Classics Read Aloud

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson
“Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.”
I had the explosively beautiful Spring chapter of “Jean Gourdon’s Four Days” by Émile Zola all teed up for this week’s reading. Alas, as the temperatures hover in the 30s in my world, and the wind howls, and the rain feels a touch too icy to be properly called rain, I just can’t bring myself to publish it. The vibrance of Zola’s spring imagery deserves better. It deserves May (I hope!).
With the grey cold overstaying its welcome, one can start to feel a little unsettled…a little crazed by another day of the same shivers and the many layers donned. Rather than fight it, I’m going to lean in with a rather unusual story.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” snares us into the psyche of a woman retreating to a country home with her family so that she may recover the steadiness of her mind. Through Stetson’s masterful narration, we witness the narrator disappear and reappear on the spectrum of sanity, as she is kept almost entirely isolated in one room in the spirit of getting well. As we see so often in our own therapy-speak-laden culture, focusing on the restlessness of the mind to the avoidance of the work of living is destined to backfire.
Please enjoy…
Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

The End of the World: A Vision by James Kirke Paulding
“In the course of my wanderings, methought I encountered the celebrated Fire-King, who was sitting at home, quietly smoking his cigar, and calculating that being the destined survivor of all his race, he would succeed to an immense landed estate, and become lord proprietor of the whole earth.”
In the early months of 1843, a wave of Judgement Day fanaticism swept across the East Coast of the United States. Building on a close inspection of biblical texts, a lay preacher and farmer named William Miller had predicted that the end of the world would arrive sometime between March 21st, 1843, and March 21st, 1844. Miller began working on his theory in the early 1820s, and in 1831, he was asked to fill in at the pulpit of the Baptist church in Dresden, New York. Miller used his time centerstage to share his beliefs for the first time publicly. The Dresden congregation was mesmerized, Miller was invited by neighboring parishes to spread the word, and Millerism was born.
By 1840, the Millerite flock had grown beyond the proportions of obscurity. Thousands would come to hear Miller speak, and all manner of unfortunate events were being pinned on the movement, a sure sign of having “made it.” By the time it reached Philadelphia, the opening date of Miller’s prediction loomed large, and all that was left was to laugh.
Laugh is exactly what penny papers like the Public Ledger did. James Kirke Paulding’s satirical piece, “The End of the World: A Vision,” published among those pages in 1843, contains the withering observations of a man bearing witness to the last day of the world, April 1st. Granted a reprieve from the screaming heat by some unnamed deal with the devil, our narrator perambulates from place to place, recording his field notes for our amusement of all the many human reactions to the world melting down in judgement.
The world Paulding describes is due for a reset, a stage decline confirmed by the realization that none of the inhabitants seems to be anticipating ascension in their direction of travel.
Please enjoy…
Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

“And so it appears that all these five blocks of buildings are at work, and inferior cotton is sold in the Eastern markets, simply that Christina Dmitryevna may eat sterlet and drink Madeira.”
In 1890, Anton Chekhov made what was surely an uncomfortable six-week journey across Siberia. His destination: Sakhalin Island, a penal colony established by imperial Russia to house criminals and political prisoners. For reasons not entirely understood, Chekhov, a medical doctor by day and prolific writer by night, set out to rigorously document the squalor and depravity of the conditions to which the prisoners were subjected.
Why might a talented young man decide to do such a thing? Chekhov had a deep sensitivity to the plight of humankind and was compelled to treat it and bring it into the public consciousness. This wiring led him to create detailed studies, in situ, of nearly 10,000 prisoners who lived among such an infestation of bugs and cockroaches, “that the walls and ceilings seemed to be covered in funeral crape, moving as if in a wind.” It also inspired dozens and dozens of insightful short stories that are heavy on pathos and short on sentimentality. His hit rate is truly remarkable.
Today’s story, “A Doctor’s Visit,” takes us not to the vast loneliness of Siberia but to an industrial town outside Moscow where a young doctor has been called to examine the daughter and heiress of the area’s primary factory complex. What he finds is an intelligent woman who has, through the din of the machinery and the despondent lives of the factory workers, fallen into an ambiguous state of existential despair.
Chekhov, the doctor-writer, deftly diagnoses the ailment, but he does not leave it untreated. By the end of this sensitive narrative, the “larks [are] trilling and the church bells [are] pealing” once again.
Please enjoy…
Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

“Four little chests all in a row,Dim with dust, and worn by time,Four women, taught by weal and woe,To love and labor in their prime.”
Louisa May Alcott’s bestseller, Little Women, has been a cherished favorite of readers young and old, rich and poor, optimistic and cynical. The only dichotomy that may not be confidently claimed is male and female. Perhaps we’ll break the mold with this reading, given the largely male proportion of Classics Read Aloud subscribers. I do hope so, for Alcott’s sincere tale of deep, hearty familial love and loyalty can be a tonic for any human soul… and I suspect perhaps men could relate to Alcott more than they might realize. Her driving sense of responsibility to provide for her family, sacrificing her own preferences, made her, in a sense, a pragmatic and tireless rower of her family’s canoe.
Alcott was the second daughter of four, born to parents of respected lineage and obvious intellect. While not of high society, it was a hardworking family defined by dignity and civic duty. As Ednah D. Cheney remarks in Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals, “…the uncommon powers of mind and heart that distinguished her were not accidental, but the accumulated result of the lives of generations of strong and noble men and women. She was well born.”
The labors of those prior generations, paired with her upbringing on a diet of clear and confident moral certitude, practically glow from the pages of her most popular work. Readers at any phase of life can find among the comings and goings of the four March sisters, guided by the sagacious counsel of Marmee and Papa March, just the right perspective for facing life’s quandaries with grace and grit. Their lifestyle is so foreign to today’s culture that it can easily be written off as idealistic and pat; however, even the most superficial perusal of Alcott’s letters and those of her family members would quickly contradict such a conclusion. The work was one of realism, born of her own family life.
Alcott’s success with the book rather took her by surprise, as she had grudgingly brought it to fruition at the request, repeated many times over until forced to ultimatum, of her publisher, Thomas Niles. At the time, Alcott’s father Bronson was trying to publish a manuscript of philosophical writings. Niles made Alcott’s submission of “a girls’ story” the condition for moving ahead with Bronson’s work. Well, in the words of a woman who cherished her father and his work, “that settled it,” and home libraries around the world are the better for it.
Please enjoy…


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

“I would prefer not to.”
Today, Moby-Dick is regarded as one of the greatest novels in American history and a towering achievement for its author, Herman Melville. Not so when it was first published: Sales were poor, and those who read it mostly had no idea what to do with it. His subsequent novel, Pierre, fared no better.
“Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” was an attempt to turn the tide on a disappointing run. Seeking commercial justification for his writing and needing to claw himself out of debt to his publishers, Melville geared the tale for magazine publication in two parts. Perhaps contrary to purpose, Melville’s perspective on Wall Street was hardly full of the type of speculative intrigue that might entice the attention—and dollars—of fly-by-night audiences. Only much later did the work emerge as a masterpiece, appreciated for its allegorical subtlety, its engaging absurdity, and that oh-so-confounding five-word phrase that one never forgets.
[Insert Not to be Reproduced | René Magritte, 1937]
Amid the hustle and bustle of Wall Street, the titular character stands out for his apparent apathy—he is the antithesis of ambition and industry, “one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable.” The attention he draws to himself is far from positive, and the reactions of those who have to deal with his infuriating indifference are both comic and painful. What is one to do?
In the end, “Bartleby the Scrivener” was unable to deliver Melville from hardship or contemporary irrelevancy. How could it? After all, the story reflects Melville’s pointed rejection of lowering himself to the sensationalism he believed necessary for commercial acclaim. He would, it seems, have preferred not to.
Please enjoy…
Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com