Dear Serial Readers,
Last time I mentioned how the bigamy plot, secrecy, and suspense reminded me of the popular sensation novels serialized in the 1860s. But this time, I'm thinking: GOTHIC. I admit that these illustrations (see sidebar) by Leighton prompts thoughts of this genre, one that usually involved some kind of intrigue around Catholicism, monasteries and convents, corrupt ascetics, monks with amazing powers and sexual appetites. The Gothic is especially suggestive in the final chapter of the installment, and the illustration which had the caption "A Dangerous Colleague," perhaps one that might be applied to any of the three figures in the scene: most obviously Spini, but also Tito, and then there's Romola, who witnesses this exchange about a plot against Sav, and responds with a threat to divulge all at San Marco. I liked how this episode concludes with Romola recovering some sense of her own power to thwart Tito, something she can only do by living near him (so her submissive retreat home seems somewhat vindicated).
But in this serial number, before she's an alter-"Dangerous Colleague" to Tito, she's also the "Visible Madonna," in contrast to the "Unseen Madonna," that "mysterious hidden image" enclosed within the tabernacle--unseen to all, of course, but the omniscient narrator, and us readers (although there is far more detail given to the brocade curtains that conceal than the "Pitying Mother" inside). This hidden madonna in contrast to the visible Romola suggests more layers, more that cannot be fully represented to the eye or ear. Here I'm reminded of Julia's comment about the non-verbal or textual powers weilded in this novel--Sav's voice, some spiritual force, or sexual force (Tito and his women) that can't quite be translated into words?
What do you think of these images that were included in the installment? Romola is definitely cloaked in the second ("Dangerous Colleague") as she recedes into the wall, but she's also the attentive eavesdropper. In the first, she is a feminine Saint--? Which one attracted all the little children and fed the animals, or am I mixing up my saints here? I thought her dress in this image looked faintly Victorian.
Like Julia, I've thought of Eliot's penchant for discussions about political and philosophical and cultural questions, either in a club setting (the one Julia mentioned in Daniel Deronda) or the Rucellai Gardens dinner scene. But in both of these, only men, and only hand-picked men, are included. I thought Baldassarre, as interloper who gets tossed out and imprisoned, might also be aligned with women, also barred from these group exchanges. There are other kinds of conversational gatherings with a more popular format--the gossip of Nello's barber shop, or, in Middlemarch, tea parties or pub gatherings, offer a broader range of views and include women and people of diverse class positions as active participants.
I want to end this post by talking about serial reading, what else? I have a bit of blog envy, I admit, after watching the film "Julie and Julia" last weekend. Clearly I'm no Julie Powell writing about cooking Julia Child's French recipes, and so no surprise this blog about serial reading isn't suited to zillions of hits. But I don't think this blog is like other reading blogs either. I have a friend who keeps a blog A Book a Week where she reviews and grades the books she reads. But this reading project isn't about a book a week, but a book over many many weeks, as these novels were written and first read. I'd love to hear more about your experiences reading in this way, rather than immersing yourself thoroughly in the pages of a Victorian novel for days on end until you finish, without a mindful break.
In the spirit of multiple reading endeavors at a time, rather than the one-and-only-book at a time, I thought I'd list my reading this past week. I'm not including incidental reading (newspapers, magazines, blog articles--including Facebook), but books or essays. In all cases I read only parts (with the exceptions of the short items, not the books), but in some cases I finished a book, or started a book, or read in the middle, like this installment of Romola.
What did your reading menu look like this past week? Even if you're not reading Romola, but you area reading this, can you share your range of reading this week? Here's mine, a mix of work-related and sheer pleasure, and in no particular order:
Fetish Lives by Gail Jones, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Pulitzer prize winner book),
Darwin's Worms by Adam Phillips (read on my Kindle!), The Closed Door by Dorothy Whipple,
three sequels to Ibsen's A Doll's House by G. B. Shaw, Walter Besant, Eleanor Marx and Israel Zangwill, Heretical Hellenisms: Women Writers, Ancient Greece, and the Victorian Cultural Imagination by Shanyn Fiske, "The Task of the Translator" by Walter Benjamin (in translation).
Besides parts of these books, and others, I'll also be reading chaps 47-51, the April 1863 installment of Romola. I was thinking, for the next Serial Readers pick, linked short stories that were serially published, either Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life or Sherlock Holmes. Any other ideas?
Serially signing off,
Susan
2 comments:
I haven't been reading that much, Susan! Wow! I have been reading assessment rubrics, and The Lazarus Project.
I'm happy to read serialized short stories, though some have spoken against it in the past.
I've been thinking that it would be fun to get out Mary McCarthy's Stones of Florence and look at it again as I'm reading Romola. I am struck by how many references there are to paintings and buildings that we could look at. So I included the link to the fainting Madonna that Nello compares Romola too. http://www.christusrex.org/www2/art/images/beato14.jpg
She makes up a small part of the painting--I'm not sure who is supporting her.
It's interesting that you say Romola looks like a saint in the picture of her as Madonna-to me she looks like a mother! But the child on the far left does have a hair pick that looks like a crucifix. I looked up some of the famous female saints associated with St. Francis of Assisi, and his sister Agnes was a saint in Florence, but like their sister Clare, she was enclosed and really didn't go out and do work for the people. On the other hand, these folks had chaste marriages, but we don't really know whether Romola and Tito are still having a sexual relationship--I did find myself wondering in this section.
I'm also interested in the political dialog, and I find it intriguing, all the double crossing and deceit. But I can't really tell what Romola thinks--I'm intrigued by the folks who want rule by the people even if it means having to accept Sav. Yet most of the admirable characters in the novel so far were Medicean. I am also intrigued that Romola is so a-political. It seems Eliot is more interested in the what and how of what happened in Florence and less in speculating on what she wishes would have happened, or in forming emotional alliances with particular political sides. Is this typical for her? I find myself as a reader *always* rooting for the populists, but in this novel that seems challenging.
Perhaps the political world of 15th-century Florence is shown as equally limited to Bardo's hermetic intellectual world? I don't quite think that, either, though. I am puzzled by the lack of clear allegiance in this novel, other than to Romola and Tessa--do other readers also see this, or do you think I'm missing certain clues?
I love the idea of reading linked short stories next, and I'd be happy with either Eliot or Conan Doyle!
I've been thinking about gothic this week, just like Susan, and perhaps this relates to some of the other books I've been reading:
Drood, by Dan Simmons (a neo-Victorian novel about Dickens's last days narrated by a fictional Wilkie Collins!); The Mystery in Palace Gardens, by Charlotte Riddell (originally serialized in London Society Magazine); Macbeth; and the Lais of Marie de France
I've also been drifting in and out of my husband's dramatic reading of Tennyson's Idylls of the King (read as a bedtime story for my 4-year-old daughter). This has given me another version of the serialized reading experience as Victorians might have practiced it!
But back to Gothic and this installment of Romola. I saw the end of the last chapter potentially setting up a scenario for Tito to imprison Romola as a potential threat to his scheme. Did anyone else see this kind of sinister move as a possibility in the plot development? This seemed particularly likely now that Tito's bad side is coming out more strongly.
As a second point, I found the chapter titles intriguing this time around. We start off with "Romola in her Place"--suggesting to me a stable identity as she returns to the role of wife and benefactor of Florence that Savonarola dictates for her). But the next chapters, "The Unseen Madonna" and "The Visible Madonna," seem to destabilize this and reintroduce complexity into her new existence. In these chapters (as in the last one, as emphasized by the illustrations), Romola attempts to be both visible and invisible. The figure that is recognized by Florentines as saintly, but also a figure that tries to take refuge in "black drapery [thrown] over her head" (p. 362).
Thinking more about the political in the novel, it seems that this installment highlights two styles of "making a difference" in Florence. On the one hand, we see Romola's hands-on work with the needy, which is linked to Savonarola's religious message. On the other hand, we have Tito's grand political schemes, the approach to change that is also embraced by Machiavelli, etc. It will be interesting to see which style "wins" in the end. Will it be Romola's selflessness or Tito's scheming?
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