Re-reading two classics

While I was teaching in Hong Kong last month (January 2013) I re-read The Portrait of a Lady. I did not read any Henry James as an undergraduate but read some of his work during my first two years of teaching in secondary schools. I think I read ‘Portrait’ at that time but I certainly forgot it very quickly. I think that was because I was rapidly moving from interests in literature to interests in education and sociology. Anyhow I caught up with ‘Portrait’ some five years ago and realised I had missed out on getting to know an important book.

but it was the re-reading a few weeks ago that affected me most. This time the relations between Isabel and others became much sharper. Gilbert Osmond may be the height of cruelty but what subtlety and what venom. I was more aware og how James creates mood and also how he uses comments on the scenery. Thus Osmond’s house was described as shuttered. This time I felt less hostilty beween Isabel and Madame Merle at the end. The scene in the convent is full of tension but Isabel recognises her kinship in being an outsider with her nemesis.

I will write more fully on this next time. over the last two weeks I have re-read Middlemarch. This was my favourite novel as an undergraduate and I re-read it a few times in the early 1970s but never since then. So, after a gap of forty years I took to it again. I remembered scenes, speeches, George Eliot‘s author commentaries. I was more aware of her views of self, of light and dark and the way dialogue leads the novel. Even in the speaking of very minor characters there are glimpses of how the town functions. I came away realsing I needed to go back to some of the work that influenced Eliot herself – Comte and Feuerbach in thier very different ways.

I have now signalled I will blog again and in more detail on these two books. Yes, I will read contemporary work as well but there is much to be gained by re-reading classics. Both books had the ability to sustain my interest, surprise me, remind me of previous ideas about them, but above all they had the quality of enduring – of saying ‘I am still here and you can find more inside my pages…’