Exotic and irrational entertainment

How great a sacrifice should we make for love? The title character in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anuradha (1960) is a woman who was once a famous singer and dancer. But as the film begins, Anuradha (Leela Naidu) has been out of the public's awareness for 10 years. During that time she has been married to a doctor, Nirmal (Balraj Sahni); they have an adorable young daughter, Ranu, who often accompanies him on his rounds:

Nirmal is idealistic and highly dedicated, and he has moved the family to a rural village so that he can provide medical care for its impoverished inhabitants. Of course, this means that he can barely provide for his own family.

Anuradha's days are spent in the domestic drudgery of cooking and cleaning; her nights are spent in the loneliness of waiting for her husband to return from his endless round of patients.

I am left alone all day. Who do I talk to? The walls?

Nirmal has devoted his life to the care of the villagers, but he has neglected the needs of his own wife.

The film is structured as a series of flashbacks of the couple's courtship. We learn that they met through her brother and fell in love as Nirmal treated her for a sprained ankle. Nirmal is attracted by Anuradha's beauty and talent; she is attracted by his kindness, humor, and selfless ideals.

Nirmal is committed to working in the village because his own mother died there for lack of a local doctor. But he recognizes that his work in the countryside will be incompatible with Anuradha's stage and recording career in the great metropolis:

What about your music? Who will hear you?

The love-struck Anuradha dismisses his misgivings:

You. You are my world, you are my music.

Anuradha's father (Hari Shivdasani) has his own plans for her. He has long wished to marry her to his closest friend's son, Deepak (Abhi Bhattacharya), just returned from studying overseas. Of course, Anuradha's father hasn't bothered to consult with her; she learns of it when she overhears him talking to Deepak:

Why ask her? I am her father. I know what is good or bad for her.

Anuradha has to break the news to Deepak that she's in love with someone else. Considering that his engagement has been made and then broken over the space of five minutes, Deepak takes it well. He's clearly a decent guy: he offers to tell Anuradha's father that he is the one rejecting the match, to spare her from her father's anger (she won't let him). But Deepak has a question for her:

Alas, this is a question whose answer will only become apparent over time. Ten years on, despite her lovely daughter and her caring but preoccupied husband, Anuradha has come to feel trapped in her marriage:

Things are brought to a crisis by the return of two figures from the past. The first is Anuradha's father. At the time of her marriage to Nirmal he disowned his daughter for her disobedience. Now, chastened, he comes to the village to reconcile with the couple and meet the granddaughter he has never seen. But he can't resist asking his own question of Anuradha:

Anuradha replies "Happiness," but without convincing either her father or herself.

The second person to return from the past is Deepak. We see him travelling in a car driven by Seema, a woman who wants to marry him but doesn't understand why he's still carrying a torch for a past love. In fact, she's distracted by arguing about this when a child darts out into the road in front of them. To avoid him Seema swerves the car off the road and into a tree. By filmi coincidence, they happen to have been passing Anuradha's village, and Nirmal is called to treat the injured couple.

Deepak is not seriously hurt, and Nirmal has him carried to his own house for treatment. When Anuradha sees Deepak, a certain tenderness is reawakened:

And when Nirmal discovers that Anuradha and Deepak know one another, he insists that Deepak remain in his house as a guest. As a guest, Deepak requests the privilege of hearing Anuradha sing—which begins to reawaken other long-buried feelings in her:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69zOYZA66MI

The music is by Ravi Shankar, with lyrics by Shailendra; Leela Naidu's playback singer is Lata Mangeshkar.

Deepak is dismayed to discover Anuradha's neglect of her music, and Nirmal's neglect of her. He urges her to leave Nirmal:

Return back to your father. Go back to music.

Anuradha is torn. She loves her husband, but has obviously suppressed a huge part of herself to become a wife and mother in this remote location. Worst of all, Nirmal seems to take her for granted; she even has to remind him about their wedding anniversary.

Nirmal promises to make up for his forgetfulness by spending their anniversary evening together. But (as we've seen before) his promises are meaningless. Nirmal, responding to one patient after another, doesn't make it home until dawn. For Anuradha, who has waited up all night, it seems to confirm his lack of concern for her:

You couldn't fulfill my desire even for a day?

In her hurt and anger she decides to leave with Deepak. When Nirmal learns of Anuradha's decision, he's stunned. He realizes too late how focussed on his own needs he has been, but seems unable or unwilling to try to convince her to stay. Perhaps it's because he realizes the justice of her accusations:

If you considered us one, you would have understood my loneliness.

All he asks of her is that she wait one day: a big-city doctor, Colonel Trivedi (Nazir Hussein), has been called in by Seema's rich father, and after praising Nirmal's skillful care of Seema he has invited himself over to dinner. Nirmal doesn't want to reveal his family troubles before strangers, and Anuradha agrees to help him by staying until the next morning.

When the guests arrive, Colonel Trivedi recognizes Anuradha and requests a song (tellingly, it is always their guests who ask her to sing, and never her husband). But this time, Nirmal stays and listens to her, as if for the first time. "Why don't the days of the past return?" she sings. "My music lies abandoned without song; my garland of dreams is withering":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky8lb5bdbmg

Later that night, after the guests leave, Nirmal is called out on yet another emergency case. When he returns, Anuradha is asleep, and Nirmal finally lets his tears fall:

But is Anuradha really asleep?

Anuradha is full of such emotionally subtle moments. The characters (like all of us) are a mixture of selfish and generous impulses. And they find themselves (like all of us) caught in situations that are the products of long-ago choices, and facing uncomfortable questions.

Perhaps it's the movie's literary origins that make it such a rich experience: it's based on a short story by Sachin Bhowmic that was inspired by Flaubert's great novel of marital dissatisfaction, Madame Bovary. Clearly, too, we can also thank director Hrishikesh Mukherjee, whose humanistic vision imbues every major character (and most minor ones) with emotional depth and complexity.

But I couldn't help feeling dissatisfied at the end, perhaps because Anuradha's choices have become so limited. If she leaves Nirmal she regains her musical career—her art—but loses her husband and destroys their family. If she stays with Nirmal she gives up her music forever, and her life with its narrowed horizons will continue much as before. If for women marriage and family demand the sacrifice of their own hopes, ambitions and dreams, is the sacrifice too great?

For another view of Anuradha, please see Dustedoff's excellent review.

Elizabeth Gaskell: The Life of Charlotte Bronte

I'm not a systematic reader. Who is, apart from Ph.D. students in English Literature? My reading is instead guided by serendipity: recommendations, reviews, fortuitous finds in bookstores.

One such fortuitous find was Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, discovered by chance in a used bookshop as I was looking for another book entirely. In fact, until I saw it on the shelf I was unaware of its existence. I had long meant to read Mrs. Gaskell: the BBC adaptations of her novels Cranford and Wives and Daughters were among my year-end favorites of 2011, and Cranford is #26 on the Telegraph's list of "100 novels everyone should read." And, shamefully, I had never read any of the Brontës, although Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights make perennial appearances near the top of lists of the best novels (for example, ranking #2 and #3, respectively, on this 2003 list of the 50 Best Books by Women).

On pulling The Life of Charlotte Brontë off the shelf, I noticed a small medallion in the lower right-hand corner of the cover which made this cheap paperback an irresistible purchase:

As I was to learn from Gaskell's biography, the Haworth Parsonage (now the Brontë Parsonage Museum) is the house in Yorkshire where Charlotte Brontë and her younger sisters Emily and Anne spent most of their short lives with their clergyman father Patrick. This book had once been purchased there, and so had an intimate connection with Charlotte's life, although at a distance of 150 years.

Elizabeth Gaskell by George Richmond, 1851 (detail)

The Life of Charlotte Brontë is compelling but grim reading. Death devastated the Brontë family: a year after they moved to Haworth in 1820 Charlotte's mother Maria died (Charlotte was only 5). A few years later Charlotte, together with her younger sister Anne and her two older sisters Maria and Elizabeth, was sent to the Cowan Bridge boarding school. The Cowan Bridge School was the model for the harrowing Lowood School scenes in Jane Eyre. The regimen was cruel: the students were beaten and ridiculed, given inedible and inadequate food, and spent most of the long, damp winter shivering with cold in unheated rooms. The damp, the cold, and the poor food gave rise to a typhoid outbreak, and exacerbated Maria and Elizabeth's consumption; both died in June 1825 after spending less than a year at Cowan Bridge.

The fragile health of Maria and Elizabeth was shared by all of the Brontë siblings. In one terrible eight-month period between September 1848 and May 1849 Charlotte's alcoholic brother Branwell and her sisters Emily and Anne all died of consumption. Consumption was also the cause of death of Charlotte, who died in March 1855 at age 38. She was six months pregnant, and had been married to her father's curate Arthur Nicholls for just nine months.

Patrick Brontë thus outlived all of his children. In Gaskell's account he is a caring but also stern, commanding, remote, and mercurial father. He strongly discouraged all of his daughters' suitors; Gaskell writes, "He always disapproved of marriages, and constantly talked against them." [1] We can only speculate as to why he was so fiercely opposed to the possible marriages of any of his daughters, but likely reasons include his need for emotional support and for increasing assistance as he grew more infirm with the passing years. That he viewed his daughters as instrumental to his happiness, rather than seeing himself as instrumental to theirs, suggests that Patrick—who was born in the 18th century—was a man firmly of his time, rather than ours.

Patrick Bronte, date unknown

Patrick's eyesight began to fail in the 1840s, and by the summer of 1846 (he was in his late 60s) cataracts had rendered him virtually blind. With Charlotte at his side he underwent what in the absence of anesthesia must have been an excruciatingly painful eye operation, and gradually recovered his sight. There is a suggestive parallel between the infirm, blinded Patrick and the maimed, blinded Rochester in the final chapters of Jane Eyre (published in 1847, the year after Patrick's cataract surgery). Rochester, with Jane's aid, also eventually recovers his ability to see.

But while it's fascinating to learn of the biographical events that were transmuted into Charlotte's fiction, the chief interest of Gaskell's biography, at least for me, is its liberal quotation from Charlotte's letters. In particular, Gaskell was given access to Charlotte's extensive correspondence with her former school friend Ellen Nussey. Charlotte's letters are frank, open, and sometimes painfully revealing. Here is an example from a letter dated May 10, 1836; Charlotte, just turned 20, was a teacher at Roe Head School, where she had been a student a few years before. Writing to Ellen, she says,

"I won't play the hypocrite; I won't answer your kind, gentle, friendly questions in the way you wish me to. Don't deceive yourself by imagining I have a bit of real goodness about me....I am not like you. If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I daresay despise me." [2]

The letters are poignant documents of Charlotte's life and thoughts. And it was in the hope of encountering that same deeply appealing voice that as soon as I finished Gaskell's biography I turned to Charlotte's first published novel, Jane Eyre.

Next time: "I scorn your idea of love": Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

--

1. Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Vol. II, Ch. VII
2. Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Vol. I, Ch. VIII

A portrait of Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond, 1850

A couple of weeks ago Filmi Girl wrote a post on the recent Bollywood release Bang Bang in which she describes Hrithik Roshan's character as "the perfect fantasy of the invulnerable hero who’s actually vulnerable, needing to be saved by the heroine." Perhaps this "perfect fantasy" also explains the timeless appeal of Edward Fairfax Rochester in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847).

Rochester is a troubled and troubling character. There's no way to talk about why without discussing key plot points, so if you are one of the few people who has never read Jane Eyre (as I was until last month), be forewarned that spoilers follow.

"Happiness is irrevocably denied me." Rochester is physically powerful and emotionally mercurial, a dangerous combination made still more so by his rejection of conventional morality. (He can get away with rejecting it, of course, because he is a wealthy lord.) Jane Eyre describes him as "severe,""moody,""sullen,""grim,""fractious,""morose,""stern,""sardonic,""gloomy," and compares him to a "wild beast." But he also behaves at times with "gentlemanlike affability" and "contentment"; after dinner, and a few glasses of wine, he can even be "genial" and "more cheering than the brightest fire."

Jane is a diminutive and introspective young woman who, at 19, is half Rochester's age. He calls her "little girl" or "Little Jane"; she calls him, only half in jest and even after they have declared their love for one another, "my master," and tells him "I like to serve you, sir, and obey you." [1] (Early in the book she calls herself "habitually obedient." [2])

After they are engaged, they partake in a strange, almost sadomasochistic ritual:

He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as "love" and "darling" on his lips: the best words at my service were "provoking puppet,""malicious elf,""sprite,""changeling,"&c. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. [3]

Charlotte Brontë drew on figures in her own life to people her fiction. The Professor (1857) and Villette (1853) transmuted her unrequited love for a married schoolmaster; Shirley (1849) featured characters so recognizable that the real-life models themselves bragged about their appearance in the book (even though the portraits were unflattering). After having read Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), it's hard to escape the suspicion that Rochester is at least in part a combination of her stern, fierce, forbidding, emotionally volatile father Patrick, and her playful, teasing, if at times annoying, brother Branwell. Also like Branwell, Rochester drinks, at times to excess, is irreligious, and has had affairs (and perhaps an illegitimate child); also like Patrick, Rochester is fiercely jealous, loses his sight, and then has it partially restored by the treatments of "an eminent oculist." [4] It's not for nothing, I suspect, that Jane Eyre is subtitled "An Autobiography," which makes this reader feel queasy about the dynamic of dominance and submission between Rochester and Jane.

The rescue fantasy. Rochester is not only mad, bad, and dangerous to know, he needs rescuing: from a deranged wife, from his emotional and physical wounds, and from himself. Jane, of course, is all too aware of his faults, but believes that he can change:

He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description. In my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He was moody, too unaccountably so....But I believed that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say former, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. [5]

The idea that Jane can save Rochester from himself recurs throughout the novel. The very first time Jane and Rochester meet, he is riding recklessly. He takes a bad spill, sprains his ankle, and to recapture and remount his horse must lean on Jane. Later, it is Jane who rouses a sleeping Rochester from a burning bed; still later, after he has been blinded and maimed, she becomes his "prop and guide." [6]

It is Rochester's vulnerability, as well as his strength, that appeals to Jane. And it is only when he acknowledges that vulnerability that he is finally worthy of becoming her husband. But Rochester's helplessness and dependence come to feel strangely like wish-fulfillment on Jane's part: see, reader, he does need me!

"Such a martyrdom would be monstrous": After Jane discovers the truth about Rochester's wife and flees across the storm-swept moor, she finds refuge with a clergyman, St John Rivers, and his sisters. St John (pronounced "sinjun") decides that it is his mission is to convert Hindus to Christianity, and after he has known Jane for some time he asks her to accompany him to India—as his wife.

Jane is prepared to go with him, but refuses his offer of marriage; instead, she wants them to continue to live together as sister and brother. But St John is afraid of scandal. Or so he claims; but Jane will not agree to a marriage where there is no love or attraction, at least on her side:

'It is what I want,' he said, speaking to himself; 'it is just what I want....we must be married. I repeat it: there is no other way; and undoubtedly enough of love would follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your eyes.'

'I scorn your idea of love,' I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. 'I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.' [7]

This scene may tie in with another incident from Charlotte's life. In July 1846 she wrote to her friend Ellen Nussey to deny a rumour that she was engaged to the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, who had been her father's curate for the past year:

A cold faraway sort of civility are the only terms on which I have ever been with Mr. Nicholls. I could by no means think of mentioning such a rumour to him even as a joke. It would make me the laughing-stock of himself and his fellow curates for half a year to come. They regard me as an old maid, and I regard them, one and all, as highly uninteresting, narrow, and unattractive specimens of the coarser sex. [8]

Jane describes St John as both "cold" and "scrupulously polite." Could St John, often thought to have been based on the missionary Henry Martyn and on Ellen's brother Henry Nussey (who proposed to Charlotte in 1839), have also been modelled in part on Nicholls? And if so, could Nicholls have made an overture to Charlotte in 1846 that she rebuffed, and concealed from her family and acquaintances?

St John is relentless in his pursuit of marriage to Jane, and she almost yields to him. Nicholls, too, was evidently not a man easily discouraged. Whether or not he had developed a romantic interest in Charlotte as early as 1846, it seems that she never treated him with any partiality. Nonetheless, in December 1852 he formally proposed:

He stopped in the passage: he tapped: like lightning it ﬂashed on me what was coming. He entered—he stood before me. What his words were—you can guess; his manner—you can hardly realize—nor can I forget it—Shaking from head to foot, looking deadly pale, speaking low, vehemently yet with difficulty—he made me for the ﬁrst time feel what it costs a man to declare affection where he doubts response. The spectacle of one ordinarily so statue-like—thus trembling, stirred, and overcome gave me a kind of strange shock. He spoke of sufferings he had borne for months—of sufferings he could endure no longer—and craved leave for some hope. I could only entreat him to leave me then and promise a reply on the morrow.

...When he was gone I immediately went to Papa—and told him what had taken place. Agitation and anger disproportionate to the occasion ensued—...Papa worked himself into a state not to be triﬂed with—the veins on his temples started up like whip-cord—and his eyes became suddenly blood-shot—I made haste to promise that Mr. Nicholls should on the morrow have a distinct refusal. [9]

Nicholls immediately resigned his curacy. Charlotte wrote to Ellen a few days later that while she was dismayed by her father's furious response and the monetary grounds for his objections to the match, that did not mean that she was looking with any more kindness on Nicholls' offer:

Mr. N. must never expect me to reciprocate the feeling he had expressed...My own objections arise from sense of incongruity and uncongeniality in feelings, tastes—principles. [10]

But something radically changed Charlotte's view of marriage to Nicholls over the next year or so. He continued to write to her, visited the neighborhood of Haworth Parsonage in January 1854, and by April he and Charlotte were engaged. Her announcement of this event to Ellen is tinged with trepidation and sadness:

...all I learnt [about Mr. Nicholls] inclined me to esteem and, if not love—at least affection—Still Papa was very—very hostile—bitterly unjust. I told Mr. Nicholls the great obstacles that lay in his way. He has persevered—The result of this his last visit is—that Papa’s consent is gained—that his respect, I believe is won—for Mr. Nicholls has in all things proved himself disinterested and forbearing. He has shewn too that while his feelings are exquisitely keen—he can freely forgive. Certainly I must respect him—nor can I withold from him more than mere cool respect. In fact, dear Ellen, I am engaged.

...What seemed at one time—impossible—is now arranged—and Papa begins really to take a pleasure in the prospect. For myself—dear Ellen—while thankful to One who seems to have guided me through much difﬁculty, much and deep distress and perplexity of mind—I am still very calm—very—inexpectant. What I taste of happiness is of the soberest order. I trust to love my husband—I am grateful for his tender love to me—I believe him to be an affectionate—a conscientious—a high-principled man—and if with all this, I should yield to regrets—that ﬁne talents, congenial tastes and thoughts are not added—it seems to me I should be most presumptuous and thankless. Providence offers me this destiny. Doubtless then it is the best for me.

...Good-bye—There is a strange—half-sad feeling in making these announcements—The whole thing is something other than imagination paints it beforehand: cares—fears—come mixed inextricably with hopes. [11]

What could have caused Charlotte to accept Nicholls' offer after she had so strongly emphasized in Jane Eyre the need for husbands and wives to share a passionate attachment? The answer is contained in another letter to Ellen that Charlotte wrote shortly after her engagement:

My hope is that in the end this arrangement will turn out more truly to Papa’s advantage—than any other it was in my power to achieve. Mr. N. only in his last letter—refers touchingly to his earnest desire to prove his gratitude to Papa by offering support and consolation to his declining age. [12]

And she wrote to her publisher George Smith regarding her marriage, "thus Papa secures by the step—a devoted and reliable assistant in his old age." [13]

By this time, Charlotte's siblings were all dead, and she must have been aware of her own uncertain health (in a letter written on her honeymoon she reports that her "cough was become very bad" [14]). "This arrangement"—after their marriage, she and Nicholls would live in the Parsonage—was Charlotte's way of insuring that her father would continue to be supported and cared for by a family member, even in the event of her own death.

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte wrote bitterly of marriage without love as a "sacrifice" and "martyrdom":

Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he would scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. [15]

While in this passage Jane is referring to St John's plan to marry her without love, reverse the genders and we can see what agreeing to "endure" marriage with Nicholls must have cost Charlotte.

Encountered too late? As I read Jane Eyre, I began to wonder whether I had waited too long to read it for the first time. The opening scenes at the home of the Reeds, where the orphaned Jane is relentlessly bullied by her cousin John and treated cruelly by her aunt, are emotionally wrenching. The chapters set at Lowood School (based on Charlotte's experience at the Cowan Bridge School), where Jane and her schoolfellows are humiliated and starved, and spend their time shivering with cold and sickened by the brutal conditions, are horrifying. And Jane's flight on foot across the moors, in which she is exposed to the storms and cold and nearly dies from lack of food or shelter, is harrowing.

But the core of the novel is the relationship between Jane and Rochester, and the book ends, apparently happily, with their marriage. I found the ending to be problematic, though, and I'm not sure that the author intended it to be so. Over the course of the novel, Rochester has proven that he is domineering, violent, moody, deceptive, and selfish; he views other people as either obstacles to or instruments of his pleasure. Can his cruelty toward his first wife be rationalized so easily (and isn't her self-inflicted death just a bit too convenient)? Has he really been chastened and reformed by his brush with mortality and by Jane's love? And is the greatest fulfillment of the intelligent, capable, and deeply-feeling heroine to be Rochester's nurse for the rest of his life? Reader, "all sorts of doubts and fears are troubling my thoughts." [16]

Charlotte Brontë's greatest novel is not Jane Eyre. The novel that in my view deserves that honor will be the subject of the next post.

Next time:"Hunger, rebellion, and rage"
Last time:"I am not like you": Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë

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1. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Chapter 20
2. Jane Eyre, Chapter 4
3. Jane Eyre, Chapter 24
4. Jane Eyre, Chapter 38
5. Jane Eyre, Chapter 15
6. Jane Eyre, Chapter 37
7. Jane Eyre, Chapter 34
8. Margaret Smith, ed. Selected letters of Charlotte Bronte, Oxford University Press, 2007, Letter 44. To Ellen Nussey, 10 July 1846, pp. 76-77 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/123)
9. Selected letters of Charlotte Bronte, Letter 141. To Ellen Nussey, 15 December 1852, p. 212 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/259)
10. Selected letters of Charlotte Bronte, Letter 142. To Ellen Nussey, 18 December 1852, p. 213 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/260)
11. Selected letters of Charlotte Bronte, Letter 153. To Ellen Nussey, 11 April 1854, p. 227-228 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/275)
12. Selected letters of Charlotte Bronte, Letter 154. To Ellen Nussey, 15 April 1854, p. 230 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/277)
13. Selected letters of Charlotte Bronte, Letter 155. To George Smith, 25 April 1854, p. 231 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/278)
14. Selected letters of Charlotte Bronte, Letter 158. To Margaret Wooler, 10 July 1854, p. 234 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/281)
15. Jane Eyre, Chapter 34
16. Jane Eyre, Chapter 11

Jane Eyre (1847) was Charlotte Brontë's first published novel, and it made her famous. But as I wrote in "I scorn your idea of love": Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, I found its central love story to be troubling (and suspect that I may have waited too long to read it for the first time). Still, despite what I viewed as its flaws, Jane Eyre made me curious to read more of Charlotte's work.

And so I next turned to her final novel, Villette (1853). Based on Charlotte's experiences during her two years spent at a boarding school in Belgium, Villette tells the story of the ill-fated loves of its quiet heroine, Lucy Snowe. Despite her name, Lucy is only outwardly cool; inwardly she is warmly passionate. But the constraints which forbid her to express her feelings openly, as men in her society are allowed to, lead to desperate unhappiness—which must, like her love, remain concealed.

Like Jane Eyre, Villette has readily identifiable autobiographical sources. Dr. John Graham Bretton, the handsome and sympathetic English physician whose precious letters Lucy ultimately buries as she must bury her feelings for him, was based on her publisher George Smith. [1]

George Smith. Image: Brontë Parsonage Museum

When Smith wrote Charlotte of his engagement to Elizabeth Blakeway, Charlotte's breviloquent response was "In great happiness, as in great grief—words of sympathy should be few. Accept my meed of congratulation—and believe me Sincerely yours, C. Brontë." [2] This brief note, with its comparison of happiness to "great grief," and offering a "meed" of congratulation (a meed is something won or earned, not freely bestowed), speaks volumes about Charlotte's dismay at this news. Perhaps it is coincidence, but only a few weeks after learning of Smith's engagement Charlotte accepted the marriage proposal of Arthur Nicholls, a man whom she had once described as "highly uninteresting, narrow, and unattractive." [3]

M. Paul Emmanuel, the schoolmaster with whom Lucy's initially antagonistic relationship slowly develops into mutual affection, was based on Constantin Heger. Heger was a teacher at the boarding school that Charlotte attended; he was also the husband of its owner, Claire Heger (portrayed in the novel as the imperious and suspicious Madame Beck).

Constantin Heger

After two years at the Pensionnat Heger, as Elizabeth Gaskell wrote in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), Charlotte found that she had to leave the school because she was "no longer regarded with the former kindliness of feeling by Madame Héger..." [4] Gaskell was not being fully honest about the reasons for Charlotte's abrupt departure from Brussels in January 1844. The true reason became public only in 1913, when four letters written by Charlotte to M. Heger after she left Brussels were donated by Heger's son Paul to the British Library.

Three of the letters had been torn into pieces by M. Heger, but the pieces were retrieved by Mme. Heger and sewn back together with paper strips. On reading the letters, it's clear why M. Heger thought they were incriminating, and why the mistrustful Mme. Heger went to such lengths to discover, reconstruct and preserve them. They must have amply confirmed her suspicions of an emotional attachment between Charlotte and her husband.

From the evidence of the letters, though, that emotional attachment was one-sided. Charlotte's letters, written mainly in French, are painful reading: they are hurt, apologetic, pleading, and ultimately abject confessions of her feelings.

From the letter of 24 July 1844:

Ah Monsieur! I once wrote you a letter which was hardly rational, because sadness was wringing my heart, but I shall do so no more—I will try to stop being egotistical and though I look on your letters as one of the greatest joys I know, I shall wait patiently to receive them until it pleases and suits you to send them.

...I have not asked you to write to me soon because I don’t want to seem importunate—but you are too good to forget that I wish it all the same—yes—I wish for it very much—that is enough—after all, do as you please, Monsieur—if in fact I received a letter and thought that you had written out of pity for me—that would hurt me very much.

...once more goodbye, Monsieur—it hurts to say goodbye even in a letter—Oh it is certain that I shall see you again one day—it really has to be—for as soon as I have earned enough money to go to Brussels I shall go—and I shall see you again if it is only for a moment. [5]

This is clearly not the first letter in the sequence. Charlotte apologizes for an earlier letter which was "peu raisonnable" (translated by editor Margaret Smith as "hardly rational"), suggesting that it was likely written out of anguish at the lack of a reply from Heger to still earlier letters.

From the letter of 24 October 1844; Charlotte still has not received a reply to her two previous letters:

I am not going to write a long letter...I am afraid of boring you. I would just like to ask you whether you heard from me at the beginning of May and then in the month of August? For all those six months I have been expecting a letter from you, Monsieur—six months of waiting—That is a very long time indeed! Nevertheless I am not complaining and I shall be richly recompensed for a little sadness—if you are now willing to write a letter...

However short the letter may be I shall be satisﬁed with it— [6]

From the letter of 8 January 1845; Heger has still not replied to Charlotte's previous letters:

Day and night I ﬁnd neither rest nor peace—if I sleep I have tormenting dreams in which I see you always severe, always saturnine and angry with me—

Forgive me then Monsieur if I take the step of writing to you again—How can I bear my life unless I make an effort to alleviate its sufferings?

I know that you will lose patience with me when you read this letter—You will say that I am over-excited—that I have black thoughts etc. So be it Monsieur—I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to all kinds of reproaches—all I know—is that I cannot—that I will not resign myself to the total loss of my master’s friendship—I would rather undergo the greatest bodily pains than have my heart constantly lacerated by searing regrets. If my master withdraws his friendship from me entirely, I shall be absolutely without hope—if he gives me a little friendship—a very little—I shall be content—happy, I would have a motive for living—for working.

...I don't want to re-read this letter—I am sending it as I have written it—Nevertheless I am as it were dimly aware that there are some cold and rational people who would say on reading it—"she is raving"—My sole revenge is to wish these people—a single day of the torments that I have suffered for eight months—then we should see whether they wouldn't be raving too. [7]

Tellingly, "my master" is how Jane Eyre refers to Rochester. [8]

Charlotte wrote to Heger again in May 1845, a letter in which she evidently promised to write him not more than once every six months (this letter does not survive). Heger seems to have written back, at last ("your last letter has sustained me—has nourished me for six months"), but it was not enough for Charlotte.

From the letter dated 18 November 1845:

I will tell you candidly that during this time of waiting I have tried to forget you, for the memory of a person one believes one is never to see again, and whom one nevertheless greatly respects, torments the mind exceedingly and when one has suffered this kind of anxiety for one or two years, one is ready to do anything to regain peace of mind. I have done everything, I have sought occupations, I have absolutely forbidden myself the pleasure of speaking about you—even to Emily, but I have not been able to overcome either my regrets or my impatience—and that is truly humiliating—not to know how to get the mastery over one’s own thoughts, to be the slave of a regret, a memory, the slave of a dominant and ﬁxed idea which has become a tyrant over one’s mind. Why cannot I have for you exactly as much friendship as you have for me—neither more nor less? Then I would be so tranquil, so free—I could keep silence for ten years without effort.

...Writing to an old pupil cannot be a very interesting occupation for you—I know that—but for me it is life itself. Your last letter has sustained me—has nourished me for six months—now I need another and you will give it me—not because you have any friendship for me—you cannot have much—but because you have a compassionate soul and because you would not condemn anyone to undergo long suffering in order to spare yourself a few moments of tedium. To forbid me to write to you, to refuse to reply to me—that will be to tear from me the only joy I have on earth—to deprive me of my last remaining privilege—a privilege which I will never consent to renounce voluntarily. Believe me, my master, in writing to me you do a good deed—so long as I think you are fairly pleased with me, so long as I still have the hope of hearing from you, I can be tranquil and not too sad, but when a dreary and prolonged silence seems to warn me that my master is becoming estranged from me—when day after day I await a letter and day after day disappointment ﬂings me down again into overwhelming misery, when the sweet delight of seeing your writing and reading your counsel ﬂees from me like an empty vision—then I am in a fever—I lose my appetite and my sleep—I pine away. May I write to you again next May? I would have liked to wait a full year—but it is impossible—it is too long— [9]

This was apparently the last letter she wrote to Heger. In all likelihood Charlotte had already begun writing The Professor, her first attempt at rendering her love for her teacher into fictional form.

Separation from the beloved is a trope that recurs again and again in Charlotte's novels. In The Professor (published posthumously in 1857) a young teacher at a girls' boarding school in Belgium, Frances Henri, is dismissed by its jealous owner, Mlle Reuter, because of the developing affection between Frances and another teacher, William Crimsworth, with whom Mlle Reuter is also in love. In Jane Eyre, Jane and Rochester fall in love, but she flees his house when she discovers that he is already married. In Shirley (1849), mill owner Robert Moore deliberately distances himself from Caroline Helstone to prevent himself from falling in love with her; she sits by her window every day hoping to catch a glimpse of him going by (shades of Charlotte hoping daily for a letter from M. Heger). And in Villette, M. Paul is sent by his family to oversee their West Indian plantations for three years; the possessive Madame Beck attempts to prevent M. Paul and Lucy from even having a chance to say goodbye to one another.

Villette does not contain the same sort of highly dramatic action as Jane Eyre: there is no demonic laughter echoing through the halls at night, no flights across the storm-swept moor, no return to the charred ruin of a once-magnificent estate. The landscape of the novel is an interior one, as we slowly come to know Lucy's perceptions, thoughts and feelings. Charlotte reported that her publisher was "a little disheartened by the tranquillity" of the novel. [10] The poet and critic Matthew Arnold, though hostile to Villette and its author, was more perceptive when he wrote that under its muted and melancholy surface it "contained nothing but hunger, rebellion, and rage." [11]

Villette'scomplex characters and richness of (seemingly minor, but tellingly detailed) incident made it feel more emotionally true than its famous predecessor. And I discovered that I'm not the only one who thinks so; so did Brontë's contemporary George Eliot ("Villette! Villette! It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre.") So also do some modern critics such as Lucy Hughes-Hallett, who writes that Villette is "at once an intensely erotic love story, a fierce attack on the conventions that doomed so many 19th-century women to submission and frustration, and a beautiful and inventive piece of poetic fiction" (in "Why Villette is better than Jane Eyre"). Joining their company is Claire Fallon, who praises its heroine's "perceptiveness and ability to embrace ambiguity" (in "This Charlotte Brontë Novel Is Way Better Than 'Jane Eyre'). As Hughes-Hallett asserts, "Charlotte Brontë wrote not one but two masterpieces," and the greater of them is Villette.

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1. Sidney Lee, "Memoir of George Smith," preface to the Dictionary of National Biography (Suppl. 1), Oxford University Press, 1901, p. xxii.
2. Margaret Smith, ed. Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronte, Oxford University Press, 2007. Letter 152. To George Smith, 10 December 1853, p. 227 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/274)
3. Selected letters of Charlotte Bronte, Letter 44. To Ellen Nussey, 10 July 1846, p. 77 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/124)
4. Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Smith, Elder & Co., 1857, Chapter XII
5. Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronte. Letter 28. To Constantin Heger, 24 July [1844], pp. 51-52 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/98)
6. Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronte. Letter 30. To Constantin Heger, 24 October 1844, p. 55 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/102)
7. Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronte. Letter 31. To Constantin Heger, 8 January 1845, p. 58 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/105)
8. Reinforcing the Heger-Rochester connection is a poem Charlotte wrote about her love for Heger in 1845. Quoting it in part:

His coming was my hope each day
His parting was my pain!
The chance that did his steps delay
Was ice in every vein

I gave entire affection now
I gave devotion sure
And strong took root and fast did grow
One mighty feeling more

The truest love that ever heart
Felt at its kindled core
Through my veins with quickened start
A tide of life did pour

[A] halo played about the brows
Of life as seen by me
bliss within me rose
And anxious ecstacy

I dreamed it would be nameless bliss
As I loved—loved to be
And to this object did I press
As blind as eagerly.

Most of the verses from this poem, with diction slightly revised and gender reversed ("Her coming was my hope each day") became the song that Rochester sings to Jane in Chapter 24 of Jane Eyre.
9. Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronte. Letter 36. To Constantin Heger, 18 November 1845, pp. 67-68 (see http://librarum.org/book/18855/114)
10. Margaret Smith, ed. The Letters of Charlotte Bronte, vol. 3: 1852-1855. To George Smith, 20 November 1852, p. 83 (see http://goo.gl/NUc5dR)
11. Quoted in Miriam Allott, ed. The Brontes: The Critical Heritage. Routledge, 1974, p. 201 (see http://goo.gl/7Ydv67)

Tere Mere Sapne (Our Dreams, 1971) offers several unusual twists on a familiar story: a public-spirited reformer discovers how intractable are the world's problems, and how entrenched are the rich and powerful who benefit from them.

Based loosely on the physician A.J. Cronin's novel The Citadel (1937), Tere Mere Sapne features a noble, idealistic doctor who chooses to practice among poor villagers instead of treating the complaints of the rich in the big city (very much like Nirmal in Anuradha (1960)).

In the first moments of the film the new doctor Anand Kumar (Dev Anand) is unsuccessfully trying to explain his choice to his fellow medical student, Kaul. Kaul has some foreshadowing to convey to Anand, and to us:

The coal mining town where Anand travels for his new position is grim: we see a montage of smoke pouring from smokestacks, begrimed faces, men and boys loading coal amid eruptions of black dust. Anand has been hired by the ailing Dr. Prasad (Mahesh Kaul), who holds the lone company license to practice medicine in the village. Anand, who will do the actual work, is designated Dr. Prasad's "assistant" and paid a pittance by his wife (Paro). Thrown into the deal is a cramped room and inadequate food.

The other assistant is London-trained Jagan (Vijay Anand, Dev's brother and the film's director). When we and Anand first see him, lighting a cigarette and with a stiff drink in front of him, it's clear the toll that dealing with black lung, mine injuries, and sick children has taken:

During the days, Anand and Jagan are kept busy caring for endless lines of patients. The dedicated and conscientious Anand spends his nights reading the medical journals for which he must pay a huge proportion of his inadequate salary:

The burned-out Jagan spends his nights in a drunken stupor:

One day Anand goes to visit a child he's treating for smallpox, only to discover that the village schoolteacher has come by and convinced the parents to send him back to class. Anand is furious:

What illiteracy! Even the teachers are ignorant!

He storms into the classroom of Nisha (Mumtaz) to bring the boy back home. Nisha pleads for the recovering child to remain: his family is poor, and he needs the free milk he gets at school. Anand castigates her for placing the other children at risk; Nisha finally yields, but has her own opinion of Anand:

You are a doctor but extremely insolent.

Of course, we realize immediately, even if Nisha and Anand don't, that they are meant to be together. And when Nisha overhears Anand paying for the life-saving injection for the impoverished father of one of her students, she realizes that she's misjudged him.

Nisha's aunt (Leela Mishra) wants to play matchmaker, and pretends to be sick to bring Nisha and Anand together. Her ploy is transparent:

But it works: Anand asks Nisha to spend her Sunday off with him. He takes her to the village fair, where Bombay Touring Talkies has set up a screen to show the latest movie of the biggest Bollywood star, Maltimala (Hema Malini looking glam and gorgeous):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH36_PqqNoc

"Phur ud chala" ("Where is my heart flying off to on the wind?") was composed by S.D. Burman, with lyrics by Neeraj; Hema's playback singer is Asha Bhosle. The contrast between the delirious Bollywood spectacle and the realities of the village is fully apparent—we even see a group of village women dancing at the fair moments before Maltimala bursts onto the screen—but it isn't overstated by director Vijay Anand.

When Dr. Prasad's wife demands the money that grateful parents have offered Anand as a blessing for saving the life of their newborn, Anand angrily resigns his position. Although Prasad's wife is portrayed as miserly and selfish, the film does not demonize her: we see how her financial anxieties arise from the her worries about her husband's fragile health.

But after their confrontation Anand resolves that he cannot remain in the household, and he applies for a job at a union-run hospital in the next village. He's told that he's the leading candidate, but to get the job he needs to get married. He goes to tell Nisha, who isn't flattered by what she thinks are his motivations for asking her. But as the discouraged Anand is leaving, Nisha calls him back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmwj4mWJza4

This song exemplifies how what is symbolized or suggested can be so much sexier than what is shown. After the wedding night, her hair unbraided, Nisha stretches languorously in the morning light, singing "Every pore of my being craves for my beloved" (the playback singer for Mumtaz is Lata Mangeshkar).

Of course, the blissful happiness of the young couple can't continue undisturbed. At the hospital Anand refuses to participate in expected small daily corruptions (such as issuing false certificates of illness to the workers). His quixotic stances at first makes him unpopular:

The rumors are true. You're a puppet of the bosses.

Even his friends, such as the semi-competent dentist Dr. Bhutani (Agha), express disbelief:

A boycott by the workers cuts severely into Anand's already small salary. The uncomplaining Nisha, however, does everything she can to prevent Anand from being aware of how difficult it is for her to maintain the household on what he earns.

Ultimately, Anand's bravery, skill and dedication win over the workers. Nisha also discovers that she is pregnant, increasing the couple's happiness even further. So we know that tragedy must be looming, and indeed it strikes without warning (be aware that some spoilers follow).

As Nisha is returning from the market one day, she is hit by the speeding car of local landowner Madhochand (Prem Nath). Nisha is badly injured—only an emergency operation by Jagan saves her life—and her baby is killed.

Madhochand comes to see Anand in order to pay restitution for the accident. Anand is deeply offended that Madhochand thinks he can be bought. Madhochand, who owns the house that Anand lives in, the hospital where he works, and the mine that the hospital serves, angrily tells Anand that he would be foolish to oppose the power of his money:

You'll be crushed afoot if you try to confront it.

(I think the subtitler meant underfoot.)

Anand is undeterred:

But in court witness after witness, suborned by threats and bribes, lies about the accident. Madhochand is absolved; the power of money has won. Anand makes a bitter vow:

I swear by your love, no longer will we be poor.

Anand and Nisha move to Bombay; Kaul's prediction about Anand's "regretful return" has come true, as Kaul is the first to remind him when they run into one another:

Kaul explains to Anand how doctors in the city pad their incomes: they develop a network of cronies who refer their wealthy patients to each other unnecessarily and take a cut of the fees. Eventually Kaul brings Anand into his circle, and life becomes an endless round of appointments during the day and dinner parties at night.

To numb himself to what he is becoming, Anand starts to smoke and drink—he is beginning to turn into a big-city version of Jagan. Meanwhile, Jagan visits from the village, and Nisha is surprised to see that his contact with Anand has influenced Jagan to give up his vices:

The emptiness that liquor filled no longer exists.

Anand's practice starts to bring him into contact with Bombay's fashionable people, including those on the fringe of the film world:

I'm hairdresser to film star, Malti Mala.

Maltimala is beset by headaches and crying jags that cause repeated delays and cancellations in her film shoots. After Anand successfully treats Maltimala's hairdresser, he is brought in to see the star herself. He quickly realizes that her main problem is overwork: she spends her life responding to the demands of her family, her manager and her film producers, and has no time for herself.

Anand's miracle cure is to treat her with sympathy and compassion as a suffering human being, not as a goddess or a money-minting machine. Maltimala, unaware that Anand is married, soon finds her grateful friendship developing into something more. The songs she performs come to echo her new feelings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frftxs9vHZk

"What's the matter with me?" she sings. "My heart sings and my feet dance...my heart is pounding and everyone teases me. I don't know what's wrong with me."

Nisha has some idea, though. When she sees Maltimala tenderly wishing Anand goodnight, her jealousy is instantly aroused. Understatement works greatly to the film's benefit here as well: Maltimala is not portrayed as an evil, sophisticated seductress, but instead as a young woman who is drawn to the first man she's met who isn't seeking to exploit her.

Nisha and Anand now argue constantly; she's bewildered by the changes in him. She tries to remind him of the loyal, idealistic Anand she fell in love with back in the village:

But Anand does not want to be reminded of his former self—the self that was powerless to protect his wife and child:

Will Anand get what he wants only to lose what he has? Or can he recover his principles and win back Nisha's love?

Tere Mere Sapne has a great cast and classic songs (I've left out an item number featuring Shreyas Talpade's aunt Jayshree, several Lata Mangeshkar / Kishore Kumar duets, and a surprisingly bold song about corruption sung by Manna Dey). And as I've indicated above, the script gives the characters depth and complexity: few have unmixed motives or unconflicted feelings. If the ending doesn't quite resolve all of the difficulties the film has raised, it's no wonder: clearly something more than domestic happiness is necessary to counteract the brutalities visited on its citizens by a corrupt, unjust and venal society.

For another perspective on Tere Mere Sapne, please see Memsaab's excellent review.

The murders. On October 26, 1590, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, let it be known to his household that he was going hunting (as he often did) and would be absent from his Naples palazzo for two days. He returned secretly that evening, however, and sometime after midnight burst into his wife's bedroom with three armed servants.

There he found his wife Maria in bed with her lover, Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria. A witness heard Gesualdo order his men to kill the couple, and then the firing of two shots. As he was leaving the room with his hands "covered with blood," Gesualdo was heard to say "I do not believe she is dead!" and turned back to stab his wife's body several more times.

Gesualdo and his men then fled Naples, leaving behind a scene of carnage. Carafa had been shot in the chest and in the head at close range, and stabbed so savagely the points of the weapons gouged the floor beneath his body. Maria had "many wounds" in the head and body, and her throat was cut; her nightdress was "bathed with blood." The lovers had not just been murdered, but butchered. Immediately after the killings Gesualdo and his accomplices probably escaped to the relative safety of his family castle in the town of Gesualdo, about 60 miles east of the city. [1]

"The Pardon."As an act of penitence Gesualdo ordered the building of a Capuchin monastery near the castle, which was completed over the next few years. Behind the altar of monastery's chapel, Santa Maria delle Grazie, hangs a large painting now known as "Il pardon" (The Pardon). The upper part of the canvas depicts Christ, surrounded by the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, archangels and saints. In the lower part of the canvas Gesualdo himself is shown kneeling next to a fiery pit, from which angels and cherubim are helping a naked man and woman to emerge. All the figures (except Mary Magdalene, who looks at Gesualdo) are gazing imploringly at Christ, who raises his right hand in a gesture of blessing. Is Gesualdo asking for pardon? Or is he pleading for the pardon of the souls of the two lovers, who, surrounded by other sinners, had been trapped in eternal fire?

The second marriage and the first books of madrigals. In 1593 negotiations were concluded for a marriage between Gesualdo and the 32-year-old Eleonora d'Este, a cousin of Duke Alfonso II d'Este of Ferrara. That a powerful family would seek a marriage with Gesualdo just a few years after he killed his first wife demonstrates the degree to which adultery was seen as legitimate grounds for spousal violence. The alliance was advantageous to both families. Duke Alfonso was hoping for greater influence with the Pope through Carlo's uncle Alfonso, who was Dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome. Gesualdo, a self-made widower with only one son, needed more potential heirs.

When Gesualdo arrived at Ferrara, about 70 miles southwest of Venice, for the marriage festivities in February 1594, he carried the manuscripts of his first two books of madrigals with him. These were published in May and June of that year by the printer for the house of d'Este, Vittorio Baldini. These works are highly accomplished examples of the madrigal form, as shown by the piece that opens the First Book, "Baci soave e cari" (Sweet and tender kisses):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcs7i8PpIBA

The performers are the Czech Soloist Consort; the words are by Giovanni Battista Guarini: "Baci soavi e cari,/ cibi della mia vita/ c'hor m'involate hor mi rendete il core,/ per voi convien ch'impari/ come un'alma rapita/ non sente il duol di mort'e pur si more." (Sweet and tender kisses, sustenance of my life, first you steal, then you give back my heart: you want me to learn how a soul in rapture feels not the agony of death, yet dies.) A characteristic Gesualdo touch is the dissonance on the word "morte" (death) that occurs at around 1:50 in this performance; in his later books, the dissonance and chromaticism would become ever more extreme.

Ferrara and the third and fourth books of madrigals. With one six-month exception when he travelled back to Gesualdo without his new wife, Carlo Gesualdo stayed in Ferrara for the next two years. During this time he was in contact with musical developments at other northern Italian courts, which were renowned for their musical establishments. His third and fourth books of madrigals, published in Ferrara in 1595 and 1596, were probably composed at this time, and are more harmonically daring than his first compositions. Here is "Sospirava il mio cor" from Book 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB3YHW5_CZM

The performers are Delitiae Musicae; the words are "Sospirava il mio core/ per uscir di dolore/ un sospir che dicea: 'L’anima spiro!'/ Quando la donna mia più d’un sospiro/ anch’ella sospirò che parea dire:/ 'Non morir, non morire!'" (My heart was sighing to escape its pain, a sigh that said "I give up my soul!", when my lady also breathed a sigh that seemed to say, "Do not die, do not die!")

Had Gesualdo stopped publishing music after his Fourth Book was issued, he would still be among the most famous composers of the time. He is mentioned in an essay appended to a 1607 collection of Claudio Monteverdi's music as one of the founders of the "second practice" of madrigal composition, in which the words were paramount and the expressive capabilities of music were intended to convey their meaning: a sighing fall on the word "sospira," agitated fast tempos for battle metaphors, dissonances on words such as "pain,""death,""suffering."

However, in his last two books of madrigals Gesualdo took the conventions of chromaticism and dissonance to new extremes.

Return to Gesualdo and the last compositions. In late 1596 or early 1597 Gesualdo returned, permanently, to the town of Gesualdo, and his wife Leonora and their infant son, Alfonsino, joined him in September. There were dark hints in letters and other documents that Gesualdo physically and psychologically abused his wife, and that he had taken mistresses (not unusual, it must be said, for a Renaissance prince). There were also suggestions that Leonora and her half-brother Alessandro were incestuously involved; Alessandro had also had an affair with the sister of d'Este family friend Marco Pio, who feuded with Alessandro, perhaps over the affair, and was later murdered, probably by Alessandro. Ah, the colorful lives of the Italian aristocracy...

In October 1600 the five-year-old Alfonsino became ill and died. There are accounts that after his son's death, Gesualdo was increasingly subject to dark mood swings ("melancholia," which could mean anything from poetic wistfulness to black depression), and that he asked to be beaten by teams of servants:

he was assailed and afflicted by a vast horde of demons which gave him no peace for many days on end unless ten or twelve young men, whom he kept specially for that purpose, were to beat him violently three times a day, during which operation he was wont to smile joyfully. [2]

This account should be treated skeptically since it dates from two decades after Gesualdo's death. These rumors have been widely repeated, though, and may be the origin of the idea that Gesualdo was gradually driven mad by remorse and sorrow.

In 1611 Gesualdo published his Responsoria for Holy Week as well as the fifth and sixth books of madrigals, whose dissonance and chromaticism can seem amazingly modern. Here is "Moro, lasso" from Book 6:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDtRD0KrJYA

The performers are the Gesualdo Consort; the words are "Moro, lasso, al mio duolo/ e chi mi può dar vita,/ ahi, che m'ancide e non vuol darmi aita!/ O dolorosa sorte,/ chi dar vita i può,/ ahi, mi dà morte!" (I die, alas, in my suffering, And she who could give me life, alas, kills me and will not help me. O sorrowful fate, she who could give me life, alas, gives me death.)

In August 1613 Gesualdo's son by the murdered Maria d'Avalos, Emmanuele, died in a riding accident without leaving a male heir; and two weeks later Gesualdo himself passed away. After winding up Gesualdo's estate, his wife Leonora moved to the town of Modena to be with her family, and died in 1637 at the age of 76. The ancient family of Gesualdo died with her.

Do the late madrigals reflect Gesualdo's madness? The author of the prefaces to Gesualdo's fifth and sixth book of madrigals claimed that their appearance in print was "fifteen years from the time when they were composed." [3] This would place their composition around 1596, at the time the madrigals of the fourth book were published.

For those who see a stark stylistic disjunction between the earlier and later books of madrigals, and who are tempted to read this disjunction as evidence of Gesualdo's increasing mental affliction, these prefaces present a problem. While it's clear that they may be an attempt on Gesualdo's part to establish false precedence, there's also no reason to assume that the music contained in the fifth and sixth books was composed close to the date of publication in 1611: composers of the time often withheld music from publication for private performances, and printed collections were often "best of" compilations that included music composed over many years. Also, those who espouse the idea that Gesualdo's music reflected his growing madness have to explain how a madman would have been capable of writing the complex counterpoint and shifting harmonies of five-part madrigals.

Instead, I think we have to recognize Gesualdo as a highly innovative and self-conscious composer who was deliberately pushing the boundaries of the accepted musical practice of the time. He may also have been "assailed and afflicted by a vast horde of demons," but those demons are more likely to have interfered with his ability to compose, rather than to have inspired it.

Gesualdo's harmonic innovations were not always approved by later listeners. Charles Burney (the father of Fanny Burney) wrote in his General History of Music (1789) that Gesualdo's late style involved "harsh, crude, and licentious modulation" that is "offensive...not only repugnant...but extremely shocking and disgusting to the ear." [4] However, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Gesualdo's harmonic practices seemed to prefigure modern developments in chromaticism, dissonance and atonality. Stravinsky, in his preface to Glenn Watkin's critical biography of Gesualdo, calls his music "powerful" and "revolutionary" (Stravinsky made two pilgrimages to the town of Gesualdo and one to Gesualdo's tomb in Naples). [5]

The Complete Gesualdo Madrigals. Between 2010 and 2013 the Italian ensemble Delitiae Musicae, under the direction of Marco Longhini, recorded all of Gesualdo's madrigals for the Naxos label. When the project was completed the seven CDs were issued as a boxed set.

As you can hear from the version of "Sospirava il mio core" from Book 3 included above, these are superb performances. The chosen pitch is a step lower than what many ensembles have chosen, but I very much like the lower tessitura: it gives the sound of the ensemble a depth and richness that few other groups in this repertoire can match. Longhini has also chosen to use only male voices, with countertenors taking the highest parts. This also works beautifully—the similarity in timbre allows the voices of Delitiae Musicae to blend in a very pleasing way. It's also historically justifiable: falsettists are known to have sung in sacred and secular ensembles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

A choice that seems less historically justifiable to me is Longhini's decision to add continuo parts to some of the madrigals in Books I - IV. As far as I'm aware Gesualdo gave no indication that his madrigals should be performed with instruments. While the accompaniment is limited to a discreet harpsichord, in my view it's an unnecessary addition.

But the added harpsichord is a minor issue when the vocal performances are this focused and assured. Longhini's tempi are measured, and this makes the dissonances just a bit more apparent without requiring the singers to give them extra emphasis.

Many thanks to the dear friend who gave me this collection recently as a birthday present, thinking (correctly) that I would listen to it obsessively; for the last several weeks there's been at least one disc, and sometimes nothing but Gesualdo, in my CD changer. I recommend it highly.

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1. This account is taken from the depositions of witnesses to the murders quoted in Watkins, Glenn. Gesualdo: The man and his music, Second edition. Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 15-23.

2. Quoted in Watkins, p. 83.

3. Watkins, p. 166.

4. Burney, Charles. A general history of music from the earliest ages to the present period, Volume the second, with critical and historical notes by Frank Mercer. Dover, 1957, p. 181.

5. Watkins, pp. ix-xi.

This year my reading list included novels by Jane Austen's influences such as Fanny Burney (Cecilia), Maria Edgeworth (Belinda), and Charlotte Lennox (The Female Quixote). This was also the year I first read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Villette. But perhaps the books I've most enjoyed over the past twelve months are by a writer who bridges the disparate worlds and sensibilities of Austen and Brontë: Elizabeth Gaskell.

In 1849 Gaskell—whose first novel Mary Barton had been published the year before—wrote a fan letter to the author of Jane Eyre. That letter initiated a correspondence and friendship that continued for the rest of Brontë's short life. The two writers met in person for the first time the next year; afterwards Gaskell wrote to a acquaintance, "She and I quarrelled and differed about almost every thing,—…but we like each other heartily I think & I hope we shall ripen into friends…" [1]

Perhaps one of the things that drew them together was the similarity of their experiences. Both Gaskell and Brontë had lost their mothers at an early age; Gaskell was a year old when her mother died, while Brontë was five. Both were primarily raised by their mother's sisters in the north of England: Gaskell was sent to Knutsford, a small town near Manchester, to live with her mother's relatives, while Brontë's aunt came to Haworth, a village near Leeds, to live with the Brontë family. Both were sent to boarding schools as young girls. Both of their fathers were ministers, although Gaskell's father resigned from the church before she was born, and both were deeply religious. And both married clergymen themselves, although Brontë was unmarried when she and Gaskell first met. Perhaps these affinities are what moved Charlotte's father Patrick to ask Gaskell to write an account of Charlotte's life shortly after she died (see "I am not like you": Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë).

That Brontë and her novels deeply impressed Gaskell is evident from novels Gaskell wrote after their friendship was established. Jessie Brown in Cranford (1851-1853), Margaret Hale in North and South (1855), and Molly Gibson in Wives and Daughters (1865) are all young women caring for widowed fathers (Gaskell's father remarried when she was four; Brontë's father never did). All of these heroines defy convention, as did Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe (in Villette), and Brontë herself. Jessie Brown insists on walking behind her father's casket to his burial, though this action is viewed by some as "against...propriety" [2]; Margaret Hale involves herself in the lives of the immiserated working class of Manchester; and Molly Gibson is interested in the scientific developments of her day, and risks her own reputation to help her stepsister out of a romantic dilemma.

North and South
North and South is the Gaskell novel that perhaps most clearly brings together the influences of both Brontë and Austen. Margaret Hale is the most Brontë-like heroine in Gaskell's fiction. Like Caroline Helstone, heroine of Brontë's Shirley (1849), she falls in love with a textile mill owner at a time of labor unrest, and sympathizes with both the workers and the owner. This is a connection that Gaskell clearly intended the reader to make: the bucolic village in which Margaret and her family are living at the beginning of the novel is called Helstone. There's also an Austen connection: the fictional village of Helstone is located in Hampshire, the rural county in the south of England where Austen was born and raised.

Margaret is portrayed in terms that Gaskell might have used to describe Charlotte Brontë herself:

...her quick perceptions and over-lively imagination made her hasty, and her early isolation from sympathy had made her proud; but she had an indescribable childlike sweetness of heart, which made her manners, even in her rarely wilful moods, irresistible... [3]

Margaret's life also closely parallels of that of her author. Her father is a clergyman who leaves the church because of a crisis of conscience; Gaskell's father did the same before she was born. At age 19, Margaret must move with her family to the industrial city of Milton; on her marriage at age 22, Gaskell moved with her husband to the industrial city of Manchester. Margaret has a brother, Frederick, who joins the Navy; Gaskell's brother John sailed with the East India Company's merchant fleet.

The central narrative in North and South is Margaret's slow recognition of the depth and nature of her feelings for Mr. Thornton, the (relatively) young and (relatively) progressive owner of a textile mill in Milton. Mr. Thornton is brought to recognize his love for Margaret much more quickly. In the midst of a near-riot at his mill during a strike she stands next to him to try to protect him from the crowd's wrath, and is injured. Shortly afterwards, he declares his feelings to her, but she rejects him abruptly:

'You seem to fancy that my conduct of yesterday'—again the deep carnation blush, but this time with eyes kindling in indignation rather than shame—'was a personal act between you and me; and that you may come and thank me for it, instead of perceiving, as a gentleman would—yes! a gentleman...that any woman, worthy of the name of woman, would come forward to shield, with her reverenced helplessness, a man in danger from the violence of numbers....You seem to have imagined, that I was not merely guided by womanly instinct, but'—and here the passionate tears (kept down for long—struggled with vehemently) came up into her eyes, and choked her voice—'but that I was prompted by some particular feeling for you—you! Why, there was not a man—not a poor desperate man in all that crowd—for whom I had not more sympathy—for whom I should not have done what little I could more heartily.' [4]

This is perhaps reminiscent of another independent-minded young woman's rejection of another prideful suitor:

Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said:

'You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner....I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.' [5]

Neither Mr. Thornton nor Mr. Darcy can forswear their love; and both continue to work, without perhaps a full consciousness of their own motivations, to be worthy of the heroine's affection.

Good as North and South is, it's not without flaws: Nicholas Higgins, the representative of the "deserving poor," seems a bit too virtuous to be true (he gives up drinking entirely under Margaret's influence, for example). And Mr. Thornton, who is brusque and business-oriented, does not excite this reader's sympathies to anywhere near the same degree as the heroine. We come to feel that Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy are meant for each other; but the potential union of Mr. Thornton and Margaret does not seem to have the same sense of emotional inevitability.

Cranford
Perhaps Gaskell's most delightful and charming work, Cranford was based on her experiences living with her aunt in Knutsford, a small town in Cheshire near Manchester. Cranford, located near the manufacturing town of Drumble, is governed (at least socially) by spinsters and widows. The interconnected stories that make up the novel (and which were originally published separately in Dickens' magazine Household Words) are narrated by a younger woman, Mary Smith, and describe the responses of the Cranford ladies to the rapidly changing mores and modes of life of the Victorian era.

The tone is warm and affectionate; the foibles and eccentricities of each of the Cranford ladies are acknowledged, but their underlying generosity and good-heartedness (particularly that of Miss Matty Jenkyns, who becomes the novel's central character) shine through. But not all is sweetness and light in Cranford. Gaskell's novels do not shy away from the fact of death, and several of the characters in Cranford, major and minor, pass away over the course of its 150 or so pages.

Gaskell herself wrote to John Ruskin that "It is the only one of my books that I can read again;—but whenever I am ailing or ill, I take 'Cranford' and—I was going to say, enjoy it! (but that would not be pretty!) laugh over it afresh!'" [6] The deep sympathy and tender fondness with which Cranford is written indeed inspire laughter and (even if Gaskell isn't willing to say so herself) profound enjoyment. If you have never read Gaskell it is the perfect place to start.

Wives and Daughters
If North and South is Gaskell's most Brontë-like novel, Wives and Daughters is her most Austen-esque—and her greatest achievement. It takes place entirely in the village of Hollingford (another version of Knutsford) and follows the fortunes of Molly Gibson, a young woman who lives with her widowed father, the town's surgeon. There's also a Brontë connection: Molly's governess is named Miss Eyre.

When Molly's blossoming beauty attracts the ardent attention of one of his apprentices, Mr. Gibson resolves to marry again to provide Molly with a stepmother. The woman he chooses is Mrs. Kirkpatrick, the widowed former governess to the children of the local lord:

Her voice was so soft, her accent so pleasant, that it struck him as particularly agreeable after the broad country accent he was perpetually hearing. Then the harmonious colours of her dress, and her slow and graceful movements, had something of the same soothing effect upon his nerves that a cat's purring has upon some people's. He began to think that he should be fortunate if he could win her, for his own sake. Yesterday he had looked upon her more as a possible stepmother for Molly; to-day he thought more of her as a wife for himself. [7]

Mrs. Kirkpatrick, for whom life has been a struggle since her husband's death, has her own reasons for accepting Mr. Gibson's offer:

She was looking out of the window...thinking how pleasant it would be to have a husband once more;—some one who would work while she sat at her elegant ease in a prettily-furnished drawing-room. [8]

We may be reminded of another man who chose his wife for her superficial attractions, but discovered too late how unsuited they were to one another:

Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort. Her father captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour, which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence, had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown. [9]

If Mr. Gibson's situation echoes that of Mr. Bennet, Molly's echoes that of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (1814). Fanny, a demure young woman, has grown up in the household of the widowed Sir Thomas Bertram, and has fallen in love with his second son Edmund. Edmund, however, becomes infatuated with the worldly Mary Crawford, and Fanny must watch their growing attachment with dismay. Molly has grown up admiring the second son of the local squire, Roger Hamley, but he is captivated by the sparkling Cynthia, Mrs. Kirkpatrick's daughter. Roger is interested in the latest scientific theories, and embarks on a lengthy African expedition. Cynthia could not be less interested in science; she only cares about gowns, jewels, and making a brilliant impression in society. The quiet Molly understands and shares Roger's interests, but he has eyes only for Cynthia's beauty. Will Roger come to his senses and recognize Molly's true worth before it's too late?

The stage is set for a fairy-tale struggle between the evil stepmother and -daughter and the virtuous heroine. Fortunately Gaskell subverts our expectations: Mrs. Kirkpatrick is not evil, only shallow; and Cynthia and Molly, despite their differences, become close. And when a figure from Cynthia's troubling past threatens her with exposure and disgrace, Molly risks her own reputation in order to save Cynthia's.

Wives and Daughters was the last work Gaskell wrote, and she left it unfinished—she died unexpectedly before completing the final chapter. But with its close observation of the social world of a small English village and its touching portrait of the shy, sensitive and steadfast Molly Gibson, Wives and Daughters bears comparison to the work of Austen, Brontë, and to George Eliot's Middlemarch—that is to say, to some of the greatest novels ever written.

Judi Dench as Miss Matty Jenkyns in Cranford

BBC adaptations
All three of the Gaskell novels discussed here were adapted for BBC television. I wrote briefly about two of them, Cranford (2007) and Wives and Daughters (1999), in my post on Favorites of 2011: Television. North and South (2004) features Brendan Coyle, later of Lark Rise to Candleford and Downton Abbey, and Anna Maxwell Martin, later of Bleak House (2005) and South Riding (2011). All three Gaskell adaptations are excellent. But give yourself a treat and, if you haven't already done so, read the novels first.

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1. Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Penguin Classics, 1985, Appendix B, p. 561.
2. Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, Oxford World's Classics, 1980, Ch. II, p. 18.
3. Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Penguin English Library, 1970, Ch. 49, p. 508.
4. Gaskell, North and South, Ch. 24, pp. 253-254.
5. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Pantheon Books, 1949, Ch. XXXIV, p. 191.
6. Quoted in Gaskell, Cranford, Introduction, p. v.
7. Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters: An Every-Day Story. Penguin Classics, 2001, Ch. 10, p.105.
8. Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Ch. 10, p. 104.
9. Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. XLII, p. 233.

Classic Bollywood

In our classic Bollywood viewing 2014 was the year of the young Hema Malini. Of course, we'd seen her before as the flirtatious Basanti in Sholay (Flames, 1975; dir. Ramesh Sippy), and in her charming double role as the gentle Seeta and the feisty Geeta in Seeta aur Geeta (1972; dir. Ramesh Sippy). But somehow we'd never sought out other early Hema Malini films until this year.

But Sharafat (Decency, 1970; dir. Asit Sen), Raja Jani (Dear Raja, 1972; dir. Mohan Segal), and Tere Mere Sapne (Our Dreams, 1971; dir. Vijay Anand) showed us what we'd been missing. Of these, perhaps our favorite was Tere Mere Sapne. Hema gives a heartrending portrayal of a film star who, despite all her glamour, beauty and talent, has lost her sense of herself in trying to meet other people's ever-escalating demands. "Phur ud chala" (Where is my heart flying off to?) defines star quality; Hema is dazzling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH36_PqqNoc

You can read the full posts on Tere Mere Sapneand Sharafat.

Other favorite classic films

Anuradha (1960; dir. Hrishikesh Mukherjee): A idealistic doctor discovers—too late?—the price his wife and family have paid for his single-minded dedication to his work.

The Chess Players (1977; dir. Satyajit Ray): While the British are threatening to take over the last independent kingdoms in 19th-century India and rebellion is looming, the ruling class spends its time enjoying wine, women, song—and chess.

Contemporary Bollywood

Ram-Leela (2013; dir. Sanjay Leela Bhansali): James Baldwin wrote of film stars that "one does not go to see them act: one goes to watch them be." [1] There are few people I would rather watch be right now than the two leads of Ram-Leela, Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone. They simply glow in their physical perfection. And that glow is not just the sheen of the body makeup in Ranveer's shirtless scenes: Bhansali surrounds the actors' youth and beauty with gorgeous costumes, sets and lighting. The Romeo-and-Juliet-style plot involves two warring families and forbidden love, but the plot is almost beside the point: this film is all about star charisma and onscreen chemistry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK5E_aeBGYA

If "Nagada Sang Dhol" reminds you of "Dholi Taro Dhol Baaje" from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (My heart belongs to you, 1998), there's a good reason. Bhansali wrote the music for Ram-Leela, but it sounds quite a bit like the scores Ismail Darbar composed for HDDCS and Devdas (2002)—not coincidentally, the two most successful films Bhansali directed before this one. (Also not coincidentally, Deepika's playback singer is Shreya Ghosal, who also did the playback for Aishwarya Rai in Devdas.) Still, stars don't have to be original, and neither do films—they just have to be compelling. And the story of Ram and Leela's love-death was the most compelling contemporary Bollywood film we saw this year.

Classic Hollywood

This year we curated our own Jean Arthur film festival. We're still waiting to rewatch Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair (1947), but we saw many of her other highlights, including Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), The Talk of the Town (1942), and The More the Merrier (1943). But perhaps our favorite discoveries were two of her less heralded films.

Too Many Husbands (1940) is a gender-reversed and much more suggestive version of My Favorite Wife (1940). Vicky Lowndes (Arthur) has remarried after her first husband Bill (Fred MacMurray) vanished at sea. But when Bill is rescued after being marooned on a desert island, Vicky faces a dilemma: is she married to Bill, or to her second husband, Bill's friend and business partner Henry (Melvyn Douglas)? She's not sure, and she's not in a hurry to make a decision…

The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) features Arthur as a department-store salesgirl who, together with her boyfriend Joe (Robert Cummings), is trying to organize her fellow clerks. The store owner, John Merrick (Charles Coburn), goes undercover to try to expose the union ringleaders—only to discover that his workers have legitimate grievances.

Contemporary Hollywood

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014): Wes Anderson's movie about an old hotel, a priceless painting, and a murder mystery is set against the violent history of Central Europe in the 20th century. This matrushka doll of a fairy tale, with its stories within stories, is a visual and narrative delight.

Her(2013): Spike Jonze's film takes our fixation with (and anthropomorphism of) technology into a future so near it looks disturbingly like the present. Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a lonely writer, discovers that there's only one woman in his life who is always available, interested, and emotionally compatible: his Siri-like smartphone operating system. A depiction of our technology-enhanced isolation and anomie that's brilliant and desolating.

Documentary

Tim's Vermeer (2013): Penn and Teller's film follows computer graphics entrepreneur Tim Jenison's attempts to recreate a Vermeer painting using optical techniques that were plausibly available in seventeenth-century Holland. The film is fascinating, both as an exploration of the optical aids that might have been used by the old masters, and as a portrait of Jenison's obsession.

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1. James Baldwin, "The Devil Finds Work," in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985. St. Martin's Press, 1985, p. 575.

Concert performances

For us 2014 was musically bookended by two brilliant countertenors. In February we saw the electrifying Philippe Jaroussky perform with the Venice Baroque Orchestra in Berkeley as part of the Cal Performances season. The concert was billed as a battle between the rival composers Handel and Nicola Porpora, featuring arias written for their star castrati Carestini and Farinelli. At the end of the concert I turned to my partner and said "Handel won." The real winners, of course, were all of us fortunate enough to be in the audience for Jaroussky's stunning performances of "Mi lusinga il dolce affetto" from Handel's Alcina, "Scherza infida" from Handel's Ariodante, and "Alto Giove" from Porpora's Polifemo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSqBCFtBo90

Jaroussky has recorded excellent albums devoted to arias written for Carestini and Farinelli.

In November we saw Andreas Scholl appear with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorus in a program of Handel and Bach. In the middle of the third decade of his international career, Scholl's tone has lost little of the beauty displayed in his early recordings. He sang "Va tacit e nascosto" and "Aure, deh, per pieta" from the title role of Giulio Cesare, and an exquisite "Dove sei" from Rodelinda (the Met Live in HD broadcast of the latter was one of my Favorites of 2011). In the second half, he performed the lovely Cantata No. 170, "Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust" (Delightful rest, beloved pleasure of the soul):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5JBRYs8nAU

Dance

The most sheerly enjoyable dance we saw in 2014 was the Mark Morris Dance Group's production of Handel's Acis and Galatea, seen in Berkeley in April. (So far we're two for two with this Handel chamber opera: we also saw a great production of it at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2011.) Morris's version used Mozart's fuller reorchestration, performed brilliantly by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Nicholas McGegan. And just as he did in the BEMF production, bass-baritone Douglas Williams stole the show as the jealous cyclops Polifemo. Some of the other singers' costumes were unflattering, but that was the only flaw in a production that brought back fond memories of Morris's version of Handel's "L'Allegro."

Opera

A great cast and Christopher Alden's clever and visually striking production at San Francisco Opera could not quite disguise the middling level of Handel's musical inspiration in Partenope (seen October 24). But the Surrealist milieu and Man Ray visual references worked beautifully as an updated setting for this story of erotic intrigue and irresolution. As the title character, Danielle De Niese was costumed as a combination of Peggy Guggenheim and Nancy Cunard, and ruled over a salon of the yearning and the lost. I don't think I will ever forget the sight of tenor Alek Shrader singing an aria through the transom window of a water closet, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Recordings

Marc-Antoine Charpentier:
Messe des morts/Litanies, Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet, director: Naxos Records
Messe de Monsieur de Mauroy, Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet, director: Glossa
Miserere/Motets, La Chapelle Royale, Philippe Herreweghe, director: Harmonia Mundi
Actéon, Boston Early Music Festival Vocal and Chamber Ensembles, Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, directors: CPO

This was the year we immersed ourselves in Charpentier's sacred music, thanks mainly to the serendipitous discovery of Messe des morts (Mass for the dead) in Amoeba Music San Francisco's bargain bin. While we had long been familiar with his operas—William Christies's recording of Medée with Lorraine Hunt in the title role was one of the first Baroque operas I ever purchased, Magnificat's performance of La Descente d’Orphée aux enfers was one of our Favorites of 2011, and Actéon was one of this year's highlights)—Charpentier was largely blocked from producing works for the stage by the hostility of rival composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. By necessity Charpentier devoted most of his energies to sacred music, and this year we discovered its many beauties.

Lalla-Roukh, Opera Lafayette, Ryan Brown, director: Naxos Records.

Based on an 1817 poem by Thomas Moore, and later turned into a Bollywood movie, Lalla Roukh's story is strange indeed. As I wrote in my post on the opera, "In reviving and recording this forgotten gem, Opera Lafayette has outshone opera companies with budgets many times as large. If you enjoy the sound-world of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman, Bizet's Pearl Fishers or Delibes'Lakmé, you'll find Lalla-Roukh to be a fresh new discovery with some welcome familiarities."

The Complete Gesualdo Madrigals, Delitiae Musicae, Marco Longhini, director: Naxos Records.

The Italian Renaissance prince Carlo Gesualdo murdered his wife and her lover when he found them in bed together, and later was accused of madness. At the same time he was one of the greatest composers of the madrigal, and the extremes of chromaticism and dissonance developed in his music were not approached again until the 20th Century. Many thanks to the dear friend who gave this to me; I've been playing it obsessively for weeks.

Finally, I can't help but notice that three of my favorite recordings of 2014—Messe des morts, Lalla-Roukh, and The Complete Gesualdo Madrigals—were issued on the Naxos budget label. If only all record labels were this adventurous.

Fiction

Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters and Cranford

Perhaps the books I've most enjoyed over the past twelve months are by a writer who bridges the disparate worlds and sensibilities of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë: Elizabeth Gaskell.

Wives and Daughters is Gaskell's greatest achievement: it follows the fortunes of Molly Gibson, a young woman whose widowed father makes a sudden decision to remarry and discovers the painful truth of the proverb about repenting at leisure. With its close observation of the social world of a small English village and its touching portrait of the shy, sensitive and steadfast Molly, Wives and Daughters bears comparison to the work of Austen, Brontë, and George Eliot—that is to say, to some of the greatest novels ever written.

Cranford is a warm and affectionate portrait of the kind of small town in which Gaskell herself grew up. The interconnected stories about the spinsters and widows who rule Cranford society are narrated by a younger woman, Mary Smith, and describe the varying responses of the Cranford ladies to the rapidly changing mores and modes of life of the Victorian era. If you have never read Gaskell it is the perfect place to start.

Read the full post:Bridging Austen and Brontë: Elizabeth Gaskell

Charlotte Brontë, Villette

Based on Brontë's experiences during her two years spent at a boarding school in Belgium, Villette tells the story of the ill-fated loves of its quiet heroine, Lucy Snowe. Despite her name, Lucy is only outwardly cool; inwardly she is warmly passionate. But the constraints which forbid her to express her feelings openly, as men in her society are allowed to, lead to desperate unhappiness—which must, like her love, remain concealed.

Read the full post:"Hunger, rebellion, and rage": Charlotte Bronte's Villette

Fanny Burney, Cecilia

Cecilia is a young woman trying to make her way through the hypocrisies, trivialities and unwritten constraints of the social world. Burney's heroines, like those of her admirer Jane Austen, are not always unblemished paragons of virtue and good sense, but instead experience uncertainty and occasionally make mistakes. Burney's books also share the same kind of clear-eyed view of the allurements and perils of the marriage market that distinguishes Austen's novels. And if one of the pleasures of reading Burney is to be immersed in the social mores of the distant 18th century, another (as it is with Austen) is to discover just how contemporary her characters can seem.

Read the full posts:Jane Austen and Cecilia: A personal connection?" and Jane Austen's favorite novelist: Fanny Burney

Biggest Disappointment: David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

David Mitchell is brilliant at creating narrators with distinct and highly individual voices. That focus on character is what drove his best novel to date, Cloud Atlas (2004). The Bone Clocks (Random House, 2014) starts promisingly as the story of a convincingly-voiced teenaged girl, Holly Sykes, who is running away from home after a fight with her mother. But it quickly bogs down in a science fiction/fantasy plot in which its human characters are pawns in a supernatural war between two factions of immortal beings, the Anchorites (evil) and the Horologists (good). There's talk about "the Dusk Chapel of the Blind Cathar" and "the Psychosoterica of the Shaded Way," but it's not meant as parody—at least, I don't think so. A big chunk of the novel is taken up with the final confrontation, in which the Horologist narrator says things like "I pour psychovoltage into a neurobolas and kinetic it at our assailants." The fantasy plot ultimately renders the actions and fates of the novel's mortal characters mere background. Not many novels can leave me indifferent to the fate of humanity, but The Bone Clocks managed it.

Second Biggest Disappointment: Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

I was an early fan of Haruki Murakami's, discovering him at the time A Wild Sheep Chase was first issued in the U.S. (1989), and then seeking out his earlier novels in their Japanese English-language editions. But lately I've begun to wonder whether I wasn't really a fan of his early translator, Alfred Birnbaum. Murakami's most recent novels have been translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, seemingly in haste, because they are full of stylistic awkwardnesses (one of the things that made his last novel, 1Q84, my Biggest disappointment of 2012).

But clunky translation could be forgiven if Colorless Tsukuru were otherwise compelling; unfortunately it revisits territory covered too often before by Murakami and other writers. An emotionally withdrawn protagonist approaching middle age renews his acquaintance with each of his former friends from college to try to understand why years ago he had been abruptly ostracized from the group. There are a half-hearted invocations of many Murakami tropes: a dreamlike alternate reality, Western music (classical and jazz), a central story that involves the unraveling of a mystery. But Colorless Tsukuru lacks the conviction, originality and imaginative energy of Murakami's better work.

Nonfiction

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë

Elizabeth Gaskell knew Charlotte Brontë personally, and her friendship with Charlotte gives this biography an intimacy that is rarely achieved between biographer and subject. And while it's fascinating to learn of the real-life people and events that were transmuted into Charlotte Brontë's fiction, the chief interest in Gaskell's biography, at least for me, is its liberal quotation from Charlotte's letters. In particular, Gaskell was given access to Charlotte's extensive correspondence with her former school friend Ellen Nussey. Charlotte's letters are frank, open, and sometimes painfully revealing, as when she wrote to Ellen, "Don't deceive yourself by imagining I have a bit of real goodness about me....I am not like you. If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I daresay despise me."

Read the full post:"I am not like you": Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë

Rachel Mead, My Life in Middlemarch

My Life in Middlemarch (Crown, 2014) is a record of the changing meanings that George Eliot's Middlemarch has held for Mead as she has reread it over the course of her life. It's also a concise and highly compelling biography of Eliot, a description of the creation and reception of Middlemarch, and a frank and moving account of Mead's life and experience as it has been reflected in and informed by the novel. My Life in Middlemarch is essential reading for lovers of Eliot's great novel, but also for those, like Mead (and myself), for whom books have been a crucial element of their "self-fashioning."

Read the full post:My Life in Middlemarch

Fanny Burney: Journals and Letters

On her 15th birthday, Fanny Burney, conscious of her father's (and her society's) disapproval of women authors, burned every scrap of her writing: poems, plays, stories, and a full-length novel. But nine months later she picked up her pen again and began writing a journal that she dedicated to Nobody:

…to whom dare I reveal…my own hopes, fears, reflections & dislikes?—Nobody!

To Nobody, then, will I write my Journal! since To Nobody can I be wholly unreserved—to Nobody can I reveal every thought, every wish of my Heart, with the most unlimited confidence, the most unremitting sincerity to the end of my Life!

Burney indeed kept the journal until the end of her life as a record of her thoughts, feelings and sensations. It was also a record of her keen observations of the literary and aristocratic worlds into which she was unwillingly thrust by the success of her first novel, Evelina. Burney's fame brought her into intimate contact with figures such as Samuel Johnson, Hester Thrale, and Queen Charlotte, in the service of whom the shy, sensitive Burney spent five miserable years as the Second Keeper of the Robes.

In the 19th century the posthumous publication of her journals eclipsed her novels. But it's not just the famous people she knew or the compelling story of her life (a late-blooming love, forced exile with her French husband during the Napoleonic Wars, her horrifying experience of a mastectomy without anaesthesia) that made her journal so popular; it is her forthright, perceptive and deeply appealing voice. In essence, the publication of the journals made Fanny Burney her own greatest character.

Biggest disappointment: Morrissey, Autobiography

Morrissey was the lead singer and lyricist for The Smiths, whose "Hatful of Hollow" album gave expression to certain inchoate feelings of loss, regret, and lack of direction in my post-collegiate 20s. Johnny Marr's crystalline guitar was the perfect accompaniment to Morrissey's arch, funny, and bitterly true lyrics: "I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now / I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I'm miserable now."

In the first half of Autobiography, Morrissey writes compellingly of his youthful feelings of loneliness and desperation, his struggles to escape the dead-end future planned for him by a routinized and soul-crushing school system, and his conviction that there must be a way to stop being an observer, a fan, and take an active part in the world of pop music that was his lifeline: "I am suddenly full of sweeping ideas that even I can barely grasp, and although penniless, I am choked by the belief that something must happen. It is not enough just to 'be'....I cannot continue as a member of the audience. If only I could forget myself I might achieve" (p. 116).

Shortly afterwards Morrissey met Marr, and The Smiths were born. But after five years and four albums (plus compilations like "Hatful of Hollow"), The Smiths broke up acrimoniously. Morrissey's substantial success as a solo artist over the past quarter century has not, apparently, healed those wounds, and the second half of Autobiography devolves into score-settling, l'esprit de l'escalier, name-dropping, lengthy passages that sound like excerpts from his tour diary, and a 40-page-long blow-by-blow recounting of a royalties lawsuit brought by The Smith's former drummer Mike Joyce.

Perhaps the last word should be left to Morrissey and Marr in better days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbgdCzGfFt4

Raj (Rishi Kapoor) and Bobby (Dimple Kapadia) in Bobby

In Indian cinema premarital sex has often had severe, and sometimes fatal, consequences. What follows is a brief history of premarital sex in seven films from five decades (with mild spoilers):

Aradhana (Adoration, 1968): After a night of passion with local beauty Vandana (Sharmila Tagore), dashing Air Force pilot Arun (Rajesh Khanna) is killed in a plane crash. Vandana soon discovers that she's pregnant. Unmarried,* and rejected by Arun's family, Vandana must give her son Suraj up for adoption. To stay close to Suraj, she goes to work as a servant in the household of the wealthy couple that adopted him, but must keep her true identity a secret. Attempted rape, a killing, prison and years of separation follow…

Bobby (1973): Rich boy Raj (Rishi Kapoor) and poor girl Bobby (Dimple Kapadia) fall passionately in love. Raj's father, though, angrily rejects the proposed match and engages him to another bride. Raj and Bobby elope, but are pursued by their angry parents, kidnapped and beaten by goons, and plunge off a cliff into a raging river.

Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (From Doom to Doom, 1988): Raj (Aamir Khan) and Rashmi (Juhi Chawla) fall in love, but their feuding families won't agree to their marriage. So the lovers elope and live in blissful happiness together—until hired killers are sent by Rashmi's father to murder Raj.

Kya Kehna (What Is There to Say? 2000): Priya (Preity Zinta) falls hard for the daredevil charms of college hero Rahul (Saif Ali Khan). When she discovers that she's pregnant, she is spurned by Rahul, ostracized by her family and her community, and has to fight to keep her baby.

Salaam Namaste (Muslim-Hindu Greetings, 2005): Radio DJ Ambar (Preity Zinta) and aspiring restaurateur Nick (Saif Ali Khan) move in together, but when she becomes pregnant he tells her that he isn't ready for fatherhood, abandoning her to deal with the pregnancy on her own.

Love Aaj Kal (Love These Days, 2009): Meera (Deepika Padukone) and Jai (Saif Ali Khan), unwilling to let their 3-year-long live-in relationship interfere with their careers, separate to pursue their dream jobs. They both become involved with other people, but when Jai is badly beaten by muggers, he realizes that he truly loves Meera—who, in the meantime, has married another man.

Cocktail (2012): Party-girl Veronica (Deepika Padukone) and flirtatious Gautam (Saif Ali Khan yet again) sleep together, but think of themselves as free agents. Veronica comes to realize, though, that she is truly in love with Gautam—only, he has fallen for her new roommate, the demure Meera (Diana Penty). Stumbling down the street in a haze of alcohol and grief, Veronica is hit by a speeding car.

It's hard not to view these movies as cautionary tales about the dangers, emotional and physical, of premarital sex. Krishna and Radha may be held up as models of passionate love, but those who follow their example are regularly forced to endure Sita-like trials.

Which brings us to the latest entry in this series:

Shuddh Desi Romance (Pure Indian Romance, 2013)

Raghu (Sushant Singh Rajput) hustles tourists for a living; he's also a wedding guest for hire as part of the crew of wedding planner Goyal (Rishi Kapoor). On the overnight bus to his own arranged marriage, Raghu expresses his last-minute doubts to Gayatri (Parineeti Chopra). She's equally skeptical about arranged marriages:

That's India for you. No love. No romance, nothing.

She's been hired to play the role of Raghu's sister, and (she tells him) has had several boyfriends. This evidently makes her more attractive to Raghu, and they exchange a few tentative kisses.

At the wedding ceremony the next day Raghu panics just as he's about to be garlanded by his bride Tara (Vaani Kapoor), and runs away. He later explains to Gayatri that it was because of their brief encounter on the bus. Gayatri is wary, but also attracted to him. They start sleeping together, and eager Raghu is soon ready to move in.

Of course, we wonder about Gayatri's judgment. But perhaps it's precisely Raghu's publicly demonstrated fear of commitment that attracts her. With him, she's safe from impulsive marriage proposals—or at least, she's free from having to take his impulsive proposals seriously. We learn that her last boyfriend dumped her after she became pregnant; she's understandably distrustful of Raghu's promises and leery of making her own commitments:

And love? Cooked it, tasted it, done with it.

Despite Gayatri's uncompromising talk, one drunken night she accepts Raghu's proposal of marriage. At the ceremony, though, both have second thoughts, and this time it's Gayatri that runs away (sensing, rightly, that Raghu was about to do the same).

As a hired guest at another wedding, Raghu bumps into his jilted bride Tara, who inexplicably slips him her phone number. When they meet later on at a cafe, she asks him a question that stuns him (and us):

This raises a question that the film is unable to answer:

What do women see in you? Why do they come back?

When Gayatri re-enters his life, Raghu is faced with a choice between the two women. But it is the women, of course, who really make the choice...

Shuddh Desi Romance is ultimately unsatisfying, though not because the right couple isn't united at the end (the aimless and evasive Raghu is lucky to be in a relationship with anybody), or because the characters are punished for having sex out of wedlock (unless you count Gayatri's pre-film pregnancy and abandonment). But Jaideep Sahni's script is so busy setting up clever parallelisms in the story that it doesn't allow the characters to grow, change, or achieve any insight into their own feelings. Perhaps the spectacular scenery of Rajasthan can allow us, and them, to overlook this—at least for a short time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4ZJxhyAaH8

The music is by Sachin-Jigar with lyrics by Sahni; the playback singers are Jigar and Priya Saraiya.

By the end of the film, the characters' reflexive avoidance of marriage seems like a negative choice, not a positive one. While they claim to be rebelling against marriage as a corrupt and increasingly empty institution, it's clear that it's their anxieties and not their principles that are driving their decisions. Complementary emotional wounds—fear of commitment on his part, and fear of rejection on hers—don't seem like the healthiest basis for a sustained, or even temporary, relationship. In Shuddh Desi Romance, marriage may be in trouble, but life without commitment is hardly a viable alternative.

--

* In Aradhana and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, the couples perform their own private marriage ceremonies. They're "married in the eyes of God," but not in the eyes of their families or the larger society.

Anne Brontë, like her sisters Charlotte and Emily, was a poet and novelist; like them, too, she died of consumption at a tragically young age. But while Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are now among the most widely read novels in English, Anne's two novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), remain relatively neglected.

Neither of Anne's novels appear, for example, on any of the four lists of 100 recommended novels I discuss in the post "100 novels"; both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights appear on three out of the four. As of this writing the free e-book versions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights on the Project Gutenberg website have been downloaded as single titles 8474 and 6925 times, respectively; meanwhile, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has been downloaded only 674 times, while Agnes Grey has been downloaded a mere 360 times.

Why this comparative neglect? It's true that Anne is not as polished a writer as either Charlotte or Emily. Anne's heroines are trapped in painful situations which they find difficult to escape; large sections of her novels are litanies of torment. Her heroines are also intensely pious in a way that may make readers in our more secular age uncomfortable. But her novels deserve to be read for the light they shed on the plight of women in Victorian society; and their autobiographical elements provide another perspective on the troubled situation of the Brontë family.

Agnes Grey

Agnes Grey is based on Anne's unhappy experiences as a governess in the homes of two families, the Inghams and the Robinsons. As the narrator states in the novel's first paragraph, "shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I…will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend." It's not necessary to take this assertion completely at face value to recognize that Agnes Grey must indeed draw significantly on autobiographical sources.

When her father is suddenly impoverished by a speculation gone wrong, Agnes decides to seek a position as a governess despite her youth (she's 19, the same age that Anne was when she took her first position with the Inghams). She is hired by Mrs. Bloomfield to supervise her unruly children Tom, age 7, and Mary, age 5. It soon becomes clear that one of Tom's chief pleasures—encouraged by his harsh father—is torturing small animals. Mary obstinately refuses to cooperate with Agnes, and the situation quickly becomes a physical power struggle:

Sometimes, exasperated to the utmost pitch, I would shake her violently by the shoulder, or pull her long hair, or put her in the corner; for which she punished me with loud, shrill, piercing screams, that went through my head like a knife. She knew I hated this, and when she had shrieked her utmost, would look into my face with an air of vindictive satisfaction, exclaiming,—

'Now, then! that's for you!'

And then shriek again and again, till I was forced to stop my ears. Often these dreadful cries would bring Mrs. Bloomfield up to inquire what was the matter?

'Mary Ann is a naughty girl, ma'am.'

'But what are these shocking screams?'

'She is screaming in a passion.'

'I never heard such a dreadful noise! You might be killing her. Why is she not out with her brother?'

'I cannot get her to finish her lessons.'

'But Mary Ann must be a good girl, and finish her lessons.' This was blandly spoken to the child. 'And I hope I shall never hear such terrible cries again!'

And fixing her cold, stony eyes upon me with a look that could not be mistaken, she would shut the door, and walk away. [Ch. III]

Of course it was an era in which corporal punishment of children was routine, but it's nonetheless dismaying when Agnes fervently expresses a desire for a "good birch rod" or to deliver "a few sound boxes in the ear." Still, it's clear that she is in an untenable position: she has responsibility for the children's behavior and educational progress, but is given no authority (she is continually being undermined by both parents). The parents also squabble openly in her presence, making her the unwilling witness of their bitter arguments. It's hard to know whether it's a greater relief to Agnes or to the reader when she is dismissed by the nightmarish Bloomfields and sent back to her family.

Agnes then finds a position with the Murrays. The Murray children are older but only slightly better behaved than the Bloomfields'. Charles Murray, 10, is "a pettish, cowardly, capricious, selfish little fellow, only active in doing mischief, and only clever in inventing falsehoods, not simply to hide his faults, but, in mere malicious wantonness, to bring odium upon others"; she calls him her "little tormentor." John, 11, is "rough as a young bear, boisterous, unruly, unprincipled, untaught, unteachable." The two older sisters aren't much better: Mathilda, 14, is "a veritable hoyden" who has learned "to swear like a trooper," while Rosalie, 16, is "testy and capricious" and "shallow." [Ch. VII]

As in her previous situation as a governess, Agnes finds herself in a strange in-between position. She is not considered the social equal of her employers or their children; but as a clergyman's daughter, fraternizing with the servants is beneath her. She is socially and emotionally isolated, and unable to form true friendships with either Mrs. Murray or her daughters. And in any case, she feels no affinity with the Murrays, parents or children: Mrs. Murray is superficial, far more concerned with her daughters' social position than their happiness; and the Miss Murrays are selfish (Rosalie), coarse (Mathilde) and willful (both).

Over time Agnes does, though, develop an attachment to the evangelical curate of the local parish, Edward Weston. When the beautiful, coquettish Rosalie Murray comes to suspect Agnes' regard for Weston, she determines to win his admiration for herself. "Whether she intended to torment me, or merely to amuse herself, I could not tell." [Ch XV] Even as Rosalie turns the full power of her charm on Weston, though, she is already engaged to a rich local landowner, Sir Thomas Ashby. Rosalie's marriage to Ashby will make her miserably unhappy and leave her a virtual prisoner on his estate—so desperate that she reaches out to her former governess Agnes for friendship and support. Rosalie's essential nature is unchanged, though, and her gesture comes too late.

If the Bloomfields, the Murrays and the Ashbys are cautionary tales of marriage in which love has died or never existed, Anne Brontë's next novel offers an even more alarming portrait of marital incompatibility.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

A mysterious woman, Helen Graham, and her young son come to live on a long-abandoned estate in the wilds of Yorkshire. Gilbert Markham, a young man in the neighborhood, becomes intrigued by the woman and eventually declares his love. She tells him that love is impossible between them, but asks him to remain her friend. Markham becomes increasingly jealous of Helen's intimacy with another man, Frederick Lawrence, who he thinks is his romantic rival.

When Markham finally confronts her with his suspicions, Helen gives him her diary. It reveals that Helen is not a widow, but rather is still the wife of Arthur Huntingdon. She has fled her husband to protect her son from his influence: her husband frequently drinks to excess with his dissolute friends, and is amused by encouraging his son to drink and swear in their company. Huntingdon is also openly having an affair with Lady Annabella Lowborough, the wife of one of his drinking companions.

Huntingdon's drinking and extramarital affairs are modelled in part on Branwell Brontë, Anne's brother (Huntingdon also shares Branwell's red hair). Anne had recommended Branwell for a position as a tutor to the son of the Robinsons, the family where Anne was employed as a governess. Branwell soon embarked on an affair with Lydia Robinson, the wife of his employer. Anne probably learned of the affair, and resigned her position in June 1845. When the affair was discovered by the husband a month later, Branwell was summarily fired. According to Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, Lydia Robinson kept up a clandestine correspondence with Branwell, but on the death of her husband she distanced herself from him and eventually married another man. [1]

Over the next few years the rejected Branwell turned increasingly to drink and opium, dying of alcoholism and consumption (most probably) in September 1848. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Arthur Huntingdon, too, becomes seriously ill from drink and a resulting injury, and Helen returns to him in order to try to nurse him through his crisis.

This return to her emotionally abusive spouse out of a sense of wifely duty is one of the reasons this novel may present difficulties to the modern reader. Another is presented by the man Helen has come to love, the volatile and violent Gilbert Markham. At one point Markham assaults Frederick Lawrence without provocation, smashing him in the head with the heavy metal handle of his riding whip and leaving him stunned and bleeding by the side of the road.

Helen's choice to leave an abusive marriage, live alone and support herself is truly radical. This reader, at any rate, was not eager to see her either patch up her marriage with her deliberately cruel husband or unite herself with the mercurial Markham. But these unsatisfactory alternatives are stark illustrations of the difficulties of independence for 19th-century women.

After resigning her position with the Robinsons Anne never worked as a governess again. In conversation with Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë suggested why such a position had become abhorrent to Anne:

She said that none but those who had been in the position of a governess could ever realise the dark side of 'respectable' human nature; under no great temptation to crime, but daily giving way to selfishness and ill-temper, till its conduct towards those dependent on it sometimes amounts to a tyranny of which one would rather be the victim than the inflicter. [2]

In May 1849, nearly a year after the first publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, it became clear that Anne was dying. On May 24 she set out with her sister on a journey to the seaside town of Scarborough; she died there on May 28th at the age of 29.

----

1. Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Ch. VIII
1. Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Ch. VIII

The Slits, 1977: Viv Albertine, Ari Up, Tessa Pollitt, Palmolive

The full title of Viv Albertine's memoir is Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys—"that's all you think about," she says her mother used to tell her (p. ix). Albertine was the guitarist for The Slits, an all-women (at least in their first incarnation) punk band in 1970s London. When I picked up her book I assumed the title was ironic; unfortunately, it's descriptive, although a more accurate title would be Boys Boys Boys Clothes Clothes Clothes Music, since Albertine spends more time talking about her boyfriends and her look and than about performing with her band or the creation of their songs.

Side 1

The Slits—in addition to Albertine the original lineup included vocalist Ari Up (Arianna Forster), bassist Tessa Pollitt, and drummer Palmolive (Paloma Romero)—started out playing thrashy two- and three-minute songs about shoplifting and housing estates. Their first gigs were shambolic. Here's Albertine describing their first night opening for The Clash on the White Riot tour in 1977; at this point she didn't yet know how to tune her guitar, and she counts off "one two three four" at the start of a song like Dee Dee Ramone, but doesn't yet realize that her count is supposed to set the tempo:

We all play at different speeds. Ari screams as loud as she can, I thrash at my guitar, Palmolive smashes the drums—the stage is so big and Tessa's so far away, I can't hear what she's doing. I can't differentiate between the instruments....We all play the song separately, we know we should play together, but we can't. I hope that if I remember my part and the others remember theirs, with a bit of luck we'll all end at the same time. That doesn't happen. (p. 173)

But because they don't know how they're "supposed" to play their instruments, their music at this stage is strangely compelling: here's "Newtown" from their 1977 Peel sessions EP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLotWx2jVI

As they went on they absorbed influences from ska and reggae (their first album, Cut, was produced by Dennis Bovell, whose band backed the dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson). My favorite Slits song from this era is "Typical Girls":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyXGblps64M

Some of the lyrics:

[Typical girls]
Can't decide
What clothes to wear
Are sensitive
Typical girls
Are emotional
Typical girls
Are cruel and bewitching
'She's a femme fatale' [1]
Typical girls
Stand by their man [2]
Typical girls
Are really swell
Typical girls
Learn how to act shocked
Typical girls
Don't rebel

Who invented the typical girl?
Who's bringing out the new improved model?
And there's another marketing ploy
Typical girl gets the typical boy

It's odd that the woman who wrote these lyrics, which describe how women are influenced to obsess about clothes and boys, has written a memoir largely about what clothes she wore and what boys she flirted with, hung out with, and slept with (sometimes chastely). Of course, Albertine didn't wear typical clothes and wasn't interested in typical boys, but the concern with wearing the right outfits and having the right boyfriends doesn't feel very subversive of mainstream values.

And while Albertine gets points for frankness—we hear about her first (and second) case of crabs, her first time shooting heroin, her first attempt at oral sex (with Johnny Rotten—it didn't go well), and her attraction to bad boys (including Sex Pistols' guitarist Steve Jones, Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious, Heartbreakers' guitarist Johnny Thunders, and, later in life, the actor Vincent Gallo)—the book has some odd elisions, too.

One of these comes when Albertine forces the other Slits to choose between her and Palmolive, who co-founded the group with Ari Up and was one of its main songwriters. Albertine writes that Palmolive had missed rehearsals and seemed interested in pursuing other possibilities (she later joined The Raincoats). But in Albertine's telling the decision to kick her out of the band was made in Palmolive's absence, and it feels like some of the story—even from Albertine's side—must be missing.

Also missing are mentions of many of the other women musicians in the punk scene: in the first part of the book ("Side 1"), which covers events up to the Slits' breakup in 1982, there's exactly one reference to The Raincoats, and none to Poly Styrene (X-Ray Spex), The Adverts, The Mo-dettes (formed by The Slits' first guitarist, Kate Korus, whom Albertine replaced), Delta 5, Au Pairs, or Kleenex/Liliput. Since Gina Birch of The Raincoats, for one, has mentioned how much she was inspired by The Slits, the absence of these bands from Albertine's recounting of this period feels like deliberate disregard.

There are mentions, though, of the places Albertine bought her clothes. One photo caption actually names the source of the polka-dot hair ribbon she's wearing. Style has long been crucially important to self-definition in British youth culture—Dick Hebdige's 1979 book Subculture is subtitled The Meaning of Style—and Vivienne Westwood and Malcom McLaren's clothing shop Sex was both a sartorial and cultural center for punk. But in Albertine's memoir clothes and boys receive so much attention that other significant aspects of the cultural moment feel like they're given short shrift.

Albertine was somewhat older than many of the other participants in the punk scene: when she joined The Slits in 1977 she was 22—Ari Up was 15—and when they broke up she was 27. Perhaps because of this her sense of failure and the closing off of possibilities was especially devastating: "This feels like the death of a huge part of myself…I've got nowhere to go and nothing to do…I'm burnt out and my heart is broken." (p. 250)

Side 2

The second part of the book ("Side 2") recounts the long and painful process of reinventing herself and finding renewed purpose in the band's (and punk's) aftermath. It clearly wasn't an easy process: we hear about bad dates, mean bosses, life-threatening health crises, and her increasingly rocky marriage (surprisingly traditional, in that as in other ways). But again there's the sense that, despite all the self-revelation, key pieces of information are missing.

As an example, Albertine says that the decision to renovate their house in 2007 put a strain on her relationship with her husband from which it could never recover. But much earlier there are signs that all is not well between them. In 1999, after the birth of their daughter and her treatment for cervical cancer, Albertine is weak, exhausted and depressed, and experiences flashes of anger towards her husband:

Hubby does all her feeds and changes her nappies. She's started looking to him eagerly for cuddles, she feels safer with him because he's the the provider of comfort.

I watch as the intense bond I had with my daughter slips away. I'm losing the child I fought so hard to have in my life…

The next morning I say to Hubby, 'From now on I do all Baby's feeds and changes. No matter how tired I am.'

I don't have the energy to do it but it's that or lose my daughter… (p. 298)

That Albertine sees the care of their daughter as a zero-sum game—that every time her husband feeds their child or changes her diaper it means less affection for herself—suggests very strongly to this reader that their marriage already has some serious problems. (According to a Google Books search, the phrase "our daughter" occurs four times in the book; "my daughter" occurs 24 times.)

As her marriage disintegrates, Albertine returns to writing and performing music for the first time in 25 years. (After the end of The Slits, she writes, "I can't bear to listen to music. Every time I hear a song I feel physical pain, just to hear instruments is unbearable, it reminds me of what I've lost." (p. 250)) She begins to play open mics and small gigs, and with the support of friends like Mick Jones (The Clash), Jah Wobble (Public Image Limited, John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band), Glenn Matlock (the Sex Pistols' first bass player), and Gina Birch (The Raincoats), records The Vermilion Border album, which was released in 2012. Here is "Confessions of a MILF," about the confinements and disillusionments of her marriage—sort of a "Typical Girls Part 2":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdBeYG4Ct7E

But confessions are not enough. In her memoir Albertine recounts plenty of appalling and/or mortifying incidents, but (as in the "losing my daughter" moment) her book is at times oddly tone-deaf. It reads a bit like worked-over diary entries, with occasional commentary by her present self added in italics. The present-tense approach gives a sense of immediacy, but at the cost of reflection and insight. To put it bluntly, if you weren't already a huge fan of The Slits or punk rock (and even if you were), why should you care where Albertine was buying her leggings and hair ribbons? Ultimately, C3M3B3 doesn't provide enough of an answer—or enough stories like this one:

...In a week's time the Slits are going on the White Riot tour with the Clash. I've got to learn all our songs, I can't even play guitar standing up yet. We haven't played a gig together either, so we go down to the Pindar of Wakefield pub in Islington to see if we can have a quick go on their stage. When we arrive we see that a bunch of boys are churning out some old rock music; we've got our guitars with us but we hold them behind our backs so no one suspects anything. In between songs I go up to the guitarist in the rock band and ask him if we can play a song. He says no, so I pull him off the stage and Ari, Tessa and Palmolive pull the other guys off, there's an uproar, a couple of cymbals get kicked over but Palmolive doesn't care, she doesn't use them anyway. We bash through "Let's Do the Split" before the manager and barmen pull us off. That's our warm-up gig done. (p. 172)

----

1. A reference to The Velvet Underground, "Femme Fatale," from The Velvet Underground & Nico, Verve, 1967
2. A reference to Tammy Wynette, "Stand By Your Man," Legacy, 1968 (released in the UK in 1975). The Clash's "Train in Vain" from the album London Calling (1979), with its refrain of "You didn't stand by me," was written by Mick Jones about his and Albertine's on-again, off-again relationship.

Queen (2014) won six Filmfare Awards last weekend, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress.* It's been showered with other awards and appeared on many year-end best-of lists. I found it to be a modest and likable film, especially because of the performance of Kangana Ranaut as Rani ("queen" in Hindi).

On the day before her wedding—almost literally while the henna is drying on her hands—the shy and demure Rani is abruptly dumped by her London-returned fiancé Vijay (Rajkummar Rao). Rani decides to go on her bought-and-paid-for honeymoon trip to Paris and Amsterdam by herself, and (amazingly) her parents agree to let her go. Adventures—some heartwarming, some cringe-worthy—ensue.

There's the couple having noisy sex in the next hotel room; the bewilderment and anxiety of ordering meals or negotiating taxi rides in languages she doesn't understand; being stopped without her passport by the police; wandering alone and watching the happy couples who seem to be everywhere; fighting off a purse-snatcher; going to a disco and getting drunk for the first time; having her first hangover.

Rani has the good fortune to get taken under the wing of the free-spirited Vijaylaxmi (Lisa Haydon), the hotel staffperson who (we discover) was the woman having sex next door. She's also a single parent, although childcare never seems to be an issue as she shows the wide-eyed Rani around Paris and takes her shopping and clubbing (which is where the first hangover comes from):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gtc5P5KZxA

"Hungama Ho Gaya" was originally sung by Asha Bhosle in the 1973 movie Anhonee; this remix, with an interpolated section from Simon and Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade of Winter" of all things, is by soundtrack composer Amit Trivedi with additional vocals by Arijit Singh.

When I first heard about the film, Ranaut did not seem like an obvious choice for the naïve Rani. A former model, Ranaut's major roles before this included a young office worker who is sleeping with her boss in Life in a…Metro (2007), a coked-out supermodel in Fashion (2008), a Golden Age Bollywood star in Once Upon a Time in Mumbai (2010), a loud, tough-talking gangster's moll in Tanu Weds Manu (2011), and a shape-shifting mutant with an endless series of glam outfits and hairstyles in Krrish 3 (2013).

But Ranaut gives a highly believable performance as an ordinary young woman tentatively beginning to discover her strength and resourcefulness. Thanks to the cinematography of the late Bobby Singh (who died while the film was nearing the end of shooting), neither the look of the film nor that of Ranaut herself has the high gloss of most of her previous films. In Queen, she is radically deglamorized:

Ranaut's performance is one of the things that makes Queen very much worth seeing. Another is that it's a woman-centered story in a medium which is mainly, not to say relentlessly, about the hero's journey. Queen is so woman-centered that Ranaut is in almost every frame, which is both a virtue and a shortcoming. The film is so focussed on Rani's story that some of the other characters (particularly her changeable fiancé Vijay) can seem a bit sketched in.

The movie avoids some major potential pitfalls (spoiler alerts for those who haven't seen the film): Rani does not fall in love with some dashing European man, although she does experience her first kiss. When she winds up with three (carefully multiethnic) male roommates at her Amsterdam hostel, they are protective and not predatory. And when Vijay learns about the new Rani and finds her to tell her that he'd like to get married after all, Rani realizes that she no longer feels governed by other people's expectations.

Despite director Vikas Bahl's attempts to establish an atmosphere of realness with street scenes, hand-held cameras, and ambient lighting, the movie doesn't avoid a certain amount of filmi contrivance. Would parents who don't let their daughter go to the bank or to a café without taking her little brother Chintu (Chinmaya Agrawal) along as a chaperone let her fly to Europe alone? In Amsterdam there are those improbably helpful hostel roommates, and an improbably supportive Italian restaurateur who impulsively puts Rani in charge of his street-food booth. And Queen's portrayal of Asians borders on caricature, as with her Japanese hostel roommate Taka (Jeffrey Ho), or a group of Asian tourists who start snapping pictures of Rani throwing up outside a restaurant (because Asian tourists photograph everything, of course).

But these are minor flaws in a very enjoyable movie. In its affirmation of the value of friendship and the need to find your own path, Queen delights; and Ranaut's performance deserves all the accolades it has received.

For another (even more positive) review of Queen, see Filmi Geek.

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* Where were these Filmfare voters two years ago when the similarly low-key but charming English Vinglish, which is also about a woman discovering inner resources on a foreign trip, lost out for Best Film to Barfi!? Just asking.

Halfway through the Emmy-Award-winning video of the Metropolitan Opera's 1989 production of Verdi's Aida, I turned to my partner and said, "This is why people think they dislike opera."

The problem isn't the level of artistry on display. The cast is filled with stars, who are all in excellent voice: Plácido Domingo, Aprile Millo, Dolora Zajick, Sherrill Milnes. In 1989 James Levine, the conductor, was in his 17th year as the music director of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, which is deservedly considered one of the premier orchestras in the world. So the music, which includes some of Verdi's most beloved arias and instrumental interludes, is performed at a very high level.

But opera is not just music, it is also theater; and that's where the problems come in.

The libretto. Despite its four-act length and the huge cast it requires, Aida is one of the most frequently performed operas. According to the Repertory Report, in the Metropolitan Opera's history it is second only to Puccini's La bohème in the number of performances (more than 1100; on average, one out of every 25 performances at the Met has been of Aida).

But in spite of its popularity, I've somehow managed not to see Aida until now (Elton John's version doesn't count), and I was surprised at how dramatically static much of it is. In Antonio Ghislanzoni's libretto scenes of conflict alternate with scenes that do nothing to advance the action or give us a greater insight into the characters' emotional dilemmas.

In the first scene, we're introduced to the central love triangle, in which the Egyptian warrior Radamès (Domingo), who is loved by the Egyptian princess Amneris (Zajick), instead loves the captive Ethiopian princess Aida (Millo). We also learn that an Ethiopian army has invaded Egypt, and that Aida is torn between her love for Radamès and her loyalty to her country and to her father, the Ethiopian king Amonasro (Milnes). But in the scene that immediately follows these urgent revelations, Radames is slowly—very slowly—girded and armed for battle at the Temple of "Vulcan" (the Egyptian god Ptah). This scene brings everything to a screeching halt.

This same pattern is followed in the next act. After a key confrontation between Aida and Amneris, in which Amneris falsely tells Aida that Radamès has been killed in order to learn her true feelings about him, the next scene is the famous triumphal march, which features a seemingly endless parade of supernumeraries striding across the stage in a victory celebration that goes on, and on.

Aida was commissioned for the opening of the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo in 1871, so perhaps that's one explanation for its emphasis on ceremony. But ceremony does not make for compelling drama. For some, this is the sort of thing that makes grand opera grand, but in my view Verdi could easily have cut an act's worth of inaction from Aida. Finally in Acts III and IV the story is moved forward: Radamès decides to flee with Aida and Amonasro, only to have their plans overheard by Amneris—but the eruption of passion and conflict takes too long to arrive.

The production. Sonja Frisell's production has been hugely popular at the Met: it has been in the repertory since 1988, and is still being used (it was most recently revived this very season). It is based on elements of the original 1871 premieres in Cairo and Italy, as well as other 19th-century productions. In its echoes of those productions, whose costumes and sets were based on then-recently discovered ancient Egyptian artifacts, ruins, and wall paintings, the Met's version is striving for some sort of authenticity (whatever that might mean in the context of opera, the most artificial of art forms). But whatever the intention, too often the result is incongruous. Domingo, a handsome and elegant man, is made to look distinctly inelegant in Dada Saligeri's costumes:

The costumes do no favors for Dolora Zajick, either; her lapis peacock headdress looks more like a turquoise turkey:

These designs were evidently based on those for early productions of Aida:

Knowing this, though, doesn't make them less distracting.

Another incongruity: note the weathered, half-buried ruins:

The opera is set at a time when the Old Kingdom at the height of its power, and so it makes no sense for the characters to be wandering among ruins. Perhaps the ruins are mean to suggest the lesson of Shelley's Ozymandias about the ultimate fate of all empires, or perhaps (like the costumes?) they are meant to provide a frame of the 19th-century archaeological fascination with Egypt. But since everything else in the production seems to be functioning on a literal rather than symbolic level, having the characters stepping around ruins on Gianni Quaranta's sets just looks anachronistic.

And the less said about Rodney Griffin's choreography for the dance interludes, the better:

But unflattering costumes, anachronistic sets and awkward choreography could be overlooked. There is something about this production can't be overlooked, though:

Millo and Milnes, Ethiopian characters portrayed by white singers, perform in brownface.

Race is an important issue in Aida: the love of Radamès and Aida crosses not only boundaries of national enmity, but of ethnicity. If this is something you want to emphasize in your production, my suggestion would be to hire African-American singers. If you want a particular singer in a role regardless of the identity of the character, then I'd suggest color-blind casting. At the Met and elsewhere the great African-American soprano Leontyne Price portrayed Cio-Cio San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Liu in Puccini's Turandot, and Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. It amazes me that a major cultural institution in the late 20th century would think that putting white singers in brownface was an acceptable practice.

As I say, if Verdian grand opera is to your taste, the musical qualities of this performance are outstanding. But I think in the future if we're ever tempted to put this Aida on again, we'll leave the picture off.

The future flashed before my eyes in all its pre-ordained banality. Embarrassment, at first, to the exclusion of all other feelings. But embarrassment curled at the edges with a weariness, the sort that comes over you when you are set on a track by something outside your control, and which, although it is not your experience, is so known in all its cultural forms that you could unscrew the cap of the pen in your hand and jot down in the notebook on your lap every single thing that will happen and everything that will be felt for the foreseeable future. Including the surprises....I try but I can’t think of a single aspect of having cancer, start to finish, that isn’t an act in a pantomime in which my participation is guaranteed however I believe I choose to play each scene.

—Jenny Diski: "A diagnosis" (London Review of Books, 11 September 2014)

Jenny Diski is writing a series of articles in the LRB chronicling her experience of cancer, or, as she puts it in the first article in the series linked above, "another fucking cancer diary." Her articles have followed two threads: the first is about her disease—the medical system's depersonalizing and clinical (in both senses) treatment of cancer patients, together with the physical and emotional effects of her radiation therapy. The second thread is an extended reflection on her adolescence and young adulthood, when after a suicide attempt and her committal to a psychiatric hospital she was taken in by a woman she'd never met, a former classmate's mother: the writer Doris Lessing. Lessing, who died in 2013, fictionalized their relationship in two novels, Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971) and Memoirs of a Survivor (1973).

Diski is writing "sidebars" to her LRB series on her blog, This and That Continued. The latest news is not good: she has radiation burns from her cancer treatments, and those treatments have also inflamed her pre-existing "mild pulmonary fibrosis," making breathing and movement difficult. And she fell recently and broke her wrist, which is causing her acute pain and making it difficult to type. She writes,

What started out as [a prognosis of] 2-3 years if I had the treatment is now an unknown quantity. I’m a miserablist, so it’s not surprising I’m feeling that death is rather imminent….So I’m not cheery or brave or serene at the moment….it hasn’t been a good week, and I’m fucking fed-up. And sorry for myself. What, should I keep a stiff upper lip?

—"A sidebar: How's it going?"This and That Continued, 19 Feb 2015

The same day that Diski posted this sidebar on her blog, another announcement was made in an even more public forum:

A month ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.

—Oliver Sacks: "My own life: Oliver Sacks on learning he has terminal cancer,"New York Times, 19 February 2015

Sacks goes on to anatomize his feelings on learning this news: a sense of serenity, of clarity, of focussing on the essential and detaching from daily cares and worries about the future. He writes,

This does not mean I am finished with life.

On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

Of course, Diski's and Sacks' disparate perspectives on their impending deaths reflect their basic dispositions. Diski is skeptical, critical (of the system in which she finds herself unwillingly embedded, and of herself), and pessimistic; Sacks is learned (the title of his piece is taken from the philosopher David Hume's brief autobiography, written when he discovered that he was dying), observant, and, if not optimistic about the ultimate outcome, at least positive in his approach (he repeatedly uses words such as "gratitude" and "privilege"). The prospect of imminent death seems to expose our truest self.

Nonetheless, I can't help noting that their circumstances are very different. Sacks is 81, an age when it seems natural to come to terms with your own mortality. Diski is in her sixties, more than two decades younger than the most common age of death for British women. Sacks reports being virtually pain-free, while Diski is experiencing unremitting pain and frightening spells where she struggles to breathe. I think in her situation I, too, would have difficulty maintaining equanimity and detachment.

This page includes links to Diski's entire series so far, some of which require a subscription to the LRB (well worth the cost, which is under $2 per issue). Sacks reports that he has completed an autobiography which will be published in the spring. Our sad knowledge is that there will come a time, all too soon, when their voices will fall silent.

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For more posts on Jenny Diski, see:

The Sixties: A personal history of a time of sweeping cultural, social and economic changes.

Making a Costume Drama Out of a Crisis: Downton Abbey, Upstairs, Downstairs, and other "Vicwardian" costume dramas.

For another post on Oliver Sacks, see:

Music As A Drug: Musicophilia: On "the overwhelming and at times helpless sensitivity of our brains to music."

Victorian novels have an entirely undeserved reputation for gentility; really, they are all about money and sex.

Think of Trollope's Palliser novels, in which (to take one of many examples) Phineas Finn must marry a wealthy, socially-connected woman in order to realize his political ambitions. Or Vanity Fair, in which Becky Sharp becomes the mistress of the Marquis of Steyne in exchange for the advancement of her husband's career. Or Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, in which Squire Hamley is staunchly opposed to his son's marrying either of the daughters of his family doctor—an old friend but a social inferior. Daringly for its time, George Gissing's New Grub Street (1891), set in the literary world of London, takes the connection between money and sex as its explicit subject.

New Grub Street (1891)

Grubstreet, according to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, was a lane in London "much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems"—literary work produced for hire. So "grubstreet" became a widely used synonym for hackwork. (Johnson, of course, was also recorded by Boswell as saying that "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.") And by the late 19th century, a hundred years after Johnson's death, mass literacy had vastly expanded the market for literary labor.

New Grub Street follows the increasingly divergent fates of two characters who are toiling in the mines of literature. Jasper Milvain has an acute sense of what the marketplace values, and he uses that judgment to guide his conduct in every arena. His easy facility with words allows him to produce work that he knows will sell, curry favor in the right quarters, and make his reputation, and he cultivates professional and personal relationships that will be instrumental in helping him advance. The other main character, Edwin Reardon, writes from an inspiration which does not often come, acts on his (often misguidedly generous) impulses, and forms friendships based on intellectual affinity. Poor Edwin.

Both men take up with lovers who are temperamentally and morally unsuited to them. In a rash moment the shallow Milvain commits himself to marry the smart, sincere, and deeply-feeling Marian Yule. Reardon, temporarily riding high on a minor literary success, unwisely marries Marian's beautiful cousin, Amy Yule. Amy is attracted to Edwin because he seems to be a rising new author, but she's bitterly disappointed when he proves incapable of producing the kind of writing that will provide her with social and material success.

Milvain is quite explicit about the conscious alignment of his sexual and monetary interests. As he explains to his friend Whelpdale:

'I haven't much faith in marrying for love, as you know. What's more, I believe it's the very rarest thing for people to be in love with each other….As a rule, marriage is the result of a mild preference, encouraged by circumstances, and deliberately heightened into strong sexual feeling. You, of all men, know well enough that the same kind of feeling could be produced for almost any woman who wasn't repulsive…A preference of this kind can be heightened into emotion, if one chooses…[but] I am far more likely to marry some woman for whom I have no preference, but who can serve me materially.' (Chapter XXII)

While Milvain subordinates his sexual feelings to his calculations of material advantage, Reardon has allowed his sexual desire for Amy to lead him into a marriage whose incompatibility becomes increasingly stark as continued literary success proves ever more elusive. Reardon begins but then abandons several different novels, finally persevering, at Amy's urging and to his growing self-disgust, with a book that he knows is mediocre. Gissing is unsparing about the devastatingly corrosive effect that the lack of money can have on emotional attachment and sexual desire. As Reardon declares to his friend Biffen:

'I am quite free from sexual bias. I can see that Amy was not my fit intellectual companion, and all emotion at the thought of her has gone from me. The word "love" is a weariness to me...The best moments of life are those when we contemplate beauty in the purely artistic spirit...utterly remote from the temptations and harassings of sexual emotion. What we call love is mere turmoil. Who wouldn't release himself from it for ever, if the possibility offered?' (Chapter XVII)

For the character of Reardon, Gissing drew on his own experiences of poverty and literary struggle. Between late 1889 and late 1890 Gissing worked fitfully on at least seven projects, all of which turned out to be abortive. Finally, he had a breakthrough, and over nine weeks during the fall of 1890 wrote New Grub Street, which features agonizingly vivid descriptions of Reardon's inability to write. Ironically, it was by becoming a "chronicler of vulgarity, squalor and failure" (George Orwell's words) that Gissing finally achieved moderate success. He was then in his mid-thirties; he died in 1903, at the age of 46, after having suffered ill-health for most of the final decade of his life.

In its candidness about the connection between money and desire, New Grub Street was daring in its day; it remains compelling in ours.

Zanjeer (Chains, 1973) is not the kind of film my partner and I normally seek out, and a glance at the blood, guns, knives, and angry grimaces on the poster will tell you why. But Zanjeer holds such a significant place in Hindi cinema that we thought it was worth a look.

Ranjit (M. Rajan) is involved in the illicit trade in fake medicines. When he emerges from prison to discover that his daughter has died due to an injection of the very product he's been peddling, though, he decides that he wants out of the business. But Ranjit's bosses aren't willing to let him go—he knows too much about their operation—and they send a hit man to eliminate him. Ranjit's son Vijay witnesses the brutal murder of his parents by a man wearing a chain bracelet with a white horse symbol:

Orphaned, Vijay is taken in and raised by the upright Police Inspector Singh (Iftekhar). Twenty years later, Vijay has grown into Amitabh Bachchan, an honest cop in a world full of corruption and crime.

His battle against evil is a lonely and dangerous one. Once the local gang boss Teja (Ajit)—who not only distributes adulterated medicines, but also adulterated booze—discovers that Vijay isn't deceived by respectable appearances and can't be bought, he frames him to make it look as though he is taking a bribe. The honest and compassionate Vijay is sent to prison for corruption.

But this just makes Vijay more determined to bring down those who sent him there. Months later, when he is released, he resumes his crusade. Teja, angry that Vijay hasn't gotten the message, orders him to be savagely beaten and left for dead. But Teja and his gang come to regret that they didn't finish the job...

Vijay does have a few allies in his battle against Teja's vast criminal enterprise. There is De Silva (Om Prakash), whose sons died after being poisoned by Teja's "whiskey." De Silva seems like a harmless drunk, and so he is ignored by the gang. But since they don't pay him any attention he is able to see and hear all about the gang's plans, and he telephones Vijay with information about their next moves.

Mala (Jaya Bhaduri) is an itinerant knife-sharpener. She is a prime witness when one of the gang's liquor trucks speeds through a checkpoint and plows into a group of schoolkids. Reluctantly, Jaya agrees to identify the driver; murderously pursued by the gang, she seeks shelter with Vijay. He takes her to the home of his step-brother and wife for safekeeping. But as Vijay and Mala are thrown into each others' company, tender feelings begin to develop between them...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI76QsObboU

"Deewane hain" (We crazy ones) was composed by Kalyanji-Anandji, with lyrics by Gulshan Bawra, and sung by Mohmd. Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar.

Just remember that (to paraphrase Chekhov) if in the first act a knife is sharpened, in the third act it must wind up in someone's back—hurled there by Mala.

Vijay's other ally is Sher Khan (Pran). Sher Khan ran a gambling den that was broken up by Vijay. After the two have a brutal but honorable bare-knuckle fight that leaves them both dazed, they become fast friends. Sher Khan closes his establishment, becomes an honest auto mechanic and Vijay's two-fisted backup.

This is the first film that made us really notice Pran, who (both before Zanjeer and after) mainly played villains. We had seen him (without giving him special attention) in other classic films: Ram aur Shyam (1967), Bobby (1973), Don (1978). But Sher Khan is so memorable because he is such a delightful and strongly positive character: tough, fearless, and loyal, as he demonstrates in "Yaari Hai Imaan Mera" (Friendship is my honor, friends are my life; Pran's playback singer is Manna Dey):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=477ktukCn2k

With friends like these can Vijay's ultimate discovery of the identity of his parents' murderer, and his victory over Teja and his gang, ever be in doubt?

Zanjeer has a key place in Amitabh's career because he had not previously had a great deal of success as a leading man. It also has a key place in the career of the heroine, Jaya Bhaduri. At the time she was a more successful actor than he was; she had had several hits and had already won a Filmfare Award. It was something of a risk for her to appear with him, but (already in love with him, thanks to their work together on Bansi Birju the year before) she didn't hesitate. During the shooting of Zanjeer the couple reportedly decided to marry if the film was a hit. It was, and they married less than a month after its release. Ironically, the success of Zanjeer and the couple's subsequent marriage mark the beginning of the decline in Jaya's film career: a young wife and mother, she was soon displaced as a romantic heroine by other, unmarried actresses.

Zanjeer was also the first Salim Khan-Javed Akhtar scripted film in which Amitabh appeared. Salim-Javed went on to write the Amitabh-starring superhits Sholay (Flames, 1975), Deewar (Wall, 1975), Trishul (Trident, 1978), and Don (1978), among others. Although these Salim-Javed films are all very distinct, in each Amitabh plays a working-class man who is forced to respond—usually with violence— to the world's crushing injustice. The names of his characters? Vijay (Zanjeer), Jai (Sholay), Vijay (Deewar), Vijay (Trishul), and Vijay (Don).

Zanjeer is the film that made Amitabh Bachchan a superstar, and which defined the Angry Young Man role he would play for much of the next decade. And while it's impossible for us to watch this film without hindsight, it's clear that this kind of role became Amitabh's trademark because of his powerful charisma and fierce conviction—qualities that he continues to bring to his roles more than four decades later.

This is not a list of the "best" or the "most essential" classical music recordings. There are already many of those lists available, and perhaps with a few exceptions the selections that follow probably don't appear on most of them. Instead, this is a list of 10 recordings that caught me by surprise in some way, and which have remained surprising, and deeply rewarding, each time I have encountered them since—in some cases, for more than two decades. If you don't already know these recordings, I hope they offer you a similar sense of discovery.

1. Guillaume Machaut: Messe de Notre Dame. Ensemble Organum, Marcel Pérès, director.

Ensemble Organum incorporates vocal embellishments from the Byzantine church into their renditions of Western medieval polyphony. Whether or not this approach is "authentic," its dark, mysterious quality suggests the awe with which our ancestors must have encountered the sacred. "Gloria," from the Notre Dame Mass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U7mPwGx7Ls

2. Nicolas Gombert: Music from the Court of Charles V. Huelgas Ensemble, Paul Van Nevel, director.

Gombert's emphasis on low voices and dark timbres is hauntingly realized by the Huelgas Ensemble. In "Regina coeli," a hymn to the Virgin Mary, Gombert musically foregrounds her sorrow and pain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJZAZ2c2xjU

3. Various composers: The voice of emotion. Montserrat Figueras; Hesperion XX/La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Jordi Savall, director.

As I wrote in my post on Montserrat Figueras on her untimely death in 2011, "Once heard, Montserrat Figueras' voice could never be forgotten. It was rich and dark-hued, and at the same time could suggest fragility and suppressed tears." Tomas Luis de Victoria, "Salve, Regina":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7EFjD6SKAE

4. Handel: Opera duets. Sandrine Piau, Sara Mingardo; Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini, director.

The brightness of Sandrine Piau's soprano contrasts beautifully with Sara Mingardo's contralto in these lovely duets from Handel operas. Both Piau (Handel, Mozart) and Mingardo (Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Handel) also have wonderful solo aria recordings. "Caro, dolce, amico amplesso" from Poro, Re dell'Indie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAOSgjuaUP8

5. Mozart, Haydn, Gluck: Opera Arias. Anne Sofie von Otter, The English Concert, Trevor Pinnock, director.

I first encountered Anne Sofie von Otter singing "He was despised" in Trevor Pinnock's recording of Handel's Messiah. I was to discover that she imbues everything she sings with similarly deep feeling, as in "Oh, del mio dolce ardor" from Gluck's opera Paride e Elena (the aria ends at 3:15, although the clip continues silently for another minute or so).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jv0sq3isdc

6. Haydn: Le sette ultime parole del nostro Redentore in croce, Quatuor Mosaïques.

The inwardness of Haydn's meditation on the last seven utterances of Christ on the cross is superbly matched by the introspective playing of the Quatuor Mosaïques. "Introduzione: Maestoso ed adagio" ends around 6:13, but you may find yourself unable to stop listening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcmF2z_Z3_c

7. Richard Strauss: Vier Letzte Lieder. Gundula Janowitz; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, conductor.

Strauss wrote these final songs as he faced death. Janowitz's pure, soaring soprano expresses the sense of serene acceptance that suffuses "Im Abendrot":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YD_8E4ZVxY

8. Reynaldo Hahn: La Belle Époque. Susan Graham; Roger Vignoles.

As I wrote in my earlier post on La Belle Epoque, "'Exquisite' is a word often applied to Hahn's music, perhaps derived from his delicate treatment of mood in 'L'heure exquise' (The exquisite moment); it's an adjective that can certainly be applied to the performances of Graham and her pianist Roger Vignoles on this recording.""À Cloris":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hblAmLvg55g

9. Federico Mompou: Música Callada. Herbert Henck.

As I wrote in my post on Música Callada, these pieces "create an atmosphere of stillness and inwardness." Mompou himself playing the first piece from Book 1, marked angelico:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-IED0XuihE

10. Shostakovich, Quartet No. 15; Sofia Gubaidulina, Rejoice! Gidon Kremer, Daniel Phillips, Kim Kashkashian, Yo-Yo Ma.

Haydn's Seven Last Words consists of eight consecutive slow movements; Shostakovich's Quartet No. 15, one of his last works, is composed of six consecutive adagios. In the opening movement, "Elegie" (performed here by the Rubio Quartet), the sense of grief is palpable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgYFbBBk7vI

In my post about 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, I wrote that Eduardo Galeano's Memoria del Fuego trilogy (1982-86; translated as Memory of Fire by Cedric Belfrage, Pantheon, 1985-1988) is "a history of the Americas from before Columbus to the present day, told through a series of vignettes full of outrage, humor, and sadness. Galeano employs the skill of a historian, the techniques of a journalist, and the sensibility of a poet." In his later books Galeano continued use the medium of the miniature, the vignette, to illustrate large truths about historical and contemporary injustice, and also about the resilience, courage, and deep humanity of his subjects: the marginalized, the struggling, and those who, despite everything, remain hopeful.

Eduardo Galeano died on April 13, 2015. Exactly 24 years earlier, on April 13, 1991, I joined an audience of 500 others at a sold-out Victoria Theater in San Francisco's Mission District to hear Galeano read from what was then his latest book, El libro de los abrazos (1989; translated as The Book of Embraces by Cedric Belfrage with Mark Schafer, W. W. Norton, 1991). It was an extraordinary event; he was greeted like a hero by the majority Spanish-speaking audience. In reading from El libro de los abrazos, Galeano alternated Spanish and English, but read different passages in each language. Amazingly, even though my Spanish is very limited, I understood him no matter which language he was speaking—mainly because of Belfrage's faithful and fluent translation, which I had read before the event.

After the reading, Galeano signed books, but in a way that was unlike any other author I'd ever seen. Instead of sitting behind a table stacked with books like so much product, he stood by himself onstage. As each person approached him, he engaged them in conversation, often ending in an embrace, and only then would ask how they wanted their book inscribed. Several hundred people lined up to meet him. He had already greeted and spoken with probably 40 or 50 people before my turn came, and yet he did not seem fatigued. From my few moments with him, I remember primarily a sense of how attentively he listened and took in what I was saying, and how warmly he responded. The copy of The Book of Embraces I brought to that reading is one of the most treasured books in my library.

The Function of Art/1
Diego had never seen the sea. His father, Santiago Kovadloff, took him to discover it.
They went south.
The ocean lay beyond high sand dunes, waiting.
When the child and his father finally reached the dunes after much walking, the ocean exploded before their eyes.
And so immense was the sea and its sparkle that the child was struck dumb by the beauty of it.
And when he finally managed to speak, stuttering, he asked his father:
"Help me to see!"
—The Book of Embraces, p. 17

Eduardo Galeano's beautiful, sad and inspiring works help us to see.

Postscript: I can't end this post without commenting on something included in Galeano's New York Times obituary. After mentioning his book Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina (1971; translated as Open Veins of Latin America by Cedric Belfrage, Monthly Review Press, 1973), the journalist Simon Romero writes, "But Mr. Galeano stunned many of his supporters on the left as well as his critics on the right when he disavowed the book, saying that it was poorly written and that his views of the human condition had grown more complex." This follows a previous New York Times article by Larry Rohmer, "Author Changes His Mind on ’70s Manifesto: Eduardo Galeano Disavows His Book ‘The Open Veins’"; the article also uses the word "renounce."

Open Veins of Latin America opens with a section entitled "Mankind's Poverty as a Consequence of the Wealth of the Land," and in its original version its final chapter was entitled "The Contemporary Structure of Plunder." In his introduction, Galeano wrote,

...our region still works as a menial. It continues to exist at the service of others' needs, as a source and reserve of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and foods destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them...Latin America is the region of open veins.

For those who see history as a competition, Latin America's backwardness and poverty are merely the result of its failure. We lost; others won. But the winners happen to have won thanks to our losing: the history of Latin America's underdevelopment is, as someone has said, an integral part of the history of world capitalism's development. Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others—the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.

—Open Veins of Latin America, pp. 11-12

So talk of "disavowal" seems to imply that Galeano no longer held these views. But this is what Galeano actually said during a group interview at the 2nd Biennial of Books and Reading in Brasilia on April 11, 2014, as reported by Cynara Menezes:

"...after so many years, I don't feel as attached to that book as when I wrote it. Time has passed, I started to try other things, to get closer to human reality in general and political economy in particular—for Open Veins tried to be a book of political economy though I didn't have necessary training. I don't regret having written it, but I've gone beyond that stage. I wouldn't be able to read that book again—I would keel over. For me, that prose of the traditional left is too heavy, and my body can't take it. I would have to be admitted to an emergency room. The question would be: 'Got any open bed?'" Laughter.

It's clear that Galeano is distancing himself from the style of the book, and its abstraction: its focus on large-scale economic forces, rather than the individual stories which show the impact of those forces on "human reality" (not a generalized "human condition"). In a later e-mail exchange with Jorge Majfud, Galeano repudiated those who seized on his remarks as an indication that he had undergone a political conversion:

"The book, written ages ago, is still alive and kicking. I am simply honest enough to admit that at this point in my life the old writing style seems rather stodgy, and that it's hard for me to recognize myself in it since I now prefer to be increasingly brief and untrammeled...The other voices that have been raised against me and against The Open Veins of Latin America are seriously ill with bad faith."

This exchange was posted in November 2014. For Simon Romero and his New York Times editors to repeat the distortion that Galeano disavowed Open Veins indeed shows bad faith, or worse.

The final words should be Galeano's:

On his deathbed, the man of the vineyards spoke into Marcela's ear. Before dying, he revealed his secret:
"The grape," he whispered, "is made of wine."
Marcela Pérez-Silva told me this, and I thought: if the grape is made of wine, then perhaps we are the words that tell us who we are.
—The Book of Embraces, p. 18

Anuradha

"I am not like you": Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë

"I scorn your idea of love": Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

"Hunger, rebellion, and rage": Charlotte Bronte's Villette

Tere Mere Sapne

Prince, composer, murderer, madman: Carlo Gesualdo

Bridging Austen and Brontë: Elizabeth Gaskell

Favorites of 2014: Bollywood and Hollywood

Favorites of 2014: Opera, music and dance

Favorites of 2014: Books

Premarital sex and Shuddh Desi Romance

The other Brontë sister: Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Clothes, music, boys: Viv Albertine

Queen

"This is why people think they dislike opera": Verdi's Aida

Suggested reading: Jenny Diski and Oliver Sacks

Money and sex: New Grub Street

Amitabh's breakthrough: Zanjeer

Ten recordings you may not know—but should

In memory of Eduardo Galeano