March Prompt - A Classics Challenge

For the month of March, the prompt on November's Autumn is location.  We are to chose a setting within a novel that intrigues me the most.  The one that intrigues me the most is the bricklayer's house that is mentioned in Chapter 8.

I will do the Level two and three questions for this prompt.

1) How do you envision it?
 I envision it as a small, dark space.  I can imagine that the furniture is quite close together, with the beds and the kitchen table probably quite close together, with a chair or two near the fire.  There probably isn't a cooktop, but rather the cooking probably takes place in the hearth.  There are probably a couple of windows, but they are probably quite dirty.   The floor is probably dirt, but it could probably be boards as well.

2) Do you feel the setting is right?
Yes I do.  Dickens makes you feel as though you are in home that doesn't have a lot of money, if any.

3) If this particular setting was changed how would it affect the course of the story?
How it would affect the course of the story is that it would not offer the contrast between the world of where Esther and Ada are living and the people that lived like the bricklayer and his family.  It also helps to give the story a bit of gloom to the tone of the story.

February Prompt - A Classics Challenge

For this month's prompt on Nov, we are be asked to write about a character that we find interesting.  This month I have chosen Konstantin Levin from Anna Karenina.

I am going to answer a combination of Level 1 and Level 2 questions.

My first impressions of Konstantin Levin is of somebody who doesn't enjoy being in the city and is clearly a person who feels pressed in when visiting his friend, Stepan Arkadyevich and somebody who prefers to be on his country estate and getting his hands dirty and not in a fancy home somewhere not doing things with his hands.

I have actually grown to like Levin and even though I think that he can be a bit awkward socially in that he would rather be by himself rather than around the social elite of St. Petersburg and Moscow and like my protagonists to be a little more socially attuned.  I find him to be totally believable because he sounds a lot myself, in which I would rather be with a few selected friends rather than amongst people that I really am not comfortable around.  I would also rather be in a space that is somewhat out of the way rather than in a place that is constantly busy, although I do like being in a place that is close to stores and activity so that when I do need it, I can easily access it. Like Levin, I would also rather be around books than people and find that being around people rather difficult.  I would like to meet him; he seems to be what one calls an old soul, as he is not really concerned about the things of the here and now and more concerned about things that require thought and study.

January Classic Challenge: Nathaniel Hawthorne

For the January Classics Challenge: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

As part of the Classics Challenge, I have started to read The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

This is a photo taken in 1848, about 3 years before The Scarlet Letter was published and probably would have looked somewhat like this at the time of the writing of his most famous work.

He was born on July 4, 1804, a year after the Louisiana Purchase was announced in 1803, in Salem, Mass. His father, who was a sea captain, died when Nathaniel was about 4 years old.  He mainly lived in the Salem area while growing, but lived in Maine from 1816 until he was sent away for school in 1819.    After he finished college in 1825, it is uncertain where he lived until 1839, when he moved to Boston to work at the Boston Custom House for about three years.  After marrying, he and his wife eventually settled in Concord.  After the publication of The Scarlet Letter, he moved his family to Lennox, Mass., returning a couple years later to Concord.  In 1853, he was awarded the position of United States consul in Liverpool.  Four years later, his appointment ended and the family toured France and Italy, eventually returning to the States in 1860.  He died in May, 1864.

Some of the other novels he wrote where The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni.

Some interesting facts:
• was a neighbour of both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
• was a friend of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Franklin Pierce and Herman Melville
• the home they bought in Concord in 1852 was previously own by Amos Bronson Alcott
• went to college with the future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge.

Information taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne