"Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation."
... yes Eliot is not easy reading for quote most unquote people ... including me ..
"Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation."
... yes Eliot is not easy reading for quote most unquote people ... including me ..
I sometimes think one can pass over a certain amount of incomprehension and still get pleasure out of a book, but if it becomes too much, one can't; and you do sort of learn a writer's language, and the language of a time, as you go. But a person doesn't have to decipher everything! Hard to get what "eccentric" is doing here exactly. Maybe its meaning was somewhat different then.
Agree, agree, agree! I think one can feel at home in EliotтАЩs language once one allows her broader worldview and cultural context to settle in. Read Daniel Deronda recently. With Gwendolyn there and Dorothea here Eliot is particularly concerned with attractive women who are also very smart and want to be more than adornments to the men they marry. Their struggles to find fulfillment outside traditional expectations drive their plots. Eliot, being homely herself, poses this challenge to her beautiful female heroines. She wants to be honest about the power of appearances. Of course the ultimate example of this is DanielтАЩs mother, the opera singer who abandoned her role as mother to pursue her role as artist.
David! Hi! Welcome! So interesting. I wonder if she innerly feared that she could not persuade readers to care about a not-beautiful heroine. Perhaps we non-beautiful women all feel that if we could be perceived as we are we would have the magnetism that society grants the beautiful. I read Daniel Deronda long ago, but I remember being puzzled by its understanding of Jewishness. I was urged to read it by a writer friend--the journalist Jonathan Mirsky--after a long discourse from him that I don't remember about the significance for English literature and society of how she handled it, when I was supposed to be taking corrections or something at the NYRB.
Thanks for writing back! I think where Eliot really resides in Middlemarch is in the character of Mary Garth. The young woman of outer ordinariness and inner beauty who helps Fred become an adult. The beautiful creatures that the eligible men flock to like Rosamond Vincy are a kind of mystery to her and she experiments with them to discover how their characters are formed. In RosamondтАЩs case her beauty ultimately translates into shallowness and, though one canтАЩt say itтАЩs really her тАЬfault,тАЭ the destruction of Lydgate, who ends up losing his integrity and his scientific focus. Dorothea is a different case: more self-aware, more concerned with inner growth. Her mistake is that she feels she can be a helpmeet to Casaubon, who in the end is a fraud and, in despair, resents Dorothea for her youth and her sacrifice. I love Eliot, but in a different way than I do Tolstoy.
I agree, we learn a writerтАЩs language as we go. When I was reading French novels in school, I found if I could get through the first 100 pages, the rest was easy, as writers tend to use the same vocabulary and sentence structure throughout. In Middlemarch, I concur, it is not necessary to understand everything to enjoy the story as it unfolds and I find myself inspired to read up on the тАЬThe Catholic Question тАЬ and Henry of Navarre. This adds a delightful secondary enjoyment brought by the novel.
I'm finding too that when I realize I've sort of missed something, and I go back to look at it more closely, it unfolds something really delightful. The bits that may at first seem to be asking a lot reward attention.
"Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation."
... yes Eliot is not easy reading for quote most unquote people ... including me ..
I sometimes think one can pass over a certain amount of incomprehension and still get pleasure out of a book, but if it becomes too much, one can't; and you do sort of learn a writer's language, and the language of a time, as you go. But a person doesn't have to decipher everything! Hard to get what "eccentric" is doing here exactly. Maybe its meaning was somewhat different then.
Agree, agree, agree! I think one can feel at home in EliotтАЩs language once one allows her broader worldview and cultural context to settle in. Read Daniel Deronda recently. With Gwendolyn there and Dorothea here Eliot is particularly concerned with attractive women who are also very smart and want to be more than adornments to the men they marry. Their struggles to find fulfillment outside traditional expectations drive their plots. Eliot, being homely herself, poses this challenge to her beautiful female heroines. She wants to be honest about the power of appearances. Of course the ultimate example of this is DanielтАЩs mother, the opera singer who abandoned her role as mother to pursue her role as artist.
David! Hi! Welcome! So interesting. I wonder if she innerly feared that she could not persuade readers to care about a not-beautiful heroine. Perhaps we non-beautiful women all feel that if we could be perceived as we are we would have the magnetism that society grants the beautiful. I read Daniel Deronda long ago, but I remember being puzzled by its understanding of Jewishness. I was urged to read it by a writer friend--the journalist Jonathan Mirsky--after a long discourse from him that I don't remember about the significance for English literature and society of how she handled it, when I was supposed to be taking corrections or something at the NYRB.
Thanks for writing back! I think where Eliot really resides in Middlemarch is in the character of Mary Garth. The young woman of outer ordinariness and inner beauty who helps Fred become an adult. The beautiful creatures that the eligible men flock to like Rosamond Vincy are a kind of mystery to her and she experiments with them to discover how their characters are formed. In RosamondтАЩs case her beauty ultimately translates into shallowness and, though one canтАЩt say itтАЩs really her тАЬfault,тАЭ the destruction of Lydgate, who ends up losing his integrity and his scientific focus. Dorothea is a different case: more self-aware, more concerned with inner growth. Her mistake is that she feels she can be a helpmeet to Casaubon, who in the end is a fraud and, in despair, resents Dorothea for her youth and her sacrifice. I love Eliot, but in a different way than I do Tolstoy.
I would love a Tolstoy reading list from you. I have read the great big novels but never knew quite where to go next.
Hi Ann. Worlds away from Joseph B.!
I agree, we learn a writerтАЩs language as we go. When I was reading French novels in school, I found if I could get through the first 100 pages, the rest was easy, as writers tend to use the same vocabulary and sentence structure throughout. In Middlemarch, I concur, it is not necessary to understand everything to enjoy the story as it unfolds and I find myself inspired to read up on the тАЬThe Catholic Question тАЬ and Henry of Navarre. This adds a delightful secondary enjoyment brought by the novel.
I'm finding too that when I realize I've sort of missed something, and I go back to look at it more closely, it unfolds something really delightful. The bits that may at first seem to be asking a lot reward attention.