One of my literary goals is to read certain classics, and two titles by Wilkie Collins featured in there. After completing this book, Collins can now be ticked off my list.
Like The Woman in White, The Moonstone is, most definitely, a narrative drive novel, and though this book is good too I enjoyed The
Woman in White more.
I thought Collins’ satire in the guise of the piously, hypocritical
Miss Clack and her manic religious-tract giving was very humorous:
Here was a golden opportunity! I seized
it on the spot. In other words, I instantly opened my bag, and took out the top
publication. It proved to be an early edition—only the twenty-fifth—of the
famous anonymous work (believed to be by precious Miss Bellows), entitled The Serpent at Home. The design of the
book—with which the worldly reader may not be acquainted—is to show how the
Evil One lies in wait for us in all the most apparently innocent actions of our
daily lives. The chapters best adapted to female perusal are “Satan in the Hair
Brush;” “Satan behind the Looking Glass;” “Satan under the Tea Table;” “Satan
out of the Window”—and many others.
“Give your attention, dear aunt, to
this precious book—and you will give me all I ask.” With those words, I handed
it to her open, at a marked passage—one continuous burst of burning eloquence!
Subject: Satan among the Sofa Cushions.
LOL. What an awful woman, such perfect reading to gift to dying aunt ;)
Betteredge, the butler, much to my delight, constantly refers to
Robinson Crusoe ,
"I am not superstitious; I have
read a heap of books in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned
seventy, I possess an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to
take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my
opinion that such a book as Robinson
Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried
that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have
found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my
spirits are bad—Robinson Crusoe.
When I want advice—Robinson Crusoe.
In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop
too much—Robinson Crusoe. I have
worn out six stout Robinson Crusoes
with hard work in my service. On my lady’s last birthday she gave me a seventh.
I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and Robinson Crusoe put me right again. Price four shillings and
sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain."
“The man who doesn’t believe in Robinson Crusoe, after that [a quote
from Crusoe], is a man with a screw loose in his understanding, or a man
lost in the mist of his own self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him; and
pity is better reserved for some person with a livelier faith.”
During the writing of this book, Collin’s seems to be using Ezra
Jennings as the voice to document his own pain driven addiction to opium –
opium taking pops up everywhere –
Back again, this morning, to
the old routine! Back again, tonight, to the dreadful alternative between the
opium and the pain!
I liked Ezra and thought his personal ‘ending’ was rather sad.
