Wanda McCaddon
1) Emma
Emma stands a little apart from Jane Austen's other novels. It is perhaps the most self-aware, socially critical and ironic of all her works. Her protagonist, Emma Woodhouse, is a beautiful, rich girl who is also spoiled, proud and blinded by her own situation in life. She begins to understand herself and life a little better when her romantic schemes - charitable good works to those around her - become entangled in tensions of class and
...3) Oliver Twist
When Mr. Dashwood dies, he leaves his second wife and her three daughters at the mercy of his son and heir, John. John's wife convinces him to turn his step-mother and half-sisters out, and they move to a country cottage, rented to them by a distant relative. In their newly reduced circumstances Elinor and Marianne, the two eldest daughters, wrestle with ideas of romance and reality and their apparent opposition to each other. Elinor struggles
...Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as “flawless,” Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to...
A Room with a View is a romance and a social critique of Edwardian society. A young woman is chaperoned to Italy by her bitter aunt. There she meets an intriguing, but eccentric young man. Back in England she finds herself respectably engaged to a proper gentleman, but is thrown into a muddle when her young man from Italy moves to her English town. The novel celebrates the chaotic, unsure muddle of feelings over a kind of lifeless acceptance
...7) Howards End
Howards End is a masterful discussion of changing social class-consciousness. Three families from different levels of society become intertwined: the rich capitalists, the intellectual bourgeoisie and the struggling poor. Forster does not suggest that relationships between the classes are easy, but he does think them vitally important. The social philosophy inherent in the novel is significant and beautifully written.