2015: The Year of Reading Women discussion

We are planning this read for June 1st.

Is this still a go? I'm in the middle of this right now.

It’s on the table beside my reading chair. Will start tomorrow.

I'll start reading my copy tomorrow evening.

I just started this as well.

This will be my first George Eliot. I can't wait!

I've read 5 or 6 chapters so far and I really like it. I've always loved Eliot's writing style and this one is no exception. I've watched the BBC miniseries of this book several times and it's been nice to see the characters come even more to life with Eliot's excellent writing, especially Gwendolyn. I can't wait to delve deeper into the book today:)

If I can find my copy, I may try to fit a reading of this book into my schedule. I adore George Eliot.

Fascinating how throughout the entire first part we barely even meet the title character!

Ms. Eliot alludes to so many things; you can tell she was well read, and she didn't mind showing it. Is anyone else looking these up everytime she mentions a minor Greek god or a contemporary-for-her-time lady of fashion, or are we powering through and hoping we get the gist?

****Edit: I stopped looking everything up about page 300 and went to looking up a few things. Powering through is also definitely an option.

Connie wrote: "If I can find my copy, I may try to fit a reading of this book into my schedule. I adore George Eliot."

Kindle has it for free, if that helps.

Niki wrote: "Ms. Eliot alludes to so many things; you can tell she was well read, and she didn't mind showing it. Is anyone else looking these up everytime she mentions a minor Greek god or a contemporary-for-h..."

My copy is well-footnoted, thank goodness! And I'm reading all those footnotes, because that's who I am, but very rarely do they make any difference to the meaning of the book.

Alexa wrote: "Niki wrote: "Ms. Eliot alludes to so many things; you can tell she was well read, and she didn't mind showing it. Is anyone else looking these up everytime she mentions a minor Greek god or a conte..."

I understand Eliot was quite intellectual, but I have the impression that she also felt she had something to prove, and that her many citations were a part of the proof she offered.

I spent more time on this book than I have on any reading for a long while. A couple of weeks after beginning, and I'm finished reading, but not finished digesting.

So far my ambivalent feelings about this book can be summed up: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Kat wrote: "I understand Eliot was quite intellectual, but I have the impression that she also felt she had something to prove, and that her many citations were a part of the proof she offered. "

That is an excellent point that I hadn't considered. I'm sure as a female writer and editor she had to prove her mettle many times over, and the allusions to classical education was one way.

Do you think this also accounts for the amount of omnipresent asides she has about her characters? So many times, she would describe a person's character by explaining their action or thought by assuming this god-like narrator tone that presumes to know much about human nature. Some of it is gorgeous and en pointe. But I wonder why so much of it?

As example: “Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so for every visible arc in the wanderer's orbit; and the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of action--like the cry of Prometheus, whose chained anguish seems a greater energy than the sea and sky he invokes and the deity he defies.”

Perhaps that's part of it--but it's also possible that she just really enjoyed writing those kinds of sections! I think they do make her "heavier" than other Victorian writers, and I know some readers consider her "preachy."

Didn't she write this under a male pen name, though? So she had nothing to prove, as everyone already considered her a male. I'm a bit rusty when it comes to her bio, but from what I remember she never planned on exposing her real identity.

I think people forget that "intellectuals" use the metaphors and descriptions they do because that's their world, their language and their things that they're passionate about. It's easier for them to describe certain things using as a compass the myths and stories they love and have studied.

I'm interested by the two places where I see feminist arguments being made. Early on Gwendolen makes some strong arguments against marriage:

"to become a wife and wear all the domestic fetters of that condition, was on the whole a vexatious necessity. Her observation of matrimony had inclined her to think it rather a dreary state, in which a woman could not do what she liked, had more children than were desirable, was consequently dull, and became irrevocably immersed in humdrum."

This is quite early on, when Gwendolen has only been presented as a rather shallow person.

Then later, near the end, the princess says that she has the right to be free, that she has the right to overthrow the bondage that was preventing her freedom, and goes on to make a strong argument as to why she shouldn't have been restricted solely to the limited roles of wife and mother.

These are both really powerful arguments, yet Eliot puts these words into the mouths of two characters being presented as cold and shallow. So did Eliot find these arguments convincing? Could she only have the less attractive women say them? Or was there some irony in having the unattractive women say the words she believed? Or did she feel she could only get away with making such arguments if the characters making them were those of less than upstanding character?

Those are really interesting questions, Alexa. The only thing the occurs to me is that it might not be realistic to have these sentiments uttered by more conventional characters, who have bought into the system. Also, although it's clear that Eliot considers Gwendolyn a flawed character due to her selfishness, I wonder how likely it would be to read a novel in which a man struggles with his selfishness. I think it's an accusation that falls on women more readily than men because our whole socialization is around being "nice" and being there for others. What I'm trying to say, not very well, is that perhaps to challenge the status quo IS to be selfish and to appear cold, i.e., to reject that socialization.

Well put! I need to think about that.

I think her portrayal of Gwendolen is so interesting - first she shows us her most unattractive aspects (and her treatment of her sisters and her arrogance was pretty appalling) but then that portrait gets more and more nuanced and we find ourselves caring for her more and more.

I love Gwendolyn because she engages in a moral struggle--she really works at trying to better herself, and finds it so hard! Me too. For me, the Daniel Deronda portions were less engaging. But I wouldn't go so far as to agree with critics of the time who thought the two stories should be in two different novels.

Kat wrote: "Those are really interesting questions, Alexa. The only thing the occurs to me is that it might not be realistic to have these sentiments uttered by more conventional characters, who have bought in..."

I ran across this quote by Margaret Atwood, from a speech she gave at Radcliffe College in 1980 titled "Witches," which really speaks to the point you made:
"When you are a fiction writer, you're confronted every day with the question that confronted, among others, George Eliot and Dostoevsky: what kind of world shall you describe for your readers? The one you can see around you, or the better one you can imagine? If only the latter, you'll be unrealistic; if only the former, despairing. But it is by the better world we can imagine that we judge the world we have. If we cease to judge this world, we may find ourselves, very quickly, in one which is infinitely worse."

Alexa wrote: "Kat wrote: "Those are really interesting questions, Alexa. The only thing the occurs to me is that it might not be realistic to have these sentiments uttered by more conventional characters, who ha..."

Wow, great quote!! Do you have a link, or is it paper?

Paper. It's in her collection of essays, Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, p. 333.

Thanks, Alexa.

Kat wrote: "Also, although it's clear that Eliot considers Gwendolyn a flawed character due to her selfishness, I wonder how likely it would be to read a novel in which a man struggles with his selfishness...."

No, instead we have a young man struggling with his excessive empathy! At times Daniel seems almost paralyzed by his ability to put himself into everybody else's shoes. So here we have another way Eliot's looking at gender, by giving each of them traditionally other-gendered traits and watching them writhe.

Dee wrote: "Didn't she write this under a male pen name, though? So she had nothing to prove, as everyone already considered her a male. I'm a bit rusty when it comes to her bio, but from what I remember she n..."

It's my understanding that her real identity was known quite early on, certainly by the time this was being written.

I'm finished! Wow, that took me forever, not the book's fault though, but mine.

My first reaction, upon finishing it, was that in many ways, in spite of being the title character, Daniel Deronda wasn't really the protagonist, but rather Gwendolen was. In a certain sense Daniel is something that happens to Gwendolen (sort of like calling a book "The Hurricane" or "The Revelation"). We see a fair amount of Daniel, granted, but mostly in aid of further understanding his impact on her. And that explains the entire first section which begins with Gwendolen's first glimpse of him and then tells us all about her life before he enters it. This also would explain why Gwendolen is so much more fully developed/known/interesting than Mirah is.

Did everybody else finish this?

Yes, although it took more determination than I'd like to admit. Glad I read it, but I really want to go through it with a red pen. In my fantasies, Eliot would have Hemingway as an editor.

Niki wrote: "Yes, although it took more determination than I'd like to admit. Glad I read it, but I really want to go through it with a red pen. In my fantasies, Eliot would have Hemingway as an editor."

LOL. I always find Eliot a bit of work. Many people feel she's on the preachy side. I wouldn't put it that way myself, but I wish she would let us draw our own conclusions instead of spelling out so much. It's as though she doesn't trust her characters and stories to speak for themselves.

Kat wrote: "Niki wrote: "Yes, although it took more determination than I'd like to admit. Glad I read it, but I really want to go through it with a red pen. In my fantasies, Eliot would have Hemingway as an ..."

Kat - "It's as though she doesn't trust her characters and stories to speak for themselves." - That's a very interesting. I didn't think of that but now that you say it you are right.

When she goes on about Judiasm it does feel a little like she is on a soap box. I feel like the whole cadence of the book changes. The story stops and there is an announcement being made.

Yes. And there's a tendency for people to say, well, that's how they wrote in the 19th century, and I think some of them did--but not Dickens, not Trollope.