Warning: this post contains SPOILERS on nineteenth-century novels!!!!!!
1. Jude the Obscure (1895) by Thomas Hardy -- (Book #1 The Doompill)
2. Middlemarch (1872) by George Eliot -- (Book #2 The Hopepill)
3. Anna Karenina (1878) by Leo Tolstoy -- (Book #3 The Compromisepill)
This is probably not the last time you're going to have to deal with me marriageposting or divorceposting (I recently read John Milton's pamphlet on divorce!!! So watch out!!!) By the way, Hardy actually quotes Milton in Jude the Obscure!!!!
Jude the Obscure -- The Doompill
Jude the Obscure is actually my favourite novel of all time. It's also a book that made me cry, scream, and crash out because it's the saddest novel I've ever read. Without giving too much away, the novel is about two people who love each other who can not be with each other. This is because Jude marries a woman who manipulates his sense of honour/chivalry but who he does not actually love, and Sue (who he actually loves) marries someone else who can provide for her out of convenience. But Sue does not love the old schoolmaster she marries either. Jude and Sue have an intellectual connection. Sue basically changes Jude's entire worldview through their intellectual discussions. It's clear that Hardy thinks intellectual companionship is important. They both do Latinmaxxing and Greekmaxxing, but Jude does this to study Christianity while Sue has a deeper appreciation of the classical pagan authors. And this has a huge impact on their worldviews and leads to lively debate and long yaps between them. This book is extremely doompilling because it makes it sound like everyone ends up marrying someone they settle for rather than who they truly love. Even when Sue's husband sees Jude and Sue yapping together, he has to admit that they are lowkey perfect for each other. Jude and Sue technically never get married, but you can argue that they are more married than anyone else in the book is if you use love to define marriage rather than a piece of paper. By the way, what is the Milton quote that Hardy includes as an epigraph in this book? It's this one:
“Whoso prefers either Matrimony or other Ordinance before the Good of Man and the plain Exigence of Charity, let him profess Papist, or Protestant, or what he will, he is no better than a Pharisee.” — John Milton, quoted by Thomas Hardy
This is a truly based quote. And I don't think anything more based about marriage has been said than this in the entire history of western thought, except for maybe that thing that Nietzche said about marriage being a long conversation. That was pretty based too. However, I have not actually read Nietzche's Human, All Too Human yet so I don't have much context for that. What I can tell you is that Milton and Hardy are based and 100% correct about marriage. If you don't think that whatever Jude and Sue have is a love that is higher than marriage, you are basically a Pharisee (by which Milton means someone who cares more about the law than what is actually right)!!!!!
Middlemarch -- The Hopepill
Middlemarch is the novel that made me end a relationship. I know I said Jude is my favourite novel of all time, but Middlemarch is a close second. I love how this novel basically has two stories going on at once. Dorothea, the protagonist, is in an unhappy marriage with an old scholar named Casaubon. At first, Dorothea thinks Casaubon would be a good match because she wants to be with an intellectual guy who she admires. She thinks she can help him with his scholarly work. However, Dorothea comes to the nasty realization that Casaubon has no admiration for her even though she is an intelligent woman. He has no interest in her inner life, but she remains devoted to him out of a sense of duty. Dorothea has a literary foil, or a character who is in a very similar circumstance as her, named Lydgate. Lydgate is a doctor who is very passionate about his work, but his wife Rosamond doesn't respect his passion. She rejects Lydgate's interest in the medical field, making Lydgate himself feel rejected, unhappy, and resentful. Dorothea and Lydgate both want to be valued for their minds, but their partners do not offer this to them. My relationship reminded me too much of Dorothea and Casaubon's relationship, which is why I ended it. Eventually, Dorothea meets a man named Will Ladislaw who truly loves her soul!!! There's an unforgettable scene where Will Ladislaw and his friend are in an art museum where they see Dorothea. Ladislaw's friend, an artist, says he would paint Dorothea. And Ladislaw says what she really deserves is a poem about her, meaning that he deeply appreciates her non-physical attributes. He is captivated by her voice, soul, and mind. The most romantic scene ever is after Casaubon dies and Dorothea marries Will even though he's poor.
Anyway, men shouldn't date Rosamonds and women shouldn't date Casaubons.
While reading Middlemarch, I took pics of passages that had me howling and screaming and posted them on my one-person Discord server. I'll share some with you guys here. This is about how Rosamond was a terrible wife:
Also here is something I saved about some characters who had more minor roles in the story, Fred and Mary. Mary wanted to fix him so badly:
Anyway, Middlemarch is based. It is more hopepilled than Jude because of how Dorothea finds Ladislaw at the end who is basically a perfect man and marries him.
Also, this is a meme I made. I posted this before. But here's a repost anyway.
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Anna Karenina -- The Compromisepill
Eventually when you're pondering about marriage, you arrive at the compromisepill. However, this is a hard pill to swallow and I lowkey didn't really swallow it yet ngl.
My cat Mictlan is a Russian Blue, and so I thought it would be cool to take a picture of a Russian creature with a Russian book!! Lowkey Tolstoy should've added more creatures. There were horses though.
Now, this is 800 pages about a woman cheating on her husband. Interestingly, I actually hated two other classic novels that were about women cheating on their husbands. One was Main Street by Sinclair Lewis and the other was Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. I think the reason why I didn't like those books is because I thought the women were dumb and hard to sympathize with, even though their husbands were such mediocre men. The husbands in both Main Street and Madame Bovary were doctors who had no time for their wives. They were also lowkey kinda uncultured and didn't read enough poetry. However, their wives were also mediocre and I can't say I liked them much. But Anna is different. I loved Anna, idk. She was cool af and I understand why the young women in the novel like Kitty are captivated by her, and the men too of course. Her husband Karenin is very similar to the hubsands in Main Street and Madame Bovary. That is to say he is extremely mid. Anna wants a passionate love, and so she cheats on him with Count Vronsky, a handsome charming guy who I imagine had a great jawline. However, Vronsky never truly does value her. He sort of treats having her as a status symbol. You also see elements of the classic demand-withdrawal cycle in their relationship.
Anna Karenina's plot structure is similar to Middlemarch because it sort of has two storylines in one. There's the Anna-Vronsky storyline and the Levin-Kitty storyline. This is kind of like how Middlemarch has Dorothea-Casaubon and Lydgate-Rosamond. I actually wonder if Tolstoy read Eliot. He probably did. I know he liked Dickens.
Anyway, Vronsky doesn't truly love Anna's soul. There are times when he seems to, like after Anna recovers from a nearly fatal illness, but he mostly just seems like a hotter version of Karenin. Anna realizes that maybe it wasn't worth it. Meanwhile, Levin turns to God instead of turning to other women when he is unhappy in his own marriage.
The novel shows Levin as a noble character while Anna tries to fulfill her own desires instead of turning to spirituality.
However, the genius of the novel is probably in that even though Levin is endorsed as morally superior, Anna is the more likeable character by far. Her intensity and passion makes her so much easier to sympathize with and relate to than Levin.
So if you fully swallow the Compromisepill, you could end up like Levin. And he is an admirable guy when it comes to morality.
But Anna is more based, remember that! At what cost will you swallow the Compromisepill?
Here's a pic I took of a page from the book. Anna and Vronsky are quarrelling in this chapter. And I just thought Tolstoy did a 10000 times better job of describing "the demand-withdrawal cycle" than psychologists do. Take that, psychologists. Your field isn't a real science and it can be done better by writers of literary fiction. The demand-withdrawal cycle usually has a woman feeling unappreciated and demanding more from a man who then withdraws because he doesn't like the criticism. It had me howling and screaming when it happened to Anna and Vronsky.
A Poem I wrote about the Marriage Trilogy
Long conversations between Jude and Sue
on matters that changed their entire worldview,
Perhaps you'll never know what that's like,
Philosophy taking over the night
Casaubon made Dorothea feel like
he was the sea, and her mind was a pool
until Ladislaw showed her what it was like
to actually be loved for her soul,
But they'll never say you're like him
Maybe you're like Count Vronsky
so handsome he made Anna Karenina
cheat on her husband and ruin her life,
All she wanted was love,
though Vronsky didn't know how to do that right,
But her husband was not much better
so she never satisfied her desires
Jude loved Greek and Latin
a poor boy who became a stonemason
just so he could have books
And Lydgate was a doctor
who truly had a passion
but I'm not sure you know what that's like
any better than his wife did
Maybe that's why you can't love
a person that well either,
Jude and Levin and Ladislaw
could do it better
I don't even think you see
your lover is ensouled,
Ladislaw thought Dorothea's
beauty
was too much for a portrait,
just right for poetry,
It would capture more of
her mind, her voice,
They say their love is beautiful
and in this one short life
I can't see the point
of being with you if
it doesn't feel like what they have,
So it can't be right
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
that's all, folks! I'll probably try to post something less lonelypilled next time.
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