Posted on 11/23/2019 6:42:11 AM PST by Borges
A woman sits engrossed in her reading, long hair hanging lose at her shoulders, feet slung over the arm of a chair. However you imagine George Eliot, it’s probably not like this. The few existing portraits of the novelist fix her in an era far removed from our own, conveying an ethereal gravity that jives with the reverential image peddled after her death in 1880. It was thanks largely to a capacious biography by her financial advisor and, briefly, husband, John Cross that Eliot came to be posthumously lauded as what literary biographer Lyndall Gordon dubs a “wise angel”, one whose shadow would for a long time obscure the earthier, more radical aspects of her personality and experience. Yet for her fellow writer and sometime housemate, William Hale White, she remained fixed in his memory as the kind of woman who thought nothing of assuming that most un-Victorian of poses. “She was really one of the most sceptical, unusual creatures I ever knew,” he recalled, describing her sitting in this way and calling her an “insurgent” writer.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
“George Eliot’s” life and work are inherently interesting, and this article is nicely done. But it is also interesting to see an article on literature in a leftist source, that flirts with reconnecting the author with the work, something intellectual elites some time declared verboten (meaning must arise from idiosyncratic interpretation of the text only, without the polluting effects of knowledge). Anderson tries not to cross the line, but really can’t. Has the Marxist sun set? Or is Eliot’s rebellion against gender restrictions of her time just too alluring a target?
Interesting thanks.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) is indeed a genius, in my opinion her observations of the ways and manners of small-town England are better than those of Jane Austen or the Brontes.
...jibes with...
That’s right. I like the cut of your jib.
There is an underlying story regarding the local MP (one of the protagonist's suitors) who also sits as a local district judge. Don't be puzzled as to why he deliberates - actually is resigned - over the potential judgment of a youth accused of poaching ... a rabbit.
Read Silas Marner in High school TWICE! Thought I was gonna die! HORRID!
At the time I was reading at an adult level the Horatio Hornblower series, Beau Geste, H.P.Lovecraft, CAPTAIN BLOOD trilogy, Dracula and other action novels.
Dull English novels were never my thing. Am now, at 73, reading WAR AND PEACE and am hooked on it! I joke I started reading it at 16, but in reality I started two weeks ago. Excellent book!
I didn’t read Silas until a few years ago...I probably would not have enjoyed it as a kid but as an old lady, found it beautiful and loved Silas’ love for the little foundling.
Loved Silas Marner.
I’ll never forget the teacher dragging us through Silas Marner. Knowing I detested dull novels she asked me if I was reading something better.
“Yes! I’m reading MANILA GALLEON and a sailor in a sea battle just caught a cannon ball right through the chest!”
I was never much on fiction, but in High School I went out and bought everything Sowell had on the shelf: https://m.facebook.com/HooverInstStanford/videos/10156239446799853/
That actually comes up more than once, I think. Dorothea’s uncle is talking about it at one point, I remember. Nowadays, the “youth” walk into the stores and take what they want and walk out again. No one does a thing. I don’t know if mercy is much of an improvement after all.
Silas Mariner is a beautiful book, among the best I’ve ever read.
Thanks. We literate Americans are becoming as rare as hen's teeth.
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