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"a lady of obscure origin and indomitable social ambitions" it's okay you can say bertha russell

man it's hard to be a woman

this might be my new favourite wharton. it is so cleverly and tightly written!! i'm obsessed!!!!

"in this crowded selfish world of pleasure"... oh, edith wharton. you have never failed me

i forgot how much i loved reading YA novels

i find it so interesting how eliot has depicted children as redemptive figures who bring adults back to the light/back to christ/back to godliness

reading this after reading carol gave me the craziest whiplash

im so sad

i don't want this book to end

this is in no way an exaggeration but i am obsessed with george eliot’s particular brand of realism. the way her characters speak just feels so incredibly authentic and real— i freaking LOVEEE her style! the story itself is a little dry— it feels like a parable—but that makes it easy to follow

i despise how everyone in this narrative treats therese. like yes she's 19 but guys she's an adult like please respect her decisions ! richard gives me the biggest ick i hate him he's such a stereotypically awful boyfriend

therese is doing mental acrobatics trying to make herself the victim and whilst i find it incredibly interesting it is also incredibly frustrating as a reader to interact with

i don't like richard

therese please lock in

i find it a little hard to believe that therese is 19 because how are we only 8 months apart??? i am nowhere near as certain of myself in many ways as she is. how and when does one become at least semi-cognisant of her position within society? her place? her personality, maybe? like. therese isn't the most certain person. but she knows more about herself than i do.

if this book continues its beautiful trajectory, i'm going to give this 500 stars

POV you're hanging out at a random castle, preparing to have your head cut off in a couple of days, when the lady of the castle comes into your bedroom and tries to seduce you:

i might reread this at a later date as a detailed analysis of the nature of being an author/writer. only when one does not need to fight or submit to her age-- only when one is of one's age, and is comfortable in her own skin-- can she write and write well. but when will i become comfortable with myself? when will i manage to reconcile the inexperience of my age with the grandeur i have planned for myself?

"And the words went dashing and circling like wild hawks together among the belfries and higher and higher, further and further, faster and faster they circled, till they crashed and fell in a shower of fragments to the ground..."

i love how she writes. there's something so simultaneously nebulous and specific about her choice of words

me when british authors rpf

that whole bit about clothing dictating gender expression was literally just judith butler doing somersaults across the page

i love virginia woolf's style. there's something very fluid about the way she writes; she takes you on a meandering journey, and it's nothing short of exhilarating. only issue so far is the overt racism but that's to be expected of a book written in this period