'Romola' by George Eliot (Review)

After spending some time in Renaissance Italy in Bound in Venice, I was eager to read more about the era, so I trudged off to my shelves to see what I could uncover.  Very quickly, I stumbled upon the perfect book, one I'd been meaning to reread for some time.  After a spell in Venice then, it's time to head off to Florence - in the company of a rather accomplished tour guide...

*****
Romola was George Eliot's first attempt at fiction outside her home country (perhaps even her home county).  The reader is transported to Florence in 1492, where the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto ruler of the city, has initiated a period of uncertainty.  A power vacuum has appeared in the city, and it's a time of unrest, with rival groups vying for supremacy and the charismatic preacher Savonarola waiting in the wings.  Enter Tito Melema, a Greek-Italian survivor of a shipwreck, educated and good-looking, but down on his luck - a state of affairs which won't last long.

The stranger is taken in by some friendly locals, eventually gravitating to Nello's barber shop, a gathering place for intellectuals, and it's here that he receives an introduction to blind scholar Bardo Bardi and his beautiful daughter, Romola.  Melema is handsome, intelligent and cunning, and this is his time; in the confusion of the new world order, power, wealth, fame and love are his for the taking.  But is the fair-faced newcomer as good as he seems?

"Ay, Nello," said the painter, speaking with abrupt pauses; "and if thy tongue can leave off its everlasting chirping long enough for thy understanding to consider the the matter, thou mayst see that thou hast just shown the reason why the face of Messere will suit my traitor.  A perfect traitor should have a face which vice can write no marks on - lips that will lie with a dimpled smile - eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them - cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard."
p.46 (Everyman, 1999)

As the story progresses, we see that there's truth in the painter's view of traitors and fair faces, and we begin to discern hints of what's really beneath the smiles and curls...

Romola is a great vision of the distant past, a picture of renaissance Florence and a superb story of a man who wants it all.  Eliot shows us a visitor who, arriving at the right time (and not having any uncomfortable beliefs or scruples to get in the way), is able to ingratiate himself with various Florentine factions, succeeding in becoming one of the most useful and powerful men in the city.  The (anti)hero of the novel is a man with fatal flaws which threaten to undo him, the writer at pains to show us that then, just as now, beauty was often only skin deep.  Despite having been born in Italy, there is enough of the Greek in Tito to justify a tragedy ;)

This is because Tito is fatally flawed.  While he is outwardly strong and honest, on the inside he is weak, doubting and lazy - and not quite brazen enough to ignore the trouble he has brought upon himself:

"Tito foresaw that it would be impossible for him to escape being drawn into the circle; he must smile and retort, and look perfectly at his ease.  Well! it was but the ordeal of swallowing bread and cheese pills after all.  The man who let the mere anticipation of discovery choke him was simply a man of weak nerves." (p.168)

Despite the bold words, he is not always able to swallow the pills with a smile.  The chain armour he is eventually scared into wearing becomes a physical manifestation of his constant mental fears.

As Tito falls in our estimation, his role diminishes, leaving the way open for the rise of Romola, both in character and importance.  Beautiful and good, she ever so gradually begins to suspect her husband's shortcomings:

"But all the while inwardly her imagination was busy trying to see how Tito could be as good as she had thought he was, and yet find it impossible to sacrifice those pleasures of society which were necessarily more vivid to a bright creature like him than to the common run of men." (p.249)

Romola despises Tito once his true character is revealed; unlike her husband, she prefers helping the sick and poor, whoever they may be, to scheming for wealth and power.  At times, she even ends up helping Tito's enemies...

One of the major themes of Romola is the difficulty of doing the right thing when the wrong thing is so much easier (and much more lucrative), and Eliot frequently returns to her main message of the way in which we justify our bad deeds to ourselves.  She lingers on Tito's decisions to ignore signs that his adopted father, Baldassare Calvo, may not be dead after all, but it's never judgemental - Tito's actions are considered carefully as an ethical dilemma.  It's all very cleverly done, with constant arguments on one side or the other forcing the reader to examine Tito's behaviour (and wonder if we would have acted differently...).

The tragedy is played out against a superbly researched background, and the language, too, evokes the era.  We feel ourselves back in Renaissance Florence, witnessing the fall of the Medicis, and the rise (and subsequent fall) of the ambitious and enigmatic Savonarola.  From within the walls of the city state,  we are witness to the interference of the Pope and the 'visit' of the French army, along with a host of real-life characters (including Niccolò Machiavelli...) - there's even mention of Aldo Manuzio, AKA Aldus Manutius, the master publisher encountered in Bound in Venice!

Of course, there's a little too much research at times, and Romola isn't the easiest of books to get into.  The narrator is looking back at times which seem fairly primitive, and the viewpoint is almost clinically detached, giving the book the air more of a scientific study than a novel.  Also, as mentioned in Leonée Ormond's introduction, the character of Romola is especially problematic.  She's far too modern and anachronistic in the way she thinks and acts (and has the freedom to think and act); just as is to be the case in Felix Holt, the main character here is the least life-like element of a realistic historical recreation.

Romola is one of the least-read, and least-popular, of Eliot's novels.  However, it's still an excellent book, and of course, despite the title, it's Tito who is the star of the show.  While the writer warns us about him frequently, part of you still wants him to succeed in his endeavours, even after we have glimpsed some of the ugly truths lurking beneath the handsome exterior.  It's true what they say though - politics is a very dangerous game...

...especially in Renaissance Florence ;)

A Little Silliness Goes a Long Way

Last week I posted on the last of George Eliot's works of fiction, Impressions of Theophrastus Such, but until that post became a little longer than expected, I had actually intended to review another side of Eliot's writing along side it - one which I've finally got around to talking about today :)  As you may have heard, Eliot, as well as being a novelist, was a writer of essays and assorted non-fiction, and while I was stumbling around her Wikipedia page, I came across a link to a text copy of a certain literary text she wrote...

The title - Silly Novels by Lady Novelists - will immediately tell you what it's all about, and the essay does exactly what it says on the tin.  In twenty pages or so, Eliot discusses various types of dreadful novels, and... but let me hand you over to the lady herself:

"Silly Novels by Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them - the frothy, the prosy, the pious or the pedantic."

Where Impressions of Theophrastus Such was a little lacking in humour, this piece has it in spades, dripping in sarcasm while ripping bad writers to shreds.  This particular lady novelist really has it in for those of her gender who give everyone else a bad reputation.  While female writers in the Victorian era were often forced into the profession (as the only one suitable for a middle-class lady in need of an income), Eliot suspects that many of the worst offenders do not have this excuse.  She writes:

"It is clear that they write in elegant boudoirs, with violet-coloured ink and a ruby pen; that they must be entirely indifferent to publishers' accounts, and inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains."

Ouch.

One particular criticism is the formulaic nature of certain novels, with their unrealistic characters and simplistic plots, where:

"The vicious baronet is sure to be killed in a duel, and the tedious husband dies in his bed requesting his wife, as a particular favour to him, to marry the man she loves best, and having already dispatched a note to the lover informing him of the comfortable arrangement."

Eliot scathingly dissects numerous bad examples of the genres she criticises, wittily expounding upon the female protagonists more competent in ancient languages than the average college professor (and more prone to using that ability in public), and four-year-old children who can express their feelings with the pathos of a romantic poet.  She is, as you've probably gathered by now, not very generous about it.

And why should she be?  As she points out, the efforts of these dilettantes do women in general (and female writers in particular) a disservice.  It's hard enough being a female writer in a man's world, without being compared to the mindless creators of the works savaged here.  Eliot claims that this has happened because the awful amateur is received kindly - at first:

"By a peculiar thermometric adjustment, when a woman's talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is at the boiling pitch; when she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer heat; and if she ever reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point."

Perhaps Eliot was a little sensitive here to criticism of her own work...

I'm not usually one for including several direct quotations from books, but once again I was tempted to copy huge swathes of this essay and let Eliot speak for herself.  She is quite simply a wonderful writer, and when freed from the constraints of a monstrous three-volume novel, she can also be very, very funny.  Silly Novels by Lady Novelists is freely available and fairly short, so I would recommend that you give it a go.  It is well worth the effort :)

Impressive Impressions

When it came to choosing a Victorian writer to contribute to my Women Writers Month, it was hard to go past George Eliot, even though I've already read (and, in many cases, reread) all of her more famous fiction.  I was originally planning to read The Mill on the Floss, when I remembered that I had a couple of her less well-known works on my Kindle - which brings me to today's offering...

Impressions of Theophrastus Such is one of Eliot's minor works of fiction, and probably one for the completist rather than the casual reader, but it's still an interesting little book.  It consists of a series of philosophical musings on a range of topics, by a friendly narrator called (I assume) Theophrastus Such.  Such is (in his own words) an averagely-intelligent middle-aged man who wants to tease out a few issues with regards to human behaviour.  Of course, this is just a front, allowing the formidable mind of George Eliot to dissect the foibles of the Victorian middle classes :)

In eighteen short chapters, Such discusses issues such as people who cannot bear other people's success, the perils of attempting to create new research whilst stepping on other men's toes, the horrors of plagiarism, and the possible consequences of technological advancement.  For the most part, the essays are written in a light-hearted manner, reminiscent of Jerome K. Jerome's Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, or Anthony Trollope's occasional quasi-philosophical asides to his readers, but as you can probably tell from the topics above, Eliot's serious side is never far from the surface, negating the humour a little.

Which is not to say that it's not humorous.  I spent half my time highlighting wonderful passages, some thought-provoking, others witty, the occasional line being laugh-out-loud funny.  One unfortunate man is treated as follows:

" Some listeners incautious in their epithets would have called Hinze an "ass".  For my part I would never insult that intelligent and unpretending animal who no doubt brays with perfect simplicity and substantial meaning to those acquainted with his idiom." p.47

When discussing another gentleman, the person whose jealousy won't allow him to appreciate anything done by anyone else, Such ponders:

"Why, then did he speak of the modern Maro or the modern Flaccus with a peculiarity in his tone of assent to other people's praise which might almost have led you to suppose that the eminent poet had borrowed money of him, and shown an indisposition to repay?" p.38

And there's one particularly wonderful quote, one which may hit close to home for the bloggers among us...

"And however unpractical it may be held to consider whether we have anything to print which it is good for the world to read, or which has not been better said before, it will perhaps be allowed to be worth considering what effect the printing may have on ourselves." p.102

Perhaps I'd better move on...

While Impressions of Theophrastus Such is a wonderfully-entertaining read though, it's not perfect.  You see, Eliot is such an intellectual giant that she occasional shoots too high, and the reader is likely to get lost if they are unacquainted with at least the rudiments of the classics and a firm grounding in modern foreign languages.  While I appreciated the humour of the articles published in the "Selten-erscheinende Monat-Schrift" ("Rarely-Appearing Monthly", p.30), I doubt that many others would.  Also, beginning one essay with half a page of untranslated French is unlikely to endear Mr. Such to many monolingual readers :(

Do stick with it though, because there are a couple of gems near the end.  In one, Such (in a discussion with a friend) predicts the rise of the machines and the disappearance of the human race in a disturbingly Terminator-esque portrayal.  In another, the most serious of the collection, Such (Eliot...) argues passionately for an end to prejudice against Jews, reliving the history of the race and showing how ludicrous society's treatment of them really is.  She truly was a woman ahead of her time...

So where can you get this work?  There don't seem to be any editions from the usual suspects, but The Book Depository has scanned and formatted it, offering a copy in its Dodo Press range for about AU$12.  However, this edition is also available as a free PDF, so you can just pop over to the site and download it onto the electronic device of your choosing in a matter of moments - how good is that?!

Before you rush off though, I'll leave you with one last nugget of wisdom from the writings of the irrepressible Such.  A while back I put forward Eliot as my champion to take on the rather unlikeable V.S. Naipaul after his nasty comments about female writers, and one sentence, taken from an essay about people who can't help giving their opinions, just sums up nicely why Eliot would be up to the task:

 "Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact..." p.37

There's nothing really to be added to that :)

A Journey Through Rural England

As promised in a previous post, July has been reserved for old friends, and my first three books for the month are all very familiar friends indeed.  Let me take you on a little trip through time and space, from the south of England to the north.  It'll be a slow journey, but, I promise you, it will be well worth it...

*****

Our journey starts off down in Wessex, the ancient English kingdom appropriated by the wonderful Thomas Hardy as the setting for his Victorian novels.  Far From the Madding Crowd is a typically bucolic tale, describing a few years in the life of the young and beautiful Bathsheba Everdene.  This headstrong woman, who has decided to take on the running of her uncle's farm alone after his death, is pursued by three very different men: surly Farmer Boldwood; dashing soldier Frank Troy; and the honest, reliable shepherd Gabriel Oak.  While this early novel has a little more cheer than Hardy's later tragedies, there's still a lot that goes wrong for Bathsheba, and plenty of obstacles to overcome before she can settle down in peace.

I first read this at secondary school - and got an almighty telling-off from my English teacher when I did a surprise test in class on the book without having bothered to read any of it (I think it was the question where I said Bathsheba was a farmer with a beard that gave things away...).  Now, I love this book, with its luscious descriptions of the English countryside and its long, leisurely conversations between locals in ramshackle pubs.  Admittedly, Hardy never uses a short word when he can dig up (or invent) a horribly long and complicated one instead, but this minor fault is far outweighed by his elegant storytelling - which is why, on finishing this novel, I went straight to the Book Depository and ordered three more of his works :)

*****

Now let's (reluctantly) leave Wessex and move northwards, over the undulating southern hills, across the pleasant fields of Warwickshire, and onto the tranquil village of Hayslope in the (fictional) hilly county of Loamshire, for here we will encounter a fine example of the turn-of-the-(19th) century workman, Adam Bede.

George Eliot's admirable carpenter is one of the principal figures of her first novel, and throughout its 540 pages, he must learn to use his broad shoulders to support others in their time of need - and to bear the crushing disappointment he encounters in his own affairs.  Adam, a cut above the average English country-dweller (both mentally and physically), is in love with Hetty Sorrel, a beautiful (and empty-headed) young dairymaid.  However, when the heir to the local estates, Arthur Donnithorne, sees the pretty girl, events take an unfortunate and fateful turn (reminiscent of a certain Hardy novel), tainting the lives of all involved.

This novel, which I bought at a second-hand shop while I was living in Japan (and read to death!), has many similarities with Far From the Madding Crowd, and I constantly compare and confuse Adam and Gabriel (in my mind, they both look like an actor I saw in an ITV production of Hardy's novel!).  I'd have to say though that Eliot's story is the better of the two.  It has all of the wonderful depiction of how people in the country really lived, with less of the stark contrast between the language of the story and the philosophising.  Middlemarch is probably a better book, but Adam Bede is definitely my favourite Eliot novel.

*****

Alas, we must keep moving, and the way is becoming less pleasant now.  We pass through the bare, coal-stained hills of Eliot's Stonyshire, skirt the big industrial cities of the north, and venture out onto the wet, wild and windy Yorkshire moors - until we stumble, on completion of our journey, upon a pair of houses isolated on the moors: Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights...

The novel is actually a story within a story (within a story) as a large part of the tale is told third-(and occasionally fourth-) hand by the feisty, and perhaps not all that trustworthy, maidservant Nelly Dean.  Through her long fireside stories to the convalescing tenant of Thrushcross Grange, Mr. Lockwood, we learn about the strange events that unfolded in recent years.  All begins when Hareton Earnshaw, the owner of Wuthering Heights, returns from a trip to Liverpool bearing a rather unwelcome sort of gift - a dirty, dark stray who soon comes to be known by the name of Heathcliff.  While Earnshaw's two children are initially repulsed by the intruder, his daughter, Cathy, quickly becomes the best of friends with Heathcliff, a tie which will endure lifelong... and perhaps beyond.

Emily Brontë's classic story is nothing if not divisive (as recent Twitter conversations have shown!), but I love this book.  Melodramatic?  Definitely.  Exaggerated?  Of course.  Stretching reality of behaviour to its limits?  Without doubt.  That's not the point though.  In the self-centred and slightly deranged Cathy, Brontë created one of the most fascinating heroines of the Victorian age (with the best theme tune too!), and as for Heathcliff... well, any character who bangs his head against a tree until it's covered in blood has to be worth engaging with.

This was probably the first piece of serious literature that I ever read (voluntarily anyway), back in those wonderful days when Penguin brought out their one-pound popular classics and widened general access to the literary greats.  I still remember struggling through the book, all the time trying to work out who Cathy/Catherine/Linton/Hareton actually was.  By the end of the novel, despite this difficulty, I was hooked on reading 'proper' books :)

*****
Alas, we must now turn our backs on the world of fiction; our time here is done.  And so, with our journey at an end, it's time to leave 19th-century England behind and return to the realities of 21st-century Melbourne: a large amount of planning to do for next term, a mountain of bills to pay and two noisy (but lovely) daughters to pay attention to.

Until next time :)

Review Post 45 - What novelists do in their spare time

George Eliot, a writer who once lived in my home town and is, therefore, officially brilliant, is well known for her epic novels (Middlemarch, Romola etc.), and I have long wanted to complete the set by reading Felix Holt, the only fiction of hers not in my possession - or so I thought...  When browsing a list of Oxford World's Classics publications, I discovered an Eliot title I'd never heard of, and it turns out that old Mary Ann, as I like to call her (it's a Coventry thing), in addition to her eight major works, also had two short stories serialised in literary journals.  Unfortunately, they were not as popular as her longer works, so they remained alone and largely overlooked, waiting for the odd reader to discover them centuries later.  Now, how could I resist that?

*****
Brother Jacob, the second of the two stories in my edition, is a whimsical tale of David Faux, a young man who decides that the world owes him a living and that he intends to seek payment of that debt sooner rather than later.  He concocts a plan which involves appropriating twenty Guineas belonging to his mother in order to decamp to the West Indies and make his fortune in some vague and unplanned fashion.  The plan, however, comes unstuck when his idiot brother (whose name you can probably guess) tags along, complicating matters somewhat.

Having eventually made good his escape, we rejoin David several years later after his return from the Caribbean, now making a fair living as a confectioner under a pseudonym.  Life is starting to look up for our gallant protagonist when tempting news reaches his ears - but will his youthful misadventures threaten his imminent prosperity?

This amusing tale, probably Eliot's lightest literary moment, is reminiscent of Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (albeit without any of Michael Henchard's redeeming qualities).  It shows the price we pay for our greed and the way it causes us to overreach when happiness is within our grasp.  Faux, whose name was chosen for its French meaning of 'false' and its resemblance to the English word 'fox' - indicating the cunning nature of our 'hero' - is the cause of his own downfall, and it's simple Brother Jacob who is involved in his final come-uppance.  Remember, everyone: it's rather important to be honest.

*****
The first of the two stories, The Lifted Veil, is about the same length (around forty pages) as Brother Jacob, but in many ways it is a far weightier tale.  A dark (almost Gothic?) story, it centres on the figure of Latimer, an aged gentleman in a country house, apparently waiting for his death.  He tells us the story of his life, and recounts how he became obsessed with Bertha, a beautiful young woman who was the intended bride of his more popular and successful elder brother, and how events arranged themselves so that he ended up her husband.

All fairly normal stuff so far, you may think; however, there is a twist in the tale.  Latimer chooses Bertha despite knowing full well that she will end up despising him, with full knowledge that his marriage will be unhappy, a sham.  And how does he know this?  Well, you see, our friend Latimer has a couple of very unusual abilities...

When first offered for publication, the periodical which ran it was not particularly keen on the tale and wanted to tone it down a little; it was certainly a far cry from the pastoral story-telling of Scenes of Clerical Life and Adam Bede.  The focus on a number of pseudo-sciences, such as phrenology, (which had not, at the time, been dismissed as being without substance) seems strange to the modern reader, and the final twist in the story (a fairly unexpected one) is even more startling.

The underlying focus though is on the value of uncertainty in life and the misery that ensues when your destiny is preordained.  It is the possibility of forging your own future which makes life possible, and enjoyable, and on reading Latimer's tale, the reader can feel content not to have inside knowledge as to what is in store for them, tempting as it is to want to know our fate.

*****
All in all then, a most enjoyable duet of tales, especially so when you consider that I never even knew they existed.  While there can be no comparison to Eliot's longer works, the two stories show another facet of a great writer, and that's something which is always welcome.  So, as mentioned above, it just remains for me to source a copy of Felix Holt, and I will have finally read all of Eliot's fiction - unless, that is, there are more lost stories waiting to be discovered...

*****
Review copy courtesy of Betty from Oxford University Press (Australia & New Zealand) :)

61 - 'Scenes of Clerical Life' by George Eliot

Wherever you look on the Blogosphere, there are challenges galore for the poor reader who has difficulty deciding what to read next. Me, I'm not really into this side of reading, with the honourable exception of 'The Japanese Literature Challenge' (and my own moral code, outlined in an earlier post!); if I was though, I think I'd invent my own challenge - 'The Fifty-Mile Challenge'.

Before you run off to fetch a psychiatrist ("Tony's really gone bananas this time!"), let me explain. My theoretical 'Fifty-Mile Challenge' would involve reading works by writers who were born within a fifty-mile radius of your home town. This would obviously be much easier for bloggers in Dublin than in Detroit, London than Loughborough, Weimar than Wollongong... However, it would be especially easy for me as, in addition to flicking through the works of some playwright from just up the road (wrote something about kings, mad people and lovers - 'Hambeth and Juliet'?), I would be able to sit back and enjoy the works of George Eliot.

'Scenes of Clerical Life' was Eliot's first work of fiction, but it was not her first novel as it consisted of three 'short' stories totalling about 320 pages. As is evident from the title, the lives of the clergy are prominent features of these tales, and the theme of religion is one that Eliot pursued in later novels, although these stories focus on the human more than the church side of their lives. Just like her contemporary, Anthony Trollope, she draws out the lives of churchmen in a time where the vicar was a centre of society in country towns and played a much greater role in the community than is the case in many countries today.

Back in 18th/19th century England, the church was not only a place for people with a calling to gravitate to, but also a common employer for the younger sons of rich families where the eldest son inherited the money and estate. Consequently, many clerics were well educated (at Cambridge or Oxford), fairly well off and desirous of the good things in life, and this made things difficult for the poorer members of the clergy, as they were expected to fulfil the same role in society as these younger sons of the landed gentry with virtually no money. The hero of the first tale ('The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton') faces precisely this problem, one which was not uncommon for poor curates (often substitutes for a vicar who owned the 'living' of several parishes and 'sub-let' all but one of them for a fraction of the stipend he received for them). Amos falls into financial troubles because of the need to keep up appearances, despite receiving a wage no better than most workers. When a flighty Countess decides to move in with him and his family, this causes further dents in the budget and leads to problems which are totally unforeseen...

In the third scene, 'Janet's Repentance', the religious view turns to the conflict between traditional Protestant doctrine and the evangelical wing of the Church of England. A new curate, Edgar Tryan, appears in Milby (Eliot's home town of Nuneaton, just down the road from my home town of Coventry - the model for Middlemarch!) and shocks many of the townspeople with his approach to religion, drawing protests and scorn from some of the most powerful people in the town. Events in this scene (and, to some extent, in her first novel, 'Adam Bede') reflect the conflict in Eliot's own life as she began to doubt her faith in Christianity. Through Tryan's role in the saving of Janet Dempster, the title character of this tale, Eliot espouses her support for people who do good deeds and have faith in their fellow mortals over the allegedly moral but actually selfish traditional churchgoers. Eliot also shows the way in which the ordinary people follow their religion without really understanding much about it, enjoying it as a tradition rather than as anything more complicated than blind faith (an idea which Thomas Hardy also touched upon in 'Under the Greenwood Tree').

However, important as the religious side is, the clergy are not always the central characters of these stories. In Amos Barton's tale, the tragic fate of his wife, Milly, and the way in which Amos only comes to realise his good fortune too late, are more important than the tale of the curate himself, and in the second scene, 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story', the parson of the title is secondary to the true heroine, Caterina. This young woman, brought to England by an aristocratic couple after being orphaned at a young age has her affections trifled with by a young nobleman (very similar to the situation of Hetty Sorrel and Arthur Donnithorne in 'Adam Bede'). The poor Caterina, living as she does in late eighteenth century England is triply disadvantaged: she is foreign (you can't trust Italians...), she is of low birth, and is consequently not adopted, but brought up as a dependant, and she is also, the most unfortunate situation of all, a woman. By virtue of these social failings, she is treated badly by the vain young Captain Wybrow, and the events caused by this mis-matched passion lead to a tragic ending for all concerned.

I could go on all night about the interesting themes and concepts in this book, but I won't, mainly to spare you all my meandering explanations (and also because red wine and literary exposition just do not mix). However, there is one further idea which Eliot pushed in this work, and that is her preference for the plain, the old, the ordinary good people over the showy and well-off. Just as Edgar Tryan is eventually accepted by the folk of Milby, despite his dissenting views, and the crabby old Mr. Gilfil is shown to have a passionate and unfortunate past, people are shown to be inherently interesting in themselves, no matter what their religion or social standing. This collection was written in the mid-nineteenth century and was partly constructed to show readers that life was just the same, and people were just as interesting, passionate and good in the time of their grandparents and great-grandparents. Eliot enables the innate goodness of her characters to shine through in her scenes, connecting the old-fashioned times of the the stories to the 'modern' age of the readers. In this way, her readers were urged to learn lessons from the past and not make the same mistakes. Today, in a time where conflict, both within and between religions, is as violent as ever, this is a lesson which we could do with learning.

34 - 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot

I live in Melbourne, a big city on the south-east coast of Australia, where the sun always shines, beer is cheap and kangaroos bound happily down the road of an evening (sadly, none of those things are true). However, my home town is Coventry, a small city located in the centre of England, where the skies are grey, beer is expensive and people can be a bit mental (sadly, all of those things are true). So what, you may ask; what does all this have to do with the critical review I am about to unleash? Well, dear reader, the fact of the matter is that Middlemarch is Coventry, and Coventry is Middlemarch. Confused? Read on.

George Eliot was born (a long time ago, let's not get bogged down by details) near Nuneaton, now a small satellite town of Coventry. She moved to the larger town in her teens, spending many of her formative years there, and when she was looking to write a grand novel set in a provincial centre, my home town was the pattern for the book (hurray!). The setting is crucial for 'Middlemarch'; the book is set in the years around 1832, when the great Reform Bill (abolishing many 'rotten boroughs' and increasing the number of people able to vote in elections) was the talk of the nation. By using a semi-urban centre away from the capital, Eliot was able to show the changing society of early-nineteenth century England as social mobility became a reality. In a town of substantial, but not national, importance, we can more easily see the interplay between events and people. Many of the characters in 'Middlemarch' rise or fall in class and social standing over the course of a few short years, affected by external events or their own rash decisions or shortcomings; Fred Vincy, disappointed in his hopes for a large inheritance, voluntarily descends in the social order by taking up a job which involves some manual labour while Caleb Garth and Vicar Farebrother both end the story richer and more successful than when it began.

One of the major causes of change of class is, of course, marriage, something which is all too common in what Henry James describes as the great, baggy monsters that are Victorian novels. Unusually, however, some of Eliot's marriages occur early in the piece, leaving us with the opportunity to examine the marriage, and not just the wedding. As a result, we are able to compare the lots of the young, devout Dorothea Brooke (who marries a much older man and lives to regret it, through no fault of her own) and the local doctor Tertius Lydgate, whose marriage to Rosamund Vincy descends into a loveless torture, owing mainly to the selfishness and shallowness of his beautiful bride. Dorothea's sister, Celia, who marries more for convenience than real love in accepting the proposal of Sir James Chettham, the former suitor of the elder Brooke daughter, is (initially at least) far luckier in love poor Dorothea.

As can be seen from the previous section, one of the telling features of 'Middlemarch' is the intricate web of human connections which Eliot spins over the many pages of the eight books making up the novel. The limited size of Middlemarch, the inter-marrying between families, and the chance arrival of strangers who have a connection with one or more locals leads to a sense of 'wholeness': the book does not consist of a few separate stories loosely tied together; rather, each character and relationship is vital to the book as a whole. 'Middlemarch' (and the town itself) is a living, breathing organism which is difficult to reduce to the sum of its parts. One reading does not do justice to the skill with which Eliot has put the novel together, and each time you approach the book, more layers of subtlety are revealed.

Crotchety old Henry James (a great admirer of Eliot's, who, nonetheless, blew hot and cold about this particular book) also said that this was the book which pushed the idea of the Victorian novel to the limit. He wasn't being completely complimentary when he said that, but I prefer to understand it literally; with 'Middlemarch', Eliot had taken the genre of the sprawling, multi-plot novel as far as it could go. It literally wasn't possible to connect each part of a book to every other part more than she had done here.

The first time I read 'Middlemarch', I didn't really fully understand its greatness. Of course, that's probably because I got distracted by the fact that it was supposedly set in my home town and spent the whole time trying to spot local landmarks (which wouldn't have existed 135 years ago anyway...). This time, however, I enjoyed the book a lot more; in fact (if I may end on a pun) being sent to Coventry was never such fun.

5 - 'Silas Marner' by George Eliot

George Eliot (who was born not far from my home town and used it as the basis of 'Middlemarch') wrote big books. Big, weighty books with important themes.

'Silas Marner' is about 180 pages long, and at first glance, is about a moody old bloke.

Of course, it's a bit more complex than that. The conflicting tales of the calvinist weaver, cast out of his home society by an evil friend, who finds riches, then despair, and finally fulfilment in the shape of a daughter (Silas does these things, not the friend; commas can be confusing); and the son of a squire who gives into temptation in the form of a secret marriage and hides the presence of the daughter after the hated wife's untimely demise (can you tell what it is yet...) pack countless religious, mythological, social and literary allusions into the twenty-one chapters, and many critics called it her finest novel.

Still, I wasn't entirely convinced. The book is slow at times, and a more thorough analysis of Marner's character before the changes in his life in Raveloe would have added to the story. In addition, while there is meant to be a contrast between the good-hearted (and simple-minded?) village folk and the gentry of the area, the scenes with the higher-status characters actually seem dull at times.

However, the passages with Silas and Eppie are full of interest (especially for a father with a baby daughter!), and the confrontation in Silas' house with Godfrey and Nancy Cass is made for a BBC television adaptation (and probably already has been...). Despite the brevity of the story, you don't feel that the tale has ended too quickly; in fact, for such a short book, a lot seems to have been packed in.

While I've read a fair bit of George Eliot recently (and enjoyed all of it), this, in my humble opinion, does not match up to 'Adam Bede' or 'Romola'. I am soon to re-read 'Middlemarch', and as this time I won't be keeping an eye out for places I know (for some reason, I kept thinking that Eliot would mention prominent Coventry landmarks on each page!), I'm sure I'll enjoy it more - and probably a little more than 'Silas Marner' too.