Passion

[heslopian]

Read this critique of the works of Victorian novelist Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, Emma) by Charlotte Bronte today:

"Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood... What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death - this Miss Austen ignores... Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman, if this is heresy - I cannot help it."

It got me thinking: does great literature require great passion? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Leanne]

I'm afraid I'd have taken Jane Austen over the insipid and sternly prim Miss Bronte any day of the week. I've always found Austen's works to have a wonderful undercurrent of gentle sarcasm, a criticism of her society that clearly her peers weren't too happy about. Northanger Abbey in particular made me laugh out loud more than once, as did Emma. Her characters have dimensions, whereas Jane Eyre's only real dimension is overt moralism and propriety, only "falling in love" with the completely inappropriate man because she was too damn stiff to have a proper grownup relationship with someone ordinary.

I think the term "passion" is badly defined by Madam Shortly Upherself Bronte et al as being only to do with the romantic. There are greater passions than an artificial and unattainable love, they just need not be so overt as to completely dominate the literature.

[heslopian]

I've tried reading Jane Eyre several times and had no luck finishing it. It reminds me of Charles Dickens in how broad the characters are, verging on pantomime. Grotesque pouting dames and pure young ladies. Austen I have mixed feelings about. I find her gently amusing and wonderfully escapist - like Agatha Christie without the dead bodies - but her books don't have a great deal of texture. The only Bronte I like is Emily, who had the common decency to make the most prominent characters in Wuthering Heights a bunch of bitter psychotics Heathcliff's emotional violence, Catherine Earnshaw's ghost having her wrists scraped against smashed window glass... Now that was passion. Plus she was quite simply a better prose stylist than her sister.

[Leanne]

Wuthering Heights was streets ahead of Charlotte's Mills-and-Boon-for-the-straitlaced-and-cobwebbed, but its characters are still too easy for English teachers to put into boxes: "what does Cathy represent? Self-indulgence and greed", "what does young Cathy represent? innocence", "what does Heathcliff represent? Some smelly nutter who lures women out onto the moors"... that sort of thing Jane Eyre is very much like Dickens, I couldn't agree more, maybe that's why it irritates me so much. And Bronte was kidding herself when she compared her own writing to Thackeray's -- she wouldn't have known satire if it bit her in her flat bodice.

I don't like the Bronte's much, can you tell?

(As an aside, if you haven't read Auden's "Letter to Lord Byron", I highly recommend it. It's hard to find the text online and this one's set out oddly in two columns, read one stanza in the left then one in the right for the proper order.)

To quote Auden:

She was not an unshockable blue-stocking;
If shades remain the characters they were,
No doubt she still considers you as shocking.
But tell Jane Austen, that is if you dare,
How much her novels are beloved down here.
She wrote them for posterity, she said;
'Twas rash, but by posterity she's read.

You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle-class
Describe the amorous effects of 'brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.

[heslopian]

I think Heathcliff was a bit more complex than the box he is admittedly put in by critics and teachers. He was a child who was at once unfairly doted on by his foster father and unfairly abused by his foster brother. For me he was an argument for emotional consistency in childhood haha. I wish he'd lure me out on the moors, the filthy brute I agree with you about Catherine, she is a rather typical romantic heroine, though her change in personality is a nice comment on Victorian society I think.
I fear I've never read Thackeray Did he write Vanity Fair?
Thank you for the poem. I studied it briefly in high school, so it will be nice to appreciate it away from the confines of the classroom.

[Leanne]

Once I finished highschool I made a point of re-reading every text I could remember studying, just to see if I liked them any better when I didn't have to analyse them -- and mostly I did, except Wuthering Heights Oh, and Sylvia bloody Plath, but I know you love her... :p

[heslopian]

You studied Sylvia Plath in school? She was much too modern for us. We only went as far as the Great War in terms of poetry.

[Leanne]

We only went as far as the Great War in terms of poetry.

Auden would be upset to hear you say that... well, if he weren't dead that is

[billy]

do great writers need passion. from the opening post i got a slight feeling of resentment towards said writers.
i think they wrote of their time, of how to some extent it was then. after seeing olivier playin heathcliff i fair chucked up my dinner, but he played the part as well as anyone has. bur really all that is just guff. the crux is the passion and if it's needed. personally i think not. first and foremost it needs ability...without it no amount of passion will prevail a great literary event.
it all depends what you mean by passion. a love of writing maybe, if so then i'd say no again. if on the other hand you mean a special tenacity to stick with something, then yes. i think it's fair to say many of the greats had staying power. they worked at their craft. zola, hesse, joyce, and the like. i think they had both types of passion. back to the ladies, lets remember also that writing about sex in love wasn't really the done thing of their periods (excuse the pun) many used nom de plumery. while their works are not my cup of tea i see merit in their works. i wish i was as read as some so i could take part a little more in some of these mullings. (excuse me if i got anything head over tit )

[heslopian]

The film Wuthering Heights with Olivier was as faithful to the book as a rock star is to one woman. To say Olivier played the character well is true, but that character was the one invented by the film, not Emily Bronte. The Heathcliff of the book was a cruel and sadistic monster obsessed with revenge against everyone, not a whining yuppie. Anyway, rant over
I agree with you about the difficulty of defining exactly what passion is. Charlotte's perception of passion seemed to be courtly love, stilted Victorian romance.

[billy]

i realize that the book was bastardised as many are. but even then a script had to be written hehe.
but that aside. did the original need the author to have certain passions. most likely so depending on what passion was or is. i'm sure that many modern classics to come will be reviled given enough time and change of views, language, culture in the 21st century.
i'm on the about the passion for writing. i'm not sure passion of an emotional level such as love or knowledge of it is employed as often as the passion to simply write.

[heslopian]

The film only adapted the first half of the book, ending just as Catherine and Heathcliff reunite, then ignoring her death and his revenge. Even then they missed out a lot, like Hindley Earnshaw's devestation at the death of his wife and descent into blasphemous hedonism, which almost ends in him murdering his infant son.
I must say you've raised an interesting point with the separation of passion in terms of the love for words, which all writers are supposed to have, and emotional passion. Jane Austen no doubt had tremendous passion for language and storytelling, if not violent storms of the heart. Perhaps the only requirement of a novel is to interest us for its 300 or so pages, regardless how much "passion" it has.

[ICSoria]

I loved reading all your analyses on this thread, even though you make me feel like the mentally-challenged sibling sitting quietly on the porch. I never was much of a reader when it came to fiction. Hell, I had never really read much poetry before beginning my own serious attempts at writing and understanding it--having been more into non-fiction and technical books. I was an Art Major before changing to a Business degree, however, and you brought back a lecture about the Impressionists; how they were not appreciated in their time. The royal-snoot-critics of the time lambasted their use of color and technique of mixing directly on their canvases. Yet, this is how they created vibrant hues and textures unknown before that time. This made me think about art critics and their own convoluted perspectives. They eventually managed to get aboard the bandwagon and show a high appreciation for those impressionists. However, it took collectors across an ocean, especially Boston, where most of those paintings eventually ended up, to encourage that appreciation. I guess I am trying to say that hasty critics, no matter how adroit their phrasing or clever their disparaging remarks woven into backhanded accolades; over time reveal themselves as little more than asterisks on the appendices of those they disparaged. Thank you all for the read.

Sid