The Crown of Life
George Gissing
Publisher: Project Gutenberg
Summary
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Publisher: Project Gutenberg
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Written when women-and workers generally-had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequities of the rigid class system in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Agnes comes from a respectable middle-class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a governess. Pampered and protected at home, she is unprepared for the harsh reality of a governess's life. At the Bloomfields and, later, the Murrays, she suffers under the snobbery and sadism of the selfish, self-indulgent upper-class adults and the shrieking insolence of their spoiled children. Worse, the unique social and economic position of a governess-"beneath" her employers but "above" their servants-condemns her to a life of loneliness.Less celebrated than her older sisters, Charlotte and Emily, Anne Brontë was also less interested in spinning wildly symbolic, romantic tales and more determined to draw realistic images of conditions in Victorian England that needed changing. While Charlotte's Jane Eyre features a governess who eventually and improbably marries her employer, Agnes Grey deals with the actual experiences of middle-class working women, experiences Anne had herself endured during her hateful tenure as a governess.Show book
Three classics about love, class, and social expectations by one of the greatest English authors of the nineteenth century. This collection of Jane Austen’s novels includes three timeless classics.Persuasion: A woman is pressured by her family to end her engagement to a man of modest means—then meets him again years later, when both of their circumstances have changed.Northanger Abbey: A young woman besotted by gothic novels sees danger lurking everywhere, but she soon learns more about the perils of real life in this wise, satirical novel.Pride and Prejudice: The basis of countless film and television adaptations, Austen’s tale of the Bennet family and Mr. Darcy is considered her masterpiece.Show book
"Mesmeric Revelation" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that explores a dialogue between a hypnotist and his dying patient. Through hypnosis, they discuss profound themes about the nature of the soul, the existence of God and the universe, revealing transcendent perspectives on life and death.Show book
Twilight in Italy describes Lawrence’s time as an educated working-class Englishman living among the Italian working men and women in the region around Lake Garda, from the Austrian Alps to the North, to Switzerland and finally Como and Milan. He captures the psyche of Italian peasants without ever romanticising or patronising them. His quick intuition locks onto their harsh, narrow lives and deep primitive emotions, exploring the very soul of Italy and its approach to life, death, belief, love, sexuality and change. His descriptions of the scenery and natural beauty of the country are evocative and find full expression in this masterpiece.Show book
The Cafè of the Broken Heart is situated near the cemetery at Monmartre. When a widow calls by on the last day of the year and asks for a private room to grieve on the third anniversary of the death of her late husband, she is irritated to learn that the room is already occupied. She gets into conversation with the other mourner—a young artist—and discovers that he has a very strange story to tell.Show book
Skeletons and corpses rise from their fitful sleep and share a haunting message from beyond the grave.Show book