haha if werther had had friends this group of silly young men would have been them

Read for The Literary Life Podcast: 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge.

16. A Book by A Minor Author

I had not heard of Peacock until I picked up this book. I wonder if Jane Austen's work (Northanger Abbey) is a play on this, since it also deals with satirizing romantics and gothic enthusiasts. In some sense, this pokes as much fun at The Sorrows of Young Werther, as it is The Addams' Family of its day.

I must admit that I love gothic literature, but this short novel was equal parts funny and truthful. The digs at Kantian philosophy and the commentary on women's education were poignant observations of the age.

As I guessed, there's sort of a feminist subplot in the novel, as one of the male characters is disappointed on love and tries to convince his son that all women are the same, the son then complains about the inequality of women, but does not live up to the standard he has set and then proceeds to blame women for their fickleness

Spoiler

when he was to blame instead, because his fickleness made him fall in love with women instantly, without ever being able to renounce his former lover.

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The contrast between the two young women is also classic of romantic authors, and though by names it's clear where the author's sympathies lie, both make an honorable choice in the end. Recommendable and very funny to those tired of the love triangle trope,

Spoiler

because the women are not having it

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Nightmare Abbey is an early 18th century satire of the English romantic movement, specifically Byron, Shelley and their ilk. It is filled with overwrought romance, writing, tragedy and the like, all presented in a relatively silly manner. I’m not sure what it was like at the time but now it reads in a pretty dated way and does not have much independent interest beyond the satire, less than (say) Northanger Abbey which was around the same time but had more in the way of characters and development. (Note this is a very short novella and I listened to the reasonably good Flo Gibson audiobook version.)

Downright silly at times, this book certainly doesn't take itself seriously. It is a blatant satire of the genre, and it does that well, but as a book in it's own right it falls a little flat. It leans too heavily on being a parody, and doesn't seem to have any substance of it's own, beyond the jabs it takes. Even though it was short, it still felt like it had played itself out early on.

Only one chapter references ghosts/hauntings. Very disappointed.

*Maybe I should check what books are about before reading.*

Overall, there were very clever chunks of text in this book that I appreciated, but it doesn't really make up for the utter lack of plot. So enjoyable moments, but overall, I found the book somewhat tedious.

It is a short amusing parody of the gothic genres and other literary forms. The story follows the melodramatic romantic Scythrop who makes plans to rejuvenate humanity until he becomes romantically entangled with women and must decide who he wants to marry among the backdrop of the gloomy Nightmare Abbey, unable to decide between them, which ends up costing him both. The rest of the novel consists of the conversation of the various visitors to Nightmare Avery who represent different literary types.

Although the characters may be exaggerations based on actual literary figures and real people that Thomas Love Peacock knew such as Percy Byshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, etc., the real comical interest of the characters resides in how they represent different literary trends and types. In other words, a reader who didn’t realize Scythrop was based on Percy Byshe Shelley, but knew something of the romantic melodramatic tendencies of the literature of this time would still find Scythrop amusing. The work’s strength and comedy stems from the way it parodies the literary genres of its time.

There is Mr. Toobad who thinks the devil is behind any misfortune or strange occurrence in life or at Nightmare Abbey. This clearly is poking fun at a certain kind of religious person. There is Mr. Listless who walks about with an affected posture of ennui and boredom, mocking those gentleman and artistic souls who fetishize the pointlessness of life as some sort of approach to existence. Mr. Asterias who is a scientist in search of mermaids, which shows that even the most technical and seemingly serious of men can still chase after phantoms and nonsense under the superficial guise of reason and scientific advancement.
Mr Cypress the restless and misanthropic poet who is leaving the country, but seems to advocate that life is all disappointment and beauty exists only in our minds. However, the best character of all is Mr. Flosky the transcendental philosopher who worships Kant and never answers a simple question or offers any advice except in turgid, overcomplicated, and abstruse language.

In one of my favorite scenes in the book, Marionetta comes to Mr. Flosky for advice about Scythrop. She continually gets impenetrable philosophical responses from him and not the practical advice she had hoped from somebody supposedly so wise. He refuses to admit his ignorance, while mostly just engaging in an endless word-salad.

“To say that I do not know, would be to say that I am ignorant of something; and God forbid, that a transcendental metaphysician, who has pure anticipated cognitions of every thing, and carries the whole science of geometry in his head without ever having looked into Euclid, should fall into so empirical an error as to declare himself ignorant of any thing: to say that I do know, would be to pretend to positive and circumstantial knowledge touching present matter of fact, which, when you consider the nature of evidence, and the various lights in which the same thing may be seen—“

When Marionetta realizes she is not going to get any useful information about Scythrop, Flosky responds,

“My dear Miss O'Carroll, it would have given me great pleasure to have said any thing that would have given you pleasure; but if any person living could make report of having obtained any information on any subject from Ferdinando Flosky, my transcendental reputation would be ruined for ever.”

This is one of the funniest moments in the book. As this character is based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, you can interpret it as Peacock mocking the poet-philosophers’ inability to write anything useful that makes sense to the average person, but it also could be read as a general mockery of the inscrutable metaphysical philosophy of people like Kant. Flosky admits that his reputation rests on people not being able to understand him and not offering any practical wisdom that a normal person could follow. This sort of philosophy is about being complicated without saying anything and has lost sight of philosophy’s purpose as having practical application to real life.

It was like Austen but not much of a plot. The characters were not very whimsical or memorable but it streatched my vocabulary.