Book Review - "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy

I saw the 1997 movie adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean and was quite smitten with it.

But reading the epic novel has been a “value-added” experience. It feels like I have been given a three-dimensional picture of each of the main characters which simply come alive as flesh and blood with feelings, thoughts and beliefs – just like real people, who are from a historical era. This is not to say that Marceau’s and Bean’s and others’ acting wasn’t perfect, which it was. It’s just that the novelist has the advantage of going right into the characters’ mind and soul and through adroit writing craft, of laying it bare to the audience. The emotional turmoil and mental processes that go on beneath their appearances, facial expressions, gestures and actions couldn’t be conveyed as convincingly if it weren’t for the author’s sensitive insight into the human psyche and his skilful use of words. Well, yes, you may say that this is a roundabout way of saying that I love Tolstoy’s writing, and I do.

The story, though with an emphasis on Anna’s poignant love affair and ill fate, is in fact about the vicissitudes of three households: a happy one (Kitty and Levin), an unhappy one (Dolly and Oblonsky) and a tragic one (Anna and Karenin), painted on a canvas of transitioning Russian social and political norms. Social mores about love and marital bonds are beginning to tend towards a less dogmatic norm but upper-class society in general still takes a hypocritically conservative attitude. Politically, aristocratic Russia is waking up to the calls for democratic reforms to its administrative structure and economic organization of resources. I like the way Tolstoy blends the storyline with such a richly woven backdrop.

I believe Tolstoy’s own worldview finds its mirror in Levin’s mental struggles between morality and temptation and between social justice and self preservation, which conclude in the belief that good deeds are necessary for the sake of one’s soul. Perhaps Tolstoy’s own interpretation of a happy household is also reflected through Levin’s household after his marriage to Kitty.

“Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” There are two unhappy families, each with its own grievances. Oblonsky’s womanizing and irresponsible attitude towards finances is shown to cause great anguish to Dolly and their children, while Karenin, a self-centered and rigid bureaucrat and insensitive husband, blames his unfaithful wife Anna for wrecking his honor and happiness and drives her to despair out of pettiness.

Lastly, there is something to be said about Anna’s sufferings and her ultimate failure to overcome her deep insecurities. Apart from her painful dilemma between choosing her lover and her beloved son and her inimical hardship in living like a social outcast, her constant mental anguish arises, ironically, from her exquisite beauty and her power to attract men, of which she is only too conscious, and her apparent knowledge that beauty doesn’t last. Her debilitating fear that Vronsky will love her less and less and will finally leave her is pitiable but not unreasonable. If only she could find a way to building up confidence in her inner beauty (her intellect and nurturing talent)! But self-confidence is not a female trait condoned by society then. Thus, her tragedy could not conceivably be averted! This is the pathos of the story.

Book Review: The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser

This is a work of elaborate research into and objective recount of the lives and fates of the six queens of Henry VIII. Although I had to struggle with the innumerable and often confusing names and titles of the gargantuan cast in the presentation, this didn't thwart my desire to get to the end.

The stories of the women themselves are poignant, if not upsetting (upsetting because they are not fictitious but real people). Their fates are a direct result of the times they lived in, which was probably one of the bloodiest reigns in English history, not to mention their ill luck of being tied in marital bond with, to say the least, a volatile and self-indulgent monarch who was obsessed with the issue of a male heir.

The author did a good job in explaining in detail the intricacies of European politics in that era: the unending strife between the Catholic and Protestant factions, the in-court rivalry between the consort-related nobility and the use of royal marriages for political ends. Highlighting such labyrinthine political background are the calculating and often deadly machinations by stakeholders behind a masquerade of civility and honor.

One gruesome detail of the narrative is the description of those monstrous capital punishments and tortures permitted under sixteenth century English law, which rival in cruelty with China's penal system in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties.

Overall, the moral lesson that can be drawn from this historical account is perhaps that a ruler or political leader (man or woman) can never be trusted with having absolute, unchecked power over others.

Book Review - The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo

This is an eloquent and emotional appeal in fictionalized form for the abolition of the death penalty. The contents are grim and stark, yet the argument trenchant and convincing. Hugo's writing not only touches the heart, but also reaches into the depths of our conscience to rattle our complacency about man-made laws.

Given the political upheavals prevailing at the time, it is not difficult to understand the author's particular hatred of political persecution by means of the guillotine.

".... during any social crisis, of all scaffolds the political scaffold is the most monstrous, the most harmful, the most pernicious, the one that most needs eradicating." -  (Preface)

"Poor young man! How repulsive their so-called political necessities are! For the sake of an idea, a daydream, an abstract theory, this terrible reality called the guillotine!" - (Chapter 11)

This single sentence in the Preface to the 1832 edition epitomizes the author's perspective on crime and punishment:-

"(Society) should not punish to take revenge: it should correct in order to improve."

Book Review - A Midsummer Night's Dream

I've enjoyed this Shakespearean comedy tremendously, which is an awkward statement from someone who has never been a great fan of Shakespeare’s! There are two things about this play that particularly pleased me. One is the comic effect rendered by the lighthearted world of sweet fairies, in particular the bumbling but innocent blunder committed by Puck, which is the pivot of the play; and the other is the sympathetic tendency shown by the author towards the plight of women in the areas of courtship and marriage in a patriarchal society.

When Puck realizes he has made a huge mistake, he just nonchalantly blurts out: "Then fate o'er-rules, that, one man holding troth, a million fail, confounding oath on oath." Then when Oberon has drugged Demetrius in an attempt to remedy Puck's mistake, Puck mischievously looks forward to watching some human drama unfold, saying: "Then will two at once woo one; That must needs be sport alone; And those things do best please me that befal preposterously."

In the happy world of dreamy fairies, nothing is serious and everything is fun. When this is juxtaposed with the sorrowful world of humans, where disobedience to the father in the matter of marriage means death or life confinement to a nunnery for the daughter, the satirical irony becomes intense. Luckily, at the end of the play, the comic world of dreams prevails.

Another important theme is inequality of the sexes which pervades throughout the play. Apart from the unfair patriarchal demand imposed on Hermia, we also see Helena as a victim of her times. The latter's bitterness about her unrequited love is obvious from this line of hers (to Demetrius): "Your wrongs do set a scandal upon my sex: we cannot fight for love, as men may do; we should be woo'd and were not made to woo." The fact that she dares to chase after Demetrius regardless must have seemed quite incredible to readers of yonder times! Nonetheless, her position still seems doomed. By contrast, in the world of fairies, Titania is at least able to hold her ground and refuse Oberon his brutish demand. So Hermia's and Helena's happy endings that are made possible with the fairies' help are particularly heart-warming. Hats off to Shakespeare for inspiring hope in mortals that dreams may come true!

Book Review - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I’ve enjoyed reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, which is a Gothic supernatural kind of tale with a Faustian theme.

Dorian Gray is a young and handsome lad who has bartered his soul for eternal youthfulness and a life of wild pleasures. After experimenting a debauched life, inspired by a poisonous book that his cynical friend Lord Henry has given him (believed to be the French novel “A Rebours” by Joris-Karl Huysmans, which was to become a famous, so called “decadent” novel), he finds that his own enemy is and has always been his conscience, which is represented by the portrait that his artist friend Basil Hallward once painted of him. When Dorian further engages in one wicked deed uncontrollably after another, he is ensnarled in utter despair. Is he ever going to get out of the vicious cycle?

It is amusing to note some of the criticisms that “The Picture of Dorian Gray” received when it was first published in 1890. It was described as “mawkish and nauseous”, “unclean”, “effeminate and contaminating” (from Wikipedia). In hindsight, it is clear that the criticisms were more directed towards the novel’s unconventional moral concepts that Wilde had the audacity to put forward in conservative Victorian times, rather than towards the work as literary art. He was censored for being too avant-garde and too rebellious in his ideas of hedonism, art appreciation, love (with homosexual overtones), marriage and religion, often mixed with a shot of mockery at the lack of sensitivity for art and general hypocrisy in English society.   

The novel doesn’t lack purple prose, which I find not at all cumbersome but actually complementary to the Gothic mysteriousness, as it creates a paradoxical mood for romance and horror, spurring the imagination into curious activity.

My only complaint is that I find the ending a bit too melodramatic!