Cathy and Catharsis: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child, big enough to both walk and talk--indeed, its face looked older than Catherine's--yet, when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand. I was frightened, and Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors; she did fly up, asking how could he fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own bairns to feed and fend for? What he meant to do with it, and whether he were mad?
It's been years since I was forced to read Wuthering Heights in high school and hated every page. Obviously there is plenty I missed the first time around, but yeas...the location and most of the players are toxic to my soul.
It's a mystery to me why there's a cultural assessment of Heathcliff as some sort of tragic, charismatic, romantic hero--which is how he was presented by the teacher during my first reading. My hypothesis is that the old movie starring a very young Laurence Olivier had something to do with that. The plain text of the book emphasizes Heathcliff as a savage, feral monster who grows up half-blind with rage against his foster family and the neighbors, abuses the woman he supposedly loves, and ends up seizing and destroying everything including himself. He is a Morlock to the Eloi presented by the Earnshaws and Lintons.
Mind you, the Lintons are snoots, and Hindley Earnshaw is both a snoot and a lout, whose anger as the heir displaced for a stranger is understandable but ugly nonetheless. Probably the most sympathetic character is Lockwood, the astonished narrator who bookends the long story of how the grange and the heights came to be such miserable places. when disagreeable people do mean and petty things to each other in revenge for previous mean and petty things, it's hard to get too excited. Fortunately, Charlotte and Anne are the Brontes who wrote more than one.
Aubrey/Maturin: The Far Side of the World; The Reverse of the Medal; The Letter of Marque, by Patrick O'Brian
"I beg your pardon for bursting in upon your beetle," said Mowett," but the Captain would like to know whether the human frame can support this." He passed a mug of rainwater collected long ago, north of the Line.
Stephen smelt to it, poured a little into a phial and looked at it with a lens. Delight dawned upon his grave, considering face and spread wide. "Will you look at this, now!" he said, passing it to Martin. "Perhaps the finest conferva soup I have ever seen, and I believe I make out several African forms."
"There are also some ill-looking polyps, and several creatures no doubt close in kin to the hydroblabs," said Martin. "I should not drink it for a Deanery."
--from The Far Side of the World
Men who are accustomed over a long series of years to supposing that whatever can somehow be squared with the law is right--or if not right, then allowable--are not useful members of society; and when they reach positions of power in the state, they are noxious. they are people for whom ethics can be summed up by the collected statutes.
--from The Reverse of the Medal
You may have inferred from the rate at which I'm going through my second reading of Aubrey/Maturin that I am having the time of my life, and you would be right. These three books, it seems to me, are the zenith of the story arc.
The Far Side of the World is so magnificent that, when they tried to do a big budget Aubrey/Maturin movie, they skipped right to the middle and started off with this story. Sea battles and spycraft, mutinous crew members and people pressed into the service out of a lunatic asylum by a desperately understaffed navy; murderous love triangles and shipwrecks and piracy, protagonists lost overboard in the middle of the ocean and found by hostile amazons, all culminating in a look at how Lord of the Flies would have played out among adult castaways. After that gourmet literary feast, The Reverse of the Medal takes Captain Aubrey to his lowest point in the entire series, while The Letter of Marque features Stephen beginning with Jack the long climb up from the bottom. All three books, I read in a day of failing to put them down. You might, too. Very highest recommendations.
Monsieur Hulot's Folly Days: Cousin Bette, by Honore de Balzac
In one moment, Lisbeth Fischer had become the Mohican whose snares none can escape, whose dissimulation is inscrutable, whose swift decisiveness is the outcome of the incredible perfection of every organ of sense. she was Hatred and Revenge, as implacable as they are in Italy, Spain, and the East. These two feelings, the obverse of friendship and love carried to the utmost, are known only in lands scorched by the sun. But Lisbeth was also a daughter of Lorraine, bent on deceit.
This month's Balzac is a peculiar one. It is presented by the translator as an equal and opposite novel to Cousin Pons (about a poor relation treated horribly by rich relatives), as if it was about Bette, the poor relation, treating rich people horribly....and yet, the 'poor relation' is a seamstress who has frugally saved up a substantial sum, while the family of "rich relatives", from the beginning, are at the edge of ruin behind a veneer of threadbare once-new carpets and tarnished heirloom silver. The daughter of the houshold thoughtlessly steals Bette's boyfriend (thereby triggering a revenge plot worthy of Edmond Dantes), but other than that, the family is quite good and respectful to her, and trusts her to the point where she can do them serious harm. The main instrument of Bette's revenge is her friend the beautiful Madame Marneffe, who gets the paterfamilias to throw away family money he can't afford on a "comic" extramarital affair bordering on farce. Marneffe at one point is having a jolly time collecting presents from no less than four silly male suitors, not counting her actual husband; and the adultery of these men with women half their age is presented as human folly in a "old men will be old men, what can you do?" sort of way. In fact, the story appears to be more about the lecherous comic/tragic flaw of the weak patriarch Hulot, whose helplessness against feminine wiles is summed up by his son in what may well be the true theme of the book: Parents may hinder their children's marriage; but children cannot interfere with the insane acts of their parents in their second childhood
The 19th Century Murders: The Bride of Newgate, by John Dickson Carr; Breach of Promise; The Twisted Root, by Anne Perry; Snake Stone, by Jason Goodwin; Days of the Dead, by Barbara Hambly; Broken Vessel, by Kate Ross
"Why can't we allow people to break a betrothal if they realize it was a mistake," he went on passionately, "without assuming there must be some fearful sin on the part of one or the other of them? Why do we care so much if a woman is pretty or not? If all we want is something lovely to look at, we can buy a picture and hang it on the wall. We do this!" He flung out his arms. "We create a society where people go to law instead of saying to each other the simple truth. And now, instead of a broken romance--which, God knows, hurts enough, but we all experience it--we have scandal, disgrace, shame, and worst of all, we have destroyed one of the brightest talents of our generation. And over what? A misunderstanding."
--from Breach of Promise
"Yes, I've solved a lot of murders....Some I understood, and might have done the same myself. Others were so cold-blooded, so consumed in self, it frightened me that another human being I had talked with, soot beside, could have hidden that evil behind a face which looked to me like any other."
--from The Twisted Root
"Under your precious law, the husband has still another right. Everything I own becomes his property, even to the house we stand in at this moment. And what, pray, do I get in exchange? I receive a boorish lout who will stamp home smelling of the stables, rattle out his oaths, and be hopelessly drunk by three o'clock in the afternoon. Or an empty-pated dandy (praise heaven the breed is passing!) who pays fabulous compliments, has a sour temper, and gambles away every farthing at Watier's or White's. And for THIS, we are taught to simper, and swoon, and tap coquettishly with a fan, and cry 'Fie' at some mildly bawdy jest. For what purpose? To 'catch', dear me, a husband who is not worth the trouble to catch!"
--from The Bride of Newgate
It was the hour of the evening prayer, when you could no longer distinguish between a black thread and a white thread in ordinary light. George pulled the paring knife from his belt and sliced it through the air as he turned. All over Istanbul, muezzins in their minarets threw back their heads and began to chant.
It was a good time to kick a man to death in the street.
--from The Snake Stone
Toby lived on the first floor above the public house and let out the second-floor rooms to ladybirds and their flats. There was not much danger that the authorities would take notice; the parish constables were too indolent, and the Bow Street Runners preferred bigger game. Throat them a bottle of spirits now and again, and they would turn a blind eye. God knew, such accommodation houses were common enough round the Haymarket, where girls like Sally were as numerous as the paving stones they trod each night.
--from The Broken Vessel
"Hope is something the living do." The fiddler coughed, switching the bow into his other hand so that he could press his hand to his side. "...to hope till Hope creates / from its own wreck the thing it contemplates...it's too silly an occupation for the dead."
January took a sip of the gin--which was cheap and unspeakably bad--and said, "You may be right about that."
--from Days of the Dead
Breach of Promise has TWO novel-alteringbig reveals, the first of which made me mad because I did not see itcoming. I am usually good at seeingthese things coming, but Anne Perry has fooled me quite a few times this year(Well played, Ms. Perry. Very well played). As usual, almost as wonderful as the gripping mystery is the socialcommentary about the days when men who did not see an engagement through tomarriage could be sued for "breach of promise" (see also, the Gilbert & Sullivanmini-opera Trial By Jury), and sometimes the lawsuit wasrequired even if the ex-fiancee didn't want it, because without it, busybodysociety would gossip and chin-wag about how she must have been rejected assomehow damaged goods, and then no one else would want to marry hereither. Anne Perry will not fail toremind you about how sucky traditional gender roles were and are. The Twisted Root is enigmatic for along time, but needs a trigger warning for turning unbearably ugly in the finalchapters with a tale of abuse strong enough that it may be too painful forthose who don't see it coming. Perry does not pull punches when depictingpsychological pain.
The Bride of Newgate is one of therarest treats in historical detective fiction; a dabbling in the genre by a20th century grand master of locked room and other 'impossible crime'stories. John Dickson Carr's (apparentlyonly) foray into history is a delightful regency romp as well as a devilishlyclever whodunnit. SHE is the spirited,independent, Strong Female Protagonist who, in order to inherit a fortune undera will that stipulates that she MUST get married, determines to marry aconvicted murderer and be widowed by the hangman the next day. HE (Dick Derwint) is the condemnedrapscallion whose conviction is miraculously overturned after the wedding butbefore the execution, giving him a do-over chance to prove his innocence. meanwhile,the improbable couple has been joined in matrimony, and the hijinks thatensue---OH HOLY SHIT, JUST READ IT! VeryHighest Recommendations.
The Snake Stoneis the second in Jason Goodwin's series about Yashim the Eunnuch, investigatorin the 1830s Ottoman Empire. The series is very well written, and adds an exotic change of localeto a historical genre where most crimes are in England or America. It does require a content note, in thatmany of the murders involve unusual or nasty ways to die, and the bodies aredescribed in more detail than many will want to know. This book relatesthe last days of Constantinople to a book written two centuries later, arecent Greek popular uprising, and a search for hidden treasures in whichsomeone who knows too much (several people, actually, but the French collectoris considered the important one) is deaded, and Yashim himself is the onlysuspect. High recommendations.
Kate Ross's series about the dandy Julian Kestrel and his reformed pickpocket-turned-valet "Dipper" continues to add joy to my reading, for word use, for character building, and for sleuthing. Compared to Anne Perry, Ross's London is the musical Oliver as compared to the darkness of the original Dickens. Sally, the sassy, seductive strumpet who teams up with Kestrel in The Broken Vessel might as well be Nancy Sykes singing "Oom-Pah-Pah" in a busker-filled streetside tavern like the one that opens the book. Sally lifts the handkerchiefs of three very different customers of the night, discovers an alarming note that must have been hidden in one of them, and goes on an investigative romp that includes the homes of the rich "gentry-coves" as well as to a "home for the reclamation of reduced females" that gives a feel for the indignities and abuses of the age with enough distance (in part due to the use of words like "strumpet", "taradiddle" and "jackanapes" that convey the rich upper and lower class slang of the time) to avoid serious triggering. The Broken Vessel won the Gargoyle Award for best historical mystery of the year, and it shows. Very high recommendations.
Last is another Benjamin January mystery, which I've come to read more for historical and cultural value about a nasty time in my nation's past than for the challenge of "whodunnit". My experience is, the mystery is either not solvable or just makes sense from the beginning, but the plots are gripping and make one burn with indignation about the horrific levels of racism that continue in parts of the region to this day, with or without the backing of law. Days of the Dead has January take a trip to Mexico City to maybe clear a man accused of murder, in a land where he need not continually prove his credentials as a free man, and where the superstitions of indigenous Mexico, Voodoun and white Christianity clash as potential solutions for the death. Also valuable for an appearance by General Santa Anna as a larger than life character.
Sigma Xi Lectures: The Forces of Matter; The Chemical History of a Candle, by Michael Faraday
Last month, I read 19th Century papers by Dalton and Lobachevski, and piped up that it would be nice if the Great Books set had included them as part of a western canon that Mortimer Adler and his editorial board believed any person could read. Most actual scientists I know have re-assured me that lay people Do Not learn science from the original Newton, etc. But too late. My OCD has kicked in, and I'm in for the long haul. as of this writing, I am hopelessly bogged down in Faraday's mammoth Experimental Researches in Electricity , which thankfully, appears to be the last of the huge technical jargon books in the Great Books set. how much happier I would be if, like the Harvard Classics, Faraday had been represented with <b> The Forces of Matter and The chemical History of a Candle.
These two sets of six brief "lecture" chapters each are easy to read and, while basic, taught or reminded me of something new. When i was young, my father used to take me to an evening lecture series with guests who ran the gamut from Richard Feynman on physics to The Amazing Randi on debunking claims of the supernatural. They did demonstrations on How Shit Works that you could learn from by watching, just like they never did at my actual high school. Faraday's "lectures' are like that. Heavily illustrated, in plain English, and using toys like fire-balloons to demonstrate chemical reactions and energy. As far as I'm concerned, these should be studied and demonstrated as part of high school science.
The Adventures of Emo and Straight Man: Either/Or, by Soren Kierkegaard
If one were to ask for a divorce because his wife was tiresome, or demand the abdication of a king because he was boring to look at, or the banishment of a preacher because he was tiresome to listen to, or the dismissal of a prime minister, or the execution of a journalist because he was terribly tiresome, one would find it impossible to force through. What wonder, then, that the world goes from bad to worse, and that its evils increase more and more, as boredom increases, and boredom is the root of all evil.
My goodness, but this is a weird piece of work. Kierkegaard, a Dane, is said to have invented existentialism a century before Sartre, and to have had his work sit neglected until the 20th Century, when he was declared to have been a tortured genius. As usual with philosophers who talk about a universal human condition, I immediately suspect that Kierkegaard attributes to all people a case history that is really more about himself than about humanity (right after the quote above about boredom, he famously asserts that God created a woman because Adam was bored; then had them produce offspring because the two of them were bored, and eventually that all of the being fruitful and multiplying was so that we could all form society and be bored together!
On the other hand, a good deal of what he says about human experience and feeling is in fact consistent with my own memories of younger life compared to how I am today, so I can't discard him out of hand. Your mileage may vary.
Kierkegaard pretends that Either/Or is a bunch of papers he found in a desk, that were written by two other people, one a young epicure, the other a middle-aged judge. The epicure's contribution includes several literary critiques of the psychology behind Don Giovanni and Faust, particularly as they apply to rogue protagonists who toy with the affections of women; and concludes with "The Diary of a Seducer", a commitmentphobic account about wooing a young woman, awakening her love, and then abandoning her. The second part of Either/Or consists of the judge, who has apparently read the seducer's diary, telling the epicure what's wrong with him and urging him to choose different.
The central philosophical concept is that we are all (even the women) the epicure and the judge, and that life and maturing consists of passing through an "aesthetic" stage of life devoted to sensual pleasures and scholarly pursuits in studies that enhance pleasure (such as refined appreciation of art, music, wine, etc.)...and into a more mature "ethical" stage guided by empathy and conscience. The judge writes a lot about the Emperor Nero, who was a talented musician and artist, but an epic failure at governing because, says the judge, Nero became bored and used the supreme power to provide ever-increasing thrills for himself.
So, yeah. Got it? Don't be Nero. Next book…
Orogen Story: The Obelisk Gate, byNK Jemisin
You focus on the drunk woman and it isalmost instinctual, the urge to begin squeezing the movement and life out ofher and replacing that with whatever the by-product of magical reactions reallyis, this stuff that looks like stone. This stuff that is killingAlabaster, the father of your other dead child, NOT ONE MORE RUSTING CHILD. Forhow many centuries has the world killed rogga children so that everyone else'schildren could sleep easy?...and you turn with the obelisk torrenting its powerthrough you to begin killing everyone within and beyond your sight.
The sixth and last of the Hugo-nominated novels I have readis by the woman who won last year for The Fifth Season, towhich The Obelisk Gate is a strong sequel. I won't spoil the plot of two books by goinginto detail, but i hope that the story arc is building to something uplifting,because this particular dystopia, especially as applied to climate change andhatred of (in our world, scientists; in Jemisin's world, orogenes withsupernatural abilities) . They kill thepeople who have the power to save them, and in this age of In-Yo-Face TrumpismVictorious and 'religious freedom" for people whose religions give themexcuses to be vicious, we are watching a parallel to the Broken Earth seriesgoing on right now.
I wonder how many other writers of dystopian fiction work long and hard ontheir masterpiece only to discover that their nightmare is no longer entirelyfiction.
So, here is my ranking of the six Hugo nominated novels for 2017:
1. Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky
2. Cixin Liu, Death's End
3. Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning
4. NK Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate
5. Yoon Ha Lee, The Ninefox Gambit
6. Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit
Your mileage may vary as to the order, but all of them arewell worth the read, and this may well be the finest overall collection to beoffered since I first started seeking out and reading the Hugo novel list. Based on my track record, the smart money ison Death's End, which would make my sixth straight year ofranking the eventual winning novel second by my personal taste.
What the Dickens: The Adventures of Chartin Mhuzzlewit, by Charles Dikkens, the well known Dutch author
Perhaps there never was a more moral man than Mr. Pecksniff: especially in his conversation and correspondence. It was once said of him by a homely admirer that he had a Fortunatus's purse of good sentiments in his inside. In this particular, he was like the girl in the fairy tale, except that if they were not actual diamonds which fell from his lips, they were the very brightest paste, and shone prodigiously. He was a most exemplary man, fuller of virtuous precept than a copybook. Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always telling the way to a place, but never goes there; but these were his enemies, the shadows cast by his brightness, that was all. His very throat was moral.
You know what you've signed up for when you read a Dickens book: Masterful, memorable characters, improbable plots that take a backseat to the characters and atmosphere, a whole lot of extraneous words, and among the dross, some of the finest writing to be found in English prose. Martin Chuzzlewit was new to me this month, but familiar nonetheless. Young Chuzzlewit is interchangeable with Nicholas Nickleby, or Charles Darnay, or grown-up David Copperfield, or any other colorless, earnest young romantic in his novels. But in spite of the title, this isn't really Martin's story.
With many Martin- and non-Martin digressions, the real protagonist is Tom Pinch, the golden-hearted servant and only friend to Wicked Uncle Pecksniff, whose goodness he believes in and defends against all the world. Indeed, Dickens at his best shows through in his capacity to damn with faint praise and praise with faint damns. Pinch is always described as a wretch and a fool in a way that really emphasizes depth of character, while Pecksniff is continually lauded as a philanthropist and a paragon of morals in a way that reveals him as a hypocritical asshole.
Martin Chuzzlewit is also notable as the only Dickens that involves characters who go to America. I do not know whether Dickens ever visited America, but he is no Tocqueville, and his characterization is a blend of massive fail with spot-on satire. In DickensLand, New York is populated almost entirely with blustering Colonels who bellow like foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam, One blusterer has a multi-page monologue about how America is the land of freedom and equality, and how he just came back from a trip to snooty old England with their titles and their royalty and their social rank distinctions and how, by gum, it's great to be back where a person is a person like any other. At the end of this rant, he learns that the gentleman he was addressing, far from being a gentleman, took the boat to New York by--gasp--steerage class, and reached for his sword. How DARE that man so much as speak to him! Another man waxes eloquently about having just joined a good, wonderful Christian organization dedicated to the all-American principles of equality of all peoples, until he is horrified to discover that the organization is all about freeing the n*****s! Lather, rinse, repeat.
There's a reason Martin Chuzzlewit is not as well known as some of the other novels, but it is a wonderful secondary read in the style you expect.
A Dish Served Frozen: The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
"And now," said the unknown man, "farewell kindness, humanity, and gratitude! Farewell to all the feelings that expand the heart! I have been Heaven's Substitute to recompense the good--now the God of Vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked!" At these words, he gave a signal and, as if only awaiting this signal, the yacht instantly put out to sea.
He had everything....until THEY took it from him!
(dramatic stab)
NOW he's back--and shit is about to get real!
*explosions* *cries of despair* *blood* *plot, plot* "NOOOO! I'm ruined!" *more explosions*
173 YEARS LATER.....
I read this once before, and it must have been an abridged version. This book, fortunately a fast-paced thriller, is HUGE. It takes 75 pages for the villains to do protagonist Edmond Dantes mortal wrong; 200 more pages for him to suffer 14 years in a dungeon for a crime he didn't commit; escape daringly, and unearth buried treasure enough to grant him everything that money can buy....and then a further NINE HUNDRED FORTY FIVE pages before the first of the four baddies from the beginning finally collapses under the ruin of everything he has ever loved, crying "You! Omigod, NOOOOOOOOO....", and then even more while he polishes off the other three.
That middle 940 pages is the most muddled tapestry of plotting, supernatural foresight, characters who have coincidentally multiple contacts with other characters (even the original villains do not all know each other in the beginning, but by the middle there are 20 or so people currently in Paris who intersect in a 20-circle Venn diagram that is probably impossible to actually construct.
After 15 years in a dungeon and 15 more years establishing groundwork before he surfaces, it's been 30 years since the original crime against Dantes; the villains have all married and have grown up children innocent of wrongdoing, who are part of the set of "everything they've ever loved" which must be destroyed. Dantes, the protagonist we are supposed to identify with, for 945 pages is a machine, ostensibly charming but lying in every word he says, while the other characters have their emotions laid bare for the reader. And the villains are not the same people they were 30 years ago; Dumas has the reader run with the hare for a lot more of the book than we chase with the hounds, and I, at least, found myself screaming along with them at the denouments rather than triumphing along with the mysterious "Count".
But then, I overthought it. I could not stop obsessing about Albert Moncref, the grown son of one of Edmond's targets, who has loved his father all his life---and yet, when the Count revenges himself by exposing an ancient scandal (the old soldier had once betrayed a Sultan in Turkey and taken a castle for the French by treachery, decades earlier), the son does an about face and abandonds the old man without so much as speaking to him. Leaves all of his belongings, down to his pocket change, pointedly on the front table for the father he had loved from birth until two days earlier, to see so that he might suffer the tortures of the damned. This, it seems to me, says more about Albert than about the man with the checkered past. Just as it may be that me dwelling on plot points in a book more than most people would says more about me than about Dumas.
But you'll notice I read the whole thing, had trouble putting it down, over the course of a week. Dumas is correctly credited as a master storyteller, and with a revenge story like this, you know exactly what you're signing up for.
Epilogue to the Durants: The Age of Napoleon, by Will and Ariel Durant
He was an exhausting force, a phenomenon of energy contained and explosive, a rising, burning, waning flame that consumed those who touched him intimately. We have not found in history another soul that burned so intensely and so long. That will, at first so hesitant, fearful, and morose, discovered its weapons and resources in a piercing mind and eye; it became confident, rash, imperious, rioting in grasp and power; until the gods, seeing no measure in him, bound lesser wills in union to pursue him, corner him, seize him, and chain him to a rock until his fire should burn out. This was one of the great dramas of history, and still awaits its Aeschylus.
Here ends the first of several literary lists that, when I started in 2011, were to bring me from the earliest times to something close to the present. The Durants thought they would write world history in four volumes, and ended up writing ten and limiting themselves, other than in Vol. I, to Western Europe. The Age of Napoleon, which begins with the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and ends with Napoleon's death on St. Helena in 1821, was volume 11, written as the Durants' retirement continued longer than expected.
For six and a half years, I've had one of the thick books by the side of my bathtub, to be grazed in on weekends, a chapter at a time. They're easily read--what used to be considered a high school reading level, and cover the general things an intelligent person ought to be familiar with about the major events, governments, philosophy, literature, morals, manners, art and music, religious and scientific and economic developments in the various stages of Western European history, told in an affectionate, sometimes witty manner.
The main thing I'll miss about it is the illustrations--portraits of famous people and buildings, and paintings and sculptures from various times. Most of the other "great works" are just words on paper.
On the other hand, most of what is said is said better, and with more insight than narrative, in other works you will find in these book posts. The Durants are an excellent introduction to European history, but they are just a surface-scratching introduction.
Toxic Boyhood: Tom Brown's School Days, by Thomas Hughes
After all, what would life be like without fighting, I should like to know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real, highest, honestest business of every son of man. Everyone who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in quiet until he has thrashed them.
It is no good for Quakers, or any other body of men, to uplift their voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for them, and they don't follow their own precepts.
I remember seeing episodic adaptations of this story of an English Boys' School under the direction of Matthew Arnold on TV when I was little. Young Tom Brown was abused by Flashman, the school bully, and threatened with expulsion and disgrace for things he didn't do, before right always triumphed in the end. There was a little sneak of a Fauntleroy named Cuthbertson, and...and, this is not the same story at all. There is no Cuthbertson, no threat of expulsion, and Flashman is gone midway through the story. Tom's parents who, on TV, were always punishing him, here are pleased with their big stalwart son, the pride of all England.
Because that's what Tom Brown, the book is. A propaganda piece for the battle of Waterloo having been won on the playing fields of Eton. I picture Hughes as a hearty man with a handlebar mustache and a striped full-body swimsuit, vigorously inhaling great lungfuls of nourishing fresh air and performing deep knee bends as he prepares for a round of fisticuffs. Hughes calls to life a slice of history in which boys were Real Boys, girls were Real Girls, and small furry creatures from the school fields were caught and squished for sport, because builds character, eh?
Boys fight. Boys do Christian worship. They drink at the pub, and poach fish out of the river Avon, and do a healthy spot of betting on the horses. All of these but the worship are strictly forbidden, but encouraged by the unwritten code of manly boys, and the prefects are charged with turning a blind eye unless it is going to get out of hand. Upperclass boys are given lowerclass boys as slaves for the year (which is called "fagging"), and are allowed to beat them with canes. For a "fag" to defend himself against an older boy who tries to beat him with a cane is a disciplinary infraction subject to being beaten by the master.
Hughes reminisces fondly about "Tom's" healthy upbringing here, and how it taught him to be a man, the pride of England. Tom stands up for the weaker kids against bullies, is keen on his spiritual development, and is full of pluck and beans. I found it an absolute horror.
Paleo Fandom: the antiquity of Man, by Charles Lyell
The slowness of the progress of the arts of savage life is manifested by the fact that the earlier instruments of bronze were modeled on the exact plan of the stone tools of the preceding age, although such shapes would never have been chosen had metals been known from the first. The reluctance or incapacity of savage tribes to adopt the new inventions has been shown in the East by their continuing to this day to use the same stone implements as their ancestors, after that mighty empires, where the use of metals in the arts was well known, had flourished for three thousand years in their neighborhood.
Lyell, a contemporary of Darwin, was maybe the greatest geologist of the nineteenth century. He evidently didn't think too much for evolutionary theory, but did find evidence that ancestors of the human race walked the earth as far back as two million years ago, and asserted an infinite age of the earth itself. This alone was enough, in his day, to cause a bunch of assholes to assert that he should be killed for having found science that contradicted a mythology text that put man as no older than a few thousand years. As recently as when I was born, these things were not considered issues, and people respected scientific theories. Now we have a frightening number of people old enough to know better chanting that their unsupported superstitions should be given more weight than actual scientific evidence when deciding public policy, and they are voting for the willfully incompetent to ssert dominance over others once again. Why do people do this shit?
Socrates v. Jesus Steel Cage Match: Philosophical Fragments, by Soren Kierkegaard
The projected hypothesis indisputably makes an advance upon Socrates, which is apparent at every point. Whether it is therefore more true than the Socratic doctrine is an entirely different question, which cannot be decided in the same breath, since we have here assumed a new organ, Faith; a new presupposition, the consequences of Sin; a new decision, the Moment; and a new teacher, the God in time. Without these, I should never have dared present myself for inspection before that master of Irony, admired through the centuries, whom I approach with a palpitating enthusiasm that yields to none. But to make an advance upon Socrates and yet say essentially the same things as he, only not nearly so well--that at least is not Socratic.
This is presented as the core of Kierkegaard's philosophy, as Monadology is considered the core of Liebniz. Both books are short and dense.
Unfortunately, Kierkegaard went beyond the aesthetic and ethical stages of life postulated in Either/Or, above, and also assumed that "everybody" also goes through a highest "religious" phase. Maybe a lot of people get old and start thinking about their own mortality and begin hedging their bets about life after death.
Kierkegaard pretty much begins by assuming the truth of religion and therefore goes where reasonable people need not follow. He urges people to forget all about learning by experience and instead accept the authority of human charlatans who wrote words in a book thousands of years ago, which are now used to scam people. he calls this "learning by revelation", and never mind that it is humans, not a supernatural being, that wrote the things presented as "revelation." If you don't start with the premise, then the argument is not worth looking at, and the "paradoxes" are not worth the effort to study. As always, any fans of an author I pan, are invited to tell me what I'm missing.