You know what sucks? That blogger and Facebook insist on changing your interface without even giving you an option. What the hey? Would it hurt them to have some stay on the old interface and those who want to migrate to the new one? Would it? Would it? When they changed my interface, I changed it back. And now they tell me I have no choice. Maybe Wordpress IS better after all.
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with Dickens, I know. Except what he writes about evil capitalists bending everyone to their will. And at least in Dickensland, they ultimately fail and hang themselves.
Which all goes to show that I'm reading Nicholas Nickleby now. In fact, I'm nearly done. 53 chapters into the book. Which has about 65 chapters. The chapters, however, are shorter than the Martin Chuzzlewit chapters. So I'm getting through the book at a rapid pace.
At the beginning I was surprised to find that the scenes at Dotheboys Hall consisted only of about 4 chapters or so. It made such an impression on my mind when I first read it that I thought it comprised at least half the book.
Nay, not so.
Nicholas does different things, teaching, tutoring the Kenwigs daughters in French, acting Romeo, writing plays...until he finally settles down as a book keeper in Cheeryble, Brothers. The moment the Cheeryble theme was introduced, I relaxed and settled down. With those deux ex machina were there nothing could ever be so bad again.
No, not nearly.
I forgot that Kate was a companion to that Mrs Witterly (she was forgettable). But I remember laughing fit to kill myself when Kate charged her with being "so much older" and she fell into hysterics. And her stupid husband who took his wife's vapours/hypocondhria as proof of her SOUL. Ugh.
I forgot (maybe because when I first read it I skipped through the passages) how much Dickens goes off track in some chapters beating his own particular dead horses (like the unlawful adaption of books for the stage). He has Nicholas talking about it and it seems strange, to say the least, coming from him, given that Nicholas was doing very much the same thing with the French plays, translating them to English and improvising here and there, and claiming to be author. I wonder if Dickens realised how inconsistent he was being. I mean OK the misery of the children in the Yorkshire schools and the likes of Squeers having charge of them, fine. At least that was disinterested. But when he blows his own trumpet and beats his own drum, he becomes wearying.
Also, I think this, more than any other book, has the worst heroines. I'm still at the part where Madeline Bray has consented to marry Arthur Gride to "save" her father. Call it what you may, turn it whichever way you want to, it seems spiritless of her to sacrifice her life in that way. The problem was she had a stupid mother who married for looks rather than character and on dying, charged her daughter to take care of her mistake (husband). I don't think Dickens pulls this off very well. In fact, by contrast, Kate seems a lot more spirited. At least she resented the insults offered to her by those so-called noblemen.
Anyway, I was in the actual chapter of the day of the wedding, and Jenny started talking to me about the obit I had written for Sabrina. So we talked of Sabrina for a bit and of what she did for those animals, and who was left to carry on her work. How suddenly she died. Those kinds of things.
And now I've come back to my place to work. Even if I don't feel like. I can take a leaf from Sabrina's book and just do what needs to be done. I don't have to feel like doing it. Just to do it.
Later for you
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