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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
I picked this copy up at the closing month sale at Skyline Books in NYC.
So this is my "last" gap book in my "Major Novels of George Eliot" subjective quest of the winter. Silas Marner is popular and Felix Holt is long, and someday soon I'll read both. But having taken a glance at some lit crit, I think I've covered the works I'm most likely to encounter SPOILERS about if I read any. Which is uh, what was actually most important to me, in this quest.
Speaking of spoilers, I think this is the rare book I can't write about at all without the filter on.
It's partly because: very little in this book happens as I expected it to happen. Which isn't bad. But also, sometimes, I wondered why. Which is a new feeling for me, reading Eliot. In my opinion, George Eliot writes novels that are perfect. This actually doesn't mean I always jaw-drop love them, but it means that everything they are is exactly as it should be to become the richest, rightest story. It will stay and stay with you.
You know that thing that often happens when you read someone's first novel, and you notice all the things that are first-novely about it? And they give you reservations but you also forgive them. I guess the writer I least expected this feeling from is George Eliot, but this is how I felt through nearly the whole book. The carpenters speak always in carpentry metaphors; the farmers speak always in farming metaphors. Like simple country folk! Would you like to read a six-page description of a room or person each time one is visited? This is the book for you! There are also about ten too many harsh digs at women that... maybe used to seem funny or true, or just like evidence that the author was a man.
I acknowledge my response there is unusual, because this book was and is incredibly loved, and was the standard against which all the author's other books were compared. Its strength of atmosphere is one of the things most loved about it. Hear the peasants speak! See the squires dance! Imagine yourself really there, in the dairy! See Hetty's beautiful, pink, round, beautiful roundness and pinkness. This transporting description is a beloved trait of the novel. Victoria loved it so much she commissioned royal paintings of its scenes:
Hetty
and Dinah.
And it is all that, but much of it is also the kind of reading that makes high schoolers never want to touch a book again in their lives.
Anyway, it does have an undoubted power once, as such high schoolers would say, shit gets real. Because it does, and all of the frank hardness that George Eliot cultivates in the rest of her novels is there, too. The situation becomes uncomfortable quite fast, and you know the crushings will come. The ones that come down are huge. Almost too huge? I was setting up in my mind the slow, long crushing of Eliot's other conflicts, but this one works very very differently. It's made me feel odd, because part of me has this uncharacteristically conservative feeling that this story is too much, too loud and on the nose, that I prefer the more interpersonal disasters later in her works, with all the little boats.
(A helpful flowchart I made)
But then, Hetty runs away and everything changes. The first chapter of her wandering, when Eliot manages to have us understand that Hetty's realized she's pregnant, is amazing and frightening. I was talking about it and was asked, "How do you discover that's what the situation is, if the author's not allowed to say anything about sex or pregnancy?" and I couldn't exactly answer. You just know. Hetty's horror and panic is just that real, that it couldn't be anything else. The chapter is named "The Hidden Dread" for goodness sake.
We knew that this was going on. We knew what Arthur was in denial about. We knew that he lied to Adam, in love with Hetty, when Adam asks if she "can never be my wife." I didn't know where it would lead. I thought, actually, that Hetty would be Adam's wife -- that the three of them would have to live with the situation they'd put themselves into, and Arthur would inherit his position as the squire, and everything would be totes awkward and horrible.
I knew a baby would be born. I knew the baby would become dead. But a reader is kind of blindsided by this still -- we leave Hetty to her hungry wandering, and then the details of what happens do not emerge for a while. She's in prison, she won't speak. Others speak her story for her. Some woman she stayed with witnesses the birth, and mostly sounds as if she's just peeved her sleep was disturbed. Someone found its body and gives testimony that Hetty looked like a wild beggar.
The baby is always called "it." By everyone. This was actually the most powerful thing, maybe? Because I know it was so deliberate to write it that way. In real life, they wouldn't speak that way. It would be a he or a she, a person. Doing this to the baby in this story makes the story be about Hetty. It's extremely unsettling, making you feel how not existing the child is, and yet feel extremely strong for Hetty at the same time.
I think it almost is just too hard to believe that what happens with her trial and sentencing could really be happening. It's almost too unbelievable to make a good story. Of course, the problem with that is that it's plenty real. It happened enough. I read that George Eliot heard this story as a teenager from her aunt (a model of Dinah), who counseled a girl going to the gallows like this. There's a story of a woman sentenced to hang for child murder in Edinburgh, 1728, who did, and lived. Hetty is every teenage girl leaving her newborn in the bathroom trash at school, it's just, then she's sentenced to die for it.
The fact that she is saved from this is almost meaningless, it seems. Everything this book is comes from this part of the novel, from what Hetty undergoes in these events. It's telling us about having to live with our actions and inactions, and how our innocence is lost. Hetty's innocence is lost in ignorance and selfishness, by becoming a fool. Adam's innocence is lost when he sees he is foolish for believing in hers. Their regret and shame change them into new people. Both of them feel that they won't be able to ever get over it, and they are sort of justified in this.
Oddly, though, Hetty is technically spared her death sentence, but she is not spared in the rest of the story. (The fact that a whole section is still left after Hetty's trial reminded me of there being a whole section of Anna Karenina left after her death.) It's just Adam who gets to keep going, and become happy.
I'm really glad I read this, because these novels are able to keep going and make new lives within their readers, too. I should probably rate this higher, because I think my feelings for it are going to prove very fluid with time. We're going to have to visit again.
So this is my "last" gap book in my "Major Novels of George Eliot" subjective quest of the winter. Silas Marner is popular and Felix Holt is long, and someday soon I'll read both. But having taken a glance at some lit crit, I think I've covered the works I'm most likely to encounter SPOILERS about if I read any. Which is uh, what was actually most important to me, in this quest.
Speaking of spoilers, I think this is the rare book I can't write about at all without the filter on.
It's partly because: very little in this book happens as I expected it to happen. Which isn't bad. But also, sometimes, I wondered why. Which is a new feeling for me, reading Eliot. In my opinion, George Eliot writes novels that are perfect. This actually doesn't mean I always jaw-drop love them, but it means that everything they are is exactly as it should be to become the richest, rightest story. It will stay and stay with you.
You know that thing that often happens when you read someone's first novel, and you notice all the things that are first-novely about it? And they give you reservations but you also forgive them. I guess the writer I least expected this feeling from is George Eliot, but this is how I felt through nearly the whole book. The carpenters speak always in carpentry metaphors; the farmers speak always in farming metaphors. Like simple country folk! Would you like to read a six-page description of a room or person each time one is visited? This is the book for you! There are also about ten too many harsh digs at women that... maybe used to seem funny or true, or just like evidence that the author was a man.
I acknowledge my response there is unusual, because this book was and is incredibly loved, and was the standard against which all the author's other books were compared. Its strength of atmosphere is one of the things most loved about it. Hear the peasants speak! See the squires dance! Imagine yourself really there, in the dairy! See Hetty's beautiful, pink, round, beautiful roundness and pinkness. This transporting description is a beloved trait of the novel. Victoria loved it so much she commissioned royal paintings of its scenes:
Hetty
and Dinah.
And it is all that, but much of it is also the kind of reading that makes high schoolers never want to touch a book again in their lives.
Anyway, it does have an undoubted power once, as such high schoolers would say, shit gets real. Because it does, and all of the frank hardness that George Eliot cultivates in the rest of her novels is there, too. The situation becomes uncomfortable quite fast, and you know the crushings will come. The ones that come down are huge. Almost too huge? I was setting up in my mind the slow, long crushing of Eliot's other conflicts, but this one works very very differently. It's made me feel odd, because part of me has this uncharacteristically conservative feeling that this story is too much, too loud and on the nose, that I prefer the more interpersonal disasters later in her works, with all the little boats.
(A helpful flowchart I made)
But then, Hetty runs away and everything changes. The first chapter of her wandering, when Eliot manages to have us understand that Hetty's realized she's pregnant, is amazing and frightening. I was talking about it and was asked, "How do you discover that's what the situation is, if the author's not allowed to say anything about sex or pregnancy?" and I couldn't exactly answer. You just know. Hetty's horror and panic is just that real, that it couldn't be anything else. The chapter is named "The Hidden Dread" for goodness sake.
We knew that this was going on. We knew what Arthur was in denial about. We knew that he lied to Adam, in love with Hetty, when Adam asks if she "can never be my wife." I didn't know where it would lead. I thought, actually, that Hetty would be Adam's wife -- that the three of them would have to live with the situation they'd put themselves into, and Arthur would inherit his position as the squire, and everything would be totes awkward and horrible.
I knew a baby would be born. I knew the baby would become dead. But a reader is kind of blindsided by this still -- we leave Hetty to her hungry wandering, and then the details of what happens do not emerge for a while. She's in prison, she won't speak. Others speak her story for her. Some woman she stayed with witnesses the birth, and mostly sounds as if she's just peeved her sleep was disturbed. Someone found its body and gives testimony that Hetty looked like a wild beggar.
The baby is always called "it." By everyone. This was actually the most powerful thing, maybe? Because I know it was so deliberate to write it that way. In real life, they wouldn't speak that way. It would be a he or a she, a person. Doing this to the baby in this story makes the story be about Hetty. It's extremely unsettling, making you feel how not existing the child is, and yet feel extremely strong for Hetty at the same time.
I think it almost is just too hard to believe that what happens with her trial and sentencing could really be happening. It's almost too unbelievable to make a good story. Of course, the problem with that is that it's plenty real. It happened enough. I read that George Eliot heard this story as a teenager from her aunt (a model of Dinah), who counseled a girl going to the gallows like this. There's a story of a woman sentenced to hang for child murder in Edinburgh, 1728, who did, and lived. Hetty is every teenage girl leaving her newborn in the bathroom trash at school, it's just, then she's sentenced to die for it.
The fact that she is saved from this is almost meaningless, it seems. Everything this book is comes from this part of the novel, from what Hetty undergoes in these events. It's telling us about having to live with our actions and inactions, and how our innocence is lost. Hetty's innocence is lost in ignorance and selfishness, by becoming a fool. Adam's innocence is lost when he sees he is foolish for believing in hers. Their regret and shame change them into new people. Both of them feel that they won't be able to ever get over it, and they are sort of justified in this.
Oddly, though, Hetty is technically spared her death sentence, but she is not spared in the rest of the story. (The fact that a whole section is still left after Hetty's trial reminded me of there being a whole section of Anna Karenina left after her death.) It's just Adam who gets to keep going, and become happy.
I'm really glad I read this, because these novels are able to keep going and make new lives within their readers, too. I should probably rate this higher, because I think my feelings for it are going to prove very fluid with time. We're going to have to visit again.
2.5/5
There's religion, there's gender relations, and then there's the matter of having enough fresh young bodies to form a standing army whenever the nation requires such, breaking up the populace in the far more controllable form of the nuclear family as effectively as the commons was broken up by enclosure, and protecting economic stratifications from veering wildly out of a family's/larger society's control simply because one descendent wasn't class conscious enough to keep it in their paints/skirts. True, there will be some slip ups, but there's a certain vein of human sentiment absorbed in matters of shaking one's head/self-flagellation/communal outpouring of grief and/or shame to be mined during the course of such events, and since the imperial mechanisms that instigate such needless tragedies are too far removed to make the newspapers suppled to the average village estate, even the odd execution or transportation banishment can be put to good mass cathartic use. That, mechanistically stated, is the crux of the twist and push of the plot's rise, fall, and ultimate denouement; everything else is Evans writing what she knows, loves, believes, and otherwise wishes to convince the reader of, and if one has any experience with 19th c./Victorian works, one knows how wildly that style can swerve between magnificently powerful and insipidly piddling depending on the author at its helm. I didn't actually go through with rolling my eyes at certain less than inobtrusive sections, but it was still rather gratifying to see one of the more onerous sections pointed out in this books' Wikipedia article as being of especial weakness, and while it is true that a first novel often is as a first novel does, having a reading experience that is generally of especial relish be broken up by obstinate aping at the sermon on the mount tends to be more disappointing than a piece that is comparable in neither its highs nor its lows in its smoothness of mediocrity. One could well assume, then, that this particular piece could serve as an introduction to Evans, and yet, it was due to the fact that I had read so much of what was to come that I came out liking it more than I imagine I would have. A conundrum for those who lack the tendency to fling themselves at the bigger, the better, and ride them out on a hope for the best strapped to a preparation for the worst, but in any case, I've largely said my piece, and will leave the reader to make up their own minds regarding their own trajectory.
With the completion of this work, I have exactly one unread novel left of Evans', along with with a bevy of novellas, essays, poetry collections, and other miscellanea that I could see myself picking up at one or another opportune moment for one or another practical reason. She's a writer who made her mark during a year that marked the most significant turning point that my life has undergone thus far, and my reading years have reverberated with her words, for better or worse, ever since. For all that, Evans is not a gold standard that I'm willing to make endless excuses for (I'm hard pressed to think of any author for whom I do such these days), but the combination of rare historical esteem and true writing worth has always been a hard thing for me to resist, and as I'm pretty much destined to test my tastes out on some of the "oldies but goodies" every year for the rest of my days, there are few writers I can think of whom I'd rather be endlessly reading than her. The point is that, while this work probably wouldn't exist without certain brutally dehumanizing historical ideologies providing it with a narrative arc that is both choked to the gills with pathos and inexorably convenient in its inceptions and its conclusions, it spends enough time putting on flesh and muscle and blood and bone to become far more than the sum of its parts. Not the greatest of its writer's works by far, but I can think of many an author whose entire bibliography cannot compare in quality to this individual piece, and if that doesn't give an accurate representation of the results of my almost decade long engagement with Evans, nothing will.
It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy, and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair.2013, 2014, a repeat of 2013 in 2016, 2018, the bridge from 2018 to 2019, 2020, 2021. These are the years that I chose, for one reason or another, to commit a portion to reading the works of Mary Ann Evans, also known as George Eliot. If I had to rank my experiences thus far, 2018 (Daniel Deronda) would come first, followed by 2013/2016 (Middlemarch), 2014 (The Mill on the Floss), 2018-2019 (Romola), and 2021 at the second to last, preceding only 2020 (Silas Marner) For this work is, to put it plainly, a failure of sympathetic imagination, and the fact that I rated it more highly than others that are similarly flawed is simply due to the fact that I cannot deny how much of a pleasure it was, despite the length and certain sections of particularly nauseating proselytization, to read. Like many an author before her and multitudes after her, Evans decided to sprinkle her steadfast tale of Good English Village Living™ with a sensationalism of the Other, heard in passing from a relative and so contorted as to fit contemporaneous Victorian mores of writing as to lose almost all sense of credibility. Needless to say, this first novelistic publication paled in comparison to its successors, and yet, while reading, I could see so many of the seeds that were destined to flourish when handled with far more moderation, compassion, and even a hint of the kind of true grace untinged by holier-than-thou-isms and other breeds of smug sentiment that I was somewhat glad that Evans worked out some of her grasping polemics and jealous overtones here and thus hone her skills such as to become capable of composing her grandest creations. I still don't think this work rightly earns its place in certain lists prone to lumping in the whole lot of Austen/Brontë/Woolf/etc and thus save themselves from having to think of twenty to thirty other individual women writers worthy of inclusion, but it was a comfort to read for the most part, and as these times keep on going, I won't begrudge it that.
Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heartstrings to the beings that jar us at every movement.
There's religion, there's gender relations, and then there's the matter of having enough fresh young bodies to form a standing army whenever the nation requires such, breaking up the populace in the far more controllable form of the nuclear family as effectively as the commons was broken up by enclosure, and protecting economic stratifications from veering wildly out of a family's/larger society's control simply because one descendent wasn't class conscious enough to keep it in their paints/skirts. True, there will be some slip ups, but there's a certain vein of human sentiment absorbed in matters of shaking one's head/self-flagellation/communal outpouring of grief and/or shame to be mined during the course of such events, and since the imperial mechanisms that instigate such needless tragedies are too far removed to make the newspapers suppled to the average village estate, even the odd execution or transportation banishment can be put to good mass cathartic use. That, mechanistically stated, is the crux of the twist and push of the plot's rise, fall, and ultimate denouement; everything else is Evans writing what she knows, loves, believes, and otherwise wishes to convince the reader of, and if one has any experience with 19th c./Victorian works, one knows how wildly that style can swerve between magnificently powerful and insipidly piddling depending on the author at its helm. I didn't actually go through with rolling my eyes at certain less than inobtrusive sections, but it was still rather gratifying to see one of the more onerous sections pointed out in this books' Wikipedia article as being of especial weakness, and while it is true that a first novel often is as a first novel does, having a reading experience that is generally of especial relish be broken up by obstinate aping at the sermon on the mount tends to be more disappointing than a piece that is comparable in neither its highs nor its lows in its smoothness of mediocrity. One could well assume, then, that this particular piece could serve as an introduction to Evans, and yet, it was due to the fact that I had read so much of what was to come that I came out liking it more than I imagine I would have. A conundrum for those who lack the tendency to fling themselves at the bigger, the better, and ride them out on a hope for the best strapped to a preparation for the worst, but in any case, I've largely said my piece, and will leave the reader to make up their own minds regarding their own trajectory.
With the completion of this work, I have exactly one unread novel left of Evans', along with with a bevy of novellas, essays, poetry collections, and other miscellanea that I could see myself picking up at one or another opportune moment for one or another practical reason. She's a writer who made her mark during a year that marked the most significant turning point that my life has undergone thus far, and my reading years have reverberated with her words, for better or worse, ever since. For all that, Evans is not a gold standard that I'm willing to make endless excuses for (I'm hard pressed to think of any author for whom I do such these days), but the combination of rare historical esteem and true writing worth has always been a hard thing for me to resist, and as I'm pretty much destined to test my tastes out on some of the "oldies but goodies" every year for the rest of my days, there are few writers I can think of whom I'd rather be endlessly reading than her. The point is that, while this work probably wouldn't exist without certain brutally dehumanizing historical ideologies providing it with a narrative arc that is both choked to the gills with pathos and inexorably convenient in its inceptions and its conclusions, it spends enough time putting on flesh and muscle and blood and bone to become far more than the sum of its parts. Not the greatest of its writer's works by far, but I can think of many an author whose entire bibliography cannot compare in quality to this individual piece, and if that doesn't give an accurate representation of the results of my almost decade long engagement with Evans, nothing will.
In this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes.She didn't follow her own advice so well here, but she would eventually do so, within her own sphere, in time. Sometimes, that's all one can ask for from a fellow mortal human being.
adventurous
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really enjoyed and was very intrigued by the story which related to the persecution of a woman accused of "child murder" (not abortion; this happened after it was already born), and how the people of the time reacted to the accusations and imprisonment. But I didn't find the book all that moving...and, in fact, I found the characters frustrating and rather one-dimensional. I thought the story was pretty bland and largely predictable, and I found I was angry at how saintly Adam's brother was about certain things (don't want to spoil anything). Every character had his or her caricature, and they stuck to it through to the end. And I am sometimes frustrated by George Eliot, because while I know that some of the things she writes about women was tongue-in-cheek (seeing as she wrote under a masculine nom de plume), the way her female characters are can b e pretty awfully stereotypical. Anyway, it was a quaint story, but I probably wouldn't recommend it. I feel like I have more to say, but I think I'm being more redundant than anything else right now, and not getting my point across. Blah.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Adam's a good man. Hetty's a cautionary tale. Dina's the real deal. This book has absolutely nothing to do with the new Trump administration. Long live escape reading!
Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2018-A book written by a female author using a male pseudonym.
This was a really good book. The characters are interesting and almost all of them are likeable, yet flawed. The story is also interesting and there's really not a lull in the middle, which I find a lot of in classics (in my opinion, of course).
This was a really good book. The characters are interesting and almost all of them are likeable, yet flawed. The story is also interesting and there's really not a lull in the middle, which I find a lot of in classics (in my opinion, of course).
While probably the weakest of George Eliot's novels--I've yet to read them all, but I'm getting there--it still has some wonderful things in it, but also some pretty severe deficiencies that hold it back from achieving the profundity of The Mill on the Floss, say, or Silas Marner.
As usual for Eliot, the novel is smoothly written and full of terrific authorial reflections, truisms presented as asides or conclusions from the narrator's observations, that often astound me for their great wisdom. Such sagacity always makes me feel in good hands when reading an Eliot. I just love the voice I'm listening to. Also, as usual, there's a wonderful cast of characters, who are not silly, forced caricatures as in Dickens, but common people made fascinating by the narrator's interest in them and the penetrating eye cast upon them. Again, as in Eliot's other works--really novels of this era and maybe novels in general--our characters are put to the test through adversity and thus the story is pretty engrossing as we're invested in the people and yearn to see how they will cope.
On the downside, however, here I was far more interested in Hetty than in Adam and thus the story ended for me about 50 excruciatingly dreary pages before the novel finally comes to a conclusion. Most of the events leading up to the adversity, as well as these events' eventual outcomes, are so predictable here that I found myself muttering "Get on with it" more than a couple of times, something I never did before when reading an Eliot--hence my assuming this is her weakest work. But, even in Hetty's tale, the skirting and avoiding of the topic of sexual intercourse in a novel that centers around a pregnancy, is doomed to feel, in today's world anyway, rather gutted and even improbable. It's like a pregnant Barbie doll--you can only wonder how she got that way without having any genitalia. It just doesn't ring true, no matter how cleverly our narrator tries to telegraph the information through silence. 600+ pages of silence are rather a lot.
As usual for Eliot, the novel is smoothly written and full of terrific authorial reflections, truisms presented as asides or conclusions from the narrator's observations, that often astound me for their great wisdom. Such sagacity always makes me feel in good hands when reading an Eliot. I just love the voice I'm listening to. Also, as usual, there's a wonderful cast of characters, who are not silly, forced caricatures as in Dickens, but common people made fascinating by the narrator's interest in them and the penetrating eye cast upon them. Again, as in Eliot's other works--really novels of this era and maybe novels in general--our characters are put to the test through adversity and thus the story is pretty engrossing as we're invested in the people and yearn to see how they will cope.
On the downside, however, here I was far more interested in Hetty than in Adam and thus the story ended for me about 50 excruciatingly dreary pages before the novel finally comes to a conclusion. Most of the events leading up to the adversity, as well as these events' eventual outcomes, are so predictable here that I found myself muttering "Get on with it" more than a couple of times, something I never did before when reading an Eliot--hence my assuming this is her weakest work. But, even in Hetty's tale, the skirting and avoiding of the topic of sexual intercourse in a novel that centers around a pregnancy, is doomed to feel, in today's world anyway, rather gutted and even improbable. It's like a pregnant Barbie doll--you can only wonder how she got that way without having any genitalia. It just doesn't ring true, no matter how cleverly our narrator tries to telegraph the information through silence. 600+ pages of silence are rather a lot.
emotional
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix