It occurred to me that, in the time since this blog came into being in February of this year, several of my views on a variety of different subjects have altered considerably. I have written things that I now feel differently about, and so I decided it would be a good idea to write a post addressing some of the areas in which my views have changed.
In this post, written back in April, I said that I was not very impressed with the television series Christy, based on Catherine Marshall's classic American novel. I would now like to rebuff that. I'm not sure why I went through a stage of disliking the show- perhaps it was because I watched it with my family so much as a child that when I got older I grew kind of bored with it. I would now like to say that I think the series is practically perfect in every way, and I absolutely love it. Nobody could have played Christy better than Kellie Martin, and Christy Huddleston is now one of my top favorite literary heroines.
Another thing is Downton Abbey. I wrote a review of the first season in March, just after I watched it for the first time, which I now believe was unwise of me. When you watch something for the first time, at least when I do, my initial reaction or first impression is not usually what ends up being my final assessment. For me it takes time to think about it for a while. (I know, I wish it weren't so complicated! I just can't help reading into the matter so much.) Since that time I have seen the 2nd and 3rd seasons of Downton Abbey, and watched the 1st one and half of the 2nd over again. It is a truly amazing series (I really could rant on about it for pages and pages) and one of my favorite shows, and the characters are some of the most memorable I've ever encountered.
Most of what I wrote in my review is not what I would write now. I won't go into all of it, but for starters, I don't really like Mr. Bates anymore.
I admit, I did like him very much the first time I watched season 1 (in my neck of the woods we call them seasons), but now he's mostly just irritating. (Plus I can no longer seem to keep a straight face around him, but the poor man can't help that he isn't the most attractive person.) He is a nice man and all, but sometimes it seems as if most of the trouble he runs into, and he runs into a LOT of trouble, is more or less his own doing. Besides that, he hardly ever speaks up for himself and tells the truth when everyone else is jumping to conclusions about him and his past. Sometimes I just want to shake him! In a way, he's a lot like Elsie Dinsmore (humor me on this one): he's constantly being wrongly accused, and he refuses to defend himself.
Also, I was overly hasty in my judgements of Thomas and Miss O'Brien. Yes, they are both nasty and conniving and cause a great deal of trouble, but if you look hard enough, neither one of them is entirely evil. Miss O'Brien may be rude and unpleasant and uncaring and just downright mean, but she has a heart. She genuinely cares about Cora, even though sometimes she gets angry with her and acts like she doesn't (and calls her a filthy ungrateful cow. Ouch.) In short, I think Miss O'Brien is nasty and mean, but she is not entirely without human compassion, even though sometimes it may seem that way.
Thomas isn't as horrible as I used to think either. He's a bully and a coward, but I actually have sympathy for him, because as Mrs. Patmore says, he is a troubled soul. I'm not trying to defend him, but he's not as solely evil as I used to think. He does care about some people- when Sybil died it was plain that he genuinely cared about her- he's just all mixed-up inside and perhaps being nasty is all he's ever known. Thomas is a very complicated character and I still haven't really figured him out yet, but my first assessment was not a fair one.
I also wrote that Edith was "the boring sister", to quote myself. I'm not going to go into the character of Edith in detail right now (because I simply don't have the time and I would probably bore you all to death anyway), but let it never be said that Edith is boring! And what I wrote about Mary was not very fair either. And I didn't even hardly mention Mr. Carson or Mrs. Hughes! My goodness, maybe I really should write another review. : )
Another thing to set straight is my list of Top Ten Literary Heroines, my third post written in February. This was something that I had seen on other blogs and I was so excited to do on my own when I created my blog. I was so excited about it that I didn't really take the time to think through the list, so if I were to make another list now it would not be the same. I don't think Elinor Dashwood is my favorite literary heroine, although she is one of them. Now I would probably put Christy Huddleston somewhere near the top of the list, and Mattie Ross would most certainly not be number ten! I'm not going to make another list, but I just wanted to set the record straight on that. Also, that was a list of my favorite heroines from classic literature, so a list of my favorite heroines from any books would be quite different.
Also, in this post from July, I sounded really whiny. And just downright silly. I'm not sure why I was so whiny that day, but I would like to apologize!
That about covers it, for now anyway. I really wanted to write this post to clear up anything I might have said that I would disagree with now, and searching through my archives, those were the four main things I came up with.
God Bless,
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