silver

I've been reading these (Penguin 1990's edition) and I've now read Erec & Enide, Cligès and half of The Knight and the Cart (Lancelot).

(I included the book cover because it illustrates beautifully why I love medieval art. The era of photography and photo-realistic art [and understanding/importance of perspective] makes that image delightfully weird. The artist just doesn't care about any of that. The guy on horseback has literally stuck his sword into that other guy's face. And that's a lion, fighting alongside. But what a story!)

I thought that Erec is such an ass. He was fine at first but at a very innocuous remark, he basically drags Enide all over the country because work-life balance? That's not balancing marriage and knightliness, Erec. Telling Enide to not say anything, Enide then twisting herself into knots over whether Erec would get murdered by the next three knights trying to sneak-attack him and whether she should warn him and get verbally thrashed, or not warn and potentially see him killed, was so frustrating. She's so devoted to him too, even after all that; she faints after this random count tries to forcibly marry her not only because of the forcibly-married part but because she thinks Erec is dead and she can't stand to be married to anyone else period. Erec & Enide was also written rather episodically, in three parts, so I kept expecting pieces of the past bits to be picked up, but they never really were. I'm guessing that they were probably told episodically--come back tomorrow night to hear the second installment!--but it's not obvious in text.

Cligés was a lot better. A lot easier for me to follow, too. There's one part I want to talk about though: about midway through Fenice and Cligès decide to try to get married 'the right way', i.e. Fenice is already married to Cligés' uncle and so they can't just run away, no, that would destroy Fenice's reputation ¹. No, instead, Fenice decides to literally play dead, with her nurse Thessala helping by feeding her a potion which would make her seem dead. Then they would dig her up afterwards and no one would be the wiser, see. This was such a Romeo and Juliet plot that I stopped reading, thought about chronology, and then went back to reading, but couldn't help think this was going to end badly. And oh my god, IT DOES. (Other examples: Les Misérables. Lesson: don't literally play dead). Three wise doctors arrive and they infer correctly she's alive and then they start torturing her to make her speak. But the potion's effect means she can't speak or move and they literally get to the point of ( torture ) before the bereaved court ladies shatter the door barring them and rescue her. Things which I was no expecting: THAT.

I'm struck by how sometimes you can almost hear Chrétien saying some of the stuff. I mean, in the beginning of many of the tales he slips into the narrator role, and he says "written for my lady Marie [of Champagne, his patroness]". But in some of the knightly parts, where whichever knight is the hero is laying about and fighting so hard he splits weapons with the force of the blows, you can almost feel Chrétien's glee, like a little boy's, over how so-and-so is the best knight in all the land, unequalled, etc. Some of it is perhaps idealization for his audience, who would have been knights; knights becoming an actual noblish class is just beginning around this time, and they probably don't have people opening their doors and getting lavish hospitality everywhere they go. That's the dream or just an enjoyable fantasy, like our own fiction genres.



¹: For some reason it is better to pretend to die and then marry Cligès than to run away. I'm pretty sure either way you're committing bigamy.... Oh! And also it's okay to do this (perhaps not in "real life morality" reasons, but in "audience will root for you" certainly) because there's a complex plot in which Cligès' uncle essentially stole Cligès' inheritance by marrying Fenice, whom Cligès then immediately fell in love with while they were retrieving her in Saxony (or thereabouts). Trying to explain how these stories work takes so much ink because they're basically stories with most of the description taken out, although there is always description of riches (oh the furs!) and the battles, of course, with the lance splitting and being knocked off horses and all that.

Before I fell down the rabbit-hole and started reading oh so much fic (thank god for Panorama in Firefox, I have eight million tabs open), I finished North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell!

*presumes you all know the basic plot synopsis*

( a very dry version of the premise )

It actually took me several attempts to get a quarter way through, and then the novel seized me something fierce and I mainlined the rest of it. (This involved staying up way past my bedtime, but I digress). It opens quite slowly; Margaret talks to her cousin who is going to be married, goes home, spends some pages doing nothing really important, and then Mr Hale tells her he's no longer able to continue in his job and that they must move - north.

Frankly at this point I didn't understand what a huge deal it was; it was written very lightly about. I think Gaskell must have assumed her readers would know. I suppose if I had to explain it, it'd be like a mid-life crisis, but about sprituality/faith, and in that light Mr Hale feels he can't continue to be the vicar, and seeks employment elsewhere.

But then they move to Milton, a fictional town in the North, and things start to move.

Initially as I was reading, I was hit by the incredible similarity between (I know, I know) Gaskell and Austen. But the novel kept progressing, and I revised my opinion. In the beginning, yes, they're quite similar; Margaret only deals with the people round her (similar social status for the most part) and she seems to be the only one with any sort of sense at all. A bit of social satire, too. But in Milton, with her father's profession no longer as respectable as before, her mother's failing health, and their general loss of wealth, she comes into contact with those who are not like her. Here Gaskell really diverges with Austen; the interactions between Thornton & Margaret, Higgins & Margaret - these are all relationships that really are significantly affected by where they're grown up and what they do today. Wikipedia calls it "[Gaskell's] second industrial novel", and Milton is clearly a fictionalized version of a town like Manchester, circa mid-19th century.

It's those conflicts which are really interesting. I twitched at all the mentions of "crebbing babies", but mostly the portrayal seemed even-handed and more importantly, most of the main characters seemed like people. Higgins works in a mill; Thornton is a major mill owner, and Margaret doesn't exactly just fit in right away. The conflicts - there's almost a fundamental incompatibility of world-view. Through Margaret, Thornton and Higgins even become acquainted.

I did find it very dramatic at times. My main objection was that people dropped like flies. Without spoiling the book, a lot of people died. Right and left and center. By the end of it - and I admit, it was late - I was kind of emotional, wondering who else was about to get it, so much that the happy ending was a bit, uh, abrupt. There was a lot of death. If Austen is cool, deft satire, then Gaskell paints a wide, colourful portrait of different places, different classes, different views. (Sorry. I compare everything.) Wait, no, I had one more objection: there was often an infuriating inability to communicate between characters. When Mr Hale announces that they're up and moving to Milton, he can only bear to tell Margaret, his child. Mrs Hale is kept entirely in the dark for days, while he attempts to summon courage to say it (and eventually he dumps the responsibility on Margaret); Mrs Hale isn't exactly insensitive to the tension in the household. Things like this happen all the time, and it drove me nuts during the novel because I wanted them to talk. You can't put off these things forever!

In Gaskell's defense, all the characters have flaws. Mr Hale only seems to have backbone about one thing (moving to Milton), Thornton has some significant blindspots, Mrs Hale ditto, Mrs Thornton (Thornton's mother) has some massive prejudices. The communication thing just drove me mad, though, because I hate that trope used to make tension. My sympathies towards different characters swung back and forth all the time as the characters coped with the things that kept happening.

Other than 'dropping like flies' syndrome (and that ending! That was cruel, to leave us there!) I enjoyed it muchly! I am after Wives and Daughters, once my TBR list gets a little shorter. (Queued up next - it's actually physically present on my bookshelf - is Cinda William Chima's The Crimson Crown, YA fantasy, which is a 180 degree turn. I'm looking forward to it.)