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An illuminating exploration of how seven of the greatest English novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesFrankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Between the Actsportray the essential experiences of life.
For Edward Mendelsona professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia Universitythese classic novels tell life stories that are valuable to readers who are thinking about the course of their own lives. Looking beyond theories to the individual intentions of the authors and taking into consideration their lives and times, Mendelson examines the sometimes contradictory ways in which the novels portray such major passages of life as love, marriage, and parenthood. In Frankensteins story of a new life, we see a searing representation of emotional neglect. In Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre the transition from childhood to adulthood is portrayed in vastly different ways even though the sisters who wrote the books shared the same isolated life. In Mrs. Dalloway we see an ideal and almost impossible adult love. Mendelson leads us to a fresh and fascinating new understanding of each of the seven novels, reminding usin the most captivating waywhy they matter.
The Things That Matter is a book that will delight all passionate readers.
Review:
"Columbia professor Mendelson's interlocking essays on the subtexts of seven great works of fiction (all by women) are lucidly expressed, insightful and often provocative. However, in arguing that one can learn the essentials of human existence from close readings of Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch and three Virginia Woolf works, he stretches Freudian imagination. In the chapter 'Birth,' for example, Mendelson demonstrates that Frankenstein is pervaded by fears of abandonment and death. Readers must invoke the subconscious to accept that these fears are common to human beings contemplating or existing in that earliest stage of life. What Mendelson does accomplish, and brilliantly, is to analyze these novels as extraordinary representatives of changes in moral and cultural mores in the 19th and 20th centuries. He offers a fascinating glimpse into the hidden visionary narrative in Wuthering Heights; convincingly finds that Middlemarch ('Marriage') and other of George Eliot's novels 'expound more knowledge than any other body of fiction in English, and more wisdom than most'; and credits Woolf with groundbreaking insights into human emotions. As literary guides to these seven books, Mendelson's essays offer significant intellectual pleasure. (Aug. s15)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"'This book is about life as it is interpreted by books,' Edward Mendelson begins. He takes as his subjects Birth, Childhood, Growth, Marriage, Love, Parenthood and (instead of Death) the Future. The novels he uses to explicate his thoughts are Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein,' Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights,' Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre,' George Eliot's 'Middlemarch,' and 'Mrs. Dalloway,' 'To the... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Lighthouse' and 'Between the Acts,' all by Virginia Woolf. He chooses only novels written by women because 'the reason that women writers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were more likely than men to write about the emotional depths of personal life is that they were more likely to be treated impersonally, to be stereotyped as predictable members of a category, rather than recognized as unique human beings. A woman writer therefore had a greater motivation to defend the values of a personal life against the generalizing effect of stereotyping ... by insisting that those values matter to everyone and that everyone experiences them uniquely.' Obviously, this book isn't for everyone. It certainly helps to have read the books in question, and fairly recently. Novels, and the worlds they evoke, seem to recede even faster than regular time. Prose styles change; fashions and customs change. In the academic world, dead white women have become almost as passe as dead white men. But those who have read these books and been moved by them — or not — will find this collection thought-provoking, imaginative, perfect to have a conversation about — if they can find someone with whom to have the conversation. The best of these essays is the one on 'Middlemarch,' used here to explore Marriage, and the highest compliment I can pay Mendelson, an English professor at Columbia University, is that he ignited in me a lively desire to read that novel once again. Most readers will remember that in 'Middlemarch,' the lively Dorothea, a vibrant young woman who, as a 19th-century female, is cut off from higher formal education, impulsively seeks to obtain education-by-osmosis by marrying the elderly and very scholarly Mr. Casaubon. The marriage is a dreadful disappointment since Mr. Casaubon is passionless, self-absorbed, locked in a dead-end scholarly project and almost totally out of touch with the world of the senses — 'real life,' if you will. (In the world of graduate schools past, this resonated with almost everyone since every month or so, scrupulous or unscrupulous professors who possessed nothing but knowledge used it to co-opt toothsome assistants, girlfriends or wives.) But what Mendelson addresses primarily here is the question of whether rational knowledge correlates in any way with moral knowledge. (My first thought was, 'It better! I've sat through God knows how many avant-garde plays, and tried to grasp Noam Chomsky's theory of transformational syntax, and I haven't been improved?') Dorothea yearns to be both learned and good. She craves love, knowledge and equality. She may go about this quest in a misguided fashion, but she is rewarded by these attributes in the end. The essays on the Bronte sisters are excellent, distinguishing Emily, the visionary who valorized childhood, from Charlotte, who — like George Eliot — craved an adult relationship (both in fiction and life) that promised parity and mutual respect. But these essays beg for actual conversation — about life, about books. 'Mendelson says Heathcliff is the only stormy, Byronic hero in English literature who doesn't have a sex drive,' I told my daughter as we were driving to a baby shower. 'That's why women love him,' she answered cryptically, and she wasn't talking about Mendelson. The clunker here is the piece on 'Frankenstein,' which, if nothing else, proves that Mendelson really is a guy. In an essay about childbirth — which manages to say little more than parents should be nice to their kids — he discusses the only novel in which a man gives birth. (Which in turn raises the question: Why haven't women written much more about childbirth and the first few years of childhood? Too afraid? Too afflicted with good manners? Just haven't got around to it yet?) The three Woolf novels, especially in this context, make for creepy — if beautiful — reading. Woolf, who also got much of her education by osmosis (hanging out with the leading intellectuals of her time), can be clearly seen — although Mendelson doesn't explicitly mention it — engaging in magical, circular thinking: Mrs. Dalloway and (in 'To the Lighthouse') Mrs. Ramsey are beings possessed by mythical power. They're amazing even though they're not great beauties or terribly smart or even always very nice. They're amazing because Woolf says they are. We're expected to take her word for it. And why, in the literary explication of 'Between the Acts,' is Woolf's prose style described as 'playful' when we know that she was suicidal at the time and beginning another bout of mental illness? Mendelson mentions that illness in only one sentence and not in the context of the work itself. What's he getting at? I'd like to know. I'd like to talk about it. With a friend. Someone who reads books." Reviewed by Carolyn See, who may be reached at www.carolynsee.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Synopsis:
For Edward Mendelson--"Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University--"these seven classic novels tell life stories that are valuable to readers thinking about the course of their own lives. Looking beyond theories to the individual intentions of the authors, and taking into consideration their lives and times, Mendelson examines the sometimes contradictory ways in which the novels portray such major passages of life as love, marriage, and parenthood. In
Edward Mendelson is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of W. H. Audens estate and the editor of Audens complete works. Among his previous books are Early Auden, Later Auden, and editions of novels by Anthony Trollope, George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, and Arnold Bennett. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Columbia professor Mendelson's interlocking essays on the subtexts of seven great works of fiction (all by women) are lucidly expressed, insightful and often provocative. However, in arguing that one can learn the essentials of human existence from close readings of Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch and three Virginia Woolf works, he stretches Freudian imagination. In the chapter 'Birth,' for example, Mendelson demonstrates that Frankenstein is pervaded by fears of abandonment and death. Readers must invoke the subconscious to accept that these fears are common to human beings contemplating or existing in that earliest stage of life. What Mendelson does accomplish, and brilliantly, is to analyze these novels as extraordinary representatives of changes in moral and cultural mores in the 19th and 20th centuries. He offers a fascinating glimpse into the hidden visionary narrative in Wuthering Heights; convincingly finds that Middlemarch ('Marriage') and other of George Eliot's novels 'expound more knowledge than any other body of fiction in English, and more wisdom than most'; and credits Woolf with groundbreaking insights into human emotions. As literary guides to these seven books, Mendelson's essays offer significant intellectual pleasure. (Aug. s15)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
For Edward Mendelson--"Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University--"these seven classic novels tell life stories that are valuable to readers thinking about the course of their own lives. Looking beyond theories to the individual intentions of the authors, and taking into consideration their lives and times, Mendelson examines the sometimes contradictory ways in which the novels portray such major passages of life as love, marriage, and parenthood. In
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