Mendalla,

I love "the classics".

Uncle Tom's Cabin was anti-slavery and laid many a good foundation... that said, looking through this lens and time, Stowe had condescending racist descriptions of black character's appearances, their speech and behavior... and "Uncle Tom" became a derogatory term because of the passive nature of Uncle Tom.

I tend to look at when they were written and by whom and read them in that context, much like I do with Scripture. =)

Mendalla, I don't have a problem with reading older books with racist/sexist additudes.  I might roll my eyes from time to time, but I think it's also important to see where we have come from.

I have more of an issue of reading books with similar attitudes now.  When reading an old book, you probably aren't supporting an author who holds those viewpoints, with a new book there's a good chance you are.

What do you all think of Jane Austen's works and their relevance to today's world?

With book publishing companies, well this one at least, they laid out "no weak female characters" as one of the requirements for them to accept a manuscript for publishing. I thought at first that was a bit of an odd thing to ask for, as surely a story can still be good if it has weak women in it... "doesn't it depend on the story and the people it's about?" I thought.

I admit, I haven't read any old fiction, except the frist half of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which I was enjoying, but my son got scared and wanted to quit and I was reading it to him, so back it went. I should try the audio books though.

I would imagine I would be able to look at it from the perpsective of the time though. But, when I watch a film written in the past, with a women who sits back when the bad guy is attacking the man she loves, it really bugs me. She could at least hit him on the head with something!

I think also it's good to get a look into what the attitudes were back then. I don't think we should let the work fall by the wayside, no. It's still culturally important, largely because it has endured and was good to begin with, like Jane Austen... It's escapism too, to watch a story where women wore dresses and men looked after them.

Do you think the film versions of these old fiction books retain the racist & sexist perspectives of the original work?

LOL, funny Trish, you should say that while I was writting my post... : )  I like the Jane Austen. Sigh~~~

The relevance, sadly, seems to have gone by the wayside though. What woman can hope to be swept off to Mr Darcy's house now? I mean, man! You'd be shamed for wishing it! But, you should see all the Mr Darcy souveniers for sale at Chatsworth!! Like the bookmark that reads "Could I ever hope to gain your love?" (or something like that)

http://www.bbcamericashop.com/search-results.html?kword=Mrs.%20Darcy&cat_id=

I like that mug.

We had a very old record that our children had really enjoyed (and played and played).  One of them transferred it to a cd and gave copies to everyone for Christmas one year.

My grandkid played it for a friend while travelling in the car and the friend's mother was horrified.  The song that upset her was Jimmy Crack Corn and she complained it was racist.  This same woman also refused to read the old stories (Three Pigs, Red Riding Hood etc)  to her children because they were politically incorrect.

Wow Kay, Wow.

Yeah that's a pretty mug Trish.

Well the audio book collection is rather pitiful, but I managed to order the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the Invisible Man by HG Wells on tape. And I ordered Dracula in print. I dipped into it a couple months ago when I had a half hour to kill at the library and found it gripping from the start.

Hubby also remembered that we did indeed listen to the Time Machine on tape 3 years ago, and I remember enjoying the excitement and suspence. I don't remember being offended, but I don't remember the book very well in general. I have enjoyed two film versions of it though.

Come to think of it, the original Star Trek has some sexist moments in it, like whenever a woman walks down the hall in one of those stupid minidresses, or acts stupid and swoony in the face of Kirk. Or when Ohura (in a hip length "dress" with matching hot pants that showed from behind) tells the captain that she's scared, (cause she's so fragile and only a poor little woman who needs her captain to protect her and tell her what to do). You wouldn't get Ohura acting like that nowadays. Even the wimpiest woman on Enterprise D, Troy, never exibited that kind of inability and dependance. Changing times is all, I guess. Different cultural expectations. I gotta say, I never warmed to Captain Janeway. "Jane-way" the "Girl-way", yeah right. I didn't like her brutish way, coupled with her unrealisticly made up face and highly bouffanted hair, and those suposedly balancing phoney smiles and soft feminine scenes of hers. I never bought it.

yes it is but did you read it?

I don't believe an historical work should be edited in aid of "political correctness". Literature should stand alone as a document of the times. It would be ridiculous to change the wording to accommodate a "modern" vocabulary.

Mark Twain used the "n" word in his work even though he was a passionate abolitionist. It was in context and accurate to the era. 

As for women characters -- some were well-drawn (Thomas Hardy at least was interested in their characters and made women 3 dimensional). Hemingway, who came later didn't. He was apparently unable to "see" a real woman and they stand out in his novels as vapid and unrealistic. 

Trish: Yup.

"Literature should stand alone as a document of the times. It would be ridiculous to change the wording to accommodate a "modern" vocabulary."

I agree with this quote. 

I love some of the old classics such as "Wuthering Heights", "Jane Eyre" and "Little Women" with strong female characters.

Certainly a contrast to Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" for sure.

Jonathan Swift's work is great, such as "Gulliver's Travels", and his satire "A Modest Proposal".  Perhaps we can learn from this essay as our world faces overpopulation and there are those who feel some people/races are expendable.  Changing the words or modernizing this piece would be inappropriate.

"The Time Machine" is a great read and imaginative literature ahead of its time.  It can be read on many levels.

I struggled with novels such as "Vanity Fair" and "Middlemarch".  Expect they only show up on university English courses.

I'm a huge Thomas Hardy fan.  His characters are well-crafted for their time.  "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" is a classic tragedy.

The book that impressed me most and that is probably my favourite, is Maughm's "The Razor's Edge".  Powerful book.

I don't read modern novels much because character development seems superficial.

Happy to read a Margaret Lawrence novel any day.

I think it's sad that many young people will never get to experience some of the great classics unless they major in English at university and I don't even know what courses of study are like now.  People seem content to read abbreviated versions on the internet.

When I compare the books students are required to read at the high school level now to those we read and taught 20 years ago, I shudder because student's reading capability seems to have deteriorated. 

Somehow I can't picture students wading through "Moby Dick" or "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Guess reading material has to be relevant and maybe I'm just an old-fashioned fuddy duddy.

Average reading level has indeed decreased.  Attention spans and the need to constant changes.   The "sesame street" phenomenon.

At schools, it is part of the idea that reading anything is good which is ok but at some point you need to read something "better"

It is the difference between "airport trash" and "literature"

I like the classics and old books too but I must admit i almost always need to look up at least one word in a dictionary.  their vocabulary was much greater than our is now.

Yes there definitely were fewer 'quick reads' back then.  I finished reading David Copperfield. LOVED that book. Dickens is a master but not for many of today's readers who need to be 'grabbed' from the first paragraph. Classics need to be savoured, like wine.

I like a lot of classic novels but Dickens has never worked for me. Perhaps it was the way Great Ex was hammered into me in Grade 11 English or something, but somewhere along the line I got put off him and never got back to him. Should grab some Dickens for my Kobo and give him a fresh try.

Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, I love. Still haven't finished it, but it's a rather different beast than I'd expected based on some of what I'd read about it and that's a good thing.

Mendalla

It';s funny how much I read on WOndercafe, yet how few books I've read. In high school I couldn't read a whole novel. This was 20 years ago. We'd be assigned to read a chapter for homework and I couldn't do it, so I'd watch the movie so as not to fail the test and to be able to write an essay and get a B. I did manage to read Farenheit 451 in grade 10, which is a little book, only by stealing it from the school library as it took me all semester to read. And I managed Brave New World over a similar length of time in grade 11. (I returned Farenheit 451 when I was done.) Meamwhile my girlfriends were gobbling up classics and bodice rippers.

I read my first big novel about age 20, and it took me maybe a year. That was Greenlanders. I was proud of myself. My friend took a look at it and said it was the type of book she would find boring and could never read. Then I read Clan of the Cave Bear.

I only got Lord of the Rings in because hubby read it to me, but some of you allreday know that. I found it rather short on female characters, and rather heavy on yukky orks and battle scenes. Very manish. I would have liked to hear more about poor Arwen waiting back at Rivendell, so was kinda glad she had more of a part in the film. Hearing about Eowyn was a relief.

But many of the titles mentioned here, I've enjoyed the films of. Tess of the D'Urbervilles is great, Vanity Fair, Gulliver's Travels, Great Gatsby... I enjoyed the horror film for The Portrait of Dorian Grey, and The Woman in White... There are several good film versions of Wuthering Heights. I have yet to see the one with Ralph Fiennes as Heithcliff. I saw a scene from it on tv which looked good. Recently got out the new film for Jane Eyre which we'll watch tonight.

I've read all but one of the Harry Potter books, and didn't fall asleep reading them!

I might just have to get into this new downloading of audiobooks from the library, to listen to on my mp3 player. Though I'm afraid that digital books will replace real books in libraries, and that would be a tradgedy!

I'm not sure if our vocabulary has actually decreased, or if it's just different now.  Language changes over time.  I do love junk books.  They are a nice quick read, can be devored in a day or 2 and are a nice break when you have a job or school that requires a lot of mental work.

It's more the latter, I think. I love old fiction and I occasionally stumble over it due to vocab differences.

I also find that writing was more mannered and formal in older times. Prose itself was a bit of an artform in some ways instead of just how you told the story. Today, authors seem to be more likely to write in a colloquial style and there seems to be less focus on the beauty of the prose (though I personally tend towards authors who do seem to have a more poetic or artistic prose style) and more on just getting the story told.

Mendalla

Yes, this is probably true. All the same, I remember that the big challenge in high school (I graduated in 1972) was to write a book report without actually reading the book.

My finest effort was a report on Ben Hur which I wrote by using the LP cover of the music from the movie. My mom was upset when I received 9/ 10 as a mark on my book report.

Ha ha. Fun times.

paradox3,

Your post made me laugh and remember recent events. Our instructor was a dinosaur, I mean "old school". Any book you were assigned to read came with a companion book report assignment that had specific questions to be answered in the body of it.
Things like -
What was the author's main idea?
What was their intent?
and similar standard book report questions.
 

One of which was "in one sentence sum up this work"

It worked until the book was Introduction to the History of Christianity  LMAO

Someone wrote that Dowley's intent was "to bore us into submission".

Someone wrote as their summation in one sentence. "This book is heavy."

Hi SG,

That's funny!

Another funny memory from high school English class. We were doing a series of presentations on contemporary poetry. There was a certain young man who was a bit of a class clown. Nice guy but not what you would call a serious student. When it was his turn to present to the class, the teacher called on him rather sarcastically and said, "Well, what do you have for us today?"

He was doing Irving Layton. In his presentation, he told us about phoning up Irving Layton at York University and chatting with him for a while.

The teacher's chin almost hit the floor! Ha ha, I am laughing to myself about the incident all these years later.

Re Huck Finn's slang time for African-Americans.   I have no problem with it.  It reflects the culture and the time. 

I've recently written a historic novel set, mainly, in the Canadian Arctic.  The first half of the book contains references to Eskimos, usually done in a derogatory manner.  I cringed every time I typed that word.  But what else could I do?  That was how British seamen and explorers referred to the native peoples at that time, and was in common usage until the latter half of the 20th century.  In my novel it is only after the hero makes contact with the People that he learns that 'Eskimo' is an insult and that a better word is 'Inuit'.

Re:  reading skills.  I think that comparing reading skills and vocabulary of today to that of 50 years ago is like comparing apples to oranges.  Fifty years ago much of the population had only elementary education - many never got past grade 2 or 3.  Their reading skills and vocabulary reflected this.  But their lack of literacy skills wouldn't show up on any test for high school students.  Now, with better transportation, communications, more emphasis on staying in school, and fewer jobs that a person might find as soon as they are old enough to peel pulp or pick potatoes, most students stay in school.  They are no longer 'held back' until they acquire basic skills, so many disinterested teens are now in high-school, and their lack of literacy skills show up on standard tests.

I think the top 10% of today's students could easily match the top students of 50 years ago.  Maybe they wouldn't be so familiar with farming and logging terms but they certainly would surpass them in computer language.   How many of you know what a peevee is used for, or a wiffle-tree (sp)?   Recently someone questioned me when I mentioned 'mucking out the cows'.  

I'm a fan of Pagan literature of pre-Christian and on up to about 1400CE.

You learn a lot about a culture long gone by paying attention to the stories they tell.

Chemgal -- a movie version that I've enjoyed is an older one -- a very faithful to the novel "Far From the Madding Crowd" (ThomHardy). A babalicious Julie Christie is astonishing as Bathsheba Everdene, and Terrance Stamp is Sgt. Francis Troy. (sigh) Directed by David Lean

I'd be interested in hearing what this covers, Witch. I read quite a bit of Classical Latin lit (alas, mostly in translation since my Latin has gotten rather rusty), esp. poetry, but I'm thinking that you're talking something broader here.

Mendalla

I'd forgotten about this one....great book and adaptation.

I know people who take issue with the  Little House books becasue of the way Laura's mother's attitiude towards natives is portrayed.  But it's a pretty accurate reflection of how a white pioneer woman would have felt at the time.

Ninj, Love that version of Far From the Madding Crowd. Great film. I love the more recent 4 hr version too. They both have their bennefits. There's more folk culture in the latter.

Hello Witch. Greetings. It looks like you and Ninj are both on the verge of being on the forum with your blank avatars at the moment.

The native thought is an interesting one. If we were white pioneers back then, I think we'd be pretty afraid of the Indians too. They were wild, primitive and brutal in battle, wildly defending their land against us invaders, and woefully ill equiped to do so. I admire aspects of them, but understand the settlers fear.

Watched the new Jane Eyre last night and thought it was nice, but all in all, not that impressed. Nice music, lovely settings, great costume, hair and makeup, and I adore Haddon Hall where it was filmed, but definately prefer the 4 hour Timothy Dalton version. By a long shot.

So I haven't had an answer to my question about whether film renditions maintain the original potentially offensive and politically incorrect position of the book... Anyone?

Mendalla if you like the poetic prose, I recommend Carlos Fuentes (if you can find it, Christopher Unborn is fantastic) and Paulo Coelho - both are South American authors and I suspect the poetic leanings are culturally influenced.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.
      Carlos Fuentes

Latin American writers have a very dfiferent style and outlook, don't they? I haven't read those two, but have read a bit of Borges and Marquez (I love magic realism). American fantasy and s-f writer Lucius Shepherd drew inspiration from Latin American literature and he was a favorite of mine in the 90s (hasn't written much recently that I can find, should Wiki him to see what's up). His Latin American war stories, collected as "Life During Wartime" combine magic realism with social commentary (on US involvement in Latin America during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years) in a very compelling way.

Mendalla

Mendalla if you love magic realism you will love Coelho.  Best known for The Alchemist but I think my favourite so far is The Devil and Miss Prym.

The story of one person is the story of all of humanity.
       Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym