Anne of Avonlea, Chapters Twelve and Thirteen

In which Anne has a very cranky day and finds her personal educational philosophy slipping, but then celebrates a pseudo-birthday by exploring the countryside and learning a terribly tragic story; and in which our narrator wonders whatever happened to Anne's toothache, because she should really get that checked out, seriously now.



Today's cover is from a 1995 Norstedts printing of the Swedish edition of Vår vän Anne. I like that this one shows Anne with (presumably) Davy and Dora, who I have never seen featured anywhere. Heck, they're hardly ever even mentioned when talking about these books, so it's rather nice to see them on a cover. In Sweden, anyway. I also appreciate that Davy looks like he's trying to claw his way out of those fancy clothes that are strangling him.

Unnecessarily complex notes to follow!


10:56 - "by what somebody has called 'a Herculaneum effort.'" Herculaneum was an ancient Roman city that was, like the more famous Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. It was wealthier than Pompeii, and actually better preserved, containing organic remains like wood, food, beds, and even skeletons. The destruction of Pompeii, though, was famously witnessed and described by Pliny the Younger, so it's distinctly the better-known.

Of course, that doesn't have much to do with this quote, which is a malaprop for the idiom "a Herculean effort." I'm not sure who the "somebody" is that Montgomery is attributing this phrase to, though. My best guess comes from an 1894 travelogue called Our Journey Around the World, by Rev. Francis Clark and Harriet Clark, where the narrator says "with a Herculaneum effort, as Mrs. Partington would have said..." Mrs. Partington turns out to be a character created by American humorist B. P. Shillaber in the 1850s who is described as an American Mrs. Malaprop (who, in turn, was from the play The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan and who, of course, gave her name to the practice of humorously replacing one word for another, similar-sounding one). The texts the Mrs. Partington are from, though, don't appear to be readily available online, at least not in searchable form, and what I can find does not appear to use particular term. I found other people in the 1800s making this same malaprop, though, so maybe it was just a semi-common joke with no specific source.

12:58 - "plum puffs won't minister to a mind diseased" Ah, okay, this one's easy. Anne here is adapting a quote from Act V, Scene III of Shakespeare's Macbeth:

MACBETH: How does your patient, doctor?

DOCTOR: Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from rest.

MACBETH: Cure her of that!
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon her heart.

DOCTOR: Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

One should note that by quoting this, Anne is casting herself in the part of Lady Macbeth, guilt-ridden over the murder of King Duncan.

13:37 - "Every morn is a fresh beginning / Every morn is the world made new." Anne here is caroling the start of the poem "New Every Morning," from the 1889 book A Few More Verses by Susan Coolidge (1835-1905, real name Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, and also author of, of course, Verses). As far as I know, it was never set to music. If it ever was, it most certainly was not whatever travesty I saddled it with.

17:45 - "harrowing." A harrow is an agricultural tool made up of many spikes, discs, or tines which are dragged across plowed soil to smooth it out and break up large clump of dirt, giving it a finer and more finished appearance  that is also better for seeding. This is also where the word "harrowing" comes from, as in "a harrowing experience." Because, well, imagine being dragged through this sucker.

18:17 - "Begone, dull care!" This comes from an old English folk song that dates back to at least the 1600s, and possibly earlier.

19:14 - "It would be too hot to hold some folks." ...yeah, no, I still have no idea what Jane is so "sagely quoting" here, if indeed anything.
 
20:21 - "elephant's ears." I'm not sure which of the various related plants referred to as "elephant ears" they are referring to, but as far as I can tell none of them would be described as "graceful" or "feathery," or appropriate for "picking a big bunch," as they're primarily known for their very large, leathery, heart-shaped leaves rather than their flowers.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

Frankenstein, Volume Three, Chapters Five and Six

In which Victor is self-centered to the point of missing the obvious, gets married, and the obvious happens.



And the monster has hit the fan! Well, he hit Elizabeth, actually, something which the monster's killing of others dear to him and and threats to take away all that he loves completely failed to tip Victor off to the monster's next move. Seriously, Victor, it's not all about you.

Anyway, now that the, uh, spoiler has occurred, I can share the more dramatic and violent of the covers. First up:

This French-language edition is from Le Scribe of Brussels in 1946, and depicts Elizabeth's murder in a manner highly inspired by the movie, with the castle and the neckbolts and what-not. Notice that this edition was written by Ann Mary Shelley, I guess. Apparently, the title page gets a little closer with May W. Shelley. Don't... don't know what's going on there, Belgium. Oh, and the cover artist is uncredited. So.

This one,by Lion Press in 1946 also with no artist credited, shows the immediate aftermath, with a sexy, lipsticked, cleavage-baring Elizabeth very prettily being dead without a mark on her. Meanwhile, the monster is not especially Karlovian, but does appear to be having a "my god, what have I done" moment that is not especially apparent in the book. Though, to be fair, neither is the cleavage.

Only one note this time around: at 16:42 we hear about Victor and Elizabeth purchasing their house in Cologny, which is a municipality of Geneva that is home to the World Economic Forum.

...I'm sorry, I thought that note would be more interesting. Anyway, one more installment!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

Frankenstein, Volume Three, Chapter Four

In which Victor discovers the identity of the murdered man, falls ill — again — for a couple of months, is found innocent, and is picked up by his dad.



So... is it just me, or are you all kind of rooting for bad things to happen to Victor now? Am I a bad person for feeling this, or is Victor just sort of insufferable? Maybe a little of Column A, a little of Column B? All right then.

Today's cover focuses on Victor, walking in the Alps, just as he first meets the monster whose shadow looms over his shoulder:

This 2007 edition is from Sterling Publishing's Unabridged Classics series, all of which have covers by Scott McKowen. McKowen works in a scratchboard style, which is nicely evocative of old-school woodcuts and such. He's best known for his work illustrating theatrical posters, many of which can be seen here along with much of his other work, and is also well-known in geek circles for illustrating the covers to Marvel Comics' 1602, by Neil Gaiman.

Notes after the jump!

Frankenstein, Volume One, Chapters One and Two

In which we are introduced to Victor Frankenstein, and he relates his backstory of parental death, sweetheart cousin Elizabeth, best friend Henry, fascination with alchemy, and teachers both supportive and non.



All right, so we've broken through the crunchy, frozen outer shell of the framing device and into the smooth, chocolately Swiss backstory of young Victor. This is actually where an interesting change was put in when Shelley edited the story for the 1831 edition. In the original version we're reading, Elisabeth is Victor's cousin, taken in by Victor's father when his sister (Victor's aunt) dies, and Elizabeth's father decides she'd apparently be better with her uncle than with a stepmother. Reading too much Grimm, perhaps.Spoilers, but Elizabeth and Victor become sweethearts, which was not an uncommon thing back then. Charles Darwin, for instance, married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839.

The 1831 edition, in contrast, not only beefs up how much Victor's parents doted on him, but changes Elizabeth into the daughter of an Italian nobleman who, upon his wife's death, left her with a foster family to raise. When the foster father disappeared at war, the family fell into poverty. Victor's parents, traveling through Italy and being of a charitable mindset, frequented the houses of the poor and came across this foster family. They noticed that one of the children "appeared of a different stock. The four others were dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child was thin, and very fair." Obviously, they decided to take this child (and only this child) out of poverty. The family loved her, but wanted the best for her, and so let them take her. Elizabeth was then subsequently given to Victor as a present. Jokingly, but the five-year-old took it seriously.

Personally, I find this 1831 version much creepier and more problematic than the kissing cousins.

Anyway, notes after then jump:

Sense and Sensibility, Volume the Third, Chapters Six and Seven

In which Elinor and Marianne arrive at the Palmers' residence, where Marianne takes dreadfully ill, everyone is very concerned and Colonel Brandon is dispatched to fetch Mrs. Dashwood; and in which there is a shocking twist!



Drama! Yes, we've come to the part that fans of the book have most likely been waiting for, where everything actually comes to a head, and we see that, while an excess of sensibility (here defined as feeling and expressing all emotions most intensely) can be dangerous, an excess of calmness and tranquility (or "sense") can sometimes lead to inaction when action may very much be needed. I wonder if any sort of lesson will be learned by either or both of the sisters?

Oh, crap. I have to use the "tedious moralizing" tag on myself, now.

4:46 - Showing her child to the housekeeper.

5:49 - The gardener's lamentations.

The only note I've got is at 15:07, where we hear about another card game. Mrs. Jennings insists that Colonel Brandon stay during Marianne's illness in order to keep her company while Elinor was sitting with Marianne, and "play at piquet of an evening," a pretense Mrs. Jennings thought necessary as to not separate Colonel Sad-eyes from Elinor, and which he was more than willing to accept so as not to be separated from Marianne. Well, piquet (in which the "t" is pronounced, because what are we, French?) is a trick-taking card game, like whist is (y'all remember whist, right?), but for only two players. It seems a bit complicated, involving a 32-card deck that had the 2-6 cards of each suit removed. Each player gets 12 cards, but then gets a chance to exchange up to five of them with cards from the remaining eight cards of the deck. Once both have exchanged, one declares what points they can make with their hand (like, "Point of four," meaning four of one suit). The other one then sees if they can beat it, and points are scored accordingly. You apparently want to do this without revealing too much of the specifics of what you actually have in your hand. Once this "declaration" phase is over and scored, they move into "play," which is fairly standard trick-taking: one lays down a card, the other lays down a card of the same suit. Whoever lays down the higher card wins the trick and scores. There are other ways to score as well, involving who does what first and who's dealing and such. Ultimately, whoever makes it to 100 points first wins.

Anyway, piquet was developed in France and was enormously popular there for a long time. It went in and out of fashion among Britain's upper crust for a couple of hundred years, until roughly a century ago when Bridge knocked it down into obscurity. And if you want to play it, there's an app for that. Because of course there is. Free on Android, and... $7.99 on iOS? Dang. You Apple folks are getting shafted in the archaic card game department.

28:55 - Opened a window-shutter.

If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg, and high-res copies of the Thompson illustrations can be found in the British Library's Flickr stream. No reading ahead, though!