Entries in the Category "atonement (book)"
Note to that girl in my class
Hey, you know what's a really effective method for bugging me? To take a novel that's literally built around the concept of ambiguity (how our perceptions of events differ from others' perceptions of those same events) and, when talking about it, keep saying, "It's clear that the author meant..."
For the record, in literary interpretation, it's rarely "clear" that anything does anything. But especially not in that book.
Note to my prof: When you said pointedly, "I think we should take the word 'clear' out of the discussion entirely," you became my personal hero.
Strange Connections
It's always been fascinating to me how easily connections can be drawn between completely disparate fields of study. As an undergrad, I was always getting shocked when the same concept came up in lit class and sociology class, or in physics and women's studies, or whatever. Right now I'm taking two courses, and although both are literature-based, they cover different subjects and eras. And yet, everything I'm reading right now is strangely connected to everything else.
Firstly, I'm in the middle of The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is kind of the seminal Gothic novel, full of castles, mysterious portraits and people hearing noises in the next room, creeping in and finding it strangely empty. For the same class, I am also reading (actually just finished) Northanger Abbey. The connection between those is relatively clear: Jane Austen wrote Northanger as both an homage to and a parody of the Gothic novel. The main character, Catherine, reads Udolpho:
'But, my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all this morning?--Have you gone on with Udolpho?'
'Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil.'
'Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?'
'Oh! yes, quite; what can it be?--But do not tell me--I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina's skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.'
The joke of the novel is that Austen took this particular comic tone in narrating it; she writes as though Catherine's ordinariness is continuously overthrowing her expectations of Gothic happenings. For example, while traveling, Catherine is surprised to reach her destination without a crash or being harassed by bandits.
So, already there was tons of crossover appeal between those two books. Then, yesterday, I started Ian McEwan's Atonement for a completely different class. Imagine my surprise when I opened it to the beginning and discovered that McEwan opened it with a quotation from Northanger Abbey!
Weird, man. Weird.