Over the past two years, at intervals of several months, I have read Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and Dracula. I read Dracula most recently, and I thought that the time was right to write a review – either on Dracula itself or one of the other books that preceded it. But this felt dissatisfying, somehow.
Then I noticed that these books, based on the year they were published (1818, 1847, 1847, 1861, 1897), represent a fairly neat eighty years of 19th century English literature. This realization, in turn, prompted me to reflect more broadly on 19th century English literature and the place these five titles hold therein. I began to think about what these books had in common. What themes and ideas, if any, bound them together? Certainly, I enjoyed them all immensely, and I still look back fondly on the peculiar feelings each left me.
As these thoughts flew around my head, submerged, and reappeared, I became convinced that something about these books set them apart from all others I have ever read. Now, even though they are separated by time and genre, I see them all as a singular collection. They share certain features of brilliance.
The most immediately obvious is language. Here are five examples of daring, spectacular English. Without excessive recourse to metaphor and simile everything is described or crafted with unmatched power. Each author rides language at full gallop, making use of all its subtleties and implications. Just listen to this sentence from Jane Eyre:
I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
My god. I truly believe there is a magic in words like these that few authors today can replicate.
Either directly or through stylistic evolution all share that quintessential romantic literary trait: emotion. The characters in these books are constantly animated by one seismic force or another. Love, revenge, joy, greed, fear, melancholy, passion, sadness. Every conversation or personal moment is driven and directed by one or more of these feelings, and as a result the words come alive with a visceral intensity few other novels are able to match. It is cathartic to see the full range of human emotion on display. Some readers might not enjoy the cataclysmic, hand-wrenching monologues of pain these books often deliver. Such sentimentality might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But I think these books lend an appreciation for the human experience. They help purge our superficiality in an age where zoom and social media keep everyone at a screen’s distance. It is good to walk through a storm, from time to time.
Lastly, in something very near to my heart, all these books treat nature as the sublime source of awe and peace. Characters always remark on the beauty and majesty of the world around them. They run to the mountains or find bliss by a stream. A spring wood temporarily lifts away one’s troubles. These five authors put into words the majesty of nature better than most. They capture its elusive beauties with all the poetic fancy of a Wordsworth, but they also seem to understand its deeper significance. In all these books, nature is more than a passive setting for human events – it imbues those events with meaning. Nature not only frames things, it defines them, holds them in place; much like Cathy’s “eternal rocks beneath.”
So, consider this a brief introduction for my first serial of articles. Now that I have introduced my love of this period in literature and for these five books specifically, I will review each in turn over the course of this summer, starting with Dracula.
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