Happy Halloween! The end of October feels bittersweet this year. It was such an inspirational month for me, and a huge reason for that is because I decided to take part in my first-ever readathon, Victober. Victober is a readathon taking place over the month of October where participants read Victorian literature. There are specific challenges and books chosen each year by the hosts, but the general idea is just to read as much Victorian literature as you can. For the readathon, I read 2 plays (The Importance of Being Earnest and A Woman of No Importance) and 3 books (Cranford, Villette, and Wuthering Heights). Read on for my spoiler-free thoughts and feelings.
Group Readalong #1: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
I’ll admit, I was a little hesitant to read the group readalong choices for this year’s Victober. I don’t really like watching plays, let alone reading them. But The Importance of Being Earnest ended up being such a delightful surprise for me. I loved how even though it’s a savage satire of the Victorian upper classes, it isn’t dry at all—absolutely the opposite. It’s very silly, but consistently silly throughout. It’s hilarious, too, and overall it was just such a joy to read. It’s quite a short play, and I found the language to be quite accessible for a Victorian piece, so if you are new to Victorian literature (as am I) it is a great place to start.
Rating: 5/5 stars
Group Readalong #2: A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde
After finishing the first group readalong, I was quite looking forward to the second one, another Oscar Wilde play. Unfortunately, A Woman of No Importance was a bit of a let-down for me. Like The Importance of Being Earnest, it is a social satire, but it is very different in 2 main ways. Firstly, rather than satirizing the upper classes in more broad terms, it is more specifically a criticism of the hypocritical, and often ridiculous standards women were subjected to. Secondly, it is much more serious in tone.
Being a feminist, I really wanted to like this more than I did. I do think it was ahead of its time, and I think if I were a lady in the Victorian era I would have appreciated it much more, but as someone familiar with modern feminist ideas, I just didn’t feel like it had anything new to offer to me. The plot was interesting enough to keep me sustained for 90-some pages, but the wit and nuance I loved so much in Earnest wasn’t really there. I also didn’t really care for how melodramatic it was in the final act. Perhaps this is one that is better to watch than to read. This read was interesting to me from a historical perspective, but outside of a historical context I felt like I didn’t get anything special out of it.
Rating: 3/5 stars
Katie’s challenge (Read a Victorian book under 250 pages): Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
This is probably an odd Gaskell for one to start with (to be fair, I wanted to read North and South, but it is perpetually checked out at my library). It is a bit of an unusual novel for the era, being that it is more of a slice-of-life collection of vignettes, rather than having a main, sweeping storyline.
I first heard of this novel in a video for Victorian lit recommendations for Jane Austen fans. I love Jane Austen, and I agree that this is a good pick if you are a fan of her writing. It takes place in the fictional village of Cranford, where the population is mainly women — particularly older, unmarried women. Most of the book is about the everyday antics these women get into, kind of like a Victorian sitcom. It’s a really, really charming and hilarious book. I loved how the women were obsessed with seeming “genteel”, despite being quite poor themselves, and this often leads them to become hilariously flustered. It’s a really sweet book, not a romance, but a sweet story of female friendship. My only gripe is that in the last few chapters it seemed like Gaskell suddenly decided there wasn’t enough plot and added some rather dramatic events. The ending was predictable and felt kind of tacked-on and a touch moralistic to me. I much preferred the slice-of-life feeling of the rest of the book.
Overall, this was a really cozy, light and enjoyable read, and I have plans to watch the TV miniseries after this!
Rating: 4/5 stars
Katie’s challenge (Read a Victorian book over 500 pages): Villette by Charlotte Brontë
Some have said Villette is a darker, more mature version of Jane Eyre. I absolutely loved Jane Eyre, and I love Charlotte Brontë’s highly descriptive, Gothic writing style. I also was drawn to this book because it is supposed to be Charlotte’s most autobiographical novel, as it takes place in the fictional city of Villette, based on Brussels, where Charlotte spent many dark and lonely years of her life teaching English, and where she fell into unrequited love with her fellow professor.
This is such an incredibly beautiful book. It has possibly the most beautiful writing I have ever read in my life. I actually kept a pencil with me when reading it because I often felt compelled to underline entire paragraphs—something I very rarely do. Besides the prose, my other favorite part of this book is how it explores themes of loneliness and depression. The protagonist, Lucy Snowe, falls into a severe depression midway through the book, and the description is the most effective, yet beautiful description of depression I have ever read in my life. I loved how real Lucy felt as a character. She is a strong character, but still very damaged from the tragic events that have happened in her life. I found the descriptions of her constant internal struggle between reason and passion really profound and relatable.
I’ve only been gushing about the writing and the themes, but the plot is also really solid. There are a few twists and turns that completely took me by surprise. The ending was really powerful, too, and about a week after finishing the book I’m still sorting out my feelings about it. I could write several more paragraphs about this book, but this post is already far too long!
(By the way, if you plan to read this book and you aren’t fluent in French, it is imperative that you find an annotated copy. There is tons of French in this book, from random phrases to entire paragraphs of dialogue, and you will need a translation handy. I recommend the Penguin Classics edition myself.)
Rating: 5/5 stars
Ange’s challenge (Read a book by a Victorian female author): Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Wow. This. Book. I was really nervous to read Wuthering Heights, because from what I have seen, most people either love it or despise it, and even those who love it say they understand why some people hate it. I’m happy to say that I ended up loving this book.
If Villette is about the internal struggle between passion and reason, then Wuthering Heights is about extreme, intense passion in the absence of any reason whatsoever. And I loved it for that. I loved how intense, passionate, and despicable the main characters were. Yes, you will probably hate the main characters, and that is the main reason so many people dislike this book. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Even though I disliked the characters, as human beings, I was absolutely fascinated by them in a literary sense. I was fascinated and terrified by Heathcliff, I felt sick to my stomach whenever he appeared, his intense passion and drive for revenge was so disturbing, yet interesting, that this book was un-putdownable for me.
This is a difficult book to review, especially because the things that so many people hate about the book are the very things that caused me to love it—in fact, I will say no more, for fear my lack of eloquence will turn more people away from reading it. This book is amazing. If you like psychological horror stories, then it’s a must-read.
Rating: 5/5 stars
Overview
Overall, this was a really satisfying Victober for me. I got to go out of my comfort zone reading Oscar Wilde’s plays, and I’m really glad I did that. And I found new all-time favorites in Villette and Wuthering Heights. I didn’t complete all the challenges, but I got a decent amount of reading done and there wasn’t anything I felt like was a waste of time. After all this, I’m still craving to read more Vic-lit, which I wasn’t expecting. (By the way, if you are interested in what else I’m reading, I’ve included a link to my Goodreads account in the sidebar of my blog).
