The Virgin and The Gipsy Written by D.H. Lawrence
This novel is very intriguing and teaches lessons of morality, religion, and of life and death intended for those with imagination and insight.
The author's style contributes deeply to the intrigue and true meaning to this novel. The author's use of imagery makes tensions in the story vivid and emphatic. In this story there is a re-occurring tension between religion and desire. The tension between religion and desire is most clearly demonstrated between the characters of Yvette and the rector. Yvette was brought up in a world of religious conventions and beliefs, an environment of forgiveness, love, and morality. This world is later realized to truly be a world of repression towards all feelings of passion and desire; not the environment of forgiveness, love, and morality Yvette and the readers are lead to believe. This starts the conflict between religion and desire, and confuses Yvette greatly because her religious upbringing denies and contradicts all her natural instincts of love, passion, and sexuality. The rector and Yvette do not share the same understanding of love. They are both very different in their thoughts and expressions, of what love is. The narrator in the story tells us what the rector thinks of Cynthia, his lost wife. He describes her as 'the pure white snow-flower'; (p.6) and expresses that her husband thought of her 'on inaccessible heights…that she was throned in lone splendor aloft their lives, never to be touched'; (p.7) This would have the reader believe that Cynthia is considered in the rector's eyes to be like god not bodily in his life. At another point in the novel the narrator informs the reader that the rector believes Cynthia to be sacred and that she was enshrined in his heart, as if she were a religious idol, never simply expressing any love or desire for his lost wife. It's like the rector has moral religious love for his lost wife, and not passion or desire, like the love Yvette feels for the gypsy. When Yvette matures and realizes that she feels differently than her family, she undergoes a change in her heart, and attitude. Yvette's father picks up on her change and resents her for it because the rector wishes Yvette to be pure and clean like him, or her sister Lucille who turned out the way the rector intended. Therefore not expressing or experiencing true l...
... middle of paper ...
...der that the truth will set you free, and lead you into making the right decisions. The flood is a symbol of re-birth, the flood wiped out the dark, dull stone house, and giving Yvette a second chance at the life she wishes to pursue.
The characters are a very important role in the novel and are very diversified. Each character is unique and opinionated which adds contrast and intrigue. Cynthia left her husband for another man, but in her husband's eyes is still considered as pure. The rector is an odd man. Even though his wife left him for another man, he worships her as if she were his god. Perhaps this emphasizes his feelings and beliefs towards her, which are holy and without desire. He does not know the meaning of love, or desire so the reader is lead to believe that his beliefs of holiness, and of purity are his means of recognizing love.
This novel was very symbolic and had an extensive vocabulary. It was very intriguing and kept the reader's interest throughout the whole novel. I would recommend this novel to anyone who would like an exercise for his or her mind. There is a lot of insight needed to interpret this novel, but the challenge only adds to the intrigue.
I found this book to be a rather interesting read. I enjoyed how Levathes researched this book and wrote it to try to explain about this specific period of time and how it is very non-fiction.
This novel really stirred my emotions, especially in the beginning. For example, Candelario works at a restaurant owned by a man named Don Gustavo. Candelario is the salad maker and what taught, by Don Gustavo himself, how to make a perfect Caesar salad for his customers. The doctor and his wife came in and both ordered salads and Candelario made the salads exactly to Don's instructions, but the customers were not pleased. Since they were not pleased Don fired Gustavo on the spot that night. This made me very angered with Don and people like Don. It sucks when you do something right but then someone is displeased so all of a sudden it was the wro...
I found the book to be easy, exciting reading because the story line was very realistic and easily relatable. This book flowed for me to a point when, at times, it was difficult to put down. Several scenes pleasantly caught me off guard and some were extremely hilarious, namely, the visit to Martha Oldcrow. I found myself really fond of the char...
This book is a very interesting read, if you have some self discipline. I mean that you need some self discipline because this book didn’t really captivate me in the sense that I couldn’t put it down. But after reading it for a while, I started to appreciate the author’s way of describing the characters and actions in this book.
My overall opinion of this book is good I really liked it and recommend it to anyone. It is a good book to read and it keep you interested throughout the whole book.
This is my personal reflection about this book. First and foremost, I would like to say that this book is very thick and long to read. There are about nineteen chapters and 278 pages altogether. As a slow reader, it is a quite hard for me to finish reading it within time. It took me weeks to finish reading it as a whole. Furthermore, it is written in English version. My English is just in average so sometimes I need to refer to dictionary for certain words. Sometimes I use google translate and ask my friends to explain the meaning of certain terms.
Criticisms (Unfavourable): Near the end of the book the dialogue becomes more rhetorical than the rest of the book. This isn’t really a problem, but can become slightly confusing at times. The best option would be to read this part slowly and carefully in order to understand what the message is.
have chosen it for my report. Finally, I will give my reactions to the novel
The problem we find in this story, and in puritanism, is that it presents contrasting views of love. Attachment to earthly possessions, to other people in fact, is discouraged, because everything physical leads to temptation and damnation, and ultimately hell, while the road to salvation of the individual wanders through a spiritual discipline, rigour, austerity. A man should not love his wife more than he loves God; in fact, it is recommended that he not derive pleasure from his wife, but rather seek suffering, in order to redeem himself from his earthly condition, his impure state.
In the opening lines of the tale there is a compulsion, representing internal conflict, indicated on the part of both the protagonist and his wife Faith:
To conclude, I believe that this novel gives a warning to the reader. I believe that it is telling us not to push the boundaries of reality and not to tamper with things that would perhaps be better left alone, because the consequences are unknown, unpredictable and unnatural. It tells us that death and birth are things that in the modern world we just have to accept, and that we should not even attempt to exceed mortal limitations: Playing God should be left to God.
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
The story initially deals with the interactions of three characters: Basil Ransom, Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant. The character of Basil Ransom, a Mississippian who has fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederates, is presented to us as head-strong, determined, full of honor and tough in his own masculinity and as someone who is aware of the world and the society which he lives in but of which he is not fully accepting. Olive Chancellor, (Basil Ransom’s cousin), a Bostonian woman, on the other hand is a hard-hearted woman who is bitter and is quite opposed to the traditional notions of women and men. She believes that the times of traditional feminine and masculine nature is in the past and that women are as equal as men in the changing future of society; she fights against the brutal nature of men with her rugged character in the narrative. The historical context of the story is the Civil War and its influence on the society of the day, Basil who lost everything in the war has to seek new employment and does not see eye to eye with the new ideals of r...
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and believe it to be one of the best books I have ever read. It was extremely well written and challenging for me to understand at times. It conveys that dark side of human ambition very well, and it has given me much to think about.
In this book review I represent and analyze the three themes I found the most significant in the novel.