services in provincial England, early nineteenth century. This means abuse in the extreme. Life in the parish workhouse is portrayed as very hard and with very little freedom and sustenance. It is written flat out that most children die so the parish can spend less money on the poor. Oliver’s chief crime at this time is, that, when the children are very hungry, he asks for more food. Oh horror! At this stage he is up against the tyrannic Mr. Bumble, the beadle.

At age 9, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker, but gets in trouble when he stands up against harassment from one of the other apprentices (Noah Claypole). Oliver runs away towards London where he meets Dawkins, also known as The Artful Dodger. The Artful brings him into Fagin’s gang in the underbelly of London. This is a gang of pickpockets and what other scams Fagin can come up with. Only when out on his first job does Oliver realize that he is supposed to be stealing and so he runs away. He is caught and brought before a magistrate, but the elderly man whom he was supposed to steal from, drops his charges and instead takes him in.

In the care of Mr. Brownlow, Oliver recovers and just as his life starts to look bright, he is kidnapped back into the gang. This time round is no fun at all, Oliver knows what the gang is up and when they take him along for a housebreaking, he sounds the alarm, and is shot at in the ensuing melee. Fortunately, the people in the house are the friendly Maylies and Oliver finds a new home there. Still, Oliver is not out trouble as Sikes, Monk and Fagin are up to more mischief.

There is a lot more going on in Oliver Twist than I thought. As a tale, there are many twists and turns and lots of drama and for that alone, the book is a page-turner. Here I thought this was about a boy living a dismal life with a gang of thieves, but there are so much more to the story. No wonder this was quite a bestseller back in the nineteenth century.

Beside the story itself, what really works in this book is when Dickens talk about life in the underworld of London. There are many details and the world has texture and smell and individuals fleshed out in details. You can follow them around on a map using the landmarks of London and you can visualise the warren of Saffron Hill with a pub like the Cripples. The pleasure Dickens had when describing these characters and their banter is very obvious and the unfortunate result is that I as a reader risks caring more for these characters, even the brutal Sikes, than the heroes of the story.

Dickens clearly had much less fun with the heroes. As characters they are surprisingly flat, with the main character trait being that they are GOOD, whatever that means and to the exclusivity of all else. They are so over the top virtuous that I frankly do not like then very much and that includes, unfortunately, Oliver Twist himself.

Another feature of the book that at first seems like an asset, but eventually becomes a problem is the comic exaggeration used by Dickens. Dickens wanted to highlight the absurd cruelty with which poor people were treated at the time and so uses a sort of comic exaggeration to describe the callousness of those in charge of poverty relief. I have no doubt that abuse and fraudulence at the expense of the poor was the order of the day, but in Dickens’ writing it becomes too easy to dismiss it as exaggeration and the loss of realism removes us, sadly, from the story. We do get some bitter-sweet laughs, but frankly, I think the price is too high for those. A character like Mr. Bumble belongs in a cartoon, not in anything resembling realism.

Then of course there is the very strong antisemitic trait. I am not certain what Dicken’s excuse was for that, but this is rather hard to swallow, and I am usually not so sensitive to that.

This all sounds like I was unhappy with Oliver Twist and that is not true at all. There is just so much good stuff here that the faults are so much more glaring for the missed opportunity.

I do recommend it, and I am surprising myself by looking forward to more from Charles Dickens.

  

The Nose - Nikolai Gogol (1836)

 

The Nose

“The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol is a bizarre concoction.

The first thing you notice is that it is remarkably short (which I guess is why it is labelled a “short story”) at just 38 pages with a very large font. It was very quick to get through.

The topic of the story is... strange. Major Kovaloff wakes up one day and discovers that his nose is gone. Where it used to be is just a flat piece of skin. Apparently, his nose has left him and gone on adventures. He recognizes it out in town posing as a State Councillor, a functionary several degrees above his own, which presents him with some problems in getting it back. The nose gets away and Kovaloff tries to insert an advertisement in a local newspaper for his nose. He is refused due to the absurdity of the request. The same happens at the police station.

He is busy accusing a lady-friend, who wants him to marry her daughter, for his lost nose, when a policeman shows up with his nose. Kovaloff’s barber found it in a piece of bread... Unfortunately, the doctor says it will not get back on, yet the next morning it is back in its place.

The story ends with the author exclaiming that he has no clue what this story was about, that it is totally absurd and that it is strange that authors can choose to write on such useless topics.

I must say, I am equally confused.

I do understand that this is an absurd story and that the absurdity makes it comedic. It is actually very funny. Major Kovaloff is a man very impressed with himself and his appearance so to suddenly find himself without a nose is a terrible hit to his pride. Add to that the humiliation that the nose has simply left him, posing as somebody else. Even without an intimate knowledge of the vanity of Russian officers in the 1830’ies, I can sense how this tickles him the wrong way.

What I am missing is the point of the story. While it must have been fun to write and certainly is fun to read, such a story does not get the fame it has unless there is a point. The closest I get (with the help of Wikipedia) is that this has to do with, yes, vanity. With the, absurd, obsession of physical appearance of officials in St. Petersburg.

It is fun, easy and not a little silly.

 

 

Father Goriot - Honore De Balzac (1835)

 

Old Man Goriot

With “Old Man Goriot” (or "Father Goriot") we are getting another book by Honoré de Balzac, but where I was disappointed with “Eugenie Grandet”, I can finally see why Balzac is as big a star as he is. “Old Man Goriot” is an impressive book.

An instalment in Balzac’s “La Comédie humaine”, “Old Man Goriot” takes place in and around a boarding house in Paris in the year 1819. This is a boarding house in the lower price range and the boarders are generally out of their luck. There is the girl Victorine, whose very rich father has disowned her to avoid offering a dowry, there are the mysterious and booming Vautrin, full of schemes but the main characters are Old Man Goriot and the young student Rastignac.

Goriot moved in years before as a wealthy man, but has moved to cheaper and cheaper accommodation and now resides in the worst room of the house. Keeping to himself, he is generally ridiculed by the other boarders, and it is rumoured that he lost his money on high-end prostitutes. At least he is frequently seen with women much smarter than he is.

Rastignac is intent on enjoying the Belle Monde of Paris, but although of a noble family, he is very short of funds. The short cut seems to be to find a wealthy mistress and through his cousin Comtesse de Beauséant, he is introduced to this world. He learns that Madame de Restaud and Madame de Nucingen are actually Goriot’s daughters, Anastasie and Delphine. By starting a love affair with Delphine, Rastignac also befriends Goriot.

But not everything is as it seems...

There are a lot of things happening in “Old Man Goriot”. It is like a window into a complex world populated with real, though slightly extreme characters. There is a plotline where Vautrin wants Rastignac to marry Victorine, then get her brother “accidentally” killed in a duel, landing the inherence on her and by implication on Rastignac. In return, Vautrin would be setup up as a plantation owner in America. However, in my reading, I see two overriding themes.

One is the saintly father who gets abused for his love of his children. This is a variation on the King Lear story, though less bloody than in “Ran”. Goriot sacrifices everything for Delphine and Anastasie, but gets very little in return. They only need him when they need money and when he has no more to give, they need him no more. Is it the fault of the father to love (spoil) his children too much? Or is it the crime of his daughters and sons in law to not give the filial love he deserves? Or maybe it is simply the corruption of Paris.

The second theme is “the training of Rastignac”. Rastignac is the naive outsider, keen on getting involved in Parisian life. He presents outside eyes on his world and through his involvement with Vautrin and the other boarders of the boarding house, Madame de Beauséant and Goriot’s daughters, he (and we) is taught of the dark side of the Belle Monde. This is a world of wild luxury, but also of villainous behaviour, egocentrism and hidden tragedies. Rastignac is trained on how to successfully manoeuvre in this world, but he is also trained to see it for what it is and be disgusted in the process. What we do not know is whether this will make him a player or whether it will teach him to stay out of this game. I like to think it is the latter, but Balzac is ambiguous.

This is in fact a curious trait of Balzac’s writing in this book. He writes a lot about what the characters are and then makes them do or say things that are contrary to this description. As if his own characters have more integrity and are more real than his own narration. It takes a bit getting used to, but it is fascinating to experience.

In general, “Old Man Goriot” is a far more riveting and multifaceted story than “Eugenie Grandet” and although there is a real danger of getting lost in the details, they also add so much texture to the story that it becomes alive and relevant.

It also made me curios about the larger project of “La Comedie humaine” and I cannot rule out I will dive more into that at some point.

Highly recommended.