Barchester Towers - thoughts

She closed her lips, and steadied her eyeballs, and looked at him in a manner that ought to have frozen him.
But gentlemen are not easily frozen when they are full of champagne...

This is the example of what I like in a good literature)))

I've finished to read "Barchester Towers" the other days, and enjoyed it very much. Including that interesting feature of english novel when there exists a couple perfectly destined to each other in readers eyes, but totally unnoticed by the novel society. And it come to full astonishment when their engagement finally becomes known.

Of course, this goes like a very good tip for the author to make his reader feel smart and some superiority over the others. But nevertheless reader (me in particular) can not be ungrateful for all the success scenes and joy received :)

Together with the plotline I always try to figure out what was the ordinary life of the people in those times. And in this novel I found out, for example, that girls of 16 and 17 age could sleep in one bed "in each other's arms" even in a family with a pretty good income of several thousand pounds per year.

Or, for example, there was a vicarage proposed to one of the heroes with an income of around 200 pounds per year that was almost like survival. But there was a wine storage in his house nevertheless. Though archdeacon decided that he wouldn't drink wine that would lie for more than two years in that storage since it was in a bad condition. So is it normal that a man with a low income will keep wine in his house for years?

I would like to mention that same archdeacon was very surprised at the mere idea of his friend having a round table in the dining room. For him round table could be fit just to apostates, democrats and ... cheap cloth weavers. And it seems like a total joke just nowadays when we can consider first two groups as good examples of citizens.

And there was a conversation in the novel that made one idea come to me about the differences in civil and common law. It came to me that these differences really can have their routes in religion. When one of the heroes told that english eclesiastical society has to many arguements because they do not have an authority (like Papa). And other distinquished feature is that they had wives and children and were much more part of society than in catholic world.

Anyway I will continue with my english studies (it's the way I see all these readings - not just a part of time spending like reading in native language). Even now step by step English becomes to me more elegant when I see how it can be used by authors of classic period.

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