Classic Books with a Modern Twist for Women's History Month
Classic literature has given us some of the most memorable female characters in literature. However, as times change, we know it can be difficult for modern readers to connect with classics. That's where modern companion books come in - novels that either complement or reimagine classic stories for a contemporary audience. In this article, we'll explore a few of these literary pairings, delving into what makes them work and why they're worth reading. Whether you're a die-hard fan of the classics or just looking for something new to add to your reading list, these modern companion books offer a fresh perspective on timeless stories that have influenced women's literature.
the Classic
Jane Austen is renowned for her classic novels exploring life, love, and society in regency-era England. While Pride and Prejudice is her best-known novel, her novel Emma is a better commentary on life at the time. It addresses themes such as social status, gender limitations, and marriage and courtship by focusing on the activities of the small town of Highbury.
What makes Emma truly a classic is that it showcases Austen’s best writing. Not only is it a compelling story, but it features a fully imagined cast of characters so relatable, you will be fan-casting with people from your real life. This story is about so much more than marriage. While the plot deals heavily with romance, the true story is about what happens when you make assumptions about those around you, meddle in the affairs of others, and refuse to take criticism, even from those you trust the most. It’s a true coming of age story for the regency era.
Emma follows young Emma Woodhouse, a witty and headstrong girl who makes it a point to meddle in the business of others. Considering herself a matchmaker, Emma tries to set up her friend Harriet. But her plan goes awry when the bachelor in question mistakes Emma’s intentions. But one failed match isn’t going to stop her.
Emma
by Jane Austen - Mint Editions
Emma Woodhouse is a bit of an anomaly in her sleepy town of Highbury. Curious, intelligent, and spoiled rotten, Emma is a young lady whose nose is always in other people's business. With nothing but time on her hands, Emma delights in the chaos of her good intentions gone awry. With an inclination towards matchmaking, she decides this skill is one that must be perfected, even at the expense others. Quickly becoming the self-professed village matchmaker, it isn't until Emma's own heart is on the line that she realizes she's gone perhaps a bit too far.
Our Modern Companion -
Polite Society by Mahesh Rao is a retelling of Emma if it were set in modern day Dehli. Think Emma meets Crazy Rich Asians. Ani Khurana, the Emma character, goes through many of the same trials and tribulations as Emma Woodhouse. She makes the same mistakes and learns many of the same lessons. However, Ani has to do it all at a time when social media broadcasts your mistakes around the world.
Polite Society
by Mahesh Rao
Beautiful, clever, and more than a little bored, Ania Khurana has Delhi wrapped around her finger. Having successfully found love for her spinster aunt, she sets her sights on Dimple: her newest, sweetest, and most helpless friend.
But when her aunt's handsome nephew arrives from America, the social tides in Delhi begin to shift. Surrounded by old money and new; relentless currents of gossip; and an unforgettable cast of socialites, journalists, gurus, and heirs, Ania discovers that her good intentions are no match for the whims and intrigues of Delhi's high society--or for her own complicated feelings toward her cherished childhood friend, Dev.
Pairing razor-sharp observation and social comedy with moments of true tenderness, this delicious whirl through the mansions of India's dazzling elite celebrates that there's no one route to perfect happiness.
the Classic
"If you really read this novel, you will find out about yourself."
In 2015 Michael Gorra wrote a piece for the BBC claiming George Eliot's Middlemarch was the most remarkable British novel, using the sentence above as justification. Many modern critics agree with the statement as the story is almost a study in balancing a narrator's perspective with other lives they intertwine with, all while Eliot was throwing in her own comments, questions, and empathy to the other characters in the view.
Other critics, and often ones at her time of publication, called it a morbid story. Eliot felt women's literature's unfair confinement to domestic lives ending with a happy marriage was a disservice to reality. A union makes up more than one person, and as people moved along their web of influence, they were caught in a balancing act between their own experiences and thoughts to the others that each decision or thought affected. Throughout the story, you see each main character grapple with the decisions made but also empathize with the decision made by another character affected.
Middlemarch
by George Eliot - Mint Editions
First appearing in 1871, Middlemarch is a historical novel set 42 years before its publication. Political and social concerns of the era are present but serve as background and contrast to four compelling plotlines focused on a set of unforgettable characters striving against circumstance, each other, and themselves. Powerful themes, religion, love, marriage, education, society's treatment of women and much more, are dealt with as fully fused elements of the story and integral parts of the lives of the characters. The author conveys a sweeping vision of small-town England in the Victorian era, the rich and the poor, the people of the countryside and the people of the city, while unspooling several interlocked storylines full of passion, uncertainty and suspense. Middlemarch received a mixed reaction upon its initial appearance, but has gained in standing among critics and general readers until it is now commonly considered one of the high points of 19th century fiction and even of English literature as a whole.
OUR MODERN COMPANIONs
We've paired this book with a few different options. All three use George Eliot's multinarrative perspectives that changed the course of the story, but we went a few different routes in literary style.
Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media--as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents--the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter--but is he really a killer?
If I Had Your Face
by Frances Cha
Kyuri is an achingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul "room salon," an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood.
Kyuri's roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the heir to one of the country's biggest conglomerates.
Down the hall in their building lives Ara, a hairstylist whose two preoccupations sustain her: an obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that she hopes will change her life.
And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to have a baby that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise in Korea's brutal economy.
Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the thing that ultimately saves them.
Fates and Furies
by Lauren Groff
Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation.
Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.
the Classic
Notable for being the earliest work of fiction published by a Chinese author in the United States, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, is a wonderful collection of short stories by Sui Sin Far. The name Sui Sin Far was actually the pen name for Chinese-British-Canadian-American writer, Edith Maude Eaton.
Published in 1912, this collection is broken up into two sections. The first is a section of stories for adults reflecting on the struggles and joys of Asian American families in Seattle and San Fransisco during a time of discrimination. The story's second half depicts classic Chinese folk tales written for children.
Mrs. Spring Fragrance
by Sui Sin Far - Mint Editions
Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) is a collection of short stories by Sui Sin Far. Inspired by her experience living among Chinese Americans in San Francisco and Seattle, Mrs. Spring Fragrance is considered one of the earliest works of fiction published in the United States by a woman of Chinese heritage.
In "The Inferior Woman," Mrs. Spring Fragrance encounters her neighbors, the Carmans, as they try to find someone to marry their son. While Mrs. Carman wants him to marry into a family of higher social standing, her son is in love with a local girl who works as a legal secretary. Known by Mrs. Carman as the "Inferior Woman," she has risen through hard work and perseverance to achieve her position at the law firm. Sympathetic toward her neighbor's son, Mrs. Spring Fragrance advocates on his behalf. "In the Land of the Free" is the story of a Chinese immigrant who is separated from her young son upon arrival due to insufficient paperwork. Exploring the struggles of this woman to reclaim her son, Sui Sin Far exposes the discrimination and hardships faced by Chinese Americans due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, illuminating the byzantine and restrictive immigration policies which sadly continue under a different guise in modern America.
OUR MODERN COMPANION
For a modern look at the struggles of Asian-American immigrants, look to Sindya Bhanoo’s short story collection, Seeking Fortune Elsewhere. Bhanoo was the winner of the 2022 New American Voices award and her story “Malliga Homes” was nominated for the O’Henry award.
This collection focuses on the immigration stories of South Asian families. Centering on women, readers experience the conflicting and complicated feelings they have while deciding between staying and leaving their homes for a better future. How do their lives and relationships change when they leave their loved ones behind?
Seeking Fortune Elsewhere: Stories
by Sindya Bhanoo
Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart.
In "Malliga Homes," selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students.
Sindya Bhanoo's haunting stories show us how immigrants' paths, and the paths of those they leave behind, are never simple. Bhanoo takes us along on their complicated journeys where regret, hope, and triumph appear in disguise.
the Classic
Despite being published in 1909, Emmuska Orczy transports readers to 17th century England in her historical fiction novel, The Nest of the Sparrowhawk. The novel follows Sir Marmaduke de Chevasse as he tries to secure the fortune of his young ward, Lady Sue.
Lady Sue is a lady in want of a husband and soon finds herself being wooed by many gentlemen, including Sir. Marmaduke’s secretary, Richard Lambert. Enter the exiled French Prince of Orleans, who is Marmaduke in disguise. What follows is a story of deception, murder, secret marriages, and kidnapping within Puritanical England. This classic novel is the perfect blend of mystery, historical fiction, and romantic comedy.
The Nest of the Sparrowhawk
by Emmuska Orczy - Mint Editions
Set in the seventeenth century, The Nest of the Sparrowhawk follows the events within a small Puritan community. One of its members, Sir Marmaduke de Chevasse, is captivated by the young ward, Lady Sue. She is beautiful, charming and popular among both men and women. Yet, Sir Marmaduke's intentions are not pure of heart. He's eager to marry Lady Sue to lay claim to her fortune. When another admirer, Richard Lambert, becomes a viable threat, Sir Marmaduke works to exploit his weakness and destroy their potential relationship.
The Nest of the Sparrowhawk is influenced by the social and political norms of the time. It's driven by deception, intrigue and personal greed. This is a vibrant account of one man's need to solidify his status by any means necessary.
OUR MODERN COMPANION
For another story of love and deception within the confines of history, look no further than The Company Daughters, by Samantha Rajaram. This historical fiction romance also takes place in the 17th century, but instead takes place in a Dutch colonial outpost.
Jana and Sontje are destitute and forced to sign up with the East India Trading Company as company daughters. In hopes of a better life, they agree to become the wives of Dutch settlers. However, when love begins to bloom, the women find themselves in a tricky situation. They are supposed to marry the colonists, but their hearts belong to each other.
Company Daughters: A heart-wrenching colonial love story
by Samantha Rajaram
Amsterdam, 1620. Jana Beil has learned that life rarely provides moments of joy. Having run away from a violent father, her days are spent searching for work in an effort to stay out of the city brothels, where desperate women trade their bodies for a mouthful of bread. But when Jana is hired as a servant for the wealthy and kind Master Reynst and his beautiful daughter Sontje, Jana's future begins to look brighter.
But then Master Reynst loses his fortune on a bad investment, and everything changes. The house is sold to creditors, leaving Jana back on the street and Sontje without a future.
With no other choice, Jana and Sontje are forced to sign with the East India Company as Company Daughters: sailing to a colonial Dutch outpost to become the brides of male settlers they know nothing about. With fear in their hearts, the girls begin their journey - but what awaits them on the other side of the world is nothing like what they've been promised…