82 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Women Who Write and Emotions in the Individual Life, August 23, 2006
Every so often a book appears with a fresh approach to familiar classics
which reinvigorates our belief in the importance of literature to the
experience of culture. Edward Mendelson is a Professor of English and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University. As the subtitle declares,
The Things That Matter revisits seven novels with an aim of exploring a
central theme from each that can tell us something about how to
interpret emotional challenges that beset us in the course of our
lifetime. Frankenstein is offered as an examination of birth, Wuthering
Heights of childhood, Jane Eyre for growth, Middlemarch for marriage,
Mrs. Dalloway for love, To the Lighthouse for parenthood, and Between
the Acts for the future. Mendelson's premise is flexible enough to avoid
heavy-handed exegesis; what he has given us is a literary roadmap into
moral and emotional conundrums that the authors of these books have
confronted through story and character.
The selection spans two centuries and the authors are women. Three of
the books were written by Virginia Woolf. Mendelson believes that women
"had a greater motivation to defend the values of personal life against
the generalizing effect of stereotypes..." He makes a good point:
certainly the authors of these books took great pains to examine the
emotional life and its influence on actions and choices.
One gets from his book a keen sense of Mendelson's reverence for the
individual experience, whether as a reader, a writer, an artist, or
merely a soul confronting contradictions; and he seems to be saying that
the best literature offers visions in lieu of answers, and that the
visions given here have something of emotional truth derived from what
women know especially.
Authors exist in a relationship to their characters that creates a
second dynamic to the narrative. "The novels that I write about in this
book all emerged from their authors' arguments with themselves." From
this can be inferred arguments that authors have with their characters,
disapproving of their behavior even as they create situations that allow
it, and with their readers, for whom the story is told. It is precisely
the interpersonal aspects of literature and the visions that emerge from
speculation that excite Professor Mendelson, and he has given new light
to familiar books in this thoughtfully insightful meditation.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
seven tastes of greatness !, February 9, 2007
I just read "The Things That Matter," having seen it on my library's shelf and picked it up out of curiosity. I loved this book not only for its content but for the timing with which it showed up for me to read. My brilliant-at-math-and-science-stuff child was having a challenge with English Lit class; this book has given me a way to relate to them the value of novels to real life stuff, especially thinking about how "universal ideas" in life play out in personal actual life.
I found Mendelson's critical reviews of "What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life" timely and well written. I highlight below several points that struck me.
. I have never, never, NEver realized the intricate complexities of "Frankenstein" til I read Mendelson's analysis. I had heard that the authoress (Mary Shelley) was brilliant and accomplished and connected in her time, but to be honest all I could image in my mind prior to this book was the film treatments of a) Boris Karloff, and b) Mel Brooks. Suffice it to say I have a whole new appreciation of the rich ideas and paradoxes Shelley wove into her story!
. Mendelson does a fine job of weaving seven stories into seven Stages of Life (Birth, Childhood, Growth, Marraige, Love, Parenthood, The Future). Never mind the excellence of each chapter's analyses; the crafting of the whole book, and its demonstration by example of its meta-theme that "things that matter are written about in great literature," excite my professional admiration for a job of craftsmenship and talent well done.
. Further exciting my admiration are several points mentioned in the preface and in the essays as Mendelson distinguishes "universal ideas" that these authoresses (Mary Shelley, Emile Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf) present in their narratives:
1) He chose all woman authors because "it has nothing to do with any fantasy that women have greater moral and emotional intelligence" but rather "a woman writer [in the 19th and 20th centuries] had a greater motivation to defend the values of personal life against the generalizing effect of stereotypes." This is still an issue today for ALL of us, I think, whatever our personal circumstances or lifestyle choices.
2) That opposite life principles may be equally true, that what is publically espoused may be privately doubted. Or said colloquially, "The opposite of a Great Truth may be in itself a Great Truth." Examples include, in "Frankenstein," the espoused principle that a good upbringing of a child will result in a good character of an adult. But: "The opposite may also be true."
To read Mendelson's "take" about these works and their authors has made me feel more acquainted with seven "tastes of greatness!"
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