Redefining Classics: Toppling Literature’s Monuments

I have been thinking of a good way to start this post and to be honest, I couldn’t really think of something more witty but I kept thinking back to when I first read Jane Eyre. This was during my senior year in high school and I was still firmly i my “I like to read the classics” phase, among others. I saw myself as being a prolific reader and that I read books of quality…with a few vampire novels and fantasy and scifi thrown in.

The main thing that has always stuck with me is my reaction to the “Mad Woman in the Attic” and her description. The way I understood it was that Bertha Mason was a vision even in her lowest. Maybe it was my own reading or something, maybe it was that we had been told she was from the Caribbean and my head instantly projected and thought “Oh so she is like very beautiful got it”. It took me some time and re-readings and realizing how most adaptations to see that had been just me. This was even before I got to Wide Sargasso Sea and saw some unfortunate choices on the redemption of this character.

But that is part of it, right? I mentioned before that re-reading in part is great because as we change so do what we read. And yes that’s part of it, the media we consume should change with us. However, it’s also important to expand horizons, and yes sometimes realize you need to move on from something.

Those on the pedestals

Jane Eyre is by all definitions a “Classic”. I write it like that on purpose. It’s on “must read” lists, it’s considered a a key feminist reading, one of the defining works of the Gothic genre. It has earned it’s place in the literature pantheon. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like reading The Old Man and The Sea and wondering just what exactly makes this such a monument other than people’s love for the mythology of Hemingway. I read it and I still love seeing Jane tell Rochester she will not just take his offers of diminishing herself. The quote “I must keep in good health, and not die” when asked as a child how she will avoid going to hell for being wicked is still one of my favorite lines in literature.

But these aspects don’t mean I consider this as one of the best books there is above others that don’t have the benefit of being written by a white English woman. I can love it,  yet not give it a place in my own personal set of pedestals anymore because Bertha’s madness is rather…there is whole books on why this is problematic. And that is what I want to talk about when I say we have to redefine what is a “Classic” and maybe topple some of these “monuments” to literature’s greats.

rethinking classics

Back in the pre-streaming days, the basic cable network TNT would promote their collection of more recent films as “New Classics”. Unlike it’s sister channel of Turner Classic Movies, TNT would focus on films with a more recent release. And it really did elevate movies to this. Some were already well known and regarded as “New Classics”; while others, like The Shawshank Redemption had their fates changed by this. This is something film has done better, even if representation among even modern or “new classics” has been slow, but it is getting there. This is still better than what literature has done.

The literal canon has been slow to accept “new classics”. It hasn’t been until more recent years that my own personal canon has shifted.But again, that is just me, my personal reading choices. While authors and readers of marginalized groups have tried to shift things with #ownvoices, or #weneeddiversebooks, everyone will point out that even these have been used by groups that still keep the “classic” cannon unmoved. Other hastags such as #publishingpaidme have shown that even in cases where some change seems to be happening, it is in no way as supported ad keeping the status quo. When you saw the figures relatively unknown white writers got versus someone like N.K. Jemisin who has won the Hugo Awards three years in a row for a trilogy, the first writer to do so, it is very clear that literature still needs to go far.

monuments in literature

Maybe the comparison to the recent events where monuments that commemorate racist and bigots around the world seems over the top to some, but that is what literature and so many other arts and communities need to do. And in some cases, we do need to question the people that are being held on these pedestals. I mentioned Hemingway above. Part of the reason he has the place he does in literature is that mythological aspect to him as I said. It’s putting his negative aspects as just a part of who he was and his tortured genius. It’s how I am sure in the US more people have been exposed to Cuba in his writings and how it ties to him and not seeing that the ideal tropical paradise he writes about was under a dictatorship that catered to the US expats like him to create that vibe of you can escape into our magical imaginary Caribbean.

This is the kind of thing we have to re-examine and maybe topple. The “canon” might have it’s place and yes, a lot of us even out of the countries usually made part of the canon have been influenced by the literature we consume and it has been these same monuments. I know people here in Puerto Rico who barely read not just books from the island, but barely books from authors of color form around the world. Or cases where they read them but they see them as lower literature. People who don’t know their favorite genres like fantasy, science fiction, romance, horror, they all have stories that go beyond what the “canon” of each is. These monuments in literature are what have kept these ideals and thats why they need to be examined.

your own new classics

There is probably a desire here to say “Ok, then tell me where to find these writings that open up what I read”. And I will start by saying that I myself am in that process. There is plenty of places where one can find this without asking for a reading syllabus. Some people even do make a syllabus. What I mean is that just like the monuments were not brought down by “the proper channels” but by people taking action…thats what we have to do with our artistic monuments too. We can’t wait for others to do it for us, it’s up to us to pull on the ropes and chains and bring them down and learn about those who either get smaller monuments or don’t even get them at all.

Literature, art in general, are living things in that they evolve and change. In the case of literature, even the changes in languages and how they have moved with society have changed how we write. The idea that a canon should be unchangeable kind of destroys the possibility of what it can be in the future or even in the now. Change in society has to be and includes change in the media that informs and moves that society too. That change will come from us pulling a TNT and saying that while the canon may seem unmovable, there is more out there that can get lost in the idea of not looking beyond what you are being told is the high form of art. Like I said above, I am working on doing this myself and what bringing down the literary monuments has been not just giving me new things to read, but also helping my own writing evolve beyond trying to emulate those canonical writers. So lets all work together and make new monuments and new classics where they are not on pedestals and made of stone, but living and thriving and growing into more.