Dear Serial Reader/s,
I'm on a mission--these stories deserve more serious notice than they've received! I have one comment on this episode of this "Scene"/story, and then another on a way to read these "Scenes" as interlocking.
First, on the scene between Tryan and Janet. I once wrote a book on confession in Victorian literature, and I wish I'd included this remarkable scene. When Janet confesses "how weak and wicked" she feels for her sin of drinking (seems a bit harsh on herself, given that her husband drinks excessively and beats her and locks her outside in the middle of the cold night, but never mind) to Tryan, this Evangelical, renegade preacher responds with a confession of his own sin--his great guilt for indirectly causing a young woman's death. Eliot demonstrates that much more than doctrinal belief, true religion is human compassion, not just sympathy or pity, but deeply hearing and understanding another's suffering, sometimes through connection with one's own. Tryan is a remarkable confessor because of the mutuality which his sympathy means--"sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession." I can think of many confession scenes in other Eliot novels (such as Gwendolen to Deronda) and cannot recall a single instance of this response of confession to confession. It seems clear that redemption and salvation come through human connection first, not some dry religious creed. The story Tryan tells about Lucy reminded me of Gaskell's earlier seduction stories (Esther Barton, even Mary Barton and Carson, and Ruth), only this time from the perspective of the genuinely reformed seducer (unlike Ruth's Bellingham).
Second, it occurs to me that we might link together each clergyman of the "Scenes" and see a kind of evolution here, from the very ordinary Amos Barton who does his job in a perfunctory way, but nothing remarkable. Perhaps all those young children and wife and the countess distract his attention outward. Then we have Maynard Gilfil, who is a good enough vicar, even if he doesn't seem to live up to the most doctrinal principles. We learn he has a good heart, by going back through the story of his own heart. Yet it is this third clegyman, the "meddlesome, upstart, Jacobinical fellow" (according to Lawyer Dempster), who displays the greatest power of ministering to a sufferer. This is also the only story of the three where the minister's name isn't in the title, but instead the woman who turns to him out of desperation.
While I think that it's "Janet's Repentance" that typically has received the most attention as the best of the three "Scenes," I'd like to suggest that we could even see Tryan as the culmination of the serial ministers, and perhaps Janet as the composite of the women linked to them. In any case this story of a battered wife and a ridiculed Evangelical preacher who "gets" what human suffering means is quite remarkable to me. And I wonder if Eliot is recommending celibacy for her clergymen--or recovered celibacy at least. It seems to me that the most powerfully compassionate religious men are not married--Farebrother in Middlemarch, say, or even Savonarola in Romola, and Dr. Kenn at the end of The Mill on the Floss is recently widowed.
If anyone reading this knows of good scholarship on this series of stories, please tell me!
Next week: the final installment of "Janet's Repentance" (chaps. 22-28). There's more suspense, I find, at the end of each of these installments (or maybe the suspense builds from the earlier stories to this one). Now the final suspense: is Janet going to be delivered through Dempster's timely death or will he survive and she return to him? Tune in for the finale!
The week after next: Martin Chuzzlewit!
Serially sympathizing,
Susan
POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins
27 June 2011
"Janet's Repentance" III (chaps. 10-14) SCENES of CLERICAL LIFE (Sept. 1857)
Dear Serial Readers,
This story has now swerved into a portrait of an abused wife, with the harassed Evangelical minister on the periphery. Eliot offers an array of reactions, none helpful--how Janet's mother-in-law blames this misery on Janet's failures in housekeeping, and how her own mother sees and feels helpless, and how the people in Milby see and gossip and do not feel enough. Eliot implicates the reader in this futile search for origins of abuse: "Do you wonder how it was that things had come to this pass--what offence Janet had committed in the early years of marriage to rouse the brutal hatred of this man? The seeds of things are very small: the hours that lie between sunrise and the gloom of midnight are travelled through by tiniest markings of the clock: and Janet, looking back along the fifteen years of her married life, hardly knew how or where this total misery began..."
Several "Poor Janet!" moments--reminds me of Eliot's penchant for this pitying address in later novels, especially MIDDLEMARCH.
At the end of this installment, Dempster has locked Janet out of their house--at least he did not murder her, as she expected. But to be locked out in the cold also thrusts her domestic plight into public. I'm anticipating Tryan to the rescue.
On this serial reading and ahead: I see the conversation has fallen off in recent weeks. I am curious if this relative quiet has anything to do with the stories themselves. I have been searching for how these "Scenes" are a series, but it's clear the narrative threads are unevenly stitched, with Gilfil before Barton in time, and this tale of Tryan and the Dempsters seemingly unhinged from the other two, except for the "clerical life" theme. Two more episodes and we're through with SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. For next week: 15-21.
Upcoming serial--Dickens again! We'll start reading MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, the last of Dickens's picaresque novels (with PICKWICK as the first),in a few weeks.
Serially yours,
Susan
This story has now swerved into a portrait of an abused wife, with the harassed Evangelical minister on the periphery. Eliot offers an array of reactions, none helpful--how Janet's mother-in-law blames this misery on Janet's failures in housekeeping, and how her own mother sees and feels helpless, and how the people in Milby see and gossip and do not feel enough. Eliot implicates the reader in this futile search for origins of abuse: "Do you wonder how it was that things had come to this pass--what offence Janet had committed in the early years of marriage to rouse the brutal hatred of this man? The seeds of things are very small: the hours that lie between sunrise and the gloom of midnight are travelled through by tiniest markings of the clock: and Janet, looking back along the fifteen years of her married life, hardly knew how or where this total misery began..."
Several "Poor Janet!" moments--reminds me of Eliot's penchant for this pitying address in later novels, especially MIDDLEMARCH.
At the end of this installment, Dempster has locked Janet out of their house--at least he did not murder her, as she expected. But to be locked out in the cold also thrusts her domestic plight into public. I'm anticipating Tryan to the rescue.
On this serial reading and ahead: I see the conversation has fallen off in recent weeks. I am curious if this relative quiet has anything to do with the stories themselves. I have been searching for how these "Scenes" are a series, but it's clear the narrative threads are unevenly stitched, with Gilfil before Barton in time, and this tale of Tryan and the Dempsters seemingly unhinged from the other two, except for the "clerical life" theme. Two more episodes and we're through with SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. For next week: 15-21.
Upcoming serial--Dickens again! We'll start reading MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, the last of Dickens's picaresque novels (with PICKWICK as the first),in a few weeks.
Serially yours,
Susan
19 June 2011
"Janet's Repentance" II (chaps. 5-9) SCENES of CLERICAL LIFE (Aug. 1857)
Dear Serial Readers,
The ending of this second installment, like the ending of the first of this story, is jarring, again a hook of suspense leading to the next segment of publication. But this last paragraph also hints at the title's meaning. I had thought the title alluded to J's repentance of her marriage, but now it seems geared toward her part in ridiculing and causing pain to Tynan, the Evangelical minister with a deeply sympathetic core, unlike the wretched Dempster. On the one hand, it sounds like the narrator is scolding Janet for "looking on in scorn and merriment" at Tynan. But on the other hand, we see the pernicious claws of abuse where Janet, for the paltry crumbs of her husband's affection("Gypsy" is his nickname for her! Shades of Maggie Tulliver!), stoops to take part in humiliating a good man who has noticed her own suffering.
Like Kari, I noticed that the narrator identifies as a man with memories of boyhood. What did you make of the "mural literature" of Dempster's playbill of the "reclaimed and converted Animals"? It seemed rather silly farce to me, and somewhat surprising from Dempster who appears to lack any speculative, imaginative capacity, something Eliot usually affiliates with sympathy.
Next week: segment 3, chapters 10-14.
Serially yours,
Susan
The ending of this second installment, like the ending of the first of this story, is jarring, again a hook of suspense leading to the next segment of publication. But this last paragraph also hints at the title's meaning. I had thought the title alluded to J's repentance of her marriage, but now it seems geared toward her part in ridiculing and causing pain to Tynan, the Evangelical minister with a deeply sympathetic core, unlike the wretched Dempster. On the one hand, it sounds like the narrator is scolding Janet for "looking on in scorn and merriment" at Tynan. But on the other hand, we see the pernicious claws of abuse where Janet, for the paltry crumbs of her husband's affection("Gypsy" is his nickname for her! Shades of Maggie Tulliver!), stoops to take part in humiliating a good man who has noticed her own suffering.
Like Kari, I noticed that the narrator identifies as a man with memories of boyhood. What did you make of the "mural literature" of Dempster's playbill of the "reclaimed and converted Animals"? It seemed rather silly farce to me, and somewhat surprising from Dempster who appears to lack any speculative, imaginative capacity, something Eliot usually affiliates with sympathy.
Next week: segment 3, chapters 10-14.
Serially yours,
Susan
12 June 2011
"Janet's Repentance" (chaps. 1-4) SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE (July 1857)
Dear Serial Readers,
From female murderers to a High Church lawyer who has a habit of wife-beating in Eliot's final "Scene." I must say I was taken by this first installment--how we're initially introduced to Dempster's campaign against the Evangelical minister Tynan's evening lectures, and then other scenes in Milby (forerunner of Middlemarch?) replete with tea, handicrafts, and gossip, including Tynan's comment about Mrs. Dempster, aka Janet, and then finally her sad story. There's something about the form of this installment that performs the suppression of domestic abuse--until the end. All this piling up of public sphere politics, spearheaded by Dempster, and then he resurfaces at the end when he returns home, drunk, and beats Janet. Is this, like realism, or part of realism, domestic violence as ordinary or as the dirty secret everyone knows?
As Plotaholic asks about what are female murderers doing in Eliot's realist fiction, I would ask the same about the abusive husband, who has a different public face. I sometimes think Eliot uses sensational scenes (like Mme Laure or Gwendolen's held hand in Grandcourt's drowning--and do we know in either case what did cause the deaths of their husbands?)for realist ends, which could mean ambiguity, lack of resolution or full disclosure--an ending that doesn't quite conclude. It's interesting that both *Middlemarch* and *Daniel Deronda* prompted sequels.
I found moving the last paragraphs of this segment on the twin paintings over mantelpieces, one of Janet's mother, the other (Christ about to be crucified?) by Janet as a young girl, as symbolic presences of mother and martyred daughter to each other. Yet neither is able to actually speak about this horrible secret of Janet's abuse. Like Janet's mother, and Milbyites who seem to know what's going on here, the reader too can feel, but cannot do anything. I'm hoping Tynan does.
One more thing--I wonder if the "Janet" mentioned in the first chapter of the first story of Amos Barton is the same "Janet" here? Perhaps just a coincidence? Mr. Gilfil does come up in that first chapter of "Amos," and I'm suspecting that there are more networked connections across these three "Scenes."
Next week: chapters 5-9.
Serially stunned,
Susan
From female murderers to a High Church lawyer who has a habit of wife-beating in Eliot's final "Scene." I must say I was taken by this first installment--how we're initially introduced to Dempster's campaign against the Evangelical minister Tynan's evening lectures, and then other scenes in Milby (forerunner of Middlemarch?) replete with tea, handicrafts, and gossip, including Tynan's comment about Mrs. Dempster, aka Janet, and then finally her sad story. There's something about the form of this installment that performs the suppression of domestic abuse--until the end. All this piling up of public sphere politics, spearheaded by Dempster, and then he resurfaces at the end when he returns home, drunk, and beats Janet. Is this, like realism, or part of realism, domestic violence as ordinary or as the dirty secret everyone knows?
As Plotaholic asks about what are female murderers doing in Eliot's realist fiction, I would ask the same about the abusive husband, who has a different public face. I sometimes think Eliot uses sensational scenes (like Mme Laure or Gwendolen's held hand in Grandcourt's drowning--and do we know in either case what did cause the deaths of their husbands?)for realist ends, which could mean ambiguity, lack of resolution or full disclosure--an ending that doesn't quite conclude. It's interesting that both *Middlemarch* and *Daniel Deronda* prompted sequels.
I found moving the last paragraphs of this segment on the twin paintings over mantelpieces, one of Janet's mother, the other (Christ about to be crucified?) by Janet as a young girl, as symbolic presences of mother and martyred daughter to each other. Yet neither is able to actually speak about this horrible secret of Janet's abuse. Like Janet's mother, and Milbyites who seem to know what's going on here, the reader too can feel, but cannot do anything. I'm hoping Tynan does.
One more thing--I wonder if the "Janet" mentioned in the first chapter of the first story of Amos Barton is the same "Janet" here? Perhaps just a coincidence? Mr. Gilfil does come up in that first chapter of "Amos," and I'm suspecting that there are more networked connections across these three "Scenes."
Next week: chapters 5-9.
Serially stunned,
Susan
06 June 2011
Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story (chaps. 14-Epilogue) SCENES of CLERICAL LIFE (June 1857)
Dear Serial Readers,
On the lacking of the "clerical" in this story about Mr. Gilfil, the Shepperton rector who preceded Amos Barton of the first SCENE: maybe Eliot's point is that clerical life, like realism, is ordinary and secular. Notwithstanding the protracted botanical metaphor of Gilfil as a " whimsical misshapen trunk" (due to heartbreak over that "delicate plant" that died "in the struggle to put forth a blossom"--did Caterina die in childbirth?), this story concludes with the suggestion that Gilfil's "love-story" of long ago made him a better clergyman, a more compassionate presence than a doctrinal expert.
I found myself impatient with the story, and I'm not sure it was simply because I knew the ending near the outset (some of you know my agnosticism on readerly suspense). I found the writing at times too maudlin, overgrown with those botanical flourishes. I even had this suspicion: did Eliot write this story entirely, or did Lewes have a larger helping hand?
Yet here are some aspects that intrigued me:
*Caterina's dagger--her desire to murder Anthony, and Maynard's refusal to believe she would actually be capable of this deed--shades of other Eliotic women would-be or otherwise murderers (from Hetty Sorrel to Madame Laure and Gwendolen Harleth) and men who cannot fathom them as such.
*All the chapter divisions--this story has many very short chapters; I'm not sure what this means in terms of the serial parcel, but I found many sub-scenes within this larger scene.
*The verb tense shifts (as Julia noted)--the use of the present tense to generate suspense, excitement, or immediacy-- a way to insert the reader into the story.
*The scene shifts between humble homes and Cheverel Manor (between realism and romance), even between provincial England and Italy.
*There were elements that also reminded me of JANE EYRE (Caterina fleeing Cheverel Manor, and her vulnerability to the seductions of Anthony who cannot marry her) and AURORA LEIGH (the transplant of the Italian child onto English soil)
Next up: our third and final "SCENE"--"Janet's Repentance" (chaps 1-4).
Thanks, Kari, for mentioning the photographs from the 1907 edition. Are there ones that accompany the other stories in SCENES too?
Serially scenic,
Susan
On the lacking of the "clerical" in this story about Mr. Gilfil, the Shepperton rector who preceded Amos Barton of the first SCENE: maybe Eliot's point is that clerical life, like realism, is ordinary and secular. Notwithstanding the protracted botanical metaphor of Gilfil as a " whimsical misshapen trunk" (due to heartbreak over that "delicate plant" that died "in the struggle to put forth a blossom"--did Caterina die in childbirth?), this story concludes with the suggestion that Gilfil's "love-story" of long ago made him a better clergyman, a more compassionate presence than a doctrinal expert.
I found myself impatient with the story, and I'm not sure it was simply because I knew the ending near the outset (some of you know my agnosticism on readerly suspense). I found the writing at times too maudlin, overgrown with those botanical flourishes. I even had this suspicion: did Eliot write this story entirely, or did Lewes have a larger helping hand?
Yet here are some aspects that intrigued me:
*Caterina's dagger--her desire to murder Anthony, and Maynard's refusal to believe she would actually be capable of this deed--shades of other Eliotic women would-be or otherwise murderers (from Hetty Sorrel to Madame Laure and Gwendolen Harleth) and men who cannot fathom them as such.
*All the chapter divisions--this story has many very short chapters; I'm not sure what this means in terms of the serial parcel, but I found many sub-scenes within this larger scene.
*The verb tense shifts (as Julia noted)--the use of the present tense to generate suspense, excitement, or immediacy-- a way to insert the reader into the story.
*The scene shifts between humble homes and Cheverel Manor (between realism and romance), even between provincial England and Italy.
*There were elements that also reminded me of JANE EYRE (Caterina fleeing Cheverel Manor, and her vulnerability to the seductions of Anthony who cannot marry her) and AURORA LEIGH (the transplant of the Italian child onto English soil)
Next up: our third and final "SCENE"--"Janet's Repentance" (chaps 1-4).
Thanks, Kari, for mentioning the photographs from the 1907 edition. Are there ones that accompany the other stories in SCENES too?
Serially scenic,
Susan
29 May 2011
Mr. Gilfil's Love- Story #3 (chaps 7-13) May 1857
Dear Serial Readers,
First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR SERIAL READERS! Three years ago this week I launched this adventure with the first novel, DOMBEY & SON. Since then, we've serialized through eight novels and a few stories.
This third of four installments of "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story" showcases the structure of the serial, with the first sentences as a kind of recap from the previous chapter/installment, and the final lines a stab at suspense--is he dead or alive?
Of course, we know the end of the love-story from the start of this narrative, so whether he is dead or alive is only an issue in terms of how the plots works out, not the overall outcome.
I was amused at the rapid switch to present-tenseness for suspense value in the close of this episode with: "See how she rushes noiselessly, like a pale meteor..." But still, I'm rather detached from any gripping engagement with this story.
Next time--the end of "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story" (chaps 14-Epilogue).
Serially celebrating Three,
Susan
First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR SERIAL READERS! Three years ago this week I launched this adventure with the first novel, DOMBEY & SON. Since then, we've serialized through eight novels and a few stories.
This third of four installments of "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story" showcases the structure of the serial, with the first sentences as a kind of recap from the previous chapter/installment, and the final lines a stab at suspense--is he dead or alive?
Of course, we know the end of the love-story from the start of this narrative, so whether he is dead or alive is only an issue in terms of how the plots works out, not the overall outcome.
I was amused at the rapid switch to present-tenseness for suspense value in the close of this episode with: "See how she rushes noiselessly, like a pale meteor..." But still, I'm rather detached from any gripping engagement with this story.
Next time--the end of "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story" (chaps 14-Epilogue).
Serially celebrating Three,
Susan
23 May 2011
Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story (chaps.3-6) from SCENES (April 1857)
Dear Serial Readers,
First, I just added an article link to the list of blogs and articles (see right column, scroll down past several novel covers)about designing a Kindle for Dickens.
On this story as a serial: I continue to be intrigued by Eliot's reverse-narrative with Mr. G's story. In this second installment, the narration goes back several decades to the summer of 1788 in Italy to tell the backstory of Caterina Sarti and how she came to be a ward of Sir and Lady C at Cheverel Manor. I found echoes of various Victorian narratives before and after this one, including Aurora Leigh (transplanted too from Tuscany to England). The narrative structure that sets a scene in the opening two chapters and then jumps back to provide a richer narrative context for that initial moment is a form Eliot uses in her final novel DANIEL DERONDA. I wonder how effective this shape is for the serial? Perhaps one could read this story and not even need the first two chapters (ie first installment) to follow it?
That this story stands on its own apart from the first "Amos Barton" SCENE is clear, and yet Eliot does intertwine the stories, again going backward. I'm curious to see how the last story, "Janet's Repentance," will play into the serial and the backward narrative structure. But first, the penultimate segment of this story for next week--chapters 7-13.
Serially yours,
Susan
First, I just added an article link to the list of blogs and articles (see right column, scroll down past several novel covers)about designing a Kindle for Dickens.
On this story as a serial: I continue to be intrigued by Eliot's reverse-narrative with Mr. G's story. In this second installment, the narration goes back several decades to the summer of 1788 in Italy to tell the backstory of Caterina Sarti and how she came to be a ward of Sir and Lady C at Cheverel Manor. I found echoes of various Victorian narratives before and after this one, including Aurora Leigh (transplanted too from Tuscany to England). The narrative structure that sets a scene in the opening two chapters and then jumps back to provide a richer narrative context for that initial moment is a form Eliot uses in her final novel DANIEL DERONDA. I wonder how effective this shape is for the serial? Perhaps one could read this story and not even need the first two chapters (ie first installment) to follow it?
That this story stands on its own apart from the first "Amos Barton" SCENE is clear, and yet Eliot does intertwine the stories, again going backward. I'm curious to see how the last story, "Janet's Repentance," will play into the serial and the backward narrative structure. But first, the penultimate segment of this story for next week--chapters 7-13.
Serially yours,
Susan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)