Complete Works of George Eliot

by George Eliot

This is the definitive Kindle Edition of the great writer's works, with every published novel, short story, novella and poem written by George Eliot, with beautiful illustrations and bonus texts.

Including:
* ALL 7 novels, with contents tables
* annotated with concise introductions to the novels and other works
* illustrated with many attractive images relating to Eliot's life and works throughout the eBook
* ALL the short stories and novellas
* rare non-fiction texts, revealing Eliot's mastery in literary criticism
* UPDATED with special images of how the novels first appeared, giving your Kindle a taste of the original Victorian texts!
* the COMPLETE poetry - with new additions and improvements
* each novel has its own contents table - you won't get lost in this eBook!
* includes Eliot's essays
* Elliot's rare religious translations
* includes 'Tom and Maggie Tulliver' the adapted children's version of 'The Mill and the Floss'
* also includes the SPECIAL BONUS TEXT of George Willis Cooke's biography on Eliot - discover her amazing life!
* boasts a special literary criticism section, with three essays exploring Eliot's works

There is also a front no-nonsense contents table, allowing easy navigation around the enormous file. As with all Delphi Classics, the texts are arranged in chronological order, allowing a scholarly reading and appreciation of Eliot's works.

For more information and to see other titles, please visit: www.delphiclassics.com

The Novels
ADAM BEDE
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS
SILAS MARNER
ROMOLA
FELIX HOLT THE RADICAL
MIDDLEMARCH
DANIEL DERONDA

The Novellas and Short Stories
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE
THE LIFTED VEIL
BROTHER JACOB
MAGGIE AND TOM TULLIVER

The Non-Fiction
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR
SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM
IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH
CARLYLE’S LIFE OF STERLING
WOMAN IN FRANCE: MADAME DE SABLÉ
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING
GERMAN WIT: HENRY HEINE
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS: THE POET YOUNG
THE GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT
ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, BY FELIX HOLT

The Poetry
THE LEGEND OF JUBAI.
AGATHA.
ARMGART
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING.
A MINOR PROPHET.
BROTHER AND SISTER.
STRADIVARIUS.
A COLLEGE BREAKFAST-PARTY
THE DEATH OF MOSES.
ARION
THE SPANISH GYPSY.
I COME AND STAND AT EVERY DOOR
LINES WRITTEN UNDER THE CONVICTION THAT IT IS NOT WISE TO READ MATHEMATICS IN NOVEMBER AFTER ONE'S FIRE IS OUT
LECTURES TO WOMEN ON PHYSICAL SCIENCE
TO THE CHIEF MUSICIAN UPON NABLA: A TYNDALLIC ODE
A VISION OF A WRANGLER, OF A UNIVERSITY, OF PEDANTRY, AND OF PHILOSOPHY
MID MY GOLD-BROWN CURLS
IN A LONDON DRAWINGROOM
COUNT THAT DAY LOST
I GRANT YOU AMPLE LEAVE
SWEET ENDINGS COME AND GO, LOVE
TWO LOVERS
GOD NEEDS ANTONIO
ROSES
O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.
MOTHER AND POET.
NATURE’S LADY.
TO A SKYLARK.

The Translations
THE LIFE OF JESUS CRITICALLY EXAMINED BY DR. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY BY LUDWIG ANDREAS FEUERBACH

For more information and to see other titles, please visit: www.delphiclassics.com

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Poetry, Literature, Historical, Collections

10358 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 2, 2012

About the author

Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.

Reviews

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am currently still reading The Mill on the Floss but will be done this weekend but I will write a review of this Delphi collection, as I have done to others where I have not finished all yet but come back to this collection when I decide to read George Eliot again. My reviews will not be here but under the title and can be found above in my George Eliot shelf. I read Adam Bede here and so far the navigation is perfect and I can't remember any errors yet. My notes and highlights are located here, some public and some private. I did not read Middlemarch here but in a separate kindle version.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

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Complete Works of George Eliot
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These beginning reviews were written when I began writing reviews on Shelfari, and reviews of novels etc by George Eliot are here. Those of her essays, poetry reviews are at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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The Novels
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Adam Bede, 1859

A bit of a tough going for those not quite facile with old dialects of northern country England, especially from a century or so ago, this starts slow and takes time to grip one, what with the extensive description of religion and Methodists of the fledgling times. Then before one quite knows the characters grip one, with a familiar tale of temptation and lack of resolution and foresight made more than worth reading and in fact a must due to the excellent descriptions of characters and variety thereof.

As to the story, surprises await one around every corner, almost. And before one knows there is the wolf in the woods dressed up in a deceptively attractive form. (The wolf is only the temptation leading to disaster, though, and not presented here quite as a personified human as another author would present it.) And before one knows one is deep into one third, then half, and then two thirds of the tale, all the while wondering why Eliot has not been allowed the same high pedestal as Austen, Hardy, and so on. Adam Bede has the same character of a story where little happens page after page and yet one is unable to leave it behind, most of the time.

The explanation comes soon enough with the - as Maugham described it of the most popular Tolstoy work of literature - barely or not even barely disguised nature of the moral lesson presented as a story. Hardy's Tess, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and then Eliot's poor Hetty Sorrel who is a barely mid-teen country girl with no knowledge and experience to keep her out of danger that presents itself disguised as love of a beautiful man, the lord of the land, all are innocent women that suffer consequences of their being unprotected as Tess was or not well guided as Hetty or falling in love as Anna Karenina does, and one is left to wonder if the author or the readers of those days were quite aware that these women, indeed very young women at that, were only human. They are punished, every one of them, with ruin of life and love, and death coming as the only escape for their ruined lives. Meanwhile Tess's rapist or seducer must be murdered by her as the only possible punishment he could find in the social set up, and the various other men of the stories depend on the authors for their just due, with Anna's brother habitually straying and nevertheless maintaining a social respectable position, and Arthur Donnithorne suffering on par with Hetty Sorrel (although not physically or socially but only at heart and less so socially) since Eliot would not let the guilty male go scot free.

As an aside, Eliot is rather less realistic about the time frames - Hetty's travails seem to be sprung on not only the reader but all of her family and other people as a complete surprise all of a sudden, and at that the reader is better prepared with a couple of hints but then lulled into comfort with the passing of time until the troubles suddenly pile up (a bit like the several miles long pile up of the vehicles on highway some years ago in Virginia due to paper mill and fog). This confusion of time factor leads one to wonder if Eliot is quite unaware of facts of life or was dressing those days so very aiding and abetting in hiding them from people - but no, even then, the women around Hetty being unaware for so long of the state she is in is inexplicable. And this must be the reason for the otherwise excellent work being not so very popular or held high in esteem in comparison with works of Austen.

March 6, 2011.
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The Mill on the Floss, 1860

Human nature, the author's era, and in particular a corner of the veil over caste system of Europe lifted with the casual reference to the separate churches or chapels for the poor and the gentry - all in all, good.

Friday, February 11, 2011.
............

Amazingly this is one of the few works of literature where a film or a television serial gives more, not less, than the original work in some ways. The social contexts of the time and the general setup is described in the book by the author as much as the author saw necessary, but times change and perhaps social set up across the world in another land, another time is different. At any rate, what comes across as a very personal story of a young woman in particular and her family in general, with the society as the frame thereof, changes when one takes into account the context of the time and the society, which is brought to view far more clearly on film in the film or television series.

The central character Maggie is very endearing in her persona full of life and aspiring for a life of mind and spirit while in turmoil of heart and conscience. Eliot seems to be a follower of Aquinas, and at any rate finds it necessary to make the poor young girl give up her one chance of finding life of happiness when she and a young man are inexorably drawn in spite of all obstacles, with little quarter given to his very valid arguments about the others they are engaged to being merely cheated if these two pretended no love existed between them.

The author seems to make little of the young woman's quest for independence by on one hand making her insist she won't depend on her relatives if she can make her own living and on the other hand give far more importance to the claims of various relatives and others when weighed in against her own mind and heart.

As for others, the society then clearly had its caste system with money and power playing top roles (which one doubts has changed much) and more, society including most women (author mentions them towards the end as the wives whom the rector cannot bring to see reason or truth where a poor young woman without powerful connections when compared to others is concerned - what else is new? -) consider a young woman as not quite proper except as someone belonging to, property of, under protection of a relative with some money, prestige, power, preferably male. If the male is merely a slightly older brother, nevertheless he has the power of righteous indignation and wrath if the young woman has any emotions much less actions or thoughts that are not explicitly approved prior to having them by the said male, and same is true of other relatives. The young man in question gets far more latitude in comparison.

In short the life and society of Europe was not that different regarding the feudal structure especially regarding women from what is now protested about as the restricted version in lands other than those of richer western nations (which is not a geographical term, since it includes Australia and NZ generally) with lifestyles of plenty and so forth.

One wishes the author had made Maggie's society see common sense and have a heart and allow her and Stephen Guest to be happy, but Eliot seems to think it is necessary to go tragic to deprive Maggie of everything that can possibly be taken from her including life, merely for the sin of having a young man of rich class fallen in love with her - he has been courting her cousin, but is really not bound by promise to her - and the only relief in all this is that the four young people concerned, the two in love and the other two who thought they belonged to them, understand all perfectly with no rancour. Which makes it all the more senseless that the tragedy is forced merely for sake of punishing a flouting of conventional bindings due to truth of hearts.

But then again, the author is a prisoner of her times, and perhaps she meant to bring about change in social attitudes by forcing this tragedy to attention of her readers and making them see sense.

July 27, 2012.
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Silas Marner, 1861

The story of two men, and a little girl, and rectitude and values, ethics and right choices, loss and redemption, love and caring and the joy they bring to life.

The wealthy young man married in what moment of temptation is left unsaid, but he did wish to not only keep his family hidden for fear of his society, he was in love with a good young woman, and did not wish to lose her. When the wife turned up in the village and was found dead - due to starvation and cold, having been neglected by the husband - he took the opportunity to say nothing about his connection.

The little child had wandered into the home of a stranger to the village society who had left a traumatic past behind him in the city, where he was persecuted due to his epileptic fits being mislabeled as dealings with devil and he had been thrown out of his work and his life. He had lived for years in the village, but connected with humanity only when he found the child in his home shortly after being robbed of all his money, all his saving, and insisted the child was his to protect and care for.

The father of the child let that be - and so lost the only child he was ever going to have, as it turned out.

Silas Marner gained a life by his act, his choice and his heart's truth in giving love and care to an orphan as he thought the child was. The father of the child lost all but his wealth by deliberately not acclaiming the child he knew was his, and while he married the good woman he loved, he knew he was not good enough for either her or her love, since he was an untruthful unworthy man by virtue of having denied his wife and his child, having neglected one until she died of starvation and cold, and having not claimed the child so she was taken and raised as an orphan by another man, who found the whole village gather round him in the process.

One of the most touching tales about human relationships, mistakes and redemption, crime and sin, fate and choices.

Silas Marner found life, and love of a daughter, with the little girl wandering in and falling asleep at his hearth; it was not his duty but a choice he made to keep the little one he could ill afford. Meanwhile her natural and legal father has refrained from admitting his family, falsified his identity in relation to the family he would not own, for sake of the good young woman he loved, and he lost much in the process of fall from rectitude.

March 6, 2011.
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Romola, 1863

Quoted from blurb:-

"This historical novel is set in the fifteenth century, and is “a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view”. It first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August. The story takes place amidst actual historical events during the Italian Renaissance, and includes in its plot several notable figures from Florentine history. The content of this novel is distinctly different from the rest of Eliot’s oeuvre."
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The book opens, deliberately dated explicitly at 1492, in Florence, with locals guiding a Greek youth to a home of a local scholar of renown who might use his assistance. There is much conversation along the way, and much exposition in prologue before, that makes one wonder if the author was deeply immersed in a scholastic study, or acquired it via travel, or both; but she does drop names of the era, now little kniwn, a great deal. That, however, isn't all - she already discusses the views of Romans, Italians in general and Florentine in particular, regarding scholastic quality of Greece versus their own - and vice versa, the disdain of Greece for Romans and Italians, unaffected by the reversal of fortunes, supported by the Greek familiarity with antiquity as opposed to what they almost call idolatry of Italians, in that Greece thinks Italian thought is unable to grasp anything prior to their religion.

To a reader not deeply into scholastic study of that era or of antiquity, of Greece and Italy, and particularly with regard to thinkers of the two lands over millennia, it's a tad unclear if the author us mentioning names strictly historical, and presenting their views accurately - or mixing it up a little with imaginary ones, since it's a novel, after all.

At that, a short way into the story, a small similarity with Silas Marner becomes apparent, that about an attractive youth who isn't a bad sort but isn't firm in his virtues, divided between a woman far above that he aspires to and another not quite that class whom he might love contentedly but for his aiming for the one higher.

But the chief similarity is the moral dilemma, which here isn't a choice between the two; it's rather a choice between the duty towards an adoptive father who needs to be rescued from slavery, which might involve a journey and search that might prove fruitless after all, but in any case be a certain loss of his years of youth, and most likely of the woman aspired to, apart from the life and status of a scholar established in society of Florence.

Another slight similarity is, of course, that of the two scholars - here a blind old father of the beautiful Romola, and the old Mr Casaubon of Middlemarch whom the beautiful Dorothea chose to marry; come to think, Romola is not very dissimilar to Dorothea, except she's a daughter, her scholarly father isn't described as working fruitlessly, and her destiny is more likely akin to Nancy of Silas Marner.

But the book is quite slow until about somewhere between a quarter and one third of the way, where it pickets up pace; until then it's heavy reading for those not well acquainted and enamoured about Florence circa 1492. And it's a bit further before one begins to realise that Eliot really intended to write of Savonarola.

At the end, after one has read it through puzzled, suddenly the whole structure emerges, and one sees the various characters that the author has painted, each a distinct type. Each has their own greatness and faults that go with it, not dissonant but making them human. And Savonarola merely fits in, as a historic persona seen rather dim in background, despite being portrayed not always in background.
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"More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and unstable sea — saw the same great mountain shadows on the same valleys as he has seen to-day — saw olive mounts, and pine forests, and the broad plains green with young corn or rain-freshened grass — saw the domes and spires of cities rising by the river-sides or mingled with the sedge-like masts on the many-curved sea-coast, in the same spots where they rise to-day. ... "

" ... And doubtless, if the spirit of a Florentine citizen, whose eyes were closed for the last time while Columbus was still waiting and arguing for the three poor vessels with which he was to set sail from the port of Palos, could return from the shades and pause where our thought ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are various collections of works of this author (as indeed is true of many of the classic authors of comparatively recent past centuries), and while many include much more of the works, few are as complete as the Delphi classics; but some, with contents closer to this one, are more honestly titled complete novels.
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Table of Contents (from book)
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Middlemarch a study of provincial life
Daniel Deronda
Romola
Adam Bede
Felix Holt the Radical
The Lifted Veil
Silas Marner
Brother Jacob
The Mill on the Floss
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Middlemarch a study of provincial life
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Middlemarch, 1871-72
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Exquisite beginning, sketching out the three characters, from the dresses to the thinking to lifestyles to status and expectations of Brooke girls and their uncle.

Why does it seem that this particular satisfaction is peculiar to women authors who were independent thinkers and wrote to their own satisfaction, despite seeming limitations of an era when women were not supposed to indulge themselves beyond domesticity? Whether Jane Austen or George Eliot, Agatha Christie or Bronte sisters, or Margaret Mitchell for that matter - and Marilyn French comes to mind, in the context - they all did as they chose, when it came to thinking and writing.

But the part that might surprise a reader is that, having spent detailed chapters of descriptions on the Brooke family and engagement of Dorothea, author then swiftly dispatches her off to Rome on her wedding tour, and moves on, not to the sister as expected, but to an entirely different clan, mentioned very little until then. One begins to realise that this work is about society of England in general, Midlands in particular, of the times of the author, and perhaps not about particular one or two or handful of persons, as one might expect from novels in general, and author of Silas Marner in particular.

The author takes her time in developing characters, with several sets of young lovers and their elders, their inclinations and characters and destinies, all developing at a rate that's at first trying, because it takes time to catch on, and then trying because reader would like a beloved character or couple to find happiness already. One would like Dorothea to be united with her love and be secure, the pretty Rosamond to have some sense knocked into her head, Dr Lydgate to find security enough to allow him to work, and more. But in Silas Marner, too, author solved everything only at the end, albeit in favour of those deserving. One hopes.

But Middlemarch was written a little later than Silas Marner, and justice is not as completely satisfactory here, although nor is is as non-existent either - and neither are things as neat as they could and should have been.

It's not that Dorothea giving up her husband's wealth for her love jars one, as unjust as it is; it's that thereby her being able to do good is marred too, quite unnecessarily. For if she's not to keep it, it ought to have gone to his next of kin, which would be Will Ladislaw who was wronged in first place; and so they together could help Dr Lydgate, instead of his life and talent ruined and his early demise, while Rosamond flourished and was satisfied. This really jars.

It's to credit of the author, the sketches of Celia and Rosamond that she portrays, who are so very common in a the world and held respectable too, while the Dorothea and Lydgate and Will Ladislaw are held lower, but the reality of souls is the very opposite as the author shows. Her determined expose on the caste system of England, of West in general, remains scathing to the end.
............

Author, even in taking a dig, is delightful.

"In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid."

And shortly thereafter,

"Has the theory of the solar system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact?"

And a superb

"This was one of the difficulties of moving in good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office."
............

"Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,—or from one of our elder poets,—in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared. The pride of being ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably "good:" if you inquired backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying forefathers—anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestor discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterwards conformed, and managed to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate. Young women of such birth, living in a quiet country-house, and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster's daughter. Then there was well-bred economy, which in those days made show in dress the first item to be deducted from, when any margin was required for expenses more distinctive of rank. Such reasons would have been enough to account for plain dress, quite apart from religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it; and 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. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. ... With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and afterwards in a Swiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their orphaned condition.

"It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote. He had travelled in his younger years, and was held in this part of the county to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out. ... "

"In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance; but in his niece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults and virtues, turning sometimes into impatience of her uncle's talk or his way of "letting things be" on his estate, and making her long all the more for the time when she would be of age and have some command of money for generous schemes. She was regarded as an heiress; for not only had the sisters seven hundred a-year each from their parents, but if Dorothea married and had a son, that son would inherit Mr. Brooke's estate, presumably worth about three thousand a-year—a rental which seemed wealth to provincial families, still discussing Mr. Peel's late conduct on the Catholic question, innocent of future gold-fields, and of that gorgeous plutocracy which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life."

"The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers, was generally in favor of Celia, as being so amiable and innocent-looking, while Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it."
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Contrast is further brought out as Celia asks that they see and divide the departed mother's jewels, and Dorothea finds the suggestion surprising, preferring giving it all to Celia.

""But how can I wear ornaments if you, who are the elder sister, will never wear them?"

""Nay, Celia, that is too much to ask, that I should wear trinkets to keep you in countenance. If I were to put on such a necklace as that, I should feel as if I had been pirouetting. The world would go round with me, and I should not know how to walk.""

But it's not a false or drab sacrificing character either.

""How very beautiful these gems are!" said Dorothea, under a new current of feeling, as sudden as the gleam. "It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St. John. They look like fragments of heaven. I think that emerald is more beautiful than any of them."

""And there is a bracelet to match it," said Celia. "We did not notice this at first."

""They are lovely," said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her finely turned finger and wrist, and holding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. All the while her thought was trying to justify her delight in the colors by merging them in her mystic religious joy.

""You would like those, Dorothea," said Celia, rather falteringly, beginning to think with wonder that her sister showed some weakness, and also that emeralds would suit her own complexion even better than purple amethysts. "You must keep that ring and bracelet—if nothing else. But see, these agates are very pretty and quiet."

""Yes! I will keep these—this ring and bracelet," said Dorothea. Then, letting her hand fall on the table, she said in another tone—"Yet what miserable men find such things, and work at them, and sell them!" She paused again, and Celia thought that her sister was going to renounce the ornaments, as in consistency she ought to do.

""Yes, dear, I will keep these," said Dorothea, decidedly. "But take all the rest away, and the casket."

"She took up her pencil without removing the jewels, and still looking at them. She thought of often having them by her, to feed her eye at these little fountains of pure color.

""Shall you wear them in company?" said Celia, who was watching her with real curiosity as to what she would do.

"Dorothea glanced quickly at her sister. Across all her imaginative adornment of those whom she loved, there darted now and then a keen discernment, which was not without a scorching quality. If Miss Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it would not be for lack of inward fire.

""Perhaps," she said, rather haughtily. "I cannot tell to what level I may sink."

"Celia blushed, and was unhappy: she saw that she had offended her sister, and dared not say even anything pretty about the gift of the ornaments which she put back into the box and carried away. Dorothea too was unhappy, as she went on with her plan-drawing, questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech in the scene which had ended with that little explosion.

"Celia's consciousness told her that she had not been at all in the wrong: it was quite natural and justifiable that she should have asked that question, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was inconsistent: either she should have taken her full share of the jewels, or, after what she had said, she should have renounced them altogether."
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Author isn't above a not too subtle caricature of how gentlemen treated women if they spoke and not like dim-witted, fainting creatures.

""Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr. Brooke, smiling towards Mr. Casaubon. "I remember when we were all reading Adam Smith. There is a book, now. I took in all the new ideas at one time—human perfectibility, now. But some say, history moves in circles; and that may be very well argued; I have argued it myself. The fact is, human reason may carry you a little too far—over the hedge, in fact. ... "

And nor is Dorothea above rejecting the aggravating squire, especially when she's caught by the young and serious clergyman.

""But you are fond of riding, Miss Brooke," Sir James presently took an opportunity of saying. "I should have thought you would enter a little into the pleasures of hunting. I wish you would let me send over a chestnut horse for you to try. It has been trained for a lady. I saw you on Saturday cantering over the hill on a nag not worthy of you. My groom shall bring Corydon for you every day, if you will only mention the time."

""Thank you, you are very good. I mean to give up riding. I shall not ride any more," said Dorothea, urged to this brusque resolution by a little annoyance that Sir James would be soliciting her attention when she wanted to give it all to Mr. Casaubon."

Of course, Celia is realistic, more so than Dorothea.

"Celia thought privately, "Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chettam; I believe she would not accept him." Celia felt that this was a pity. She had never been deceived as to the object of the baronet's interest. Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would perhaps not make a husband happy who had not her way of looking at things; and stifled in the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister was too religious for family comfort. Notions and scruples were like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down, or even eating."

And the squire definitely pursued Dorothea, oblivious of her feelings.

" ... As to the excessive religiousness alleged ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

These beginning reviews were written when I began writing reviews on Shelfari, and reviews of novels etc by George Eliot are here. Those of her essays, poetry reviews are at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Adam Bede (1859)

A bit of a tough going for those not quite facile with old dialects of northern country England, especially from a century or so ago, this starts slow and takes time to grip one, what with the extensive description of religion and Methodists of the fledgling times. Then before one quite knows the characters grip one, with a familiar tale of temptation and lack of resolution and foresight made more than worth reading and in fact a must due to the excellent descriptions of characters and variety thereof.

As to the story, surprises await one around every corner, almost. And before one knows there is the wolf in the woods dressed up in a deceptively attractive form. (The wolf is only the temptation leading to disaster, though, and not presented here quite as a personified human as another author would present it.) And before one knows one is deep into one third, then half, and then two thirds of the tale, all the while wondering why Eliot has not been allowed the same high pedestal as Austen, Hardy, and so on. Adam Bede has the same character of a story where little happens page after page and yet one is unable to leave it behind, most of the time.

The explanation comes soon enough with the - as Maugham described it of the most popular Tolstoy work of literature - barely or not even barely disguised nature of the moral lesson presented as a story. Hardy's Tess, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and then Eliot's poor Hetty Sorrel who is a barely mid-teen country girl with no knowledge and experience to keep her out of danger that presents itself disguised as love of a beautiful man, the lord of the land, all are innocent women that suffer consequences of their being unprotected as Tess was or not well guided as Hetty or falling in love as Anna Karenina does, and one is left to wonder if the author or the readers of those days were quite aware that these women, indeed very young women at that, were only human. They are punished, every one of them, with ruin of life and love, and death coming as the only escape for their ruined lives. Meanwhile Tess's rapist or seducer must be murdered by her as the only possible punishment he could find in the social set up, and the various other men of the stories depend on the authors for their just due, with Anna's brother habitually straying and nevertheless maintaining a social respectable position, and Arthur Donnithorne suffering on par with Hetty Sorrel (although not physically or socially but only at heart and less so socially) since Eliot would not let the guilty male go scot free.

As an aside, Eliot is rather less realistic about the time frames - Hetty's travails seem to be sprung on not only the reader but all of her family and other people as a complete surprise all of a sudden, and at that the reader is better prepared with a couple of hints but then lulled into comfort with the passing of time until the troubles suddenly pile up (a bit like the several miles long pile up of the vehicles on highway some years ago in Virginia due to paper mill and fog). This confusion of time factor leads one to wonder if Eliot is quite unaware of facts of life or was dressing those days so very aiding and abetting in hiding them from people - but no, even then, the women around Hetty being unaware for so long of the state she is in is inexplicable. And this must be the reason for the otherwise excellent work being not so very popular or held high in esteem in comparison with works of Austen.

March 6, 2011.
............

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Human nature, the author's era, and in particular a corner of the veil over caste system of Europe lifted with the casual reference to the separate churches or chapels for the poor and the gentry - all in all, good.

Friday, February 11, 2011.
............

Amazingly this is one of the few works of literature where a film or a television serial gives more, not less, than the original work in some ways. The social contexts of the time and the general setup is described in the book by the author as much as the author saw necessary, but times change and perhaps social set up across the world in another land, another time is different. At any rate, what comes across as a very personal story of a young woman in particular and her family in general, with the society as the frame thereof, changes when one takes into account the context of the time and the society, which is brought to view far more clearly on film in the film or television series.

The central character Maggie is very endearing in her persona full of life and aspiring for a life of mind and spirit while in turmoil of heart and conscience. Eliot seems to be a follower of Aquinas, and at any rate finds it necessary to make the poor young girl give up her one chance of finding life of happiness when she and a young man are inexorably drawn in spite of all obstacles, with little quarter given to his very valid arguments about the others they are engaged to being merely cheated if these two pretended no love existed between them.

The author seems to make little of the young woman's quest for independence by on one hand making her insist she won't depend on her relatives if she can make her own living and on the other hand give far more importance to the claims of various relatives and others when weighed in against her own mind and heart.

As for others, the society then clearly had its caste system with money and power playing top roles (which one doubts has changed much) and more, society including most women (author mentions them towards the end as the wives whom the rector cannot bring to see reason or truth where a poor young woman without powerful connections when compared to others is concerned - what else is new? -) consider a young woman as not quite proper except as someone belonging to, property of, under protection of a relative with some money, prestige, power, preferably male. If the male is merely a slightly older brother, nevertheless he has the power of righteous indignation and wrath if the young woman has any emotions much less actions or thoughts that are not explicitly approved prior to having them by the said male, and same is true of other relatives. The young man in question gets far more latitude in comparison.

In short the life and society of Europe was not that different regarding the feudal structure especially regarding women from what is now protested about as the restricted version in lands other than those of richer western nations (which is not a geographical term, since it includes Australia and NZ generally) with lifestyles of plenty and so forth.

One wishes the author had made Maggie's society see common sense and have a heart and allow her and Stephen Guest to be happy, but Eliot seems to think it is necessary to go tragic to deprive Maggie of everything that can possibly be taken from her including life, merely for the sin of having a young man of rich class fallen in love with her - he has been courting her cousin, but is really not bound by promise to her - and the only relief in all this is that the four young people concerned, the two in love and the other two who thought they belonged to them, understand all perfectly with no rancour. Which makes it all the more senseless that the tragedy is forced merely for sake of punishing a flouting of conventional bindings due to truth of hearts.

But then again, the author is a prisoner of her times, and perhaps she meant to bring about change in social attitudes by forcing this tragedy to attention of her readers and making them see sense.

July 27, 2012.
............

Silas Marner (1861)

The story of two men, and a little girl, and rectitude and values, ethics and right choices, loss and redemption, love and caring and the joy they bring to life.

The wealthy young man married in what moment of temptation is left unsaid, but he did wish to not only keep his family hidden for fear of his society, he was in love with a good young woman, and did not wish to lose her. When the wife turned up in the village and was found dead - due to starvation and cold, having been neglected by the husband - he took the opportunity to say nothing about his connection.

The little child had wandered into the home of a stranger to the village society who had left a traumatic past behind him in the city, where he was persecuted due to his epileptic fits being mislabeled as dealings with devil and he had been thrown out of his work and his life. He had lived for years in the village, but connected with humanity only when he found the child in his home shortly after being robbed of all his money, all his saving, and insisted the child was his to protect and care for.

The father of the child let that be - and so lost the only child he was ever going to have, as it turned out.

Silas Marner gained a life by his act, his choice and his heart's truth in giving love and care to an orphan as he thought the child was. The father of the child lost all but his wealth by deliberately not acclaiming the child he knew was his, and while he married the good woman he loved, he knew he was not good enough for either her or her love, since he was an untruthful unworthy man by virtue of having denied his wife and his child, having neglected one until she died of starvation and cold, and having not claimed the child so she was taken and raised as an orphan by another man, who found the whole village gather round him in the process.

One of the most touching tales about human relationships, mistakes and redemption, crime and sin, fate and choices.

Silas Marner found life, and love of a daughter, with the little girl wandering in and falling asleep at his hearth; it was not his duty but a choice he made to keep the little one he could ill afford. Meanwhile her natural and legal father has refrained from admitting his family, falsified his identity in relation to the family he would not own, for sake of the good young woman he loved, and he lost much in the process of fall from rectitude.

March 6, 2011.
............
............

Romola (1863)

Quoted from blurb:-

"This historical novel is set in the fifteenth century, and is “a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view”. It first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August. The story takes place amidst actual historical events during the Italian Renaissance, and includes in its plot several notable figures from Florentine history. The content of this novel is distinctly different from the rest of Eliot’s oeuvre."
............

The book opens, deliberately dated explicitly at 1492, in Florence, with locals guiding a Greek youth to a home of a local scholar of renown who might use his assistance. There is much conversation along the way, and much exposition in prologue before, that makes one wonder if the author was deeply immersed in a scholastic study, or acquired it via travel, or both; but she does drop names of the era, now little kniwn, a great deal. That, however, isn't all - she already discusses the views of Romans, Italians in general and Florentine in particular, regarding scholastic quality of Greece versus their own - and vice versa, the disdain of Greece for Romans and Italians, unaffected by the reversal of fortunes, supported by the Greek familiarity with antiquity as opposed to what they almost call idolatry of Italians, in that Greece thinks Italian thought is unable to grasp anything prior to their religion.

To a reader not deeply into scholastic study of that era or of antiquity, of Greece and Italy, and particularly with regard to thinkers of the two lands over millennia, it's a tad unclear if the author us mentioning names strictly historical, and presenting their views accurately - or mixing it up a little with imaginary ones, since it's a novel, after all.

At that, a short way into the story, a small similarity with Silas Marner becomes apparent, that about an attractive youth who isn't a bad sort but isn't firm in his virtues, divided between a woman far above that he aspires to and another not quite that class whom he might love contentedly but for his aiming for the one higher.

But the chief similarity is the moral dilemma, which here isn't a choice between the two; it's rather a choice between the duty towards an adoptive father who needs to be rescued from slavery, which might involve a journey and search that might prove fruitless after all, but in any case be a certain loss of his years of youth, and most likely of the woman aspired to, apart from the life and status of a scholar established in society of Florence.

Another slight similarity is, of course, that of the two scholars - here a blind old father of the beautiful Romola, and the old Mr Casaubon of Middlemarch whom the beautiful Dorothea chose to marry; come to think, Romola is not very dissimilar to Dorothea, except she's a daughter, her scholarly father isn't described as working fruitlessly, and her destiny is more likely akin to Nancy of Silas Marner.

But the book is quite slow until about somewhere between a quarter and one third of the way, where it pickets up pace; until then it's heavy reading for those not well acquainted and enamoured about Florence circa 1492. And it's a bit further before one begins to realise that Eliot really intended to write of Savonarola.

At the end, after one has read it through puzzled, suddenly the whole structure emerges, and one sees the various characters that the author has painted, each a distinct type. Each has their own greatness and faults that go with it, not dissonant but making them human. And Savonarola merely fits in, as a historic persona seen rather dim in background, despite being portrayed not always in background.
............

"More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and unstable sea — saw the same great mountain shadows on the same valleys as he has seen to-day — saw olive mounts, and pine forests, and the broad plains green with young corn or rain-freshened grass — saw the domes and spires of cities rising by the river-sides or mingled with the sedge-like masts on the many-curved sea-coast, in the same spots where they rise to-day. ... "

" ... And doubtless, if the spirit of a Florentine citizen, whose eyes were closed for the last time while Columbus was still waiting and arguing for the three poor vessels with which he was to set sail from the port of Palos, could return from the shades and pause where our thought is pausing, he would believe that there must still be fellowship and understanding for him ....

[Robinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the complete works.

Would have given it a higher rating if it had actually been the complete works, but it's not. Very disappointing.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

These beginning reviews were written when I began writing reviews on Shelfari, and reviews of novels etc by George Eliot are here. Those of her essays, poetry reviews are at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Scenes of Clerical Life. (1858)
............
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
Janet's Repentance
............
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton

For an early work this story has amazing insight into human nature and behaviour, along with a detailed description of the place and time, and also usage of the language far more extensive than what one is used to during 20th century even before the sms era.

Even if one knows nothing of the author it is easy to suspect post finishing the book that this is an autobiographical tale, and it mainly at heart is a very deeply loving daughter's heartbreaking tribute to her very beautiful and universally loved mother who was also a very good person, along with the outward story that is a factual exoneration of her father of a false blame and suspicion harboured by silly neighbours of the parish who could not imagine a beautiful woman taking an extensive stay with a family of a man of cloth even if his own wife was beautiful, much loved by all including himself, and very much present on premises.

Why the author could not show details of the family post the departure of the mother is what one immediately questions after finishing this abruptly ending tale - along with such questions as what happened to other children (only two are mentioned, did the rest die as children did of decease and starvation in poverty in Europe those days?) and why Patty did not marry. That can be only explained by the surmise that this is the story of Mary Ann Evans who took the pen name of George Eliot in order to be able to write in peace and publish at all (- misogyny was not so violent then as now what with crimes against women being more violent and explicit by the day, but women were not seen as people who could think and were certainly not allowed to write and publish, and being an exception was a harsh struggle, so Bronte sisters had male names to publish too as did Madam Sand -) and that she did not marry due to the horror and pathos of the marriage of her mother who died so early in her life, compounded by the fact that there was no dowry for Patty or Mary Ann Evans to help her marry with security of a middle class life, since her father was a poor man of cloth with several children to feed and clothe and shelter.

One cannot but help compare here, since it is very pertinent and relevant - Barton in all his poverty and ordinary Englishman's life and persona of someone who has been to university and is involved day to day in matters intellectual and religious (for Barton approaches religion and sermons within strictly the intellectual realm and bores his parish stiff, enabling them to distance themselves until they sympathise with his loss of his wife) and little or none of the luxuries or power in his life or riches for that matter, is nonetheless no different from the Mongol (Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and the close relatives of Kublai Khan that settled in India routed via Persia bringing that nomenclature) emperor Shah Jahan who built that extravagant mausoleum for his wife on top of the revered temple of the majority religion of the country, achieving two shots in one; both the women were worn out by extensive childbearing beyond their health capability and died due to this " excessive love from the husband", a husband who was incapable of forbearing his sexual appetite even when the consequences endangered the wife's health to the point of death.

Perhaps the only difference is that Barton (or Evans) had no harem to satisfy his needs elsewhere while preserving the loved wife's health and life, and Shah Jahan did but wore out the one loved nevertheless. Amelia Barton died after giving birth to seven children (or is it eight?) and Mumtaj Mahal to fourteen, but then the latter had servants galore to do all her work and take care of her as well, and no lack of physicians or food or remedies of any sort available around in half the known world.

Milly Barton was poor, overworked, starving, worrying about her children being fed and clothed, and paying the bills in all honour.

This says two separate and related things to any aware reader - one, those involved in intellectual and spiritual line of work are likely to be poor as a rule, whether vicars and curates of England or Brahmans of India or rabbis of Jewish diaspora anywhere for that matter, and especially more so when they have families of their own to support and are not allowed to make money by using any skills since they are men of cloth or are Brahmans as indeed they are not by tradition allowed in most of these cases. And two, the only difference in the various traditions mentioned here is that in the older ones the Brahman or the rabbi is at least nominally most respected member of the society while a curate or a vicar is not accorded that social respect without backing of independent wealth, which in fact gets him a better living too.

Positions of vicar, curate, etc might be obtained by anybody and are not hereditary, but that in practice merely means that the positions are either bought by someone for the person appointed or are doled out as a favour to someone for some reason for the favour; as a consequence those richer get higher positions and those from poor background get less paid ones if at all, in church as well in trade or military or any other sphere of work.

On thinking it over, men inheriting their father's trade is not so far off this buying of positions, since most poor in the world are limited to what knowledge their parents can provide them as heritage; and women all over the world are limited even now with everyone seeing them as reproductive functionaries and food preparing and other services providers, to be browbeaten and blackmailed and threatened into it irrespective of time, place, relationship, occasion, whatever.

Indeed the only women that escape it might be born princesses and queens regina of Europe, if any. Others may fight back, but this merely makes life unpleasant, and this is the choice offered them socially as a weapon to force them to submit - until they do submit they are constantly attacked. I have heard a supposedly educated scientist from space agency of Europe questioning sexual capacity of a very famous high profile chief of a computer firm only because he heard about her being appointed in that position, and he went worse from that point. Till date I suspect most people hold him innocent in the huge quarrel we had and of course he probably does not mention his wrongs if indeed he is aware of them, but then even if he did they would not seem wrong to most people but only humour, not to be taken seriously or pointed out the wrongs of seriously. He in fact said it was different if he made racist jokes, which he would not, and was very angry when informed it was not different at all.

His wife wanted to discuss caste system of India, and was nonplussed when pointed out that her not requiring her sons or husband to help her in the kitchen but requiring or expecting any woman around irrespective of age, including any casual visitor or invited guests or new acquaintances, was caste system.

Most men and probably most women too would think this is harsh against Barton and against someone who spent twenty years and millions of public fund to build the most famous mausoleum in the world, since men's sexual needs are held not only incontrollable but sacrosanct, with rape considered natural and of no consequence and in fact the woman's fault for being raped (why was she there, what did she were, did she not encourage it and want it and if so how does anyone prove it, what difference does it make unless it is a damage to her husband or father's honour) through most of the world even now when law is changing and some lip service to a woman's right to be not assaulted is paid at some places around the world.

But fact is, these women died of their husbands "love" for them, thoughtless as it was and driven by the physical needs of the husbands, and what difference does a tombstone or a mausoleum make to the one that is dead?

If that is not convincing, consider what a man - any man anywhere in the world - would say offered the same alternative, of repeated usage and death in youth with a handsome mausoleum as a memento to the "love". It is a no brainer - men would club anyone suggesting this to death, with no memorial.

March 10, 2011.
............

Mr. Gilfil's Love Story

The first part had begun after departure of the earlier pastor, Mr Gilfil; the second retreats to begin the story of the earlier pastor by recounting his parish's feelings about wearing black in honour of his departure.
............

" ... To be sure, Mrs. Jennings was a new-comer, and town-bred, so that she could hardly be expected to have very clear notions of what was proper; but, as Mrs. Higgins observed in an undertone to Mrs. Parrot when they were coming out of church, 'Her husband, who'd been born i' the parish, might ha' told her better.' An unreadiness to put on black on all available occasions, or too great an alacrity in putting it off, argued, in Mrs. Higgins's opinion, a dangerous levity of character, and an unnatural insensibility to the essential fitness of things.

"'Some folks can't a-bear to put off their colours,' she remarked; 'but that was never the way i' my family. Why, Mrs. Parrot, from the time I was married, till Mr. Higgins died, nine years ago come Candlemas, I niver was out o' black two year together!'

"'Ah,' said Mrs. Parrot, who was conscious of inferiority in this respect, 'there isn't many families as have had so many deaths as yours, Mrs. Higgins.'

"Mrs. Higgins, who was an elderly widow, 'well left', reflected with complacency that Mrs. Parrot's observation was no more than just, and that Mrs. Jennings very likely belonged to a family which had had no funerals to speak of."
............

"Nevertheless, with all these notorious sources of income, the shameless old woman constantly pleaded poverty, and begged for scraps at Mrs. Hackit's, who, though she always said Mrs. Fripp was 'as false as two folks', and no better than a miser and a heathen, had yet a leaning towards her as an old neighbour.

"'There's that case-hardened old Judy a-coming after the tea-leaves again,' Mrs. Hackit would say; 'an' I'm fool enough to give 'em her, though Sally wants 'em all the while to sweep the floors with!'"
............

"'Why, he'll eat his head off, and yours too. How can you go on keeping a pig, and making nothing by him?'

"'O, he picks a bit hisself wi' rootin', and I dooant mind doing wi'out to gi' him summat. A bit o' company's meat an' drink too, an' he follers me about, and grunts when I spake to'm, just like a Christian.'"
............

" ... Alas, alas! we poor mortals are often little better than wood-ashes—there is small sign of the sap, and the leafy freshness, and the bursting buds that were once there; but wherever we see wood-ashes, we know that all that early fullness of life must have been. I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man, or a wizened old woman, but I see also, with my mind's eye, that Past of which they are the shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance, compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden-scenes and fair perspectives overturned and thrust out of sight."
............

"And a charming picture Cheverel Manor would have made that evening, if some English Watteau had been there to paint it: the castellated house of grey-tinted stone, with the flickering sunbeams sending dashes of golden light across the many-shaped panes in the mullioned windows, and a great beech leaning athwart one of the flanking towers, and breaking, with its dark flattened boughs, the too formal symmetry of the front; the broad gravel-walk winding on the right, by a row of tall pines, alongside the pool—on the left branching out among swelling grassy mounds, surmounted by clumps of trees, where the red trunk of the Scotch fir glows in the descending sunlight against the bright green of limes and acacias; the great pool, where a pair of swans are swimming lazily with one leg tucked under a wing, and where the open water-lilies lie calmly accepting the kisses of the fluttering light-sparkles; the lawn, with its smooth emerald greenness, sloping down to the rougher and browner herbage of the park, from which it is invisibly fenced by a little stream that winds away from the pool, and disappears under a wooden bridge in the distant pleasure-ground; and on this lawn our two ladies, whose part in the landscape the painter, standing at a favourable point of view in the park, would represent with a few little dabs of red and white and blue."
............

" ... But neither he nor Lady Cheverel had any idea of adopting her as their daughter, and giving her their own rank in life. They were much too English and aristocratic to think of anything so romantic. No! the child would be brought up at Cheverel Manor as a protegee, to be ultimately useful, perhaps, in sorting worsteds, keeping accounts, reading aloud, and otherwise supplying the place of spectacles when her ladyship's eyes should wax dim."

" ... After those first years in which little girls are petted like puppies and kittens, there comes a time when it seems less obvious what they can be good for, especially when, like Caterina, they give no particular promise of cleverness or beauty; and it is not surprising that in that uninteresting period there was no particular plan formed as to her future position. She could always help Mrs. Sharp, supposing she were fit for nothing else, as she grew up; but now, this rare gift of song endeared her to Lady Cheverel, who loved music above all things, and it associated her at once with the pleasures of the drawing-room. Insensibly she came to be regarded as one of the family, and the servants began to understand that Miss Sarti was to be a lady after all."
............

"This was Mr. Gilfil's love-story, which lay far back from the time when he sat, worn and grey, by his lonely fireside in Shepperton Vicarage. Rich brown locks, passionate love, and deep early sorrow, strangely different as they seem from the scanty white hairs, the apathetic content, and the unexpectant quiescence of old age, are but part of the same life's journey; as the bright Italian plains, with the sweet Addio of their beckoning maidens, are part of the same day's travel that brings us to the other side of the mountain, between the sombre rocky walls and among the guttural voices of the Valais."
............
............

Janet's Repentance
............
............

Janet's Repentance
(Scenes of Clerical Life #3)
by George Eliot.
............

This work combines two vital concerns, one that ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

These beginning reviews were written when I began writing reviews on Shelfari, and reviews of novels etc by George Eliot are here. Those of her essays, poetry reviews are at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
................................................................................................
................................................................................................

............
............
Table of Contents (from book)
............
............
Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)
Adam Bede (1859)
The Lifted Veil (1859)
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
Romola (1863)
Brother Jacob (1864)
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)
Middlemarch (1871/72)
The Legend of Jubal, and Other Poems (1874)
Daniel Deronda (1876)
Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)
The Essays
Miscellaneous Poems
............
............
Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)
............
............
Scenes of Clerical Life. (1858)
............
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
Janet's Repentance
............
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton

For an early work this story has amazing insight into human nature and behaviour, along with a detailed description of the place and time, and also usage of the language far more extensive than what one is used to during 20th century even before the sms era.

Even if one knows nothing of the author it is easy to suspect post finishing the book that this is an autobiographical tale, and it mainly at heart is a very deeply loving daughter's heartbreaking tribute to her very beautiful and universally loved mother who was also a very good person, along with the outward story that is a factual exoneration of her father of a false blame and suspicion harboured by silly neighbours of the parish who could not imagine a beautiful woman taking an extensive stay with a family of a man of cloth even if his own wife was beautiful, much loved by all including himself, and very much present on premises.

Why the author could not show details of the family post the departure of the mother is what one immediately questions after finishing this abruptly ending tale - along with such questions as what happened to other children (only two are mentioned, did the rest die as children did of decease and starvation in poverty in Europe those days?) and why Patty did not marry. That can be only explained by the surmise that this is the story of Mary Ann Evans who took the pen name of George Eliot in order to be able to write in peace and publish at all (- misogyny was not so violent then as now what with crimes against women being more violent and explicit by the day, but women were not seen as people who could think and were certainly not allowed to write and publish, and being an exception was a harsh struggle, so Bronte sisters had male names to publish too as did Madam Sand -) and that she did not marry due to the horror and pathos of the marriage of her mother who died so early in her life, compounded by the fact that there was no dowry for Patty or Mary Ann Evans to help her marry with security of a middle class life, since her father was a poor man of cloth with several children to feed and clothe and shelter.

One cannot but help compare here, since it is very pertinent and relevant - Barton in all his poverty and ordinary Englishman's life and persona of someone who has been to university and is involved day to day in matters intellectual and religious (for Barton approaches religion and sermons within strictly the intellectual realm and bores his parish stiff, enabling them to distance themselves until they sympathise with his loss of his wife) and little or none of the luxuries or power in his life or riches for that matter, is nonetheless no different from the Mongol (Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and the close relatives of Kublai Khan that settled in India routed via Persia bringing that nomenclature) emperor Shah Jahan who built that extravagant mausoleum for his wife on top of the revered temple of the majority religion of the country, achieving two shots in one; both the women were worn out by extensive childbearing beyond their health capability and died due to this " excessive love from the husband", a husband who was incapable of forbearing his sexual appetite even when the consequences endangered the wife's health to the point of death.

Perhaps the only difference is that Barton (or Evans) had no harem to satisfy his needs elsewhere while preserving the loved wife's health and life, and Shah Jahan did but wore out the one loved nevertheless. Amelia Barton died after giving birth to seven children (or is it eight?) and Mumtaj Mahal to fourteen, but then the latter had servants galore to do all her work and take care of her as well, and no lack of physicians or food or remedies of any sort available around in half the known world.

Milly Barton was poor, overworked, starving, worrying about her children being fed and clothed, and paying the bills in all honour.

This says two separate and related things to any aware reader - one, those involved in intellectual and spiritual line of work are likely to be poor as a rule, whether vicars and curates of England or Brahmans of India or rabbis of Jewish diaspora anywhere for that matter, and especially more so when they have families of their own to support and are not allowed to make money by using any skills since they are men of cloth or are Brahmans as indeed they are not by tradition allowed in most of these cases. And two, the only difference in the various traditions mentioned here is that in the older ones the Brahman or the rabbi is at least nominally most respected member of the society while a curate or a vicar is not accorded that social respect without backing of independent wealth, which in fact gets him a better living too.

Positions of vicar, curate, etc might be obtained by anybody and are not hereditary, but that in practice merely means that the positions are either bought by someone for the person appointed or are doled out as a favour to someone for some reason for the favour; as a consequence those richer get higher positions and those from poor background get less paid ones if at all, in church as well in trade or military or any other sphere of work.

On thinking it over, men inheriting their father's trade is not so far off this buying of positions, since most poor in the world are limited to what knowledge their parents can provide them as heritage; and women all over the world are limited even now with everyone seeing them as reproductive functionaries and food preparing and other services providers, to be browbeaten and blackmailed and threatened into it irrespective of time, place, relationship, occasion, whatever.

Indeed the only women that escape it might be born princesses and queens regina of Europe, if any. Others may fight back, but this merely makes life unpleasant, and this is the choice offered them socially as a weapon to force them to submit - until they do submit they are constantly attacked. I have heard a supposedly educated scientist from space agency of Europe questioning sexual capacity of a very famous high profile chief of a computer firm only because he heard about her being appointed in that position, and he went worse from that point. Till date I suspect most people hold him innocent in the huge quarrel we had and of course he probably does not mention his wrongs if indeed he is aware of them, but then even if he did they would not seem wrong to most people but only humour, not to be taken seriously or pointed out the wrongs of seriously. He in fact said it was different if he made racist jokes, which he would not, and was very angry when informed it was not different at all.

His wife wanted to discuss caste system of India, and was nonplussed when pointed out that her not requiring her sons or husband to help her in the kitchen but requiring or expecting any woman around irrespective of age, including any casual visitor or invited guests or new acquaintances, was caste system.

Most men and probably most women too would think this is harsh against Barton and against someone who spent twenty years and millions of public fund to build the most famous mausoleum in the world, since men's sexual needs are held not only incontrollable but sacrosanct, with rape considered natural and of no consequence and in fact the woman's fault for being raped (why was she there, what did she were, did she not encourage it and want it and if so how does anyone prove it, what difference does it make unless it is a damage to her husband or father's honour) through most of the world even now when law is changing and some lip service to a woman's right to be not assaulted is paid at some places around the world.

But fact is, these women died of their husbands "love" for them, thoughtless as it was and driven by the physical needs of the husbands, and what difference does a tombstone or a mausoleum make to the one that is dead?

If that is not convincing, consider what a man - any man anywhere in the world - would say offered the same alternative, of repeated usage and death in youth with a handsome mausoleum as a memento to the "love". It is a no brainer - men would club anyone suggesting this to death, with no memorial.

March 10, 2011.
............

Mr. Gilfil's Love Story

The first part had begun after departure of the earlier pastor, Mr Gilfil; the second retreats to begin the story of the earlier pastor by recounting his parish's feelings about wearing black in honour of his departure.
............

" ... To be sure, Mrs. Jennings was a new-comer, and town-bred, so that she could hardly be expected to have very clear notions of what was proper; but, as Mrs. Higgins observed in an undertone to Mrs. Parrot when they were coming out of church, 'Her husband, who'd been born i' the parish, might ha' told her better.' An unreadiness to put on black on all available occasions, or too great an alacrity in putting it off, argued, in Mrs. Higgins's opinion, a dangerous levity of character, and an unnatural insensibility to the essential fitness of things.

"'Some folks can't a-bear to put off their colours,' she remarked; 'but that was never the way i' my family. Why, Mrs. Parrot, from the time I was married, till Mr. Higgins died, nine years ago come Candlemas, I niver was out o' black two year together!'

"'Ah,' said Mrs. Parrot, who was conscious of inferiority in this respect, 'there isn't many families as have had so many deaths as yours, Mrs. Higgins.'

"Mrs. Higgins, who was an elderly widow, 'well left', reflected with complacency that Mrs. Parrot's observation was no more than just, and that Mrs. Jennings very likely belonged to a family which had had no funerals to speak of."
............

"Nevertheless, with all these notorious sources of income, the shameless old woman constantly pleaded poverty, and begged for scraps at Mrs. Hackit's, who, though she always said Mrs. Fripp was 'as false as two folks', and no better than a miser and a heathen, had yet a leaning towards her as an old neighbour.

"'There's that case-hardened old Judy a-coming after the tea-leaves again,' Mrs. Hackit would say; 'an' I'm fool enough to give 'em her, though Sally wants 'em all the while to sweep the floors with!'"
............

"'Why, he'll eat his head off, and yours too. How can you go on keeping a pig, and making nothing by him?'

"'O, he picks a bit hisself wi' rootin', and I dooant mind doing wi'out to gi' him summat. A bit o' company's meat an' drink too, an' he follers me about, and grunts when I spake to'm, just like a Christian.'"
............

" ... Alas, alas! we poor mortals are often little better than wood-ashes—there is small sign of the sap, and the leafy freshness, and the bursting buds that were once there; but wherever we see wood-ashes, we know that all that early fullness of life must have been. I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man, or a wizened old woman, but I see also, with my mind's eye, that Past of which they are the shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance, compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden-scenes and fair perspectives overturned and thrust out of sight."
............

"And a charming picture Cheverel Manor would have made that evening, if some English Watteau had been there to paint it: the castellated house of grey-tinted stone, with the flickering sunbeams sending dashes of golden light across the many-shaped panes in the mullioned windows, and a great beech leaning athwart one of the flanking towers, and breaking, with its dark flattened boughs, the too formal symmetry of the front; the broad gravel-walk winding on the right, by a row of tall pines, alongside the pool—on the left branching out among swelling grassy mounds, surmounted by clumps of trees, where the red trunk of the Scotch fir glows in the descending sunlight against the bright green of limes and acacias; the great pool, where a pair of swans are swimming lazily with one leg tucked under a wing, and where the open water-lilies lie calmly accepting the kisses of the fluttering light-sparkles; the lawn, with its smooth emerald greenness, sloping down to the rougher and browner herbage of the park, from which it is invisibly fenced by a little stream that winds away from the pool, and disappears under a wooden bridge in the distant pleasure-ground; and on this lawn our two ladies, whose part in the landscape the painter, standing at a favourable point of view in the park, would represent with a few little dabs of red and white and blue."
............

" ... But neither he nor Lady Cheverel had any idea of adopting her as their daughter, and giving her their own rank in life. They were much too English and aristocratic to think of anything so romantic. No! the child would be brought up at Cheverel Manor as a protegee, to be ultimately useful, perhaps, in sorting worsteds, keeping accounts, reading aloud, and otherwise supplying the place of spectacles when her ladyship's eyes should wax dim."

" ... After those first years in which little girls are petted like puppies and kittens, there comes a time when it seems less obvious what they can be good for, especially when, like Caterina, they give no particular promise of cleverness or beauty; and it is not surprising that in that uninteresting period there was no particular plan formed as to her future position. She could always help Mrs. Sharp, supposing she were fit for nothing else, as she grew up; but now, this rare gift of song endeared her to Lady Cheverel, who loved music above all things, and it associated her at once with the pleasures of the drawing-room. Insensibly she came to be regarded as one of the family, and the servants began to understand that Miss Sarti was to be a lady after all."
............

"This was Mr. Gilfil's love-story, which lay far back from the time when he sat, worn and grey, by his lonely fireside in Shepperton Vicarage. Rich brown locks, passionate love, and deep early sorrow, strangely different as they seem from the scanty ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Bede (1859)

A bit of a tough going for those not quite facile with old dialects of northern country England, especially from a century or so ago, this starts slow and takes time to grip one, what with the extensive description of religion and Methodists of the fledgling times. Then before one quite knows the characters grip one, with a familiar tale of temptation and lack of resolution and foresight made more than worth reading and in fact a must due to the excellent descriptions of characters and variety thereof.

As to the story, surprises await one around every corner, almost. And before one knows there is the wolf in the woods dressed up in a deceptively attractive form. (The wolf is only the temptation leading to disaster, though, and not presented here quite as a personified human as another author would present it.) And before one knows one is deep into one third, then half, and then two thirds of the tale, all the while wondering why Eliot has not been allowed the same high pedestal as Austen, Hardy, and so on. Adam Bede has the same character of a story where little happens page after page and yet one is unable to leave it behind, most of the time.

The explanation comes soon enough with the - as Maugham described it of the most popular Tolstoy work of literature - barely or not even barely disguised nature of the moral lesson presented as a story. Hardy's Tess, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and then Eliot's poor Hetty Sorrel who is a barely mid-teen country girl with no knowledge and experience to keep her out of danger that presents itself disguised as love of a beautiful man, the lord of the land, all are innocent women that suffer consequences of their being unprotected as Tess was or not well guided as Hetty or falling in love as Anna Karenina does, and one is left to wonder if the author or the readers of those days were quite aware that these women, indeed very young women at that, were only human. They are punished, every one of them, with ruin of life and love, and death coming as the only escape for their ruined lives. Meanwhile Tess's rapist or seducer must be murdered by her as the only possible punishment he could find in the social set up, and the various other men of the stories depend on the authors for their just due, with Anna's brother habitually straying and nevertheless maintaining a social respectable position, and Arthur Donnithorne suffering on par with Hetty Sorrel (although not physically or socially but only at heart and less so socially) since Eliot would not let the guilty male go scot free.

As an aside, Eliot is rather less realistic about the time frames - Hetty's travails seem to be sprung on not only the reader but all of her family and other people as a complete surprise all of a sudden, and at that the reader is better prepared with a couple of hints but then lulled into comfort with the passing of time until the troubles suddenly pile up (a bit like the several miles long pile up of the vehicles on highway some years ago in Virginia due to paper mill and fog). This confusion of time factor leads one to wonder if Eliot is quite unaware of facts of life or was dressing those days so very aiding and abetting in hiding them from people - but no, even then, the women around Hetty being unaware for so long of the state she is in is inexplicable. And this must be the reason for the otherwise excellent work being not so very popular or held high in esteem in comparison with works of Austen.

March 6, 2011.
............

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Human nature, the author's era, and in particular a corner of the veil over caste system of Europe lifted with the casual reference to the separate churches or chapels for the poor and the gentry - all in all, good.

Friday, February 11, 2011.
............

Amazingly this is one of the few works of literature where a film or a television serial gives more, not less, than the original work in some ways. The social contexts of the time and the general setup is described in the book by the author as much as the author saw necessary, but times change and perhaps social set up across the world in another land, another time is different. At any rate, what comes across as a very personal story of a young woman in particular and her family in general, with the society as the frame thereof, changes when one takes into account the context of the time and the society, which is brought to view far more clearly on film in the film or television series.

The central character Maggie is very endearing in her persona full of life and aspiring for a life of mind and spirit while in turmoil of heart and conscience. Eliot seems to be a follower of Aquinas, and at any rate finds it necessary to make the poor young girl give up her one chance of finding life of happiness when she and a young man are inexorably drawn in spite of all obstacles, with little quarter given to his very valid arguments about the others they are engaged to being merely cheated if these two pretended no love existed between them.

The author seems to make little of the young woman's quest for independence by on one hand making her insist she won't depend on her relatives if she can make her own living and on the other hand give far more importance to the claims of various relatives and others when weighed in against her own mind and heart.

As for others, the society then clearly had its caste system with money and power playing top roles (which one doubts has changed much) and more, society including most women (author mentions them towards the end as the wives whom the rector cannot bring to see reason or truth where a poor young woman without powerful connections when compared to others is concerned - what else is new? -) consider a young woman as not quite proper except as someone belonging to, property of, under protection of a relative with some money, prestige, power, preferably male. If the male is merely a slightly older brother, nevertheless he has the power of righteous indignation and wrath if the young woman has any emotions much less actions or thoughts that are not explicitly approved prior to having them by the said male, and same is true of other relatives. The young man in question gets far more latitude in comparison.

In short the life and society of Europe was not that different regarding the feudal structure especially regarding women from what is now protested about as the restricted version in lands other than those of richer western nations (which is not a geographical term, since it includes Australia and NZ generally) with lifestyles of plenty and so forth.

One wishes the author had made Maggie's society see common sense and have a heart and allow her and Stephen Guest to be happy, but Eliot seems to think it is necessary to go tragic to deprive Maggie of everything that can possibly be taken from her including life, merely for the sin of having a young man of rich class fallen in love with her - he has been courting her cousin, but is really not bound by promise to her - and the only relief in all this is that the four young people concerned, the two in love and the other two who thought they belonged to them, understand all perfectly with no rancour. Which makes it all the more senseless that the tragedy is forced merely for sake of punishing a flouting of conventional bindings due to truth of hearts.

But then again, the author is a prisoner of her times, and perhaps she meant to bring about change in social attitudes by forcing this tragedy to attention of her readers and making them see sense.

July 27, 2012.
............

Silas Marner (1861)

The story of two men, and a little girl, and rectitude and values, ethics and right choices, loss and redemption, love and caring and the joy they bring to life.

The wealthy young man married in what moment of temptation is left unsaid, but he did wish to not only keep his family hidden for fear of his society, he was in love with a good young woman, and did not wish to lose her. When the wife turned up in the village and was found dead - due to starvation and cold, having been neglected by the husband - he took the opportunity to say nothing about his connection.

The little child had wandered into the home of a stranger to the village society who had left a traumatic past behind him in the city, where he was persecuted due to his epileptic fits being mislabeled as dealings with devil and he had been thrown out of his work and his life. He had lived for years in the village, but connected with humanity only when he found the child in his home shortly after being robbed of all his money, all his saving, and insisted the child was his to protect and care for.

The father of the child let that be - and so lost the only child he was ever going to have, as it turned out.

Silas Marner gained a life by his act, his choice and his heart's truth in giving love and care to an orphan as he thought the child was. The father of the child lost all but his wealth by deliberately not acclaiming the child he knew was his, and while he married the good woman he loved, he knew he was not good enough for either her or her love, since he was an untruthful unworthy man by virtue of having denied his wife and his child, having neglected one until she died of starvation and cold, and having not claimed the child so she was taken and raised as an orphan by another man, who found the whole village gather round him in the process.

One of the most touching tales about human relationships, mistakes and redemption, crime and sin, fate and choices.

Silas Marner found life, and love of a daughter, with the little girl wandering in and falling asleep at his hearth; it was not his duty but a choice he made to keep the little one he could ill afford. Meanwhile her natural and legal father has refrained from admitting his family, falsified his identity in relation to the family he would not own, for sake of the good young woman he loved, and he lost much in the process of fall from rectitude.

March 6, 2011.
............
............

Romola (1863)

Quoted from blurb:-

"This historical novel is set in the fifteenth century, and is “a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view”. It first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August. The story takes place amidst actual historical events during the Italian Renaissance, and includes in its plot several notable figures from Florentine history. The content of this novel is distinctly different from the rest of Eliot’s oeuvre."
............

The book opens, deliberately dated explicitly at 1492, in Florence, with locals guiding a Greek youth to a home of a local scholar of renown who might use his assistance. There is much conversation along the way, and much exposition in prologue before, that makes one wonder if the author was deeply immersed in a scholastic study, or acquired it via travel, or both; but she does drop names of the era, now little kniwn, a great deal. That, however, isn't all - she already discusses the views of Romans, Italians in general and Florentine in particular, regarding scholastic quality of Greece versus their own - and vice versa, the disdain of Greece for Romans and Italians, unaffected by the reversal of fortunes, supported by the Greek familiarity with antiquity as opposed to what they almost call idolatry of Italians, in that Greece thinks Italian thought is unable to grasp anything prior to their religion.

To a reader not deeply into scholastic study of that era or of antiquity, of Greece and Italy, and particularly with regard to thinkers of the two lands over millennia, it's a tad unclear if the author us mentioning names strictly historical, and presenting their views accurately - or mixing it up a little with imaginary ones, since it's a novel, after all.

At that, a short way into the story, a small similarity with Silas Marner becomes apparent, that about an attractive youth who isn't a bad sort but isn't firm in his virtues, divided between a woman far above that he aspires to and another not quite that class whom he might love contentedly but for his aiming for the one higher.

But the chief similarity is the moral dilemma, which here isn't a choice between the two; it's rather a choice between the duty towards an adoptive father who needs to be rescued from slavery, which might involve a journey and search that might prove fruitless after all, but in any case be a certain loss of his years of youth, and most likely of the woman aspired to, apart from the life and status of a scholar established in society of Florence.

Another slight similarity is, of course, that of the two scholars - here a blind old father of the beautiful Romola, and the old Mr Casaubon of Middlemarch whom the beautiful Dorothea chose to marry; come to think, Romola is not very dissimilar to Dorothea, except she's a daughter, her scholarly father isn't described as working fruitlessly, and her destiny is more likely akin to Nancy of Silas Marner.

But the book is quite slow until about somewhere between a quarter and one third of the way, where it pickets up pace; until then it's heavy reading for those not well acquainted and enamoured about Florence circa 1492. And it's a bit further before one begins to realise that Eliot really intended to write of Savonarola.

At the end, after one has read it through puzzled, suddenly the whole structure emerges, and one sees the various characters that the author has painted, each a distinct type. Each has their own greatness and faults that go with it, not dissonant but making them human. And Savonarola merely fits in, as a historic persona seen rather dim in background, despite being portrayed not always in background.
............

"More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and unstable sea — saw the same great mountain shadows on the same valleys as he has seen to-day — saw olive mounts, and pine forests, and the broad plains green with young corn or rain-freshened grass — saw the domes and spires of cities rising by the river-sides or mingled with the sedge-like masts on the many-curved sea-coast, in the same spots where they rise to-day. ... "

" ... And doubtless, if the spirit of a Florentine citizen, whose eyes were closed for the last time while Columbus was still waiting and arguing for the three poor vessels with which he was to set sail from the port of Palos, could return from the shades and pause where our thought is pausing, he would believe that there must still be fellowship and understanding for him ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

These beginning reviews were written when I began writing reviews on Shelfari, and reviews of novels etc by George Eliot are here. Those of her essays, poetry reviews are at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and at

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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CONTENTS (from book)

Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)
Adam Bede (1859)
The Lifted Veil (1859)
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
Romola (1863)
Brother Jacob (1864)
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)
Middlemarch (1871/72)
The Legend of Jubal, and Other Poems (1874)
Daniel Deronda (1876)
Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)
The Essays
Miscellaneous Poems
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................................................................................................
Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)
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................................................................................................
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton
................................................................................................
................................................................................................

For an early work this story has amazing insight into human nature and behaviour, along with a detailed description of the place and time, and also usage of the language far more extensive than what one is used to during 20th century even before the sms era.

Even if one knows nothing of the author it is easy to suspect post finishing the book that this is an autobiographical tale, and it mainly at heart is a very deeply loving daughter's heartbreaking tribute to her very beautiful and universally loved mother who was also a very good person, along with the outward story that is a factual exoneration of her father of a false blame and suspicion harboured by silly neighbours of the parish who could not imagine a beautiful woman taking an extensive stay with a family of a man of cloth even if his own wife was beautiful, much loved by all including himself, and very much present on premises.

Why the author could not show details of the family post the departure of the mother is what one immediately questions after finishing this abruptly ending tale - along with such questions as what happened to other children (only two are mentioned, did the rest die as children did of decease and starvation in poverty in Europe those days?) and why Patty did not marry. That can be only explained by the surmise that this is the story of Mary Ann Evans who took the pen name of George Eliot in order to be able to write in peace and publish at all (- misogyny was not so violent then as now what with crimes against women being more violent and explicit by the day, but women were not seen as people who could think and were certainly not allowed to write and publish, and being an exception was a harsh struggle, so Bronte sisters had male names to publish too as did Madam Sand -) and that she did not marry due to the horror and pathos of the marriage of her mother who died so early in her life, compounded by the fact that there was no dowry for Patty or Mary Ann Evans to help her marry with security of a middle class life, since her father was a poor man of cloth with several children to feed and clothe and shelter.

One cannot but help compare here, since it is very pertinent and relevant - Barton in all his poverty and ordinary Englishman's life and persona of someone who has been to university and is involved day to day in matters intellectual and religious (for Barton approaches religion and sermons within strictly the intellectual realm and bores his parish stiff, enabling them to distance themselves until they sympathise with his loss of his wife) and little or none of the luxuries or power in his life or riches for that matter, is nonetheless no different from the Mongol (Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and the close relatives of Kublai Khan that settled in India routed via Persia bringing that nomenclature) emperor Shah Jahan who built that extravagant mausoleum for his wife on top of the revered temple of the majority religion of the country, achieving two shots in one; both the women were worn out by extensive childbearing beyond their health capability and died due to this "excessive love from the husband", a husband who was incapable of forbearing his sexual appetite even when the consequences endangered the wife's health to the point of death.

Perhaps the only difference is that Barton (or Evans) had no harem to satisfy his needs elsewhere while preserving the loved wife's health and life, and Shah Jahan did but wore out the one loved nevertheless. Amelia Barton died after giving birth to seven children (or is it eight?) and Mumtaj Mahal to fourteen, but then the latter had servants galore to do all her work and take care of her as well, and no lack of physicians or food or remedies of any sort available around in half the known world.

Milly Barton was poor, overworked, starving, worrying about her children being fed and clothed, and paying the bills in all honour.

This says two separate and related things to any aware reader - one, those involved in intellectual and spiritual line of work are likely to be poor as a rule, whether vicars and curates of England or Brahmans of India or rabbis of Jewish diaspora anywhere for that matter, and especially more so when they have families of their own to support and are not allowed to make money by using any skills since they are men of cloth or are Brahmans as indeed they are not by tradition allowed in most of these cases. And two, the only difference in the various traditions mentioned here is that in the older ones the Brahman or the rabbi is at least nominally most respected member of the society while a curate or a vicar is not accorded that social respect without backing of independent wealth, which in fact gets him a better living too.

Positions of vicar, curate, etc might be obtained by anybody and are not hereditary, but that in practice merely means that the positions are either bought by someone for the person appointed or are doled out as a favour to someone for some reason for the favour; as a consequence those richer get higher positions and those from poor background get less paid ones if at all, in church as well in trade or military or any other sphere of work.

On thinking it over, men inheriting their father's trade is not so far off this buying of positions, since most poor in the world are limited to what knowledge their parents can provide them as heritage; and women all over the world are limited even now with everyone seeing them as reproductive functionaries and food preparing and other services providers, to be browbeaten and blackmailed and threatened into it irrespective of time, place, relationship, occasion, whatever.

Indeed the only women that escape it might be born princesses and queens regina of Europe, if any. Others may fight back, but this merely makes life unpleasant, and this is the choice offered them socially as a weapon to force them to submit - until they do submit they are constantly attacked. I have heard a supposedly educated scientist from space agency of Europe questioning sexual capacity of a very famous high profile chief of a computer firm only because he heard about her being appointed in that position, and he went worse from that point. Till date I suspect most people hold him innocent in the huge quarrel we had and of course he probably does not mention his wrongs if indeed he is aware of them, but then even if he did they would not seem wrong to most people but only humour, not to be taken seriously or pointed out the wrongs of seriously. He in fact said it was different if he made racist jokes, which he would not, and was very angry when informed it was not different at all.

His wife wanted to discuss caste system of India, and was nonplussed when pointed out that her not requiring her sons or husband to help her in the kitchen but requiring or expecting any woman around irrespective of age, including any casual visitor or invited guests or new acquaintances, was caste system.

Most men and probably most women too would think this is harsh against Barton and against someone who spent twenty years and millions of public fund to build the most famous mausoleum in the world, since men's sexual needs are held not only incontrollable but sacrosanct, with rape considered natural and of no consequence and in fact the woman's fault for being raped (why was she there, what did she were, did she not encourage it and want it and if so how does anyone prove it, what difference does it make unless it is a damage to her husband or father's honour) through most of the world even now when law is changing and some lip service to a woman's right to be not assaulted is paid at some places around the world.

But fact is, these women died of their husbands "love" for them, thoughtless as it was and driven by the physical needs of the husbands, and what difference does a tombstone or a mausoleum make to the one that is dead?

If that is not convincing, consider what a man - any man anywhere in the world - would say offered the same alternative, of repeated usage and death in youth with a handsome mausoleum as a memento to the "love". It is a no brainer - men would club anyone suggesting this to death, with no memorial.

March 10, 2011.
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February 07 - 09, 2021.
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Mr. Gilfil's Love Story

The first part had begun after departure of the earlier pastor, Mr Gilfil; the second retreats to begin the story of the earlier pastor by recounting his parish's feelings about wearing black in honour of his departure.
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" ... To be sure, Mrs. Jennings was a new-comer, and town-bred, so that she could hardly be expected to have very clear notions of what was proper; but, as Mrs. Higgins observed in an undertone to Mrs. Parrot when they were coming out of church, 'Her husband, who'd been born i' the parish, might ha' told her better.' An unreadiness to put on black on all available occasions, or too great an alacrity in putting it off, argued, in Mrs. Higgins's opinion, a dangerous levity of character, and an unnatural insensibility to the essential fitness of things.

"'Some folks can't a-bear to put off their colours,' she remarked; 'but that was never the way i' my family. Why, Mrs. Parrot, from the time I was married, till Mr. Higgins died, nine years ago come Candlemas, I niver was out o' black two year together!'

"'Ah,' said Mrs. Parrot, who was conscious of inferiority in this respect, 'there isn't many families as have had so many deaths as yours, Mrs. Higgins.'

"Mrs. Higgins, who was an elderly widow, 'well left', reflected with complacency that Mrs. Parrot's observation was no more than just, and that Mrs. Jennings very likely belonged to a family which had had no funerals to speak of."
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"Nevertheless, with all these notorious sources of income, the shameless old woman constantly pleaded poverty, and begged for scraps at Mrs. Hackit's, who, though she always said Mrs. Fripp was 'as false as two folks', and no better than a miser and a heathen, had yet a leaning towards her as an old neighbour.

"'There's that case-hardened old Judy a-coming after the tea-leaves again,' Mrs. Hackit would say; 'an' I'm fool enough to give 'em her, though Sally wants 'em all the while to sweep the floors with!'"
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"'Why, he'll eat his head off, and yours too. How can you go on keeping a pig, and making nothing by him?'

"'O, he picks a bit hisself wi' rootin', and I dooant mind doing wi'out to gi' him summat. A bit o' company's meat an' drink too, an' he follers me about, and grunts when I spake to'm, just like a Christian.'"
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" ... Alas, alas! we poor mortals are often little better than wood-ashes—there is small sign of the sap, and the leafy freshness, and the bursting buds that were once there; but wherever we see wood-ashes, we know that all that early fullness of life must have been. I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man, or a wizened old woman, but I see also, with my mind's eye, that Past of which they are the shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance, compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden-scenes and fair perspectives overturned and thrust out of sight."
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"And a charming picture Cheverel Manor would have made that evening, if some English Watteau had been there to paint it: the castellated house of grey-tinted stone, with the flickering sunbeams sending dashes of golden light across the many-shaped panes in the mullioned windows, and a great beech leaning athwart one of the flanking towers, and breaking, with its dark flattened boughs, the too formal symmetry of the front; the broad gravel-walk winding on the right, by a row of tall pines, alongside the pool—on the left branching out among swelling grassy mounds, surmounted by clumps of trees, where the red trunk of the Scotch fir glows in the descending sunlight against the bright green of limes and acacias; the great pool, where a pair of swans are swimming lazily with one leg tucked under a wing, and where the open water-lilies lie calmly accepting the kisses of the fluttering light-sparkles; the lawn, with its smooth emerald greenness, sloping down to the rougher and browner herbage of the park, from which it is invisibly fenced by a little stream that winds away from the pool, and disappears under a wooden bridge in the distant pleasure-ground; and on this lawn our two ladies, whose part in the landscape the painter, standing at a favourable point of view in the park, would represent with a few little dabs of red and white and blue."
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" ... But neither he nor Lady Cheverel had any idea of adopting her as their daughter, and giving her their own rank in life. They were much too English and aristocratic to think of anything so romantic. No! the child would be brought up at Cheverel Manor as a protegee, to be ultimately useful, perhaps, in sorting worsteds, keeping accounts, reading aloud, and otherwise supplying the place of spectacles when her ladyship's eyes should wax dim."

" ... After those first years in which little girls are petted like puppies and kittens, there comes a time when it seems less obvious what they can be good for, especially when, like Caterina, they give no particular promise of cleverness or beauty; and it is not surprising that in that uninteresting period there was no particular plan formed as to her future position. She could always help Mrs. Sharp, supposing she were fit for nothing else, as she grew up; but now, this rare gift of song endeared her to Lady Cheverel, who loved music above all things, and it associated her at once with the pleasures of the drawing-room. Insensibly she came to be regarded as one of the family, and the servants began to understand that Miss Sarti was to be a lady after all."
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"This was Mr. Gilfil's love-story, which lay far back from the time when he sat, worn and grey, by his lonely fireside in Shepperton Vicarage. Rich brown locks, passionate love, and deep early sorrow, strangely different as they seem from the scanty white hairs, the apathetic content, and the unexpectant quiescence of old age, are but part of the same life's journey; as the bright Italian plains, with the sweet Addio of their beckoning maidens, are part of the same day's travel that brings us to the other side of the mountain, between the sombre rocky walls and among the guttural voices of the Valais."
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Janet's Repentance
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Janet's Repentance
(Scenes of Clerical Life #3)
by George Eliot.
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This work combines two vital concerns, one that belongs to its time and space, other far more extensive.

George Eliot deals here with social and more concerns ....

[Critical Sandwich]

I sometimes do "randomizer pick" when choosing my next read, and I DON'T have classics books by big authors on goodreads TBR (cuz otherwise my TBR would be ~200 books higher), so I put a few of these "Complete Works" onto TBR so they'd have a chance to be chosen by randomizer, but I'd still have the freedom to choose whatever work.

[Andi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only read "Middlemarch," because it kept being referenced in books I was reading. It was ok. Very long and drawn out, but I liked the ending and some of the characters. I felt it was a lot to wade through to get to the ending.