Arthur Schnitzler – La Ronde

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1900, Arthur Schnitzler, Austria 1900s, Book Review, La Ronde, Peter Zombory-Moldovan (translator), Plays, Stephen Unwin (translator)

It’s Sex that makes the world go Ronde

Arthur Schnitzler’s play La Ronde has had a curious history. Schnitzler originally wrote it in 1897. The first publication was a printing in 1900 for private circulation, under its original, German title, Reigen, and its first commercial publication was 3 years later, in Vienna, in a run of 40,000. However it was promptly banned by the censors a year later, and not re-published until 1908 in Germany. A translation and publication in French followed in 1912, with the title which has become most familiar, La Ronde. The translation into English was published in 1920, in a ‘privately printed, privately circulated’ edition

As the play is ‘A Round’ of sexual encounters, it was clearly seen as far too hot to handle.  The title also inherently suggests a kind of dance, where partners are swapped. The play is presented in 10 two-person scenes. Characters are not named, instead, their ‘function’ describes them – for example, the first pairing is the Prostitute and the Soldier. The second scene is the Soldier (from the scene before), with, now, a new partner, the Maid (Parlour Maid). The third scene features the Parlour Maid with the Young Master. The final, scene 10 encounter involves the Prostitute from the first scene, so completing the circle

As difficult as it had been to get the play printed, early performance proved equally challenging. It was not performed until 1912 (in translation), in Hungary, and was immediately banned after that first performance. It had its first performance in German in 1920 in Germany and 1921 in Austria, and was quite violently received, both pro and anti. The ‘anti-camp’ included not only those outraged by its frank acknowledgement of sexuality, but also those who objected to Schnitzler himself – he was Jewish, so subject matter and race were linked by the ‘anti-camp’ as some of those antis were anti-Semitic – the play seen as pornographic, the author attacked as a Jewish pornographer. Schnitzler withdrew the rights to public performance of the play in German, though the play was popular in other countries, in translation – and, most particularly in France, where there were a couple of movie adaptations, one by Max Ophuls (1950) and one by Roger Vadim (1964)

Snippets of Ophuls

When the play came out of copyright early in the 80s, it rather gained a new lease of life, particularly with versions which updated the setting (1890s Vienna) to a more modern take on how class boundaries break down when sex itself, divorced from any idea of permanent encounter, or even, from love, is engaged in for its own sake

So there have been several adaptations of the play setting it in the gay community, a production with characters with a range of sexual orientation, and productions where the ‘class-levelling’ encounters were differently expressed, so, for example instead of Schnitzler’s ‘servant’ and ‘master’, the power dynamic could be expressed using more contemporary ideas of who has power and who doesn’t. There have also been re-writings or adaptations of the piece – for example, the British playwright David Hare, in his version The Blue Room. There have also been musicals based on Schnitzler’s play!

Nicole Kidman and Iain Glen in David Hare’s version of La Ronde, The Blue Room, 1998, Donmar Warehouse

I have to admit I did struggle with reading the play – far more than the first two novels I read in ‘Reading the Twentieth’ – (Theodore Dreiser’s wonderful Sister Carrie, and Colette’s remarkably free spirited look at the sexuality of young girls, Claudine at School). Schnitzler reads as quite dated. Not to mention a little coy. I don’t know how much translation (Stephen Unwin and Peter Zombory-Moldovan are both credited as translators and writers of the excellent introduction) itself is responsible, and how much is a kind of more dated quality in spoken language, particularly when something about class is being suggested by the use of slang. Using original slang can lose punch. Trying to update specific language can still sound peculiar. Certainly, a play depends on far more than merely words upon a page, but some plays seem to leap more easily into how they might look and sound, when read silently..

So, for example, in this translation, in the first encounter, (Prostitute, Soldier) the Soldier says to the Prostitute at one point ‘Give us a snog’ – so, fair enough, language has been modernised…..except that, a little later the Prostitute says ‘At least give me sixpence for the housekeeper’ and, when he runs off without paying, her language is restrained, her curses mild : ‘You scum! Bastard!’ The mismatches irritated me.

Gustave Klimt, The Kiss

What I did find, far more fascinating than the play itself on the page, was that excellent introduction in this edition, which looks not only at Schnitzler himself, and this play in particular, but at the politics, society and culture of Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century, and examines, for example, the popularity of the sentimentalism of Strauss’s waltzes, Lehar’s operettas on the one hand, and the disturbing, more challenging and unsettling ‘new’ music as defined by Mahler and Schoenberg on the other. In the visual arts, a Viennese variant of Art Nouveau was emerging – as seen in the work of Klimt; Egon Schiele was also painting, and there is a frank eroticism in the work of both artists. Sensuality up front, as in La Ronde. There is also, in the music, in the art, and in La Ronde, an underlying anxiety, a melancholy – it is that ‘ring of bright hair about the bone’, the ticking clock, the impermanence of it all – and Schnitzler himself, in a diary entry, links love and death together

Each relationship carries its death right from the birth, just as people do

Lest this all sound too gloomy, there is also, quite clearly, a playfulness in the encounters, and I suspect the best productions will contain the idea of a kind of dance between each couple, a flirtatious game of seduction, deception, dishonesty. The sex-cheating-death-for-a-moment is subtext rather than smacking the audience in the head from the off

Egon Schiele The Embrace

Schinitzler himself, perhaps unsurprisingly, as he had originally been a doctor, was a Viennese, and clearly interested in the mismatch between our conscious structures and our unconscious drives, corresponded with Freud, another Viennese, also Jewish, who of course has been a towering and central figure on ‘the Century of the Self’. Schnitzler, as a doctor, was interested in ‘psychological approaches’ in the treatment of physical ailments. Freud was full of admiration for Schnitzler, and how his writings , through imagination, were laying out much of what Freud’s books are about. Freud’s conclusions came from observations and encounters with clients, and the process of psychoanalysis

Part of the 3rd movement of Mahler’s Symphony No 4, composed 1899/1900

Part of my reason for reading this has been because my original choice of Dreiser, the desire for a lighter read (Colette) and the fact that Freud’s Interpretations of Dreams seemed to me to be far and away the most potentially interesting non-fiction book of 1900, did end up making a kind of reading pattern around women, and attitudes to their sexuality, and the powerful drives we cannot simply rationalise away, though that is indeed what we may strive to do – so, a mismatch between surface and what lies below the surface has seemed a common thread. Dreiser references some of what is being discussed in the Interpretation of Dreams, and talks at one point about pre-existing scientific theories of dreams, which Freud also spends a lot of time dissecting, before talking about his own findings.

La Ronde has certainly been an illuminating 1900 piece, though, of course, a slightly controversial one to pin to a specific year, given its stop start, stop start history both on the page and in performance

La Ronde, translated by Unwin, Zombory-Moldovan NHB digital edition UK
La Ronde, translated by Unwin, Zombory-Moldovan NHB digital edition USA

A READING THE TWENTIETH POST – 1900 : FICTION – PLAY – IN TRANSLATION 

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Frank L. Baum – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

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1900, America 1900s, Book Review, Children's Book Review, Frank L. Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Somewhere Over The Rainbow……………….

I have never read The Wizard of Oz. Not as far as I remember. My childhood books were very much the classics of English literature for children. I remember of course, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Wind In The Willows (very strongly), the marvels of the Andrew Lang coloured fairy story books, which I was forever borrowing from the library, Dodie Smith, the marvellous Moomins, a few Blytons – the Faraway Tree stood out. The famous five appealed less than Swallows and Amazons – I wanted to be Pirate Nancy Amazon, the Swallows were too tame! , Noel Streatfield, and, most of all, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett – a marvellous central character, a cross, imperious, bad-tempered girl who discovers a real love of the natural world (clearly, lots to identify with!) My guess is that what lay over the Atlantic did not really enter my mother’s mind. I don’t think I even saw the film till I was an adult, probably on one of the perennial TV showings.

W.W.Denslow, Illustrator

So, having discovered that Baum wrote it – it never even occurred to me that it had had a literary beginning way before Judy Garland developed an obsession with rainbows – and that it first saw the light of day in 1900, it seemed time to see what a 1900 child was getting, particularly as the version I got on Kindle came with the original drawings (albeit in black and white). I gather that one very original feature of the book was that it had colour illustrations, which of course is something we absolutely expect in a children’s book these days. Thinking about those illustrations it was interesting to see that Dorothy is quite a stocky, solid, normal looking little girl, not stylised into extreme pulchritude in the Barbied or Disneyfied fashion of today

I was intrigued by Baum’s reasons for writing this . In the foreword, he states he wanted to write a book full of magic and wonders but without the moralising aspect of children’s books of the time – fair dos to that – but, curiously he was troubled by the nightmares and the horrors in children’s books – as in traditional fairy stories, for example, Brothers Grimm style. However, I was less impressed by that idea. Children do tend to rather love a degree of grisly, and I think it’s adults who then forget that as children there was a kind of terrified delight in the grimness of those dark tales. Things always came right in the end, despite the horridness.

I do have to say I rather missed the scary in this. There are of course baddies – the two Wicked Witches, though the first one is killed by Dorothy’s house landing on her before we even know she exists, and the second one, though not the nicest of lassies by any means, certainly is no where near as chilling as witches generally are in fairy tales. Besides, Dorothy is such a sensible and grown-up little body that though we are told she is frightened, homesick and the rest, Baum doesn’t really go in for the kind of description which really gets you into identifying with the feelings of the central character. And, perhaps this was an unusual aspect in the book. It is the little girl, Dorothy, not to mention the good and beautiful witch Glinda who are the most sensible and grounded, as well as psychologically balanced. Dorothy might almost be said to be too good to be true. I liked very much that the driver of resolutions (with a little help from her friends whom she, of course, had enormously helped in their own psychological development) was a female child. Dorothy is rescuer as much as she is ever rescued.

It was also interesting to see that her heart’s desire was always practical and pragmatic – to get back to Kansas. In large part because the kindly girl does not want to leave her aunt worrying about her. Her companions, the brainy scarecrow who believes he has no brains, the highly empathetic and feeling tin man who feels he lacks heart, and the cowardly lion who constantly behaves bravely but not does not realise that feeling fearful doesn’t mean cowardice, have problems in being unable to positively see themselves as they really are. Likewise, the wonderful wizard of Oz himself is a fake, who is afraid of being seen for himself. It’s only Dorothy who doesn’t really have time for all this neurosis which, in their different ways, the over-imaginative chaps of straw, tin, lion and wizardry are expressing.

Difficult to completely cast myself back into the mindset of the child I was, and try to see this through that child’s eye, but I suspect Dorothy would have been far too sensible and perfect for me to identify with, though I would have liked the fact that she’s the one who solves the problems rather than just waiting feebly for the prince to come and rescue her.

I also very much enjoyed the warm humour. Much of this may have resonated more for the adults reading the book to their children, though I’m not really convinced that those adults would have been thinking ‘here is an allegory about economic theory’ (see below):

Something I enjoyed almost more than the story was the inclusion, in the interesting after material of a fabulously, barkingly hot air academic analysis of this which tied itself in ever more ridiculous knots to find political, economic and sociological analysis of the text, indeed, going so far as to claim that Baum clearly wrote the book to engage with a major strand in economic theory thinking at the time – bimetallism. Oscar Wilde makes satiric reference to this theory in An Ideal Husband, as Mabel Chiltern deflects the often proposing Tommy from yet another proposal :

At luncheon I saw by the glare in his eye that he was going to propose again, and I just managed to check him in time by assuring him that I was a bimetallist. Fortunately I don’t know what bimetallism means. And I don’t believe anybody else does either. But the observation crushed Tommy for ten minutes. He looked quite shocked.

Bimetallism referred to a monetary standard which gave a fixed rate to both gold and silver – a fixed rate of exchange between them. Both gold and silver can then be exchanged into fixed rates of legal tender

Henry Littlefield, an historian, produced a highly complex analysis of the Wizard of Oz in the 60’s (irreverently I wondered under what influence!) claiming that the Yellow Brick Road which led to the Emerald City represented the Gold Standard. Which led to the fakery of The Emerald City with its fake wizard and the green glasses which deceived wearers into only seeing green: the fraudulence and fakery of ‘greenbacks’ – paper money. The silver slippers which finally will get Dorothy back to Kansas represent the stability which ‘Bimetallism’ would bring (according to its adherents) to the economy, compared to only using the Gold Standard.

Frank L. Baum

You’re quite right, I went cross-eyed trying to work out the theory of this, as reported in the afterword which reported on Littlefield’s theories, and others.

I think I’m with Mabel Chiltern.

I enjoyed my reading of Baum, and the inevitable inclusion of that iconic rainbow moment from the 1936 film.

I shall be looking forward to including some more books written for children, in due course, as I progress, increasingly slowly, through the century. It seems harder to move on from a year than I anticipated

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Amazon UK
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Amazon USA
This Kindle version has the original illustrations, but in black and white, and with the addition of a lot of extra background material

I have since found another version, also on Kindle, with those original illustrations by W.W. Denslow, but as colour illustrations. Heaven. I’m not sure whether it has all the interesting postscripts that the copy I had contains – I suspect not, from the big difference in numbers of pages. I suspect the first version is perhaps of more interest for adults, with all the background. Me, I’m greedy, one version with both please!
Original illustrations in colour Amazon UK
Original illustrations in colour Amazon USA

A READING THE TWENTIETH POST – 1900 : FICTION  (CHILDREN’S)– NON UK

Finally – I’m told by the Site Admin that this is my 500th post. It seems more than fitting that a blog called ‘Lady Fancifull’ should have a distinctly fantasy/fairy tale book review for such a momentous number

Colette – Claudine at School

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1900, Antonia White, Book Review, Claudine at School, Colette, France 1900s, Gay and Lesbian Literature

Wicked, vicious and enchanting – girl power in France, circa 1900

A major effect of my sequential twentieth century challenge is that reading in this way will inevitably take me outside the book itself as an isolated reading experience, and focus some attention on the time, culture and geography of its arising – and, I suspect, I shall happily be drawn into ‘biographical fallacy’ as there is always a life being lived (the author’s) in that time, culture and geography. And sat within the twenty-first century, it will no doubt be interesting to see how much we consider to be modern and new is of course, merely a spiral: specific manifestations may change, but the form remains the same

So, turning to Colette’s first novel, Claudine at School, the story of a racy minx of a fifteen year old in a perhaps unusual school in Burgundy, which was published in 1900 purporting to be written by Monsieur Willy, the nom-de-plume of Colette’s husband, it’s necessary to take a look at the author, and also at the person whose name originally appeared as author.

Colette, born in 1873 as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, was by 1893 married to Henry Gauthier-Villars, a man some 14 years older than she was. His pen-name was amusingly apt, as far as Anglo Saxon speakers are concerned, because he was a libertine, with serial mistresses. Monsieur Willy was an ‘author’ – except he wasn’t exactly. He was a man of wealth whose family business was a publishing house. Although he was a music critic and writer who wrote under several nom-de-plumes, he also persuaded impoverished writers to write books which he then published under his own name, gaining some reputation as a man of letters. Although the authors did get some recompense, and had the satisfaction of getting published, they did not get the financial rewards, or the kudos, which might have accrued had they got published elsewhere, under their own names. This seems like a different version, perhaps, of our modern vanity publication – in reverse! Willy encouraged Colette, clearly a woman of generous sexual tastes, to have affairs with women whilst he continued his own affairs, which marriage did not interrupt. Curiously, it did not seem that he encouraged her to also have affairs with other men!

In the end Colette married three times, as well as having relationships with other women. It is not always clear how much of her writing is fictional, and how much merely an embroidery of fact.

Colette as a schoolgirl : Simplesue.tumblr.com

The story behind the Claudine series of four books puts it about that that this is a thinly disguised fiction, based on Colette’s own experiences at school. Colette recounted some amusing, not to mention salacious, tales of life at a school, where the headmistress and second mistress were lesbians, and the central character and narrator, Claudine, was more interested in girls and young women than she was in boys and young men, at that time. Willy suggested she wrote ‘her’ escapades into a story, and he would see if he could publish them. By all accounts, he didn’t initially think much of them and slung them, forgotten, into a drawer. A few years later, discovering them, he realised they were gold, and published them under his name. To be honest, the themes of hot-house gymslip pashes, crushes and overt lesbian sex, plus a fair smattering of dominatrix behaviour, perhaps become more alluring if they are presented as being more fact than fiction, as his wife’s stories, written by him. Certainly Colette had a rather unconstrained, definitely unconventional sexual history, and the reader might assume Claudine IS Colette, though the story certainly has major departures from her own known life – Claudine is the only child of a widower who is an academic specialising in the study of slugs – this latter the source of much humour. Colette was the daughter of a tax collector and her much loved mother, Sido did not die in the author’s childhood! Nonetheless, the way Colette describes the definitely vampy Claudine, down to that amazing hair and the shadowed, smudged eyes, does seem as if she has described herself!

Colette’s life did show her to be a highly sexy and alluring woman, with a remarkably, one would think, for the time, relaxed, light-hearted and playful attitude to sex. Certainly what might be thought of as ‘Victorian morality’ was not the case across the Channel, if Colette, and her book’s reception are anything to go by. Claudine at School (and the three later volumes in the series) became a runaway success, inspiring merchandising mayhem, and generating income for ‘Monsieur Willy’

Colette by Jacques Humbert 1896

By 1906 the marriage was over. Willy owned the copyright to the books and the merchandise, and Colette was unable to profit from her own works. To support herself, she went on the stage, had a scandalous relationship with another woman, married twice more, and in her late 40’s embarked on an affair with her 16 year old stepson, the child of her second husband. In a case of art imitating life, one of her most famous books, Chéri (and The Last of Chéri ) charts the relationship between a woman in her 50s and a much younger man/boy. Her third husband, with whom she lived happily until she died, was also a much younger man.

Probably her most famous book was Gigi, which became a stage musical and a film

Her writing was hugely appreciated and praised in her native country – as indeed it deserved to be – her life and her art explored female sexuality, marriage, and the struggles of women for independence. She had a great gift for describing the world of the senses and physicality. Even in this first book there is clear delight in her descriptions of the natural world, the colours, sounds, smells, tastes and textures of reality. She was at one time regarded as France’s greatest woman writer, was a recipient of several literary honours, in both France and Belgium, President of the Academie Goncourt, a recipient of the Legion of Honour, nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, and was the first French female writer to receive a full State funeral.

Reading a brief account of her life and works, though I had read the Claudine books, and Cheri, many years ago, I had not at that time taken on board how extraordinary the subject matter was, given the time of publication. Never mind the sexual revolution of the sixties, certainly across the Channel from England this Frenchwoman was openly exploring her sexuality as the twentieth century dawned – and doing so in her writing with wit, verve, delicious openness and freedom. England and France were clearly worlds apart. It is impossible to think of an English writer at this time, at the tail end of Victoria’s reign, writing a book like this which is so frank and bold about young girls’ passions, and it also becoming a run-away best seller. What is remarkably different from, for example English writing on ‘inversion’ (as the term went in the UK) – such as Radclyffe Hall’s admittedly a generation later ‘Well of Loneliness’ or E.M. Forster’s 1913/14 written Maurice – which was in fact not published till after the author’s death – is that there is no sense of shame or guilt in ‘Claudine’ – there is gossip, there are whisperings and delight in scandal, but there is a kind of ‘so what?’ shrug being expressed about it all. A film of the book Claudine a L’École, directed by Serge de Poligny, and starring  Blanchette Brunoy, was released in 1937, here showing just some clips

What looks like a rather more knowing TV version followed later, with Marie-Hélène Breillat in the title role, directed by Édouard Molinaro and there is certainly a lot more ‘sass’ and a sense of in your face provocation in the clip from this.

Claudine herself is intelligent, witty, vicious, prone to sadism, rebellious, an utter minx, fearsome and sparklingly entertaining – and no relation at all to some of the troubled, angsty teens who become icons later in the century – Holden Caulfield, for example. Claudine runs rings around everyone, she oozes sexuality and female power and is no man’s – or woman’s – pushover. The book fizzes with vivacity, and the girls are remarkably odd – the intelligent ones are all wickedly ill-behaved, and the adults to a man and woman easily manipulated by the charming and scary Claudine and her close chum and nemesis ‘the lanky Anaïs’ This is young girl power, like a firework display.

Who would have thought that weird eating habits – a predilection for eating snow, pencils, crayons, cigarette papers and drinking vinegar could produce such an example of girls with not only attitude, but high intelligence and wit (you’ll have to read the book!)

We still had ten minutes to go before the end of class; how could we use them? I asked permission to leave the room so that I could surreptitiously gather up a handful of the still-falling snow. I made a snowball and bit into it: it was cold and delicious. It always smells a little of dust, this first fall. I hid it in my pocket and returned to the classroom. Everyone round me made signs to me and I passed the snowball round. Each of them, with the exception of the virtuous twins, bit into it with expressions of rapture. Then that ninny of a Marie Belhomme had to go and drop the last bit and Mademoiselle Sergent saw it.

“Claudine! Have you gone and brought in snow again? This is really getting beyond the limit!”

She rolled her eyes so furiously that I bit back the retort “It’s the first time since last year

Finally, during the hilarious examination scene, and in the lessons where the teachers vainly try to keep order, the standard of education, and particularly maths, is fearsomely high. No calculators either.

For me personally, the story dragged a little once the examination scene was over, and the final big set-piece and wrap up happened, with the visit of the Minister of Agriculture and a big ‘town celebration’ , though it did give the chance to open into the wider world.

     Colette with a couple of her soul-mates

The version I found was published in 1968, translated by Antonia White – she of Frost In May fame. You can rather tell that the translator is someone who is able to do much more than just ‘literal word for word’, and is someone who has the feel for the shape of a sentence, and the flavour of writing and different writers. I had no sense of ‘in translation’ just of immediate connection with what I was reading. The Kindle Version appears to be of the Vintage Classics republication of this, with White’s translation

Claudine at School Amazon UK
Claudine at School Amazon USA

A READING THE TWENTIETH POST – 1900 : FICTION – IN TRANSLATION

Theodore Dreiser – Sister Carrie

Tags

1900, America 1900s, Book Review, Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser

Championing a fairer deal for women and the working class in early twentieth century America

Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 published novel, primarily set in Chicago, is a wonderful way to start my sequential reading the twentieth century challenge.

Many of the concerns which are likely to be centre stage in my reading of the century, which film-maker Adam Curtis (I’m sure, amongst others) dubbed ‘The Century of The Self’ are markedly to the fore in Dreiser’s novel. Indeed, I find connections with the non-fiction biggie from that year, which I’m slowly working through – Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams

Dreiser, in this written in the third person, narrator also as philosopher, interpreter, adviser, teacher, which was a common stance in writing at that time, as well as telling his story, also reminds us about the unconsciousness of many of our choices, and shows a lot of understanding of much which was being written about, discussed, debated, in a century which began to look at mind itself. The novelist has absorbed and thought about what is being addressed by the great psychotherapy pioneer and his colleagues and predecessors in this field

Sister Carrie was Dreiser’s first novel, and what a deep novel it is. It follows a clear narrative journey, has completely believable characters, the central ones of whom are particularly complex, nuanced and perfectly credible as recognisable individuals – but we also absolutely see the history and culture of time and place acting on them, moulding them, influencing and shaping them. Choices may be made, which seem individual, but the freedom of expression may be more circumscribed than some characters – or some readers, particularly at that time – may believe.

Carrie is a young rural girl, who comes to Chicago in 1889, to stay with her sister and her brother-in-law. Carrie has ambition, she is a young woman of beauty and some delicacy, wanting to improve her status and opportunities. She aspires to some kind of clerical office job, or perhaps as a sales assistant in one of the burgeoning glossy department stores. Unfortunately, her poverty and lack of experience are against her. It is an employer’s market, and all she can get is dirty, badly paid, unskilled factory work, exploited and working in impossibly harsh conditions.

Dreiser, writing with irony, looks back on the 1889 working conditions and compares them to the more enlightened thinking of ‘now’ (1900):

The place smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather – a combination which added to by the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant, even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept each evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving them as little and making the work as hard and unremunerative as possible. What we know of footrests, swivel-back chairs, dining rooms for the girls, clean aprons and curling irons supplied free, and a decent cloak room, were unthought of. The wash rooms and lavatories were disagreeable, crude, if not foul places, and the whole atmosphere of hard contract

Another writer with a socialist, humane ideology, Upton Sinclair, in his famous book The Jungle, set also in Chicago, in the meat processing industry, and published in 1906, rather shows the ‘atmosphere of hard contract’ had not changed in the intervening years, so Dreiser was writing at a time when, practically, those footrests, dining rooms, clean lavatories and the rest, were still unthought of in factories.

Dreiser’s particular focus in this book though, is on women, on the circumscribed choices available to women, and how poverty and want may drive a woman to make a living by selling herself. He explores the different power dynamic between men and women, and also the different morality expected of the sexes.

I discovered with interest that though Sister Carrie found a publisher, the book was considered too hot – or even too offensive – to handle. It was poorly promoted, and in fact published expurgated. And this is not because of any salacious content. Dreiser never describes the bedroom content, we only are told she has been set up by a protector, and it’s perfectly obvious what choices she had to make to get protection.

“Chicago-Loop-1900” source: David Kennedy, et al. American Pageant (13th ed. 2006) p 503. Licensed under PD-US via Wikipedia

What 1900 society found so offensive in Dreiser’s writing was his refusal to act the moralist, thundering down abuse on this fallen woman – instead, he reminds the reader how society itself creates the world in which the Carries must make this choice.

There are three major figures in this book, Carrie herself, the travelling salesman Charles Drouet and the sophisticated bar manager G.W. Hurstwood, looked up to by both Carrie and Drouet. Hurstwood is a man beginning to move in circles near the people of greater power, celebrity and wealth. In fact, the adulation of celebrity, and its shallowness, so symptomatic of our age, is also laid out here. The two men, like Carrie herself, aren’t presented as consciously wicked, rather with the normal human failings of weak will, easy desire, not to mention the ability to delude themselves. And the way society, and its political and economic systems are structured, offer false values as aspirations,  so encouraging those failings.

I found the authorial voice, and the wide ranging evidence of Dreiser’s sophisticated, nuanced thinking, as fascinating and absorbing as the story of, particularly, Carrie and Hurstwood, the trajectory of their entwined histories. The first section of the book has Carrie, starting from a kind of point of lowliness and desperation, and follows her rise (looked at one way) which might also be considered her fall. When she first meets Hurstwood, his star is in the ascendant, and life is rosy, and showing every possibility of getting rosier. From thence, the fortunes of the two, initially linked, begin to travel in different directions. It is Hurstwood who becomes the major focus, and the drift of his story also offers a glimpse into early twentieth century capitalism in America, and the hard fought struggles of labour to achieve fair wages, fair conditions

Dreiser’s philosophical musings in the book were aspects his publishers wanted removed. They were also more interested in Hurstwood’s story, and wanted the book to start with Hurstwood, and his first encountering Carrie, rather than following her story from her arrival in Chicago.

Delmonico’s – already a place to aspire to dine at in 1900 New York

Hurstwood is a far more complex character, and has a different journey from Carrie’s. We meet him first at the zenith of his being. There is one extraordinary chapter, presenting Hurstwood at a place where the choices he makes will be responsible for the rest of his life. As I read that psychologically fascinating story, the scene suggested itself like the playing of an painfully suspenseful Hitchcock movie, – the audience may be ahead of the character, and wanting to cry out ‘don’t do this’, but the protagonist is under the grip of strong instincts, and no realisation that, maybe, one small step too close to the edge of a precipice, will, for him, offer no way to retreat.

Dreiser must have been quite a complex individual. Whilst having understanding of how women, without the means for independence themselves, fell prey to exploitation by men, he was unable in his personal life, to achieve fidelity and constancy. Towards the end of his life, his social consciousness, and his belief in socialism led him to simultaneously join the Communist Party and the Episcopal Church. An interest in both political and ideological systems, and the workings of individual, personal morality, and how systems have their shaping on what might be called individual soul, run strongly through this book. Dreiser shows commitment to body, to mind, to spirit.

He was a foremost writer of the naturalist school : his subjects were working people, not those born to money, property and prestige. Writers of this school (for example Zola) were not just showing how things were, but also showing that the kinds of lives individuals have, and the choices they make, are ‘nature and nurture’ – with the nurture being societal, cultural, not purely individual family upbringing. Dreiser explores this in Sister Carrie.

I must admit his style is not always the most flowing, and he isn’t a writer of what appears to be so well and beautifully crafted prose that the writing seems effortlessly poised, but what at times may be rough-hewn has honesty, and the ‘stuff’ of his writing is powerful, important and necessary. A working ploughshare, fit for a crucial purpose, rather than a Faberge egg which can only be properly appreciated by other fine workers in delicate, expensive substances

The book was made into a film in 1952, ‘Carrie’ directed by William Wyler, and starring Lawrence Olivier and Jennifer Jones. I couldn’t resist this mainly silent montage from the film which the Youtube uploader spliced in with Leonard Cohen’s Take This Waltz. Not of course the film’s soundtrack. Now, I haven’t seen the film, but I would suspect, given the date of making, that Wyler will have focused rather on the film as a simple love story, with powerful characterisations, and that the blistering clarity of Dreiser’s commitment to socialism, and a condemnation of the exploitation of the working classes by the owners of the means of production, would not pass muster in Hollywood, at that time.  HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee had turned its attention to the Communist Party in America, and the Blacklist of ‘Reds’, fellow travellers, and indeed even suspected pale shades of pink were well in force within Hollywood. As mentioned previously Dreiser had joined the CP in 1945, and his commitment, in his writing shows shades of full-blooded red, rather more than baby pink, and would surely have made the socio-political background to Sister Carrie, dangerous in those days of naming and shaming those only slightly to the left of liberal views. HUAC was particularly focused on the influence of the movie industry, so Hollywood with its high profile and perceived influence on values both personal and political had become increasingly nervous and circumspect

I found this an absorbing, humane, compassionate and thought provoking read, and may well return to Dreiser in a later year, with the book which brought him fame, An American Tragedy. It will be interesting to see how he developed as a writer. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930, and died in 1945

Sister Carrie Amazon UK
Sister Carrie Amazon USA

However – do be aware that according to Amazon reviewers in the UK some eread digitisation  is extremely poor. I bought the old Penguin version, second hand. Looking at versions on Amazon USA it seems some must be heavily edited and expurgated, according to listings of page numbers. I have linked to a version of over 500 pages, which is what it should be! Some editions are 200 pages shorter. Perhaps its a version produced by the remnants of HUAC!

A Reading The Twentieth Post – 1900 : Fiction – Non UK

Reading The Twentieth Century

Tags

Bits and Bobs, Bits and Pieces, Reading Challenge

A Very Slow, Very Long Journey 1900 – 1999 (or perhaps 2000)

Oh yes, I know, many of you are shouting furiously that because the first year AD was year 1 and not year 0, so the first century, and all the others, must start with year 1 of its particular century.

But you know that just doesn’t feel like the right start for this journey. So, if I start in error, so be it.

So, having decided crossly, ‘I’m not going to do any more reading challenges’ I’ve invented a variation on one, for myself. It’s going to be a corker, whether I get anywhere near completing, or not. And I’m trying not to put a timescale on it, as there will of course be other reading going on

The challenge is this, reading 4 books, in 4 categories, for each year 1900-1999. And, to qualify as one of the reads for that year, I’ll be doing it sequentially – so a 1967 book, for example, will only qualify as my 1967 book once all 4 1966 books have been read, otherwise, its just a book which I’ve read which happened to be published in 1967!

The categories are, for each year:

A Fiction book written by an author from the United Kingdom, originally published in English

A Fiction book originally written in English, by an author not from the United Kingdom

A Fiction book originally written in another language, date of first publication in its original language (but which I’ll be reading in English)

A Non-Fiction Book 

I’m interested to see what picture I get of ‘the times’ once I’ve read a few years, although of course I’ll no doubt be creating that picture by the choices of book, which are likely to be erratic.

And, once I’ve read all four categories in each year, and have moved on to the next year, the rule is that I can then ADD to a year already read (go back to it) – even though going forward is not allowed. This is because, having I hope gleaned a kind of idea of a flavour of a year, I suspect I may read books set in that year still with an awareness of my ‘read the century challenge’ and if so, they would qualify

And, from time to time, rants may arise connected to a year or a span of years (lets say, then, it’s going to take nearer to 20 years, as I keep creating new complexities and deviations!)

It may also be that I break my own rule, on this blog, of not reviewing anything which is not 4 star, minimum, with my ‘Twentieth Century’ challenge as I might read something less appreciated but which is somehow right in there in that ‘reading the twentieth century’ context, and I might appreciate it in context, even if not on its own isolated merits

I’m beginning to get quite excited by this mammoth reading task, as reading sequentially, and perhaps stopping for quite a while on a certain year, could take me into all sorts of highways and byways – what was happening that year, what were they wearing, what kind of chocolate were they eating……………………………

Even if the books chosen may have a randomness (for example, something already on my shelves) reading with this sequential focus will create patterns, not to mention determine directions.

I’ll compile an index of those reads as they happen, and each read will also get categorised and indexed in my normal fashion

Onwards………………….a journey of 400 books (at least) and a hundred years, starts with just one book in just one year

I’m under here, somewhere Flicr, Commons, Alicia Martin Biografias

I rather fear there might be a fair share of these:

At least Noel manages to sound reasonably light-hearted about those blues