A Book with a One Word Title

I'm sneaking this entry in between book writing and reading a zillion things for my World Lit II class. However, if I don't write this up I'll completely forget the book! I read it in January, for Pete's sake.

Here, I'm going with a Book with a One Word Title from my Better Reading Challenge. I've chosen Hild by Nicola Griffith. This could have fulfilled a few categories: book longer than 500 pages, book by a LGBT author, and a book a friend recommended. Don't worry, it's not taking all four categories, I'm not cheating.

Hild is by an author that I like, Nicola Griffith. I've read and enjoyed Ammonite (1993) and Slow River (1995) and hated The Blue Place (1998). Man, that one was terrible. Anyway, the first two novels were science fiction, and felt like Griffith was trying on genres for size. Ammonite was clearly an homage to Le Guin and Slow River was built on Gibson and other Cyberpunk authors. Hild is where I think Griffith really comes into her own.

It's historical fiction, telling the story of the early days of Hild, who later becomes Saint Hilda.  This is the story of the early conversion of England to Christianity and the tenuous role that one young girl plays in that story. Not tenuous because she's not great, merely because there are so many power plays happening that she's always in danger. What I loved about this book was the pacing. It's slow. Very slow. Reading it felt like sinking into a really comfortable bed. (I was going to say warm syrup, but I thought that might gross you all out.) The slowness of the text really gave me a chance to feel like I was in Hild's head. She's a thinker, a planner, as well as a doer. There's something rare about just engaging with a complex thought process that isn't always even tied to action. 

We also get a larger perspective on women's roles in early Britain. (The book is meticulously researched, so I feel as though they aren't terribly exaggerated, but I'm not an Medievalist so buyer beware.) The relationship between female companions was fascinating, the women's roles at court are complex, and women just generally seem like competent members of society. The opposite of what we often expect based on other fantasy novels, as the NPR review notes. As an aside, Terry Jones also teaches this lesson in his Medieval Lives episode on "The Damsel:" 

I highly recommend Hild if you like engaging in popular conceptions of the Medieval era. Give this a chance now that you've read all zillion pages of Game of Thrones, why dontcha? 

A Book Longer than 600 Pages

Yeah, right. 

Another better reading challenge blog post. I certainly won't make 50 this year, but hopefully 10. I've read many more than 10 books so far this year (and, actually, probably more than 50 at this point) but I don't have as much time to write as I'd like. Or, not as much time for pleasure writing.

First, let me introduce everyone to an amazing resource. Amazing! I’m currently teaching World Lit II online. All of our texts are also online, making the “I don't have the book yet” excuse entirely moot. What a pleasure! Anyway, some of the readings were on rather messy webpages, so I went searching for better versions that could be easily downloaded to Kindle (the Project Gutenberg downloads have never worked for me). I came across the University of Adelaide’s eBook program, and it’s great. The books read well on a web page, but are also easily and quickly downloaded to Kindle. In fact, both the readings I reference here are available: Little Women and Vindication on the Rights of Woman. Go forth and find some books! (I also downloaded Collins’ The Moonstone which I’m super psyched to read in conjunction with Waters’ Fingersmith.)

Oof. When I started reading Little Women on my kindle I didn’t really check to see how long it was. I also apparently read both parts, packaged together as Parts I and II by the Adelade eBook website, not realizing they were published as separate books initially. So, some of these impressions are definitely from Good Wives. When I downloaded the book I just figured, “oh, I haven’t read this and it’s a big hole in my children’s lit knowledge, so I should do it.” Little did I know. So many pages! So much "womanly advice!" So much nonsense disguised as sense!

My book's cover was more utilitarian. 

I really disliked this book. I know so many people have fond memories of it from reading it as a child, but as an adult I found the larger message of meek womanhood to be extremely frustrating. In fact, rereading Wollstonecraft’s Vindication I came across this passage:

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.

Of course, this is what Wollstonecraft is rallying against in her treatise. Yet it seems exactly the advice that Jo et. al. receive throughout Little Women. Jo is repeatedly advised to hold her anger inside in order to model ideal femininity. While this article from Michigan Quarterly Review suggests one of the most engaging aspects of the story is Marmee's underlying anger, it's still an anger she has learned to quash and encourages her daughters to do the same. Published in 1868, America is 20 years into "first wave" feminism, but the possibilities of that movement are not reflected in the novel. 

The girls are encouraged to be obedient and proper. One of the most nauseating examples, I think, is the chapter where Meg is struggling a bit after the birth of her first child. She no longer is pretty! And endlessly charming! And she’s tired! And frustrated because she never talks to adults! So her husband just quits eating at home and goes to his friend’s house, where there’s a more charming wife. When Mama March finds out she encourages “a puerile kind of propriety,” suggesting Meg be a perfect version of a housewife until she charms her husband back home. Smile pretty, make nice dinners, and your husband will pay attention to you for a few hours a day. Yeesh.

My one word review

I also think Jo should have ended up with Laurie. They challenged each other! I think the lively discussions were good, not bad. I get why Alcott wanted Jo to remain independent, but I'm not sure a marriage to Laurie automatically undermines her autonomy. It does recenter the book around the girls' relationship with each other, but that's also undone by creating the "good wives" of Part II.

Jo's temper just gets totally checked and she meekly marries that old scholar. Plllbbbthhh. I just really have nothing good to say about it. I suppose it's admirable that Jo starts the school for boys, and that she marries for love and not money. Everyone is happily paired off by the end, the girls' having successfully found husbands due to their excellent feminine virtues.

Anyway, keep those happy childhood memories intact if you have them, and by no means give this a nostalgia reread. It’s a miserable and heavy handed book about obedience to your husband and God. Go read Wollstonecraft instead and see how many of her ideas we have yet to realize.