I'm not a Shakespeare expert by any means, nor is he my favorite author yet, but every once in a while I think: "Hey, I wonder how Shakespeare's doing?" This time it was Hamlet's turn, because I had a ticket for a production that was organized on a stormy autumn night in my hometown's gorgeous medieval castle (pictures here & here). We exchanged our phones for skulls and wandered through the rooms in groups. Combining puppet theatre, singing, the art of clowning and pop culture references, the whole thing was amazing, but it was useful to read the play first in order to understand all the nuances.

In the end, I ended up liking the Grus Grus Theatre's production more than the original. When something's as legendary as Hamlet, there's always the fear that it doesn't live up to expectations. Hamlet definitely has interesting themes ranging from madness, guilt, and revenge, so all the pieces are there for a great tragedy, but as a whole it just didn't do anything for me. I did write down a couple of great quotes, and I'm happy that I finally got around reading something that is such a big part of culture, but that's all. Although I have to end my review on a high note: I had really missed Shakespeare's humor. Maybe I should try one of his comedies next?

Anyway, don't mind me. There's a reason why Shakespeare is popular, so you won't lose anything if you read his plays. Go Will!

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Much better as a mere concept, because the execution... Nope. Reading She was like a rollercoaster. First you spot a beautiful description of something, then you get swamped by some endless journey to I-couldn't-care-less-where, then there's an interesting discussion about religion, then you just feel like hitting your head with the book etc. Talk about hot and cold! It seemed like there was enough material for just a short novella.

It's no wonder that She has sparked discussion about femininity and colonial attitudes, though. I liked the mystical aspect of a raven-haired beauty ruling over a whole tribe in some mysterious part of Africa (this was completely botched in the clinical Hammer movie adaptation). Ayesha seems both vulnerable and harsh, yearning for her dead lover but also believing that mere beauty makes up for sin etc. Haggard, on the other hand, seems to preach a point about passion being wrong and destructive, and that Ayesha is wrong when she says there's no purely good and evil but instead good intentions can sometimes spark evil consequences. And what about the tribe then? Well, they clearly have no morals, so they need a white woman to put them in their place.

Overall an oddly mixed bag of old-fashioned ideals and progressive concepts.

"Each religion claims the future for its followers; or, at least, the good thereof. The evil is for those benighted ones who will have none of it; seeing the light the true believers worship, as the fishes see the stars, but dimly. The religions come and the religions pass, and the civilisations come and pass, and naught endures but the world and human nature. Ah! if man would but see that hope is from within and not from without—that he himself must work out his own salvation! He is there, and within him is the breath of life and a knowledge of good and evil as good and evil is to him. Thereon let him build and stand erect, and not cast himself before the image of some unknown God, modelled like his poor self, but with a bigger brain to think the evil thing, and a longer arm to do it."

"Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath--all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each?"

"And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been."

The disappointment... I understand the point of the story. The exploration of Victorian double standards etc. The descriptions of the countryside are nice, but nothing spectacular. The ambiguity of some scenes have almost a mystical quality, and I always appreciate subtlety.

However, the way Hardy deals with the character of Tess is uncomfortable. He has an obsession with Tess's beauty (describes her looks far too often; we get it, she has a lovely face) and makes the point of women being the fairer and more noble sex several times.

Hardy's way of examining the Victorian mores and fatalism through a female martyr is off-putting. He uses Tess as a mere tool, and doing so he fails to make her a convincing and compelling character. She carries her guilt through her entire life, but it's just all too much. Hardy hits you in the head over and over again with misery, so instead of feeling depressed or sorry for Tess I couldn't care less about anything that happened.

Wuthering Heights is full of darkness, but at least it's executed more smoothly and atmospherically. Tess is just kicked around and she ends up shedding all her character, becoming almost a caricature. She's the ultimate pure woman of the 19th century, but Hardy seems to enjoy a bit too much showing us the purity. Tess drags herself from one event to the other, but never did I feel the actual connection between her and what Hardy was trying to say.

Everything about this book is obvious, heavy-handed, and contrived. I never shy away from depressing stuff, but when a message is jammed down my throat (often at the expense of the characters) I become strongly averse to the whole story. The same happened with 1984. Nor am I the kind of person who rates a book low because I don't like the characters. Hardy tries to build a halo around Tess and treats the story as a fatalistic string of tragic events, so Tess is not really unlikeable but very hollow. I don't dislike her per se, but instead I dislike how she's fleshed out.

I can just imagine Hardy sitting at his table and thinking: "Alrighty then, let's make this as glum as possible, so even the dumbest ones will see the shitty situation of women in my time".

Fortunately, there's one thing that I can take from this: sexual encounters still mean different things with men and women. There are still far too many who uphold these double standards. There's for example a certain type of man who sleeps around until he can find the perfect woman to be his wife. At the same time he claims that the women he hooks up with in bars are just promiscuous dummies and good for nothing but one night stands (even though they have no idea how many partners the women have had), and his future wife should be pure and innocent without a huge sexual past (but it's ok for a man to have one). Ah, the good ol' madonna-whore dichotomy!

You have to be blind if you don't see the relevance of Tess with modern society.

Hawthorne's novel has been extensively force-fed to unsuspecting American students, and I'm not the least bit surprised if several of those students develop a disgust towards classics, or get chills from the bare mention of The Scarlet Letter. This is so dry, dry as the Sahara, that I just have to wonder what teachers are thinking. Are there really no other more riveting American classics out there that can be enjoyed by the young?

The reading experience I had was pretty sticky, which made me spend a lot more time than usual with a book this short. The intentionally archaic language wasn't as much a problem than the overabundant moralism, that is shoved down the reader's throat and drowns the characters. In addition, the male of the story gets a bit too much weight in a novel that's essentially about Hester and her crime. Who, by the way, is a compliant shadow, who only wins over the puritan society when she behaves like an angel, and regresses into a one-dimensional puritan prototype. Not to mention her nonexistent personality. The woman is a raven-haired image of supreme virtue, idealism, and righteousness. The man ponders in great detail, depth, maturity, and multidimensionality the meaning of sin and repentance to which his profession adds tension.

The idea was ok and some thoughts were interesting, but Hawthorne's actual execution is just horrendously dry drag. Maybe this benefits more from being the topic of discussion instead of actual reading. It's also difficult to believe that the puritans were as cold-hearted as they are described here. Maybe Hawthorne dealt with them through the 19th century lens or something.

Then again, Hawthorne may have also wanted to ease his guilt about his ancestor John Hathorne, who was the only judge in the Salem witch hunt who never regretted his actions. Either way, The Scarlet Letter smells awfully like a historical artifact, whose appreciation might partly stem from the fact that it represents the roots of Americans themselves in addition to the roots of American bestsellers.

Duroy grows increasingly heartless as the story progresses, but in some twisted way it was kind of fun to follow him through his journey under petticoats with his moustache twitching. Duroy climbs to the top by clinging to women's thighs, and sometimes by luck he gets an opportunity to advance in his career through somewhat macabre means. The little slimeball is a mimic and an upstart, although he wants to be a greatly admired gentleman. Even his first article is only literally his handwriting, because the ideas and thoughts are those of Madame Forestier (who actually "helps" her husband in his articles as well).

The worldview is cynical, yes, but there is also cheerful and amusing satire. The novel mocks mediocrity, and I think it's not meant to be taken as deadly serious as some seem to have done. Maupassant is one of those easily readable classic authors, whose texts don't challenge, but whose stories tangle the reader into their webs.

When the Masterpiece Theatre's production (Richard Armitage!) was first shown on Finnish tv, I fell in love with it (including the haunting theme music). I haven't seen it in a couple of years now, because I've been afraid that the enchantment will be broken or something, but after finally getting around to reading this, I'm probably going to hunt it down.

The opposites that are Margaret Hale and John Thornton are a part of the dynamics of the novel. Thornton seems a very hard man with an unpenetrable exterior, and someone who's not too keen on showing his emotions. When this break through the barrier happens, it's touching. Margaret on the other hand dislikes the superficial company of women, admires calm behavior, and her character is often misunderstood as arrogant. Both are stubborn, and despite all the misunderstandings, prejudices, and cold behavior, both understand each other in a certain way and see behind faked facial expressions.

Although I haven't read Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), based on the reviews and the miniseries I've seen, the relationship between Thornton and Margaret seems very similar than the one between Darcy and Elizabeth. North and South however isn't just about wallowing in love and relationships, but also a story about loss and justice, and where the meaning of death is great in the development of the characters. This isn't dark though, because on the background there are always new possibilities and hope.

Most of all this is a study of human nature, the conflicts of industrialisation, and injustices of the society. A humane story about a city, where the collisions of different people might even be dangerous. The reader is allowed the space to make own conclusions. Both the factory masters and workers have reasonable thoughts, and Gaskell shows that both sides are able to make mistakes.

There were a few times in the dialogue where the speaker wasn't identified, but luckily just a few so it didn't bother as much as it could have. At first the workers' way of talking was kind of cryptic, but when I figured out the logic behind it, it became easier to read. Reading aloud helped, although my speech kind of verged on the Irish side. The ending might seem abrupt to some, but I didn't mind. If I could have, I would have held my breath the whole time, and at the end I could finally sigh for a relief (won't admit any tears), even though we all know how these books end.

Since I wasn't familiar with novels in verse before now, I was a bit uneasy at first (especially since I thought this was a regular novel), but in the end I got used to it and judged it as an ok form. The thing I had problems with, was that despite the pretty nature descriptions I had difficulties in coming to terms with the characters. It wasn't that they weren't interesting. They were, especially Eugene himself in all his cynical glory, but he like the others were too superficial for my taste. Mere reflections of what might have been. Tatyana for example seems mostly just an ideal image of a sacrificing woman, who, when left disappointed, decides to just settle in a life which she can't feel any passion towards, but which she feels is right. The verses don't give that much room for delving either into the story or the characters, in which a regular novel would have had entirely different chances.

The role of writing and especially reading delighted a dusty bookworm like me. The most interesting thing in the novel was, however, Puškin's stylistic device of breaking the barrier between author and reader by occasionally referring to himself. The reader is not only being talked to, but attention is drawn to the author's own world view, feelings, and views on women (or their feet) among other things. Puškin hints at his own life and work in such manner, that it's in danger of alienating the story itself. Overall it works, though, because it brings certain depth and biographical material to the work, inspiring me to read more about the author (a classic case of being more interested about the person than about the works, I think).

The translator of my Finnish edition notes, that what Peter the Great is to history, Puškin is to literature. I can't comment on that, since my knowledge of Russian literature is pretty weak, but maybe at this stage it was only a good thing to familiarize myself with the "fountainhead of Russian literature", because later I can then compare his influence on such authors as Gogol and Dostoyevsky(hopefully the themes are utilized at a deeper level, though).

The Russian reviews here on Goodreads are interesting views on the importance of Onegin in their culture. At this point this just seemed a bit too light for my own taste, mainly just an introduction to 19th century Russian society and its literary culture. Pretty and thought provoking novel, but didn't rock my world.