Read Online 101 Letters to a Prime Minister by Yann Martel - Free Book Online
Authors: Yann Martel
Ads: Link
like to take if you were in an outhouse.
Yours truly,
Yann Martel
A UGUST S TRINDBERG (1849–1912) is best known for his plays, but he also wrote short stories, novels, poems and volumes of autobiography.In addition to his writing, he was a painter and photographer, and experimented with alchemy. In life and in his art, he was pessimistic and his works were marked by his overt satirizing of Swedish society. Strindberg’s plays fall into two categories—naturalistic and expressionistic—and he is considered one of the pioneers of Expressionism. He wrote dozens of plays, the most famous of which are the naturalistic
Miss Julia
and
The Father
.
BOOK 11:
THE WATSONS
BY JANE AUSTEN
September
3, 2007
To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel
Dear Mr. Harper,
The great Jane Austen. She is a shining example of how art—like politics—can take the least promising ore and transform it into the finest metal. Austen had three things going against her: she lived in
rural
England, she was middle class in the age before that class exploded with possibilities, and she was a woman. That is to say, her life was hemmed in by limitations.
England during Austen’s lifetime—1775 to 1817—was in the full throes of the Industrial Revolution, and revolutions are occasions of great upheaval and renewal, both for the arts and for politics. But Austen mostly missed out on this revolution because she lived outside of the urban centres that were at its heart. And in the genteel hinterland where she lived, she was a member of a most precarious class: the landless
middle
class, with a class she wished not to join swimming beneath her, the working class, and a class she wished she could join soaring above, the nobility. This precariousness was aggravated by her being a woman, which disqualified her from whatever work amember of the middle class might decently do: the clergy, the medical profession, the military. So all Austen’s female characters worry endlessly about financial security, yet have only a single way of achieving it: marriage. Hungry for status and material goods, but unwilling (because unable) to earn them, always on the hunt for wealthy husbands, yet having only stuffiness, rigidity and pretence to offer—I suspect that if we met the female members of Jane Austen’s class today, with our modern sensibilities, we would find them deeply disagreeable. There is this exchange between two female characters in
The Watsons
, the latest book I am sending you:
“To be so bent on marriage, to pursue a man merely for the sake of situation is a sort of thing that shocks me; I cannot understand it. Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.”
“I would rather do anything than be teacher at a school,” said her sister. “
I
have been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead;
you
never have. I should not like marrying a disagreeable man any more than yourself, but I do not think there
are
many very disagreeable men; I think I could like any good-humoured man with a comfortable income.”
How sad to have the most important profession in the world thought of as worse than what has facetiously been called the oldest profession in the world. Thankfully, things have changed. Today, the middle class in Canada has expanded to absorb all other classes, so that practically everyone is of the working class, the class that works, and the sinking and the soaring is called mobility, and it is a triumph of our time that women can avail themselves of that mobility (though still not as much as men—there’s still some liberating work that needs doing).
But back to Jane Austen: boxed in, left only to play card games, look forward to the next ball and keep an eye out for eligible bachelors, surrounded by green
Yours truly,
Yann Martel
A UGUST S TRINDBERG (1849–1912) is best known for his plays, but he also wrote short stories, novels, poems and volumes of autobiography.In addition to his writing, he was a painter and photographer, and experimented with alchemy. In life and in his art, he was pessimistic and his works were marked by his overt satirizing of Swedish society. Strindberg’s plays fall into two categories—naturalistic and expressionistic—and he is considered one of the pioneers of Expressionism. He wrote dozens of plays, the most famous of which are the naturalistic
Miss Julia
and
The Father
.
BOOK 11:
THE WATSONS
BY JANE AUSTEN
September
3, 2007
To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel
Dear Mr. Harper,
The great Jane Austen. She is a shining example of how art—like politics—can take the least promising ore and transform it into the finest metal. Austen had three things going against her: she lived in
rural
England, she was middle class in the age before that class exploded with possibilities, and she was a woman. That is to say, her life was hemmed in by limitations.
England during Austen’s lifetime—1775 to 1817—was in the full throes of the Industrial Revolution, and revolutions are occasions of great upheaval and renewal, both for the arts and for politics. But Austen mostly missed out on this revolution because she lived outside of the urban centres that were at its heart. And in the genteel hinterland where she lived, she was a member of a most precarious class: the landless
middle
class, with a class she wished not to join swimming beneath her, the working class, and a class she wished she could join soaring above, the nobility. This precariousness was aggravated by her being a woman, which disqualified her from whatever work amember of the middle class might decently do: the clergy, the medical profession, the military. So all Austen’s female characters worry endlessly about financial security, yet have only a single way of achieving it: marriage. Hungry for status and material goods, but unwilling (because unable) to earn them, always on the hunt for wealthy husbands, yet having only stuffiness, rigidity and pretence to offer—I suspect that if we met the female members of Jane Austen’s class today, with our modern sensibilities, we would find them deeply disagreeable. There is this exchange between two female characters in
The Watsons
, the latest book I am sending you:
“To be so bent on marriage, to pursue a man merely for the sake of situation is a sort of thing that shocks me; I cannot understand it. Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.”
“I would rather do anything than be teacher at a school,” said her sister. “
I
have been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead;
you
never have. I should not like marrying a disagreeable man any more than yourself, but I do not think there
are
many very disagreeable men; I think I could like any good-humoured man with a comfortable income.”
How sad to have the most important profession in the world thought of as worse than what has facetiously been called the oldest profession in the world. Thankfully, things have changed. Today, the middle class in Canada has expanded to absorb all other classes, so that practically everyone is of the working class, the class that works, and the sinking and the soaring is called mobility, and it is a triumph of our time that women can avail themselves of that mobility (though still not as much as men—there’s still some liberating work that needs doing).
But back to Jane Austen: boxed in, left only to play card games, look forward to the next ball and keep an eye out for eligible bachelors, surrounded by green
Similar Books
