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Born in Exile
The main protagonist, Godwin Peak, is a star student at Whitelaw College, which he won a scholarship to attend. He wins many academic prizes and his future seems promising. Then his Cockney uncle arrives intending to open an eating-house adjacent to the college. Godwin is mortified of being associated with 'trade' and leaves the college rather than face the scorn he expects to receive from his upper-class fellow students. This is indicative of his social aspirations (upwards) and snobbery (downwards).
316 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1891
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1541 people want to read
About the author
George Gissing
370 books204 followersPeople best know British writer George Robert Gissing for his novels, such as
New Grub Street
(1891), about poverty and hardship.
This English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.
Born to lower-middle-class parents, Gissing went to win a scholarship to Owens College, the present-day University of Manchester. A brilliant student, he excelled at university, winning many coveted prizes, including the Shakespeare prize in 1875. Between 1891 and 1897 (his so-called middle period) he produced his best works, which include New Grub Street, Born in Exile , The Odd Women , In the Year of Jubilee , and The Whirlpool . The middle years of the decade saw his reputation reach new heights: some critics count him alongside George Meredith and Thomas Hardy, the best novelists of his day. He also enjoyed new friendships with fellow writers such as Henry James, and H.G. Wells, and came into contact with many other up-and-coming writers such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane.
This English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.
Born to lower-middle-class parents, Gissing went to win a scholarship to Owens College, the present-day University of Manchester. A brilliant student, he excelled at university, winning many coveted prizes, including the Shakespeare prize in 1875. Between 1891 and 1897 (his so-called middle period) he produced his best works, which include New Grub Street, Born in Exile , The Odd Women , In the Year of Jubilee , and The Whirlpool . The middle years of the decade saw his reputation reach new heights: some critics count him alongside George Meredith and Thomas Hardy, the best novelists of his day. He also enjoyed new friendships with fellow writers such as Henry James, and H.G. Wells, and came into contact with many other up-and-coming writers such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane.
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January 16, 2025
The Story Of Godwin Peak
Just before publication in 1892, George Gissing changed the title of his novel to the evocative "Born in Exile" from the name of its primary character, the difficult, complex anti-hero, Godwin Peak. Although written after Gissing had made a name for himself with "New Grub Street" and other books, "Born in Exile" was a hard sell to the publishers. The book was rejected several times and nearly passed over. The book has remained little read over the years. Yet it is an extraordinary book, perhaps Gissing's best. For all its datedness, length and awkwardness, this book will reward careful reading.
The book is a detailed study of its title character and a novel of ideas. The book is among the first and the best novels to explore the relationship between Darwinism and geology and traditional religious beliefs. The book has much to say about sexuality, about the life of the mind, the erosion of values, social classes, and social change. Gissing seemed greatly influenced by Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and by Turgenev's "Fathers and Children" in writing "Born in Exile".
In some respects, Peak is modeled of Gissing himself and Gissing described the novel to a friend as "a book I had to write". Born, as was Gissing himself, to a struggling lower-middle class pharmacist, Peak is intelligent, broodingly introspective, skeptical, and rootless. He is ashamed of his origins. He both envies and scorns the upper classes and believes his intellectual gifts entitle him to a higher place. Thus Peak sees himself, in a phrase repeated several times in the book as "Born in Exile."
As a young man, Peak secures a scholarship to Whitelaw College where he distinguishes himself both in the sciences and in literature but cannot decide what he wants to do. In an odd but critical turn in the book, he leaves Whitelaw before his final year because his uncle proposes to open a cheap restaurant in the community and Peak believes this association with his uncle would shame him. He moves to London where he graduates from the London School of Mines, becomes a chemist, and falls in with a group of radical freethinkers and journalists. He has what seems to be the makings of a successful life. Peak is a skeptic and anonymously publishes an article "The New Sophistry" in a leading magazine which criticizes severely efforts to reconcile Darwinian science and geologic time with religion. The various types of arguments on all sides seem not much different from those in current debate.
Dissatisfied with his social position, Peak leaves London to try to ingratiate himself into the upper classes. Peak says to a friend in a key passage of the book that he does not believe women need to be intelligent or enlightened: women need to be sexual. And so Peak goes to look for a wife and self-destructs in the process. Peak meets a family with a landed estate, the Warricombs, whom he had known from his days at Whitelaw. The father of the family, Martin Warricomb, is a student of geology. Peak pretends to have shifted his career goals to become a minister in the Church of England. Peak ingratiates himself with Martin Warricomb, who is surprisingly liberal minded, by trying to show Warricomb the sincerity of Peak's beliefs and the compatibility of religious traditionalism with scientific modernism. Peak is interested in Warricomb's daughter, Sidwell, lovely and reserved and religiously traditional and unadventurous. At first, Sidwell is something of a stand-in for class, rather than a person Peak loves for herself. As the story develops, Peak seems to develop something of a genuine love for Sidwell. And oddly, Sidwell comes to love Peak.
Peak lives with tension in his pursuit because he knows he is practicing deceit and living a lie. He is ashamed of doing so. Ultimately the truth comes out when Sidwell's brother Buckland, an old Whitelaw friend, discovers that Peak was the author of the anonymous article "The New Sophistry" which condemned efforts to reconcile religion and science. Buckland is himself a skeptic whose views are rough and not deeply considered but still are similar to Peak's and to modernity. Buckland has found his way to Peak's former small group of friends in London who are amazed that Peak is trying to pass himself off as a prospective clergyman. Buckland confronts Peak with what he has learned and tells Sidwell and Martin. Peak is disgraced and must leave Exeter. Even though she knows the truth, Sidwell still loves Peak. Her own religious and moral views have broadened under their acquaintance to something approaching free thought. Sidwell has achieved a substantial intellectual independence from her family and background. Before Peak leaves, the door is left open that they will marry if Peak establishes himself.
Peak is miserable and lonely but he receives a bequest from an intellectual woman, Marcella Moxey, who unreciprocatedly had long loved him. With his financial future secured, Peak writes Sidwell a love letter, the first time he has opened himself up, proposing marriage. After much anguish, Sidwell rejects Peak and terminates the relationship. For all her intellectual change, Sidwell finds she cannot leave her family and its estate. Rootless and alone, Peak sets out for travel on the continent where he apparently lives the short life of a rake, contacts a disease, and dies homeless and alone.
"Born in Exile" is a study of a modern type, an intelligent, rootless, and confusedly amoral individual, in the dress of late Victorianism. The novel explores the loss of traditional religious faith and the lack of any apparent standards to replace it. Gissing, himself a nonbeliever, did not see humanism, social activism, or other nostrums as providing an adequate substitute for religion. Hence his novels, particularly this one, have a pessimistic philosophical cast.
The book is long, with extensive passages of wordy dialogue and of introspective commentary, both of which are typical to Gissing. Other than the masterful portrayal of Peak, and to some extent the characterization and growth of Sidwell Warricomb, none of the other of the many characters and scenes are well-developed. It takes perseverance to read this book. For interested readers, perseverance will be richly rewarded. Although never likely to become popular, "Born in Exile" is a troubling and deeply perceptive philosophical exploration of modernity. Unfortunately, this book appears out of print. It richly deserves a new edition. I read this book in a Harvester Press edition from the mid-1980s with an introduction by the Gissing scholar Gillian Tindall.
Robin Friedman
Just before publication in 1892, George Gissing changed the title of his novel to the evocative "Born in Exile" from the name of its primary character, the difficult, complex anti-hero, Godwin Peak. Although written after Gissing had made a name for himself with "New Grub Street" and other books, "Born in Exile" was a hard sell to the publishers. The book was rejected several times and nearly passed over. The book has remained little read over the years. Yet it is an extraordinary book, perhaps Gissing's best. For all its datedness, length and awkwardness, this book will reward careful reading.
The book is a detailed study of its title character and a novel of ideas. The book is among the first and the best novels to explore the relationship between Darwinism and geology and traditional religious beliefs. The book has much to say about sexuality, about the life of the mind, the erosion of values, social classes, and social change. Gissing seemed greatly influenced by Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and by Turgenev's "Fathers and Children" in writing "Born in Exile".
In some respects, Peak is modeled of Gissing himself and Gissing described the novel to a friend as "a book I had to write". Born, as was Gissing himself, to a struggling lower-middle class pharmacist, Peak is intelligent, broodingly introspective, skeptical, and rootless. He is ashamed of his origins. He both envies and scorns the upper classes and believes his intellectual gifts entitle him to a higher place. Thus Peak sees himself, in a phrase repeated several times in the book as "Born in Exile."
As a young man, Peak secures a scholarship to Whitelaw College where he distinguishes himself both in the sciences and in literature but cannot decide what he wants to do. In an odd but critical turn in the book, he leaves Whitelaw before his final year because his uncle proposes to open a cheap restaurant in the community and Peak believes this association with his uncle would shame him. He moves to London where he graduates from the London School of Mines, becomes a chemist, and falls in with a group of radical freethinkers and journalists. He has what seems to be the makings of a successful life. Peak is a skeptic and anonymously publishes an article "The New Sophistry" in a leading magazine which criticizes severely efforts to reconcile Darwinian science and geologic time with religion. The various types of arguments on all sides seem not much different from those in current debate.
Dissatisfied with his social position, Peak leaves London to try to ingratiate himself into the upper classes. Peak says to a friend in a key passage of the book that he does not believe women need to be intelligent or enlightened: women need to be sexual. And so Peak goes to look for a wife and self-destructs in the process. Peak meets a family with a landed estate, the Warricombs, whom he had known from his days at Whitelaw. The father of the family, Martin Warricomb, is a student of geology. Peak pretends to have shifted his career goals to become a minister in the Church of England. Peak ingratiates himself with Martin Warricomb, who is surprisingly liberal minded, by trying to show Warricomb the sincerity of Peak's beliefs and the compatibility of religious traditionalism with scientific modernism. Peak is interested in Warricomb's daughter, Sidwell, lovely and reserved and religiously traditional and unadventurous. At first, Sidwell is something of a stand-in for class, rather than a person Peak loves for herself. As the story develops, Peak seems to develop something of a genuine love for Sidwell. And oddly, Sidwell comes to love Peak.
Peak lives with tension in his pursuit because he knows he is practicing deceit and living a lie. He is ashamed of doing so. Ultimately the truth comes out when Sidwell's brother Buckland, an old Whitelaw friend, discovers that Peak was the author of the anonymous article "The New Sophistry" which condemned efforts to reconcile religion and science. Buckland is himself a skeptic whose views are rough and not deeply considered but still are similar to Peak's and to modernity. Buckland has found his way to Peak's former small group of friends in London who are amazed that Peak is trying to pass himself off as a prospective clergyman. Buckland confronts Peak with what he has learned and tells Sidwell and Martin. Peak is disgraced and must leave Exeter. Even though she knows the truth, Sidwell still loves Peak. Her own religious and moral views have broadened under their acquaintance to something approaching free thought. Sidwell has achieved a substantial intellectual independence from her family and background. Before Peak leaves, the door is left open that they will marry if Peak establishes himself.
Peak is miserable and lonely but he receives a bequest from an intellectual woman, Marcella Moxey, who unreciprocatedly had long loved him. With his financial future secured, Peak writes Sidwell a love letter, the first time he has opened himself up, proposing marriage. After much anguish, Sidwell rejects Peak and terminates the relationship. For all her intellectual change, Sidwell finds she cannot leave her family and its estate. Rootless and alone, Peak sets out for travel on the continent where he apparently lives the short life of a rake, contacts a disease, and dies homeless and alone.
"Born in Exile" is a study of a modern type, an intelligent, rootless, and confusedly amoral individual, in the dress of late Victorianism. The novel explores the loss of traditional religious faith and the lack of any apparent standards to replace it. Gissing, himself a nonbeliever, did not see humanism, social activism, or other nostrums as providing an adequate substitute for religion. Hence his novels, particularly this one, have a pessimistic philosophical cast.
The book is long, with extensive passages of wordy dialogue and of introspective commentary, both of which are typical to Gissing. Other than the masterful portrayal of Peak, and to some extent the characterization and growth of Sidwell Warricomb, none of the other of the many characters and scenes are well-developed. It takes perseverance to read this book. For interested readers, perseverance will be richly rewarded. Although never likely to become popular, "Born in Exile" is a troubling and deeply perceptive philosophical exploration of modernity. Unfortunately, this book appears out of print. It richly deserves a new edition. I read this book in a Harvester Press edition from the mid-1980s with an introduction by the Gissing scholar Gillian Tindall.
Robin Friedman
July 8, 2017
This is my third Gissing novel, after New Grub Street and The Odd Women, all three written in close succession between 1891 and 1893. New Grub Street is far the most famous of these novels, but, curiously, it’s the one I liked least of the three.
Born in Exile is impressive as a novel of ideas which also works well at the level of narrative. It represents a society in roaring fin-de-siècle transition, with the old values and pieties crumbling dramatically under the collective onslaught of radical politics, feminism, and the new, post-Darwinian, scientific-materialist mindset.
Gissing thematizes in particular the conflict of science and faith, and theologians’ attempts to find an accommodation or a compromise between the two. Radical politics, and the tensions between rising egalitarian and democratic attitudes and the still powerfully entrenched British class system, is a second, strong theme; and the place of women in society is a third.
Gissing orchestrates his large and diverse cast of characters effectively to dramatize what were fiercely topical themes. The novel starts with a school prize day in a Midlands town, at an elite college which admits some poorer, scholarship boys. This allows Gissing to assemble an initial cohort of class-diversified young men, whom the novel then follows through to their late twenties: wealthy young radical Buckland Warricombe; smarmy, polished Bruno Chilvers, who becomes a fashionable vicar; gawky but talented John Earwaker, who overcomes social disadvantages to become a successful journalist and editor; and Gissing’s extraordinary anti-hero, Godwin Peak.
What to say about Peak? He can seem quite implausible, with his multiple contradictions, until you realize that he simply is the poster boy for self-haters everywhere. Peak is the self-defined “born exile” of the title, feeling himself an aristocrat by nature and intellect and a fierce loather of the great majority of humanity; yet condemned by the cruel chance of birth to a “respectable poor,” lower middle-class background.
Peak spends the first quarter of the book—not my favourite part of it—stumbling around in a bilious stew of “gnawing discontent … furious revolt … black despair.” He is dour and socially awkward in public, and nurtures alarming, Malthusian views on his fellow human beings in private, especially those who work in shops (“the air of shopkeeping he was compelled to breathe when he visited Twybridge”—his home town—“nauseated and repelled him,”) and those with the unfortunate disability of a Cockney accent (“the London vulgar I abominate root and branch.”)
Peak’s views on women leave something to be desired as well. After spending an evening with the sister of a friend, the splendidly named Marcella Moxey, he lets off steam to his confident, the no less splendidly named Earwaker, “I hate emancipated women … Women ought neither to be enlightened nor dogmatic. They ought to be sexual.”
Where the book picks up is when the unsavoury Peak finds himself, through a series of coincidences, in the golden, leisured, late-Victorian country-house world of his old school acquaintance Buckland Warricombe. Peak sees the shred of a chance to elevate himself to the gentlemanly status he feels he has been exiled from, but at the cost of abandoning his materialist convictions and assuming the unlikely role of an earnest young intellectual Christian, destined to the priesthood. This launches a fascinating long segment of the book, self-consciously modeled on Molière’s Tartuffe, in which Peak insinuates his way into the affections of the devout Warricombe family, and particularly Buckland’s beautiful, thoughtful sister Sidwell.
I very much liked this whole sequence. The outcome is predictable at some level, but there were enough twists to keep my interest, and I found Gissing’s treatment of the central love relationship unexpectedly complex and psychologically astute. Sidwell develops into far more of an interesting character than I was expecting, and Peak develops too, so that, by the end I found myself almost liking him. There are all kinds of interesting minor characters, as well. The whole Warricombe family is well drawn, especially the affable paterfamilias, Martin, torn between his Anglican faith and his interest in science; and Buckland, who combines radical political commitments with a great deal of unexamined class prejudice.
The female characters are also strong. I was struck in The Odd Women by Gissing’s sympathetic treatment of feminism and the “New Woman,” and there are some fascinating portraits here of women at various levels of what Peak would call “enlightenment.” Besides Sidwell herself, I liked her skeptical, witty friend, Sylvia Moorhouse (the novel squeaks through the Bechdel test in one of their conversations, on faith vs. science), and doomed, plain, intelligent Marcella, unrequitedly in love with Peak.
“Grim but curiously resonant” is the novelist D. J. Taylor’s judgment on Gissing’s novels, in a very good review of a biography of Gissing (link below). That formula works for Grub Street, certainly, and there are elements of grimness in Born in Exile, as well; but there’s a great deal, also, simply to enjoy.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
Born in Exile is impressive as a novel of ideas which also works well at the level of narrative. It represents a society in roaring fin-de-siècle transition, with the old values and pieties crumbling dramatically under the collective onslaught of radical politics, feminism, and the new, post-Darwinian, scientific-materialist mindset.
Gissing thematizes in particular the conflict of science and faith, and theologians’ attempts to find an accommodation or a compromise between the two. Radical politics, and the tensions between rising egalitarian and democratic attitudes and the still powerfully entrenched British class system, is a second, strong theme; and the place of women in society is a third.
Gissing orchestrates his large and diverse cast of characters effectively to dramatize what were fiercely topical themes. The novel starts with a school prize day in a Midlands town, at an elite college which admits some poorer, scholarship boys. This allows Gissing to assemble an initial cohort of class-diversified young men, whom the novel then follows through to their late twenties: wealthy young radical Buckland Warricombe; smarmy, polished Bruno Chilvers, who becomes a fashionable vicar; gawky but talented John Earwaker, who overcomes social disadvantages to become a successful journalist and editor; and Gissing’s extraordinary anti-hero, Godwin Peak.
What to say about Peak? He can seem quite implausible, with his multiple contradictions, until you realize that he simply is the poster boy for self-haters everywhere. Peak is the self-defined “born exile” of the title, feeling himself an aristocrat by nature and intellect and a fierce loather of the great majority of humanity; yet condemned by the cruel chance of birth to a “respectable poor,” lower middle-class background.
Peak spends the first quarter of the book—not my favourite part of it—stumbling around in a bilious stew of “gnawing discontent … furious revolt … black despair.” He is dour and socially awkward in public, and nurtures alarming, Malthusian views on his fellow human beings in private, especially those who work in shops (“the air of shopkeeping he was compelled to breathe when he visited Twybridge”—his home town—“nauseated and repelled him,”) and those with the unfortunate disability of a Cockney accent (“the London vulgar I abominate root and branch.”)
Peak’s views on women leave something to be desired as well. After spending an evening with the sister of a friend, the splendidly named Marcella Moxey, he lets off steam to his confident, the no less splendidly named Earwaker, “I hate emancipated women … Women ought neither to be enlightened nor dogmatic. They ought to be sexual.”
Where the book picks up is when the unsavoury Peak finds himself, through a series of coincidences, in the golden, leisured, late-Victorian country-house world of his old school acquaintance Buckland Warricombe. Peak sees the shred of a chance to elevate himself to the gentlemanly status he feels he has been exiled from, but at the cost of abandoning his materialist convictions and assuming the unlikely role of an earnest young intellectual Christian, destined to the priesthood. This launches a fascinating long segment of the book, self-consciously modeled on Molière’s Tartuffe, in which Peak insinuates his way into the affections of the devout Warricombe family, and particularly Buckland’s beautiful, thoughtful sister Sidwell.
I very much liked this whole sequence. The outcome is predictable at some level, but there were enough twists to keep my interest, and I found Gissing’s treatment of the central love relationship unexpectedly complex and psychologically astute. Sidwell develops into far more of an interesting character than I was expecting, and Peak develops too, so that, by the end I found myself almost liking him. There are all kinds of interesting minor characters, as well. The whole Warricombe family is well drawn, especially the affable paterfamilias, Martin, torn between his Anglican faith and his interest in science; and Buckland, who combines radical political commitments with a great deal of unexamined class prejudice.
The female characters are also strong. I was struck in The Odd Women by Gissing’s sympathetic treatment of feminism and the “New Woman,” and there are some fascinating portraits here of women at various levels of what Peak would call “enlightenment.” Besides Sidwell herself, I liked her skeptical, witty friend, Sylvia Moorhouse (the novel squeaks through the Bechdel test in one of their conversations, on faith vs. science), and doomed, plain, intelligent Marcella, unrequitedly in love with Peak.
“Grim but curiously resonant” is the novelist D. J. Taylor’s judgment on Gissing’s novels, in a very good review of a biography of Gissing (link below). That formula works for Grub Street, certainly, and there are elements of grimness in Born in Exile, as well; but there’s a great deal, also, simply to enjoy.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
August 8, 2012
I was reading a couple of reviews on here, and it seems to me thaT the majority of the authors of said reviews have missed the point of the novel. This book is NOT about the impossibility of climbing outside one's own social sphere. This is an attack on idealism; it is Peak's idealism that forces his inevitable failures and Sidwell's that forces hers. And the only person who rejects the notion of Peak's ability to transcend social stations is Peak!
Such a good book.
Such a good book.
February 12, 2023
I’ve been listening to this book off and on all day. I just cannot get into it. So PASS ON IT
September 23, 2019
This book is an anti-quest. Fundamentally it encourages us to accept ourselves as human beings, and not to spoil our lives trying to achieve something that is ‘beyond’ our humanity. Doing so only provokes a lifetime of frustrated struggle, it says, which leaves behind it lots of regrets and wasted years.
All the main characters in this story are struggling to possess something that is beyond their reach, and which they never end up possessing. And the aim of the protagonist is basically to transcend his station in life, and lift himself to one higher. It is not until each of these characters fail, and resign themselves to something less than their ‘ideal’, that they find, or are even rewarded, with a kind of peace and satisfaction.
This theme is unusual considering Western literature is heavily populated with heroes who do just the opposite -- who undergo some struggle to achieve something beyond themselves. I, personally, have never read a book that told me so frankly not to waste my time on such a futile quest. For this reason I found the book quite compelling. There is a part through the middle where the narrative loses some momentum and feels boring; but after that the story pulls one along as irresistibly as any thriller.
Definitely worth a read if your interested in some writing that seems to buck the general thrust of Western literature. A couple of times I thought of the work as an unwitting demonstration of the Buddhist principle that ‘desire is suffering.’
All the main characters in this story are struggling to possess something that is beyond their reach, and which they never end up possessing. And the aim of the protagonist is basically to transcend his station in life, and lift himself to one higher. It is not until each of these characters fail, and resign themselves to something less than their ‘ideal’, that they find, or are even rewarded, with a kind of peace and satisfaction.
This theme is unusual considering Western literature is heavily populated with heroes who do just the opposite -- who undergo some struggle to achieve something beyond themselves. I, personally, have never read a book that told me so frankly not to waste my time on such a futile quest. For this reason I found the book quite compelling. There is a part through the middle where the narrative loses some momentum and feels boring; but after that the story pulls one along as irresistibly as any thriller.
Definitely worth a read if your interested in some writing that seems to buck the general thrust of Western literature. A couple of times I thought of the work as an unwitting demonstration of the Buddhist principle that ‘desire is suffering.’
October 31, 2013
George Gissing is an author everyone would like to like; but unless he's the subject of your dissertation, you won't.
July 15, 2019
I found this more digestible than New Grub Street. The hero of this novel is Godwin Peak, a young man of great intelligence who feels himself to have been born into the wrong class, hence to have been "born in exile". The plot turns upon his misguided attempts to win the love of a woman, Sidwell, from the class he desires to join. He does this by deceiving both her and her family, and maintains his deception by cutting himself off from all his prior friends and acquaintances.
The themes are extremely well-handled: the class aspects, the social debate that saw the scientific, anti-religious ideas of The Radicals pitted against traditional religionists, the difficulties of being a New Woman/emancipated, the operation of the marriage market, etc. In addition, the unfolding love between Godwin and Sidwell is well-presented, with Gissing showing the thoughts and feelings of both in turn. Peak is a compelling figure, highly reminiscent of W N P Barbellion. This,novel also features, like seemingly all of Gissing's work, truly excellent dialogue, so that, despite being in some senses, a novel of ideas, the characters never sound like mouthpieces, probably due to the dialectical development that goes on over the course of the action; as well as Peak's torments, other characters change in significant ways and adopt different intellectual positions.
This novel feels far more modern than, for example, a Forster effort of 20 years later, such as Where Angels Fear to Tread, or even Isherwood's debut, All the Conspirators, of 1928.
The themes are extremely well-handled: the class aspects, the social debate that saw the scientific, anti-religious ideas of The Radicals pitted against traditional religionists, the difficulties of being a New Woman/emancipated, the operation of the marriage market, etc. In addition, the unfolding love between Godwin and Sidwell is well-presented, with Gissing showing the thoughts and feelings of both in turn. Peak is a compelling figure, highly reminiscent of W N P Barbellion. This,novel also features, like seemingly all of Gissing's work, truly excellent dialogue, so that, despite being in some senses, a novel of ideas, the characters never sound like mouthpieces, probably due to the dialectical development that goes on over the course of the action; as well as Peak's torments, other characters change in significant ways and adopt different intellectual positions.
This novel feels far more modern than, for example, a Forster effort of 20 years later, such as Where Angels Fear to Tread, or even Isherwood's debut, All the Conspirators, of 1928.
August 7, 2013
There are always some difficulties with reading a book from a completely different era, and this book is no exception. Though the language wasn't difficult to understand, I did have some trouble relating to the ideas of class and social status that Godwin Peak was so concerned about. However, I had no trouble understanding the broken promise of Peak's idealism, and his inability to escape who he is and where he came from. Though Peak's scheme was less than noble, it did shed light on some interesting ideas regarding religious hypocrisy and the futility of basing actions on other people's perceived expectations.
February 8, 2021
Godwin Peak suffers from being academically brilliant, but not having the easy social graces to make himself popular. He suffers the embarrassment of a poor and narrow-sighted family. He suffers the anxiety of demeaning any woman he might love by the poverty of his birth. He suffers when his plan of taking holy orders to gain access to a life of gentlemanly comfort exposes him as a fraud. Gissing plumbs this social suffering with an ease and assurance that can only be borne out of experience: I picture the author as a gauche intellectual - intense, awkward - the smartest guy at the party who can think of nothing interesting to say.
September 20, 2019
Born in Exile by George Gissing is a book about classism, politics, religion, morality, and gender roles. It explores science and education. It explores ideas of feminism and radicalism. All of that should lead to a book I love, but I never found myself connected to the story and I disliked the main character. I didn't like him in any way. I had no sympathy or empathy for him. And while it wanted to promote feminism there were some very dated - and difficult to read - statements about the inferiority of women. I believe that Gissing was trying to be forward thinking but it simply didn't read in that way. At one point a man was even trying to "raise" his wife by giving her the education that would make her grow up to think the way he did. Yuck!
I did enjoy the discussions of religion versus morality, and agree with his points. There are kind and good people who are not religious and unkind, bad people who are. Religion does not have a monopoly on good behavior.
I did enjoy the discussions of religion versus morality, and agree with his points. There are kind and good people who are not religious and unkind, bad people who are. Religion does not have a monopoly on good behavior.
January 13, 2015
I thoroughly enjoyed this long book exploring one man's attempts to manoeuvre himself into a socity he was not born into. I loved the twists and turns as he struggled to mask his true feelings in order to ingratiate himself with others. I really get involved in these internal dilemmas and could feel for the protagonist.
January 26, 2011
One of those you hate to see end because you're afraid you'll never find another book quite as good for your soul.
Want to read
December 8, 2013Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
March 13, 2020
This novel is one of the majorly instructive of Gissing's novels. Like his buddy H.G. Wells, Gissing smarted under a sense of inadequacy. Much of his wretchedness was due to his frustrated superciliousness. He for all time, bore an agonising sense that he was prevented by paucity from associating with his equals. It was his fear of cultivated women that made him marry women of the lower classes who could not provide the intellectual companionship he longed for. But cultivated women haunted his thoughts.
The novel succinctly deals with the Meredithian theme of pretentiousness.
Godwin Peak is a man of of modest birth. Even so, he enjoys an incomparable aptitude and desires for an elevated societal standing.
He perceives that the blockade born out of rank, does not function against priests, who can marry above their social station.
Though he is an atheist he hides the fact from his friends and becomes a candidate for Orders. In this character he is admitted to a rich and cultured family, falls in love with one of the daughters and is almost accepted.
At this point he has a profound disgust and loathing against his own self for playing such a detestable part. In due course he is exposed.
In this novel, as in 'Our Friend the Charlatan' and other later novels, Gissing attacked the conformist mores of the then Victorian society.
The function of women in society was a potent premise of budding consequence in the 80s and 90s, and Gissing shows a noteworthy insight into female psychology.
The novel succinctly deals with the Meredithian theme of pretentiousness.
Godwin Peak is a man of of modest birth. Even so, he enjoys an incomparable aptitude and desires for an elevated societal standing.
He perceives that the blockade born out of rank, does not function against priests, who can marry above their social station.
Though he is an atheist he hides the fact from his friends and becomes a candidate for Orders. In this character he is admitted to a rich and cultured family, falls in love with one of the daughters and is almost accepted.
At this point he has a profound disgust and loathing against his own self for playing such a detestable part. In due course he is exposed.
In this novel, as in 'Our Friend the Charlatan' and other later novels, Gissing attacked the conformist mores of the then Victorian society.
The function of women in society was a potent premise of budding consequence in the 80s and 90s, and Gissing shows a noteworthy insight into female psychology.
November 27, 2024
Godwin Peak, the anti-hero of Gissing’s ‘Born in Exile,’ has to be the saddest creature in fiction. The finest thing about him is his honesty - to himself at least - about his hypocrisy. A “critic of life, an analyst of moods and motives; not the man who dares and acts. The only important resolve he had ever carried through was a scheme of ignoble trickery—to end in frustration.”
Centred on his character, the novel describes an intelligent boy, whose prospects in life are ruined both by the fact that he was neither born a gentleman nor into easy financial circumstances, as wellas by his own poor decisions about his life. These decisions in turn are impelled by Peak's social aspirations and ambitions, and set out the principal theme of the novel: class consciousness. As it happened, in the post Darwinian world these class distinctions, while still very powerful, were being offset by the various liberal and political battles of the period under review. In the Anglican Church alone, ideologies ranged from a High Churchism, regarded by some as almost equal to Catholicism, to liberal clerical opinions liable to being equated with Radicalism, amounting to heresy or worse, with atheism. Evolutionism versus creationism, in other words, forms the second theme. And while a journalist might express his scepticism of the Book of Genesis, it was quite another matter for a Church of England clergyman to express a disbelief that an entity called God created the world.
When his uncle expresses his intention to open a cook-house in front of the school, Peak's shame at being associated with trade drives him to leave the school where he has hitherto been a high achiever, and where he has been admitted on a full scholarship that includes boarding and lodging, As a result, the rest of his academic career, once so full of promise, fades into nothing while his nearest rival in school, Bruno Chilvers, is now set for even higher results in college, and thereafter to pursue a career as a Church of England clergyman. And herein lies the greatest irony: Chilvers is as great a hypocrite, social climber and fortune hunter as ever was Godwin Peak. Only his deceptions are never unmasked, and he ends by marrying a baron’s daughter.
For Godwin, however, a Church career is unpalatable. As an intellectual, he rejects creationism, holding to evolution and Darwin’s theories. His conviction in evolution leads him to undertake the study of geology, and by a not very subtle “coincidence" he meets the family of an old classmate of his at the school he had voluntarily left. Thereafter, Godwin courts more disaster, not by carelessness or accident, but by prudent, premeditated dishonesty on the two passions of his life: social advantage by upward mobility through marriage, and a strong rational inclination towards Darwin’s theories, which he retains while deciding on a future as a Church of England clergyman, perfectly conscious that he would make a bad man of God. And when disaster strikes, he does what he seems to be best at doing: he runs away.
One of the most striking things about a Gissing novel is the number of people in it, and the detail that goes into outlining their personality, despite the fact that they may have only a walk-on part, so to speak. Thus the elder Mr Peak, though he is dead when the novel opens, has a delightful and cheerful character, upheld by an integrity sadly lacking in his son. Though less than eight pages are devoted to him upto his death at the age of forty-three, his memory remains with the reader in strong counterpoint to his son's actions.
In fact, the book may be deemed a study in ethics, as one friend of Peak's after another seems to reproach him with the happiness they have achieved despite their humbler gifts or status in life: his own brother and sister are the first, but there are others, like Janet Moxey or Buckland Warricombe. Buckland is the only one of Godwin's acquaintances entitled to count himself among the minor landed gentry, or to have any claim to social rank, since his father owns a small estate. He has always distrusted Peak’s social ambitions especially in regard to his own family, and finally exposes him. To everyone's astonishment, Buckland marries “the daughter of a dealer in hides, tallow, and that kind of thing,” – far beneath his own social class, who is both educated and charming, and sure to make him a good wife.
While this is not, as are so many Gissing novels, a woman-centric work, it is unusually affected, if not actually dominated by the many women who feature in it, starting with Mrs Peak, Godwin’s mother. Born into a slightly higher social class than her husband, she has unrealistic ideas of what is due to her imagined position in society. Unfortunately, Godwin is the child who is influenced by her. Her two other children are far more down-to-earth, and while the son Oliver manages a seed supply store, Charlotte, her daughter, marries a haberdasher against the objections of Godwin and Mrs Peak:
'I was never taught,' persisted the girl, with calm obstinacy, 'that one ought to be ashamed of one's relatives just because they are in a humble position.’
Except for her baleful influence over her eldest son, it is not Mrs Peak, nor strong-minded daughter who are of interest here. That honour is shared by two other women. One is Marcella Moxey, who for all her strong, independent and rational mind, falls hopelessly in love with Godwin Peak, and is responsible, through jealousy, both for Peak's humiliation and the termination of his emotional and social ambitions. The other, Sidwell Warricombe, is a more conventional creature, seriously devout, abominating all non-Christian forms of thought, although as she grows older, she becomes more rational with regard to evolution, thus rendering Godwin's pretence to an unwavering faith in creation another terrible irony.
And is Peak in love with either woman? He is at least honest with Marcella, which, though he does not realise it, is the nearest he can come to loving a person. In Sidwell, Godwin sees merely the stepping stone to social acceptance, where at present all doors are closed to him. In a much-quoted passage, he tells his colleague:
'Yes, I hate emancipated women' ... 'Women ought neither to be enlightened nor dogmatic. They ought to be sexual.’ And about Miss Moxey, 'Miss Moxey is intolerable,' said Peak. 'I can't quite say why I dislike her so, but she grows more antipathetic to me the better I know her. She has not a single feminine charm—not one.’
Finally, in a book as bleak as ‘Born in Exile,' a word has to be added about Gissing’s sense of humour. Although usually subtle, here it breaks out in wild and unrestrained delight in the person of Mr Malkin, a globe-trotter who has a tendency to fall passionately and frequently in love, (and oddly enough, being fallen in love with) and trying to fend off matrimony until the girl he is having educated and trained to be a suitable helpmeet comes of age, which will not be for another half-dozen years. And like Wodehouse’s Bingo Little turning to Bertie Wooster for help in similar situations, he invariably turns to Earwaker to extricate him from the confusion of women and marriage licences awaiting him.
Of all of Gissing's work, ‘Born in Exile’ is probably the most difficult, partly because of its wealth of ideas and partly also its enormous cast, all of whom have a decisive role in the action, and all of whom have distinct and unforgettable personalities, so that it becomes necessary to pay serious attention to each, however trivial their presence, words or actions might be. In the end, it is none of these, but only Gissing's language and style that elevates it to possibly the best of all Gissing.
Centred on his character, the novel describes an intelligent boy, whose prospects in life are ruined both by the fact that he was neither born a gentleman nor into easy financial circumstances, as wellas by his own poor decisions about his life. These decisions in turn are impelled by Peak's social aspirations and ambitions, and set out the principal theme of the novel: class consciousness. As it happened, in the post Darwinian world these class distinctions, while still very powerful, were being offset by the various liberal and political battles of the period under review. In the Anglican Church alone, ideologies ranged from a High Churchism, regarded by some as almost equal to Catholicism, to liberal clerical opinions liable to being equated with Radicalism, amounting to heresy or worse, with atheism. Evolutionism versus creationism, in other words, forms the second theme. And while a journalist might express his scepticism of the Book of Genesis, it was quite another matter for a Church of England clergyman to express a disbelief that an entity called God created the world.
When his uncle expresses his intention to open a cook-house in front of the school, Peak's shame at being associated with trade drives him to leave the school where he has hitherto been a high achiever, and where he has been admitted on a full scholarship that includes boarding and lodging, As a result, the rest of his academic career, once so full of promise, fades into nothing while his nearest rival in school, Bruno Chilvers, is now set for even higher results in college, and thereafter to pursue a career as a Church of England clergyman. And herein lies the greatest irony: Chilvers is as great a hypocrite, social climber and fortune hunter as ever was Godwin Peak. Only his deceptions are never unmasked, and he ends by marrying a baron’s daughter.
For Godwin, however, a Church career is unpalatable. As an intellectual, he rejects creationism, holding to evolution and Darwin’s theories. His conviction in evolution leads him to undertake the study of geology, and by a not very subtle “coincidence" he meets the family of an old classmate of his at the school he had voluntarily left. Thereafter, Godwin courts more disaster, not by carelessness or accident, but by prudent, premeditated dishonesty on the two passions of his life: social advantage by upward mobility through marriage, and a strong rational inclination towards Darwin’s theories, which he retains while deciding on a future as a Church of England clergyman, perfectly conscious that he would make a bad man of God. And when disaster strikes, he does what he seems to be best at doing: he runs away.
One of the most striking things about a Gissing novel is the number of people in it, and the detail that goes into outlining their personality, despite the fact that they may have only a walk-on part, so to speak. Thus the elder Mr Peak, though he is dead when the novel opens, has a delightful and cheerful character, upheld by an integrity sadly lacking in his son. Though less than eight pages are devoted to him upto his death at the age of forty-three, his memory remains with the reader in strong counterpoint to his son's actions.
In fact, the book may be deemed a study in ethics, as one friend of Peak's after another seems to reproach him with the happiness they have achieved despite their humbler gifts or status in life: his own brother and sister are the first, but there are others, like Janet Moxey or Buckland Warricombe. Buckland is the only one of Godwin's acquaintances entitled to count himself among the minor landed gentry, or to have any claim to social rank, since his father owns a small estate. He has always distrusted Peak’s social ambitions especially in regard to his own family, and finally exposes him. To everyone's astonishment, Buckland marries “the daughter of a dealer in hides, tallow, and that kind of thing,” – far beneath his own social class, who is both educated and charming, and sure to make him a good wife.
While this is not, as are so many Gissing novels, a woman-centric work, it is unusually affected, if not actually dominated by the many women who feature in it, starting with Mrs Peak, Godwin’s mother. Born into a slightly higher social class than her husband, she has unrealistic ideas of what is due to her imagined position in society. Unfortunately, Godwin is the child who is influenced by her. Her two other children are far more down-to-earth, and while the son Oliver manages a seed supply store, Charlotte, her daughter, marries a haberdasher against the objections of Godwin and Mrs Peak:
'I was never taught,' persisted the girl, with calm obstinacy, 'that one ought to be ashamed of one's relatives just because they are in a humble position.’
Except for her baleful influence over her eldest son, it is not Mrs Peak, nor strong-minded daughter who are of interest here. That honour is shared by two other women. One is Marcella Moxey, who for all her strong, independent and rational mind, falls hopelessly in love with Godwin Peak, and is responsible, through jealousy, both for Peak's humiliation and the termination of his emotional and social ambitions. The other, Sidwell Warricombe, is a more conventional creature, seriously devout, abominating all non-Christian forms of thought, although as she grows older, she becomes more rational with regard to evolution, thus rendering Godwin's pretence to an unwavering faith in creation another terrible irony.
And is Peak in love with either woman? He is at least honest with Marcella, which, though he does not realise it, is the nearest he can come to loving a person. In Sidwell, Godwin sees merely the stepping stone to social acceptance, where at present all doors are closed to him. In a much-quoted passage, he tells his colleague:
'Yes, I hate emancipated women' ... 'Women ought neither to be enlightened nor dogmatic. They ought to be sexual.’ And about Miss Moxey, 'Miss Moxey is intolerable,' said Peak. 'I can't quite say why I dislike her so, but she grows more antipathetic to me the better I know her. She has not a single feminine charm—not one.’
Finally, in a book as bleak as ‘Born in Exile,' a word has to be added about Gissing’s sense of humour. Although usually subtle, here it breaks out in wild and unrestrained delight in the person of Mr Malkin, a globe-trotter who has a tendency to fall passionately and frequently in love, (and oddly enough, being fallen in love with) and trying to fend off matrimony until the girl he is having educated and trained to be a suitable helpmeet comes of age, which will not be for another half-dozen years. And like Wodehouse’s Bingo Little turning to Bertie Wooster for help in similar situations, he invariably turns to Earwaker to extricate him from the confusion of women and marriage licences awaiting him.
Of all of Gissing's work, ‘Born in Exile’ is probably the most difficult, partly because of its wealth of ideas and partly also its enormous cast, all of whom have a decisive role in the action, and all of whom have distinct and unforgettable personalities, so that it becomes necessary to pay serious attention to each, however trivial their presence, words or actions might be. In the end, it is none of these, but only Gissing's language and style that elevates it to possibly the best of all Gissing.
September 29, 2019
Read this for Reading 1001 BOTM, September. This book was written by George Gissing, British author, written in 1892. It is a story of a young man who is smart and longs to be of a different class than that which he was born and he views himself as born in exile as he believes he belongs to this other class. It is the story of his struggles, his alienation and the sense that he was always a lodger and never at home. His attitude is aptly presented with these quotes
"the squalling mass-obscene herd of idiot mockers".
In this novel that looks at class structure and the whether there is fluidity to climb higher or are you fated to always be what you were born. I do think it is hard to take the "thinking and cultural mores" out of the person who is born or raised in a lower structure and does change. That early life event is always part of ones history. Our protagonist could not find any peace, he could not accept his humble background. He lives in shame and then he created a deception and this deception was what really destroyed him, not his humble origins. The book also explored happiness. Is happiness promoted by intelligence and moral principles?, Is happiness the conscious exertion of individual powers (do we choose to be happy or melancholy and discontent)?
"Then you are incapable of happiness in any worthy sense? You may graze but you will never feast.". Themes of the book are loss, religion, love, marriage. This book thoroughly explored intelligence vs faith (religion). It explored many issues still relevant today. Politically, people still call people of faith "stupid, illiterate, idiots" and feel there can be no redeeming qualities of intelligence in the man of faith. It explores the erosion of faith by people of education who alter the dogmas to fit the "social demands".
"the squalling mass-obscene herd of idiot mockers".
In this novel that looks at class structure and the whether there is fluidity to climb higher or are you fated to always be what you were born. I do think it is hard to take the "thinking and cultural mores" out of the person who is born or raised in a lower structure and does change. That early life event is always part of ones history. Our protagonist could not find any peace, he could not accept his humble background. He lives in shame and then he created a deception and this deception was what really destroyed him, not his humble origins. The book also explored happiness. Is happiness promoted by intelligence and moral principles?, Is happiness the conscious exertion of individual powers (do we choose to be happy or melancholy and discontent)?
"Then you are incapable of happiness in any worthy sense? You may graze but you will never feast.". Themes of the book are loss, religion, love, marriage. This book thoroughly explored intelligence vs faith (religion). It explored many issues still relevant today. Politically, people still call people of faith "stupid, illiterate, idiots" and feel there can be no redeeming qualities of intelligence in the man of faith. It explores the erosion of faith by people of education who alter the dogmas to fit the "social demands".
April 6, 2017
I enjoyed this, but only up to a point...Gissing is certainly an interesting writer, though his star dims in comparison with the many brighter lights that were shining in fin-de-siecle English literature. Certainly, I became absorbed in the story, but...England seems such a strangely different place at this distance in time. Class, education and religion are all still live issues, of course. I remember meeting a slight acquaintance from university days some years later and was startled to find his flat working class vowels transformed into the tortured plummy syntax of the English upper class; and I myself struggled with the conflicting claims of science and religion. But these are distant echoes of the novel's central obsessions. For example, it is impossible to imagine anyone nowadays seeing ordination in the Church of England as a step to improved social acceptance and worldly success - for most people, it's the very opposite. I suspect class has always been more fluid in England than the central character here thinks: he certainly seems far more obsessed about his place in it than anyone else in the novel.
Another major difficulty is the sheer unlikeability of the central character: his name, Godwin Peak, is the only pleasing thing about him. His cold mistreatment of everyone around him, and his complete lack of personal integrity, made me long to see him get his come-uppance. Which, of course, he does: though it 's an awfully long time coming. Some of the lesser characters are brilliantly drawn, but others left me agog: such as the creepy middle aged weirdo Malkin and his obsession with very young girls. The weirdest thing about him is that the author clearly means us to find his obsession amusing. O tempora, O mores...
Another major difficulty is the sheer unlikeability of the central character: his name, Godwin Peak, is the only pleasing thing about him. His cold mistreatment of everyone around him, and his complete lack of personal integrity, made me long to see him get his come-uppance. Which, of course, he does: though it 's an awfully long time coming. Some of the lesser characters are brilliantly drawn, but others left me agog: such as the creepy middle aged weirdo Malkin and his obsession with very young girls. The weirdest thing about him is that the author clearly means us to find his obsession amusing. O tempora, O mores...
July 4, 2015
Written in the late 19th century, human nature is the same but the differences in society make it hard for me to determine how likeable/unlikeable the main characters are. Set in England in the late 19th century, Godwin Peak is smart but comes from a working class background, something he feels acutely as he has total disgust for the vulgar masses. He aspires to become wealthy but finds barriers--not the least which is he himself when setting his goals. This comes to a central point when he find the woman of his dreams, stationed in society above himself. Despite his basic pretentious unpleasantness, he still manages to find a core group of friends. The only consolation of reading this is seeing what becomes of them all. I know class was a big thing back then (I remember this coming up in Dickens' novels) but I'm just too modern to really relate to it. These upward striving characters just seem like snobs. However, like people today, these young men reject things when they become too popular as they do not support what's common and they do struggle with how much of their idealism to give up in order to gain advantages.
June 17, 2010
I had a difficult time with this book. I wanted to like the premis of the story. However, I could not find the main character to be likeable. He was pitiable at times, but not engaging. The idea of struggling to overcome social class seemed almost over-used in the book. Especially since, the only characters in the story who seemed concerned with it were Mrs. Warricombe and Godwin Peak himself. It seemed to be more about Peak's inability to overcome his overwhelming contempt of his own family and those he considered lower class, than socieity's ability to accept one of uncommon intelect into the upper reaches of the middle class.
The supporting theme of the book seemed to be religion versus science and agnosticism. It was discussed in mintue detail quite thorughly. An interesting topic, but one that seemed to detract from the story after a while as opposed to add to it.
I can say that this book did cause me to reflect more openly about my own prejudices and ideas about class and for that, it was worth reading.
The supporting theme of the book seemed to be religion versus science and agnosticism. It was discussed in mintue detail quite thorughly. An interesting topic, but one that seemed to detract from the story after a while as opposed to add to it.
I can say that this book did cause me to reflect more openly about my own prejudices and ideas about class and for that, it was worth reading.
April 4, 2009
Godwin Peak is highly intelligent, but has no money. After his school years, he leaves his family and travels to another part of England to represent himself as interested in becoming part of the clergy.
His real aim is to make a good marriage which also means to gain an estate through this "good" marriage and to rise in society.
What Peak realizes is that, try as he does, he cannot escape his place in society.
Gissing presents an England conscious of class and propriety and the inability of the people, whether or not well born, to conceive of lives lived outside the confines of tradition.
December 6, 2010
Fairly easy to read so far, just getting to grips with the characters and how they relate to each other.
A book set and written in a period where class was everything, and coming from a family in trade was seen as detrimental.
Godwin wants to marry well and to do that he has to distance himself from his family and past.
A book set and written in a period where class was everything, and coming from a family in trade was seen as detrimental.
Godwin wants to marry well and to do that he has to distance himself from his family and past.
Want to read
March 6, 2014
nutty nuut
Want to read
August 3, 2019Reading 1001 BOTM Aug 2019 *
May 31, 2020
The book begins with a high school graduation in a Midland town in 1874. Students are humilated by coming second in class. Really? But when it is realised that the protagonist is not the wealthy, easy going Buckland Warricombe, but the class conscious scholarship boy Godwin Peak, who decides to leave school a year early rather than suffer the humiliation of his uncle opening a tea rooms opposite the school, the story gains traction. Late Victorian snobbery seems extreme until it is realised that the author, George Gissing, like Godwin, had a father who was a pharmacist and who also missed his last year of school, albeit in a more spectacular fashion. He ended up in jail for stealing from other students to support an unfortunate choice in women. With Godwin Peak bearing similarities to George Gissing, the story became intriguing. Then it is realised that the class system is not the only theme. The dilemma of rationalising traditional Anglicanism with the new ideas of Darwin becomes a more pressing theme. Godwin has published an article, The New Sophistry, condemning modern religion for attempting to reconcile religion with evolution. He has done so anonymously, which allows him to conceive of an idea to profess a desire to enter the clergy, to take orders, in order to ingratiate himself with the Warricombes and advance his social position. Which definitely dates the book.! As does Godwin's ideas about emancipated women. I quote: 'Remember your evolutionism. The preservation of the race demands in women many kinds of irrationality, of obstinate instinct, which enrage a reasoning man'. Nevertheless the ensuing story becomes fascinating both for the plot and for the way that these hot issues of Victorian society: the class system, religion versus science and the emancipation of women are discussed by the various characters. The conversations are realistic, the characters develop in interesting ways and the reader begins to wonder why Gissing is not more well known.
June 18, 2022
It's taken me years but this is my last George Gissing (whoopee !). Many of them are very minor, this is neither one of the best or the worst. Some are very enjoyable, check out "Our Friend The Charlatan" and see how nothing changes in the world of politics.
In "Born in Exile" an unsympathetic hypocritical snob, the protagonist, is the architect of his own misfortunes.
The book has modern relevance, sadly 130 years later the same conflict between science, and believers in the supernatural continues, nothing's changed and probably never will. Gissing's style moves away from the Victorianism of Trollope, Collins and Dickens and towards the style of Hardy, Bennett and Galsworthy.
In "Born in Exile" an unsympathetic hypocritical snob, the protagonist, is the architect of his own misfortunes.
The book has modern relevance, sadly 130 years later the same conflict between science, and believers in the supernatural continues, nothing's changed and probably never will. Gissing's style moves away from the Victorianism of Trollope, Collins and Dickens and towards the style of Hardy, Bennett and Galsworthy.
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