What Are You After, Ralph? – The Portrait of A Lady

Reading one third of The Portrait of A Lady (p. 168 at the moment), I can’t but wondering about one of the main male characters: Ralph. Ralph Touchett is the only son of an American wealthy banker who had lived in England for a long time. Ralph suffered from pulmonary disease that prevented him from actively working, and just stayed home to take care of his father. His dull life was interrupted by the coming of his cousin: Isabel Archer—an independent girl from America who had interests to see other countries.

"Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler"
Smithsonian American Art Museum
(become the cover of
Penguin Classics edition
of The Portrait of A Lady)

Henry James didn’t put it clearly enough whether Ralph was in love with Isabel—I might come to a conclusion at the end—but the more intriguing questions in me right now are: **spoiler alert** You mightn’t want to keep reading if you haven’t read the book!

Why did Ralph make such generous act—giving Isabel half of his inheritance?

It could be because…

1. He loved her so much but he’s afraid Isabel won’t be happy if she became his wife, thus he just wanted to make sure she would be happy with what she want to do in her life.

2. He’d like to see what Isabel would do with her life, thus it’s some kind of human experiment to amuse Ralph’s boring life after his father died. In this case, Ralph was really taking advantage of Isabel, which meant that he didn’t really love her.

3. He wanted to keep her away from marrying other men—Isabel would not think about marriage as long as she’s wealthy enough. But if he knew that Isabel would outlive him, it’s not to marry her that he might have done that. Maybe he’s selfish enough to think that if he couldn’t marry Isabel, no other men could? Hmm….

Anyway…it's only my suggestions, there’s only one way to know the answer…keep reading to the end! :) That’s what I’m going to do now, I’m reading this book for The Classics Club Readathon today. I’ve been having a good time, and hopefully I can make it to 2/3 of it by the end of today. Will come back tomorrow or on Monday for the wrap up!

The (First Ever) Classics Club Readathon

I was very excited when The Classics Club announced our first ever 24-hour readathon that will be held on Saturday, January 5^th, 2013; what a great way to start a new promising year in our classics reading! It’s excited to think that there will be 46 of us (if everyone can make it) delving into classics books at the same time. Well….at least, I wish I can do so…

The readathon will start at 8:00 am EST, however as I live in Indonesia (that is GMT +7 or 12 hours ahead of people in America), the starting time would be for me at 8:00 pm my time. It would be quite late and impossible for me to read along the night. So, I’ll compromise it by starting on Saturday morning my time (as early as possible—hope my mom won’t need my help in the kitchen :P) and end it as late as possible on Saturday evening (I’m going to the church very early on Sunday morning, and won’t have time to continue the readathon the next day anyway). This way I can still manage to read with most of others for at least 1-2 hours before I must go to bed… :)

I’m just hoping that the next readathon could be stretched into 2 days (the whole weekend), so that I can feel I’m really reading with all the other participants at the same time. But, anyway, it’s still exciting, and the fact that we are reading together with friends from all over the world is really something, isn’t it?

So, here I am, very eager to read Henry James’ The Portrait of A Lady. Actually I have started it since January 1^st, and right now—when I’m posting this—I am already on page 100s. Let’s see how many pages I’ll be able to digest the whole day tomorrow! Yayyyy for readathon!!

Portia in The Merchant of Venice

Portia is a daughter of a wealthy man; she is an intelligent and independent young man, a rare kind of her sex—I believe—at the era when Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice. From her earliest appearance in the play, I could sense a strong will and wise thinking from Portia. Her late father had set up a game competition for her suitors, to decide who would be her husband.

Although Portia thought the game was nonsense—she had had found herself a man she loved—she never disobeyed her father, although he had been died at that time. One by one her suitors came to try their luck, and during those times it was obvious that Portia was much wiser and smarter than all those men. She could see and judge each of their personalities.

Source: Giclee Print by Walter Paget 

Her remarkable intelligence showed when Portia set up a plan to help relieving Antonio—her husband’s (Bassanio) friend—from the wicked Jewish’s (Shylock) debt trap. Alone Portia dressed like a male judge to interfere with the judgment of the case. Without Portia’s help, I believe Antonio would have been died. Here Portia showed her genius way of thinking—I wonder how she learned law, but in fact there were more logic than the law itself in her defense.

Portia & Shylock at the court

In short, Portia was a woman who did not think her being a female as a restriction to her life. She knew what she wanted, and she did everything she could to achieve that. However, with all her advantages, she still respect male’s authority—her father, her husband. She just wanted to do things her own way. That makes me liked Portia very much! The first female character I love from Shakespeare’s plays, maybe because she’s very similar to myself…

Let’s Read Plays 1st Check-In & GIVEAWAY!

This is the first check-in of Let’s Read Plays—the plays reading event that has been running for two months. Until now we have read one tragedy and one comedy, both from Shakespeare. There had been 25 review posts of various titles you can read at the Master Post. Some of us have been busy the two last month of 2012, but I’m sure they will return soon and catch up with us.

Just to remind you, we are having a few memes to make our plays reading more fun.

1. Character Thursday for LRP Meme – post about character(s) from plays you read on Thursdays. All your posts are eligible to enter my giveaway. I’ll pick one post randomly at the end of the event as a winner.

2. Play Monthly Meme – hosted by Listra, each month she picked certain theme related to the plays we are reading.

Let us know how’re your progress, do you find any new or interesting title to read from the review posts? Or what will you read for January (it’s a freebie!), or what’s the most exciting about #LRP so far?

Meanwhile….here is to excite you more….

GIVEAWAY...

Joon Ann has been generously hosting a Giveaway for #LRP! Check out what you can win here. The giveaway is open for all #LRP participants who signed up before Nov 15th, 2012. Good luck!

Book Kaleidoscope: My Top Five Most Favorite Books & Farewell 2012!

And here we are…on the last day of this year. 2012 has been my most important year in term of reading. This year (on March) I joined The Classics Club and it really helps me to delve deeper into classics works. In fact, most of my readings of this year were dominated by classics, most of my blog posts were in this blog (Fanda Classiclit). For 2013 I’m planning to start reading books from 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list; the works will be slightly mixed between classics and non classics.

After discussing my Top Five Book Boy Friends and Top Five Best Book Covers of books I've read on 2012, now the Book Kaleidoscope will rewind the most important aspect in reading: the book itself. 

Speaking of my readings of 2012 (I have read around 37 books), I have found a lot of great books and/or authors that for years I have only seen the title/the name, but now I am proud to say that I have read several of them. It’s been difficult to rank only five of my favorites, but I finally came to this composition…

5. Beloved

This was one of the strongest books I’ve ever read in my life, depicted a black woman’s struggle to protect her children. Beloved was quite difficult to read, as the story flowed forward and backward without clear signs, and only after reading few chapters I could be more familiar with it. And this book is not a nice reading too, although it makes us deeply touched. Therefore, fifth place is fair enough for Beloved.

4. Twenty Years After

Not known as much as The Three Musketeers, this second sequel is much better than the first. As its title, Twenty Years After was a reunion of the four friends when they were older and wiser. This is one of the books which I fully enjoyed the reading, every page of it, even every word.

3. L’Assommoir

I remember that I was shocked after finishing this book. Unlike any other books I have read, this one is very honest—extremely honest. Then I just knew what ‘naturalism’ in literature meant, that I instantly fell in love with Zola! I think my first strong impression of this book that makes L’Assommoir becomes one of my favorite books of all time, at least until now.

2. Great Expectations

Great Expectations is almost perfect as a reading companion. Dickens has been famous for writing entertaining tales, that although his wordings are often tedious, we can’t help to keep reading to know what will happen next to our favorite characters. I enjoyed every word of this book, and rewarded also with the moral value of this bildungsroman.

1. Germinal

Have I mentioned that I’m a big fan of Emile Zola? Well, it’s not surprising then, that I granted the most exclusive place in this Book Kaleidoscope to Germinal. Sharp as it always is, Germinal also offers variety of amusements in the story—romances, fights of the poor against the have, and a bigger hope that the oppressed could get a better future. I always like stories about hope! And that makes Germinal to be…

FANDA'S MOST FAVORITE
BOOK OF 2012!

And this post would also be my last post to close this remarkable year of 2012. Thank you for all of you who has been joining me in this 2012 Book Kaleidoscope yearly meme. I had actually created it to amuse myself, and I'm so surprised that there were a lot of you who'd joined in. It had been wonderful because I could find new blogs and new books (although I'd never read them, but at least I know about them), and I'll positively host another Book Kaleidoscope for next year.

I would like also to thank all my followers, most of you followed me around this year. I hope you'd been enjoying my posts. I'm sorry if I could not return all your visits and comments, as I must keep the balance between reading, posts writing, events hosting, and blog walking. I wish I could be interacting with you more often next year. Meanwhile.....I wish you a Happy New Year of 2013! ...and I just can't wait for starting  reading my 2013 piles of books!

Book Kaleidoscope: My Top Five Best Book Covers

This is the second category of the 2012 Book Kaleidoscope, the rewinding of bookish aspects of books we have read during this 2012. After a little #fangirling in the 1^st category: Top Five Book Boy Friends yesterday, now we are switching to artistic aspects of a book: Covers! Here I rank my five most favorite books covers that I had read for 2012…

5. The Great Gatsby

I have posted about this particular The Great Gatsby cover for a classics challenge, and I don’t know why, this post became quite popular with 598 pageviews (when I wrote this post). This is a translated version of The Great Gatsby, and I like it even before I read the book. I like the overall color tone: beige, and the classy nuances. I’ll quote what I’ve written for this cover:

There are three persons, two men and one woman are standing in the middle of a party took place in a mansion. That was my first impression of this cover, and it turned out to match the book theme. The luxury party and the snob expression of those three persons could reflect the moral decadency of the “Jazz Age”. It seems that the woman (Daisy) is torn between the two men. She perhaps will choose the man in the front (Gatsby I presume), but she is somehow still attached to the man behind (Tom I presume), who is staring at her sharply, afraid of losing her.

Aesthetically I love the cover, it can reflect the theme of the book, but I think it still could not reflect the whole story. I could not even guess which one is Gatsby from the two gentlemen in the illustration.

4. Nobody’s Boy

This one is translated version of Nobody’s Boy from one of the biggest publishers in Indonesia. I like the old parchment color for the cover background, the illustration is nice too. Remi was pictured as a tiny and helpless boy, patting the dogs’ heads he loved—and the dogs loved him too. In the background, there was Signor Vitalis with the monkey on his shoulder, illustrated as if they were looking at Remi from a far before they both vanished. The illustration reflected the story very well.

3. Lord of The Flies

Red is my favorite color, so when I saw this new edition of Lord of the Flies in one of The Book Depository’s hourly sales, I just grabbed it without further consideration :) I liked the cover from the beginning, and after I read it, I loved it more. Firstly, the red color represented the fighting spirit of the characters. The illustration of the primitives fit with the story’s theme, and the bright colors (in leaves, animals) represented youthfulness. All in all, the cover tells the whole story of this book, about how youths could become savages, and how they fight against it. And the cover fits well with young adult readers.

2. The Color Purple

Not only because there were purple flowers in the cover that makes The Color Purple’s cover one of my favorites, I loved it because the cover reflected the story and the emotional aspects of the story. I have written about it here, let me just quote it now.

I think this certain cover speaks a lot about the book. First, there is a portrait of a black woman’s bare legs, standing at the porch (leaning on a pillar from rotten woods). The lack of shoes and the body language of the woman already brought the sense of poverty and powerless. The grayish color of the portrait only added a sense of hopelessness (and reflected the non-existence of women in the world) to the scene. However, there are also three purple flowers, as if from the helpless ground the flowers had grown to bring a new brighter and more colorful scene to the world (and to women in particular). The purple flowers represent the new hope of happiness that awaits Celie at the end of her long waiting.

1. Beloved

From the moment I held this book, I have been intrigued by the black woman’s picture. At first I thought the woman was so black that her face was almost disappeared. However at second sight, I began to realize that the half right of her face was completely transparent, as if half of her face dissolved to the red background of the cover (it’s a brilliant idea to choose red as part of the background so that the transparency effect became more distinct). And that was not intended to be just an effect (the transparency), or otherwise her hat and clothes would be transparent as well. It’s not until after I have finished reading Beloved—and it’s a very powerful book too—that I realized how clever the illustrator was in designing the cover. I could not say as much as I like without revealing the whole story, but I think that “Beloved” was exactly as what this cover is reflecting, mysterious, dark and made you think whether everything was real or was it as what you’ve been thinking. Genius design of a cover!

And….that makes Beloved…

Fanda’s Most Favorite Book Cover
of 2012!

*Put your post in the linky at Book Kaleidoscope Master Post*

*We still have one final post of the Top Five Most Favorite Books on December 31^st! (see the details in the Master Post)*

Book Kaleidoscope: My Top Five Book Boy Friends

It’s time for Book Kaleidoscope, the rewinding of bookish aspects of books we have read during this 2012. After having much consideration and many reflections—I have more than five candidates for Book Boy Friend category!—I concluded my top five book Boy Friends from classics books I have read in 2012, here they are to the top…

5. Louis XIV in The Man In The Iron Mask

You might be surprised to this because Louis XIV could be regarded as an antagonist in The Man In The Iron Mask. He was not a good guy—as you may say it—but I like how he had transformed from ruthless, spoiled young king to be an intelligent man, full of determination who in the end gained D’Artagnan’s respect. You can read my full analysis about Louis XIV in my Character Thursday (by the way, this was one of my favorite Character Thursdays so far).

D’Artagnan labeled Louis XIV as: “Gentle towards the weak, but terrible to the strong”

4. Ralph in Lord of the Flies

He’s only a teenager, but Ralph has showed a rare quality of a grown up man. In normal life he would have been an ordinary indifferent teenager, but forced to survive in terrible circumstances, Ralph showed the qualities of bravery and persistent to keep his conscience, no matter what the consequences were. I have written more thoroughly about Ralph in one of my Character Thursdays feature.

It’s never been easy to stand alone in what you think is right against the whole world who thinks you’re wrong, but alone he was, Ralph stayed with his conscience to the end—as he said: “Cos I had some sense.” 

3. D’Artagnan in The Man In The Iron Mask

Actually my liking to D’Artagnan grew bigger in Twenty Years After, but unfortunately I didn’t written my analysis from that book as I have featured him in Character Thursday from The Man In The Iron Mask. Nevertheless, he’s still the same D’Artagnan, the bravest and cleverest from any followers of King of France at that time. He was also humorous and had a remarkable loyalty to his friends. I have written a thorough analysis on D’Artagnan in my Character Thursday, but unfortunately it’s still in bahasa Indonesia.

His later quality—respect for friendship—is what I value the most from D’Artagnan, as reflected from what he would have said to Louis XIV: “I should say to him [King] straight out: ‘Sire, imprison, exile, kill everyone in France or in Europe, order me to arrest or poniard anyone in the world, even were it monsieur your brother, but do not touch either of the four musketeers. If one of them be harmed, I will not answer for the consequences.’”

 2. Pip in Great Expectations

I loved Pip from when he was a boy and met the convict. I admired him because—despite of being frighten to death—he seemed to me to have a pity towards the convict. Well, interest mingled with pity, so I assumed Pip was a loving boy. And this became clearer when he had been in hard times and at the end could forgive two persons who had changed his life most. I have just analyzed Pip in my Character Thursday of this week.

And if it’s not impressed you yet, here’s what Pip said to Estella (how could you not love a man like this?)…. “You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then.” Owww…. <3

1. Etienne Lantier in Germinal

If I must weigh all the positive personalities of all five characters in this book kaleidoscope, I might say that Etienne had the least. Normally I like men with tough characters who know what he’s doing (“Leave me alone, I know what I’m doing” ~Kimi Raikkonen, F1 driver). From my Character Thursday post of Etienne, he shouldn’t have been my most favorite, but still…I have been in love with Etienne from the beginning of Germinal, and I don’t quite know for what reason. Perhaps it’s because he’s so natural—like most of Zola’s characters. One thing that I admired in him was how he was brave to be different, stood out from anyone else. He always acted according to his own principles—wrong was he sometimes, but still, brave to learn from his mistakes and continue on to maintain another new hope, never give up! Plus he had respect for women—unlike most men at his generation.

So, after long consideration, I think Etienne Lantier deserved to be the winner of…

Fanda’s Most Favorite Book Boy Friend 2012!

 *Put your post in the linky at Book Kaleidoscope Master Post*

*Tomorrow we will post the Top Five Best Book Covers (see the details in the Master Post)*