Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy is a heartbreaker. He kills little kids and ruins love. At least that's what his novels do.

I listened to Tess of the d'Urbervilles on my drive to Texas for graduate school in 2009. Apparently, I found the female narrator's voice for Tess whiny, desperate, and weak, and it influenced me so much that I found myself hating the heroine on that alone.

But I generally appreciated the book. It covered a lot of ground and life instances, and showed a deep struggle between religion, society and nature (nature meaning a person's natural instincts and desires).

I managed to take a few scribbled notes while listening and driving with my knees down the old Route 66. Here's my recap from that long-ago trip.

• Again I noticed a lot of outdoor, especially garden, liminal spaces. In essence, what I remember from class (please don't hate if I've mislead, Professor Younger), the liminal space is where the relationship between two characters is developing--becoming evident to reader, and likely to the characters as well. It's sexually charged without having to be sexual. In some instances its sensual, others playful, others still have an air of discovery.
• Before Tess's big fall from grace, the sexual imagery was dripping from the speakers. I can only imagine viewing the words on the pages. It's filled with rather blunt innuendos, if I can even call them that.
• Tess failed me as a heroine. Sure she was the dream single lady--making her own dough and going her own way, kicking ass and taking names at the end. But she could have prevented her misery multiple times, as the novel points out, if she had only followed through on her instincts. I'm wondering what that says about women. Through the novel, is Hardy critiquing women? Is he letting the novel's last hurrah to atone for Tess's indecision? In my eyes she's a wreck, but was her headstrong manner something for Nineteenth-Century feminists to applaud?
• Every male in this novel is represented (at one time, if note entirely) as a jackass. Surprisingly, the guy who really redeems himself in this reader's eyes, is Alec d'Urberville. Stalker? Yes. Annoying? Yes. Whiny? Yes. But damn it he tried to fix his past mistakes. Angel Clare just waltzed in from abroad and caused destruction. And he WON. The guy who tried to fix things lost. What does that say about turning away from society and God? Hmmmm?

So many question. So little answers.

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

I read Little Dorrit in 2010 or 2011. My notes at the time suggest I was not terribly blown away by the book. I'm not surprised. But, I loved it enough to dedicate a lot of time to finding the Marshalsea Prison wall on my 2012 visit to London. It's significance to the book, and Dickens' experience with debtor's prison, made it a must-see on the trip.

The one remaining wall of Marshalsea in London

Lil' D also spent a night in the church, which still stands nearby as well. 

Church next to Marshalsea

As always, Dickens wrote beautifully, and that's what I liked best about the book. Below are a couple excerpts I flagged that highlight his description, sentiment, humor, and juxtaposition.

and thus ever, by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life. 22

Why, she belonged, like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private judgment. 197

... there, she would bless her child’s face, and bless her child’s heart, and hug her child, in a medley of tears and congratulations, chopping-boards, rolling-pins, and pie-crust, with the tenderness of an attached old servant, which is a very pretty tenderness indeed. 339

Some of the rest lingered a little, marrying golden liqueur glasses to Buhl tables with sticky rings. 475

People must continue to be married and given in marriage, or Chief Butlers would not be wanted. As nations are made to be taxed, so families are made to be butlered. 513

They went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and in shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the forward and the wain, fretted, and chafed, and made their usual uproar. 688