(FREE PDF Sample) Exploratory Data Analysis Using R 1st Edition Ronald K. Pearson Ebooks
(FREE PDF Sample) Exploratory Data Analysis Using R 1st Edition Ronald K. Pearson Ebooks
(FREE PDF Sample) Exploratory Data Analysis Using R 1st Edition Ronald K. Pearson Ebooks
com
OR CLICK BUTTON
DOWLOAD EBOOK
https://ebookmass.com/product/biostatistics-and-computer-based-
analysis-of-health-data-using-r-1st-edition-christophe-lalanne/
https://ebookmass.com/product/using-r-for-data-analysis-in-
social-sciences-a-research-project-oriented-approach-li/
https://ebookmass.com/product/data-analysis-for-the-life-
sciences-with-r-1st-edition/
https://ebookmass.com/product/singular-spectrum-analysis-using-r-
hossein-hassani/
Numerical Methods Using Kotlin: For Data Science,
Analysis, and Engineering 1st Edition Haksun Li
https://ebookmass.com/product/numerical-methods-using-kotlin-for-
data-science-analysis-and-engineering-1st-edition-haksun-li-2/
https://ebookmass.com/product/numerical-methods-using-kotlin-for-
data-science-analysis-and-engineering-1st-edition-haksun-li/
https://ebookmass.com/product/spatial-analysis-using-big-data-
methods-and-urban-applications-yamagata/
https://ebookmass.com/product/practical-business-analytics-using-
r-and-python-solve-business-problems-using-a-data-driven-
approach-2nd-edition-umesh-r-hodeghatta/
https://ebookmass.com/product/statistics-for-ecologists-using-r-
and-excel-data-collection-exploration/
EXPLORATORY
DATA ANALYSIS
USING R
Chapman & Hall/CRC
Data Mining and Knowledge Series
Series Editor: Vipin Kumar
Ronald K. Pearson
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reasonable
efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and publisher cannot
assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors and
publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication
and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any
copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any
future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced,
transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, please access
www.copyright.com (http://www.copyright.com/) or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
(CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization
that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users. For organizations that have been granted
a photocopy license by the CCC, a separate system of payment has been arranged.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at
http://www.taylorandfrancis.com
and the CRC Press Web site at
http://www.crcpress.com
Contents
Preface xi
Author xiii
2 Graphics in R 29
2.1 Exploratory vs. explanatory graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.2 Graphics systems in R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2.1 Base graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.2 Grid graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.3 Lattice graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.2.4 The ggplot2 package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.3 The plot function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.3.1 The flexibility of the plot function . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.3.2 S3 classes and generic functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.3 Optional parameters for base graphics . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.4 Adding details to plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.4.1 Adding points and lines to a scatterplot . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.4.2 Adding text to a plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.4.3 Adding a legend to a plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.4.4 Customizing axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.5 A few different plot types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.5.1 Pie charts and why they should be avoided . . . . . . . . 53
2.5.2 Barplot summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.5.3 The symbols function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
v
vi CONTENTS
7 Programming in R 247
7.1 Interactive use versus programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
7.1.1 A simple example: computing Fibonnacci numbers . . . . 248
7.1.2 Creating your own functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
7.2 Key elements of the R language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
7.2.1 Functions and their arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
7.2.2 The list data type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
7.2.3 Control structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
7.2.4 Replacing loops with apply functions . . . . . . . . . . . 268
7.2.5 Generic functions revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
7.3 Good programming practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
7.3.1 Modularity and the DRY principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
7.3.2 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
7.3.3 Style guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
7.3.4 Testing and debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
7.4 Five programming examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
7.4.1 The function ValidationRsquared . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
7.4.2 The function TVHsplit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
7.4.3 The function PredictedVsObservedPlot . . . . . . . . . 278
7.4.4 The function BasicSummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
7.4.5 The function FindOutliers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
7.5 R scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
7.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Bibliography 539
Index 544
Preface
Much has been written about the abundance of data now available from the
Internet and a great variety of other sources. In his aptly named 2007 book Glut
[81], Alex Wright argued that the total quantity of data then being produced was
approximately five exabytes per year (5 × 1018 bytes), more than the estimated
total number of words spoken by human beings in our entire history. And that
assessment was from a decade ago: increasingly, we find ourselves “drowning in
a ocean of data,” raising questions like “What do we do with it all?” and “How
do we begin to make any sense of it?”
Fortunately, the open-source software movement has provided us with—at
least partial—solutions like the R programming language. While R is not the
only relevant software environment for analyzing data—Python is another option
with a growing base of support—R probably represents the most flexible data
analysis software platform that has ever been available. R is largely based on
S, a software system developed by John Chambers, who was awarded the 1998
Software System Award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
for its development; the award noted that S “has forever altered the way people
analyze, visualize, and manipulate data.”
The other side of this software coin is educational: given the availability and
sophistication of R, the situation is analogous to someone giving you an F-15
fighter aircraft, fully fueled with its engines running. If you know how to fly it,
this can be a great way to get from one place to another very quickly. But it is
not enough to just have the plane: you also need to know how to take off in it,
how to land it, and how to navigate from where you are to where you want to
go. Also, you need to have an idea of where you do want to go. With R, the
situation is analogous: the software can do a lot, but you need to know both
how to use it and what you want to do with it.
The purpose of this book is to address the most important of these questions.
Specifically, this book has three objectives:
xi
xii PREFACE
This book grew out of materials I developed for the course “Data Mining Using
R” that I taught for the University of Connecticut Graduate School of Business.
The students in this course typically had little or no prior exposure to data
analysis, modeling, statistics, or programming. This was not universally true,
but it was typical, so it was necessary to make minimal background assumptions,
particularly with respect to programming. Further, it was also important to
keep the treatment relatively non-mathematical: data analysis is an inherently
mathematical subject, so it is not possible to avoid mathematics altogether,
but for this audience it was necessary to assume no more than the minimum
essential mathematical background.
The intended audience for this book is students—both advanced undergrad-
uates and entry-level graduate students—along with working professionals who
want a detailed but introductory treatment of the three topics listed in the
book’s title: data, exploratory analysis, and R. Exercises are included at the
ends of most chapters, and an instructor’s solution manual giving complete
solutions to all of the exercises is available from the publisher.
Author
xiii
Chapter 1
The primary focus of this book is on exploratory data analysis, discussed further
in the next section and throughout the rest of this book, and this approach is
most useful in addressing problems of the first type: understanding our data.
That said, the predictions required in the second type of problem listed above
are typically based on mathematical models like those discussed in Chapters 5
and 10, which are optimized to give reliable predictions for data we have avail-
able, in the hope and expectation that they will also give reliable predictions for
cases we haven’t yet considered. In building these models, it is important to use
representative, reliable data, and the exploratory analysis techniques described
in this book can be extremely useful in making certain this is the case. Similarly,
in the third class of problems listed above—making decisions—it is important
that we base them on an accurate understanding of the situation and/or ac-
curate predictions of what is likely to happen next. Again, the techniques of
exploratory data analysis described here can be extremely useful in verifying
and/or improving the accuracy of our data and our predictions.
1
2 CHAPTER 1. DATA, EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS, AND R
1.2.1 Data
Loosely speaking, the term “data” refers to a collection of details, recorded to
characterize a source like one of the following:
• an entity, e.g.: family history from a patient in a medical study; manufac-
turing lot information for a material sample in a physical testing applica-
tion; or competing company characteristics in a marketing analysis;
• an event, e.g.: demographic characteristics of those who voted for different
political candidates in a particular election;
• a process, e.g.: operating data from an industrial manufacturing process.
This book will generally use the term “data” to refer to a rectangular array
of observed values, where each row refers to a different observation of entity,
event, or process characteristics (e.g., distinct patients in a medical study), and
each column represents a different characteristic (e.g., diastolic blood pressure)
recorded—or at least potentially recorded—for each row. In R’s terminology,
this description defines a data frame, one of R’s key data types.
The mtcars data frame is one of many built-in data examples in R. This data
frame has 32 rows, each one corresponding to a different car. Each of these cars
is characterized by 11 variables, which constitute the columns of the data frame.
These variables include the car’s mileage (in miles per gallon, mpg), the number
of gears in its transmission, the transmission type (manual or automatic), the
number of cylinders, the horsepower, and various other characteristics. The
original source of this data was a comparison of 32 cars from model years 1973
and 1974 published in Motor Trend Magazine. The first six records of this data
frame may be examined using the head command in R:
head(mtcars)
An important feature of data frames in R is that both rows and columns have
names associated with them. In favorable cases, these names are informative,
as they are here: the row names identify the particular cars being characterized,
and the column names identify the characteristics recorded for each car.
1.2. THE VIEW FROM 90,000 FEET 3
Is Pluto a Planet? [72], astronomer David Weintraub argues that Pluto should
remain a planet, based on the following defining criteria for planethood:
1. the object must be too small to generate, or to have ever generated, energy
through nuclear fusion;
The first of these conditions excludes dwarf stars from being classed as planets,
and the third excludes moons from being declared planets (since they orbit
planets, not stars). Weintraub notes, however, that under this definition, there
are at least 24 planets orbiting the Sun: the eight now generally regarded as
planets, Pluto, and 15 of the largest objects from the asteroid belt between Mars
and Jupiter and from the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto. This example illustrates
that definitions are both extremely important and not to be taken for granted:
everyone knows what a planet is, don’t they? In the broader context of data
analysis, the key point is that unrecognized disagreements in the definition of
a variable are possible between those who measure and record it, and those
who subsequently use it in analysis; these discrepancies can lie at the heart of
unexpected findings that turn out to be erroneous. For example, if we wish to
combine two medical datasets, characterizing different groups of patients with
“the same” disease, it is important that the same diagnostic criteria be used to
declare patients “diseased” or “not diseased.” For a more detailed discussion
of the role of definitions in data analysis, refer to Sec. 2.4 of Exploring Data in
Engineering, the Sciences, and Medicine [58]. (Although the book is generally
quite mathematical, this is not true of the discussions of data characteristics
presented in Chapter 2, which may be useful to readers of this book.)
Note that this quote suggests—although it does not strictly imply—that the
data we are exploring consists of numbers. Indeed, even if our dataset contains
nonnumerical data, our analysis of it is likely to be based largely on numerical
characteristics computed from these nonnumerical values. As a specific exam-
ple, categorical variables appearing in a dataset like “city,” “political party
affiliation,” or “manufacturer” are typically tabulated, converted from discrete
named values into counts or relative frequencies. These derived representations
1.2. THE VIEW FROM 90,000 FEET 5
can be particularly useful in exploring data when the number of levels—i.e., the
number of distinct values the original variable can exhibit—is relatively small.
In such cases, many useful exploratory tools have been developed that allow us
to examine the character of these nonnumeric variables and their relationship
with other variables, whether categorical or numeric. Simple graphical exam-
ples include boxplots for looking at the distribution of numerical values across
the different levels of a categorical variable, or mosaic plots for looking at the
relationship between categorical variables; both of these plots and other, closely
related ones are discussed further in Chapters 2 and 3.
Categorical variables with many levels pose more challenging problems, and
these come in at least two varieties. One is represented by variables like U.S.
postal zipcode, which identifies geographic locations at a much finer-grained
level than state does and exhibits about 40,000 distinct levels. A detailed dis-
cussion of dealing with this type of categorical variable is beyond the scope
of this book, although one possible approach is described briefly at the end of
Chapter 10. The second type of many-level categorical variable arises in settings
where the inherent structure of the variable can be exploited to develop special-
ized analysis techniques. Text data is a case in point: the number of distinct
words in a document or a collection of documents can be enormous, but special
techniques for analyzing text data have been developed. Chapter 8 introduces
some of the methods available in R for analyzing text data.
The mention of “graphs” in the Diaconis quote is particularly important
since humans are much better at seeing patterns in graphs than in large collec-
tions of numbers. This is one of the reasons R supports so many different graph-
ical display methods (e.g., scatterplots, barplots, boxplots, quantile-quantile
plots, histograms, mosaic plots, and many, many more), and one of the reasons
this book places so much emphasis on them. That said, two points are important
here. First, graphical techniques that are useful to the data analyst in finding
important structure in a dataset are not necessarily useful in explaining those
findings to others. For example, large arrays of two-variable scatterplots may be
a useful screening tool for finding related variables or anomalous data subsets,
but these are extremely poor ways of presenting results to others because they
essentially require the viewer to repeat the analysis for themselves. Instead, re-
sults should be presented to others using displays that highlight and emphasize
the analyst’s findings to make sure that the intended message is received. This
distinction between exploratory and explanatory displays is discussed further in
Chapter 2 on graphics in R and in Chapter 6 on crafting data stories (i.e., ex-
plaining your findings), but most of the emphasis in this book is on exploratory
graphical tools to help us obtain these results.
The second point to note here is that the utility of any graphical display
can depend strongly on exactly what is plotted, as illustrated in Fig. 1.1. This
issue has two components: the mechanics of how a subset of data is displayed,
and the choice of what goes into that data subset. While both of these aspects
are important, the second is far more important than the first. Specifically, it is
important to note that the form in which data arrives may not be the most useful
for analysis. To illustrate, Fig. 1.1 shows two sets of plots, both constructed
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
invokes the Saxon Chronicle and other authorities in proof of the
credibility of his narrative, but these references themselves show
that he is not unconscious of the fact that his story stands in need of
extraneous support.
And yet, this artificiality being once conceded, how beautiful is the
structure! How fine the material, and how symmetrically it is put
together! Sometimes, perhaps, the narrative lags a little; sometimes
the descriptions, like those of Cedric’s hall or Athelstane’s castle, are
longer than the impatience of the reader cares to tolerate. Yet the
great scenes of the drama, how vividly do all these stand forth in our
memory! How splendid the stage setting and how well arranged the
incidents!
The story opens quietly. Gurth, the swineherd, and Wamba, the
jester of Cedric the Saxon, are driving home a herd of swine, when
they are overtaken by Prior Aymer and the Templar Brian de Bois-
Guilbert with their train. Then follows the supper scene at
Rotherwood, the residence of Cedric, where Ivanhoe, disguised as a
wandering palmer, returned from Palestine, visits his father’s home,
answers the boasting taunts of the Templar, saves the poor Jew,
Isaac of York, and is supplied with armor for the coming tourney.
“Know, bright lily of the vale of Baca, that thy father is already in
the hands of a powerful alchemist, who knows how to convert
into gold and silver even the rusty bars of a dungeon grate. The
venerable Isaac is subjected to an alembic, which will distill from
him all he holds dear, without any assistance from my requests or
thy entreaty. Thy ransom must be paid by love and beauty, and in
no other coin will I accept it.”
And yet, in spite of such defects, the heroism displayed by Rebecca
in this particular scene has made it one of the most attractive in the
entire story. Rebecca is indeed one of the noblest characters in
fiction, and the portrait is natural and human, as well as heroic.
Although she was delivered from the stake by her champion, the
story ends sadly for her, since the knight whom she loves has
become the husband of Rowena. Scott tells us in his preface that he
has been censured for this, but he adds, with admirable taste, that
he thinks that a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp is
degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with
temporal prosperity.
That same night Don Rodrigo has sent his bravoes to abduct Lucia.
They steal into the house, but find it empty, and are suddenly
startled by the ringing of the bell, which has followed the outcry of
Don Abbondio. “Each of the villains seems to hear in these peals his
name, surname, and nickname,” and they flee in consternation,
while the betrothed betake themselves to the convent of Father
Cristoforo, at Pescarenico; and the tumult aroused in the village by
these events, admirably pictured by the novelist, at length subsides.
Renzo reaches Milan at the time of the breaking out of the bread
riots, due to the prevailing famine. The looting and destruction of
one of the bake-houses is vividly described, and also the attack upon
the superintendent of provisions. Renzo can not keep out of these
exciting scenes, and becomes quite a hero, making a speech to the
crowd, innocent enough in purpose, but easily construed into
sedition by a secret agent of the government who hears it, attaches
himself to Renzo, acts as his guide to an inn in the neighborhood,
where the innocent young man unlawfully refuses to give his name
to the innkeeper, but unwittingly reveals it to his guide; then goes to
bed intoxicated, is arrested next morning, escapes from the officers
of justice in the midst of the crowd, flees from the city, and does not
stop until he has quit the duchy of Milan, crossed the Adda, and
taken refuge with his cousin Bortolo in the Bergamascan territory—
all of which is followed by proceedings declaring him a dangerous
outlaw,—luckily, however, after he is well out of reach.
When the morning breaks after a night of this remorse, he hears the
distant chiming of bells; learns of the festival of the people in the
neighborhood who were going to meet their bishop, Cardinal
Federigo Borromeo, and, by a sudden impulse, he too determines to
go and present himself to the cardinal. The history of this great
prelate, a saintly man, is given in detail—his works of charity, his
writings, his efforts in the cause of education. The Unnamed is
welcomed by the Cardinal with joy and genuine tenderness, and the
details of a religious conversion, often repulsive to an unsympathetic
reader, here become, through the author’s skill, both natural and
attractive.
“Signor Curate, why did you not unite in marriage this Lucia with
her bethrothed husband?”....
“‘And why then, I might ask you, did you undertake an office
which binds upon you a continual warfare with the passions of the
world?... Ah, if for so many years of pastoral labors you have
loved your flock (and how could you not love them?)—if you have
placed in them your affections, your cares, your happiness,
courage ought not to fail you in the moment of need; love is
intrepid.’”
The unhappy man now finds that he has been betrayed by Griso, the
chief of his bravoes, who, under pretense of bringing the doctor, has
introduced into the room the horrible monatti, whose duty it is to
drag away the dead to their graves and the sick to the Lazaretto.
They plunder the stricken man of his treasures before his eyes, and
then carry him away.
“The monatto laid his right hand on his heart; and then zealously,
and almost obsequiously, rather from the new feeling by which he
was, as it were, subdued, than on account of the unlooked-for
reward, hastened to make a little room on the car for the infant
dead. The lady, giving it a kiss on the forehead, laid it on the spot
prepared for it, as upon a bed, arranged it there, covering it with
a pure white linen cloth, and pronounced the parting words:
‘Farewell, Cecilia! rest in peace! This evening we, too, will join
you, to rest together forever. In the meanwhile, pray for us; for I
will pray for you and the others.’ Then, turning again to the
monatto, ‘You,’ said she, ‘when you pass this way in the evening,
may come to fetch me too, and not me only.’
Renzo learns that Lucia has been taken to the Lazaretto, and he
proceeds thither. The scenes in that dreadful abode of suffering are
described in detail. Here he meets Father Cristoforo, who in tending
the sick is already falling a victim.
Renzo seeks Lucia in vain amid the procession of the few persons
who were going forth cured from the Lazaretto, but he finds her at
last, convalescent in one of the little huts in the woman’s quarters. A
very characteristic conversation ensued between the lovers in regard
to the binding nature of her vow, which Renzo naturally disputes,
and calls Father Cristoforo to remonstrate and interpose. The good
father consolingly tells Lucia that she had no right to offer to the
Lord the will of another to whom she was already pledged; and by
virtue of the authority of the church he absolves her from her vow.
It is not long until the lovers, restored to their former happiness,
leave the Lazaretto; and the book concludes with the consummation
of their wishes—their marriage, and a happy wedded life.
A great deal of quiet satire pervades the story. Take, for instance,
the following, in the description of Lecco, at the very opening of the
book:
“those prudent persons who shrink back with alarm from the
extreme of virtue as well as vice, are forever proclaiming that
perfection lies in the medium between the two, and fix that
medium exactly at the point which they have reached, and where
they find themselves very much at their ease.”
“It was well for Lucia that she was not the only one to whom
Donna Prassede had to do good.... Besides the rest of the family,
all of whom were persons more or less needing amendment and
guidance—besides all the other occasions which offered
themselves to her, or she contrived to find, of extending the same
kind offices, of her own free will, to many to whom she was under
no obligations; she had also five daughters, none of whom were
at home, but who gave her much more to think about than if they
had been. Three of these were nuns, two were married; hence
Donna Prassede naturally found herself with three monasteries,
and two houses to superintend; a vast and complicated
undertaking, and the more arduous, because two husbands,
backed by fathers, mothers, and brothers; three abbesses,
supported by other dignitaries, and by many nuns, would not
accept her superintendence. It was a complete warfare, alias five
warfares, concealed, and even courteous, up to a certain point,
but ever active, ever vigilant. There was in every one of these
places a continued watchfulness to avoid her solicitude, to close
the door against her counsels, to elude her inquiries, and to keep
her in the dark, as far as possible, on every undertaking. We do
not mention the resistance, the difficulties she encountered in the
management of other still more extraneous affairs; it is well
known that one must generally do good to men by force.”
The story, like some other of the greatest works of fiction—like Don
Quixote, Les Misérables, nay, like Henry Esmond itself, is somewhat
too prolix. The long historical citations, the extracts from the edicts
and proclamations of the time, look as if the author considered it
necessary to prove his story rather than to let it prove itself. That
Renzo and Lucia should leave Father Cristoforo to die alone is, to my
mind, the most serious blemish in the book; but in spite of these
shortcomings, “The Betrothed” is entitled to one of the first places in
the front rank of the masterpieces of fiction.
EUGENIE GRANDET
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
It is not quite fair to Balzac to judge him by any one of the stories in
his encyclopædic “Comedie Humaine.” The countless varieties of life
and character which he portrays show the author’s versatility and
power, and have perhaps a value from their very number which can
not be adequately treated when we consider only a single specimen
of his work. Many of his characters, it is true, are grotesques; some
are absolute deformities; others are hard to understand by any but a
Frenchman,—French human nature, as it seems to me, being a little
different from human nature elsewhere; but there is one great work
of his which, although it is not without its morbid side, must appeal
to the common consciousness of all mankind, and bring to every
human heart the conviction of its spiritual truth. “Eugenie Grandet”
is a novel of this universal kind of excellence.
This is a story, the like of which has happened many a time in actual
life, but the cold skeleton of the tale as given above conveys not the
slightest idea of the warm flesh and blood with which it is invested.
The description of the old street and the dreary house and its
furniture is a literary jewel. The account of the way in which Grandet
accumulates his fortune, and of the neighborhood rumors regarding
his wealth, stirs our own acquisitiveness as we read it, and shows
him to be a very natural and almost inevitable sort of miser. He is
moreover a man of commanding ability, who extorts respect even
though he inspires abhorrence. The details of his habits, his
economies, and his schemes, as well as his personal appearance, are
admirably given. Equally lifelike are the descriptions of big Nanon,
the devoted house-servant, starved and overtasked, yet always
grateful to the master who took her when none others would; of the
wife, submissive, sensitive, magnanimous, and uncomplaining; and
of Eugenie, a girl who has grown up in perfect innocence of the
world, pure, beautiful, and of a generous and noble spirit. All these
are the subjects of an odious domestic tyranny on the part of
“Goodman Grandet,” the particulars of which are set forth with
powerful fidelity.
Charles is a rather uninteresting young dandy, who comes arrayed
for conquest. It is not unnatural that an artless girl like Eugenie
should fall in love with him, and her devices to procure him such
luxuries as a cake, a wax candle, and sugar for his coffee, add to the
charm of their simple love-making. The sympathy of the two women
in his sorrow contrasts sharply with the sordid calculations of the
miser, and the scene where Eugenie learns his needs by furtively
reading two of his letters (for even her good qualities are decidedly
of the French type) and then brings him her little store of gold, and
when he hesitates, begs him on her knees to take it—this scene is
very effective, as is also her despairing cry, after he departs, “O
mother, mother, if I had God’s power for one moment!”
But the more tragic parts of this simple drama are near its close,—
the stormy scene when Grandet learns that Eugenie has given
Charles her money, her imprisonment in a room of the old house,
her mother’s illness and patient death, and, ghastliest of all, the last
hours of the miser:
“So long as he could open his eyes, where the last sparks of life
seemed to linger, they used to turn at once to the door of the
room where all his treasures lay, and he would say to his
daughter, in tones that seemed to thrill with a panic of fear:
“‘Yes, father.’
“Then Eugenie used to spread out the louis on a table before him,
and he would sit for whole hours with his eyes fixed on the louis
in an unseeing stare, like that of a child who begins to see for the
first time; and sometimes a weak infantine smile, painful to see,
would steal across his features.
“‘That warms me!’ he muttered more than once, and his face
expressed a perfect content.
“When the curé came to administer the sacrament, all the life
seemed to have died out of the miser’s eyes, but they lit up for
the first time for many hours at the sight of the silver crucifix, the
candlesticks, and holy water vessel, all of silver; he fixed his gaze
on the precious metal, and the wen on his face twitched for the
last time.
“As the priest held the gilded crucifix above him that the image of
Christ might be laid to his lips, he made a frightful effort to clutch
it—a last effort which cost him his life. He called Eugenie, who
saw nothing; she was kneeling beside him, bathing in tears the
hand that was growing cold already. ‘Give me your blessing,
father,’ she entreated. ‘Be very careful!’ the last words came from
him; ‘one day you will render an account to me of everything here
below.’ Which utterance clearly shows that a miser should adopt
Christianity as his religion.”
Then follows the long waiting of Eugenie; the dastardly letter sent
by Charles after his return; the noble dignity with which she releases
him and pays his father’s creditors to preserve the honor of one who
is quite careless of it himself, and then resigns herself to her
hopeless destiny.
As for the characters, they are of the simplest type. The dashing
devil-may-care soldier and adventurer, the deep drinker, the heavy
player, the man who with equal gayety defies the bullets of the
enemy and the commonest precepts of morality, has here his
apotheosis. Perhaps the hero of the book even more than
D’Artagnan himself is Athos, the chief of the three musketeers, who,
having made an unfortunate marriage in his youth, has forsaken his
name and station and embarked upon a life of mere adventure. We
love him and admire him, and yet it is hard to tell why upon any
logical or ethical principles we should do either. Yet when he gets
very drunk, or when he hangs his wife because he finds that she
bears upon her shoulder the mark of a criminal conviction, we feel
that he has done in each case exactly the right thing. Generally a
novelist seeks by contrasting his hero with more commonplace
characters to set him off in relief, but in this novel almost everybody
is a hero, and all are equally and superlatively great and admirable,
except perhaps the poor woman who has been hanged and comes
to life again and engages in divers diabolical plots against the rest of
the world.
JANE EYRE
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
“Jane Eyre” is a book which impresses the reader with its power,—I
might say its masculine power, were it not for the fact that the
author gives us at every turn the woman’s point of view.
Jane Eyre now flees from Thornfield, concealing all traces of her
whereabouts. She wanders amid incredible hardships and
destitution, and at last finds shelter at Moor House, the home of St.
John Rivers and his two sisters, who are afterwards discovered to be
her relatives, and with whom she divides a legacy which she
receives from a deceased uncle. St. John is a country clergyman of
high character, full of zeal, ambition, and fanaticism, and determined
to devote his life to missionary service in India. He seeks her hand,
but she realizes that it is not from love but to make her his fellow
laborer in the work of the Gospel. He has sought to inspire her with
his own enthusiasm, and she is on the point of yielding, when she
seems to hear the voice of Rochester calling to her in pain and
anguish. She returns to Thornfield, and finds that the Hall has been
consumed in a conflagration kindled by the maniac, and that
Rochester, who had sought in vain to save the life of the wretched
creature, has been himself rescued, blind and a cripple, from the
ruins. She seeks him and becomes his wife.
But the bare recital of these leading events gives very little idea of
the characters in this somber and tragic tale, or the feelings which
control their actions. The book must be read through to be
understood. From the very beginning the author strikes a resounding
chord in human nature. Brutality to children stirs us to fury, and no
one, not even Dickens or Victor Hugo, has painted this form of
tyranny in livelier colors than Charlotte Brontë. The conduct of Mrs.
Reed and of Rev. Mr. Brocklehurst, the sanctified and inhuman
director of Lowood school, arouses our hot resentment.
Some days afterwards, while the author was leaning upon the
parapet of the quay at Cordova, Carmen, a young gipsy girl of a
strange and savage beauty, comes and sits near him. After some
conversation he accompanies her to her residence to have his
fortune told. Suddenly the door opens, and Navarro, in a very bad
humor, enters the room. A quarrel ensues between him and Carmen
in the gipsy language, and it appears from the gestures that the