Emile, or On Education - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)

Emile, or On Education

The second book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the List is not really a novel but a treatise on education. For a list of novels including this book is a bit of an odd choice.

Anyway, “Emile, or On Education” is a tough book to get through and not just because it is long.

I know that we are talking about a 260 year old treatise, but it is difficult not judge such a text with modern eyes. Half the time his ideas are monstrous and I feel like shouting: “KEEP THAT MAN AWAY FROM MY CHILD!!!”, while on the other half Rousseau are remarkable modern for his time and some of the ideas are not alien today. Whether you focus on the first or the later I suppose is a matter of temper, but it makes for a weird experience reading the book.

Rousseau takes us through the raising of a boy from infancy until marriage in that order and Rousseau has a lot to say for each stage. His main idea is that nature does things right so as closer you keep things to nature the better things are. Human civilization is the opposite of nature and that is the source of everything wrong. Therefore, a boy must be raised in the countryside spending his time in as natural activities as possible. Towns, books and science however, not to mention theater and other sophistry, is to be avoided at all cost.

A consequence of this is that Rousseau wants to avoid stuffing knowledge into the young boy’s head, claiming that knowledge the boy does not understand is useless and actually counterproductive. Instead Rousseau prepares the boy to learn. He encourages curiosity and train the child to search and deduce the answers himself by observing nature. In all things he refuses to provide the answers, and rather nudge the boy in the right direction.

To a modern ear that sounds about right. Certainly, the Danish education system has now for many years abolished root learning in preference of teaching the children the learning process. To the extend that I am sometimes shocked at how little young student actually know. Instead they are superfast at acquiring knowledge.

This principle extents to religion where Rousseau wants the boy to work out for himself what he believes in and then join the denomination that fits him the best. Again, fairly modern, but this position caused, rather predictably, quite a scandal in its time. For somebody to say that no religion can monopolize the truth and that one should stay away from dogma would, in a world where every  sect believes that they and only they know the truth, be considered the worst kind of heresy. Rousseau’s book was accordingly banned and burned in many places.

Considering how big a fan of nature Rousseau was, it is surprising how antagonistic he was towards science. Doctors he considers as frauds and books are simply not worth reading. Scientific research in any form that goes beyond observing nature he considers a was of time.

On the other hand, he chooses to include a part of his own treatise on the Social Contract, a very complex, and highly regarded, piece of political science. Talk about being inconsistent.

By today’s standard the most controversial part concerns the education of girls. Rousseau was of the opinion that it is a waste of time to send girls to school. They only need to look pretty, be adept at domestic work and be submissive to their husband. I found many paragraphs that were so outrageous I had to read them aloud and laugh. Even thinking such thoughts today would get you crucified. Seriously. Though at the time, this part went down with the general public much better than the sections on religion and politics.  We have, thankfully, come a long way.

Rousseau has a meandering style. Although there is a general structure to the book, the individual chapters run all over the place with segments tangential to the main themes. He was probably having a lot of fun imagining how he would like to raise children and got carried away. It was a lot less fun being the reader of this.

I cannot with a clear consciousness recommend “Emile, or On Education”. I suppose it is a good window into Rousseau’s ideas, but as casual reading this is very much uphill and any feminist would be in risk of an apoplectic stroke.

  

Julie; Or, the New Eloise - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1760)

 

Julie, or the New Eloise

The famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau has quite a few books on my book list and “Julie, or the New Eloise” (“La Nouvelle Héloïse”) is his first entry.

Rousseau is one of those characters many people have heard of, but very few actually read anything by. As a philosopher he was extremely influential, coining the term “The Noble Savage” which nicely summarizes his philosophy. According to Rousseau the natural state, uncorrupted by civilization, is the ideal and the state we must strive to return to. All faults of men are learned faults and artifacts. Feeling and emotion is better than facts and learning and honesty to yourself and others is the highest virtue. In a world still governed by religious dogma Rousseau’s ideas were quite radical even if they ultimately aimed for the same thing as the church, that of the virtuous soul.

“Julie, or the New Eloise” must be seen in this light. It is very much a moralizing tale, exemplifying his ideas by letting emotions and passions run free and somehow succeed in achieving sublime virtue.

This epistolary tale consists letters sent between a young man known as Saint-Preux, the love of his life, the young Baroness Julie Etange, Her cousin Clare, Julie’s latter husband Wolmar and Saint-Preux friend the English Lord Bomston.

Saint-Preux is a teacher hired to train Julie and Claire and at the opening of the story they are sending highly emotional, frantic even, love letters to each other. Theirs is a secret, forbidden love, and while they know it is impossible, they are loath to give it up. Julie’s father is very much against this match, Saint-Preux has no title, and when he learns of it, it is game over and Saint-Preux flees. That Lord Bomston makes him his protégé does nothing to mollify the father.

Saint-Preux goes sailing around the world on a British ship for four years and both Claire and Julie get married. Wolmar was promised to Julie by her father, but rather than being a disaster this is now a great thing because Wolmar is really nice and Saint-Preux is invited to come live with them in wonderful threesomeness.

I was not super excited about this novel. These two lovebirds are so too much. They are obsessing more than anything. Of course, being in love you get carried away, but this was completely hysteric. It got better when the crisis occurred. At this point there was more bite to the story, but the later part was, frankly, weird. It is full of tests of the characters worthiness, praise of chaste virtue and everybody are each other’s BFF’s. The commune they form would by all rights be doomed, yet it is supposed to work because they are all so good and honest people. Seriously?

There were gems, though. While both Julie and Saint-Preux are religious beings, Wolmar is not. As the story goes, he studied all the religious directions with a cold and discerning mind and found the mysticism inconsistent and counter intuitive. He could not reconcile the mystic doctrines and decided not to believe in God. He is however the most Christian and humane characters of all involved, more worthy to the name than any believer. Of course, him being an atheist is his greatest “flaw”, but it still feels like a great kick in the butt on religious orthodoxy. Apparently, Rousseau himself got in trouble with the church for making up his own mind.

Rousseau still have a number of books to impress me, but this one was a miss.

 

 

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia - Samuel Johnson (1759)

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

It is entirely fitting that the two books, Voltaire’s “Candide” and Samuel Johnson’s “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia” should be listed back to back on my booklist. They are of course both 1759 entries, but beside this concurrency they also treat the same subject: How to live a good life.

This is of course neither the first, nor the last time that this subject is being treated in literature, but it is remarkable to see two so different and yet so alike treatments next to each other. Where “Candide” is flippant and satirical, “Rasselas” is sober and moralizing, but both use the disguise of a fantastical story to say that the ideal and happy life is a pipedream, mainly because human beings are deeply flawed.

In Johnson’s story we meet a prince (Rasselas) who is dissatisfied with the protected but idle life he leads in the secluded Happy Valley, a sort of prison resort for the royal offspring and their servants. He meets the poet Imlac who tells him stories about the outside world and Rasselas becomes convinced that out there he will find the meaning of life or, as Johnson formulates it, his “life choice”. Imlac and Rasselas tunnel themselves out of Happy Valley and are joined by his sister, Nekayah and her attendant Pekuah.

Once out of Eden they set out for the city of Cairo and spend the remainder of the book talking with high and low about what sort of life would be the best choice. We all know that the meaning of life, the universe and everything is 42, but Johnson refuses all shortcuts. No matter how you live your life, no matter what choices you make, there will always be drawbacks. Nobody are truly happy and no single choice is the right one.

Sometimes we get an interview with somebody they meet while at other times one of the characters report back from his or her investigations, but no matter who is talking it is with the same voice. This is probably the most disturbing thing about this novel. If we consider it a novel then each character should by rights have some characteristics more or less fleshed out in the course of the book, but that is not the case here. The characters have absolutely no personal characteristic, at least not when narrating. The voice is exactly the same. This is of course because this is not really intended as a novel but a poorly disguised intellectual discussion on philosophy and moral that Johnson is having with himself. Laying his words on different characters simply allows him to argue for and against, which incidentally seems to be the entire point. No argument is absolute, no certainty is final when it comes to the human condition. Hence the title of the final chapter: The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded. Johnson is running a campaign against absolute truths and while he is not, like Socrates, saying that he knows nothing, nor like a relativist saying that all has equal worth, he is saying that things are only as good as what you put into it and trouble lurks everywhere.

The discussion occasionally turn very highbrow and difficult to follow (this is one of the most annotated novels I ever read), but often the points are good and the discussion interesting enough to outweigh the book’s failings as a novel. I found the discussion on the immateriality of the soul particularly interesting, because it shows how your starting assumptions influence the conclusions. The argumentation is logical and follow Newtonian cause and effect rules, but then because of the religious imperative it gets to answers which are internally logical, but without this imperative completely illogical. It really shows how in any argument you need to agree on the rules. A modern discussion on the same topic can be found here for comparison.

“The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia” is a cerebral experience and interesting enough, especially since it is short enough not to overstay its welcome, and while I doubt it would make any of my top-anything lists, I am happy I read it.

Candide - Voltaire (1759)

Candide

After reading a long string of British novels I am finally extending my horizon and shifting across the Channel to read a French novel, Voltaire’s “Candide”. In fact, the horizon gets extended quite a bit as “Candide” takes place practically all over the known world.

Voltaire’s “Candide” is a very famous piece of work. I read it before, some 15 years ago or so, and it is one of those books that many people not particularly into old literature will know about. It also helps that it is rather short.

Voltaire wrote this as a satirical story where he manages to ridicule… everything. Seriously. The basic statement is that optimism is naïve and that the philosophers who promote optimism (Leibniz) are just pouring out BS. He does this by letting his “hero”, Candide, a young German man, be exposed to all the unfortunate incidents at all possible, usually instigated by the baseness of other people. Candide is a born optimist who keeps adhering to his philosophy that all is for the best and that this is the best of all possible worlds. This sentiment becomes more and more strained as more accidents happen than it is possible to list.

The events are not naturalistic, but rather fantastical and merely created to prove the point that people are in general egoistic and cruel and that goodness is always punished because other people do not need to follow rules of good behavior. Candide is convinced he will find somebody who is happy, but, nope, everybody is fundamentally unhappy. Except in the mythological Eldorado, a place inaccessible to normal humans.

This pessimism seems a bit tough, but it is worth keeping in mind that “Candide” was written at the height of the seven-year war, in which much of central Europe and indeed many other places in the world was devastated over a fundamentally pointless war (Kings wanted to extend possessions and influence). Besides, the mid-18^th century had plenty of larger or smaller atrocities to pick from so for a humanist these were not great days. Voltaire uses this framework to point out all these injustices which may be institutional, religious, or simply borne out of low callous greed or arrogance. Consequently “Candide” was not well liked by rulers and institutions but loved by a population at large who likely recognized much of the unfairness Voltaire pointed out. “Candide” was released in five countries simultaneously and was the fastest selling book of the period. Take that, kings and priests!

Personally, I remember it as being more fun to read first time round. Some of the satirical elements are lost on a twenty-first century reader and some of the elements are so arbitrary and fantastic that it gets ridiculous, though that may be the point. Candide’s teacher, the philosopher Pangloss, who is the strongest proponent for optimism in the book manages to get himself killed four times, but magically reemerges from all but the last death. The Baron of Candide also manages to die a few times and switches between being best mate of Candide and mortal enemy every time Candide mentions his love for Cunegonde, the Baron’s sister. This is not a book to read for naturalistic consistency but to enjoy for the lampooning of all who are high and mighty or who think they are.

A curious detail, for me at least, is that after having visited Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal (during the big earthquake), Argentina, Paraguay. Surinam, France, Venice, Turkey, Persia and Norway, Candide ends up in Copenhagen, Denmark (where I happen to live) and after a short stint in Helsingør he settles here, married to a lovely Danish girl, this being the most tolerable place he has found outside of El Dorado. I am of course a bit flattered, but more likely the reason for this was that Denmark-Norway was one of the very few countries that stayed out of the Seven-years war and therefore avoided all these atrocities. Also the Danish king at the time had relinquished most of his power to a sensible chancellor who liberated the arts, something I am certain Voltaire would have appreciated.

“Candide” is short and easy and likely an essential read. I guess that is recommendation enough.

 

 

The Female Quixote - Charlotte Lennox (1752)

The Female Quixote

Progressing slowly to the year 1752 I have now read “The Female Quixote” by Charlotte Lennox and that was probably the funniest book so far on the List.

There is a trope in comedy where a person with an entirely different world view faces the real world, like an alien on Earth or a time traveler waking up in a different age. Add to that the arrogance and confidence of insisting on your world view and it gets really funny. Or tragic. Cervantes Don Quixote was the archetype for such a character. Apply this to women and you may find countless comedies on women insisting on living in an unrealistic romantic bubble. Add, again, the confidence of believing themselves the center of the world and it gets funny indeed. Or obnoxious and tragic. Here Charlotte Lennox’ Arabella must be the archetype.

Arabella is the only child of a marquis and grows up on a remote castle with old romances as her only company. As a result, she believes these are real historic events and the world is exactly as described in the novels. She spends her youth waiting for and expecting some romantic adventure to take place. Since her romances are haughty stuff she is convinced there are people out there just waiting to abduct her and that lovers must prove themselves to her through heroic deeds, that a refusal by her might cause men to die in grief and that she can save despairing men with a command to live.

Then Arabella encounters the real world. Her father believes it is time for her to get married and suggests that his nephew, Mr. Glanville could be the one. Glanville is immediately smitten by the pretty Arabella, but such an arranged marriage does not at all conform to the rules of romance and so Arabella objects. And not because he is her cousin (icks!!). Arabella is completely convinced she is the heroine in a romance and this world view is so much at odds with the real world that everybody Arabella meets are baffled by her and she consistently misunderstand everything that goes on around her. It is simply hilarious. Glanville loves her but is exasperated with her absurd notions. His father believes she is insane and Glanville’s sister, Miss Glanville is envious of Arabella’s beauty and fortune and therefore smirks every time Arabella’s escapades causes embarrassment.

Her ideas are truly absurd, but they are also amazingly funny and they do make Arabella a far more interesting character than the docile and mindless “normal” women around her. She is a girl of action and opinion and pluck in a world of effeminate men and idle, gossiping women. Arabella believes in honor and pride and achievement, where the only achievement expected from her is to get married. While the immediate objective of the story is to laugh at her crazy ideas, there is a subtext that as a woman she must lose everything that is special about her to become a Stepford wife in 18^th century England.

The ending which is by far the weakest element of the book is about Arabella getting a “treatment” by a doctor to give up her romantic ideals through argument. It is obviously a high-brow argument, but despite this, both too easy a resolution and one who tells us that all a woman can hope to do is to conform to habit and that nothing interesting is ever going to happen. Cured of her notions Arabella can now be happily married.

Except for this morale of the story, what we have in this book is a universal theme of speaking different languages that is just as relevant today and because of this “The Female Quixote” has aged very well. When people cannot agree on the way the world look and what different things mean it is very difficult to have a meaningful conversation. Add the confidence of believing themselves to be correct and everybody else wrong and it becomes difficult indeed. Just consider religious versus secular people or people from different ends of the political spectrum.  Then it is a lot more fun to use somebody caught up in romantic ideals as a case.

“The Female Quixote” is, despite a hurried and depressing end, a truly enjoyable read and one I can only recommend.

      

Peregrine Pickle - Tobias George Smollett (1751)

The Complete Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

It is not easy to write a comedy and it is even trickier to write one that remains funny centuries down the line. Tobias Smollett managed to do the latter. Reading “The Complete Adventures of Peregrine Pickle” I frequently chuckled and often laughed out loud from the antics of Smollett’s characters.

“Peregrine Pickle” is not a perfect book. It is in fact rather uneven and in its picaresque style it also seems old fashioned for its time. Although there is a red thread and connection from start to finish, each chapter takes Mr. Pickle on a new adventure that often departs from previous chapter and just as often does not add to the general progression of the plot. The purpose seems rather to give Smollett a chance to satirize on various topics even if these only peripherally relates to the story of Mr. Pickle. If these detours had not been so amusing, they would have made the story drag, but thankfully practically all of them are.

Peregrine Pickle was born to parents who disliked him even as a toddler. Instead he was raised by his aunt and her husband, the crass but likable Commodore Hawser Trunnion along with parts of Trunnion’s old crew in his “Garrison”. Throughout his youth Pickle plays pranks on anybody who gets in his way, including old Trunnion. We follow his education, courtship of his beloved Emilia, his tour of France and The Netherlands as well as his escapades in London.

Everywhere Mr. Pickle goes he gets an opportunity to discover amusing situations or instigate such situations. Some of the most spectacular includes a puffed-up doctor who insists on relating everything to the greats of antiquity and his friend, a painter, who in naivety is a good match to the doctor. The dinner party the doctor serves up with delicacies from ancient Rome is simply spectacular. Every single dish is inedible, but the party, not to lose face must eat their way through it with catastrophic results to their dignity. Just as hilarious is the duel Pickle provokes between the painter and the doctor. A duel which is aborted because both get cold feet.

Back in London Pickle and his friend Cadwaller Crabtree plays pranks on the stuffed-up nobility by setting Crabtee up as a mystic fortuneteller who frames his victims in terrible predicaments. This reaches a zenith when two drunk gents demand WOMEN whereupon they are sent into a second room to find the wife of one and mother of the other to their mutual chagrin.

While we learn of a lot of pranks, the story is scarcer on personal details on Pickle and his companions. The third person narrative is partly to blame, but even then, the characters are rather one-dimensional. Pickle is proud and clever, but also vain and promiscuous, both of which gets him in trouble more than once, but little else do we learn of his personal character.

“Peregrine Pickle” is not a novel for great drama or sophisticated morals, but for the pure and simple entertainment. Despite a lengthy and completely disconnected story, “The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality” inserted in the second half, this is an easy and enjoyable read and much recommended.

I started “Peregrine Pickle” while I was still in Australia in February and now, finishing it two months later, the world is a different place. How weird to think of.

  

Fanny Hill - John Cleland (1749)

Fanny Hill - Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

“Fanny Hill – Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure” has been touted as one of the first pornographic novels in history, but I am inclined to think that humankind has always been obsessing about sex and so these stories has always been around. For every new media that has appeared, pornography has been there from the beginning, so why not novels?

“Fanny Hill” is a first person narrative in retrospect of a woman, Fanny, who comes into the city from some countryside backwater very young and all innocent. She is quickly picked up by a brothel who can make a lot of money on selling her virginity. This backfires when Fanny runs away with a young and handsome client with whom she starts a very sexual relationship. Some month later he is suddenly sent off to sea. Fanny becomes a held woman by an older nobleman, which lasts until he ditches her and Fanny now becomes a member of a high-class brothel until eventually she gets reunited with her original boyfriend.

This is not a terrible interesting narrative, but it also merely serves as a vehicle for describing Fanny’s many sexual encounters. You might have thought from the above that this would be a terrible social indignant story about trafficking, but rather on the contrary, Fanny embraces and enjoys all her sexual activity. To her this is exciting stuff and something she craves and so, without shame, guilt or regret she tells us of all her adventures.

It is surprisingly liberal and certainly at the entirely opposite end of the spectrum of the contemporary Samuel Richardson. Gone are all the prudence and talk of virtue and the scare of sexuality. As a twenty-first century reader I cannot help feeling that it is liberating reading this after all the constrained morality of contemporary writers. You easily get the feeling that back then people where so estranged to their sexuality it is a wonder they had children at all.

But then again, reading this you get a nagging suspicion that this book is not about presenting liberal ideas about sexuality, but simply sexual gratification. The girls are always pretty, the men are very well endowed and the sexual act always ends in mutual orgasm through penetration. We also manage to cover most varieties of sexual encounters through orgies, cosplay, bdsm, rape fantasies, female homosexuality, you name it. Only male homosexuality is frowned upon. This is all recognizable from modern pornography and likely therefore serves the same purpose.

As most such texts it quickly gets boring. Sex is just one of those things that are more interesting to do than to observe and it quickly gets repetitive. The author tried to vary the language and consistently uses metaphors for the sexual acts with great variety, but fundamentally it is the same thing happening over and over again. Fortunately, this is not a long book.

The story about the book is more interesting than the story itself. Through the centuries this has been THE dirty book that people would look for or prosecute and it has been at the center of much debate about sexuality and pornography. Incidentally it was Fanny Hill that was instrumental in legalizing pornography in Denmark in the sixties. If the ban on pornography had to be maintained then this book should be outlawed, but the historical value of “Fanny Hill” made that absurd and so the ban was lifted.