Parlous: full of danger, precarious. (Also, in the olden days, it would mean excessive…)
Anatomization: the process of cutting something natural apart to learn about its internal structure et al. Example: medical students will dissect a body in the morgue to learn more about how how everything is connected in the human.
Velocipedes: An early form of bicycle that is propelled by working pedals on cranks fitted to the front axle. (See pic below.)
Camera lucida: optical device that allowed surgeons to trace images projected onto a piece of paper and then “practice” their cutting skills using that.
Pultaceous: having a soft consistency; pulpy.
Ragged Schools: 19th century charity schools in England around 1840s. Provided free education, along with a home, food etc., for those students who were too poor to pay.
Hectic fever: this is a type of fever that sustains itself during a 24-hour period.
Pyemia: another name for blood-poisoning (septicemia) caused by spread in blood stream of pus-forming bacteria released from an abscess.
Erysipelas: a skin infection caused by Strep (typically).
Hospitalism: the adverse effects of a prolonged stay in hospital. (Also called anaclitic depression). Common pediatric diagnosis in1950s for infants required to stay in hospital for long periods of time and due to their mental health (from loneliness, lack of human touch etc.) would waste away.
Carious: decayed.
Animalcule: old name for a microscopic animal. (Latin for “little animal”.)
De novo: starting from the beginning of something.
Cicatrix: the remaining scar of a now-healed wound.
Antiseptic:from “anti” and “septic ” so material to prevent further infection leading to sepsis. Obvious to me now, but honestly, I hadn’t put that together before reading this. Duh, I know.
Aleatory: depending on the throw of a dice; chance; random.
Flaneur: a person who handles the art of strolling or sauntering.
(Mostly taken from the title, The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris (2017).)
A velocipede in action. (Note pedals are on front wheel.)
I started this read thinking that I hadn’t read it before, but in actuality, I’ve now read it twice, once in school about thirty years ago (but I have no hope of ever remembering that), and once a few years ago when I blogged about it on JOMP. However, despite my gappy memory, I still enjoyed this read this time around, picking up on different aspects as I went through it again.
Hardy is not typically thought of as a “happy” read, but Tess is not too tragic – at least in my opinion. It’s not happy, that’s true – but I think if you view the narrative arc through the lens of a Victorian reader (especially a female middle class Victorian reader), Tess is certainly one of the more flawed characters, having a checkered less-than-spotless past.
At the same time, she is such a good person that, with modern eyes and a modern sensibility, it’s hard to see the objections that some readers in the nineteenth century came up with. (Sorry – ending with a preposition there.)
Not much to say that hasn’t been reported before, did find this little nugget for you from Goodreads:
The term cliffhangeris considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy’s serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.
Subtitle: The Story of an African-American Frontier Town and the Pioneers who Settled It.
“All colored people that want [sic] to go to Kansas on September 5th, 1877, can do so for $5.” (Taken from handbill issued by the Nicodemus Town Company.)
This was a fascinating read about a part of the Wild West which I’ve not seen receive much mention before: how the pioneer world also included African-Americans in its spread westward during the nineteenth century. What was so interesting for me was learning that Kansas was a hub for these African-American pioneers. Kansas, I hear you say? Really? Well, yes.
In 1865, the U.S. cemented the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery. In 1868, the 14th Amendment secured citizenship for African-Americans, and the 15th Amendment in 1870 secured voting rights for African-Americans (at least on paper).
So in the later nineteenth century, former slaves were now free-ish (depending on lots of factors and not just the law), but although they had their freedom, it was not without its own set of problems. Former slaves were often just released without any resources to support them; many had no land, no money (and little chance of getting any), no home, no job, and limited access to employment due to a lack of skills and to rampant job discrimination. How was a former and newly released slave supposed to support him/herself and the family?
Thus the Freedman Bureau was established to address this need, but it fell wanting in numerous areas. Most slaves were minimally agriculturally skilled which only allowed them to earn a living through share-cropping (where they don’t own the land, but work on it and then share a portion of what is produced on that land). With no means to buy land and thus no opportunity to own land, what was a former slave to do?
Along around now also came the Homestead Act (1862) which opened up land ownership for many people in the newly established western states (including Kansas). So with the numerous land companies popping up and with their exaggerated exhortations with regard to the amount and quality of resources that were available in these states, newly freed men and women were targeted for populating these wide open states. Slaves with few other opportunities jumped at the chance for a better life and thus a door was opened for the African-American pioneers of the time.
Kansas was, at that time, a mix of pro-slavery and anti-slavery with the nickname of “Bleeding Kansas” due to its liberal values. With the abundance of flowery literature portraying it as a land of plenty and with the fact that famous abolitionist John Brown lived there, the state looked really attractive to the freed slaves and so thousands of African-Americas moved there. The influx of new settlers were called “Exodusters” and estimates go as high as 40,000 people who moved there.
Alongside this was an African-American Kansas resident called Pap Singleton who is credited with being one of the earlier visionaries with regard to establishing all-black communities for these new incomers. His ideas, along with the huge influx of settlers, led to the formation of the town Nicodemus and other communities run for and by black residents. It was quite a revolutionary idea for the times.
However, with the now-free slaves with few resources and not many skills, many preferred to live close to the already established communities and so although the incomers were many, few had the skills to homestead. Such an increase in community population led to an increase in crime, of poverty and other social ills, and in 1880, the Kansas Governor finally had to say no more to the newcomers and to the town companies who were promoting this state.
Roughly two-thirds of the incomers left the state after that, either going home or on to different states, but even so, it still left a pretty large population of African-Americans struggling to make Kansas their home.
And so the story goes on. It’s an amazing tale and one that I had never heard of, despite having lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years. I knew that there were African-American cowboys – in fact, I happen to know two guys who do that now – but I had no idea of the sheer numbers of freed slaves who came west. Just imagine how brave these newly freed pioneers were – and what a risk they took to create new and better lives for themselves and for their families. Amazing.
I’m really interested in learning more about this more unknown side of pioneer life, so I’m looking out for other books now. This was fascinating.
Not having had a lot of positive experiences in the past with short stories, I was curious how this book would pan out. Suffice it to say that this was a better reading experience than before – perhaps I had just chosen annoying writers before. (I am looking at you, John Cheever and John Irving.)
So – bought this book earlier in the year and thought it was a pretty good selection of American “classic” short stories. In the past, the short stories that I have read have always ended too early – as though the story wasn’t finished in some way. In the intro to this anthology, editor Corinne Demas describes the short story referencing Poe in that a good short story should be able to be read in one sitting, and so the majority of the stories here can be done like that (depending, of course, on how fast you read). I would also add that the end of a short story (for me) should not leave you hanging too much. I am all for post-modern endings, but not endings that end just because….
This anthology is pretty inclusive, although based as it is on nineteenth century authors, it’s automatically heavier on white males although, to be fair, I don’t think this is a fault of the editor. I think that that is really what has been considered the Western Canon in the past, and although I don’t particularly agree with the homogeneity of it, you get what you get from what’s available. There is an entry from Charles Chesnutt (one of the first Af-Am fiction writers to be published by The Atlantic monthly) and a couple of (white) female writers.
However, moving on to the stories themselves, I enjoyed it overall. There were a few I skipped over (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Melville). Hemingway and Fitzgerald are authors that I don’t particularly enjoy, and I had already read Melville’s story. Some of the stand-out stories for me included Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” and that Cask story, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (new author to me), Sherwood Anderson, and Ambrose Pierce. I hadn’t read any of these writers’ short stories before (and some were completely new to me as writers) and I enjoyed their work. Poe is especially good, I thought.
I found that the best way for me to enjoy this book was to pick it up, read a few stories, and then put it down for something else. I don’t really like to plough my way through story after story, just because I like continuity between stories, and with these being complete short stories in and of themselves meant a change in strategy. I am quite surprised at how much I enjoyed these stories actually – I think that I had been so burned by the crap put out by Irving and Cheever that I had sort of lumped all short stories into the same pile. How wrong I was.
Now I am wondering if there is a twentieth century equivalent of this collection (or even a twenty-first century). (Dates are when the authors are born, not necessarily when the story was written.) I am sure there are loads of good anthologies out there for more modern authors – any recommendations? Or is there a good book of short stories by one writer out there that you would recommend? Just no Cheever and Irving (in case you couldn’t pick up on that). 🙂
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