The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
(1880s New York heiress rejects ways of society to 'be herself')
Against the Odds
Emily Bronte, Wuthering HeightsĀ Ā (1800s Yorkshire: a woman loves brutal, "child-of-nature" foster-brother)
Hermann Hesse, GertrudĀ Ā (1890s German university: two students, friends, love the same woman)
Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de ParisĀ Ā (14th-century Paris: hunchback tries to protect beautiful gipsy from mne who would debauch her)
Helen Waddell, Peter AbelardĀ Ā (12-th century Paris: a monk falls in love with beautiful pupil)
"Playthings of Destiny"
Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding CrowdĀ Ā (tragic life and love in 19th-century rural England)
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity FairĀ Ā (two girls" ambitions to conquer 1810s English high society)
Theodore Dreiser, An American TragedyĀ Ā (ambition, crime and punishment in lower class 1920s New York)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven GablesĀ Ā (New England family cursed for generations because of religious intolerance)
Pressure to Conform
John Updike, Rabbit, RunĀ Ā (ex-high-school sports star tries to adjust to adult mediocrity)
Anthony Trollope, Doctor ThorneĀ Ā (snobbery, illegitimacy and inheritance among 19th-century English landed gentry)
Sinclair Lewis, BabbittĀ Ā (wealthy, morally empty merchant tries to break free of sterile small-town conformity)
Angus Wilson, Late CallĀ Ā (widow lives with uncongenial son in soulless 1960s British "new town")
Stifling Communities
Gustave Flaubert, Madame BovaryĀ Ā (mid-19th-century small-town France)
Olivia Manning, The Rain ForestĀ Ā (retreat for psychological misfits on island "paradise")
Alison Lurie, The War Between the TatesĀ Ā ("progressive" US university)
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid"s TaleĀ Ā (21st-century fundamentalist Republic of Gilead)
