POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins

POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins

13 September 2009

Romola #13--chaps 62-67 (July 1863)

Dear All Serial Readers,

Don't forget to cast your vote for our next serial! At this point, Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is the front-runner, with Trollope's Orley Farm in second place. So far, no votes for Dickens. Even if you're unlikely to read along, don't be shy about asserting your right to vote! You'll find the poll at the very bottom of this page.

And so we're on the home stretch--only the last and fourteenth installment of Romola remains for next time. I'd love to hear about your experiences reading in this serially format, either as a newcomer to this novel or as a re-reader, but this time in these deliberate segments.

This installment, as I'd anticipated, doesn't touch directly on Romola at all, but does mention her briefly toward the end, as Tito reminds himself of his "mistake of falling in love with Romola." But in a way she's in the background with the waterside imagery that ends this part too. As we've all mentioned from time to time, rivers and other watery images abound in Eliot's novels--but this is true for other Victorian writers. I did work out, however, that Romola's water isn't the same as the Arno that brings together Tito and Baldassarre, since Viareggio (where Romola has gone) is on the coast.

What did people make of the coincidence of Tito washing up on Baldassarre's shore? This perverse sense of justice--this scene of the betrayed and the betrayer, the pursued and the pursuer--reminded me of a scene toward the end of Dickens's Our Mutual Friend (Headstone and Riderhood), a novel Dickens would've been working on when this novel was serialized in 1863. And maybe also the last pages of Frankenstein? While Eliot seems critical of Baldassarre's obsession with revenge, she does allow him this fulfillment--after all, Tito is still alive, barely, and so Baldassarre, also barely alive, uses his last strength to accomplish what he has desired for so long, almost since he entered into this novel. Is this really justice, though, in Eliot's moral scheme of things?

I did find it interesting that Tito had planned to bring Tessa and her children with him on his flight out of Florence. This seemed an interesting twist where the "other" secret wife would be elevated to the position of a full-time wife, while Tito has no thoughts for Romola's future (didn't he notice she'd gone missing?). But then, this twist does not work out as Tito had planned. The final installment will surely bring back Tessa and Romola, so stay tuned.

And Savonarola? I found him especially sympathetic in these pages as we find him struggling with an inward collision between belief and knowledge, between faith and facts. He believes in miracles in the abstract, but his "keen perception of outward facts" convinces him that he would not walk through a trial by fire. Not unusual with Eliot, she unfolds an anatomy of faith here which centers on the need for it rather than assessing its validity. How life-like, life-sized, and even modern somehow seems Sav in these scenes. And Tito, well, no question he was happy to sell Sav (or his letter) down the river for his own gain. I do find Tito a kind of moral lesson throughout for Eliot--but since Tito seems incapable of change or productive moral reflection, I also began to see him more as a plot device.

For the last few chapters, I'm also interested in how Eliot will return to the now/then stitching together that was so evident in the first chapters--or will she?

Please vote early and often for the next serial! I'll announce next week, and we'll start the first week of October.

Serially steadfast,
Susan

2 comments:

Kari said...

I am loving these last chapters of Romola--to me they have made what at times seemed a long slog through Florentine history worth it. At the same time, they really backed away from the individuals who moved most of the narrative forward--the barbershop, Romola, Tessa, Baldassare, and even Tito become much smaller players in both of these last two installments, while Savonarola becomes suddenly huge--we see much more of his thinking than we had before, and he seems pretty interesting.

I find these chapters, including the previous section that I didn't write on last week, to represent the Eliot that I carry in my mind--really able to see how the strengths of a character are also the weaknesses, and both wittily sarcastic and compassionate.

I'm afraid I just can't stop myself from quoting my favorite parts, such as the comment on 15th-century handbill printing which suggests that back *then* they thought "there was no argument more widely convincing than question-begging phrases in large type." Ah, if only things had changed! That seems even to be the case in letters to The Chronicle, not to mention in Congress. And I love the immediately following comment on Romola's reading strategy, which I find an apt metaphor for her overall outlook on F. politics: "Romola, however, cared especially to become acquainted with the arguments in smaller type" (ch. 59).

Then I'm also very impressed by the analysis of why Savonarola doesn't respond to Romola's pleading, because he struggles between a desire for purity / simplicity AND the egoistic demands that any great leader has to face when trying to achieve something great. I loved the movement in chapter 59 between his goals and hers, the novel treating each so fully. Also in Chapter 61 the narrator comments on how Sav's grand goals and Rom's "tender fellow-feeling" each have their limitations.

On the other hand, I didn't like the choice of Romola floating off in a boat, although I was intrigued by the comparison to Fair Constance (Gostanza), who escapes much sexual predation with God's help and her little boat. In Chaucer's version of that tale, Constance's 2d pagan husband eventually finds Christ and their marriage is re-affirmed, so I thought for a bit about the possibility of Tito reforming! But that seemed unlikely.

His death seems such an anticlimax, not even really named as death, and at the moment that he thinks he has escaped and Baldassare thinks he has lost hope--I find that anticlimax narratively satisfying and I look forward to a satisfactory end for Tessa and Romola too, I write firmly--trying to influence the outcome with my certainty and firm desire!

Julia said...

My post is going to be brief this week, but I too was drawn into the internal struggle within Sav and his reluctance to pursue a miracle (the trial by fire) that required both "belief" and "exceptional action" (p. 493). I happen to be reading the Iliad at the moment, and this portrayal of Sav reminds me a bit of Hector's desire to stop and fight Achilles, but physical inability to do so. Hector runs initially from Achilles, just as Sav fears that he will "shrink at the last moment" (p. 494). This tension between mind and body is fascinating...We seem to get a picture of the limits of the power of the human mind, yet the installment finishes by reasserting the power of the interior life, as Eliot likens "Justice" to "the Kingdom of God--it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning" (p. 517).

One final point--like Susan, the scene of Tito and Baldassare in a "death clutch" immediately reminded me of the demise of Bradley Headstone and Rogue Riderhood in Our Mutual Friend!