Jane Austen's Usually Unknowable Characters

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is filled with people that don’t know each other, people who create public personas, participating in an act of polite deception all the while hiding private misgivings about those around them. 

As Austen’s characters actively construct personalities for themselves, they change behaviours like sets of clothes, one specifically cut out for the presence of polite society, while the unembellished self stays in private. Even the pretense that they know one another is part of the act. Yet this process of contriving false identities is not only undergone by imposters and cheaters. Elinor, the main protagonist, is no less proficient at playing pretend. Furthermore, identities are contrived and changed with such casualness that there is rarely any moral consequence involved. On the contrary, Austen illustrates in Marianne the perils of not participating in this polite deceit as Marianne constantly suffers for her honesty. 

In this world, playing pretend is clearly an expected custom, and to be honest is to be vulnerable. What results is a common sitting room populated by perfect strangers all happily deceiving each other into the belief that they really know one another. Yet that is only what lies on the surface. Ultimately, the novel is concerned with what lies underneath and how one can get to know anyone in the company of pretenders. 

For this, instances are provided in which a person fails to pretend convincingly, allowing brief views into private windows. These passing glances are crucial because without those public glimpses into personal lives there would be no evidence of the contradictory and changing nature of a person, for it is when the external fails to match up with the internal that Austen’s characters become complex and unknowable. 

Ultimately, it is in the conflict of the private and the public person that Austen’s concern lies as each is revealed to be critical to the completion of a person’s character. Thus, the connection between the contrived and the sincere is constantly being brought to the surface as Elinor and Marianne come to know the inconsistencies within themselves and those around them. In the end, it is only when both the public and the private person are seen in unison that unknowable people can be known with any certainty at all. 

 

Of all the ways that Austen incorporates the unknowableness of people into the plot, the constant claim of characters that they know each other better than they do is the most overt. The speed with which these comments are disproved by others shows that the definition of knowing someone is equally disputable. People are constantly wishing to be closer to others than they really are, not just in intimacy, but in proximity. Thus, Mrs. Palmer claims to live closer to Willoughby than she does, and the Dashwood sisters are consistently getting invited to spend more time with the Middletons than they would like. When Sir John is asked if he knows Willoughby he expresses great confidence in his knowledge of Willoughby’s character simply because “he is down here every year”. 

Of course, Sir John’s assessment of Willoughby’s character is proven to be horribly false. The problem with his view of knowing is later revealed as the narrator states that “to be together was, in his opinion, to be intimate”. 

Austen offers further cases of mistaken intimacy by displaying various unsuccessful pairings, couples who seem to play at marriage without knowing the other person at all, such as Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. It is debatable whether anyone outside the pair believes in their act, for not even Mr. Palmer seems to care enough to pretend that they really know each other.

These instances not only set the bar for what it means to know someone humorously low, it shows that many characters are contended to take others at face value. The falseness of surface appearances runs so deep throughout the lives of these characters that not even their claim that they know another can be trusted. They merely wish to appear as if they are well acquainted without actually taking the time to get to know one another. 

When Willoughby’s true character is revealed Mrs. Palmer suddenly decides to be glad that she was never “acquainted with him”. It is only after it has been publicly acknowledged that Willoughby is less than decent that he can be treated with anything less than politeness. Willoughby has, to put it simply, become someone who is no longer worth knowing, and, since they never really knew him at all, it is easy for those who had been acquainted with him to claim that they do not know him. It is, after all, true. 

In this way, the communal agreement at false intimacy works fine, for the most part, so long as its falseness is never publicly acknowledged. Yet for young women looking for a spouse, it makes for a dangerous playing field. 

 

The difficulty of knowing someone is most evidently displayed in the way the male characters are constantly mistaken for one another, hinting that, on the surface, a scheming man and an honest one look dangerously similar. Thus, when Edward and Willoughby are seen from a distance or in passing they are difficult to tell apart. It is precisely because Willoughby is not the only one who disguises himself that he blends in so well with common company, for the problem with surface appearances is that there is not much to them, and because people are generally expected to act amiably, they quickly start to resemble each other.  

Susan Morgan writes about the possible perils of blending people together in this way, saying that it creates a world “of uncertainty... without characters above reproach or beneath contempt”. The problem with everyone acting amiably is that they must be treated amiably in turn. Willoughby’s behaviour should thus be cause for suspicion from the start, for he is claimed to be known extremely well by many, all of whom “think him extremely agreeable”. Statements like these suggest that Willoughby is an extremely adept pretender, for he possesses an ability to be agreeable to anyone, whoever they may be. It is doubtful whether any of his acquaintances have ever seen the real Willoughby, for not only is he well liked by everyone, he possesses the ability to make everyone believe they know him intimately. 

In contrast, Colonel Brandon and Edward Ferrars, whose surface appearances are painted to be quite boring, are also safer, for both turn out to be equally steadfast in their private and public lives. 

Meanwhile, any sign of the real Willoughby is so well hidden that those who meet him once a year believe they have already gotten to know him. No one openly pries Willoughby for his secrets in the way they do with Brandon, for there is no evidence that he has anything private to hide. Altogether, Willoughby is so proficient at displays of false intimacy that his deceit extends even into relationships of real private emotion, such as his relationship with Marianne.

Austen shows in Marianne that to be publicly known is to be horribly vulnerable, for Marianne is one of the few characters whose public self is the same as the private. Because Marianne does not participate in public deceit, her private affairs don’t just become public, she is left unprotected without anything to hide behind. The entirety of her relationship with Willoughby, from its positive start to its painful end, is completely exposed. In contrast with those other secret engagements and private affections shown throughout the novel, there is very little about Marianne’s relationship with Willoughby that is private. The majority of their romance, even the very public humiliation that ends their relationship, happen under the eyes of others. Morgan writes that the role of polite lies is to offer a “public avowal of continued feelings and thoughts... It is a polite lie which promises truth”. The problem, of course, is that the promise Willoughby’s public actions make is the extent of it. The intimacies in which Marianne and Willoughby participate in public are not backed up by any private promises. Marianne’s mistake is to assume that Willoughby is who he publicly pretends to be. The mistake of those who are looking in on their relationship is the assumption that there is a private relationship backing up the public, namely, that an engagement has been privately agreed upon. 

There are also reverse examples of this throughout the narrative as various engagements are agreed upon which signal at affections that don’t actually exist. Morgan notes that “neither Willoughby’s engagement nor Edward’s reflects the state of their affections”. The public assumption is typically that one’s actions reflect the state of one’s mind and the affection of one’s heart. Yet, though this is certainly a comforting thought, it is rarely shown to be the case. People are far more complicated than that, and it is this that makes them unpredictable and difficult to know. R.F. Brissenden writes about this, saying “Austen’s wry insistence that absolute honesty in conversation would make ordinary intercourse impossible is amusing rather than horrifying”. It is by lying that others are spared the discomfort of truth, just as it is by lying that her characters are spared the discomfort of being publicly known. 

By allowing glimpses of her character’s contradictory nature, Austen shows that, when a character’s public and private lives don’t line up, there is usually something wrong, for it suggests that there is something that is painful or base enough to merit hiding. In the case of Willoughby, it is the selfishness of his true nature. For Elinor, it is the pain of loving a man who is engaged to another woman. For Brandon, it is the cruel fate of the first woman he loved and how little he could do to save her. 

 

For better or worse, Austen’s characters are rarely who they appear to be. Thus, the inaccuracy of their first impressions serves as an insight into how they wish to be seen rather than who they actually are. By complicating their first impressions, Austen provides insight into the contradictory nature of her characters, leading into the question of why exactly her characters wish to be seen this way and what their public personas say about their private motives. Brissenden writes about this process, describing how Austen introduces her characters by showing “how their (manner) strikes people on first acquaintance” only to ask within the following sentences “whether the appearance accurately reflects or expresses reality”.  

This is what Marianne fails to do and what Elinor is constantly attempting to find out. In this way, Marianne’s desire to see Willoughby as good says more about her than it does about Willoughby. Elinor’s need to hide her emotions speaks volumes about the vulnerability she feels. Colonel Brandon’s demeanour, which many think is boring, allows insight into his desire not to be publicly inspected. Similarly, the insistence of others that Lucy Steele is a sweet girl says more about Lucy’s need to be liked than her temperament, for Lucy is a character whom John Mullan describes as “a kind of monster”, something which is not sweet at all. 

The common assumption that Marianne represents sensibility while Elinor embodies good sense is merely Austen’s way of tempting further false first impressions, this time on the part of the reader. Ultimately, the point is not that each sister represents one or the other, but how their ability to be both sensible and sensitive complicates their lives, their ability to feel and to make choices. 

 

Despite all its concern with private and public behaviour, the narrative spends little time with people when they are alone, suggesting that it is not really in the private where its interest lies. Rather, Austen is concerned with what public pretences promise about the private. Solitude is usually observed from afar, and a person is put into private places only to be intruded upon by unwanted visitors.   

In many ways, Austen’s avoidance of private places serves to preserve their privateness, for the narrator consistently refuses to impinge on moments of intimacy. What goes on in private is usually implied through the gossip of outsiders or the unintentional intrusions of other characters into scenes of intimacy. Furthermore, intimacies of any kind are typically relayed by the narrator without any kind of indulgence, and they usually end quickly. Proposals of marriage are preserved by removing them from public view, omitting them from the narrative entirely. The intense emotions of those more private characters are likewise protected as characters constantly withdraw into solitude in order to dwell on their feelings. Even Elinor, the character that is followed most closely by the narrator, is allowed to step away and experience her emotions in private. Thus, after learning of Edward’s betrothal Elinor waits until after the Steeles have departed to “think and be wretched”, upon which the first volume abruptly ends, allowing Elinor privacy even from narrative intrusion. 

In this way, the narrator takes great care in offering just enough to suggest the contradiction of a character’s private and public self, giving a glimpse at the truth beneath the deception without allowing for a complete understanding of their real character. Austen, in short, does not care so much about the truth as she does about the process of obtaining that truth, for it is in the act of knowing that her real interest lies. 

In the end, Austen’s characters are not there to be known but to learn and to teach how to go about knowing. 

 

Although the unknowableness of Austen’s characters allows for them to be misunderstood by an inattentive reader, this does not seem to concern Austen in the least, for any reader who would dismiss her characters based on their surface appearances has failed to learn the lesson she is trying to show. 

Morgan writes that “the limited truth that learning mere facts can provide constantly remind the reader of how difficult it can be to...understand others without actually seeing into their minds and hearts”. In this way, Austen’s choice to tell the story largely through the eyes of Elinor makes sense. Elinor starts off the narrative already knowing one of the most important lessons about getting to know someone: that knowing takes time. Morgan writes that “judgment requires...being able to give oneself time. But human relations do not wait for judgments to be conclusive. They happen in the meantime”. 

It is in what Morgan refers to as “the meantime” that human relationships are formed, either to fall apart and fade away or stand the test of time and continue forming. Morgan concludes by saying that “(although) politeness is not an adequate expression of our feelings and thoughts... it leaves space and time for something still to be known”. 

In short, Morgan believes that Austen’s polite deceit functions as a promise. It is in its very inadequacy that its value lies, for it leaves space for something still to be known, for people to be more or less than their first impressions. While this allows for betrayal and the pain of being mistaken in someone, it also makes room for hope, for people to pleasantly surprise, or to be more than one thought they could be.

Sense and Sensibility ends with a feeling of incompleteness, suggesting that the process of knowing remains unfinished. The marriage of Marianne and Colonel Brandon, though built towards since their first meeting, is mentioned in passing as the story moves to its conclusion. Altogether, more time is spent in telling how Willoughby never stopped loving Marianne than in relating how Marianne came to love Brandon. This is because in many ways the Marianne of the beginning of the story is already gone, just as the Marianne that comes to love Brandon is one the reader never gets to know. Yet the very fact that the novel ends with marriage is a promise that knowing will continue. Edward, a character who throughout is barely known at all, will be known by Elinor, just as Brandon and Marianne will get to know one another. Knowing continues, and so it is never complete.   

In this way, Austen’s characters will always be unknowable, for, in the scope of a novel, the process of knowing ends when the story does. Thus, as Elinor and Marianne move on into love and a lifetime of knowing, the versions of them that have been briefly revealed by the narrator are already being left behind.

Sherlock Holmes Solves the Mystery of the Lost Boot

It was the very night on which I had shared here on this blog the story of the lost boot which had run off within the realms of my book when I discovered another such precarious shoe in a most unexpected place.

It might have been a thing not at all worth mentioning if the topic of lost boots was not one which had been greatly on my mind. 

I was reading The Hound of the Baskervilles when, almost like an afterthought, Henry Baskerville mentioned to Sherlock Holmes that he hopes that losing a single boot is not part of the ordinary routine of life.

 

 

It immediately peeked my interest, for the casualness with which it was mentioned struck me as strange. 

I of course knew due to recent experiences that losing one boot was indeed out of the ordinary, for boots don't often walk off alone, when they walk at all.

Naturally, Sherlock Holmes knew this as well and proceeded to inquire about the boot of interest. 

Rarely has a clue so interested me on such a personal level. I made it my private mission to keep my eyes peeled for it.

 

 

I am happy to say that I have since found sir Baskerville's boot, though I certainly won't give away its location to the unknowing readers out there. 

As of yet, the boot of my book is still quite content to remain missing. But even so, I could not help but feel that the immortal and ingenious Sherlock Holmes was talking to me when he remarked on page thirty-five with an air of great reassurance that "it will not be long before the missing boot is found."  

 

It was not an altogether unusual thing to say at the time. Yet if anyone could transcend from fiction's shadows and say with utter confidence that a missing boot he could not possibly have known about will be found shortly, well, then that someone can only be Sherlock Holmes. 

I would not expect it of any other. And although I confess that I myself expect that the missing boot will soon be found, it was nice to have a word of encouragement from the ultimate expert.

Dracula: The Diaries that Were Never Meant to be Read

(or) The Writing Puppeteer and the Surrogate Confessor

 

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula were written almost a lifetime apart. Yet the two novels are undeniably the most highly read books of horror ever to be written. 

 

This, to me, is no mystery.

 

Indeed, when one thinks of other renowned writers of horror, such as Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft, one usually thinks first of the author who penned them, not the names of their stories. It is not so for Shelley's Frankenstein and Stoker's Dracula. They are remembered mainly for their monsters, for the titles of their monstrous works, for the horrors that they penned within. 

Frankenstein's monster (widely and ironically called merely "Frankenstein") is a sapient creature created from dissevered human parts. Dracula, the most well known vampire ever written about, is an apparition of terror who feasts and sucks on other human beings. 

 

I trust I did not have to tell you that. You already knew who they were. Everyone does, after all. But it is good to be reminded just how ghastly these creatures with whom we are so well acquainted are.

 

While there is no denying that the grotesque and debase way human life is sucked, smothered, split, and severed in these works is utterly unsettling, there is another more horrifying detail. 

It is easy to be sickened by Victor Frankenstein's cowardice and self victimization. Even more so is it natural to detest and dread Dracula who diminishes naive young maidens to ghostliness and drives people into madness and terror. 

But, to do all this while also making the reader feel uneasy, not just with the plot itself, but with themselves, that is a narrative feat to be admired, even to be feared. 

Indeed, it is no coincidence that the two most engrossing tales of horror ever to be written adopt the same narrative style. These works are not tales, they are private confessions; they are the dreadful diaries of those who have gone to dark and dismal places and seen the diabolical; and, what's more, they were never meant to be read. 

 

 

This is, of course, not to say that the authors did not mean for us to read them. But the author is not the real teller of these stories, not in the fictional sense of the word. They are the executioner, the puppet master, and they have their ink stained hands inside another's mouth. 

 

Stoker is the singular master of numerous private diaries, confidential letters, and secret interviews. From Jonathan Harker, Madam Mina, Lucy Westerna, Doctor Seward and more, in Dracula, Stoker puppeteers these soul's private musing and secret confessions. He plays these puppets so perfectly, searing and tearing at them with his pen till the ink dots his pages, till the reader themselves can pretend in full that there is no author at all, just horrid utterances written by cursed characters who know not that their words are being read by a stranger.  

Shelley likewise has her own skill as a puppeteer, speaking in not one, but two mouths at the same time in a story told within another. In Frankenstein, Captain Walton concedes the account told to him by Victor Frankenstein on a near desecrated ship, trapped inside a frozen sea. 

One might say Walton had little choice but to listen to Victor Frankenstein's horrible account. He had no where else to go. He is locked by cold and ice just as he is by his human conviction, stuck in the clutches of curiosity and foremost, by a moral contract to listen to this distraught stranger's confession. 

Yet, the reader, having all the places to go in the world, finds themselves trapped in the same fate. From the stories first pages we are led on by the deplorable thread, the demoralizing idea that the teller has no one else to turn to. As we read the reiteration of Frankenstein's words through the mark of Walton's pen, we are implored to listen by the same means he is. We keep reading because we are curious; because our mind has been meddled with; for the narrator has claimed that there is horrible confession on its way, just ahead, on any one of these pages, and deep down, we would like to hear it to sate our secret curiosity. 

Thus, the reader is entreated to listen for the sake of the teller's soul in both tales. In Dracula as well as Frankenstein, we are not sure if the teller will make it out alive, and thus the horrible thought lurks always in the back of our mind that no one else will ever know that they are dead, or what it was that killed them.

 

 

 

 It becomes easy to see why the names of the author's, though remembered, become somehow detached from their works. The authors are admired once the book is finished, recognized when their names are spoken or their works are discussed. Yet, while the book is being read, the author becomes altogether irrelevant, displaced for the sake of terror and dismay. It is, after all, so much more terrible and thrilling to become enthralled and engrossed with the confession. 

Let us not ask the writer what their intentions are. Let us fear the monster instead. Let us forget that their is a writer pulling strings and attempting to shock. Let us be at their mercy. 

 

Of course, if we are to continue with this fictional pretense for the sake of good horror, it is also important to note that the confessor will never know that someone has read their words. It is a strange and unsettling thing to read the diaries of those now dead.

The tale of Victor Frankenstein, if we are to consider it further, is one confession inside of another. For as already stated, Victor Frankenstein tells his story to one more soul before he dies. It is captain Robert Walton, his first confessor, who writes down every word uttered by Victor Frankenstein on that cold barren sea.

I will not recount here the horrible things confessed by Frankenstein, only say that it is little wonder the tale haunts Walton so much so that he cannot but write it down, thus sharing the harrowing burden with the page and the reader's inquisitive eyes. 

Though naturally these words were never meant for us. Walton writes to his sister Margaret. It is to her that he confesses.

"What can I say that will enable you to understand the depth of my sorrow?" he asks. "All that I should express would be inadequate and feeble."

Yet there is no guarantee that Walton's words are ever read. No known response is ever received from Margaret, not a word is ever uttered by this surrogate confessor. Furthermore, the reader can never know if Walton ever reaches land and finds another soul to share in his burden. 

It may very well be that Victor's secret dies on that desolate sea, in which case the reader is the only one that knows.

Thus, Walton's story ends with the form of Frankenstein's monster disappearing across the ice into the distant darkness.

 

Famously, the story of Dracula starts with the diaries of Jonathan Harker in the weeks he spends at the castle of Count Dracula. It was in those weeks that his diary proved to be a source of solace; a soothing to his sanity in satanic places. He never imagined how vital this comfort would turn out to be. Indeed, he sometimes shudders to imagine that his words might be read by another.

Thus, when Jonathan confesses that he hesitates to note down the terrible things he saw because he fears that his love Mina might one day read it, what reader does not pause, if only for an instant, and wonder who gave them the right to read these private words.

It is a strange sort of sensation that feels faintly of discomfort, even disgust. 

 

It is true that a great many diaries are shared throughout the course of the narrative. It often seems that for the characters words do not suffice. In the rare occasion that horrors are repeated aloud they usually cause great distress. 

The reading and sharing of private writings throughout acts as a symbol of good faith, and what's more, as a more perfect truth. The accounts as they are thus laid out on the pages of their diaries are unaltered by doubt or misconceptions caused by reflections or reason. They are the raw reports of the senses and what came over them, sometimes written mere moments after the events transpire.

But there is another reason that the characters rely so on their diaries. It is a truth that every writer knows. It is simply this: a soul is easier shared on the page than in conversation. As Mina herself says, to write is both a listening and a whispering to oneself, and so, the soul is not disguised by such trifles as one's voice or actions. It is unaltered by the reactions of those they are speaking to. 

This is not to say that the characters are immune to the discomforts caused by such intrusions. Madam Mina, who becomes the guardian of their diaries as well as her own, says after reading one such account:

"I have been more touched than I can say by your grief...It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of your heart. It was like a soul crying out to almighty God. No one else must ever hear them spoken ever again!... none other need now hear your heart beat as I did."

Van Helsing upon requesting permission to read the diary of one recently deceased shares a similar statement, though his speaks even more directly into the reader's own ear. 

 

Upon assuring that he does not desire to read the papers for curiosities sake, he says, 

 

"I have them (the papers) all here. I took them... so that no strange hand might touch them – no strange eyes look through her words and into her soul."

 

If there is one thing to be taken from this it is that the reader is by all accounts a stranger, and that they have looked long and hard into all of their souls.

When Jonathan and Mina finally marry, Jonathan entrusts his diary to her, his wife, bidding her only that if she were to read it never to let him know it. 

 

Mina, of course, does not in that moment realize the gravity of her decision. She binds the book in ribbon and wax, a ribbon which she wore around her untouched neck, and she seals the wax with her wedding ring, recognizing it as a symbol of the trust they have for one another. 

 

The reader makes no such vows. Their eyes breach every secret, every concealment unashamedly. Thus, they become the invisible confessor that no one asks for.

Whether they are the one who breaks the seal or whether Mina does this herself depends on how you read the story. Maybe it is best to imagine that the story is already over and Dracula is just an old dusty diary and a stack of letters laced together with a blue ribbon once worn around a lady's neck. 

 

Surely, it is easier than watching it all transpire in silence. It is easier than intercepting every letter and stealing every diary in the dead of night just to keep up with the story. 

Certainly, it is easier than being the one to break the seal.

So the work of horror is put down and the astounded reader wonders at the puppeteer's skill, to write such a harrowing and haunted tale through the mouth of another, a mouth sewn by their own cunning hands. 

It is no longer clear who is the puppet: is it the characters? Or has the writer caught the reader in their strings? 

Stoker's Shadows

 "Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches crashed together... It grew colder and colder still."

(Dracula, Bram Stoker)

It was a cold, blustery day; the cold was of the wet, bitter kind; the kind that seems to grasp your very bones. Not even the heat indoors could fight it away. You could feel it seeping through the glass of every window. 

 

 

The outside world looked dreary, blurred by the wetness and the damp, and the rain's slim slippery fingers tapped on my window eerily, sometimes almost desperately.

 

By the time the afternoon rolled in the day had changed its mind tenfold, turning itself from rain to snow, and back to rain again. By then the clouds above were as thin as a dying person's skin, and the light it let loose was pale and meagre. 

 

The day was almost spent.

As I read by the window, the shadows crept out from between the pages of my book, out of the core of its very spine. Even as I held it open, transfixed by its horror, still, the shadows lingered. I expanded its leaves, extending its spine and wrenching it wide. Still, the shadows deepened.

 

 

 

 

 Dracula was made to be read on days like this: when all through the afternoon the light weens to grey; when the imminent dark of November is only hours away, and even the crook of a spine is a dark and shadowy place. 

 

A Stormy Night with Charles Dickens

It was a dark and stormy night in which I read Charles Dickens.

I read till late, till Book the Second made way to Book the Third, fittingly entitled "The Track of a Storm".

I stopped then and listened to the thunder shake my little house, and wondered at how awful and awe-inspiring it must be to see the sea rise in a storm like this one.

"But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this (little) space and time. And it was now... that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising." ~A Tale of Two Cities

Love for Well-Worn Paperbacks

I detest the mistreating of books, as I hate the mistreating of trees. I find it despicable when people misuse something that may very well outlive them. For indeed, the average lifespan of a book, much like a tree, is very likely to outlast the lifespan of a person. And although these things appear on the surface to be inanimate, there is so much beauty and possibility for wonder and growth in these things that their unnecessary destruction angers me.

There is, however, a difference between a mistreated book and well worn book.

The most worn out book I own is a paperback addition of Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

The spine is cracked, pierced by white like so many paper-veins showing through its otherwise black spine. The cover is bent in a few places, like an old photograph, or a letter that has been unfolded too many times. What's more, my handwriting is woven in with Dickens' own words, my messy script playing around with the printed paragraphs; drawing lines and arrows, underlining the words I want to read again, the sections I spent the most time in marked by pencil. Sometimes there are scribbles too, words jotted down; thoughts and references tugged out of my mind by the on-goings of the page.

I love this worn out book, not just because Bleak House is one of my favorites, but because I love how lived in this particular addition feels.

My copy of Bleak House is worn because I read it well. The cover is bent in places from all the time I spent carrying it around with me on the inside of my bag.

I have a love for worn out books, paperbacks specifically.

There are some readers who morn the wearing out of a book. I, on the other hand, have come to be greatly fond of this process. I believe it to be my right as a reader.

There is something comforting about a well worn paperback. You can tell when it has been opened, and even to what extent it has been read. If a reader quit part way through, the cracks will stop and the further pages will not open as naturally.

But a book that has been well-read and well-opened will open easily. It will want to be opened, for it has gotten used to be handled by readers, being visited by fingers and skimmed by eyes.

Breaking in the spine of a paperback book is like wearing in a pair of walking shoes; it is the wearing through, the cracking, that shows that there has even been a journey. These shoes have been walked in. They have gone places, a well worn pair of shoes seems to say. Or, in the case of the well worn paperback: this book has been read.

“Books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when you and I are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive.” ~The Hiding Place

Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?

 An Analysis of the Prime Example of Fictional Immortality 

Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most recognizable fictional character of all time, something which is somewhat remarkable considering how many faces he’s worn. It seems strangely suitable that Sherlock Holmes, among his many skills, should also be a master of disguise. For each time he returns, be it to the stage, the screen, or on the page, he is never quite the same. In all the different faces which have represented Sherlock Holmes we have come to recognize him mainly by his distinguished silhouette: the large beak-like nose, the tall lean figure, the deer-stalker hat, and calabash pipe, all of which are signature to his demeanor. Yet ironically, most of these are credited, not to Conan Doyle himself, but to British illustrator Sidney Paget. Even Holmes' well-known catchphrase “Elementary, my dear Watson” comes, not from the original work, but from author P.G. Wodehouse. These are not the only well-known Holmesian characteristics which are credited to other creators. Ever since Conan Doyle let loose detective Sherlock Holmes into Victorian London in A Study in Scarlet, artists have been creating their own interpretations of the world-famous detective, and thus he has become immortalized, not just by one, but thousands of reworkings and adaptations. It may therefore seem somewhat misleading to fully credit Arthur Conan Doyle with the creation of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps it is more suitable to say rather that Conan Doyle did not in-fact create Holmes. He discovered him.

Though it may seem an odd statement, it seems that Sherlock Holmes is, in fact, more influential than the man who created him. This in itself is entirely bizarre, for Holmes, of course, is fictional. Yet even in his time, multitudes of readers were convinced of his existence. To Doyle's own dismay, he received countless letters all address not to him, but to Sherlock, imploring the detective to help solve their tragedies and mysteries. In the present day, Sherlock Holmes seems more alive and real than Conan Doyle himself. So, Holmes has become the reality and the author the shadow, a silhouette perched in an armchair behind the figure of his creation. Though the simple solution would be to dismiss this as a case of excellent story-telling, someone like Sherlock Holmes would not be convinced of such a mundane conclusion.

It deems worth noting that Sherlock Holmes is not the only fictional character granted this endowment of immortality, nor is he the only one who has skipped the line between reality and fiction so effortlessly. Figures like King Arthur or Robin Hood of Loxley, to name a few, have also crossed this line, slipping out of the fictional world and leaving behind relics and remnants of misplaced evidence, as if they might actually have existed. Indeed, to this day experts are still uncertain whether or not these figures actually existed, and to what extent the stories we have about them are true. While their origins may be obscure, their influence, however, is undeniable. Sherlock Holmes himself does not have much in common with these figures, it is their mutual prestige on the public which makes them so extraordinary. Of course, there is one other key point in which these figures share: they are all heroes.

King Arthur, the righteous and just king, leader of the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, the noble outlaw who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, we’ve all heard of them. But what exactly does Sherlock Holmes have to do with them?

When we think of Detective Sherlock Holmes, words like righteous, just, and noble are certainly not the first that come to mind, if, in fact, they come to mind at all. Sherlock Holmes is flawed, often times selfish, and at times completely unsympathetic. Indeed, he has been compared to machine. What's more, it is his lack of human weakness and emotion that most fascinates those fictional characters who come know him, and those who in their turn come to know him on the page. Even so, when it comes to fictional immortality Holmes somehow manages to exceed them all. While King Arthur and Robin Hood were the heroic figures of their own time, Sherlock Holmes has become a heroic icon, not only of his own time but most every time since.

When a character becomes immortalized in this way they will inevitably become, not just a character, but an idea. Robin Hood, for example, exemplifies justice. He is a hope for the poor, a reclamation of a better world in a time of oppression. In the same way, Sherlock Holmes has also become the incarnation. He is the image of the ultimate expert. A man who, with his powers of deduction and wit can unravel any mystery. Sherlock Holmes springs out of an era of order, an industrious empire, a society overtaken with invention and vision, and yet a society overcome by the ever-growing fear that their world, a world of which the pace was ever quickening, was spinning out of control. This is a fear which is no less relevant in today’s society than it was to the Victorians who witnessed the First Industrial Evolution when the world began to move too quickly. One could argue that the world has not stopped its Industrial ascent since.

It is perhaps for this very reason that, more than a decade after his initial appearance, Sherlock Holmes has still not retired, despite what Doyle tried to make us believe in The Adventure of the Lion's Mane. And if he has indeed retired at one point or another, he has been raptly replaced by a successor, a new Sherlock Holmes for a new time.

Since Conan Doyle’s death in 1930, the public has seen Sherlock Holmes return again and again. Indeed, ever since Arthur Conan Doyle brought back Sherlock Holmes ten years after his supposed death, it seems it is quite impossible to kill him. His immortality is so adamant, and the public’s adoration so persistent, that not even his creator could kill him off. We see in Sherlock Holmes that something truly fascinating occurs when a character outlives his creator with such perpetuation. Not only has Sherlock Holmes outlasted his time, he has pervaded through every time since, slinking straight out of the fog of Victorian London into the present day, solving mysterious and delivering justice, whether that be to protect innocent murderers, or the wrongfully accused; to restore honor to the disgraced or repair trust for those that have been torn apart by a crippled system. He is a shadow of a man instantly recognized by his fans, fans who as a mass manage to maintain the illusion that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the detective who has, and most certainly will, outlive them all, is still out there today, solving mysteries, dispelling superstitions, disproving irrationality and illusion; debunking legends even as he himself becomes one.