From the outset, Wilkie Collins’s 1868 “sensation novel” keeps the reader entertained and engaged as a priceless yellow diamond, stolen from a Hindu religious statue of the Moon God in India in 1799, works its black magic and controls the action. Rachel Verinder, heir of Colonel John Herncastle, who murdered to obtain the jewel during the battle of Seringapatam, inherits this possibly cursed treasure on her eighteenth birthday in 1848, only to have it vanish before she can put it into the bank. Overall, the novel is surprisingly modern in its ability to appeal to a wide audience. Collins is adept at manipulating his readership and in keeping suspense high. His characters are often engaging and frequently humorous, and in its ability to deal with social issues of the day, the novel provides pertinent commentary about colonialism, religious fanaticism, and class issues. Collins never forgets, however, that he is writing to entertain, and in this he succeeds admirably.
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“Make ’em laugh, make ’em weep, make ’em wait, and make ’em come back.” This advice for writing serial romances, alternately attributed to Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and Charles Reade, is epitomized in this 1860 novel by Collins, a story of thwarted love, a marriage of obligation, claims on inheritance, the victimization of women, and, most of all, engaging mystery. Collins, often credited as the father of the mystery genre, creates a fast-paced story of Victorian England, revealing much about Victorian society and its values–the role of women, the laws governing marriage and inheritance, the social institutions of the day, the contrasting attitudes toward the aristocracy and the lower classes, and even the level of medical care and the treatment of psychological illness. The almost-forgotten author of twenty-five novels, Collins was one of the most successful authors of Victorian mysteries, and he is gaining new attention as a result of reprints of this novel and The Moonstone.
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Often regarded as Conrad’s masterwork, Nostromo is also Conrad’s darkest novel, filled with betrayals at all levels and offering little hope for man’s redemption. A novel of huge scope and political intrigue, it is also a novel in which no character actually wins. All must accept the ironies which fate has dealt them. Setting the novel in the imaginary South American country of Costaguana, the story centers around a silver mine in the mountains outside of the capital, Sulaco, vividly depicting its allure and the price each character pays for its success. Rich in atmosphere, vibrant in description, filled with characters representing all walks of life and philosophy, and set in a country where revolution is a way of life, the novel is full of dark portents and bleak political outcomes.
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Posted in Classic Novel, England, Historical on Jan 13th, 2011
Written in 1853, when Dickens was at his peak, Bleak House is often considered Dickens’s best novel. Set in the 1850s, the novel tells several interconnected stories involving dozens of characters from all levels of society, giving a broad picture of life in London and in the countryside during this period. Esther Summerson, the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon, an early lover, is raised in secrecy by a resentful aunt. After the aunt’s death, Esther joins the household of the kindly Mr. Jarndyce, who is also mentoring Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, Ada’s cousin. Richard, Ada, and Mr. Jarndyce have been involved for years in a lawsuit, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, about the terms of an old will, and this lawsuit, which has continued interminably in the High Court of Chancery, is the inspiration for the satire Dickens directs toward British bureaucracy and the paperwork which paralyzes it. As the lives of Esther, Lady Dedlock, Ada, Richard, and Mr. Jarndyce unfold, the reader also learns about the lives of those who come into peripheral contact with them.
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Always concerned with issues of class, social injustice, and employment, Dickens shows in Hard Times, written in 1854, a broader concern with the philosophies and economic movements which underlie those issues. Three parallel story lines reflect a broad cross-section of society and its thinking. Mr. Thomas Gradgrind runs a school founded upon the principles of rationalism, a belief in the importance of facts, the antithesis of romantic “fancy” and imagination. Basically a good man, he denies the importance of emotion–for himself, his children, and his students. Gradgrind’s friend, Mr. Bounderby, is a banker and factory owner, aged fifty, who claims to have risen from the gutter to his present lofty position purely through hard work. The third story line involves Stephen Blackpool, a worker in Bounderby’s factory, trapped in a marriage to an alcoholic who periodically appears and extorts money from him. As the story lines overlap and intersect, often with consummate irony, Dickens keeps a light enough hand to prevent the story from becoming a polemic, though his criticism of hypocrisy, corruption, and “progress” at the expense of humanity is clear.
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