not in kansas anymore

I've been reading a lot, but not finishing a lot -- usually it doesn't bother me too much to have a bunch of things on the go at once, but 26 at a time is... high, even for me. Today I finished a really good edited volume about Charlotte Smith (and finished writing my lit review about her!), and I was so excited to update my reading challenge but it doesn't even count for even one of my prompts! Alas.

The book was super good though. Here are some of the quotes I typed up that might be interesting in a broader context:

"In 1913, Saintsbury believed Smith was ‘something of a person in herself, but less of a figure in history, because she neither innovates nor does old things consummately.’ Even the first extensive study of Smith by Florence Hilbish [in 1941], whilst highlighting many areas of innovation, arrived at the conclusion that she produced ‘little strikingly original’ material … the twentieth century was not yet ready to truly appreciate Charlotte Smith. This is evident in Ernest Bernbaum’s indifferent review of Hilbish’s work, which concluded that ‘much time and care have been devoted to it; whether deservedly, is perhaps questionable.’” (Duckling 216-7)

“To hear Charlotte Smith talk about her writing, you would think she was a drudge or even a hack, ‘compelled,’ as she now famously put it, ‘to live only to write & write only to live’ … Except that she is continually ordering or borrowing books… she seems to have her nose to a grindstone and her eyes shut to all literary value. … one suddenly discovers someone who is reading every principal piece of literature available and commenting sharply on the success or lack thereof of many contemporary productions.” (Curran 175)

“In English she returns again and again to Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Goldsmith, Sterne, and, her favourite contemporary poet, William Cowper. Among French writers her taste is highly eclectic, though she returns often to La Rouchefoucauld, Rousseau, and, especially, Voltaire… Her Italian favourites are Petrarch’s sonnets and Mestasio’s operatic arias… She knows no German, but is keenly aware of the distinctive place occupied by Goethe’s Werther in the literature of sensibility. There is one other literature in which she is not only proficient but, for a woman author, surprisingly forthcoming: Latin. She certainly admires Cicero, Horace, and Ovid, but she reserves a special place for Virgil.” (Curran 176)

“Very few Smith scholars work actively on both the novels and the poetry, and consequently we have been learning about two separate Smiths, each closely linked to the genre she writes in, neither closely linked to the other. Because the novel during the Romantic period is undergoing an extraordinary amount of change and innovation, as it moves closer to its modern form, editors of the novels (myself included) tend to focus on Smith’s techniques and innovations, her use of tropes and themes, her facility with genres and description. Conversely, because Romantic poetry in the Smithian tradition is so closely tied up with explorations of selfhood and subjectivity, memory and a personalized past, editors of the poetry tend to present it as reflective of a personalized state of mind, of ‘woman’s’ experience, treating its manifold themes and narratives as, finally, reducible to and manifested from Smith’s life. Is it all to do with inherent qualities of genre, or is it more to do with the expectations we as readers bring to different genres? Genre, it seems, carries a greater force in constructing our preconceptions of identity than has been recognized, and Smith is a case in point, a case we can crack by studying closely Smith’s style and techniques across genres.” (Labbe 5)

Taking this from doctornerdington because it seemed like low-hanging fruit to re-establish a presence here on DW now that I am done travelling for a little while -- my ten favourite female characters, limiting myself to one character per source, in order of how rapidly I was able to think of them:

• Is is Elinor Dashwood? It must be somebody from Austen, and it's not Emma or Fanny, and surely not Marianne (poor thing), and I think not Elizabeth... is there enough to Jane or to Georgiana for me to claim them as a favourite? Oh! Anne Eliot. I love her the best.
• Cordelia Naismith, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Ekaterin Vorsoisson is also obviously dear to me but Cordelia saved my life)
• Oh, obviously, if we're talking precious life-saving literary talismans from one's youth, Hermione Granger
• Pepper Potts, actually, an under-explored personage of intense interest to me
• Too much children's literature is springing to mind; Sarah Crewe from A Little Princess, Ella from Ella Enchanted... let's give it to Emily Starr, who encompasses all of them for me.
• Emily Fox-Seton, by Frances Hodgson Burnett in The Making of a Marchioness (though Hester mesmerizes me more with each passing year) - technically not children's lit!
• Rosalind, in As You Like It (This is where I started to scroll through my "read" list on Goodreads and remember all the grown-up literature I actually do read)
• Cecilia, by Frances Burney (Evelina is a better novel than Cecelia I think, but I find Cecilia herself more interesting)
• Aquilina, in Venice Preserv'd (it was gonna be Belvidera but then I remembered the Nicky-Nacky scene)
• Lady Bracknell, in The Importance of Being Earnest (it turns out she's actually right most of the time?)
• Lucy Honeychurch, in A Room with a View
• Lavinia, in Ursula K. LeGuin's Lavinia and in the Aeneid
• ... oops, I'm well past 10 now, but what the heck, Hild in Hild and Katherine in Katherine are both magnificently dense characters, and now that I've made this list I don't want to cut people from it.

There. A stream-of-consciousness post which revealed to me that, actually, a lot of the really character-focused stuff I consume is about men. Or perhaps, a lot of the 18thC heroines I adore are all the same single character with different names, so it's hard to become attached to them individually?