Review of Far From the Madding Crowd

This book, written by Thomas Hardy is a story of a pretty woman, Bathsheba Everdeen, the men she encounters, the choices she makes the & their outcome. Set in rural England, where all of Hardy's novels are set, it describes the scenes of sheep shearing, Thanksgiving festival, autumn in the forests, soldier's sword manoeuvres with great eye for detail. Bathsheba Everdene is portrayed as a pretty young woman, quite aware of her own good looks, but practical and independent. She meets a young shephard Gabriel Oak who has just started his independent sheep farm & he becomes enamoured with her & proposes to her. She refuses him as he is too homely and unassuming for her fancy. She inherits her uncle's farm after his death and moves away from the place. She takes charge of the farm and decides to run it herself as the bailiff is found to be a thief. By a misfortune Gabriel Oak loses all his sheep in an accident and becomes penniless. By a curious coincidence of fate he obtains the shephard's job at Bathsheba's farm. Bathsheba, now a rich woman finds admiring male eyes everywhere she goes. Her vanity is piqued when she notices that a rich farmer in the neighbourhood Mr Boldwood, is the only man who is not moved by her good looks. In an idle moment she sends him a valentine card. Her object is soon attained when Farmer Boldwood not only notices her but starts getting obsessed with her. He proposes marriage to her. By this time Bathsheba meets a young, dashing soldier Francis Troy who soon sweeps her off her feet and she marries him. Initially their life is blissful but Troy gives up soldiering and leads an idle and dissipated life on his wife's money. Her farm, which she had earlier managed herself, suffers neglect at the hands of her uncaring husband. In difficult times it is Gabriel Oak who comes to her assistance again & again. Unknown to her Troy had been about to marry her servent Fanny Robin and would have done so but for a cruel stroke of fate where Fanny and misheard the name of the church they were to get married in & waited in vain for her groom in a different church. Fanny's fate is a sad one as she dies of starvation & exhaustion. Troy on coming to know of Fanny's fate, regrets not marrying her & mourns for her & her unborn child. He leaves Bathsheba and goes off by himself He is presumed to be dead when his clothes are found by the beach. Bathsheba who is prostrated by grief and shock by these events , recovers slowly and tries to once more get to normalcy. Farmer Boldwood once again pursues her with dogged determination & forces her to enter into an engagement with him. On the day the engagement is declared Sergeant Troy reappears once more to claim his wife & Farmer Boldwood shoots him dead. At the end of the book when Bathsheba hears that Gabriel Oak will be moving away to America, she feels deserted by her steadfast admirer, and agrees at last to marry him.
The vivid descriptions of pastoral life, conveys its rural, rustic charm to the reader. Bathsheba's transition from a slightly vain, rash, impetuous girl, to a lovelorn, heartbroken, married woman, to a wiser, chastened person at the end of the book is skilfully narrated. The characters of the three men are each different. Troy, as the flamboyant, skilful swordster , who is charismatic but unreliable, persuasive but untrue. Farmer Boldwood is a perfectionist, who gets unhinged and loses his mental balance in the throes of emotion. Lastly Farmer Oak, who like the Oak tree, is simple and without pretensions, but reliable and trustworthy.

Review of Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

This book written by erstwhile lawyer Wilkie Collins in 1859 is supposedly the first mystery novel of its genre. The story begins when a young drawing master Walter Hartright on his way to Limmeridge Hall, on a new assignment, meets a woman dressed all in white, who requests his help. He helps her to reach London and on the way there she relates her circumstances in a manner which marks something out of the common in her life, that she fears a baronet who is somehow responsible for her wretched circumstances. Later Hartwright comes to know that the lady had escaped from a lunatic asylum. Limmeridge Hall is inhabited by Mr Frederick Fairlie, a bachelor and a hypochondric, a very curious character who never stirs out of his room, even at mealtimes,his niece Miss Laura Fairlie and her devoted half sister Miss Marian Halcombe. There is an uncanny resemblence between the woman in white and Laura Fairlie which astonishes Walter Hartright so much that he requests Marian Halcombe to go through Mrs Fairlie's (Laura's mother) letters to find if the lady is in fact related to them in some way. Marian on perusing the letters discovers that the lady might in fact be Anne Catherick, a half witted woman , who had been a student at their parish school where Mrs Fairlie used to visit. She had been so fond of Mrs Fairlie that once, as a little girl, when Mrs Fairlie had praised her for looking nice in a white dress, Anne had promised her that she would dress in white always. The identity of the woman in white now established the mystery remained that who was the wicked baronet and what had he done to injure Anne Catherick.
During the course of teaching Laura and Marian drawing, Walter Hartright falls in love with Laura, though most of his coversations are with Marian Halcombe. But there is no hope for him to declare himself as he is poor and Laura is the heiress of Limmeridge Hall and all property which will come to her on the death of Mr Fairlie. She is also betrothed to Sir Percival Glyde, a marriage arranged by her father. But by this time Walter suspects that Sir Percival Glyde might be the wicked baronet which Anne Catherick had referred to. Without declaring himself to Laura he decides to leave the place, as the marriage is finalised , but Marian Halcombe knows of his feelings for Laura & suspicions against Sir Percival. She charges Sir Percival with Anne Catherick's story that he was the person who had sent her to asylum. Sir Percival very cleverly obtains a letter from Anne Catherick's mother absolving him of all blame and shows it to Marian to convince her. After Walter Hartright leaves Limmeridge Hall, Laura, who loves him, tries to get out of the engagement by declaring to Sir Percival that she is ready to marry him if he will accept her, though her heart belongs to another. Even on hearing this Sir Percival refuses to break off the engagement & promises Laura that Marian will live with her after the marriage. In the marriage settlement he refuses to accept the stipulation that if Laura dies before him without leaving any children , the twenty thousand pounds she will inherit may be left according to her will. This means that in case of her death he will be the sole owner of the huge sum of money.
Laura and Sir Percival are married and go for a six months tour to Europe. When they return to Blackwater (Sir Percival's home) they are accompanied by Count & Countess Fosco. Count Fosco is extremely shrewd, menacing and obese Italian gentleman who is also the husband of Laura Fairlie's aunt Countess Fosco, who is totally under her husband's thumb. Countess Fosco also stands to benefit monetarily if Laura Fairlie dies. Soon after marriage Sir Percival, who is in financial troubles, asks Laura to sign papers which will hand over the control of her money to him. She refuses to do this on Marian Halcombe's advice in consultation with her lawyer. Sir Percival's problems are aggravated when Anne Catherick arrives there to tell Laura his 'secret' which she knows. Marian Holcombe overhears Sir Percival and Count Fosco's plans regarding them. She gets drenched in the downpour and contracts a dangerous fever which turns to typhus. Count Fosco has already hatched a plan to get rid of Laura using the resemblence between Laura and Anne Catherick. Taking advantage of Marian's illness they trick Laura into travelling to London. When Laura reaches London she is drugged and taken forcibly to the asylum as Anne Catherick. Meanwhile Anne is taken to Count Fosco's home as Lady Fairlie. Here she dies soon after of a heart ailment. All of Lady Fairlie's money now goes to her husband and aunt. Marian Halcombe on recovering from her illness goes to the asylum to meet Anne, and is overjoyed to find Laura instead. She bribes the nurses and escapes with Laura. Here they meet Walter Hartright who had so far been in the Honduras, and has come to pay his respects at Laura Fairlie's grave, when they meet him.
Walter Hartright then takes up cudgels on Laura's behalf to restore her fortune to her. He suspects that Sir Percival's weak point lies in the mystery which Anne had threatened to reveal and which he had claimed would destroy him. Walter starts enquiring about Anne Catherick's background from Mrs Clements, the lady who had mostly looked after Anne and Mrs Catherick, her mother. He soon suspects that the secret lies in Sir Percival's past. With this aim he visits the church vestry at Welmingham to search for records of Sir Percival's fathers and mothers marriage. He finds this, but his suspicions are roused. He finds out from the original record that Sir Percival's father and mother had in fact not been married at all, but was in fact an illegitimate child. Meanwhile Sir Percival who has been following Walter comes to the vestry to try to cover his crime of forgery by burning the record. Unluckily the fire engulfs the entire vestry and Sir Percival is trapped in the blaze. Walter Cartright tries to save him but he is killed in the fire and the record of his crime is also destroyed. To establish Laura's true identity Walter then pressurises Count Fosco to give a written confession. He obtains this with the help of his friend Pesca, who are both members of a secret society in Italy. Count Fosco gives the statement by which Laura Fairlie is once more established to be living. Walter and Laura marry and their son inherits Limmeridge Hall. Count Fosco is later found murdered by the secret society members whom he had escaped from. Anne Catherick's strong resemblence to Laura Fairlie is found to be because she is probably the illegitimate daughter of her father Mr Philip Fairlie, she may be in fact Laura's half sister.
The suspense of the story is maintained in the narrative almost till the end. The ingenious plot of Count Fosco to switch the identities of the women is masterly. Sir Percival's secret is also one which is not easily fathomed. The tempo of the story builds up slowly and surely. The character of Count Fosco is finely sketched. He is shown to be courteous but menacing, kindly but unscrupulous.

Review of Persuasion

Main Characters : Anne Elliot, Captain Frederick Wentworth, Sir Walter Elliot, Lady Russell

Persuasion by Jane Austen is one of my favourite romantic novels of all time, not only because its plot is a lot like the evergreen Cinderella story written in Jane Austen's quintessential style of restrained emotion and sharp characterisation. Anne Elliot is the middle one among the three daughters of a baronet Sir Walter Elliot, a widower, who has currently fallen on hard times and so has to rent out his grand mansion Kellynch Hall to Admiral Croft, a retired seafaring gentleman, and move to smaller quarters in Bath with his unmarried elder daughter Elizabeth. Anne is also unmarried at 27. She is a gentle, sensible, warm natured girl with so much consideration for her family that she had been persuaded to give up the love of her life Captain Frederick Wentworth, eight years ago, as then being only a Lieutenant he was not thought to be good enough a match for her by her father and Lady Russell, who is a mother figure to her. The story begins at the point when Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth meet accidentally again after eight years under much changed circumstances. He is now a rich man, having made his fortune in the navy whereas her family has fallen on hard times. He is as handsome, or even handsomer than earlier, age and experience having given his face more character than it had earlier perhaps, whereas she is no longer in the first bloom of youth. She has not forgotten him and still has the feelings which she had eight years earlier for him, whereas he was bitterly disappointed when she rejected him at the behest of her family, has nearly forgotten her, and now being settled in life is looking for a suitable wife.
With her father and elder sister moving off to Bath, Anne Elliot comes to stay with her younger married sister and her family. Mary Musgrove , her sister is a demanding and often querulous and fancies herself ill most of the time & asks Anne to come look after her which Anne being the sweet and dutiful sister she is readily obliges her. The Musgroves live near to Kellynch Hall which has been rented out to the Crofts who incidentally are the sister and brother in law of Captain Frederick Wentworth who comes to visit them. When Anne meets Captain Wentworth after all this time, she is full of trepidation whereas he finds her so altered that he would not have known her again. In their next meetings he hardly acknowledges her presence, rather he begins to flirt with the Musgrove sisters. It is slowly by degrees when they are thrown together more and more that he realizes that the image of his ideal life partner which he had in his mind is none other than Anne whose excellent qualities of head and heart surpass those of any of the other ladies he had met, was meeting or ever would meet. But by the time he realises this Captain Wentworth's name has been already linked with Luisa Musgrove.
Anne Elliot next moves to Bath to her father's house. Here she finds favour in the eyes of her cousin Mr Eliott who is also her father's future heir, and the man her elder sister Elizabeth wants to marry. But Anne who had earlier rejected the suit of Charles Musgove, who later married her sister Mary, though always polite, does not fall for his charms. He is later found to be unscrupulous and avaricious who had courted her only to safeguard his inheritance. By lucky chance Captain Wentworth finds himself free of the obligation of marrying Louisa and hurries to Bath, where he now finds Anne courted by her cousin. Surmounting the obstacles the two now realise that there can be no one for them but each other, resulting in a happily ever after.

What I like about the book :
The romance between Anne and Captain Wentworth which has the flavour of old wine, which gains more flavour as it ages. The characters of Sir Walter as the narcissistic, autocratic and imperious person is rather well drawn. I wonder why he wasn't so horrible to his other daughters as he was to Anne. Maybe it is the author's ploy to draw more sympathy for Anne.
Anne get's the reader's full sympathy as she is the despised and downtrodden sister, the Cinderella, at home. Both her elder sister Elizabeth and younger one Mary are more dominating and rather more selfish than her. But the irony is that Mary's husband had earlier proposed to Anne whereas Elizabeth expects Mr Eliott to court her whereas he opts for Anne instead.

Review of Sense and Sensibility

Main Characters : Elinor Dashwood, Marianne Dashwood, Willoughby, Colonel Brandon

Written on similar lines as Pride and Prejudice this novel by Jane Austen is quite similar to it in character and cast. The main characters of the story are Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, young, pretty sisters like the Bennet sisters of Pride and Prejudice. Unfortunately the Dashwood family has fallen on hard times due to the death of their father. His property goes to his only son Mr John Dashwood, the girl's stepbrother. Mrs Dashwood and her daughters are forced to seek a home more suited to their current state of relative poverty as they are disliked by Mrs John Dashwood. Sir John Middleton, their distant relation offers them Barton Cottage far away from Norland and they decide to shift there. Elinor is in love with Edward Ferrars, who is also Mrs John Dashwood's brother. Marianne and her mother all like him and expect Elinor to be engaged to him but he does not propose to Elinor when they are at Norlund though he shows a decided preference for Elinor's company. Elinor gives excuses for this to herself and her impetuous younger sister Marianne who cannot understand dilly dallying or withholding her emotions. Elinor is on the other hand level headed and sensible as compared to Marianne who is rather rash and impulsive giving in to her sensibilities. This is the crux of the difference in the characters of the two sisters. At Barton Cottage Marianne meets Willoughby who is a young and handsome young man who soon seems completely devoted to her and besotted by her. She too falls deeply in love with him as he is the epitome of young man to her, sharing in all her interests like music and dancing. Colonel Brandon , a respectable gentleman of thirtyfive odd years, Sir Middleton's friend also becomes interested in Marianne but she pays no attention to him having eyes only for Willoughby. They spend idyllic days in each other's company, meeting for parties and picnics where they have eyes only for each other. After this Willoughby is suddenly sent by his aunt from whom he is to inherit Allenham Cottage, on an errand. He comes back no more to Barton Cottage. Marianne expects him to return daily and watches everybody who comes by on horseback to be Willoughby. Edward Ferrars comes for a visit to their house and goes away without proposing to Elinor. In Sir John Middleton's house they meet Mrs Jennings his mother in law, an elderly, rich, friendly woman and Mr and Mrs Palmer, Mrs Palmer being the younger daughter of Mrs Jennings. Mr and Mrs Palmer are absolute opposite of each other. Mrs Palmer is talkative, goodnatured and friendly whereas Mr Palmer is taciturn and uncommunicative who takes no notice of Mrs Palmer's speeches. Elinor and Marianne also become acquainted with Lucy and Anne Steele, two girls who are relatives of Mrs Jennings & are thus invited to Sir Middleton's house. Lucy Steele is a clever, conniving girl and on becoming better acquainted with her Elinor realises that Lucy Steele is secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars, and they have been engaged for many years. Although Lucy tells Elinor that Edward is very attached to her Elinor does not believe this as she feels that Edward had entered the engagement when he was younger and not aware of Lucy's character fully. Elinor believes that Edward being a gentleman cannot sever the engagement but regrets it. Of this she becomes sanguine, though she does not reveal all this to her mother or sisters who still cherish the hope that she will marry Edward.
When Willoughby does not return to Devonshire, the girls Elinor and Marianne agree to Mrs Jenning's invitation to stay with her in London for a few months. On reaching London, Marianne comes to know of Willoughby's presence in town. She writes him a number of times but receives no reply to her letters. This agonises her so much that she can hardly behave normally with others. Willoughby's true character is revealed to her when they hear the news that he is engaged to be married to a rich heiress. Meanwhile Colonel Brandon tells Elinor that Willoughby had seduced and then ditched his ward. The Steele sisters also arrive in London to stay with the Palmer's. Here Lucy Steele is invited to stay with Mrs John Dashwood, Elinor's sister in law. Lucy Steele meets Edward Ferrars younger brother Robert and finding him to be richer than Edward gets engaged to him after breaking off her engagement with Edward. After Willoughby's betrayal Marianne is anxious to leave London and return to her mother. On their way back she falls dangerously ill and they have to break their stay at Colonel Brandon's house. She is nursed to health by Elinor. When she is sick Willoughby also comes there and asks Elinor's forgiveness for his behaviour towards Marianne which he regrets deeply. Marianne recovers slowly. The story ends with Marianne accepting Colonel Brandon's proposal of marriage and Elinor marrying Edward Ferrars who has been provided a living as a clergyman in Colonel Brandon's parish church.

What I like about the book:
Elinor's character is a balanced and sensible one. She is able to judge people accurately and she guides her mother and Marianne to take proper decisions when they would have acted foolishly or impulsively. She is able to judge Edward's actions in the affair of Lucy Steele, and does not reproach him for it.

Review of Tom Sawyer

Written by Mark Twain in 1876 this classic book shows the development of an adolescent boy in Missisippi, America. Tom Sawyer is the quintessential 'bad boy with a heart of gold' and all the antics he gets upto are the focus of this book. He is perennially lazy, avoiding chores , school, homework and church recitals like the plague. His greatest enjoyments are fishing and swimming the day long. In other words he is like the majority of mankind the world over and this is what attracts us. His Aunt Polly is an original character - strict spinster aunt who imposes stricter discipline on him but still allows him to get away with a large chunk of his misdemeneours. In one classic scene Aunt Polly forces him to whitewash the long fence around their house. It is a Saturday and Tom knows that all his friends will be passing by the road soon going for their holiday enjoyments. He is ashamed that they will jeer and boo him when they see him working away- a thing he detests. So he comes up with a famous plan. He pretends to be engrossed in his work and does not reply at first to the first of his chums who happens to pass by. His friend first jeers at him for having to work on a holiday. On getting no proper response from the deeply absorbed Tom he has doubts. He then asks Tom to lend him the brush for painting for a while. Tom is internally jubilant but increases his friend's interest in fence painting by telling him that it is such an important task that his aunt would entrust it to noone but him and such sentiments in a similar vein. He gives his friend the brush only in exchange for the apple he possesses. Soon he manages to con his other friends in painting and trades a trunkfull of things in exchange for allowing them to paint his fence. When his Aunt Polly comes for an inspection she is astonished to find the job completed spectacularly! Tom Sawyer manages to kill many birds with one stone.
The philosophy of work and play is aptly stated in this book. Work is something which we are obliged to do whereas play is something which is something which we would naturally enjoy doing and are not in any way obliged to do.