Living in the country of soccer and beautiful (or not as much as we wished…) women, here it is how I´ve spent the 4 1/2 days of the most important holiday of the year… Reading English Classic Novels!!!!
Okay, I’ ve been told that I’ m a kind of excentric person, but this one surprised even myself. Being mastered in Spanish and Portuguese Literature, and having a taste for everything that I wasn’ t supposed to be reading, I’ ve dropped out Cervantes and Góngora and sank myself right into Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson!
Moll Flandres is, actually, a great book! Skillful and wisely written by the author who also released Robinson Crusoe, this piece of gold relates the story of a talented woman who was for twelve years a thief, for another twelve a prostitute, married 5 times (she even married, without previously knowing, her own brother), had countless children (that she mostly abandoned, except for the one she constantly praises, and, what a coincidence!, is the only one who supports her by the end of her life, rescuing her from misery and poverty), was arrested and expelled from England to live in the new lands. Now that I have already read the entire novel, I can venture myself by watching the TV movie with Morgan Freeman and Robin Wright Penn, who I dislike a little due both to having a boyish voice and stealing Madonna´s true love.
Washing off the scorn and dirty episodes of our sympathethic anti-heroin, I started to read Clarissa or the Misfortunes of a Young Lady of Samuel Richardson. Really, really hooked by the passionate romance and tender tears of the protagonist and dazzled by the letters of many, MANY characters, I could not stop till I’ ve finished the 4 volumes of the epistolary novel. Man, that Lovelace, one thing we can actually say about this sexy villain, never gives up (can we say the same of guys we usually know…? I don´t think so!). The scene of the rape, which I have read countless times in order to be sure of what actually happened, is so decently reported as any description of an under Inquisition book could ever have been made! That Richardson had a craft art for writing, geniously talking.
Of course, once I could not rest untill I finished the longest english novel, the very minute I closed Clarissa I stared searching for Samuel´s most known masterpiece, Pamela. I’ m sorry to say, this novel was not so thrilling. First, because the entire plot is told only through Pamela’ s eyes (I’ d rather say her pen, since it is also another epistolary novel), second, because it defends the simple argument that the heroin only could reach happines (and social status, and comfort life, once she is mere servant) for holding her viginity and demanding marriage from her boss, abductor and seductor…which was not a problem to Clarissa, who was offered marriage countless times from Lovelace and even his best friend (!!!) and, most likely himseld, a libertine, Belford. In Pamela’ s case, the line is very straightly drawn, which makes the plot a little shallow, and much less interesting than Clarissa’ s.
Anyway, such a great holiday I ‘ ve had – no beer, no samba, no women dancing over high heels with a paint covered naked body, showing all fat tissues and cellulities . God bless the English Literature and the free will of a young lady who can do anything she chooses in a world of countless possibilities!
fantasticomundodecarol 