Since I’ve been old enough to understand them, I’ve always been interested in reading classics. I must admit, I don’t understand how some of the books that I’ve read have been labelled classics, for example, Pride and Prejudice, Dracula and Great Expectations (apologies for anyone who is a fan of these, I just really didn’t get the hype). However, there are a fair few that appear timeless and therefore deserve the title. I have decided to just share my top 3 favourite novels of all time as I had too much to say about them and didn’t want this post to be verging on a dissertation. These three picks contain profound ideas, challenging messages and complex characters that make them all ‘classic’.
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
On finishing Jane Eyre- sat in a camping chair on a rainy day huddled inside a tent in Wales- I felt that the situation didn’t reflect the weight of this book’s ending. I should have been finishing it whilst watching fireworks or on a plane as it descended into Paris. Instead I felt I had no one to share the experience with. The ending making me feel physically emotional, which no other book had managed to do (if you know, you know). It wasn’t quite satisfying enough for my outburst of ‘wow…that was amazing’ to be replied to with a ‘oh…was it?’ from my Dad as he carried on reading his own book.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is so well-known that many people have heard the name but have no recollection of when or where they heard it, or have the faintest idea what is is about. The title ‘Jane Eyre’ had never really caught my attention before and I therefore read Wuthering Heights by Charlotte’s sister, Emily, a few years before I even took a second glance at Jane Eyre. It was one of many books that I had taken out of the library on one occasion to just ‘give it a go’. I didn’t have very high hopes considering it was a relatively thick book and I didn’t believe that I had the stamina to finish it. Little did I know that the opening of Jane Eyre- Jane as a young girl hiding behind a curtain in her home’s library trying not to get caught reading a book about birds by her cruel older brother- would have me hooked. The novel follows the protagonist Jane from when she neglected as a child and sent to boarding school and unfolds as she develops as a woman, finding her own voice in a world that appears to have been designed to suppress it.
I think I always associated nineteenth-century novels with the drawling and dull prose of Jane Austen which- as I have come to realise- was a mistake. Books that have become some of my favourites were written in Austen’s lifetime.
On the surface, Jane Eyre appears to be another predictable nineteenth-century romance, the plot clinging onto the possibility that such a plain-looking woman could be graced with life’s ultimate prize- a husband (of course). But it is so much richer than that. The plot line is no straight course towards an engagement ending, like many of Austen’s, but a course that could be split into many unpredictable parts. As you’re reading you notice the feminist undertones running through this novel that reveal Charlotte Bronte’s progressive views for her time. Charlotte herself had to publish under the male pseudonym of 'Currer Bell' out of fear that the publishers would refuse a female novelist.
I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Jane Eyre is my favourite novel of all time and one of the main reasons why I admire the Bronte sisters so greatly for their work. I would also highly recommend Emily and Anne’s novels and poetry. It is incredible to believe, when walking around their home- that is now a museum in Howarth, Yorkshire- that those tiny rooms were home to such profound ideas and emotionally relatable characters.
Favourite quote: ‘Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel, they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.’
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
When I think of my experience of reading The Great Gatsby one scene always sticks in my mind and that is the Valley of Ashes. Fitzgerald describes the filth and poverty that dominates a desolate area between West Egg and New York. It's the first time in the novel that Fitzgerald really explores something dark, dingy and frankly the opposite of the previous descriptions of glittering life in 1920's New York. It appears to reveal an underlying theme to the novel that wasn’t previously shown to readers and it becomes apparent that The Great Gatsby is far from a happy-go-lucky tale full of flappers and moonshine.
The novel follows a writer, Nick Carraway, who moves to New York and ends up living next to a charismatic and mysterious man, Jay Gatsby, who throws huge parties in his mansion every Saturday night. Another captivating character, Carraway’s cousin, Daisy Buchanan, is soon introduced into the storyline along with her domineering and controlling husband Tom. As the plot unfolds the cracks in all of their seemingly perfect lives are soon revealed to Nick and to the reader.
The emotion in Fitzgerald’s writing feels real and raw, probably because this tragedy is based on his own experiences with his sudden rise to fame in 1920's America and his relationship with his wife Zelda, who was- later in her life- admitted to a mental institution with schizophrenia. Fitzgerald allows the public to peek through a window into his life by basing the deeply troubled, but largely selfish, character Daisy on his wife.
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You may have seen the film that is based on the novel that stars Leonardo Di Caprio as Jay Gatsby. I loved how the screen writers included quotes from the novel to keep Fitzgerald’s descriptions at the forefront of the film as Nick’s internal monologue, however, you can’t fully understand the story if you don’t read it how F. Scott Fitzgerald intended it. Fantastic descriptions of lengthy, continuous scenes that are crafted with false facades, building tension and fake smiles lead towards an ending that shatters the gleaming white porcelain of Gatsby’s life. Readers are left with a resonating awakening of how money really can’t buy happiness, how some of the wealthiest people can also be the most miserable and how sometimes the most highly valued thing in life is a reputation.
Favourite quote: ‘This is the valley of ashes- a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and riding smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.’
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
Although the books that I’ve already previously mentioned aren’t the cheeriest of reads, Mrs Dalloway certainly isn’t. I would advise to steer clear of this Virginia Woolf novella if you prefer to read happy tales. However, if you feel prepared to enter the mind of a suicidal woman then Mrs Dalloway is brilliant.
I’d always heard of Virigina Woolf but never really the titles of any of her famous novels. I came across Mrs Dalloway whilst looking into the author and found a review on Goodreads written by another author, Michael Cunningham, that read ‘Mrs Dalloway contains some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English…it is one of the most moving revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century’. I thought this sounded quite far-fetched for a short novel that was only 172 pages long, so I thought I would see what all the fuss was about.
I can safely say I’d never read anything like Mrs Dalloway. The short novel is continuous and follows the protagonist’s internal monologue as she goes about her day preparing to host a party. Woolf also jumps into other people’s minds- those that Mrs Dalloway passes in her day without a second thought- and reveals their own internal turmoil. One of these characters, Septimus (an ex-soldier from the First World War suffering from PTSD) is followed by Woolf as he struggles with daily life, as well as his wife, who finds it difficult to understand his condition. Although this book follows the characters for just one day, many of them are reflecting on their past and after just 172 pages you feel you really understand such complex fictional personas.
The suicidal thoughts that plague Mrs Dalloway and Septimus stem from Virginia Woolf's troubled life. It appears that Woolf was able to construct such emotionally unstable characters from her own personal experience, suffering several mental breakdowns throughout her life and later committing suicide.
I would agree with Michael Cunningham’s statement that Mrs Dalloway contains ‘some of the most beautiful..sentences ever written in English’. When I’m reading I love to underline any sections or sentences that resonate with me, or make me read them a second time. Sometimes I’ll read a book that I will tell people I liked without underlining anything but my copy of Mrs Dalloway is full of pen marks. I found it difficult to choose just one favourite quote from this novel.
Although Mrs Dalloway will be called ‘depressing’ by some, it was also thought-provoking, full of depth and brilliantly executed. I would say this is a must-read, but maybe not one to take on holiday and lie reading on the beach…
Favourite quote: ‘Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? But that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself…’
I have so many other books that I have enjoyed reading and for that reason struggled to choose my top 3! Let me know if you would like another book-related post and feel free to leave a comment of what some of your favourite books are.
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