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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read this novel because someone told me it had opium use in it (for my dissertation), but I didn't find any. Oh, well -- it's still one more George Eliot read! This was very good, though it still doesn't touch Middlemarch or The Mill on the Floss. Starts very slowly, but becomes quite gripping. The relationship between the vain Hetty and the saintlike Dinah seems like a kind of blueprint for the less extreme Rosamond and Dorothea. And the idea of a female preacher is really interesting. But what is especially impressive about this novel is that, like Eliot's other novels, she really makes you see a perspective and motive you otherwise don't get and helps you understand characters who would normally just be "bad" and thus given no inner life. You don't necessarily identify with such characters, but you can see their point of view, something that is rare in Victorian novelists (and even in contemporary ones, for that matter). To see such an extended representation of a seduced woman and especially of her seducer is highly unusual in the Victorian novels I've read. (For the seduced/fallen woman, there's Tess and Ruth, but not much else I can think of -- other fallen women are sometimes sympathetically portrayed but almost always othered -- we can pity them but must see them as very different from ourselves). The ending was disappointing (though very Victorian, so I wasn't really surprised, other than hoping for something different from Eliot). However, I'm more and more convinced (especially due to my dissertation work) that the ending is not at all the point. Overall, it was an enjoyable read.
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Me and this book are extreme frenemies. At no points was I really like 'This is shite' but also at no point was I like 'This is good' until nearly the end when Hetty goes awol. Speaking of Hetty, every second page of this book is basically: 'Hetty is so fit. She is good looking. Everyone wants her cause she's mega, mega fit. There are people who aren't good looking, but not Hetty, cause Hetty is hot btw!'. I think we're meant to think she's a bitch when she abandons Adam and ventures like a 100 miles to try and find Arthur and then it turns out Arthur's not even there but I just felt pure sorry for her and found parallels between her journey and me trekking to Sala Gold when I don't even want to go out that night but I go anyway incase my bimonthly obsession happens to be there. But one thing about me is I'm never gonna feel sorry for Adam cause he's soooo annoying. He's genuinely such an ick. And the ending came out of nowhere to me and if I was Seth I would have become the Joker because of it.
I've been working on Difficult Things in therapy lately. I'm at a point the last couple weeks where I've just had the kind of big shift in thinking that swings a light around to another angle and what was familiar territory under the old light suddenly looks confrontingly foreign, and then there's the inevitable moment after that where I begin to see all the adjustment this new perspective will require and I think This is too hard. Maybe I didn't want to work on this in the first place.
So I thought to myself I could use some Eliot as comfort and decided to pick up one of the two novels I'd not yet read. But I deliberately don't read synopses before I pick books up and I walked right into a Difficult Thing with a similar character, to the extent that I kept having to stop and take off my glasses and take a few deep breaths. And wincing in places, and groaning at a couple that were just too close.
But - I turned to Eliot because she's so sympathizing, and that part of her writerliness was useful, even if there were places the story itself was hard to bear.
So I thought to myself I could use some Eliot as comfort and decided to pick up one of the two novels I'd not yet read. But I deliberately don't read synopses before I pick books up and I walked right into a Difficult Thing with a similar character, to the extent that I kept having to stop and take off my glasses and take a few deep breaths. And wincing in places, and groaning at a couple that were just too close.
But - I turned to Eliot because she's so sympathizing, and that part of her writerliness was useful, even if there were places the story itself was hard to bear.