Classical Anna: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The inspirational teacher is a stock character in literature and film, from Jane Eyre’s Miss Temple and Harry Potter’s Professor Dumbledore to John Keating in The Dead Poets Society.  These instructors light a spark in the hearts and minds of their students, often while fighting a traditional, conservative school system.  However, an inspirational teacher has great power over their students, and such power can be dangerous.  This is the case of Miss Jean Brodie, a teacher of both great inspiration and sinister influence.

Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie tells the story of the titular character, an unconventional teacher at a conventional girls’ school in Edinburgh, Scotland in the 1930’s, in her self-proclaimed “prime.” She gathers a group of students around her, known as the “Brodie Set,” and not only opens their minds to experiences outside the traditional curriculum, but involves them in her personal affairs, as well.  Miss Jean Brodie is an exquisitely complex character: she is a teacher who wants to enlighten her students but is also deeply narcissistic, self-centered, and self-righteous, frequently admonishing her students that “if only you small girls would listen to me I would make of you the crème de la crème.”  The “set” becomes a reflection of her own ego, and she wields them as pawns in her love affairs and ultimately encourages one of them down a deadly path.

Written in 1961, this “modern” classic combines the best of contemporary story-telling techniques with throwbacks to 19^th century style.  The prose is traditional and lucid, without the verbosity of many earlier classics or the lyrical mumbo-jumbo of some contemporary books. On the first page, in a clear and satisfying style that characterizes the book, Spark tells the reader, “The girls could not take off their Panama hats because this was not far from the school gates and hatlessness was an offence.”

The sharp, brisk dialogue is reminiscent of Jane Austen, as it wittily exposes the absurdities of the characters.  Readers know Miss Brodie through her words; they hear her voice and understand her character instantly.  Take, for example, this exchange between Miss Brodie and one of her “small girls”:

“I must tell you about the Italian paintings I saw.  Who is the greatest Italian painter?”

“Leonardo da Vinci, Miss Brodie.”

“That is incorrect.  The answer is Giotto, he is my favourite.”

Or this:

“Attend to me, girls.  One’s prime is the moment one was born for.  Now that my prime has begun – Sandy, your attention is wandering.  What have I been talking about?”

“Your prime, Miss Brodie.”

Such dialogue is delicious, and perfectly conveys Miss Brodie’s essence.  It is vibrant and fresh, yet reminiscent of a comedy of manners.

Though rooted in classic prose and dialogue born of an earlier time, Sparks makes masterful use of experimental flash-forwards, seamlessly weaving the present action with haunting scenes of the future:  “Mary McGregor, lumpy, with merely two eyes, a nose and a mouth like a snowman, who was later famous for being stupid and always to blame, and at the age of twenty-three lost her life in a hotel fire, ventured, ‘Golden.’” Spark uses this technique to reveal that Miss Brodie will be “betrayed” by one of her own set, but does not reveal the culprit until the last pages, creating one of the book’s main points of intrigue.

The concept of this book remains unique to this day, taking the stock character of the inspirational teacher and showing its darker potential for abuse of power.  Miss Brodie is brilliant and magnetic yet dangerous as a cult-leader, surrounding herself with blind followers.  As she says, “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.” Spark’s characterization of the girls, following them from ages 10 to 17, captures the innocent loyalty and obsession with their dramatic and poetic teacher that makes them so easily manipulated.  The narration is from the girls’ perspective, particularly Sandy’s, and this allows the readers to see Miss Brodie from the girls’ awed point-of-view.

Rooted in classic prose, yet bursting with ingenious story-telling techniques and fascinating characters, this short book is compelling and engrossing.  Any modern day reader will find it to be “the crème de la crème.”

Classical Anna: Absalom, Absalom

There are some sentences one re-reads because they are so beautiful, so delicious, that one wants to experience them again.  Take, for instance, this gorgeous passage from the Japanese classic “Naomi” by Junichiro Tanizaki, in which the narrator describes his beloved’s body: “This back was a landmark of my love. My hands, my fingers, had frolicked joyfully in this chillingly beautiful snow.” What reader wouldn’t love to roll around in pages filled with such sentences?

Unfortunately, there are other sentences one re-reads because they are so obscure, so wandering, that one needs to go over them numerous times to grasp their meaning.  This is the problem with William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom,” a book with such a murky, wordy writing style that the intriguing plot is nearly lost beneath it.

First published in 1936, the book concerns the success and sudden downfall of the Sutpen family in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi during the Civil War.  Faulkner reuses the character of Quentin Compson from “The Sound and the Fury” as a transmitter of this story, as he hears it told layer by layer from those who bore witness to it and attempts to come to some conclusion as to what caused the family tragedy.

Faulkner was a pioneer of experimental, modern fiction, along with James Joyce and Marcel Proust, and because of this a reader nearly expects to find difficulty understanding the action and meaning of his books. The most famous example of this may be Benjy’s section in “The Sound and The Fury,” which is narrated by a mentally challenged person and therefore is a literal, child-like, disorganized stream-of-conscious. This part is challenging and requires piecing together on the part of readers, but when they succeed in comprehending the narration it is a rewarding moment, as it allows them to see the story in through a unique mind.

“Absalom, Absalom” was also considered experimental, as it is non-linear and, like “The Sound and The Fury,” pieces together a story through several points of view.  However, the prose style, instead of seeming cutting-edge and electric, is cumbersome, heavy-handed, and repetitive, reminding one more of a 19th century novel instead of a modern American one:

…she was even more inaccessible to the grandfather of whom she had seen but little during her life and probably cared less anyway – that state where, though still visible, young girls appear as though seen through glass and where even the voice cannot reach them; where they exist (this the hoyden who could – and did, outrun and outclimb, and ride and fight both with and beside her brother) in a pearly lambence without shadows and themselves partaking of it; in nebulous suspension held, strange and unpredictable, even their very shapes fluid and delicate and without substance…

An entire book of sentences like this is irritating, even more so because every character talks in this same style, whether they are an old maid with little education, a southern gentleman, or a northern college student, which makes them indistinguishable from one another.

It is unfortunate that the plot is obscured beneath all this flourishing prose, because it is a Southern-Gothic tale about a doomed family and such tales in the hands of writers like Tennessee Williams are often intriguing.  However, Faulkner does not reveal the truly riveting plot details until the end of the book, and this makes much of the novel feel like a lot of fuss about nothing, merely the story of a slightly dysfunctional family.

“Absalom, Absalom” is considered one of the greatest American novels, but much of what made it so powerful and cutting-edge has since worn off: the book is structured upon the once-experimental methods of non-linear plot and unreliable narration, and because today’s readers are adept in navigating such techniques, the edginess of the book has worn off. For many readers, it may not only fail to live up to its status, but instead prove to be a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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CSS Troubleshooting

With the introduction of the new Themes in WordPress v1.5, boring and commonplace website layouts have become a thing of the past. With a few clicks, you can change your layout instantly. With a few more clicks and tweaks, you can screw up your layout instantly as well. Welcome to the exciting world of web page design.

When you encounter a screw-up in your layout, many people come running to the WordPress Forums. While the willing volunteers can do what they can to help you, there are some steps you can take to get to the solution, or at least a better idea of where the problem may lie, before you get to the Forums.

Know Before You Go

We have a list of things you need to know before you go to the forums with layout design problems, and tips on solving the problems yourself.

Examine Your HTML and CSS

Take a close comparative look at your HTML and CSS and make sure that all the references match.

Isolate Your CSS Challenges

Below we’ll show you a couple of techniques to help identify the areas that are causing your problems in an effort to narrow down the problem to a specific area and code.

Common CSS Errors

You are not the first to have this problem. We have a list of some of the most common CSS errors to help you fix the little details that can mess up your layout.

Pest Control – Watching Out For Browser Bugs

While we will help you identify some of your CSS challenges, a lot of them come from bugs and conflicts between browsers, so we’ll give you some tips on how to work around the various browser bugs.

It is the goal of this article to help you solve your layout design problems within the CSS file, not within the HTML or PHP files. For help on modifying those, check out Using Themes for more information.

Contents [hide] 1 BACKUP 2 You can do “live” CSS testing without editing your WordPress files 3 Know Before You Go 3.1 The ID 3.2 The CLASS 3.3 HTMLTags 4 Examine Your HTML and CSS 4.1 Looking Under the Hood for CSS 4.2 The CSS Parent and Child Relationship 5 Isolate Your CSS Challenges 5.1 Box Your Sections 5.2 Highlight Sections 5.3 Validate Your Source Code 5.4 Slash and Burn – The Last Resort 5.4.1 Gentle Slash and Burn 6 Common Errors 7 Pest Control – Watching Out For Browser Bugs

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BACKUP

Before beginning any of these problem-solving tips and techniques, be sure and backup your data just in case. Also, backup the files you are working on as you try different things so you have some places to go back along the way.

You can do “live” CSS testing without editing your WordPress files

If you have the means, it is much quicker and safer to do your CSS testing and troubleshooting “on the fly” using (e.g.) Jesse Ruderman’s Edit Styles bookmarklet or the Edit CSS extension for Firefox. When you’re done making changes, copy your new (edited) code into the appropriate WordPress theme files (after you back them up).

The Web Developer extension for Firefox can help too.

Know Before You Go

If you are new to CSS and web page design, start with a visit to WordPress’ CSS Tips, Techniques and Resources to find information on the basics of CSS and possibly answer some of your questions. At the least, you will get a basic overview of what CSS is, the impact it has on the HTML or structure of your page, and learn some jargon to help you ask a more informed question on the forums.

You will also need to know some basic terminology to help you express your problem to others. This isn’t a how-to-CSS guide but more of a “what is thingamahjig called” guide.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are bits of code that influence the presentation or the look of your page’s HTML code. In WordPress, the CSS styles are generally found in a file called style.css in the specific Theme folder you are using. The HTML code and CSS references that hold the structure of your page are generally found in the index.php file in your Theme folder.

The PHP files are found within your Theme folder and contain the code and references which generate your HTML page. It is here, in the final run, that you may make changes to the specific CSS selector tags, not your HTML page. For help on modifying those, check out Using Themes for more information.

‘CSS selectors (names) are generally grouped into three specific references: The ID, CLASS, and HTML tags.

The ID

The ID is a reference to a specific unique area on your web page. It is generally seen represented on your HTML web page as an enclosed DIV (division) block:

<div id="header">Title of the Page</div>

In the style sheet (CSS) the ID selector is referenced as #header and might look like this:

#header { position: relative; margin:0; padding:0;
	height:100px; width: 100%; background: red;
	color: white;}

The CLASS

The CLASS is a reference to any element on a page that needs to look a specific way when this reference is used. For example, if you frequently want to highlight a word or two within your text (we’ll use red as a highlight color in this instance), you might have a CLASS selector in your style sheet like this:

.hilite { color: red}

and the reference in your HTML might look like this:

...this is some text about something
I want <span class="hilite">in red</span>. And
some more rambling here...

As you can see, the difference between ID and CLASS selectors in the style sheet is that an ID uses a pound sign (#name) and a CLASS uses a period (.name). ID references must be unique on a page and used once. CLASS references can be used repeatedly in the same page.

HTMLTags

If you want to “design” a specific HTML tag reference, such as a blockquote, the code within the web page may look like this:

<blockquote>This is a pithy and brilliant quote
that I knew you would enjoy.</blockquote>

In the style sheet, the reference to the blockquote would not have a # or period but would just simply list the HTML and then the design elements. This example indents the quote on both sides and puts a blue line on the left side of the quote and makes the text italic.

Classical Anna: Anna Karenina

A quintessential classic like Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is the type of book that many modern readers will approach with reluctance and even more will avoid all together. It’s a monstrously long epic written in late 19th century Russia, and therefore one might expect it to be similar to Dostoevsky or Henry James – long-winded, pontificating, even preachy. While it is similar to Dostoevsky or Dickens in that it takes a sweeping view, following many intertwined lives over a span of land and years, Anna Karenina is surprisingly modern, tossing off the cumbersome heavy-handiness of its contemporaries.

Anna Karenina focuses on the high society of Moscow and Saint Petersburg in the late 19th century and the inter-connecting lives of members of this world. More particularly it is concerned with two romantic relationships, those of Anna and Vronsky and Levin and Kitty, and through these couples Tolstoy examines two types of love: a carnal, whirlwind romance and a steady, conventional marriage. Such a plot and backdrop feel surprisingly relevant to a modern reader. While of course there are important differences (like the limited role and double standard for women), in many ways the society of Russian nobility is comparable to, say, upper class, Vogue New York society today. They both have the same lavish lifestyles, cliques, social climbers, and groups such as the fashion plates and pseudo-intelligentsia. Tolstoy’s observations and critiques of the Russian upper crust are easily applied to today’s Jet Set. Moreover, Tolstoy writes with such urgency about his two sets of lovers, particularly Anna and Vronsky, and the two approaches to love he examines still exist for couples today, which further makes Anna Karenina a living, breathing novel.

However, there is much more than plot and setting that make this novel pleasurable and intriguing for modern readers. Immediately one notices that Tolstoy’s prose is smooth and clear – a reader digests the sentences as easily as if they were reading a book published in 2009 and will never have to reread a paragraph to grasp its meaning, unlike with, say, Henry James. Many of his sentences are as simple and satisfying as “Princess Betsy drove home from the theater without waiting for the last act.” Tolstoy narrates without preachy or pretentious asides and never halts the action or the inner movement of the characters to muse about the meaning of life. In section seven, Tolstoy even verges on a very modern stream-of-conscious style as he follows Anna’s fevered state-of-mind:

“I don’t know these streets at all. Hills it seems, and still houses, and houses. And in the houses always people and people. How many of them, no end, all hating each other!”

One might accuse Tolstoy of being overly detailed (and in a near one-thousand page book lots of details are to be expected), but his details are carefully picked to draw readers further into the world and allow them to better understand the characters. The descriptions are vibrant and beautiful; this world is rainbow colored and the reader can nearly taste its flavors. Not only does one not mind learning that Anna wears a “black dress, with …sumptuous lace,” one hungers for it. Tolstoy is also the master of writing magnificent scenes – like Kitty’s labor, Anna’s reunion with her son or Levin mowing with the peasants – and their power often doesn’t hit readers until after they have set the book down.

What perhaps holds up best is Tolstoy’s truly modern approach to his characters. Unlike in a Dickens novel there are no clear-cut good and bad characters, no moral judgments made upon them. Instead, they are full-fleshed characters with all the ambiguity of actual people, and Tolstoy is fair and compassionate to all of them – an approach that reminds one of the very modern Anne Tyler, who never judges her very flawed characters but instead seeks to understand. His characters are true: everyone knows a Levin, a Kitty, and hopes to meet an Anna.

Of course, this book was written over a century ago and therefore it comes with some of the conventions of a 19th century novel. One must have the time and patience to read a one thousand page book. Also, there are some parts that are a bit tedious, particularly if one doesn’t have the stomach for Russian political history. The last fifteen or so pages also slam the reader with what might seem like Christian propaganda. However, readers’ eagerness to discover the fate of these wonderful characters will more often than not give them the fortitude to push on through these sections. For a reader who has never read a grand 19th century novel (or who has and was scared away), Anna Karenina is pleasurable, intriguing, and captivating.