The Dispute Of Four Old Friends: My Reflection on Twenty Years After

I have not even got into the middle of this book yet, but I have been quite moved by the friendship of these four noble men: Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan, twenty years after their golden era of King’s Musketeers. The slogan of “all for one and one for all” seems to stick forever in my heart.

Twenty Years After depicted these four men in their later lives after Cardinal Richelieu dead. D’Artagnan was still the lieutenant of King’s Musketeers, while Athos and Porthos have been enjoying their retirement and prosperity, and Aramis has been giving himself to serve the Chucrh as an abbé. Now the new cardinal wanted to use their service again, and instructed D’Artagnan to gather his three friends. In this task, D’Artagnan only succeeded to persuade Porthos, while Athos and Aramis both rejected to join. Not only that, it appeared latter that Athos and Aramis was working on something against the Cardinal, but they did not tell D’Artagnan about this.

These four inseparable friends were now worked for two opposite sides. To avoid from killing each other, they agreed to have a reconciliation meeting. This meeting turned out to be the most interesting scene so far (I’m on page 279). From this meeting, I realized why it is very easy to make friends when we are in our 20s, but very difficult to maintain it to get through when we are approaching our 40s (I proved it myself). One of the reasons was clearly reflected in what D’Artagnan said in the meeting…

"It is not civil wars which disunite us; it is that we are all twenty years older. The loyal outburst of youth have gone, and given place to the din of interests, the breath of ambition, and the counsels of egotism.” ~D’Artagnan.

And was confirmed by Aramis…

“Men are so constituted, and are not always twenty years old.” ~Aramis.

The fact is, when we reach the 30s, we used to pursue our own interests. Most of us have been married (or at least are thinking to have a family), that our career or business would be our priority. Idealism had been replaced with interest. In this story, D’Artagnan was all thinking about his career in the kingdom, Porthos was seeking his barony, something that he have not possessed yet, while Aramis has his own ambition to pursue a higher position in Church. Maybe it’s only Athos who did not have any strong interest, but his own principle.  

Back to the four friends’ dispute, the tender-hearted Athos could not accept that their meeting should be filled with suspicion, so when Aramis suggested him to bring his weapon for the meeting, the idea broke Athos’ heart…

“Oh, Aramis, upon my soul you make me feel very unhappy! You are disenchanting a heart not quite dead to friendship. I would almost prefer, I swear to you, that my heart should be plucked from my breast.” ~Athos.

Now, when I am analyzing the situation, it is difficult indeed to stay on either side. I am perhaps rather joining D’Artagnan’s (and Porthos) side, for at least he was openly telling the truth when he recruited Athos and Aramis. I agree what D’Artagnan said to Athos…

“When I visited you at the Château de Bragelonne, I made you some propositions which you clearly understood, and instead of replying to me as to an old friend, you replied as to a child, and our friendship, of which you boast, was not broken yesterday by crossing swords, but by your dissimulation.” ~D’Artagnan.

I am rather disappointed to know that Athos lied to D’Artagnan. With Aramis, I can understand, for he was always an opportunist, but Athos? Who—like D’Artagnan said—have always been praising their friendship…., how can he do it to D’Artagnan? Because he was afraid D’Artagnan would double-cross him by reporting to Cardinal? Oh come on Athos, you are a good diplomat; you know how to win D’Artagnan? Is it a sign that trustworthy had begun to disappear? See…how difficult it is to maintain your true friendship when you were overpowered by your own interests?

However, I am quite relieved that Dumas chose to reconcile those four friends through Athos, the leader and father of them all…

“We have lived together, hated and loved together, have spilt our blood, and perhaps, I will add also, there is between us a tie more powerful than that of friendship…” ~Athos.

And once again (I hope in the next chapters), four of them would fight again together for the sake of nothing-but-truth! Come on guys….you can do it!

Dick Swiveller on The Old Curiosity Shop

Usually I limit my Character Thursday to maximum two characters from one book, to avoid over-exposing too often one particular book, which I’m afraid will bore my followers. However this time I will make an exception, I am picking another character—the third—from The Old CuriosityShop, after Little Nell and her grandfather. Why? Because I think Richard ‘Dick’ Swiveller is a unique character—the only one who experienced a character development in this book, so he deserved to be exposed here.

Dick appeared at earlier chapters only as a comical accessories to the main characters. He was brought to the scene by Fred Trent, Nell’s big brother who suspected that their grandfather was actually a very rich man, and all those times had hidden his treasure to be given to Nell when she has grown up. Fred was a bad boy, and in order to persuade his grandfather, he brought his flamboyant and poetical friend, Dick Swiveller. So, we can assume Dick to be one of antagonists, as besides Fred, Dick also worked together with Quilp, the main antagonist of this story.

Dick’s personality is quite a unique and unforgettable one, he is not as perfect as Nell and Kit—I personally never like perfect characters too much, they are only in tales, not in real life—but Dick is not a totally wicked person too as Quilp, he’s just a person who praised pleasure and wealth, not a hard-worker, an opportunist, and was quite indifferent to others or to the world. Dick liked to imagine himself as a rich person, he used to mention his apartment as ‘apartments’, and imagined his bed as a bookcase. He depended his life on his rich aunt’s mercy, and although was not holding any pence in his pocket, he would fulfill his expensive appetite with a luxury dining from different restaurants (and left a lot of debt traces in almost every dining place in London).

As an easy-going person, Dick was very easy to be tempted. When Fred offered him to marry Little Nell to gain her inheritance, Dick—without many considerations—decided to break up his present relationship with Sophie Wackles. Quilp has also used him for his own plan, by getting Dick a job in Sampson Brass’ law office. The indifference in Dick’s character was clearly stated in his own expression:

“There are some people who can be merry and can’t be wise, and some who can be wise (or think thy can) and can’t be merry. I’m one of the first sort.”

Dick Swiveller & Sophie Wackles

I have thought Dick Swiveller as and would be the little villain, someone who would execute the plan to get Kit to his downfall, however something then happened. One night Dick met the little servant of Brass family, a dirty poor-nameless-abused-and-neglected girl who used to live downstairs. His involvement with the Marchioness—a nick name Dick had given the servant girl—was later on proved to be the turning point of Dick’s character development, from an indifferent person, to become someone with more affection for others. He was the one who took the responsibility to take care of Kit’s mother and family when Kit must went to jail. And I think, somehow, Dick felt that Kit was actually innocent, and that there was something wrong with his bosses. Dick also sent a cheerful present for Kit in jail. He was now a kind-hearted person with care for others. His heroic action, however, did not occurred until he suffered a sever fever that almost took his life, if the poor and sweet Marchioness did not take care of him like a mother and nurse. In his sorrow, all his concerns were on the falsely accused Kit. He—along with the Marchioness of course—was the key actor of Kit’s release.

Dick Swiveller in the movie

I was wondering, what was the cause of Dick Swiveller’s change? I guess the poor life of the Marchioness was the trigger. Dick—I think—was quite deeply touched by the injustice and abuses that the Marchioness had lived her life with. And from there, Dick must have changed his mind about the Brass family, and thus saw things with a different point of view, and lead him to doubt that Kit was guilty. After Marchioness scene, Dick’s heart was easier to be moved by a helplessness situation, such as happened to Kit and his mother.

Dick Swiveller & the Marchioness

So, here was Richard ‘Dick’ Swiveller, from zero to hero, and although his change was not so drastically as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, but still, he deserves to be praised as a hero in this story. And I’m glad that in the end Dickens gave him a woman to love and love him in return, someone who shared his eccentricity and interests. I must admit that I would miss Mr. Swiveller’s character, he’s someone who had given this story more color and more cheerfulness within the gloomy atmosphere we felt with poor Little Nell and the grotesque wickedness of Quilp. Dick Swiveller was indeed the savior of The Old Curiosity Shop, to make us love it more!  

[Non-English Victorian Author] Émile Zola

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” ~ Émile Zola

Still in the event of A Victorian Celebration, I have a plan to explore two non-English Victorian authors of my favourites. This particular post would be about one of them: Émile-Édouard-Charles-Antoine Zola, who is famously called Émile Zola. Born in Paris on April 2, 1840 from an Italian engineer, Zola is mostly recognized for his naturalism theory and his political move in the Dreyfus affair—a case of a falsely-accused man, besides his novels.

Naturalism

Naturalism is an extension of realism movement in literature. “In literature it extended the tradition of realism, aiming at an even more faithful, unselective representation of reality, a veritable “slice of life,” presented without moral judgment. Naturalism differed from realism in its assumption of scientific determinism, which led naturalistic authors to emphasize man’s accidental, physiological nature rather than his moral or rational qualities.” [Encyclopedia Britannica]. It is believed that Émile Zola was the first author to introduce the use of the term ‘naturalism’.

Life and early career

His father died when Zola was four years old, and left the family with a small pension. Actually his mother had wanted Zola to take a law career, but he failed in his examination. Since childhood Zola made friend with Paul Cézanne, a famous artist and a Post-Impressionist painter, who painted Zola together with his writer friend, Paul Alexis on 1869-1870. However, the friendship broke up after Zola fictionalized Cézanne and his Bohemian painter friends’ life in his novel: The Masterpiece (L'Œuvre).

Paul Cézanne, Paul Alexis reading to Emile Zola 

1869-1870

Before starting his writing career seriously, Zola worked as a clerk in shipping firm, then in a publishing company named Hachette. There he made many interesting contacts and learned the new rules of the literary market. He also became a politic journalist for the same publisher, where he never hid his dislike against Napoleon III. When his second novel—an autobiographical one—La Confession de Claude was being published on 1865 and got police attention, he was fired from the publishing company.

His writing

Therese Raquin could be assumed as Zola’s first major novel (his very first book was Contes à Ninon, published in 1864). And after that, in the age of 28, Zola began his plan for a series contained of 20 novels called Les Rougon Macquart, about two branches of a family under the Second Empire: the respectable (legitimate) one—Rougon and the illegitimate one—Macquart, which Zola described as:

"I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world."

Zola has thought from the start the big layout of the stories theme. Being a Naturalist, and in order to make them cover only Truth, Zola had developed a systematic method to create the whole plan. First he collected news articles, investigation notes, and studies by informers, notes on settings or on language, and completed his historical, sociological, or lexical information. The preliminary files also contained plan, list of characters and their individual files. From those preliminary files, Zola then wrote the rough draft of each novel.

If you have read Therese Raquin and L’Assommoir, you would have noticed how thoroughly Zola described the scenes in both novels. It appeared that Zola had seen the particular passage du Pont Neuf (from Therese Raquin) and rue de la Goutte-d’Or (from L’Assommoir) from the eyes of his painter friend, then recreated them in his writings.

Illustration of the passage du Pont Neuf, 

appeared in the opening of chapter 1 of Therese Raquin 

Illustration of rue de la Goutte-d’Or, 

appeared in chapter XII of l’Assommoir

J’Accuse and The Dreyfus Affair

One of his famous attempts in politics—which brought a high risk for his career and life—was his open letter to President Félix Faure which was published on the front page of Paris daily newspaper L’Aurore, on 13 January 1898. J’Accuse..! was the title, in which Zola accused the highest level of French army has been conducting injustice and anti-semitism against Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer in French army. French intelligent had found out that someone had given their military secrets to German embassy, and Dreyfus was put under suspicion and convicted to life-imprisonment although there had not been any direct evidence against him. Zola's intention was that he be prosecuted for libel so that the new evidence in support of Dreyfus would be made public. The Dreyfus Affair became a huge issue at that time, dividing the nation into two sides—reactionary army and church on one side and the more liberal commercial society on the other side.

On 7 February 1898 Zola was brought to trial for criminal libel, as the reaction of his J’Accuse. He was convicted, but rather than going to jail, Zola fled to England, and only returned to Paris eight months later after charge against him was dismissed.

His Death

On the 29th of September 1902 Zola was found dead at his home in Paris because of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a stopped chimney. It was assumed that his politics enemies were behind the poisoning, although there was no clear evidence against it. However, decades later, a Parisian roofer made a claim during his last minutes of life, to have closed the chimney of Zola’s house for political reasons. Is that true? Sadly—we will never know…

Zola was initially buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris but on 4 June 1908, almost six years after his death, his remains were moved to the Panthéon, where he shares a crypt with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.

His Legacies

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” ~Émile Zola

Every great man must have had people who criticized them. Unlike Charles Dickens, Zola has been criticized to be lack of the power of creating life-like and memorable characters, and to make his characters true to life. Zola himself insisted that he refused to make any of his characters ‘larger than life’, that it was either scientifically or artistically justifiable to create larger-than-life characters. This is what—I think—differ Zola from the most Victorian authors—especially Dickens.

“I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.” ~Émile Zola

Bibliography:

Les Rougon-Macquart Series

The Fortune of the Rougons - book 1

La Curée - book 2

The Belly of Paris - book 3

La Concuête de Plassans - book 4

La Foute de l'Abbé Mouret - book 5

Son Excellence Eugène Rougon - book 6

L'Assommoir - book 7

Une Page d'Amour - book 8

Nana - book 9

Pot-Bouille (Restless House) - book 10

The Ladies' Paradise - book 11

The Joy of Life - book 12

Germinal - book 13

The Masterpiece - book 14

The Earth - book 15

The Dream - book 16

La Bête Humaine - book 17

L'Argent - book 18

La Débâcle - book 19

Le Docteur Pascal - book 20

Three Cities Trilogy

Lourdes

Paris

Rome

Les Quatre Evangiles Tetralogy

Fécondité (Fruitfullness)

Travail (Work)

Vérité (Truth)

Justice (Justice -- not end)

Other Novels

Thérèse Raquin

The Dreyfus' Affair: "J'Accuse" and Other Writings

Madeleine Férat

The Mysteries of Marseilles

Contes à Ninon

La Confession de Claude

Short Stories

The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories

For A Night of Love

La Mort d'Olivier Becaille

Novella

The Flood

Source:

Wikipedia

ExpositionsVirtuelles – Emile Zola 

Online-literature.com– Emile Zola 

Goodreads

Emile Zola Blog 

Do Me A Favour, Choose One From These Three…

Dear friends and followers,

I am right now reading Alexandre Dumas’ Twenty Years After, the sequel of The Three Musketeers. So, here I am again, meet those four famous gentlemen from France: Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D’Artagnan. As usual, I will pick one or two characters from the book to be featured in my Character Thursday meme. I have planned to pick two characters from Twenty Years After, and will post the first one next Thursday (25/7). The question is, WHO MUST I PICK?

I am now on page 126, and have met all the four musketeers. The problem is, they are all wonderful characters with unique and interesting personality, that I still can’t make my mind of who must I pick for Character Thursday. So, here I offer a chance for all of you to help me.

Who would you like me to pick to be featured in Character Thursday?

I have featured D’Artagnan for The Man In The Iron Mask before and won’t write about him again, so the choice would be on the other (original) three musketeers.

Would you choose:

The calm and noble ATHOS?

The simple and naïve PORTHOS?

Or the elegant and full of intrigues of ARAMIS?

I would appreciate your ideas, you can just simply choose one of them by name only, or you can also give me reason why you chose him. I will pick whoever gets chosen by most of you, to be featured in the Character Thursday. 

Thanks guys… J

The Old Curiosity Shop

[Conclusion in English is at the bottom of this post]

Di sinilah semuanya berawal, di sebuah old curiosity shop di kota London—sebuah toko yang menjual barang-barang antik (di mana anda akan menemukan sesuatu yang mengundang keingintahuan=curiosity), karena di sinilah tokoh utama kita, seorang gadis yatim-piatu berusia empat belas tahun bernama Nell tinggal bersama kakeknya. Hanya berdua saja di dunia ini menjadikan Nell dan kakeknya memiliki ikatan cinta kasih yang amat kuat, sehingga meski hidup pas-pasan, mereka berdua merasa bahagia.

Sayangnya sang kakek, dalam harapannya untuk mengentaskan Nell dari kemiskinan, mencoba mencari uang lewat jalan pintas—perjudian. Ketika akhirnya harta mereka yang sedikit dan rumah mereka berpindah ke tangan lintah darat jahat bernama Quilp, mereka pun terpaksa pergi dari rumah, mencoba mencari kebahagiaan di alam bebas, rela hidup sederhana daripada berada di bawah kekuasaan Quilp. Dalam pengembaraan mereka, ada begitu banyak hal terjadi. Ada saat-saat mereka bertemu dengan orang-orang yang baik hati, yang memberi tumpangan dan uluran kasih, namun ada juga orang-orang jahat yang ingin memanfaatkan kerapuhan kakek Nell dalam perjudian.

Sepanjang pengembaraan mereka, Nell—di usianya yang teramat muda—harus menanggung beban yang terlalu berat baginya. Ia harus bertahan hidup sembari khawatir Quilp akan menemukan mereka, sekaligus memelihara kakeknya yang—setelah ‘kejatuhan’ mereka—mengalami kemunduran mental. Yang lebih hebat lagi, Nell menjadi semacam hati nurani bagi si kakek; pada saat si kakek nyaris jatuh dalam jerat jahat perjudian, Nell lah yang harus mengambil keputusan berat dan berani untuk melarikan diri.

Setelah semua pengalaman mereka—yang indah maupun yang kelam—akhirnya mereka tiba di sebuah desa nan tenang dan memulai hidup yang baru. Akankah mereka menemukan kembali kebahagiaan seperti yang sering mereka rasakan ketika masih di rumah lama mereka, old curiosity shop?

Sementara itu, ada juga seorang anak laki-laki yang biasa bekerja di curiosity shop kakek Nell, bernama Kit. Ia anak yang miskin, baik hati, jujur dan sangat mengagumi Nell. Ketika Nell dan kakeknya pergi mengembara, ia pun mengalami banyak petualangan, dari yang menakutkan hingga membahagiakan. Kisahnya boleh dibilang mengiringi kisah Nell. Dengan dua tokoh utama ini, banyak pula hadir para ‘penggembira’, baik dari kubu yang jahat maupun yang baik, menjadikan kisah ini semacam dongeng yang dituturkan dengan indah oleh Charles Dickens, kisah yang akan selalu melekat di benak siapa pun yang membacanya.

Nell & grandfather in Mrs. Jarley's caravan

Conclusion:

This is my fifth Dickens, and I can say that The Old Curiosity Shop has just become my new favorite. Usually I don’t quite like tales, where there were only black and white, the good ones must be perfect: handsome, kind-hearted, yet weak and poor; while the bad ones were always imperfect: ugly, wicked, heartless and powerful. Can you see Little Nell and Quilp in those two opposite frames? Like I said, if I don’t like tales, then I should have disliked The Old Curiosity Shop. However, it turned out that I really enjoyed reading this book. One of the reasons perhaps, because this book spoiled me with many adventures scenes during Nell and grandfather’s pilgrimage, which made the plot went quite fast. Other reason is the appearance of comical characters like the funny-eccentric Dick Swiveller or the street entertainers Nell met within her pilgrimage. Mrs. Javier’s waxwork company and Whisker the funny pony of Mr. Garland were also highly entertaining!

Besides the entertaining aspects, I also found satisfaction in Dickens’ concerns of injustice—especially to children—which became this book’s main theme. For your information, I always love to read novels that bring concerns for injustice as the main theme! Here we got two cases, one was Little Nell and the other was Kit. Both were innocent and kind-hearted children who must suffered from adult’s faults, crime and greediness. Dickens interestingly crafted these two cases in two separate frames of story with Quilp being one of the main red-thread that related them both to be concluded in the last chapters.

Speaking of the last chapters, they were very emotional, and this aspect is the one I like the most from this book. **spoiler** I can feel that Dickens had poured out his own emotion into these last chapters—the scene of Nell’s death, that he wrote them while remembering and memorizing the death of Mary Hogarth—her sister-in-law—in her seventeenth age, almost as youth as Nell was. You might have read on his biographies, that Dickens have an affection towards Mary, and was quite shocked when Mary died from heart failure in his arm. “Mary’s death affected him grievously and the shock never seemed completely to dissipate.” [from Dickens’ Bicentenary 1802-2012 by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley]. I can’t but share Dickens’ grief when he wrote about Nell’s burial, and how his grandfather and others felt about it, feel how Dickens must have felt on Mary’s sudden death, and the consolation he must have seek at that time, just as what he wrote here...

“Oh! It is hard to take to heart the lesson that such deaths will teach, but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn, and is a mighty universal Truth.”

And from the same book too—Dickens’ Bicentenary—I learned that writing about Nell’s death had re-opened Dickens’ old wound of Mary Hogarth: “I am ….nearly dead with work—and grief for the loss of my child.” **spoiler ends**

And last but not least, I also like how Dickens concluded every piece of fragments nicely. I am a reader who judges a book from its ending, not about happy or sad ending, but more on whether it was cleanly closed or not. I don’t like it when there were still one or few things unfinished or unclear, it will make me keep asking questions like why that should happened, or what caused this or that, etc. In this book, one concern raised in my mind near the ending. I noticed that Kit—after his release from jail—had met and thanked everyone except the biggest heroes: Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, whom Kit never mentioned nor made initiative to come to thank personally. You might think I’m being absurd to think of such small things like that, but as I said, I am a perfectionist when it comes to story ending, everything must be cleared up before I closed the book (most likely) forever. However, thanks to Dickens, I was rewarded by the final page where Kit and Barbara named one of their children as Dick “whom Mr. Swiveller did especially favour” (p. 544). And so…this story becomes one of my favorites of Dickens so far, and I rewarded him with five stars!

Title: The Old Curiosity Shop

Author: Charles Dickens

Publisher: Wordsworth Classics

Published: 1995

Pages: 544 + notes

Nell’s Grandfather on The Old Curiosity Shop

Talking about Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop, is impossible without talking about her grandfather, for everything that happened to poor Nell throughout the book must have been related to her grandfather, the owner of an old curiosity shop in the suburb of London, with whom the orphan Nell lived and the only one Nell ever loved. After Nell’s parents died, her grandfather took over the responsibility to take care of her. I can see that he loved Nell very much.

“Do I love thee, Nell,” said he (the grandfather). “Say, I do love thee, Nell, or no?”The child only answered by her caresses, and laid her head upon his breast.“Why dost thou sob,” said the grandfather pressing her closer to him. “Is it because thou know’st I love thee, and dost not like that I should seem to doubt it by my question? Well, well—then let us say I love thee dearly.”“Indeed, indeed you do,” replied the child with great earnestness.

Basically Nell’s grandfather was a good man, he was just an old man who loved his grandchild, and tried to do something to give her a bright future. Unfortunately, he had chosen the wrong way to gain it. Couldn’t be patient to run his old curiosity shop business properly, he tried a faster way to earn money, by gambling. I don’t know which one comes first in Nell’s grandfather’s case, the gambling-addict or the greediness. However I can say one thing about him, that in spite of his kind heart, Nell’s grandfather has an obvious weakness, he could not resist the temptation of gambling though he knew deep in his heart that what he did was wrong and that it would make Nell sad.

I was torn between love and hate with the old grandfather at first, but reading along this book I’d rather think that he used Nell’s future to be his reason for gambling. Perhaps at first he was really a good grandfather who earnestly loved his grandchild, but having tried gambling as a desperate way to enrich himself—in his obsession to fight the poverty, and to make Nell become a lady or a woman who have a better place in society—he became addicted to gambling. It seems from the book that Nell’s grandfather has never won, but I think it’s hardly possible that a man should lose again and again. I think he sometimes won, but he used the money he won to raise his bet, until he lost all his money. And the same as a drunkard, an addicted gambling would do anything to get money, robbing if he must!

Although I felt pity to Nell’s grandfather—and all other men with same problem—I can’t sympathize with him. I do believe that men have their weaknesses, and must try to improve all their lives, but deceiving himself that he is doing it for the sake of the one he loves, well…it’s unacceptable for me. So, old and pitying Nell’s grandfather is, I can never love him, especially that he had been in many times disappointing Nell—and had been reminded by the little child—but kept doing it and deceiving himself and his grandchild. No, I can’t but blame him for all the sorrows that Little Nell must have endured.

The moral lesson from this character is obvious, that gambling could destroy—not only the gambler’s own life—but also his family and people he loves. And, the only way to stop is to stay away from the temptation. Nell has done the best thing for her grandfather by bringing her grandfather away from the temptation, no matter high the risk was.

[Short Story] The Half-Brothers by Elizabeth Gaskell

I read this story during few hours when my internet connection was very poor, that I can’t do anything else (browsing, tweeting, emailing), but copying the content of this short story from the bookmarked page of classicreader.com (I don’t know why I succeeded in doing this while having been failed with other sites). Anyway, I started to quick-browse the entire story right away, only to notice that Gaskell (or anyone who re-typed this story for ebook) has written this in long paragraphs, something I really dislike. I lost my reading appetite in an instant, but having nothing more interesting to do, I kept reading while here and there tidying up the paragraphs into moderate ones for more comfortable reading.

Very soon I began to be absorbed within the story, and after finishing it, began to cry….

The story was told in first person by a young man. He retold his story partly from his aunt Fanny and partly from his own experiences. It started when his mother had married her first husband in a very young age, only to be a widow after three years, when his husband left her a child and a farm with no money to support their household. Fortunately there was an old bachelor called Stenton—the owner of a big farm—who would like to marry her and took Gregory (his son) too into his care.

They were soon wed, but it didn’t take a long time for the old bachelor to realize that his wife’s love was never meant to be for him, but for Gregory, her son. This made him disliked and even hated Gregory, and began to ill-treat him at least with words. Then the baby was born, Stenton’s son, who would become the narrator of this story. The mother had not survived long, but before she died, she asked for Gregory to be put besides his half-brother, and for Gregory to take his brother’s hand in his. And from then on this son—the half-brother of Gregory—became everyone’s favorite, while Gregory often received hard words from other, for being awkward and ungainly.

It went on for sixteen years, when on one night the narrator was sent to a Fell (mountain) in an errand. That night turned out to be a stormy and snowy night, and the narrator soon got lost on the Fells. While he was in a desperate state, looking forward to his death, there came a help from—of course—his half brother Gregory, who was accompanied by his spaniel dog. Now, what will happen next—can the two brothers came home safely in the middle of that stormy night? I think—as other short stories—you could guess the ending. But for me, I shed my tears in the middle of my lunch hour—thanks to Elizabeth Gaskell… L

This is the first piece of Gaskell I’ve ever read, and I don’t know whether the short story can reflect her writing style in her more famous novels, but if it does, I can say that there is not something special from Gaskell that can make her stand out from other authors. Her narration flows naturally, but if not for words we have been familiar with 19th century works, I would have thought it was a work from one of modern authors.

The story is quite engaging and touching, and probably was made for shedding tears. What I can learn from it is—and I have read a similar story before—the highest quality of love, which is to keep loving others despite of their bad treatment to us. It also tells us not to ill-treat others, for ill-treatment on child could negatively affect it, which would make the child grow up as an unhappy person. The awkwardness, the indifference came not from stupidity, but from others treatment.

[I read the ebook version from classicreader.com]

This post is included in Short Storieson Wednesday.