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A review by deea_bks
Romola by George Eliot
5.0
Renaissance, Florence. Ending of the 15th Century - beginning of the 16th. A space where people like Girolamo Savonarola, Niccolo Machiavelli and the Medicis are the everyday pawns of an ongoing and complicated reality. Politics handled with ability and shrewdness, religion used for political ends and social movements are displayed with great talent in the background, while in the first plan we witness together with the omniscient author the path of an individual to fame brought by corruption and treachery. In this context of great actuality, the main character, Romola, with a majestic stature and the countenance of a Goddess, experiences love and disappointment and copes with all the good and bad coming her way with the strength of a superior character.
This is my first book by George Eliot and her display of erudition left me breathless. I am not a feminist per se, but when I see that a woman from the past, in spite of all the limitations that society imposed to women, managed to have a strong voice and express with ability and talent things that only men were encouraged to, and that she expressed them with such a spiritual force that you can only applaud the result, I feel admiration (It is true that she wrote under a pseudonim, but she didn't have the access to education that only men in that time did.) It is admiration that I feel to George Eliot’s effort to write a book about a 15th century heroine whose strength of character transcends time, political realities and societal boundaries and stands as a symbol of strength and integrity.
Tito, a young Greek whose handsomeness is striking, has to face the consequences of a choice that is morally wrong and instead of trying to get redemption, he convinces himself that what he chose was the right thing, the thing that anyone in his right mind would have done. His secret pushes him to lie further and further and get deeply immersed in a world of corruption, lies and treachery.
He avoids the past with fierceness, he runs from it, but he cannot get rid of it as the past follows him like his own shadow. The person whom he has wronged most and keeps on morally hurting, becomes his biggest enemy. He pulls the political strings in his favor continually and although he is really skilled at that he ends up his efforts in an unexpected way. His other wife, a young cherubic and innocent blue-eyed “Contadina” with his two children are saved by Romola whose superiority of character is once again proved this way. The ending, the story she tells to Tito’s little son, Lillo, is the advice no one has ever given to Tito and it makes us wonder if his son will be the same as Tito was (pursuing the pleasure) or if he will listen to Romola's advice.
I really enjoyed the display of secondary characters: Nello, the barber and his philosophy of life; Bardo; Pierro, the painter; Baldasare; Tessa etc and the way they are inserted in the story to add flavor to it. I won’t add any other quotes (although I think I highlighted more than 40% of the book) as I don’t want to spoil the pleasure of any person who reads my review and then decides to read the book. George Eliot is now another author in whose craftsmanship I want to delve further by reading other books… I’m thinking Middlemarch sometimes soon.
The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors.
and
As our thought follows close in the slow wake of a dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history – hunger and labour, seed-time and harvest, love and death.
This is my first book by George Eliot and her display of erudition left me breathless. I am not a feminist per se, but when I see that a woman from the past, in spite of all the limitations that society imposed to women, managed to have a strong voice and express with ability and talent things that only men were encouraged to, and that she expressed them with such a spiritual force that you can only applaud the result, I feel admiration (It is true that she wrote under a pseudonim, but she didn't have the access to education that only men in that time did.) It is admiration that I feel to George Eliot’s effort to write a book about a 15th century heroine whose strength of character transcends time, political realities and societal boundaries and stands as a symbol of strength and integrity.
Tito, a young Greek whose handsomeness is striking, has to face the consequences of a choice that is morally wrong and instead of trying to get redemption, he convinces himself that what he chose was the right thing, the thing that anyone in his right mind would have done. His secret pushes him to lie further and further and get deeply immersed in a world of corruption, lies and treachery.
The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires – the enlistment of our self-interest on the side of falsity; as on the other hand, the purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity.Romola, the wife he chose because he thought he loved her at the beginning when his morality was still intact, has an integrity and moral strength that is a constant reminder to him of what he has done wrong. And, because he would rather appear flawless in the eyes of the community and attempt to get higher and higher in social status, he prefers to never confess to his wife the truth of his shallow choice from the past and creates a wall between them, adding a stone to it with every new deed. He is a Dorian of Florence, but the flawless attractive version looking in the mirror, and his only real reflection is in Romola’s consciousness while discovering that he is not what he pretends to be.
He avoids the past with fierceness, he runs from it, but he cannot get rid of it as the past follows him like his own shadow. The person whom he has wronged most and keeps on morally hurting, becomes his biggest enemy. He pulls the political strings in his favor continually and although he is really skilled at that he ends up his efforts in an unexpected way. His other wife, a young cherubic and innocent blue-eyed “Contadina” with his two children are saved by Romola whose superiority of character is once again proved this way. The ending, the story she tells to Tito’s little son, Lillo, is the advice no one has ever given to Tito and it makes us wonder if his son will be the same as Tito was (pursuing the pleasure) or if he will listen to Romola's advice.
I really enjoyed the display of secondary characters: Nello, the barber and his philosophy of life; Bardo; Pierro, the painter; Baldasare; Tessa etc and the way they are inserted in the story to add flavor to it. I won’t add any other quotes (although I think I highlighted more than 40% of the book) as I don’t want to spoil the pleasure of any person who reads my review and then decides to read the book. George Eliot is now another author in whose craftsmanship I want to delve further by reading other books… I’m thinking Middlemarch sometimes soon.