The Victorian London from Sketches by Boz: The Amusements

What interested me mostly of Sketches by Boz is that it’s the earliest work of Charles Dickens. After reading three of his books: Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and A Tale of Two Cities—and so far I love the way he writes—Sketches by Boz seems to be the perfect further reading, as I am curious of how Dickens’ first writing would be. For example, had his cynical humor and long-but-beautiful-wording already appeared from the beginning? Further on, Dickens later wrote about Sketches by Boz: "They comprise my first attempts at authorship. I am conscious of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience." Don’t you find it interesting too, to read ‘the inexperienced’ Dickens after being familiar with his masterpieces?

I am now in page 234 (only certain chapters of them, and will come back later for the rest), but so far I have found so many interesting materials that I want to share here. Sketches by Boz contains illustrative of everyday life and people of London—where Dickens live. I don’t know what genre I should put this book in, it’s not a short stories collection (although Dickens wrote several fictions at the last section), for most of the contents are non fictions. Through the illustrations, we came to know London in the 19^th century, the people, the culture and the scenes. For me (who have never been to England), it’s quite difficult to imagine the scenes from Dickens’ description, so I browsed the internet to find out about common places or words. And now, in A Victorian Celebration 2012 event, let me take you to London on the Victorian era of 19^th century, together with Boz…

Note: I will divide my post about Victorian London in four parts, each will discuss about different topics:

1. The Amusements

2. The Occupations

3. The Streets and Shops

4. The Transportations

And this is the first part, The Amusements. In Victorian days, the middle classes have several events throughout the year where they can amuse themselves:

Tea Gardens

Tea garden is one of rural middle class Londoners’ means of leisure in their Sundays. The tea garden was one of the few places ladies could enter a mixed gathering in public without criticism.  It was one place where people from all social classes were welcome.

George Morland, The Tea Garden, circa 1790

Greenwich Fair

The first three days after Easter, beginning on Easter Monday is a carnival season in Victorian London (correct me if I’m wrong, as this is what I gathered about the fair). The fair was an outdoor activity. According to what Dickens described (chapter XII – Greenwich Fair), at those days you would see all kinds of transportation gathered around the park. Houses around there were turned into tea-shops, pedestrians lingered in group at the roadside. The entrance of the park was full of gingerbread, spice nuts, or toys stalls. Here and there would be couples sitting on the grass.

source

There were also traveling menageries with wild beast shows, where they exhibit wild beasts, ‘dwarfs’ (abnormally small person) or other natural curiosities. The heart of the fair—according to Dickens—was in the Richardson’s booth, where they performed a variety of melo-drama, pantomime, comic songs, overture and some incidental music, all in twenty five minutes. There are clowns too, and they also performed some Roman plays. But the numerously-frequented booth of the whole fair was ‘The Crown and Anchor’, the temporary ballroom. There you could get refreshment snack, orchestra, and of course…the dancing area.

Astley’s - circus

Is the famous amphitheatre in Victorian London. The Victorian era marked the golden age of the British circus. Astley's Amphitheatre in Lambeth, London, featuring equestrian acts in a 42-foot wide circus ring, was the epicentre of the 19th century circus [wiki].

From what Dickens described in Sketches by Boz (chapter XI – Astley’s), I think the circus was just like any other circus shows, with horse riding, theatrical performances, orchestra and clowns.

source

May Day Celebration

A celebration held every 1^st of May in Victorian London. May Day has been a traditional day of festivities throughout the centuries. May Day is most associated with towns and villages celebrating springtime fertility and revelry with village fetes and community gatherings. Since the reform of the Catholic Calendar, May 1st is the Feast of St Joseph the Worker, the patron saint of workers. Seeding has been completed by this date and it was convenient to give farm labourers a day off. Perhaps the most significant of the traditions is the Maypole, around which traditional dancers circle with ribbons [wiki].

Besides Maypole, May Day is famous with its ‘Jack in the green’, a participant in traditional English May Day parades and other May celebrations, who wears a large, foliage-covered, garland-like framework, usually pyramidal or conical in shape, which covers his body from head to foot. The name is also applied to the garland itself. May Day dancing is often linked with chimney sweepers.

Vauxhall Gardens

Vauxhall Gardens was a pleasure garden, one of the leading venues for public entertainment in London, England from the mid 17th century to the mid 19th century. Vauxhall Gardens opened at night, but at chapter XIV of Sketches by Boz, Dickens took us to see what Vauxhall Gardens was in the daylight, how ‘the veil of mystery that hung about it’ was vanished. It’s interesting how Dickens put it in his writing: “…then we saw for the first time, that the entrance, if there had been any magic about it at all, was now decidedly disenchanted, being, in fact, nothing more nor less than a combination of very-roughly painted boards and sawdust.”

Vauxhall gardens offered orchestra concert, firework show, comic singers, rope-dancing in the open theatre. A balloon ascent was also one of the interesting attractions at the garden.

A General Prospect of Vaux Hall Gardens, by Johann Sebastian Muller 

The Eagle – a music hall or tavern

The Eagle, on City Road, London, was an East End tavern on the corner of City Road and Shepherdess Walk that presented regular musical entertainment. The Eagle did a roaring trade as one of the first music halls. The Eagle was sold in 1883 to the Salvation Army, perennial enemy of drink and the music halls. The building has since been demolished and the site now boasts a new Eagle pub which has a display of old music hall prints.

The nursery rhyme Pop goes the Weasel features the Eagle. It is about a father spending his weekly wage in the music halls and then having to ‘pop’ or pawn his ‘weasel’ to raise additional money. The ‘weasel’ is thought to refer to a piece of equipment in the tailoring industry. Tailoring was one of the main occupations in London’s East End. [source]

The complete rhyme:

Up and down the City Road

In and out The Eagle

That's the way the money goes

Pop goes the weasel.

And that would be the end of our Victorian London virtual walk of today, hope it amuses you as much as it does me. See you in our next walk—I hope—next week!

The Literary Classics Reading Challenge

I know, I’m a challenge-addicted! I don’t even calculate anymore how many challenges I’ve joined this year. But (here’s my self-defense J) if I can combine several challenges with each other, then why not? I don’t have to read more than what I have planned to, but at the same time I get excited with each challenge. So..here’s my new reading challenge, which I can combine with The Classics Club Project and A Victorian Challenge—which has just begun (and several other challenges of course..): The Literary Classics ReadingChallenge. The task is to read classics throughout the year (1^st June 2012 – 31^st May 2013), we are free to make our own list and our target in number of books we’d like to read, quite easy, isn’t it? J. So…this is my list. It’s not a fixed list, I might change the schedule or the books, but I make a commitment to read at least 24 classics until May 2013.

2012

June

Sketches by Boz - Charles Dickens

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

Black Beauty – Anna Sewell

July

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

Twenty Years After – Alexandre Dumas

The Old Curiosity Shop – Charles Dickens

August

Resurrection – Leo Tolstoy

The Scarlett Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

September

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

The Old Man and The Sea – Ernest Hemingway

October

Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe

November

Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

December

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

2013

January

Of Human Bondage – W. Somerset Maugham

Call of the Wild – Jack London

February

Little Dorrit – Charles Dickens

Little House on the Prairie

March

The Masterpiece – Emile Zola

April

The Portrait of A Lady – Henry James

Enchanted Castle – Edith Nesbitt

May

The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton

David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

Hmmm…I just realized that I have put four Dickens for a year! Well, I just love how he writes and have planned to read all of his works, so why not? Actually I’m an organized person, so I like to schedule my readings for the next months. That way I always have a book to read after I finish ones (and don’t have to sort from my huge pile J). If I want to read other than the list, I would just revise or re-schedule it. This challenge really helps me to set a list for the whole year, thanks to Ali!

What about you? Come and join me in the challenge!

Classics Authors of June

Inilah parade para penulis klasik dunia yang lahir pada bulan Juni ini...

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy adalah seorang novelis dan penyair Inggris yang lahir pada 2 Juni 1840. Meski menganggap dirinya seorang penyair yang menulis novel hanya untuk alasan ekonomi, Hardy justru dikenal luas berkat novel-novelnya: Tess of d’Urbervilles dan Far From The Madding Crowd. Namun Hardy akhirnya juga diakui sebagai pembawa pengaruh penting bagi dunia puisi di Inggris.

Hardy lahir di Dorset, dan meski keluarganya tak mampu menyekolahkan hingga ke bangku kuliah, Hardy cukup mendapat didikan dari ibunya yang seka membaca. Hardy sempat bekerja pada seorang arsitek sebelum akhirnya masuk universitas di London. Tak merasa cocok di London di mana ia tak merasa nyaman dengan perbedaan kelas sosial, Hardy kembali ke Dorset dan memutuskan untuk menjadi penulis. Kematian istrinya sangat memukul Hardy, hingga ia menelusuri tempat-tempat kenangannya bersama almarhumah, dan ia membuat sebuah puisi khusus untuknya. Hardy meninggal di usia 88, dan sesaat menjelang ajal masih mendiktekan puisi terakhirnya kepada istri keduanya.

Orhan Pamuk

Penulis klasik dunia asal Turki ini yang lahir pada 7 Juni 1952 ini sebenarnya bernama lengkap Ferit Orhan Pamuk. Beliau adalah seorang novelis, screenwriter dan akademisi. Pada th. 2006 Pamuk menerima penghargaan Nobel untuk Literatur, dan ia merupakan penulis Turki terlaris saat ini. Novel-novel besarnya meliputi My Name Is Red, Istanbul dan The New Life (ketiganya telah diterjemahkan oleh Serambi). Selain Nobel, Pamuk juga menerima sejumlah penghargaan untuk My Name Is Red. Saat ini Pamuk adalah Profesor yang mengajar Humanities di Columbia University.

Pamuk pernah menjalani persidangan di Turki gara-gara mengeluarkan pernyataan tentang genosida di Armenia, suatu hal yang dilakukan karena Pamuk merasa kurangnya kebebasan berpendapat di negaranya. Tuduhan atasnya akhirnya dibatalkan. Pamuk awalnya kuliah di bidang arsitektur karena karir impiannya adalah menjadi pelukis. Namun tiga tahun setelahnya Pamuk meninggalkan bangku kuliah dan memutuskan menjadi penulis. Ia juga pernah dituding melakukan plagiarisme, meski Pamuk tak pernah mau menjawabnya, dan banyak yang mengatakan tudingan itu dilontarkan oleh mereka yang kurang memahami literatur postmodernisme.

Anne Frank

Annelies "Anne" Marie Frank adalah salah satu korban holocaust yang paling banyak dibicarakan, berkat buku harian yang ditulisnya selama bersembunyi dari tentara Nazi. Buku harian itu kelak diterbitkan oleh Otto Frank, ayah Anne dan satu-satunya dari keluarga mereka yang selamat, dan menjadi salah satu buku klasik terkenal di dunia: The Diary of A Young Girl (diterbitkan Jalasutra).  Anne Frank lahir di Frankfurt, Jerman, pada 12 Juni 1929 dari Otto dan Edith Frank. Keluarga Frank adalah keluarga Yahudi liberal yang tidak menerapkan tradisi Yahudi, dan tinggal di komunitas asimilasi Yahudi dan non Yahudi.

Sejak bersekolah, Anne sudah menunjukkan ketajamannya dalam membaca dan menulis. Pada hari ulang tahunnya yang ke-13, Anne mendapat hadiah sebuah autograph book yang ia tunjukkan ke ayahnya beberapa hari sebelumnya di etalase toko. Meski berupa autograph book, namun Anne bisa menggunakannya sebagai buku harian. Awalnya Anne menuliskan kejadian-kejadian sehari-harinya, juga beberapa perubahan yang terjadi di Belanda (saat itu keluarga mereka tinggal di Amsterdam) ketika mulai diduduki Jerman, juga impiannya menjadi seorang aktris. Anne akhirnya meninggal di kamp konsentrasi, hanya beberapa minggu sebelum kamp dibubarkan oleh tentara Inggris, meninggalkan warisan yang akan selalu dikenang dunia tentang hari-harinya di dalam persembunyian, dan harapannya akan perdamaian di dunia.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Penulis wanita asal Amerika yang lahir tgl. 14 Juni 1811 ini adalah seorang abolisionis, selain sebagai novelis. Karyanya yang paling terkenal adalah Uncle Tom’s Cabin (diterbitkan Serambi) yang mengisahkan tentang perbudakan kaum Afrika-Amerika. Stowe menulis Uncle Tom’s Cabin satu tahun setelah keluarnya Fugitive Slave Law, undang-undang yang melarang rakyat membantu budak yang melarikan diri. Buku itu membawa pengaruh besar, dan kemudian dianggap sebagai pemicu timbulnya gerakan anti perbudakan dan bahkan Civil War di Amerika. Setelah buku itu terbit, 300 bayi yang lahir pada tahun itu di Boston dinamai ‘Eva’, tokoh protagonist penuh kasih yang ada di buku tersebut.

Saat Civil War berlangsung, Stowe yang sedang melakukan perjalanan ke Washington DC sempat bertemu Presiden Abraham Lincoln, yang berkata kepadanya: "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Pada tahun 1870 kakak laki-laki Stowe didakwa dalam sebuah skandal seksual. Menghindari tekanan public, Stowe pindah ke Florida, namun tetap setia mendukung kakaknya yang ia yakin tidak bersalah.

Salman Rushdie

Pria bernama lengkap Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie ini adalah seorang penulis esai dan novelis berkebangsaan India-Inggris. Rushdie lahir di Bombay, India pada 19 Juni 1947. Karyanya yang terkenal antara lain Midnight’s Children (diterbitkan Serambi) yang memperoleh penghargaan Booker Prize pada tahun 1981. Namun novelnya yang paling kontroversial adalah The Satanic Verses yang memicu protes dari kaum muslim di beberapa negara. Rushdie banyak memadukan realism magis dan fiksi sejarah dalam karya-karyanya dan kebanyakan mengandung unsur hubungan Barat-Timur.

Awal karir menulis Rushdie adalah menjadi copy writer di advertising agency. Di sanalah ia pertama kali menulis Midnight’s Children, setelah novel pertamanya yang berjudul Grimus (dongeng-fiksi sains) diabaikan oleh publik. Selain novel, Rushdie juga banyak menelurkan cerita pendek. Selain menulis, Rushdie juga menjadi mentor para penulis muda India. Uniknya, Rushdie pernah mengatakan bahwa andai ia tak berhasil menjadi penulis, ia akan meniti karir sebagai aktor. Waktu kecil Rushdie bermimpi untuk main film di Hollywood—yang akhirnya terlaksana meski hanya sebagai cameo.

Henry Rider Haggard

Salah satu penulis kisah petualangan terkenal yang dimiliki Inggris adalah Sir Henry Rider Haggard, atau yang biasa disebut H. Rider Haggard. Lahir di Norfolk, Inggris pada 22 Juni 1856, Haggard awalnya dianggap ayahnya tak akan dapat berkembang banyak sehingga dimasukkan ke sekolah umum alih-alih sekolah privat. Haggard mendaftarkan diri ke ketentaraan namun tidak lolos, hingga akhirnya ia banyak menjalin hubungan dengan orang-orang yang berkecimpung di studi fenomena fisikal.

Kisah petualangan Haggard banyak ditulisnya dengan menggunakan setting di lokasi eksotik terutama Afrika, dan Haggard dianggap sebagai pelopor genre literatur “Lost World”. Beberapa karyanya yang mendunia adalah King Solomon’s Mines dan She. King Solomon’s Mines sendiri disebut-sebut sebagai pelopor genre Lost World, dan banyak dibaca oleh orang dewasa maupun anak-anak. Haggard memang ingin menulis bacaan untuk anak laki-laki, namun pengaruhnya ternyata dirasakan banyak orang. Ia dianggap satu dari banyak penulis yang memiliki kepedulian terhadap bacaan anak-anak. Setelah menikah Haggard sempat berkarier sebagai pengacara, namun akhirnya mengakui bahwa karir menulisnya lebih banyak menghasilkan.

George Orwell

 Nama Eric Arthur Blair mungkin terdengar asing bagi anda, karena dunia memang lebih mengenalnya dengan nama penanya: George Orwell. Novelis dan jurnalis Inggris yang terkenal dengan tulisan-tulisannya yang cerdas dan tajam mengenai ketidak-adilan sosial ini dilahirkan di India pada 25 Juni 1903. Karyanya yang terkenal antara lain novel bertema distopia: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984 – sudah diterjemahkan oleh Bentang Pustaka), dan Animal Farm, sebuah novella. Penjualan kedua buku itu melebihi penjualan dua buku oleh penulis manapun di abad 20, dan oleh The Times Orwell dinobatkan sebagai penulis no. 2 dari 50 penulis Inggris terbesar sejak 1945.

Orwell pernah berujar bahwa suatu hari ia mungkin akan menulis buku dengan gaya mirip A Modern Utopia-nya H.G. Wells, ketika ia masih menikmati memancing dan berburu bersama teman-temannya. Setelah keluar dari bangku kuliah, Orwell menjadi bergabung dengan kepolisian di India. Namun 3 tahun setelahnya Orwell terkena demam Dengue dan harus meninggalkan Burma—penempatannya yang terakhir. Ia pun kembali ke Inggris dan memutuskan untuk menjadi penulis.

Antoinne de Saint-Exupery

Pada 29 Juni 1900 lahirlah di Lyon dari sebuah keluarga aristokrat, seorang bayi mungil bernama Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger. Ialah yang kelak menjadi salah satu penulis tersukses Prancis, Antoinne de Saint-Exupery. Selain menulis novel, di antaranya The Little Prince dan Terre des Homes (Bumi Manusia)—keduanya diterbitkan oleh Gramedia—Exupery juga adalah seorang penyair dan penerbang pioneer. Sedang karya yang menyinarkan namanya pertama kali adalah Night Flight, di mana Exupery menuliskan pengalamannya sebagai pilot pesawat pos.

Sebelum ia lahir, ayah Exupery meninggal mendadak dan membuat keluarga mereka jatuh miskin. Pada usia 17 tahun Exupery berada di samping ranjang adik laki-laki kesayangannya saat meregang nyawa. Ia kemudian menulis tentang adiknya itu: "...remained motionless for an instant. He did not cry out. He fell as gently as a [young] tree falls". Sebuah gambarang yang kelak akan tercantum di bagian akhir The Little Prince. Exupery memulai karir militernya pada usia 21 tahun, di mana ia pertama kali belajar menerbangkan pesawat. Setelah sempat mengalami kecelakaan udara, bekerja di darat, Exupery kembali menerbangi angkasa, kali ini menjadi pioneer penerbangan pos international. Pada 1935 pesawat yang ditumpangi Exupery bersama seorang mekanik mengalami kecelakaan dan mereka terdampar di Gurun Sahara, nyaris mati kehausan, sebelum akhirnya ditolong oleh seorang baduin. Pengalaman nyaris mati itu kelak tertuang di memoarnya: Wind, Sand and Stars, serta di novella The Little Prince.

Penulis mana yang karyanya akan anda baca bulan ini?

Mr. _____ on The Color Purple: Character Thursday (14)

Character Thursday is a weekly meme that requires you to post on every Thursday, your character choice from the book you are reading or you have finished with. It can be the protagonist or the antagonist, characters that you love the most or hate the most. You can pick any book of any genre as you like. Please feel free to grab the button below and paste it in your post. Last but not least, please add URL of your post in the linky at the bottom of this post.

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Mr. _____ (Albert)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

You might be wondering, why I didn’t mention the actual name of my Character Thursday. Well, that is how Alice Walker wrote about this character from the perspective of Celie, the main female character of this book. From the first time Mr. _____ appeared, I have already disliked him. When he came to Celie’s house at the first time, it seemed that he was just looking for a woman for his household, not for his wife. He actually picked Nettie for his wife, however after Nettie run away, he must satisfied himself with Celie. So from the beginning, it’s neither love nor attraction.

Danny Glover as Albert (Mr. _____)

Being a husband, Mr. _____ was far from ideal. He often beats Celie even when Celie did nothing. He was harsh in bed, and never treated Celie as a wife nor a woman. And the worst of it, he was openly having an affair with his lover, Shug Avery, without hiding the fact from Celie. For Mr. _____ Celie was just someone to look after the children and do the household. That’s all. Why did he do that? I presumed that it was the habit or the culture among people at that time. Or perhaps, being a minority, Mr. ____ (and other African-American at that time) was used to be under oppression of white people, so that they need a kind of impingement from the feeling of their inferiority. They found a need to show someone (or themselves) that they still have the control over their life. So, Mr. _____ beat and did rude things to Celie, who (he thought) did not have the power to fight.

However, Mr. _____ has wrongly judged Celie. His wife turned out to be a brave and strong woman—thanks to the love she had and received. With the help of her best friend, Celie slowly built her own life. She moved from Mr. _____ house and started her sewing business. I think the fact that Celie had the courage to leave him, quite struck Mr. _____. And on this point, he changed for the better. He started to contemplate about his life, and here is his conclusion:

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accidents. But you never know nothing more about the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, the morel love.”

I know it’s quite confusing if you haven’t read the whole story, but what Mr. _____ (or we can call him ‘Albert’ now—the name which Celie had finally the courage to mention after her ‘rise’) wanted to say is, that after Celie left, he done a review of his own life, and finally decided to rebuilt it after he learned about love. After the transformation, Albert treated Celie as a friend, they could speak and even sew together for hours. Albert also offered Celie to renew their marriage.

So, Celie’s transformation actually brought another transformation in Albert too. What a wonderful character we have here, but what about you, who’s your Character Thursday for this week?

The Color Purple

How do you say that a book is a wonderful book? For me, it’s when everything from the book keeps ‘haunting’ me long after I finish it. It’s when I feel quite affected (in a good way of course) by the book, that it somehow changes a bit of me—what I think and what I feel. And that’s how I feel about this book: The Color Purple.

At the beginning, I thought this book is just going to be a story of pains and sorrows, racisms, and hard times for African-American women; a kind of story that you would perhaps put down halfway because it is too sad and frustrating to keep on reading. But I was wrong. On the contrary, The Color Purple—although it did tells stories about pains and sorrows—it tells more about love and friendship, faith and hope. And Alice Walker has written them all in a series of letters. Through that letters, we came to know about Celie and Nettie—the two sisters who love each other even though their lives have been separated, and all they must have gone through to keep their hopes on each other, in the middle of a turbulence era in America in 1910-1940s.

I love how Alice Walker emphasizes many remarkable things within the letters which were written by a non-educated African-American woman like Celie. I mean, those letters are not just ordinary letters, they contain deeper and stronger meanings, and a lot of life philosophies too sometimes. For example, the first sentence that opens the story: ‘You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy’. I detect terror or shame in it, as if the person who has written it has done something very wrong or shameful—a big secret—that she couldn’t tell anybody but God. What a great way to start a novel! It already speaks the overall theme of the story, because that’s how Celie must have felt nearly her entire life.

Unlike Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin—where Uncle Tom was portrayed almost like a saint, Celie is not that ideal, not perfect. However I love Celie better than Uncle Tom because she’s just an ordinary human being just like most of us, who can be bitter and weak upon the tortures of life. At first Celie seemed to be faithful to God, she poured her sorrows into her letters to Him. She didn’t run away like Nettie, she didn’t fight like Sofia. She just gone through every pains she got from her Pa and then from her husband, Mr. _______. However at certain point, that was when she knew that Mr. _____ has hidden Nettie’s letter from her, she stopped writing to God, and began to write to Nettie instead. It’s interesting to read how Celie felt about God at that time, from her conversation with Shug:

Celie: “What God do for me?”

Shug: “Celie! He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death.”

Celie: “Yeah, and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. Anyhow, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgetful and lowdown.”

Shug: “Miss Celie, you better hush. God might hear you.”

Celie: “Let ‘im hear me. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.”

Well, there were times when we were in hard times, we might think the same way, that God has forgotten us and left us, so we also left God. It’s not strange, because—like Celie—we are all weak. At her hard times, Celie turned to the one she love the most, her sister Nettie and her best friend Shug. It’s them (especially Nettie) who have saved Celie from throwing God away for good. Because in people you love, and love you in return, you will find God’s presence. And at the end (to my joy!), Celie can finally repair her relationship with God in her last letter. We also experience the ups and downs of our faith, and now we know—thanks to Celie—that the only way to keep us from falling is to open our heart for love.

The same thing happened to Mr. ______. His philosophy is quite deep, and I think, very interesting:

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, the morel love.”  

There are several things that I don’t get quite well, though. For instance, why did the African reject all the missionaries, although they were also African (Samuel, Corrine and Nettie)? And why they dislike Africans that had been sold for slavery to America? Is that because of their being narrow minded?

And why do you think Celie kept calling his husband with Mr. ________? I think Alice Walker wants to emphasize how women’s status upon men’s at that time. Men have full authorities to women, that even after their marriage, Mr. _______ placed himself as a master, and Celie as a slave. Or, it might be that Celie hated his husband so much that she can’t spell his name, as if to say.. hey, he who used to beat me and treat me like a slave is not a friend, so I won’t call him as if he’s my friend. Because at the end when everything got better for Celie, she could finally call Mr. ________ with just ‘Albert’. What do you think?

I have also been wondering about the color purple itself. Has it a certain meaning that Alice Walker wanted to tell us? Or is it just Celie’s favorite color besides red? I remember that Celie asked for color purple or red when Shug brought her to a store to buy cloth for her first dress. The cover of the copy I read (borrowed from a friend) is also intriguing me, as it has purple flowers on the grayscale image of a black woman. I have discussed it here.

Last but not least, through The Color Purple we can see the danger of racism. I learned it from the scene of Sofia and Miss Eleanor Jane, when Eleanor Jane tried to make Sofia say something good about his baby. Eleanor Jane could not understand why Sofia can’t treat her just as a friend. Sofia knew that Eleanor Jane loves her despite of their different races, but there will always be an invisible curtain that separates them. And I think it would take a very long time too before that invisible curtain could vanish completely from our society.

Five stars for The Color Purple and Alice Walker!

Title: The Color Purple

Author: Alice Walker

Publisher: A Harvest International Edition

Published: 2007

Pages: 294

A special thanks to Bettina from Liburuak blog, who has hosted this lovely read along. Without it, I might not have been found the greatness of Alice Walker's writing, as well as the great female character such as Celie...

*This is my 1st review for The Classic Bribe 2012*

Weigh in Wednesday (5): Poetry Vs. Prose

It’s the fifth Weigh in Wednesday weekly meme of Lauren that I have been joining so far, and I think this week’s topic offers the easiest choice for me. I never like poetry, so my choice is 100% on prose. Poetry is beautiful, but I just love to read the flowing of words that build the interpretation in prose, rather than enjoying the poetry rhymes before going back again to find the meaning J. Anyway, I’m a more logical person than romantic one, so I prefer literature with deep meanings than only a flowery words.

So, which side of you, poetry or prose? Let me know your thoughts…

And if you love memes, please check out my weekly meme : Character Thursday

The Color Purple, Between Post-Modernism and Contemporary: A Classics Challenge May

Although it is not clearly stated in the book, I believe that The Color Purple is first set around 1910 or 1920, and stretched to the beginning of civil rights movements, around 1950s. However, I prefer to put this work of Alice Walker by the values she brought at the time she wrote this novel, rather than the time setting. So, although the original time set is within the first half of 20^th century, I think the best place to put this book is between the post-modernism and contemporary literary movement. Post-modernism is a historical period that began in the 1940s, a style of literature, philosophy, art, and architecture, or the situation of Western society in a late capitalist or post-capitalist age. Social issues as writers align with feminist & ethnic groups, are among this movement.

At the time Walker wrote The Color Purple, America has been struggling with both African-American racism and men-women discrimination and gender minority. The Color Purple is also the sign of African-American literature rising. Besides Alice Walker, Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston were among the female authors that brought up the same values as The Color Purple. Their works shows the hardships of African-American women.

The story of Celie (female protagonist of this book), her hard times under the dominancy of his step father and husband, and the story of African people under the white people power truly reflect the focus of the post-modernism movement, especially the rising of African-American. As a woman, these issues are quite intriguing and emotional, so I might read other similar works, such as Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings in the future.