Constance Presents Vanity Fair

Illustration by Thackery for Vanity Fair*

Jacquie’s Email Hello Literary La​​dies! Please note that there is a change of venue for the next meeting of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson scheduled for this coming Wednesday, February 18th. Christine will welcome us to her exquisite home beginning at noon for luncheon. Joanna will ring the bell at 1 PM to begin our meeting, after which Constance will be presenting on William Makepeace Thackeryʼs masterpiece, Vanity Fair.

So, I'm sure you are all aware of the sad news that publishers will no longer be printing mass-market paperbacks. I donʼt remember the last time I purchased a mass-market paperback, but they certainly played an enormous role in my early years as a reader. I have not been able to part with my high school copies of John Jakes (The Bastard!), Belva Plain (Evergreen!), Colleen McCullogh (The Thornbirds!), Judith Krantz (Princess Daisy!), Victoria Holt (aka Jean Plaidy), James Michner, etc. etc., as well as all of my Penguin and Bantam Classics from college and beyond. And I remember the convenience of carrying my Wordsworth Classics copy of Vanity Fair on my morning commute in the 90s. (Itʼs no Clarissa, but it IS a brick!)

Now, Iʼve often prayed for a minor natural disaster to force myself to throw away all of these books, especially since I am no longer able to read the tiny print, but maybe, for nostalgias' sake, I'm lucky that never happened?!

I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday! x Jacquie

Francesʼ Minutes Christine had a good fire going in her living room – or should I write, her parlor, considering her house was built in the 19th century. We did wonder if the house was originally built with central heating. Nine members attended. Christine’s lunch included a King Cake, a New Orleans Mardi Gras specialty.

Vice President Laura called the meeting to order at 1 PM. The treasury is unchanged at $113.12. Laura reminded us of two changes: the Annual Meeting will be March 4, at her house, with lunch; the April 8 meeting will be a brown bag lunch at Joanna’s.

Our recommendations: Frances suggested There Were No Windows by Norah Hoult, published in 1944. A novel about aging, dementia, social class, loss of friends, lovers, status; all happening during the London Blitz. Connie recommended Someone at a Distance, by Dorothy Whipple. Both Hoult and Whipple’s novels were out of print until Persephone Books reissued them. In honor of her recent stay in Mexico, Christine read Chistina Rivera Garza’s Lilianna’s Invincible Summer, The Autobiography of Cotton and The Iliac Crest as well as Andrés Neuman’s Once Upon Argentina. Should our next topic be Latin American authors, Christine will have a head start.

Now, to Connie’s presentation on William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

Thackeray was born in 1811 in Calcutta. At 6, he was sent back to England, to a boarding school. He spent a year at Cambridge, read law, went to Paris to study art. Financial reversals wiped out his inheritance. He returned to London. To support himself, he became a journalist. He wrote 9 novels, the best-known being Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon and The Virginians. He published short fiction, travelogues, sketchbooks, writing under his own name as well as pseudonyms. He was a friendly rival of Charles Dickens. Perhaps Charlotte Brontë modelled Mr. Rochester on him—Thackeray had a mentally ill wife. Brontë wrote about him that he “…is a Titan…I regard him as the first of modern masters.” We know little more of her feelings for him, or his for her, except she admired him. Thackeray remained a powerful presence in London literary circles until his death in 1864.

Vanity Fair was a brilliant innovation. Thackeray creates an illusion of living with the characters as the plot—their lives—unfold. His characters fly off the page, alternately charming, annoying, mean-spirited, generous, foolish, compassionate. Thackeray is sometimes the omniscient narrator, sometimes speaking through his characters.

Becky Sharp rarely moves off center stage. She has two feckless parents; they have given her some advantages but no money. Thanks to her French mother, she speaks excellent French. She is educated at a school for well-born girls where her father once taught art. Since no one pays her tuition, she must work at the school. We meet Becky as she leaves Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies in a large coach drawn “by two fat horses.” The Smedley family has sent the coach to take their daughter Amelia and her friend, Becky, home. This friendship, Becky hopes, will be her path to marrying a wealthy man.

The characters make their entrances; the plot unfolds. Jos Smedley, Amelia’s brother, has made a fortune in India. Becky schemes to marry him. Amelia is to engaged to marry George Osborne, from a family as well-off as hers. Nothing will go as planned. Jos, after an embarrassing incident at a party, returns to India. The Smedleys have reached their limit having Becky as a guest, she leaves to work as a governess. Becky’s employer, Sir Pitt Crawley, a widower, has two sons, young Pitt and Rawdon, and a rich elderly aunt. Becky sees a raft of new possibilities. The Smedleys lose all their money; George Osborne marries the impoverished Amelia despite his family’s opposition. The family cuts off support for George and Amelia. Becky finds husband material in Rawdon Crawley, but he has received no money from his family, they must scramble for their living. Children are born in both Osborne and Crawley marriages; the Battle of Waterloo is fought; financial reversals occur. Virtue is rewarded, vice, well, is not precisely punished. Amelia will find a loving marriage, Becky will be financially secure, but with a reputation destroyed by her machinations.

Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg, Recording Secretary

* Illustration by William Makepeace Thackeray entitled: Mr. Joseph entangled. Image scanned by Gerald Ajam and captions by Tiaw Kay Siang and Sabrina Lim. Courtesy Victorian Web.

Laura Presents Three African-American Classics

Jacquie’s Email Hello Literary Ladies! Just a gentle reminder that the next meeting of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be meeting this coming Wednesday, February 4th in Gita’s beautiful aerie, from which, I imagine, we will be able to see the ice floes on the Hudson River. As usual, we will meet at noon for luncheon, though luncheon at Gita’s is never merely “usual” but always a delight for all the senses. Joanna will ring the bell at 1 PM to begin our meeting, after

which Laura will be presenting “Three African American Classics: Cane, Passing, The Invisible Man.” I, for one, am looking forward to revisiting high school reading with one of Hastings’ own English teachers extraordinaire!

Please let our hostess know if you are unable to attend. Stay warm and safe out there! x Jacquie

Frances’ Minutes Eleven members and one associate met in Gita’s sunroom. A cozy place to watch the ice floes on the Hudson River. Joanna rang the bell, business began. The terms of president and vice-president are ending; Joanna has appointed a nominating committee to fill the positions. The committee is Carol, Connie, Jacquie. Several changes made in hostesses. Next meeting Feb 18, will be at Christine’s. The March 4 Annual Meeting will be at Laura’s; lunch will be served. April 8 will be at Joanna’s; it will be a brown bag lunch.

Lori reported our treasury was, as it has consistently been since donating to the Hastings library, $113.12.

A couple of recommendations: Frances thought the Broadway musical Maybe Happy Ending wonderful. Connie recommends two films: A Private Life and Sentimental Value.

The full title of Laura’s presentation was “Three African-American Writers of the Twentieth Century, or Books Not Taught.” Those were Cane by Jean Toomer, Passing by Nella Larsen and Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man.  Of the three, Laura had only read The Invisible Man decades ago, when work and family gave her no time to concentrate.

Laura began with Jean Toomer’s Cane. She showed us one version of the novel; more than ¾ of the book was analysis and criticism. Cane is composed of sketches and poems, a sequence of scenes and portraits, modernist in style, moving from rural Georgia to Chicago and back. Toomer’s work has received much attention since it was first published in 1923.

Toomer was born in 1894 in Washington DC. Toomer’s father had been born a slave who as an adult occasionally passed as white. Toomer’s mother’s forebears were of mixed race and Creole. Toomer resisted racial classification, considered he was “a representative of a new emergent race-a combination of various races.”

Toomer’s formative years were turbulent. He went to six different colleges but never obtained a degree. He worked odd jobs, published essays in a socialist paper. In 1921 he took a job as the principal of a new agricultural and manual labor college for Black-Americans in Sparta, Georgia. Jim Crow laws were violently enforced; lynchings frequent.

Toomer composed most of Cane during that time. He saw beauty as well as cruelty around him. His poem “Karintha” repeats: “her skin is like dusk when the sun goes down.” In November Cotton Flower, he writes “Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear”

He died in 1967.

Passing was recommended by a former student of Laura’s, who had returned to Hastings HS to teach.

Nella Larsen was born in 1891 in Chicago. Her mother was Danish, her father from the West Indies. Passing is an imaginative recreation of the fluidity of race, which Larsen knew well.

Larsen studied nursing at Lincoln Hospital and began working there. In 1919, she married a prominent Black physicist; they moved to Harlem, became part of the Harlem Renaissance. She published her first novel in 1928. Shortly after, learning of an affair of her husband’s, she separated from him. In 1929, she published Passing.

The novel is about two childhood friends, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, who reconnect as adults. Clare passes as white and has even married a white racist. Irene identifies as Black. Clare lives under pressure of concealment. Yet she wants to know more about and to be a part of Harlem’s high life. She sees the friendship with Irene as a pathway. Irene senses the risk Clare is taking, avoids her. Clare comes uninvited to a Harlem party; Irene and her husband are there. The sixth-floor apartment is hot and crowded. Clare’s husband has followed her; he bursts in on the party, enraged, shouting. Clare jumps, or falls, we’re not certain, from an open window.

Larsen’s writing life ended abruptly when she was accused of plagiarizing a story. She divorced; she left her work as a librarian to return to nursing. At her funeral, colleagues came, but no family or friends.

Ralph Ellison was introduced with a quote from The Invisible Man “…one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving toward whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray. None of us seems to know who he is or where he’s going.”

Ellison was born in 1913 in Oklahoma City. Ellison was not a good student, he applied 3 times to Tuskegee Institute before being admitted. He left without getting a degree, he went to NYC to study sculpture, in 1936. Living in Harlem, he made important contacts: Langston Hughes, Gordon Parks, and critically, Richard Wright, who encouraged Ellison to write fiction.

The Invisible Man was published in 1952 to popular and critical success; it was given a National Book Award. The first-person narrator, never named, begins his story from a coal cellar where he is hiding from a political rival who intends to kill him. The most heart wrenching scene is of an old couple being evicted from their Harlem apartment, she sobbing, he leaning on his cane. A crowd stands around, watching. The narrator yells “put the furniture back in the house … make their home again!” Ellison could create drama and character, he makes us feel, with first person immediacy, the injustices of racism and of poverty.

Laura concluded, “I only hope that we will find our way… to resist what is happening now and that we can put the furniture back…and right some of the many wrongs we see today.”