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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.