Decline and Fall

Last night I finished reading Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall. I am left wondering if he will ever have characters get engaged and get married. I thought it was interesting though and funny. It might make a good surrealist movie, the way the same characters keep popping back up in different places, particularly the prison. I've noticed an almost unprecedented passivity in Waugh's main characters. So much of their lives seem to be things that happen to them. I was struck immediately by the beginning of the book when Paul was kicked out of school for being the victim of classmates antics that he didn't try to stick up for himself and explain what actually happened. When his guardian cut him off, he didn't protest that either. He just kind of accepted and rode out his luck either good or bad with almost the same amount of emotion. The only feelings he did seem to have were attraction to Margot, yet he also seemed to be happier in jail than getting married to her.

I thought the professor's explanation at the end was a very good interpretation of what had happened. Life being a carnival ride and the different people in life being static versus dynamic. How people just try to claw their way to the middle, get thrown off, and if they succeeded end up where they began. It was definitely more of a philosophical insight that I've read in Waugh's other books. I like the image of how Paul accidentally got caught up in the middle of the ride, and was thrown about and then managed to get back on course. I think his apparent lack of emotion and passivity was just displaying his role as a static character. I feel I would be able to explain this better were it not two AM.

I enjoyed the book, though frankly not as much as the other two I read. Prisons and boy's schools not as interesting as parties and mortuaries. Still it definitely made a nice change after reading Zola. And I'm definitely going to keep reading everything I can by Waugh. At the book fair I was pleased to find copies of Put out more flags and Scoop. Though with as many books as I picked up I'm not sure when I'll be reading them.

Not the King and I

At the book fair I saw a book titled, Siamese Harem Life. I picked it up saw it was written originally in 1873 and decided to get it as I have a strong fascination of old accounts of the East. I noticed there was also a chapter on a witch trial so I had to have it. When I got it home I realized that it was written by Anna Leonowens, the infamous I in the King and I. I must admit I had a great fondness for the movie with Yul Brenner when I was a young child. I even saw him perform in the play before his death. However the play in no way prepared me for the wonders of this book.

I read the chapter on the witch trial first, it was a very interesting account of a slave girl being questioned about sorcery. While the author was quick to point out the absurdity of belief in witchcraft, she was also as quick to remind the audience how it had been a large part of European life till a mere century ago and that today's beliefs in spiritualism were in no way more absurd. She quoted about specific trials in Europe and in England and I was surprised at how much she knew. So I decided that I should read the whole book.

The book was an amazing look at the lives of several amazing women living in, or affected by, the royal household, some were princesses or concubines, some slaves. But they were described with such passion and beauty and their dedication, courage and spirit with such clarity that even 150 years later their amazing lives come through the pages. Most women described were tortured and several died. Their were few happy endings for any of the remarkable women in this book. It made me greatly disheartened to think how the legend of "anna and the king" has come down to us, and one of forbidden romance, when her attitude towards him in this book was one of revulsion and horror. To her it seemed as if the women were the true heroines.

Another remarkable thing about this book was the way she described the women's city. Unlike the concubine's of China's emperor's who were guarded by eunuchs, here it was a true women's city, with women judges, guards, teachers. Women filled every role, and were educated. While they were still under the control of men it seemed so much more enlightened than normally gets presented to us.

The fact that the next King of Siam outlawed slavery should be viewed as her biggest achievement. Before he was King 75 percent of the population were slaves. Millions of people were free because of this woman's teaching of a young boy. In the middle of the 19th century I find that quite remarkable.

The cynic in me can't help but wonder how much all of this is true. But I am now definitely going to look into getting more books about this woman, and the situation she found herself in. Of course having said that the reason I liked this book so much was that it wasn't about her but her writing about the remarkable lives of the women she knew while she was living for 5 years in Siam. I've been greatly influenced by reading Susan Mann and Dorothy Ko lately, how they look at women writing women's history. This book definitely falls into that category.