Cimorene

1. In Herakles, the hero returns home just in time to save his family from execution by the tyrant who has usurped the throne, only to be driven mad (by Hera) and made to murder his wife and children himself.
   
   This play is most notable, as pointed out by Carson, for the ending, in which his loyal friend Theseus arrives as he returns to his right mind and prevents Herakles from killing himself. They leave together to build a new future. But I was also fond of the role of Madness, who protests her awful task only to be told by Iris, "Hera didn't send you here to practice sanity."



2. In Hekabe, set after the Trojan War, the widowed Queen of Troy and mother of Hektor and Paris, now a slave being transported to Greece, is consumed by her grief and despair until the murder of her youngest son reignites her sense of purpose in a desire for vengeance on his murderer.
   
   Hekabe, for me, is fascinating because it's about the murders of two of her children, and while she is prostate with grief even before the first, her reactions to the two are so different. (This is about the aftermath of the Trojan War, so, obviously, discussion of child murder, war, slavery, and rape beneath the cut.)( Read more... )



3. In Hippolytos, the titular son of Theseus is a self-righteous woman-hater whose sex-repulsedness drives him to publicly deride the goddess Aphrodite, who engineers his downfall by making his stepmother Phaidra fall in love with him.
   
   The character interests me greatly because he seems to be a sex-repulsed asexual, dedicating himself to Artemis etc, at first. But ( Read more... )



4. Then there's the strange tragicomic Alkestis, which tells of a husband who arranges for his wife to die in his place.
   
   Mostly tragic, it ends with a surprise twist and superficially (but doubtfully) a happy one: Herakles wins her back from Death and presents her to her husband... but she seems stiff and can't speak (for three days, we're told). Did she come back wrong? Is she really back? Etc. (Tumblr should love that.) Wikipedia tells me tantalizingly that whether Admetus, her husband, is selfish is a hotly-contested subject of critical debate, without any further reference. ( Read more... )

[T]he novel follows Birdalone, a young girl who is stolen as a baby by a witch who takes her to serve in the woods of Evilshaw. After she encounters a wood fairy [who] helps her escape the witch's clutches, Birdalone embarks on a series of adventures across the titular Wondrous Isles. These isles are used by Morris both as parables for contemporary Britain and as vehicles for investigating his radical socialist beliefs. As Birdalone travels through the isles she slowly evolves into the embodiment of [Morris's progressive version of] the Victorian "[N]ew [W]oman," embracing hard physical labor, healthy exercise, higher education, socialist values, and financial freedom, while rejecting sexual exploitation, physical abuse of both women and children, and the restrictive sexual mores of the era. This makes her unique in the fantasy fiction of the era as one of the genre's first examples of a strong female hero.

• so she arose and thrust her grief back into her heart,

( Read more... )

• [Shopkeeper and postmistress speaking:] "When he gets a frank he fills it up exact to the weight of an unce, that a carvy-seed would sink the scale—but he’s neer a grain abune it. Weel I wot I wad be broken if I were to gie sic weight to the folk that come to buy our pepper and brimstone, and suchlike sweetmeats."



• "You may observe that he never has any advantage of me in dispute, unless when he avails himself of a sort of pettifogging intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact—a tiresome and frivolous accuracy of memory, which is entirely owing to his mechanical descent."



• He who is bent upon a journey is usually easily to be distinguished from his fellow-citizens. The boots, the great-coat, the umbrella, the little bundle in his hand, the hat pulled over his resolved brows, the determined importance of his pace, his brief answers to the salutations of lounging acquaintances, are all marks by which the experienced traveller in mail-coach or diligence can distinguish, at a distance, the companion of his future journey, as he pushes onward to the place of rendezvous.



• He hated greetings in the market-place; and there were generally loiterers in the streets to persecute him, either about the news of the day, or about some petty pieces of business.



• "What say you?—in the language of the world and worldlings base, if you can condescend to so mean a sphere, shall we stay or go?"
  
  "In the language of selfishness, then, which is of course the language of the world—let us go by all means."
  

• or he might have staid to take a half-mutchkin extraordinary with his crony the hostler



• The young gentleman, who began to grow somewhat impatient, was now joined by a companion in this petty misery of human life—



• The floor, as well as the table and chairs, was overflowed by the same mare magnum of miscellaneous trumpery, where it would have been as impossible to find any individual article wanted, as to put it to any use when discovered.



• As Mr. Oldbuck thought his worthy friend and compeer was in some respects little better than a fool, he was apt to come more near communicating to him that unfavourable opinion, than the rules of modern politeness warrant.



• “Woman,” said he, “is that advertisement thine?” showing a bit of crumpled printed paper: “Does it not set forth, that, God willing, as you hypocritically express it, the Hawes Fly, or Queensferry Diligence, would set forth to-day at twelve o’clock; and is it not, thou falsest of creatures, now a quarter past twelve, and no such fly or diligence to be seen?—Dost thou know the consequence of seducing the lieges by false reports?—dost thou know it might be brought under the statute of leasing-making? Answer—and for once in thy long, useless, and evil life, let it be in the words of truth and sincerity,—hast thou such a coach?—is it in rerum natura?—or is this base annunciation a mere swindle on the incautious to beguile them of their time, their patience, and three shillings of sterling money of this realm?—Hast thou, I say, such a coach? ay or no?”



• "[A] walk in the garden once a-day is exercise, enough for any thinking being—none but a fool or a fox-hunter would require more."



• "But ye like to gar folk look like fools—ye can do that to Sir Arthur, and the minister his very sell.”
  
  “Nature has been beforehand with me, Grizel, in both these instances, and in another which shall be nameless."



• "I have a literary friend at York, with whom I have long corresponded on the subject of the Saxon horn that is preserved in the Minster there; we interchanged letters for six years, and have only as yet been able to settle the first line of the inscription. I will write forthwith to this gentleman, Dr. Dryasdust,..."
  



• For, gentle reader, if thou hast ever beheld the visage of a damsel of sixteen, whose romance of true love has been blown up by an untimely discovery, or of a child of ten years, whose castle of cards has been blown down by a malicious companion, I can safely aver to you, that Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns looked neither more wise nor less disconcerted.

1. “He’s a pratty man, a very pratty man,” said Evan Dhu (now Ensign Maccombich) to Fergus’s buxom landlady.
   
   “He’s vera weel,” said the Widow Flockhart, “but no naething sae weel-far’d as your colonel, ensign.”
   
   “I was na comparing them,” quoth Evan, “nor was I speaking about his being weel-favoured; but only that Mr. Waverley looks clean-made and deliver, and like a proper lad o’ his quarters, that will not cry barley in a brulzie. And, indeed, he’s gleg aneuch at the broadsword and target. I hae played wi’ him mysell at Glennaquoich, and sae has Vich Ian Vohr, often of a Sunday afternoon."



2. The friends now parted and retired to rest, each filled with the most anxious reflections on the state of the country.



3. dressed as if her clothes had been flung on with a pitchfork,



4. The master smith, benempt, as his sign intimated, John Mucklewrath,



5. “No; he that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cotter, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon.”