For a long time, I didn't read Thomas Hardy even though there was always a book or two lying around at home out of pure contrariness. It seemed to me that my mother only recommended books to me so that I'd get a moral out of them. The same went for Pearl S.Buck. (The reason for this wasn't just my cussedness, but also an unfounded conviction that Pearl S.Buck only wrote about poverty and other somewhat dreary topics.)
So imagine my surprise when I read a couple of books written by these authors and really liked them. I genuinely thought that both 'Far from the Madding Crowd' and 'The Good Earth' were excellent reads.
As for Bathsheba Everdeen and Gabriel Oak, they stand in danger of becoming my temporary muse. I can't help liking Bathsheba and hoping to meet more men like Gabriel. Bathsheba especially, tells me so much about a woman who is smart, capable and beautiful, and yet innocent and fallible that I'm surprised that her feelings were described by a man putting pen to paper.
Despite all her womanly shortcomings of vanity and impetuosity, she's one of the few characters I began to love only after I read more about her. You see a young girl, confident in her own ability and beauty, thinking that she's too intelligent to make the mistakes commonly plaguing her own sex. Then she becomes a woman who throws reason to the winds, and lets herself be swept away by passion for a man who is as shallow and superficial as she is inexperienced.
After the misery of a dying love, and being wracked by doubts and a broken heart, she finally matures into a woman who has learnt that she is made of sterner stuff. As Thomas Hardy puts it,
'She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.'
My mom just gave me a copy of 'Tess of the D'urbervilles'. I'm totally going to read this one.
So imagine my surprise when I read a couple of books written by these authors and really liked them. I genuinely thought that both 'Far from the Madding Crowd' and 'The Good Earth' were excellent reads.
As for Bathsheba Everdeen and Gabriel Oak, they stand in danger of becoming my temporary muse. I can't help liking Bathsheba and hoping to meet more men like Gabriel. Bathsheba especially, tells me so much about a woman who is smart, capable and beautiful, and yet innocent and fallible that I'm surprised that her feelings were described by a man putting pen to paper.
Despite all her womanly shortcomings of vanity and impetuosity, she's one of the few characters I began to love only after I read more about her. You see a young girl, confident in her own ability and beauty, thinking that she's too intelligent to make the mistakes commonly plaguing her own sex. Then she becomes a woman who throws reason to the winds, and lets herself be swept away by passion for a man who is as shallow and superficial as she is inexperienced.
After the misery of a dying love, and being wracked by doubts and a broken heart, she finally matures into a woman who has learnt that she is made of sterner stuff. As Thomas Hardy puts it,
'She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.'
My mom just gave me a copy of 'Tess of the D'urbervilles'. I'm totally going to read this one.
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