Friday, October 5, 2018

Let Me Tell You a Story - Part 1


Recently on “Jeopardy” I was surprised to learn that “Anna Karenina” was the number one choice of authors as the greatest book of all time.  Now as we readers know we all have our own opinion as to which books are the greatest so I will not quibble with this particular list although I would be curious to know what the gender ratio was of those authors compiling the list.
Since women authors began publishing they were aware that their books were criticized by a very different set of criteria than a male authors and thus many women chose to publish either anonymously or with a male pseudonym.  The Bronte sisters used gender neutral pseudonyms but immediately upon publication there was a veritable storm of speculation as to their sex.  Until critics could determine their sex they were hesitant to analyse the books in any serious way.  Oh but what a hoodoo was made once the gender was known, how depraved and un-sexed these reclusive sisters became!  Emily’s genius is overlooked and instead one review (which I cannot help but laugh at) goes like this:
“How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horror …”
Little wonder that Mary Ann Evans chose to write as George Eliot, Aurore Dudavant (George Sand), Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen).  At the same time we can take a look at the reaction of readers two decades earlier when “Frankenstein” was published.  The author, believed to be a man, was not trounced on for creating a monster that went about terrorizing the population.  The author had the foresight, one presumes, to write a foreword that perhaps took some of the shock out of the story and made the author less depraved. Also there is the possibility that the influence of Queen Victoria’s prudishness may already have spread that aura amongst the critics.  If Mary Shelley had revealed herself as the 19 year old girl who wrote this remarkable novel one wonders what the reaction would have been.  Even today I think we can all agree that this book was a work of genius and quite wonderful coming from such a young person.
"No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubles sphere . . ."  Emily Bronte
 
TO BE CONTINUED . . .


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