Why do I love books so? There are those cheesey, well-known, oft-expressed explanations that hold some truth: with a book one can adventure around the world without leaving one’s home; with a book one can better oneself infinitely, stretching both the mind and the imagination; and with a book one can learn what it means to live fully, love truly, give freely.
I’ve always loved the deserted areas in used bookstores and dusty libraries that seem neglected and therefore ready for an adventure. The bindings of books have captivated me many a time, as though merely through reading the titles of books I am soaking up a fraction of their information. I associate books with people who are ambitious, not only in wanting to look beyond themselves, but also in taking initiative in self-education. Additionally, I enjoy people who are bored and watch a great deal of TV; alternatively, I feel like I live in a box, as one of teachers once told me—most of my free time is spent exploring fiction rather than learning of pop culture.
While I may be out of the loop on the latest music and reality TV shows, my addiction to reading has undoubtedly helped me to further my understanding of humanity, diversity, tragedy, great joy, love that isn’t broken in its reality. This summer in particular I have dedicated in part to learning of a foreign place I was almost entirely ignorant of. Truthfully, I remain unsure of what to expect when I arrive at Oxford, but through reading a bit of literature written by authors from Oxford and fiction set in Oxford, I have pieced a preliminary understanding of Oxford together.
This past year I read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and was blown away. I’ll always associate him with Oxford after watching a video in high school youth group that was about C.S. Lewis and showed me my first clips of the stunning Oxford, where Lewis both studied and taught. For the past few years, I have vaguely dreamt of that far-off place that seems so….allusive, mysterious, grand. The long, trying application process brought a little more reality to that dream.
But back to Lewis. If someone had told me that an author would create a lion who I could envision as Christ, I would have laughed at him. If someone had told me that a fantasy world could be created by another, earlier British author that I would love equally (though in a very different way) as much as Harry Potter, I would have scoffed at the very idea. C.S. Lewis defied my expectations and captivated me in his first pages. I loved his characters for their humanness, their imperfections that made them feel like true heroes/heroines, with depth and weaknesses I could relate to. He painted such rich, breathtaking portrayals of another world and of the beginning of heaven that I now imagine them in my vision of the afterlife.
After watching that video years ago, I have also dreamt of visiting the pub which Lewis and Tolkien held meetings for their literary club, “The Inklings.” I had greater reserve in reading Tolkien’s works than Lewis’, for who could resist The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are intimidating in their lack of brevity; the length of the movies alone made me hesitate to begin his books. Nonetheless, I am proud to say I persevered and discovered some remarkable similarities between Lewis and Tolkien’s fantastical creations.
I have long felt that a good deal of British literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has a captivating quality of creating a little magnetic familial sphere of rich gossip, drama, and intrigues that one can barely pry oneself away from. Lewis and Tolkien’s works are a bit different; they create enchanting and addictive characters, missions, and settings that ask the reader to venture to entirely new worlds. Both describe food in a way that makes me hungry for a merry feast that could even begin to compare to the repasts of elves or fauns. Their merrymaking seems warm, inviting, innocently joyful, and inherently friendly (particularly as contrasted with the scanty food during harrowing missions, where the characters long for those lovely feasts). Do not fear, however: I remain ever wary of the food in England.
Lewis and Tolkien both molded characters who seem reserved, mostly content, and yet hungering for something indefinable—they do not pretend to be brave or lovable, and then the characters and the reader alike are surprised at the courage the characters dig up from within and the love the reader finds has been inspired for them. Lewis and Tolkien allowed me to form a simple, important theory about Oxford: while the fiction I read that takes place in Oxford ridicules Oxford’s snobbery and lack of true worth, these men prove that Oxford can be credited with being a part of both these noble books of profound imagination, kindness, courage, and meaning, as well as their authors. After all, Lewis became a Christian at Oxford:
"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England" (Surprised by Joy).
And where would we be if C.S. Lewis had never become a Christian? Additionally, both Lewis and Tolkien wrote their stories while teaching at Oxford. If I could happen to become friends with a literary genius like either Lewis or Tolkien while studying abroad at Oxford, I would be quite content.
In terms of fiction set in Oxford, I first read Brideshead Revisited, followed by Zuleika Dobson and Jude the Obscure. Brideshead doubled as being written from a man who studied at Oxford and a piece of fiction that partially takes place in Oxford (as does Zuleika Dobson). I must admit that I have rarely, if ever, read a work of fiction that made me feel as alone as when I read Brideshead. It’s difficult to describe, but I suppose it was due to both being completely incapable of relating to really any of the characters and the dialogue; everything that was said was said beautifully but it didn’t seem to reach the person being spoken to (and it didn’t matter: no one seemed to notice or care about the disconnect in the book itself). In a sense, I felt like the beautifully written dialogue was a series of self-involved monologues.
All mentions of Oxford seemed superficial, not flattering, perhaps because the main purpose of Oxford was partying, making social connections, and impressing one another with one’s troubled soul and originality as expressed through biting comments. To me, it seemed like I knew Charles Ryder little more at the conclusion of the book as I had prior to opening it; likewise, Oxford itself seemed a mere jumping spot to other happenings, a mere in-between place vaguely mentioned. Nonetheless, I am glad to have read a book so beautifully written and unique from anything else I have read. I picked up on qualities of snobbery, pretension, discontent, insecurity, frivolity, and romance in Waugh’s depiction of Oxford.
Zuleika Dobson portrayed a beautiful, surreal Oxford. The characters were ludicrous and extraordinary and utterly absurd. Oxford had a quality of being a place that was worth noting and had the potential for anything to happen. When every single male student committed suicide for love of the (quite literally) femme fatale Zuleika Dobson, the students of Oxford obviously looked to be a bit pompous, recklessly daring, and to crave recognition, fame, and nobility. Overall, Zuleika left me craving to see the boat races that make suicide worth postponing: “It [the Duke's suicide] shall be just after the Eights have been rowed. An earlier death would mark in me a lack of courtesy to that contest." And I simply must include this rather lengthy description of Oxford that I adore:
Oxford, that lotus-land, saps the will-power, the power of action. But, in doing so, it clarifies the mind, makes larger the vision, gives, above all, that playful and caressing suavity of manner which comes of a conviction that nothing matters, except ideas, and that not even ideas are worth dying for, inasmuch as the ghosts of them slain seem worthy of yet more piously elaborate homage than can be given to them in their hey-day…For there is nothing in England to be matched with what lurks in the vapours of these meadows, and in the shadows of these spires—that mysterious, inenubilable spirit, spirit of Oxford. Oxford! The very sight of the word printed, or sound of it spoken, is fraught for me with most actual magic. (Zuleika Dobson)
Finally, I have just finished reading Jude the Obscure this very day. I can honestly say I have never read a more depressing book. What can it be like to lose one’s dreams, children, wife, social respectability, and religious conviction? That sounds trite (how many other books include those occurrences?), but truly, Hardy succeeds in creating an oppressive, hopeless, heartbreaking tragedy. Jude’s Oxford is one which rejects the poor who crave scholarship, creating a crumbling series of buildings which merely signify a snobby community out of touch with humanity. Jude’s beloved, Sue, says that he is “one of the very men Christminster [fictional equivalent of Oxford] was intended for when the colleges were founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or opportunities, or friends…You were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaires’ sons.” Hardy frequented Oxford’s Lamb and Flag, a pub where he supposedly thought up his tragic story Jude the Obscure. Luckily, the Oxford which denied entrance to those of low social status does not exist today. People who crave knowledge and learning like Jude definitely study at Oxford—like I shall. Nonetheless, I cannot wait to visit Hardy’s old haunt.
At the end of this rather long reflection on what I have pieced together about Oxford, I find myself having produced little in the way of an antidote to my ignorance of the place. I simply know that some absolutely BRILLIANT men and women have studied at Oxford. I know that Oxford has maintained a magnetic mystique for hundreds of years that has captured one more student, frightened of her possibilities and respectful of her accomplishments.
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